Geographic Nationalism Solves the Problems of Ethnic Nationalism, Globalism, and Degradation Combined

Leaders of the Plurinational State of Bolivia:
a Geographic Nationalism instead of an Ethnic Nationalism,
Socially and Economically Developing for the First Time, Sustainably,
Once They Threw Off Past Single Ethnic Nationalism

I want to address two points that have been making the rounds on the web as of late. Both deal with the ideas or policy recommendations of "sustainability nationalism," to coin a phase.

Sustainability nationalism is a recent ideology that has a false dichotomy at its core. On the one hand of this dichotomy, people argue that "nationalism (read as ethnic, religious, or linguistic homogeneity) is the best recipe for making a sustainable society, innately and predictably." It fits with the other side of this false dichotomy, that "globalism is solely responsible for environmental degradation and a decline in development, so a only totally regional or national economy would be developmental and sustainable." Plus, globalists are claimed to be solely responsible for antics of divide and conquer in promoting multi-culturalism within ethnic nationalism. These three factors together make a narrative of ethnic nationalism and national development solely as a victim of globalists' antics of divide and conquer and of their attempts to erode geographic nationalist economies as well. However, beware any simple false dichotomies, because they put reason to sleep, and the sleep of reason produces its own monsters, however well intended.

I will argue to the contrary of both that [1] ethnic nationalism itself comes out of a history of divide and conquer, and because of that [2] it was mostly unrepresentative in the past, and thus [3] has its own unsustainable and non-developmental dynamics because of this. [4] I will argue that such ethnic nationalist movements have hardly predictably been representative, sustainable or equal, and instead have attempted in many cases the opposite: to work against their own local historical movements of representativeness, sustainability or equality to create environmental underclasses that are minorities in some states and even majorities in others. I will argue that such ethnic nationalist movements fail to have such a clear pedigree of representativeness and sustainability in the past, and while they do have an ideological claim of being so, the realities of most ethnic movements institute a violent and unrepresentative regime of the opposite while claiming to do the former. [5] Such ethnic nationalisms attempted to work against their own more multi-cultural and geographic national movements' and their desired widened franchises of equality, representativeness, and sustainability.

For example, in some cases of nationalism like the United States, as mentioned in the book The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2000) by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, the ideas of equitable multi-cultural 'geographic nationalism' that attempted to found the nation in the first place were repressed by an unrepresentative elite-steered ethnic nationalism that superseded and repressed a multi-cultural geographic nationalism once it started to address vast inequities of wealth and power. Trust revolutionary pirate Jean Lafitte as a direct witness to this. He was in the thick of the same era of the United States as it moved from its inclusive to its more exclusionary ethnic nationalism, and he echoed the same sentiment of disappointment with such a thin ethnic nationalism that had nothing to do with the U.S.'s revolutionary origins that he supported. Therefore, the wealthy and powerful in the United States later sponsored a more thin ethnic nationalist movement and redefinition of the United States to repress violently the actual founding movements of a geographic nationalism that was move inclusive, cross-class, and multi-cultural.

Second, in many other cases of nationalist democratic development, as mentioned in the book Social Democracy in the Global Periphery (2007) we have cases of very successful local geographic nationalisms because they overthrew their past crony ethnic dominant elites and their allies, and began to develop as a geographic nation economically and politically only after that gatekeeping was removed. Once that gatekeeping was removed, there was greater economic security for all through a combination of pragmatic democratic power sharing among multi-culturalist groups, a national welfare state, a nationalist development, and a policy of economic globalism combined. This rare combination after the unseating of an unrepresentative elitist ethnic nationalist drive has almost solely led to the few examples of successful nations in the global periphery with a more representative and equitable nation state that is economically nationalist, with a wide welfare state, and while being deeply involved in the global economy at the same time.

