Political geography and the manipulators of nationalism!! By: Mohamed Saad Abdel Latif: Egypt - The last century is known as the century of nationalism and ideology, and indeed the signs of nationalism appeared in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and became multiple social and economic forces and movements that were able to define the main axes for the development of countries and peoples. Under the pretext of nationalism, events erupted that ultimately led to the outbreak of the First World War, and the war itself resulted in the formation of a series of new nation-states, which confirmed the importance and influence of the ideas and principles of national identity. Images of nationalism varied between "bourgeois nationalism," "liberal nationalism," "petty bourgeois nationalism," "chauvinistic nationalism," and "superior nationalism," among others, to endorse and support political ideological goals and back targeted social and political programs. This understanding crystallized in the concepts of nation and nationalism, which took a modern form from the ideological backgrounds of nationalist movements to the status of symbols and traditions in nationalist thought (whether they actually existed or were invented to motivate peoples). The factor of time for nationalism and its historical development also played a role. Some geographers exploited their fame to manipulate the fate of peoples through "falsification and deception with maps." The geographer "Vejvich" from Yugoslavia falsified the ethnic maps of "Macedonia," exploiting his international fame and the trust granted to him at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to serve purposes aimed at "withdrawing" Macedonian lands and annexing them to Serbia. The result was to inflame Serbian nationalist spirit and their ambition to expand. This may be an early geographical precedent for the misuse of political geography to occupy any land inhabited by German speakers in Europe during the Nazi era. This led minorities to demand human rights from the indigenous populations and move towards self-autonomy, and analyzing nationalist movements from different angles, such as viewing nationalism as resistance and a primary actor in the struggle of peoples against colonialism, as class struggle nationalism, and as a movement against the regime. As is happening now in our Arab world, the word nationalism became associated with the leader / Gamal Abdel Nasser, and unfortunately many believed that nationalism was an idea of Nasser’s, and that it was a project that came with socialist regimes. The Zionist thought exploited this since the rise of the sweeping current of nationalism in the early 1950s, as mentioned by the founder of the Hebrew state (Ben Gurion) in his memoirs in 1955 about the danger of nationalism to the existence of Israel. After Egyptian President Sadat came to power, he tried to erase nationalist thought and get rid of it by eliminating its proponents and unleashing radical fundamentalism in the universities, declaring nationalism something blasphemous. In the late 1990s, Israel declared itself a "Hebrew state" and was searching for an identity within a geographical framework extending from the ocean to the Gulf. It issued periodic bulletins stating that Arab nationalism is one of many nationalisms within the space of Arab countries, and that there is Kurdish nationalism, Circassian, Armenian, Christian, Berber, Nubian, and others, and they are part of these nationalisms within the geographical space. Wars broke out at the end of the last century, and states based on nationalism appeared in former Yugoslavia, Albania, Czechoslovakia, and other countries where minorities appeared as separated regions such as (Montenegro region), the Serbs, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo Albanian region, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, and some regions demanding separation based on nationalism, like some regions in the former Soviet Union; for example, the Crimea region in Ukraine. This also started in the Middle East, in Iraq, Syria, and Algeria among the Tuareg. It expanded in the first quarter of the second millennium in some Western European countries like Spain in Catalonia and Basque regions, northern Italy. Many geographers expect this nationalist trend to emerge in many countries, and new states will appear on the political map with a new world order that is being born now from the womb of the Corona pandemic!! "Mohamed Saad Abdel Latif," an Egyptian writer and researcher in political geography.