Episode 36 Fatherlands

“We owe allegiance to no crown” an 1814 portrait painting by John Woodside, captures the growing spirit of nationalism in the U.S. following the War of 1812. Here was a glimpse of English colonialism morphed into American nationalism, complete with origin stories and national ‘founding fathers.’ Benedict Anderson famously defined the nation as an imagined political community. “It is imagined,” writes Anderson, “because the members of even the smallest nations will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” Nations are a relatively recent historical phenomenon, and ‘nationalism’ was born, as Anderson writes, from the racial anxieties of creole colonies organized by the slave owning classes of the Atlantic world. Just as the events of January 6 testified to the riotous passions unleashed by white identitarian racial nationalism, the modern age is replete with similar examples, a phenomenon we discuss in this week’s Fatherlands episode.