(These are at odds with each other only in the ideological minds of current neoliberalists. Neoliberalists are really our novel globalist feudal ruling class uninterested in our freedoms, development, sustainability and only interested respectively in their licentiousness, cronyness, and degradation over all. That is why they want to destroy nations, because nations represent sources of solidarity geographically against them. However, one kind of ethnic nationalism simply plays into their hands as will be described below.)

As another example for the book Social Democracy in the Global Periphery (2007) of a successful multi-cultural national geographic state with global development, we might add the recent redefinition of the pluri-national state of Bolivia and its developments to the cases mentioned in that book, since Bolivia did the same soon after that book was published. Meanwhile, so called 'successful' ethnic nationalist regimes (like under Mugabe's Zimbabwe, or in Ethiopia, or in North Korea) generally languish in unrepresentative, non-developmental, inequitable, and more degradative situations--all the while hazing their populations that they are homogeneous ethnic nationalisms that are representative and equal, when they are nothing of the kind.

[As a caveat, for a third kind of nationalism, there are hybrid royalist-nationalisms based on the few places that successfully transitioned and co-opted revolutionary nationalist movements of all kinds. Some versions of these royalist nationalism are very odd holdovers when royals align with their aristocratic factions against the nationalist social movements, so you get the British 'nation' (and delayed universal suffrage until after WWII!) or other small perverse places like Lichtenstein that failed to have women's suffrage until 1984 and their king still has huge veto power over 'national' legislation. However, other versions of royalist nationalisms have been the most progressive forces of nationalism, period. As noted in the book The Three World's of Welfare Capitalism (1990), when royal houses chose political alliances against aristocratic factions and with nationalist social movements (particularly socialist and regional economy movements of 'red-green'), you get strong universalistic welfare states like Sweden or Denmark under durable royal houses, while the aristocracy withered. People should decide about their own internal royalisms, and it is false that there are durable and predictable 'class conflict' ways that royalty aligns in national politics always in league with aristocratic interests like themselves.]

So there is something only to be said for a geographic nationalism and its greater democracy and sustainability and development, that I will contrast to the rather thin movements of ethnic nationalism associated more with more internal colonialism, environmental inequalities, and environmental degradation.

Thus I will contrast below the historical movement for a more inclusive geographic nationalism against the internal social movements of more thin, violent and degradative ethnic nationalism that came soon after in such geographic nations like the United States or such ethnic nationalisms were the only movements of nationalism so far in many other countries, associated more with little actual representativeness, equality, sustainability, or development to show for it. However, these movements are hardly the same. The former movements for geographic nationalism that include all within a particular territory seem the more sustainable, representative, developmental, and inclusively multi-cultural movements. The latter ethnic nationalism movements that include some and yet exclude many others are thin unrepresentative elitist movements attempting to divide up the former. Such ethnic nationalist movements tend to set up the opposite of what they talk about: unrepresentative politics and their environmental inequalities upon some that institutionalizes widening environmental degradation processes upon all over time.

So below I want to challenge the idea of sustainability nationalism only in part instead of challenge it categorically as a whole. I think sustainability nationalism has two branches: one a thin ethnic nationalist view and one a more a more inclusive geographic nationalist view. The former seems a hubristic and bombastic hypocrite, and only the latter seems to have accumulated any pedigree of representativeness and sustainability. Like some modern ecological Friedrich List, now writing of the 'national ecological system of political economy and democracy,' I accept some aspects of sustainability nationalism, though sustainability nationalism is a policy idea that requires removing such a false dichotomy about the origins of degradation as solely coming from a globalist multi-cultural venue visited upon a victimized ethnic nation. We have to solve the national problems first to move forward instead of just animate blind hatred of globalism. A nation can victimize itself internally, socially and ecologically just as well as external globalists can, and that self-victimization is what sets up the divisions that globalists rely upon appealing to, in essence, to break up the nation. So get your house in order first to protect against unrepresentative globalist appeals. Geographic nationalism and solidarity can only be multi-cultural. Ethnic nationalisms are innately divisive faux solidarities--useful for the globalists themselves.

