Faces of Nationalism Quotes

“They are parts of a single, overall, modern thought-world. According to the customary image socialists bear with them, Nationalism is the Mr. Hyde of that world. He is the Id of modernity, our revived and delirious archaism, the seductive, yet dangerous fellow from the forests who Marx pilloried back in 1843. 'Germano-maniacs' he called them, 'seeking our history of freedom beyond our history, in the primeval 'Teutonic forests'. Alas, the forests are not so easily disposed of as that, either in Germany or elsewhere. Nor are nationalists allowed to forget the fact. But what about Dr. Jekyll? This is the real question I am putting here, and it is all too rarely posed. We - 'on the left' - are assumed to be on his side. We disregard his oddities. He is a strangely Protestant figure, forever tensed up in an irreproachable piety punctuated with terrible nervous ticks. The slightest forest odour sets his forefinger wagging. Though he takes two baths a day to preserve his demeanour and sense of smell, the world remains permanenly unstatisfactory. This must be -one can hardly help feeling - because there is something unsatisfactory inside him somewhere, of which he may be only obscurely conscious.”
― Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited