Chapter 2: The Old Nationalism and Masculinity: Historical Review

In the beginning, it is necessary to pause to reflect on the origins of the myth of nation, race and masculinity. These things run deep in the way we have made culture and society, and it is easy to be fooled by these myths. Some scientists still fall into essentialist thinking when it comes to race and gender, because they are blinded to the socially constructed nature of both (Connell, 1987, 1995; Rippon, 2019; Saini, 2019). Many patriots and politicians still assume their nation is the best nation-state in the world, the one that is the richest or the most powerful, so they can just build walls to stop others coming in and taking away their freedom and wealth. It is easy to think when you just bang your head to metal – when you do not stop to think critically about history – that the modern world has just emerged as it has from some divine intervention. If we do not stop to think, we fall easily to the argument that everything in place here and now is just right and unquestionable because it is some kind of divine order. In the Bible in its King James Version, a text that has shaped the way Americans and Britons still think about the language of the divine even if they are not Christian, the opening verses of Genesis (1, pp. 1–3) begin with: