Week 12 – Nationalism & Ethnic Conflict

The concept of nationalism has always caught my attention. Why do people buy the idea of nationalism? What are their motivations? Do these nationalist ideas lead to ethnic conflict and later terrorism? After reading the chapter, I understood that nationalists have a strong desire for independence and unity and the governments of nation-states have an additional tool to aid political stability – nationalistic symbols. This resonated with me as I thought about terrorist groups in this context, for example, Taliban terrorist groups in Afghanistan use the flag with the kalima ‘la’ ilaha il’lallah muhammadur rasoolullah’ (There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah) written on it which is a core belief of Islam however it has nothing to do with the core beliefs of the Taliban group. Also, Talibans use the term ‘jihad’ to aid their ideology of terrorism and their followers buy that idea. Such nationalistic symbols like flags, slogans, and historic events help those organizations to stay upright and thus, help the leaders bring make their followers react readily to such symbols.

To continue, nationalism leads to irredentism at times, for example, Russian annexation of Ukraine in 2022. Moving on to Darley’s article, I admire his attempt to explain evil production, but I struggled to understand evil completely since it is so subjective. When talking about evilness or morality, it almost always depends on the context, for example, I thought about a person who murders someone trying to rob versus a person who murders someone trying to protect himself. What makes a person evil? Frequency or intensity of his actions?

Regarding the role of organizations in ‘producing’ evil-doers or more specifically killers, Darley (1992) mentioned, “Normal organizations sometimes intend harm….their corporate ideologies make it appropriate to harm others.” This is an interesting point because as we talk about organizations, how do we define or specify an ‘evil’ organization? Because what might be considered a normal organization might have some deep-rooted ethnocentrism beliefs, maybe as simple as not employing black people or offering them jobs with lower salaries.