I said this in the comments to my previous post, but it's worth pulling out and repeating: this is all hard for me to discuss because none of it-- loyalty to nation state, loyalty to religion, loyalty to ethnicity-- makes any sense to me, for Israelis or Americans or Iranians or anyone else. I am an internationalist and an egalitarian, and I reject artificial divisions between broad groups of people. Because of the unique history of Judaism and Israel, these issues come up more often, but that doesn't mean the contradictions aren't there for America or any other country. I happen to think that what we butt up against in these discussions is an inevitable tension between the liberal ideal of equality across difference and the dividing lines of national identity.
The issue of divided loyalties rests on assumptions I simply don't hold. As near as I can figure out, the complaint about divide loyalties stems from the assumption that loyalty to one's home country and country of citizenship must always and necessarily be the first and most important loyalty. Suggestions that any individual has loyalties that trump those to the nation state are, in this reading, insulting to that person, and in the case of superior fidelity to Israel, anti-Semitic. Even within the context of nationalism, this does not make sense to me. I don't understand why it is impossible that someone could feel greater loyalty to Israel than to the United States, or why this greater loyalty to Israel would be so horrible. This, after all, is what Ackerman was saying. My commenters yesterday fixated on the term "Israel firster," insisting that the point was whether the term has a bigoted history. But that is not at all what Ackerman said. His entire piece insists that any consideration of a conflict between loyalty to America and loyalty to Israel is prima facie anti-Semitic. It has been pointed out that some people have said quite straightforwardly that loyalty to Israel trumps loyalty to the United States. This observation has been met with total silence.
Set that all aside for now. What use is any of this if we don't assume that loyalty to one's home nation state trumps all? I am an internationalist. I recognize no loyalty to the United States beyond that of personal self-interest. I am legally prohibited from undertaking actions that oppose the security interests of my country, forcing me into a loyalty that I never chose (and thanks for that, nation state). More immediately, there are innumerable advantages to being an American, and I'm thankful for them. But loyalty, against principle or family or friends? I have none at all. I categorically reject any notion that I am duty bound to my country. The nation state is a fantasy, and an explicit one. The founders of the modern nation-state were perfectly frank: they devised it to make militarism and imperialism easier. I find the mythology of patriotism just as disqualifying as the mythology of religion.
Abandon the pretense that loyalty to America is an assumed good, and the whole case against dual loyalties falls to pieces. Nationality, religion, and ethnicity are all constructs, and ones totally incompatible with an egalitarian, liberal political ethic. That the world has not caught up to this fact is irrelevant to me. My distaste for national identity is equivalent whether we are talking about the United States or Iran or Israel or whomever. But in the case of Israel, the embrace of nationalism, and my democratic polity's considerable investment in same, is leading us toward regional war. (In contrast, my democratic polity is investing considerable sums in undermining the nationalist desires of Iran.) For that reason my duty to speak is clear. I can't be accused of "alleging" dual loyalty because I find the assumed loyalty to America unsupportable to begin with.
Perhaps, in the tangled, anachronistic competition between dueling loyalties to country and religion and ethnicity and principle, there are those conventional liberals who express anti-Semitic accusations of dual loyalties at Jewish writers. If so, that's a problem, a very big and very unfortunate problem. But it is most certainly not my problem.
The discussion of the term "Israel firster" has gone almost completely off the rails. Most discouragingly for me, it does not appear to be tied to any coherent attempt to demonstrate that the people accused of using it are actually animated by anti-Jewish hatred. I've never used the term myself. If the etymology of the term is indeed linked to a bigoted past, I think that's a good reason we should all avoid it. Surely the profound issues that confront us are how to speak fairly and constructively about Israel, whether critics of Israel's policies are in fact anti-Semitic, and whether they are motivated to speak by anti-Jewish animus. Glenn Greenwald has been writing online about foreign policy and social justice for half a decade. Has he been motivated by anti-Semitism the whole time? Isn't the purpose of our inquiry here to determine whether Israel's critics are in fact guilty of anti-Semitism? I ask and have asked none of my questions rhetorically. The silence towards simple questions asking for simple answers to simple inconsistencies and contradictions says everything.
