When was the shift in how nations and people are viewed happened?

[Corpun]

For centuries, even before the traditional dating of when the concept of nationhood is seen as happening, people and the lands they lived in were seen as spiritually tied to one another regardless of where in the world it was. Every emerging nation's primary goal was to create some national culture for its people to create a genuine tie between government, nation, and people. The concept of the Soviet Citizen for example emerged as an attempt to supplant the national identities of Russians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, etc.

Sometime, after WW2 I think, this idea of the people and nation being intrinsically tied to one another and being practically inseparable vanished and now nations and their citizens seem to be treated almost like a transient source of economic value and nothing more. When did this shift exactly happen and who is to blame? Is there a direct year that someone can distinguish when nation-states and people became economic units?

 

[DJ Grelle]

16 november, 1945.

That was the day Unesco was created.
It was created on the impetus of some rather important WASP elites . The one best known to you is Julius Huxley, brother of the author Alduous Huxley of Brave New World fame.
These men declared that racism was evil and a pseudo-science. Why? Because they said so.
These men wanted to create a "world citizen" (and would spend decades teaching it to western youth).
These men had nothing but disdain for the common man, and felt that they had more in common with other elites than with the average citizens of their nation-states.

And they've had serious - if not total - influence over the west and much of the world for over 77 years.

 

[AgendaPoster]

It was a slow shift that took place over decades.
The ethnic-based nation state is also quite new, as before it multicultural empires and autocracy were the norm, and smaller tribes were usually enslaved by a more militarily successful one.
Circa 1840s the things were already changing and Europe started to see various nationalist revolutions (which at the time were essentially the progressive side to the monarchy conservative side). Slowly new nations formed, and as old empires grew weaker, nations were able to break away. Large wars catalyzed the process.
But empires will always form and reform, and the Soviets were just one manifestation of a new imperial wave that culminated in the WW2 chimpout.
After WW2, many European elites perceived nationalism, especially of the ethnic kind, as a serious danger that threatens the stability of the entire planet, not just Europe. Technocratic rule started to impose itself as the allegedly cold, rational, empirical data-based free markets method of statehood.
Rest's modern history - but you can clearly see that just as empires won't die, neither will tribes and identity.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

16 november, 1945.

That was the day Unesco was created.
It was created on the impetus of some rather important WASP elites . The one best known to you is Julius Huxley, brother of the author Alduous Huxley of Brave New World fame.
These men declared that racism was evil and a pseudo-science. Why? Because they said so.
These men wanted to create a "world citizen" (and would spend decades teaching it to western youth).
These men had nothing but disdain for the common man, and felt that they had more in common with other elites than with the average citizens of their nation-states.

And they've had serious - if not total - influence over the west and much of the world for over 77 years.

This is actually 100% correct.

 

[Corpun]

16 november, 1945.

That was the day Unesco was created.
It was created on the impetus of some rather important WASP elites . The one best known to you is Julius Huxley, brother of the author Alduous Huxley of Brave New World fame.
These men declared that racism was evil and a pseudo-science. Why? Because they said so.
These men wanted to create a "world citizen" (and would spend decades teaching it to western youth).
These men had nothing but disdain for the common man, and felt that they had more in common with other elites than with the average citizens of their nation-states.

And they've had serious - if not total - influence over the west and much of the world for over 77 years.

Was never aware of how sinister UNESCO's origins were. I take it this was the similar scheming that brought us the Bretton-Woods system.

After WW2, many European elites perceived nationalism, especially of the ethnic kind, as a serious danger that threatens the stability of the entire planet, not just Europe. Technocratic rule started to impose itself as the allegedly cold, rational, empirical data-based free markets method of statehood.

I figured WW2 hastened it. Even your average patriots like Enoch Powell basically got shunned from political society because of questioning the need for immigration back in the 70s despite a lot of public support for him. Ethnic nationalism never really recovered in the West and I like to think a lot of the treatment former Yugoslavia received was an attempt to beat it down even more.

 

[Beak Thing]

Sometime, after WW2 I think, this idea of the people and nation being intrinsically tied to one another and being practically inseparable vanished and now nations and their citizens seem to be treated almost like a transient source of economic value and nothing more. When did this shift exactly happen and who is to blame? Is there a direct year that someone can distinguish when nation-states and people became economic units?

Honestly this was more the norm historically than you'd think. The Romans had no problem putting ethnic Italians to work as slaves in the mines or latifundia or enlisting blacks from Africa in the legions. In fact, towards the end it got so bad with the taxes and wealth inequality that free Romans willingly enserfed or even enslaved themselves as tenant farmers. The overall concept of Romanitas was completely separate from the people...those who embodied it were respected, those who didn't were disregarded.

The Chinese dynasties only cared about the amount of land, tax assessed, and household size for purposes of conscription. During the Middle Ages, you'd have a lot better chance of getting help from the wealthy on the basis of your Christianity (or Islam for that matter) and not your ethnicity.

Really every feudal system and country with institutionalized slavery had an attitude of treating its citizens as economic units. It didn't matter which serf worked the land as long as they did.

 

[AgendaPoster]

I figured WW2 hastened it. Even your average patriots like Enoch Powell basically got shunned from political society because of questioning the need for immigration back in the 70s despite a lot of public support for him. Ethnic nationalism never really recovered in the West and I like to think a lot of the treatment former Yugoslavia received was an attempt to beat it down even more.

It is a potentially dangerous, destabilizing force. Mastering a state able to keep ethnic conflict excesses under wrap while allowing people a sense of community and identity is a very hard thing to do. In the West the main issue was the mass guilt of the populations for the colonial past. At that time, when nations were still largely defined by ethnic groups (one just needs to see London in the 50s to confirm it), the fear of replacement was perceived as lunacy by a vast majority "obviously we're different than blacks and since every people has their homeland, who cares, let them have their thing, and we will have ours, empires are hard to keep anyway".
But that attitude was shortsighted and over time resulted in cheeky elites importing cheap labor and even potential new voters. What was "fascist lunacy" once became the famed it ain't happening but it's definitely a great thing that it is.
The East did not have such guilt embedded, as most of us here didn't dream of ruling over foreigners, we were more preoccupied with survival and ejecting invaders like Russia, Ottomans and Austria-Hungary and maintaining an identity while escaping the imperial center elite culture that was exported to the periphery. When your best accomplishments are not conquering others but expelling them from your lands, often at a great price, it's easier to keep that ethnic thing alive.
However, I assure you that this cohesion is decaying fast in East too and eventually if things continue like this, we'll simply become a more poor West.

 

[Chocolate Wombat]

This is actually 100% correct.

Warren Spector tried to warn us:

 

[AgendaPoster]

Warren Spector tried to warn us:

When I was young I never realized that these games were exceptional, I just thought, meh, this is just normal levels of creativity, of course you'd insert conspiracy and politics in games, just like with other art forms.
Decade later seeing milqutoast BS like Cyberpunk and endless uncontroversial vomit that passes as 2022 gaming it's easy to see that those of us that witness the appearance of gaming were quite privileged.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

a "world citizen"

Technocratic rule started to impose itself as the allegedly cold, rational, empirical data-based free markets method of statehood.

I really don't like how evidence for that "tyranny wants to make people Borg IRL soy serfs" theory I heard seems to keep showing up.

 

[DJ Grelle]

I really don't like how evidence for that "tyranny wants to make people Borg IRL soy serfs" theory I heard seems to keep showing up.

You should read Barnays' "propaganda", an 80 page work about the nature of PR and media campaigning by the godfather of the art, written in the early 1920ies. You can find a copy on archive.org for sure.