A historical friend responds to my report the other day in which Abe Foxman of the ADL said that Zionism is racist in the way that all forms of nationalism are racist:
Foxman is right, you know, about nationalism. Germany had it. And the Slavophiles in the 19th c. Anglo-Saxon stock is so mixed (a fact that can't be hidden) that English nationalism has always seemed ga-ga; more about Little than about England; and, if you look for a nationalist speech anywhere in literature what do you come up with? Something like Henry V in his Crispin speech--"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"--but it is the fight that makes them brothers not the blood of birth and soil. And who are they? Gower, Fluellen, Macmorris, Jamy (in the Hollywood WW II version: Ryan, Polodowski, Cohen, Ringstadt). Even great Shakespeare ladling out this patriotic chowder can't resist showing us the dissident Williams (a Welshman) who denies that the king has a national or supernatural authority that can justify the deaths of so many men.
But nationalism, like religion, may so reform itself as almost to cease to exist, except as a memory and a harmless holiday sentiment. The settled and civilized state of mind of a modern people is post-national. The free state (triumphant) supersedes the nation (militant) in which it began. The strangeness of Israel, inseparable from expansionism and the settler movement, is that it has become in this generation in some ways more militant than it was at its beginnings.
I can't recommend enough Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism," in the old HBJ edition of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, vol. 3.
But nationalism, like religion, may so reform itself as almost to cease to exist, except as a memory and a harmless holiday sentiment. The settled and civilized state of mind of a modern people is post-national. The free state (triumphant) supersedes the nation (militant) in which it began. The strangeness of Israel, inseparable from expansionism and the settler movement, is that it has become in this generation in some ways more militant than it was at its beginnings.
I can't recommend enough Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism," in the old HBJ edition of the Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters, vol. 3.
i live in canada, a country that murdered many native indians in its early history 1800's while trying to convert the rest to christianity in the early 1900's.. it has become a melting pot of different cultures and people of different national backgrounds.. the huge influx of immigrants helped shape canada in a way that is different now then what it was even 50 years ago, with other cultures that weren't here in the earlier phase, becoming a part of the fabric now… it appears the country israel is engaged in the exact opposite, working towards an exclusive culture of jewishness where anyone who isn't jewish doesn't or isn't allowed to fit in, at least not in an 'equal' sense… perhaps this is driven by some fear of loss of what culture it has, or??? at any rate my impression is that it isn't healhty, but more of a serious problem and coming out of a place of weakness, not strength… the jewish culture has a lot to offer the world, but it might be better if it spread it around, rather then thinking it was necessary for it to have a specific geographical location from which it had to be centered on..
"Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority."
- Arthur Schopenhauer,"Aphorisms"
indeed.. patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel… personally we need to be thinking outside the box, and in this case the box is ones identity with whatever nation they live in.. it is a claustrophobic headspace that only breeds problems..
When Hans Kohn wrote about nationalism at the beginning of the 20th century, he introduced the distinction between voluntary or civil nationalism, in which the state belongs to its citizens, and organic nationalism, in which the state belongs to the nation, and the individuals are effectively cells in the organic body of the nation, which might be defined on völkisch racist principles. States consolidated on principles of organic nationalism typically do not treat minorities well when the members of the minority are not considered as part of the nation however defined.
France, Canada, the USA, and the UK are usually considered civil national states.
The Poles had a complex form of partially völkisch organic nationalism during the inter bellum period.
Until late in the fascist regime, Mussolini's Italy was non-racist organic nationalist.
Even though Germany from 1870 through WW1 was monarchial, German nationalism especially in its Grossdeutschland form tended to be Boeckhian organic nationalist. Those nationalists that wanted Grossdeutschland to extend in Austrian Poland and Austrian Ukraine tended to count Yiddish-speakers as ethnic Germans in a Boeckhian sense in order to make the claim to those territories.
The Weimar Republic was mostly civil nationalist with mostly Boeckhian organic nationalist tendencies.
Hitler's Germany was ethnic fundamentalist organic nationalist.
