The ring of Basques
Today, all the hierarchies that have been built in our world are the result of a process of global colonization. These global hierarchies of domination are formed by other more specific intertwined hierarchies, that is, classical, ethnic, aesthetic and even linguistic. What we call Western civilization began to be built in the 16th century, and today it covers almost everyone. As we can imagine, it has been a very complex process and simple explanations are not worthwhile, but there is no doubt that one of the bases of the construction of this civilization is the National State.
And, dear Europeans, I have to tell you something you like! We are the main precursors to the idea of a modernist nation state! We have exported to the whole world the recipe needed to make a nation state properly. The first thing: if you are imperialist and want to set in motion a modern capitalist state through conquest or in other ways, you must know and say that other peoples that are within the limits that you have set are much worse than yours. This, in practice, means, among other things, that some languages are better than others. In other words, to build a modern capitalist state, it is necessary that a language prevail, above all the others that are spoken in it. Not every language, of course, must choose the best language, the most civilised one. For example, I do not know, for example, in France, French, or in Spain, Spanish. And why? Because it is obvious that they are better than other languages, of course.
Perhaps we have been a test bench for spreading linguistic colonialism around the world!
Well, there are so many more things that we can be happy about. I want to tell you something that I discovered recently. Some of you may be aware of the method of the ring that you set in motion centuries ago to impose better languages. I will give you a brief summary: a ring was given to the child who spoke the language of the people (bad and not civilized) inside the school, and to remove it from the top I had to be careful that the ring would pass if another heard that bad language. So throughout the day, and at the end of the day, the person carrying the ring received a punishment that, I know, was mostly physical.
This method had two very positive aspects; on the one hand, the elimination of the habit of speaking bad language and, on the other, the rupture of group cohesion with the arrival of boys and girls as whistleblowers. The inventors knew very well that to speak a language it is very important to break that group cohesion. We can find testimonies of this method around the world: In Europe, in Africa, or in China, for example, the most exotic I've ever encountered.
What happens is that, until other data says otherwise, I have read in an academic article the first records of this method, the oldest records, are in the Basque Country! For 200 years physical and psychological torture in the classrooms of the country, and a method to impose Spanish and French on the children of the Basque Country, which can open up to the world. What do you think? Perhaps we have been a test bench for spreading linguistic colonialism around the world! It is true that in our case it has at least not managed to eradicate language, but I would say that the idea of the hierarchy between languages has reached us to the metrics, and that is a very great achievement, don't you think?
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