What was Ernest Renan's main theory?

Answer 1

Today, Renan is most famous for the definition of a nation given in his 1882 discourse Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? ("What is a Nation?"). Whereas German writers like Fichte had defined the nation by objective criteria such as a race or an "ethnic group" sharing common characteristics (language, etc.), Renan defined it by the desire of a people to live together, which he summed up in a famous phrase, "avoir fait de grandes choses ensemble, vouloir en faire encore" (having done great things together and wishing to do more). Writing in the midst of the dispute concerning the Alsace-Lorraine region, he declared that the existence of a nation was based on a "daily referendum." He also said that a nation was "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours." In fact, if "the essential element of a nation is that all its individuals must have many things in common," they "must also have forgotten many things. Every French citizen must have forgotten the night of St. Bartholomew and the massacres in the thirteenth century in the South."

Answer 2

There are competing theories about the mafia, CIA, Russia, Castro. By far the best one I've ever read from the guy Costner played in his movie JFK, who said it was anti-Castro groups in Cuba, who were made because JFK guaranteed no more invasions of Cuba to get the missiles out. The two CIA guys who were in contact with Oswald and both ended up wacked later on were both part of these training forces of Cuban expats. THe CIA wasn't part of it, but killed them to keep this truth getting out, which nobody in their right mind thinks Hoover would have had an ethical problem with.