So a more geographic nationalism of representation, sustainability, and inclusion of all peoples within the nation would lead to sustainability. Any attempt at ethnic/religious/linguistic nationalism is to the contrary based on merely delimited, unrepresentative, and degradative majorities over minorities in a nation or even delimited unrepresentative minorities over majorities in a nation, like in South Africa apartheid or in many South American countries. Ethnic nationalisms seem to have regularly led to corruption, repression of feedback for sustainability, and degradation upon their own multi-cultural populations, instead of ethnic nationalisms having been guards for regional economies or sustainability. In many cases, unrepresentative elites of such ethnic nationalisms became and are the globalists themselves instead of globalists being a different bird altogether.

So if an ethnic nationalism is merely a recipe for degradation more locally upon minorities (or even majorities) within the geographic nation, over time expanded upon everyone, then ethnic nationalism is increasingly an unrepresentative degradation that grows upon and within the geographic nation as a whole. Meanwhile, a multi-cultural and geographic nationalism is a recipe for representation and sustainability, because it removes the ability of unrepresentative ethnic nationalists (which can be globalists as well!) that attempt to manipulate ethnic supremacist groups to their own advantage to repress those simply clamoring for equal treatment and better environments. Plus, a multi-cultural and geographic nationalism is the recipe for representation and sustainability because it removes the globalist's opportunistic appeal to (justifiably) restive groups of minorities/majorities that get a raw and degradative deal of environmental inequality and social inequality within their own nations.

Therefore, stop blaming globalists for dividing nations. Past ethnic nationalists should blame themselves setting up faulty premises of ethnic inclusion and exclusion in the political alliances that make nation states that are easily divided and quickly degraded, mostly upon environmental outcastes first though expanding to everyone later.

It is that unrepresentative strategy of ethnic nationalism that sets up globalists' successful divide and conquer appeal to minorities or majorities opportunistically, appealing toward whomever interprets they are getting a bad deal in an ethnic nationalist polity. So, ethnic nationalisms themselves can set up unrepresentative politics within the geographic nation in this way. This unrepresentative national politics sets up environmental degradation in this way by creating and repressing an environmental undercaste population (of a minority or a majority sometimes) that experiences more environmental inequalities than those in the political alliance of ethnic inclusion.

In short, I like the policy idea that geographic nations are potentially (instead of innately and predictably) the recipe for making a representative and sustainable society, while rejecting the faux idea that ethnic nationalisms can achieve such representation and sustainability at least without solving their own enforced inequalities upon their minorities or even majorities, first. Most 'sustainability ethnic nationalists,' to coin a phrase, attempt to blame external forces of unrepresentative globalism alone for their plight at being undermined, culturally and economically. Thus ethnic nationalists see the enemy as always outside, multi-cultural, and globalist, instead of the enemy equally being their own biases themselves generating unrepresentative, degradative, and repressive relations upon their internal populations and thus themselves. Their own ethnic, religious, or linguistic nationalist nearsighteness to the inequalities that they visit upon their own internal geographic minorities of various kinds (or their internal geographic majorities, sometimes!) is their major blindspot.

However, there are institutional solutions toward a more representative and sustainable geographic nationalism that can solve the problems both of ethnic nationalism and unrepresentative globalism equally. These institutional solutions are via the policy of a wider Ecological Reformation of the four major institutions in any social relations of which the bioregional state is only one quarter. When these four institutional adaptations are achieved in any nation state, it converts any thin and crony and unfair ethnic nationalism or opportunistic globalism into a more equitable, representative, and sustainable geographic nationalism for all groups, regions, and individuals equally--like that encouraged by the book Toward a Bioregional State (2005).

The rest of this post addresses two quotes about sustainability nationalism that I have found recently.