How are we to righteously discuss Israel, when Israel's defenders constantly invoke Israel's status as a Jewish state? In that same (execrable) story from yesterday's Times magazine, Ehud Barak insisted that his responsibility included "in a very direct and concrete way... the existence of the State of Israel — indeed, for the future of the Jewish people." As long as Israel's defenders speak this way, Judaism and the Jewish race will be present in the conversation. Are we not adults? Is it really not possible to discuss these issues with enough nuance and care that we avoid saying bigoted things? Yes, of course, absolutely: anyone who evinces suspicion or antagonism or criticism towards Israel because it is a home to Jews is an anti-Semite, and such people should be treated accordingly. But plenty of people are not doing that and yet are dismissed as bigots regardless. When Norman Podhoretz says straightforwardly that "the role of Jews who write in both the Jewish and general press is to defend Israel," he makes Ackerman's rules nonsensical and impossible.
One day, there will be no nation state. No America, no UK, no China, no Iran, no Israel. Until that time comes, liberals who delude themselves into thinking that they can maintain their ties to exclusive categories like nationality while embracing egalitarianism will struggle with these discussions. Israel simply throws them into sharper, more immediate relief. When an American liberal flails about, trying to define why he should care more about someone born five miles north of the Mexican border than someone born five miles south of it, he is running into the same elementary contradictions that this discussion reveals. The truth is that only with the abandonment of useless, agitating inventions like country or religion or race or people will we find true enlightenment and true justice.
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35 comments:
Now we're getting somewhere.
It's one thing to say that there will someday be no nation-states as we know them. But you seem to be suggesting that there will someday be no tribal allegiances of any kind. That is a much stronger claim. Am I misreading you?
This is easily the strangest thing I've ever seen you post.
"One day there will be no nation state ... until that time comes ..."
Are you actually saying these words? Are you a dialectical materialist? What the fuck? Is this utopian socialist bullshit what you use to replace the religious impulse, I guess?
And I'd hoped that someone as intelligent as you wouldn't ever write something as painfully obtuse as this "mythology of religion" line ... hopefully I've misunderstood you? Are you actually trying to just wave away (or psychologize away) the entire history of all faith traditions this easily? The fact that you've closed yourself off to this reality doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Also let's not forget our good buddy IOZ: "Liberal futurism is always so blandly totalitarian--whether utopian or dystopian, the whole Earth is forever resolving itself into world governments or other vast transnational, deracinated, cultureless, monolingual blocs, as if history is but a pale reflection of entropy and in the inevitable flight from primitive tribalism our animal passions cool to match the background radiation and we all end up in white corridors wearing space jumpsuits and eating our food in pill form. But why should the future be thus? Liberalism likes to blow kisses in the direction of diversity, but seems to fundamentally despise actual difference ..."
First I should tell you, then I should....
What you won't read from paul h.: a defense of the nation state as transcendent or real, a historical case that the nation state was not founded on explicitly militarist terms, an argument that is not simple incredulity.
I'm an atheist. I've always been an atheist. I've always thought that religion is based on mythology. That's kind of a minimal requirement for being an atheist. The fact that I don't go around telling religious people what to believe, that I don't have personal animus towards the religious, and that I don't think the point of atheism is to end religious belief-- those things have nothing to do with my appraisal of the natural universe, which is that the stories told by religion are not true. I've never hidden that fact. Could I be wrong? Sure could. Does your fussy incredulity move me? It does.
I'm not a liberal futurist. I'm not an optimist. I'm not a teleologist of any kind. But the explicitly anti-egalitarian and explicitly militarist formation called the nation state is not a necessary construct and is more likely to die than be sustained. And if you think that IOZ supports the nation state, you read him with even less comprehension than you've always read me.
It's one thing to say that there will someday be no nation-states as we know them. But you seem to be suggesting that there will someday be no tribal allegiances of any kind. That is a much stronger claim. Am I misreading you?
Head says no, heart says yes. History is long. The nation state is very young, and I don't doubt that it will fall away. Human nature being what it is, what replaces it will likely be just as bad or worse. But a man can dream.
*It does not
Well, I'm not going to try to talk you out of your whole worldview.
I will suggest that maybe your own tribal allegiances are not non-existent but merely invisible to you.
Two thoughts:
1) on the end of nations: I suspect that anarchism is a long time in coming. I suspect a much stronger statement would be that no country lasts forever.
2) "Because of the unique history of Judaism and Israel, " all countries and all peoples have unique history. You need to back this up. Israel follows very similar patterns to the United States. A religious group of people who were persecuted in Europe became colonists in a new land and proceeded to subjugate and slaughter the natives.
You might find this short essay in Isaac Asimov's autobiography to be interesting. It covers a lot of what you are talking about.
