If you wish a man to commit some abominable crime, from which he would naturally recoil in horror, you first teach him loyalty to a gang of arch-criminals, and then make his crime appear to him as exemplifying the virtue of loyalty. Of this process, patriotism is the most perfect instance.

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) English mathematician and philosopher

Education and the Social Order [Education and the Modern World], ch. 1 “The Individual vs. the Citizen” (1932)
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