The first is:

"Globalists don't really care about the environment. If they did, they'd encourage everyone to buy local. Nationalism saves the environment."
--https://twitter.com/polNewsForever/status/870462288976850945

To the contrary, simply 'nationalism' per se in the past has been mostly ethnic nationalism, and as such, it has been just as degradative as globalism is in the present, because both have been unrepresentative putsches across other marginalized peoples instead of geographically representative of all in a nation. However, four more representative arrangements within any nation state via these suggested more regionalized equitable politics, education, consumption, and finance have a better chance at being a real national solidarity of real 'polytopian' geographic pressures for sustainability and representation. This would be unlike the ungeographic politics and the divide and conquer dynamics of both ethnic nationalism and unrepresentative globalization spreading itself across states, multiple continents and cultures.

The common feature of such ethnic nationalisms and unrepresentative globalism is attached to the same desire to be over another group unrepresentatively. For the ethnic nationalists, these are the unrepresentative elites and their political allies that prefer a form of cultural hegemony and repression of input over their internal minorities (or even majorities!), in a form of 'internal colonialism.'

For the unrepresentative globalists, they are the individuals and groups in charge of major international corporations and banks. Currently, after World War II particularly, and expanded quickly in the 1980s from GATT into the WTO, they are developing a tyrannical formal architecture of non-nationalist supremacy over the whole world. This is a developing global feudal empire of the global corporate/banking elite within and across all nations, in which the latter is without any representation in such global formal institutions and only marginalization.

Particularly royalist-nationalisms have been heinous in this growing globalist era, as they have done great damage to their geographic nations and to others' geographic nations. Particularly the royalty of Denmark has done great damage to nationalism everywhere by sponsoring the Bilderberg Conferences repeatedly over 50 years, aligning with the bigger placeless banks and corporations and non-nationalist military empires like NATO against their own people. Much of the modern Bilderberg-built neoliberalist world of the European Union and NAFTA are hardly set up by 'capitalists' or by 'capitalism as a system' though by ongoing high level globalist conferences hosted by royalty, international militaries, international banks, and various 'knighted' politicians they then attempt to run in their home countries with their sponsorship. All of these 'knightings' of national politicians takes place in secret and illegal meetings with various national heads of state to coordinate foreign policy (that's why its illegal) between them outside of democratic purview.  Most of the U.S. candidates for President and even Vice President for over 30 years have been picked and vetted at Bilderberg before they were allowed to run 'for public office.'

Is it hardly surprising that unrepresentative royalist-nationalisms and ethnic nationalisms with their internal colonialisms align so well with unrepresentaive globalist strategems to undermine the same peoples and regions like in the euphemisms of 'trade corridors' in southern Mexico's Chiapas areas, for instance. A better word for a trade corridor or a 'free trade zone' would be a globalized occupied zone that has attempted to vanquish national rights, equal treatment before the law and due process, altogether. Such 'free trade zones' are globalist neofeudal territorial fiefdoms, pieces of a nation's territory, authority and rights sold off by corrupted and unrepresentative ethnic nationalist elites aligned with such globalists, or sometimes ethnic nationalists and globalists are in the same groups (particularly clear in the U.S. and Mexico) selling off their own nations, attempting to alienate national sovereignty with an illegal ruse of calling it an international treaty.

The only groups that find such ongoing globalism representative are the very few powerful corrupt ethnic nationalist leaderships themselves in mostly European, Middle Eastern, and East Asian areas against many other hundreds of geographic and ethnic nationalists marginalized worldwide). Thoughtlessly aligned with them are the unthinking aggregate individual masses across all nations that are encouraging by their participation the ongoing ecological and economic shakeouts of their own nations that they themselves are decrying 'are being done to them' when it really is their corrupted ethnic leadership and their daily purchasing decisions themselves that are equally to blame for the destruction of their nations as any globalist is to blame. It is the short-term individual consumer armies in all nations that support such unrepresentative corporate and banker organized globalism mindlessly without a thought to their own future. This makes their short-term daily lives the enemy of their own long-term futures for themselves and their own children. Millions of migrant workers may travel to where the globalist jobs are, though I am skeptical that their actions of beneficial participation and short term benefit represent proof that split families and economic remittances and reduced (if any) political rights of labor at their migrant underclass status location are a long term way to handle the geographic inequities of such a globalist development.

