The nation’s perceived interestlessness is what legitimizes demands for sacrifice

Evidence

While it is true that in the past two decades the idea of the family-as-articulated-power-structure has been much written about, such a conception is certainly foreign to the overwhelming bulk of mankind. Rather, the family has traditionally been conceived as the domain of disinterested love and solidarity. So too, if historians, diplomats, politicians, and social scientists are quite at ease with the idea of ‘national interest,’ for most ordinary people of whatever class the whole point of the nation is that it is interestless. Just for that reason, it can ask for sacrifices. — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 547

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds directly into how majority publics read Muslim presence as ‘interested’ and partisan, while the nation is presumed interestless — a core move in Islamophobia’s rhetorical scaffolding. — connects to: Sacrifice itself can generate the value of its goal — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 242; Obligation arises when social pressure and general demand for conformity are intense — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 299; Sacrifice is the inner condition of value, not merely an obstacle to it — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 231
• SEED: Angle: how ‘interestlessness’ as a national claim lets states demand sacrifice from minorities while framing those minorities’ own claims as merely self-interested.

Broader Connections

• Obligation arises when social pressure and general demand for conformity are intense #qualifies (0.75) — HLA Hart, The Concept of Law (Clarendon Law…, 299
• Sacrifice is the inner condition of value, not merely an obstacle to it #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 231
• Sacrifice itself can generate the value of its goal #complicates (0.72) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 242