Israel was initially ethnic fundamentalist organic nationalist, but today it is an even more extreme ethnic monist organic nationalist state.
Turkey under Ataturk was a Boeckhian organic nationalist state, but I believe it is evolving into an Islamist voluntary nationalist state.
Arab countries to be Boeckhian organic nationalist with the qualification that the national identity has remained pan-Arab even as pan-Arabism has lost out to various forms of Islamic identity.
I'm in Australia. Pommy criminals and soldiers and settlers murdered almost 500,000 aborigines and drove them off their land in an effort to wipe them out.
Today we have people from every place on earth, there is 148 languages spoken, we have Israeli, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranians and others and we have no problem.
The mindlessness of the Israeli situation is that they spent over 70 years kicking out or killing the Palestinians and then spent 20 years forcing all other arab jews to go to Israel.
Stupid.
Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism," the essay Philip's friend recommends, is online at
"But nationalism, like religion, may so reform itself as almost to cease to exist, except as a memory and a harmless holiday sentiment. The settled and civilized state of mind of a modern people is post-national."
I assume "modern people" refers to the demographically doomed white chattering classes, whose ideological visons for the world can only be put in effect by soldiers with particularly backwards ideals of nationalism, patriotism, and a country and people worth dying for.
The relationship between nationalism and racism is complex and variable. Marilyn is right up to a point in saying that "until late in the fascist regime, Mussolini's Italy was non-racist organic nationalist," but if you discount Gentile's Hegelian idealism and look at other strands I think you will find that it taught a doctrine of what I would call 'emergent racism': i.e., we are not yet 'a race' but we shall gradually become one.
Well that's the whole point isn't it – let Israel grow out of it. Countries have taken hundreds of years to evolve into the post-national paradise your friend is so smug about. Israel has only had sixty. With such strident oppposition to its very polity, though, its chances of peaceful evolution are slim….
@ …
"some fear of loss of what culture it has, or???"
You give too little credit to Judaism, my friend. It's survived for thousands of years and should put aside the hysterical notion that it will come to an end now. When the Jews didn't have Israel they still had their culture and traditions.
Judaism was the first religion, as far as we know, to start the monotheist tradition. Look how many people around the world are believers in monotheism today.
If Judaism can survive all these years I'm sure it can survive many, many more.
Again this "nationalism is racist" crap.
Nationalism, if defined as the common goal of a group which wants to govern itself in some way and administer their possesions and relations, can be racist but doesn't have to be. Only if the group defines itseld in racist terms like Nazi Germany, pan-Slavism, Jewish stateism etc. But if a group of people establishes a zone of administration in which they live and work and if they are willing to protect and fight for this zone regardless of how their neighbours look or pray, that's a fine form of nationalism to me and it ain't racist.
Judaism was the first religion, as far as we know, to start the monotheist tradition. …
Only if you ignore the Egyptian Aten. Only if you ignore Egypt and Moses the Egyptian
On monotheism, there were multiple assertions of monotheism and the extension into "ONE" that occurred in the world at similar times. Notably in India, there was a similar fight between monists and polytheists.
The concept that I find most appealing in Jewish thought is the commandment "thou shalt have no other goods before me", a description of objection to spiritual materialism, confusing a material goal but telling oneself it is a spiritual one.
The issue doesn't come up for those that are not even trying to be good and prayerful. So, its easy to criticize, which ends up harming the efforts more than correcting the efforts.
Compared to being exposed to hate, the "fence" of nationalism is progress. When the fence or the nationalism or any other ism even universalism or humanism, begins to cultivate hate more than it heals it, then the fence isn't functional.
Phil states that that is the case with Zionism now, that the fence has become the oppressor rather than the protection. There is definitely truth in it. And, there is untruth.
The untruth results from the REALITY that there is great hatred of Israel (and Jews) independant of its actions, preceeding and exceeding its actions.
So, while Israeli excesses require reform, and Israeli character requires reform and seriousness, the response of "they are racist" is an innaccurate remedy.