Such aggregate short-term individuals of consumers or laborers are unable to plan for the future of states or markets. Such short-term headless aggregated actions only mindlessly and ongoingly destroy the future of both the geographic viability of states and undercut national/regionally integrated markets, economically and ecologically. We are entering a world a globalist institutions, hollowed out nationalist rights, and a growing divided precariat. This world may be developing, though it is hardly socially or ecologically sustainable.

People can develop a politics that plans for the future, though that fails to mean automatically that innately and predictably that on the other hand that states have always done a good job at this in the past, and it fails to mean that markets mindlessly have done any better job planning either, because markets get dominated by crony suppliers aligned with crony statists, against both consumers and citizens in general. It's simply supply versus demand. However, that is a choice--an unrepresentative choice--and both states and markets can be arranged to do better. We can force suppliers out of their self-interest to be more representative of consumers by assuring contexts of wider choices in all material categories and by maintaining regional economies as checks and balances against such erosive and corrosive economic shakeout that only serves suppliers' long term interest instead of consumers long term interest. We can force states and all political parties out of their self-interest to be more representative of citizens when we have wider choices of parties and when we have a less rigged and gerrymandered district arrangement, for starters. The rationale why both markets and states get the same corruptions is that both markets and states can be unrepresentative when dominated and gatekept by supplier/administrator driven politics against consumers and citizens. So states and markets both have the same corruptions, the same potential corrupt crony supplier politics, and the same potential unrepresentative violence upon consumers and citizens wanting more options, and that violent gatekeeping of our choices keeps that crony developmentalism, corruption, and degradative choices in place.

So an ethnic nationalism is hardly a solution to representation and sustainability. Instead, any rise of ideologies of ethnic nationalism has either been an attempt at violent wrecking by elite-driven manipulations and distractions, attempting to wreck and to divide and conquer internally in the nation those working against a crony unrepresentative and degradation development; or, any rise of ethnic nationalism when it has been the only attempt at nationalism, has seldom delivered on economic developmentalism or equality that it promises, except when it falls toward a more geographic nationalism linked to the global economy and which does more than that though which maintains a geographic and regional concern with national, social, and ecological development at the same time.

In the former case, unrepresentative elites sponsor ethnic nationalist ideas in the attempt to divide and conquer the multi-cultural internal geographic nation that is rising against themselves. Such unrepresentative elites appeal to ethnic/religious nationalism to attempt to destroy the movement that is unmasking them and their crony destruction, in the attempt of them to destroy the social movements for a common multi-ethnic or multi-religious common geographic nationalism. So we should reclaim multi-culturalism of the geographic nation against the framings of crony, unrepresentaive, and degradative internal colonialisms of ethnic nationalism that work so well with similar larger unrepresentative and degradative globalisms.

Plus, if ethnic nationalists get their wish, this means end of most current nations and likely more war and smaller economies and hardly any sustainability, instead of economic stability or sustainability. This is because many current 'nations' are mostly very multi-cultural despite many ethnic national ideologies to the contrary. See this image of Europe alone. The geographic variegation of peoples and ethnicities is even more extreme in other areas of the world.

In the real world there are very few examples of viable ethnic nationalisms, while many examples of how geographic nationalisms of multi-cultural groups would be more viable. The only actual homogeneous ethnic nationalisms are in places like peninsular isolated Korea or the islands of Japan (and even there there are much regional animosities between different areas of Japan). Therefore, most nations are plurinational and thus a more geographic nationalism of wider nested regional autonomies makes sense. Spain is a prime example of such a highly regionalized polity formally. In other words ethnic nationalism is a linguistic trope of writers more than a real world phenomena across most of the world, and a dystopia results if you attempt to institute something that as paper thin as ethnic nationalism upon the beautifully variegated way that people and geography interact in our real world. Thus geographic nationalism is the only pragmatic solution to representation and sustainability, period, for the great majority of the world.

