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Lee C's avatar

I've seen arguments like this before.

The problem with it is that wood block printing was invented in China many, many centuries before it existed in Europe, either as wood or metal type.

So I'd say that it was more likely Buddhist monks (some of the earliest printing was for that) and then Chinese and Chinese speaking literati that were the first modern nations in that sense.

They even had newspapers, more or less.

https://www.medievalists.net/2021/05/how-newspapers-existed-china-900-years-ago/

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Tony Sustak's avatar

As a young person, growing up in an area that had a lot of working class Jews in it, in the 50' and 60', I was deeply influenced by a number of people of humble background. The biggest take away for me was "Never Again!". In my naivite of in the time of childhood, I lacked the historical knowledge and lacked the analytical capacity to place the sector of the Jewish population I was in interacting with, in their proper social and historical context. These were the Jews, who were open to the community around them, who thought of themselves as one other group of people, among many groups of people. They could welcome an atheistic, non-Jewish younster to their dinner tables with great warmth. Their message to me was, "Never Again!", and by "Never Again!", they meant not anywhere and not to anyone else. Perhaps, you can imagine my dis-illusionment when I started interacting with Jews, for whom "Never Again!", meant Now Is Our Turn!

I am not sure what you mean in total, when you refer to Nationalism. I am of the section of the Left that takes the view that Nationalism has no progressive aspects. Tribalism is as inherent in our species as the capacity for language. I firmly beleive, if we can not learn to see humanity as one big tribe, with many branches, stories and histories, we will orchestrate our own doom as a species.

We live in a time in which the principal organization of humanity is into Nation States. Nation States being the vessels for a flavor of tribalism. We also live in a time of near instant communication and only slightly longer times to annihilation.

Given my early experience, looking at the Zionist dog, wagging the US tail, I have a deep loathing for people like Victoria Nuland/Numacher, her rabid dog husband, Blinken and a long list of other despicable people. While the Zionist Neo-Lib/Conservative cabal is a minority, where ever one looks, one can see them running around pouring gasoline on those fires of dominance and imperialism that seems intent on acheiving armegedon.

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