Nationalism binds a centralized state to an atomized class-ridden society

Evidence

Nationalism is essentially the expression of this perversion of the state into an instrument of the nation and the identification of the citizen with the member of the nation. The relationship between state and society was determined by the fact of class struggle, which had supplanted the former feudal order. Society was pervaded by liberal individualism which wrongly believed that the state ruled over mere individuals, when in reality it ruled over classes, and which saw in the state a kind of supreme individual before which all others had to bow. It seemed to be the will of the nation that the state protect it from the consequences of its social atomization and, at the same time, guarantee its possibility of remaining in a state of atomization. To be equal to this task, the state had to enforce all earlier tendencies toward centralization; only a strongly centralized administration which monopolized all instruments of violence and power-possibilities could counterbalance the centrifugal forces constantly produced in a class-ridden society. Nationalism, then, became the precious cement for binding together a centralized state and an atomized society, and it actually proved to be the only working, live connection between the individuals of the nation-state. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 587

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines nationalism functionally as the cement joining centralized state and atomized society — a core vocabulary item for the scaffold.
• XREF: The state’s monopolization of violence connects to Weber’s definition of the state and to Arendt’s later account of how this apparatus enables mass exclusion.