Plus, if those smaller economic nations were instituted like the dreams of ethnic nationalists would want, all they would get is a greater divide and conquer from the globalized level of world economic and political activities from such corporations and banks currently, instead of gaining more 'autonomy' of action for representation and sustainability!

With those caveats, thus nationalism is still an ideology that is better than globalism as an ideology because the place-based aspects of particular nationalisms are always stronger than the thin placeless and vague global citizenships encouraged by globalism. Nationalism and patriotism as an ideology is at least tied to land, with a regular concern with people, and generally a care of land, water, and earth that is the body of the people itself through the food they eat, the air they breathe, and the water they drink. This is what is meant by a geographic nationalism that is far preferable to an ethnic nationalism. This is because an ethnic nationalism is an unrepresentative elite-steered movement of divide and conquer itself that is used to keep repressing any multi-cultural call for making real institutions more representative for all within the geography of a nation.

Second, nationalism is thus geographically and potentially more possible to make representative than globalism, though hardly predictably to be so innately representative. Most ethnic nationalisms themselves are the products of divide and conquer politics internally, by unrepresentative elites themselves against other internal multi-cultural social movements that wanted real representation. Unrepresentative elites hated that, so they jury-rigged an ethnic nationalism sentiment to divide up those calling for common geographic nationalist representation of all. Such unrepresentative elite divide and conquer politics historically against the geographic nation has been the purpose of all movements that popularized mere thin ethnic nationalism and repressed minorities (or majorities) instead of divide and conquer tactics solely coming from globalists only per se historically.

Such a geographic nationalism that is representative and sustainable is unpredictable and difficult to arrange because it is an ongoing choice we have to make in the way we treat all others. It is an issue less of ideological purity and more about the particular way that the triple variables of the formal institutions, ongoing formal policy output, and informal political alliances of the state have been arranged. The ongoing choice of keeping these three factors representative matter equally in education, consumption, and finance and whether these remain representative as well within such nation states.

It is only institutional arrangements of greater representation in all four venues of social life that makes that makes sustainability, that makes a sustainable geographic nation, instead of the culturally and politically biased versions of these four venues that make a mere ideology of ethnic nationalism. More representative formal institutional versions of all of these four venues, and more regionalized representative versions of all of these within nationalism (in aggregated watershed regions, in aggregated bioregions, in their ongoing nested feedback relationships [1] [2])  guard against potentials of an unrepresentative national policy from taking place. However, ideas of the nation state and constitutional engineering for democracy in the past have been very thin on how to have a greater citizen check and balance against unrepresentative nationalist elites themselves. Toward a Bioregional State fleshes out over 60 additional state checks and balances that make it more possible to have a sustainable geographic nation. Thus a representative, sustainable and geographic nationalism requires an extended and extensive realm of formal institutional checks and balances including changes to the architecture of the formal state as well as beyond it, in how to arrange checks and balances for wider choices and greater representation in all four venues of social life. This wider Ecological Reformation would be the apotheosis of the geographical nation, and it would make nation states more geographically representative for all instead of being mere ethnic nationalist states that degrade slowly upon all in their ongoing unrepresentative and crony policies.

However, simply the appeal to the ideology of nationalism has little to do with sustainability. The reality of ongoing representative choices of relations and of materials that suit more geographically locused states, science, finance, and consumption as lived in daily life is the only way to get to a more sustainable and representative geographic nation.

