This article is meant to explain to Americans the reason for the behavior of my fellow European anarchists.
There is some disagreement between American libertarians/anarchists and European libertarians/anarchists. Americans bash nations as dividing, which I think is caused by both the short history of the US, as well as the diversity of ethnicities on the continent.
Americans don't seem to understand why there is no United States of Europe. Europeans have been fighting each other for millenia, and Americans don't understand why. Imagine you are an expeditionary force into unknown lands, and you meet some people. The people look different, and speak different. What do you do? If they have resources, you want them. How can you trust them if you cannot communicate properly?
The logical consequence of this thinking is conquest. The only way to protect your culture and language is to make sure everyone shares that culture and language. Everyone wants safety for their own people, but with the new abundance of resources, Europeans have accepted that they don't need to fight each other anymore. Mostly. In time, Europeans embraced the difference in cultures.
While Europe has had a strong tendency towards conquest, it has also had a strong tendency against conquest. Every European worth his or her salt feel like this. Any state that covers Europe must face the fact that Europeans want to govern themselves. Weather it be the Ottoman empire, the French empire, the Russian empire, Nazi Germany, the USSR, or the EU, they will all fall, because Europeans want a country that represents them. The Balkan Slavs fought against the Ottoman empire not just for freedom, but also for a nation.
For Europeans freedom and nationalism is synonymous.
European anarchists have taken it further, knowing that no state will ever represent us. But nations will always be there. Indeed, states are a perversion of nations, which is why I want to end them, and free my brothers and sisters.