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Notes -
Promoting a single unified culture has been a part of every national movement since the Greeks and Romans. Calling “treat everyone in society as legal equals and insist on a unified culture” is a concept that would be as close to universal as can be. The Romans insisted on the unification of their territory into being Roman. Major business and cultural exchanges were in Greek or Latin. If you wanted to be an elite, you better learn to speak the language. It was the same with unification of various countries in Europe— the French promoted Frenchness, the British promoted Britishness, the Russians promoted Russian culture. Peter the Great was not Marxist by any stretch of the imagination. He was a Russian Czar promoting the culture of Russia.
I think as far as people suddenly becoming “strangers in their own land”, again, this isn’t some weird new idea that nobody ever thought about until Marx came along. There have always been subcultures and ethnic groups on the outs in any given society. It’s how a unified culture tends to work, you go along with the culture or you are at least somewhat on the outside. I and my near kin would be on the outs in lots of cultures. The Chinese are not going to look kindly on a bunch of white Americans suddenly showing up in their country, nor would they tolerate a situation in which such groups demand infinite carve outs for their particular cultural preferences. I don’t think that legally forbidding someone to practice a religion makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that it should be perfectly legal to do things that the rest of society finds abhorrent in public under the guise of “my religion or culture.”
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