A second quote or theme about sustainable nationalism making the rounds. It has been said by others though rarely as succinctly as this:

"Post-racial multicultural society & ideology serve western elites' age-old strategy of divide & rule."
https://twitter.com/rogerahicks

This in the particular is true in the way globalist elites currently dominate many nation states of the world. However, it is hardly predictable that the origin of multi-cultural ideologies only come from 'outside' a nation. A geographic nation can itself generate a more representative and multi-cultural politics and slowly demote its own ethnic nationalist past of biases and unrepresentative environmental inequalities. Multi-cultural localities can be more truly the representative kinds of nations, while more homogeneous attempts at ethnic nationalism tend to marginalize and be the lesser representative kinds of nations by creating environmental castes/classes more readily. It is the  ongoing unrepresentative quality of such ethnic national states (against their internal minorities or even their internal majorities, that suffer most of the environmental problems inequitably), that catalyzes ongoing environmental degradation instead of solves it. So it is mostly the ethnic nationalist states in their inequalities of law and administration that create environmental degradation in this way just as bad as the globalists can.

To summarize, the best route for sustainability would be thus a [1] more geographically inclusive national state development, [2] with four level of representative institutions toward an Ecological  Reformation of institutions, [3] with plural watershed/bioregional characteristics formally institutionalized, [4] with allowances for ongoing trade in only better chosen materials in all 'commodity ecology' categories that avoids degradation and externalities in any region, and [5] with a deep concern to avoid institutionalizing degradative and unrepresentative and corrupt relationships upon any internal minorities (or even majorities), instead of scapegoating them for the problems of the majorities that visit the degradation upon the minorities and create their wretched states and then use it to malign them unfairly.

To the contrary, to summarize, the beginning of ethnic nationalism is the creation of an environmental underclass and of systemic processes of unrepresentative and corrupt environmental degradation upon all groups instead of just the environmental underclasses. Creating and ignoring an environmental inequality generation in this way is the foot in the door for degradation and corruption of all nations and bioregions.

We can still have access to both local and imported items and the benefits of a globalist economy without the neofeudalist crony architecture that is being introduced with it currently. This can be done as long as there are fresh institutional contexts like the Civic Democratic Institution and the Commodity Ecology Institution (and of course more regionalized education and financial options) that help maintain regional politics/culture and  regional economies as checks and balances against such ongoing ecological and economic erosion of peoples, cultures, and their bioregional interactions worldwide.

The World Bank, which has ruined the world (hardly by itself though with the corrupt institutions that it is associated with), says about 1/7 of the world is migrant workers now, and it anticipates a feudal world of half the world's population in informal rightless settlements (slums) by 2050, living without legal or civic rights outside the walls of their gleaming carceral and surveilled smart cities for the global elite alone. Such global feudalizers in these novel castle towns actively want the destruction of geographic nationalisms less out of liberal representative desire of multi-culturalism, and more because nationalism, patriotism, universal civil rights, as well as class politics, unionism, as well as regional loyalties of all kinds are the politics of solidarity that their globalist politics of division seek to destroy. Thus all kinds of politics of solidarity in all forms are ways to maintain a check and balance against the short term consumer politics of individualism as well as a way to keep unrepresentative ethnic and globalist groups in check. However, it is argued that there is a faux solidarity in ethnic, religious, or linguistic nationalisms that plays on the globalist's side by attempting to keep the more inclusive geographic nationalism from developing.

To reiterate, we can still have access to both local and imported items and the benefits of a globalist economy, as long as there are maintained fresh contexts of regional economies as checks and balance against such ongoing globalist ecological and economic erosion of peoples, cultures, and their bioregional interactions worldwide.

Sustainability is making jobs stay home and expanding them at home, per ongoing bioregions. Sustainability is expanding wider choices at home. Deepening a bioregional economy, politics, education, and financial mediums everywhere worldwide, is the great soil and foundation of a stronger representative geographic nationalism. To the contrary, an ethnic nationalism tends to erode the bioregions by being the recipe for creating environmental inequalities by creating an environmental undercaste population, and that undercaste environmental population is the recipe for ongoing unrepresentative and unsustainable destruction of the nation itself.

