Dear Mr. Poe,

first of all, I want to thank you for your show. In general, I really appreciate the idea of doing interviews with authors you would otherwise have just the possibility to read. But one advantage of such an interview could be listening the author responding to critiques.

That applies especially to the interview with Azar Gat And it is even more unfortunate in this case where the author is introducing such a highly controversial statement that you weren't trying to question his assumptions at all.

Beginning whith a more general aspect, in my opinion, you are mixing up state, culture and nation, e.g. when you brouhgt up the example of the invading huns. Surely the population of Russia would recognize them as different, but that is not meant by the idea of (modern) nationalism. The thing is not that there are cultural differences which you can and could find on endless levels and in millions of floating elements everywhere but that nationalism means to look at a big group of people seeing them as one homogeneous entity and use this idea as an argument for political ends.

Then the example of central europe which you saw as a region prooving the long lasting existence of nations par excellence. I'm not sure if you are aware of the huge amount of very elaborate current literature describing different forms of nation building especially in this region - Pieter Judson, Jeremy King, Tara Zahra, Nancy Wingfield ... But you seem to remain on an deeply essentialist position. Let me show you a concrete case regarding the Czech Lands I was doing some research about: In 1891, 1895 and 1908 in Prague were held big cultural and industrial exhibitions with millions of visitors. Representative groups of visitors were welcomed and celebrated as the Other - meaning demonstrating a difference to an imagined Self. The funny thing is, the organizers of these reception ceremonials everytime tried to make the difference describing it with more or less the same words regardless of their origin. Thus the "Rusyns" (Ukrainians as a people was not known at that time), the "Slowaks", the "Moravians" and even the "Rural Czechs" were placed in the same relationship to the actual "Czechs"; usually following the pattern: modern, civilized, educated vs. genuine, traditional, natural ... They made this difference visible by putting some people in costumes that made them look exotic among the well dressed majority at the exhibitions. At the same time it was said that the actual Czechs are the rural Czechs. To sum it up, you agreed in the interview on the point that recognizing differences is a fundamental aspect of nationalism. So far I wouldn't disagree. But the thing is that there is nothing more than making differences. It's nothing to grasp at behind all that, no deeper essence of a collective of people. Cultural or let's say ethnic characteristics were rather shared among Czech and German speaking rural population than among the "Czechs" as a whole group. So it is a question of social stratification.

What Hobsbawm and Gellner are trying to tell is that there is eventually no possibility to find neither objective nor subjective definitions for a nation, it's just the idea of nationalism which makes us looking for differences.

But besides the complexity of central Europe ethnicity and ethnicism, about which one could discuss endlessly, why not looking at Benedict Andersons striking examples in East Asian regions. He clearly shows that Indonesia cannot be anything else than imagined regarding the hundreds of different tribes, languages and so on, totally arbitrarily cut of from others by borders created by the colonial powers. These different local communities surely never had shared a common national consciousness in premodern times.

Then the concept of American Exceptionalism as an immigration country: Unquestionable, immigration is a central background for American society. But migration did not happen only between the "old" and the "new world". In 19th century migration processes took place e.g. form eastern europe directed to the rapidly industrializing German empire with its demand for labor. But even in pre-industrialized times there had been always movements of people on smaller and larger scales. Telling that kinship is the basis of todays "nations" doen't sound very convincing.

Gat musters a significant amount of evidence suggesting that humans are more-or-less hardwired for kin and ethnic preference–we’ve always liked people who look, talk and act like “us” more than “strangers” because we are built to do so. We didn’t “invent” the nation; it was–and remains–in us.

Nationalism/tribalism/collectivism. The idea that this is some sort of modern invention seems entirely counter-intuitive to me. How was it that this gathered momentum?

It could be that "nations" will not disappear but rather that our idea of "nations" will expand. Meaning that instead of being "an American," people will begin identifying themselves as being a "westerner," etc.

My guess is that theadvancedapes would confirm that our primate relatives also prefer apes that "look, act and communicate" like they do. It would seem to be an evolutionary safeguard. This evolutionary safeguard is at the foundation of many of our conflicts on both the world stage and in interpersonal communications. It touches everything.

edit: Interesting tidbit about your daughter mpoe. I too have a young daughter and I wonder how I'll feel once she starts getting the "ism's" taught to her. I have family from germany and mexico and on both sides they've mentioned that the US has more flags all over the place than any other country they've visited. They become so commonplace that we don't often recognize them, but if you make a concerted effort, you'll notice they're everywhere. I've always liked the John Lennon quote "I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me." Seems appropriate given this topic. Great interview, as always.