The homogenic national society is the most artificial society to have ever been created and is the result of the “social engineering project… Due to its bureaucratic nature, Statism needs the homogenisation of space and time to function. It requires that within its borders, cultures and ways of life are melted into one singular artificial national and ethnic identity, dependent on, ready to sacrifice itself for the state, and hijacked by the dynamics of bureaucracy. And it is exactly this process of nation building that has turned our world into a graveyard of cultures… the nation-state homogenises everything, and with the pretext of creating a national culture, it makes the cultural norm of the dominant ethnicity and religion the general norm...
As long as we make the mistake of believing that societies need to be homogeneous monolithic entities, it will be difficult to understand confederalism. Modernity’s history is also a history of four centuries of cultural and physical genocide in the name of an imaginary unitary society. Democratic confederalism as a sociological category is the counterpart of this history, and it rests on the will to fight if necessary, as well as on ethnic, cultural, and political diversity.
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary humanity is undoubtedly that of homogeneity. It is a phenomenon with global proportions that has affected, in varying degrees, almost all corners of the planet. This leads to the homogenisation of cultures. Increasingly, people, regardless of where they are coming from, have the same cultural references, adopt similar dress codes, and embrace one of several popular world languages.
The trend of homogenisation is even more evident when it comes to geopolitics. There is one form above all – that of the nation-state – that plays a central role, because of which the term state-centred realism has been used for international affairs.
Although world complexity has also forced the recognition of other factors, the forces of statecraft ultimately shape geopolitical relations. All these levels of homogeneity lead to the disappearance of various diversities. Distinct languages and cultures are going extinct. Researchers have also found a link between the extinction of cultural diversity and biodiversity. The proponents of capitalist modernity, the driving force behind this homogenisation of global proportions, would argue that it is a small price to pay for bringing the world closer together. But while sameness reigns supreme all around the globe, we see ethnic conflicts, wars, xenophobia, and warring nationalisms to be once again on the rise. This is so because it is not homogeneity that brings people together but understanding and empowerment.
Instead, it can be argued that the ongoing homogenisation is leading human civilisation towards a decline. The effects may be more severe than we think. Complexity, social, environmental, or even biological, allows life to thrive. On the other hand, as philosopher Jean Baudrillard suggests, he who lives by the same will die by the same.
The Domination of the Nation-State
This homogenising effect did not come from nowhere nor by accident. It results from the specific architecture of power, that is, bureaucracy. Bureaucratization has been shaping societies left and right through its main form – that of the nation-state, which, as noted by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava, has consolidated as the hegemonic political structure since the French Revolution.
Due to its bureaucratic nature, Statism needs the homogenisation of space and time to function. It requires that within its borders, cultures and ways of life are melted into one singular artificial national and ethnic identity, dependent on, ready to sacrifice itself for the state, and hijacked by the dynamics of bureaucracy. And it is exactly this process of nation building that has turned our world, as Having Guneser2 suggests, into a graveyard of cultures. According to her, the nation-state homogenises everything, and with the pretext of creating a national culture, it makes the cultural norm of the dominant ethnicity and religion the general norm.
The loss of cultural diversity impoverishes societies, distancing them from meaningful perspectives of decentralisation, contributing instead to strengthening the logic of political centralisation, which is at the core of all bureaucratic structures. Thus, any attempt at resistance is met first by ideological means, trying to convince the subject, and if this does not suffice, then comes physical force and the means of repression.
The premise “one language, one flag, one nation”, the Internationalist Commune of Rojava suggests, became the cement that would homogenise the new nation-states, leading them to deny and repress any other identity which failed to comply. This strive for homogeneity, as expressed by Abdullah Öcalan, can only be realised by force, thus bringing about the loss of freedom.
In one such homogenous environment, what currently exists is being presented as the only possible option. The multitude of potential presents and futures are omitted and replaced by a continuous loop through which bureaucratic realism reproduces itself in the long run. Although global in its physical dimension, the current state-centred world order is actually shrinking the scope of social and individual imaginaries. Thus, although cities and villages throughout the planet seem more connected than ever, they seem to be getting smaller. Wherever you go, as noted above, you, more often than not, stumble upon the same pattern, be it on societal, cultural, organisational, economic, or another level.
In effect, what has happened on a global scale is that humanity has embarked on a dangerous journey of purging itself of alternative visions or ways of life – something that greatly contributes to the rising tide of insignificancy advanced by capitalist economism and consumerism. As David Impellizzeri3 rightly points out, homogeneity and the conformity of a bureaucratised, mass society hollow out the public sphere and forfeit the heterogeneity of positions and plurality of perspectives in exchange for sameness and mass uniformity.
The Symbiosis between Capitalism and the Nation-State
But what have nation-states had to do with the age of neoliberalism, where the fiercest supporters of the status quo claim to be opposed to Statism and even self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalists” have gotten themselves into running whole countries?….
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