Anderson plays on his readers’ linguistic prejudices to show how English nationalism is potentially attractive to them, but Indonesian nationalism is nonsensical. However, they can see how it might
become sensical to them: they would merely need to learn Indonesian. This allows him to extend the parallel between nations and language communities, both of which are closed in practice (because not everyone has the time, access, or resources to join them) but open in theory (anyone who puts in the effort
could join). The core of Anderson’s argument here is that nationalists use the tools of racism when they are really discriminating based on nationality: they say, for instance, that some races are inferior
because they are not members of the nation (not, for instance, that some foreigners are inferior for being of different races).