Muammar Gaddafi on the Essential Nature of Nationalism

By Rainer Chlodwig von K. | 14 December 2016

ARYAN SKYNET — Colonel Gaddafi’s Green Book, his political manifesto, constitutes the theoretical ideological framework for the Jamahiriya, Libya’s experiment with socialist nationalism. Much of The Green Book, particularly its author’s simplistic endorsements of direct-democratic participation in governance and a radical egalitarian economic system, is tedious and redundantly written; but the leader’s language springs to life in discussing nationalism, and this is clearly the topic in which Gaddafi shows himself to be the most personally interested.

“The Social Factor; the National Factor, is the dynamic force of human history,” he begins his exploration of the social basis of his Third Universal Theory. “This social bond, which binds together human communities from the family through the tribe to the nation, is the basis for the progression of history.

“Social causes are […] national,” stresses Gaddafi, “and the national relationship is a social one.”¹ More urgently, he continues:

Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin. Minorities […] are nations whose nationalism has been destroyed. The social factor is, therefore, a factor of life – a factor of survival. It is the nation’s innate momentum for survival.

Nationalism in the world of man and group instinct in the animal kingdom are like gravity in the domain of material and celestial bodies. If the sun lost its gravity, its gases would blow away and its unity would no longer exist. Accordingly, unity is the basis for survival. The factor of unity in any group is a social factor; in man’s case nationalism. For this reason human communities struggle for their own national unity, in which its national survival lies.

The National Factor, the social bond, works automatically to impel a nation towards survival, in the same way that the gravity of an object works to keep it as one mass surrounding its focus. The dissolution and dispersion of atoms in an atomic bomb are the result of the explosion of the nucleus, which is the focus of gravitation for the particles around it. When the factor of unity in those component systems is destroyed and gravity is lost, every atom is separately dispersed. This is the nature of matter. It is an established natural law. To disregard it or to go against it is damaging to life. Similarly man’s life is damaged when he begins to disregard nationalism – the social factor – for it is the gravity of the group, the secret of its survival. Only the Religion Factor is a rival to the social factor in influencing the unity of one group. The Religious Factor may divide the national group or unite groups with different nationalisms, however, the social [i.e., national] factor will eventually triumph. This has been the case throughout the ages. Historically each nation had one religion. This was harmonious. […]²

Consequently, Gaddafi advises the “sound rule […] that each nation should have one religion. For it to be otherwise,” he claims, “is abnormal. Such an abnormality creates an unsound situation which becomes a real cause for disputes within one national group.”³

He also discourages intermarriage between different national groups: “Though both man and woman are free to accept whom they want and reject whom they do not want as a natural rule of freedom, marriage within a group, by its very nature, strengthens its unity and brings about collective growth in conformity with the social factor.”⁴ […]