Again, the question is whether the assertion "anti-Zionism is racism" is also or even more true.
I conclude that it definitely IS true, that Phil's hopes are not yet realities, and to regard them as realities from the limited scope that he sees, that he has put himself in a position to see on this issue, is at least a gamble on his part, if not overtly innaccurate.
Lets work that we all grow out of our fixations.
I have problems with Henry Norr's link. Here is another one: Notes on Nationalism
Does it really matter how people divide themselves? There will never be a world government where all poeple keep their particular cultures and ideologies. And if that government were to be formed, who really believes that people of opposing or unpopular ideas and cultures would not be crushed or oppressed in the process, since tolerance usually comes later, if at all? The same will most probably happen when smaller states are formed along ideological lines–it already has happened!
I can find all sorts of nice quotes about the evils of nation states, but none are absolute truth. So what do they really mean?
I have no problem with people dividing along racial, ethnic, religious, cultural lines, or in any other way that is supposedly horse-and-buggy by now. However, I prefer that they do it in another country, since I don't see multiculturalism working out.
Of course ethnic nationalism isn't dying. How myopic does a person have to be not to understand that! Russia, China, India and Japan are just a few examples of nations that are based on culture, religion or ethnicity. Especially in the cases of Russia and China, ethnicity outlasted ideology! Why some people insist that history is linear instead of imperfectly circular is beyond me. Ideologues are ideologues, I guess.
How many lives will be ruined on the way to the secular, monocultured promised land?
@ LeaNder
@ Witty
Yes.
Yes.
Some suggest that monotheism first arose in the religion of Zoroastrianism. Others have argued that Egypt was the birthplace of monotheism, while Jews often consider their religion to be the original form of monotheism.
From that 1945 Orwell article on nationalism:
Indifference to Reality. All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side.
One must qualify that between 70 and 135 CE Second Temple Judaism was completely shattered. Out of the shards first Constantinian Christianity crystalizes, then Islam (as an evolution of Jamesian Christian Judaism) and finally both Rabbinic and Karaitic Judaism in the 10th century. Harvard Professor Shaye Cohen argues that Jewishness develops before Islam in reaction to Constantinian Christianity.
I find his arguments unpersuasive. While Karaite Judaism could exist without the Babylonian Talmud, Rabbinic Judaism could night.
Jacob Neusner's position is closer to mine than to Cohen's.
Both Neusner and I agree that Medieval/Modern Judaism is the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions that descend from 2nd Temple Judaism.
Coptic, Syrian, and Greek Orthodox Christianity are probably much closer to the elite Jerusalem Temple cult than Medieval/Modern Judaism while Islam is far closer to the Judaism of the ordinary people at the time of Jesus.
Thanks, to Phil's historical friend. An absolutely brilliant essay. I would say it's a must read for everybody here.
For our larger context, I would like to pick out two quotes:
Under the header of
Maybe it's this constellation, that leads to a phenomenon that I am trying to understand. It seem that even the more good-willed among the supporters of Zionism sometimes posit speculations that people like MacDonald would eagerly jump at, while criticizing Phil's approach for exactly that possibility. Surely real.
I am not sure why you single out English Nationalism, when it is Scottish and Welsh Nationalism and parties such as the SNP and Plaid Cymru who are the main nationalist forces in modern Britain.
A link to Orwell's Notes on Nationalism.
Judaism was the first religion, as far as we know, to start the monotheist tradition. Posted by: Saleema | March 27, 2009 at 05:58 AM
(a) That is absolute bollocks;
(b) No Muslim would qualify such a statement with "as far as we know. You're a phony, Saleema.
@ LeaNder
Thanks for the links to the books.
1.2 billion Muslims in the world and Rowan knows none of them would say what Saleema said. Are you joking (in which case it went over my head) or is there some basis for your opinion?
There are a few things all Muslims agree on, but you will have to do your own research to find out what they are. Get an honest name, for God's sake. 'Witty's anonymous critic' is a chickenshit name.