It is in this second, material sense, that a socialist should be patriotic. (Note that this material sense is not reducible to race; the fascist attempt to do so is ahistorical, and as Stalin points out, shared genetic background does not necessarily translate to shared economic interests or shared cultural identity).
This is were you lose me. Genetic background is not the same as race. Race is an enforced social construct of colonial hierarchy. It is not bound to genetics alone but by violent social relations that are used to both enforce colonialism onto the colonized and to justify it for the colonizers.
I agree with you on that, actually. “Biological” race comes apart rather quickly if you examine it all critically or scientifically; why were Prussians considered “pure German” when many of them had a heavy Slavic intermixture, how did Italian-Americans “become” white, etc. My point was more: even if you accept (for the sake of argument) the fascist conception of what race is, it still is not nation-building. Which makes the entire fascist conception of the nation essentially contradictory.
This is were you lose me. Genetic background is not the same as race. Race is an enforced social construct of colonial hierarchy. It is not bound to genetics alone but by violent social relations that are used to both enforce colonialism onto the colonized and to justify it for the colonizers.
I agree with you on that, actually. “Biological” race comes apart rather quickly if you examine it all critically or scientifically; why were Prussians considered “pure German” when many of them had a heavy Slavic intermixture, how did Italian-Americans “become” white, etc. My point was more: even if you accept (for the sake of argument) the fascist conception of what race is, it still is not nation-building. Which makes the entire fascist conception of the nation essentially contradictory.
Word that makes good sense to me thanks