Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

National Prejudices, Mass Media and History Textbooks2. The second moment is the creation of the modern Romaniannation in the nineteenth century. It is derided, minimized and falsified,starting even with the lesson’s title: “The ‘invention’ of the modernnation.” ... The crown on the arch of this “textbook” is supported by twopillars: Hungarian revisionism and the radical homogenizing internationalismthat, at the present moment, is in expansion. These two decrepitstrains of thought are using the present context of redefining the geopoliticsof Europe and of the World for their own purposes. I do think thatthey are wrong because I am positive that the European Union will bea union of nations and not a union of anti-national integration. ...To assert that a real identity, such as a nation, that is the people, was theinvention of some persons, be they intellectuals, is not only stupidity butalso a certain interested obedience. ... Such a mode of presenting issimultaneously illogical and illicit, because it mixes up the effect with thecause, being addressed to young people, potential students in faculties ofpublic relations, communication, political sciences and so on. Just listento how historical reality is presented, in a falsified way: “there is an amorphousmass of people; a bunch of intellectuals are overflowing them withtheir convictions ‘invented’ by themselves; these convictions are acceptedby the population to such an extent that they begin to like everyonewho is talking about these ideas; seeing this, the politicians start to attractthe population disseminating the ‘invented’ ideas, by which they realizedtheir importance, in view of the already contaminated population.”Can you say what normal human mind can write in such a way withoutasking yourself: qui prodest? It is useful precisely to those alreadymentioned. Anyway, it is not useful to Romania, be it ethnic nation orcivic nation, as it is once again artificially theorized, with “natural”echoes in this “textbook” too. 28This long passage shows how far the level of this discussion was fromWestern academic standards. In spite of his academic training, includingsociology, the beliefs advocated by Nãstase fall under the same siege culture.29 Talking about a siege, the universal conspiracy must be somewherein the subtext. Indeed, the “alliance” between the Hungarian extremenationalism and the internationalist forces cannot be explained withoutpresuming a universal conspiracy, a Jolly Joker of all such constructionsbased on prejudices, aversion, and frustration.The subject of my last case study is Cristian Tudor Popescu, a popularfigure in the Romanian mass media and editor-in-chief of the newspaperAdevãrul. 30 As many other journalists, Popescu also moved towards a nationalistposition and radicalized his opinion particularly after the NATO bombingof Yugoslavia. His main arguments concerned the dissolution of a sover-105