Now that I think of it, this applies to Italy as well. There was no Italy before the mid to late 1800s. Germany and Italy are both really young countries. No radical nationalist movement in the early 20th century in Italy or Germany can be a traditionalist conservative movement for the simple fact that those countries had no tradition of nationalism to go back to, which is probably why they looked back to the Roman Empire and the age of Wotan worship to find their supposed ancestors.
----- Original Message ---- From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Thu, January 7, 2010 9:06:11 AM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] My Ayn Randian, libertarian loving relatives....argh... !!!
First, Blut und Boten is not the same as the Reich. A "Reich" is an empire. Full Stop. Blut und Boden refers to a racial schema tied into the notion of Heim ins Reich (the ingathering of the people), both of which would have been considered ridiculous before around Fichte's time, when German nationalism developed in part in response to the Napoleonic Wars. Before that, "German" just meant a language. There were Saxons and Prussians and Swabians and Bavarians etc. There was no "German people." As late as WWI there was no German army. There was a Prussian army and etc. that coordinated with each other.