In any case, he decided to give a speech on the evils of nationalism.
The world is becoming an increasingly turbulent and divided place. We’ve seen Brexit, President Trump elected in the United States and the rise of right-wing populist and narrow nationalist parties around the world.... The last thing we need now is to pit different parts of our country or sections of our society against each other — or to further fuel division or seek separation.There are two problems with this. The first is that he decided to give this speech in Scotland, a nation whose elective offices have been recently dominated by an organization called The Scottish National Party.
Oops.
The second problem is that Khan himself is a living symbol of an even more divisive, even more narrow mode of 'pitting different parts of our country or sections of our society against one another.' If this is the right standard for judgment, identity politics fares even worse than nationalism, which at least is willing to take any kind of Scot as long as they're Scottish. Drawing the division at the level of the nation at least avoids drawing divisions below that level.
Nor is it clear that it is the right standard in any case, as even supra-nationalist divisions can end up being destructively divisive. Communists were not usually guilty of nationalism -- Ho Chi Minh and a few others excepted -- because they wanted to dispose of all nations in favor of a global government. They still ended up dividing members of nations against one another. Indeed, if strife is the proper measure, it was the singers of the Internationale who had more blood on their hands than anyone.
3 comments:
We will divide along some lines: Nation, clan, tribe, religion, ideology, region, profession, class, race...
More precisely, we divide ourselves along a few of these lines, with one usually being stronger than the others. Which group labels I would shed under pressure I don't know, though I can guess. People who do not want us to divide along national lines are not asking us to transcend divisions so much as choose different ones. (They are often not aware of this.) Religions usually caution that we be prepared to transcend other divisions in a pinch, and sometimes it does come to this. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to mind.)
The idea has grown up that transcending divisions is good in and of itself, and in particular, that it is righteous and holy to transcend national boundaries. This is not so. It depends what new set of dividing lines one is moving into. When the claim is that we are transcending nationalism in favor of some sort of universal brotherhood, this is nearly always false. Were it so it would perhaps be a good thing*, but it is important to see what the new version of Us vs Them is going to look like. Communism has been a brutal us/them creed, with those claiming to represent The People being the greatest offenders. Flowery claims of universality mask mere changes in how we divide ourselves. It is one of the reasons why I consider Marxism to be, at root, a Christian heresy and a particularly deceitful one. It has been damned effective as well, convincing even many Christians that transcending nationalism - which for communism is merely a tactic to remove a great competitor - is something we should always be ready to do at a moment's notice, good in and of itself.
But nations are larger groups than families, clans, professions, or classes, and draw us outward to cooperate and support more people than we would otherwise. German nazis may have called themselves nationalists, but they used a definition different than Americans or even the British used, restricting membership to a single blood-group across boundaries while rejecting Jews, Slavs and Gypsies within the "nation." This is a very European definition - but it is not ours. American nationalism transcends the other divisions. (Sometimes even religion, which I would consider to be a potential problem.) My counterclaim would be that it was the nationalism of the British, and even more especially its former colonies, which won the war against the tribalists. Even the USSR resorted in the end of WWII to appealing to patriotism for Russia and region to stand against the assault.
*Note, however, that the Bible says nothing like this. In the Revelation, the nations and tribes of the earth are all together, but they remain nations. As that book is very imagistic, we might not be able to rely on that literalness for our doctrines. Still, it says what it says.
That's very close to my own sense: nationalism transcends tribal differences, and even (as you warn) religious ones. But religion is also powerful in part because it can transcend tribal differences: we used a respected religious authority sometimes in helping to settle tribal disputes in Iraq.
Khan strikes me as someone who, in the name of transcending nationalism, would descend back to tribalism. Doubtless he aims at supra-nationalism instead, but I expect that having dissolved nationalism, tribalism is where he would find himself.
"If this is the right standard for judgment, identity politics fares even worse than nationalism, which at least is willing to take any kind of Scot as long as they're Scottish. Drawing the division at the level of the nation at least avoids drawing divisions below that level."
Yes.
It's interesting to note that Anne Frank's father, Otto, not only fought for Germany in the First World War but was promoted to Lieutenant.
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