A nation is for all that live within it, instead of simply a delimited legal definition of a nation based on a larger portion of the ethnic majorities in a particular area. Ethnic nationalism is a faux nationalism and is a kind of nascent globalism in the huge systemic inequalities it creates within nations. Geographic nationalism for all that live within the nation within it equally, with a respect for law and feedback from all equally, is the only recipe for keeping the nation free from the divide and conquer of opportunistic globalists only capitalizing on the internal divisions seeded by ethnic nationalists. Fixing a more representative and multi-cultural geographic nationalism by including its minorities (or repressed majorities) more readily is the recipe that keeps unrepresentative globalists from dividing up the nation.

Unrepresentative ethnic nationalists have only themselves to blame for degradation as well as only themselves to blame for unrepresentative globalists taking advantage of the divide and conquer context. That divide and conquer context is hardly set up by unrepresentative globalists. That divide and conquer context is set up by unrepresentative ethnic national strategies, which globalists only take advantage of. Those minorities that experience degradation and devastation visited upon them by
ethnic, religious, or language nationalities are created by the unrepresentative ethnic, religious, and language nationalists themselves.

So stop blaming globalists for the taking advantage of the inequalities that ethnic nationalists have created unrepresentatively.

Fix your own nationalist house to be more representative for all geographically instead of delimiting it to ethnic, language, and religious definitions and benefits. Then, globalists will lack the foothold that you are worried about that is eroding your nations.

As they say, barbarism begins at home, so take care you avoid projecting your own crimes upon a globalist other alone.

In conclusion, this was written as a theorist of nationalism, with geographic nationalism as a good check and balance against an unrepresentative and degradatively globalized world. So geographic nations are required as larger geographic levels of checks and balances in a globalized world, just as internal watershed as required as more internal checks and balances against unrepresentative potentials of any national state as well. Ethnic nationalisms would be self-defeating solutions for representation and sustainability, for the various rationales above. Theorists of nationalism exist despite a widespread view that there is a lack of theorization.

So, first, this is a more ecological contribution to a theorization of nationalism. It is part of the ideas of 'sustainability nationalism' above. However, it is very different in support of a nested geographic nationalism of all regions, in support of a wider multi-cultural base of all actual geographic  nationalisms that have more potential for representation and thus sustainability. This is contrary to the false unities of unrepresentative and degradative thin ethnic nationalist (mis)assumptions.

Second, as said earlier for many years consistently, the bioregional state is a sustainability nationalism that is opposed to nationalization per se as well, [1] [2] [3], since nationalization is just another version of this same mystification, hiding in plain sight the same unrepresentative centralized crony unrepresentative and degradative arrangements as ethnic nationalism.

In conclusion, the same problems plague policies of ethnic nationalism and nationalization because they are both unrepresentative and prime degradation. Nationalization is a mystifying and gaslighting policy since it claims it is 'opposed to privatization' and 'for the good of the abstract nation' when in practice such nationalizations prime the more consolidated, unrepresentative, privatized, and degradative choices that it claims to be protecting against. The same can be said for ethnic nationalism. Ethnic nationalism is a mystifying and gaslighting policy since it claims it is going to be 'for the good of the ethnic hegemony of an abstract nation' when in practice such ethnic nationalisms prime the same kind of unrepresentative, privatized, and degradative choices that it claims to be protecting against through setting up a denial and repression of the wider realistic multi-cultural geographic nation from representation within it. Upon both policies of nationalization and ethnic nationalism, environmental inequalities develop in practice upon any repressed populations within the geographic nation, which in time, expand into ever more unrepresentative and degradative policies upon all.

In short, the same monster of environmental degradation develops from the sleep of reason about the unrepresentative degradative implications of nationalization and ethnic nationalism. If we see the common geographic nationalism as what is important above thinner repressive ethnic nationalisms, the world's nations would become more representative, and thus more sustainable, places.