Isaac Asimov On Antisemitism And The Universality Of Prejudice
"That said, the Jews are not alone in this. If I'm sensitive to this particular problem, it's because I'm Jewish myself. In fact, this phenomenon is universal. In Roman times, when the first Christians were persecuted, they pleaded for tolerance. But when Christianity prevailed, did tolerance reign? Not on your life. Instead, persecution was soon going on in the opposite direction. Or take the case of the Bulgarians, who demanded freedom from their dictatorial regime, but once they had it used it to aggress against their Turkish minority. Or the people of Azerbaijan, who demanded of the Soviet Union the freedom denied it by the central government, only to immediately attack the Armenian minority."
I will suggest that maybe your own tribal allegiances are not non-existent but merely invisible to you.
They're perfectly visible to me! Doesn't mean I like them.
It seems to me that the nation-state is just a cancerous form of community, and humanity without community is oxymoronic. Loyalty to the community is the price of membership. If your crowd wants to see movie X and you would rather see movie Y, (sometimes) you go along anyway because if you don't, you have moved into a different conversation than they are having. If you don't share your beans, you have no claim on their beans when you need some. Any community only exists because people are willing to support it. But that is way different than a community rule that you must be with the group all the way, every time. Hard borders (exclusivity leads to war) vs. soft boundaries (overlap leads to tolerance). My belief, the problem will get fixed when we figure out some way to get to where size doesn't matter that much, and a bunch of us can get together and have our own little pile of beans and our own exotic conversation without feeling threatened or being seen as threatening. Or as a resource to be co-opted (but maybe a fashion statement to be imitated).
I try to just let history be my guide. Until the end of the 19th century, there was no such thing as the German nation state. Within 50 years, the people in Germany believed in it so much they were willing to plunge the world into two horrific wars.
You keep conflating nation-states with local/tribal/ethnic loyalty in general when they are not the same at all. I'm not sure anyone here is defending the nation-state as inevitable or natural. You don't have to know much history to see that it isn't.
I guess what I was getting at before is that the "dream" you're espousing here is itself a product of your tribal loyalties, or more succinctly, I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people who share your dream are white Westerners, and there are cultural reasons for this.
Of course to most people the idea of a world without what we know as culture sounds like a nightmare. What about it appeals to you?
Of course I'm not going to defend the nation-state as transcendent or real. (I quite agree with you on that.) But my point is that you seem to be replacing this with an inevitable ("one day there will be no nation-state ...") democratic-socialist post-national utopia set at some defineable point in the future. Which is where you differ from IOZ (which is why I referred to IOZ).
I think a lot of this hinges on what you're calling 'nation-state' ... is America an empire or a nation-state? Or both? Is Rome a nation-state ... obviously not in the modern sense, but the practical reality is quite similar. And the point IOZ is making is that you're never going to get rid of tribal thinking; your liberal-egalitarian hopes are a fantasy. Unless you're saying that you're an anarchist, which I don't think you are?
Also, what Brendan said.
"His entire piece insists that any consideration of a conflict between loyalty to America and loyalty to Israel is prima facie anti-Semitic."
Wha? No...
how do you get from the actual line from the post "one day there will be no nation state" to the wholey invented "inevitable democratic-socialist post-national utopia?" There's nothing in Freddie's post that assumes or asserts that the fall of the nation-state will coincide with the rise of the United Federation of Planets. Just that the nation-state as a construct will eventually fall.
I guess what I was getting at before is that the "dream" you're espousing here is itself a product of your tribal loyalties
I could ascribe your views to the tooth fairy, but that would be distinctly unhelpful for this discussion. My reasons are either convincing or they are not.
I suspect that the overwhelming majority of people who share your dream are white Westerners, and there are cultural reasons for this.
That's a pretty weak attempt at an argument, but then I suspect that you know it's not really an argument at all. To it I say: who cares? My views are held by a tiny minority. I'm used to that.
Of course to most people the idea of a world without what we know as culture sounds like a nightmare. What about it appeals to you?
Fewer dead children. For a start.
Wha? No...
Ackerman: Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, the liberal pro-Israel, pro-peace organization that I’ve written favorably about, told the Washington Post he was cool with the throwing “Israel Firster” around. “If the charge is that you’re putting the interests of another country before the interests of the United States in the way you would advocate that,” he said, “it’s a legitimate question.” So, Ben-Ami’s response to years of getting baselessly attacked for not caring about Israel is to turn around and say his attackers don’t care about America?
Part of the reason I suspect the nation state won't last long is because I presume those divisions will eventually be good for business and corporations. That's not a particularly optimistic take, for me.
I don't know; I've always felt that the anti-nationalist approach gets something wrong on a very fundamental level.
Loyalties, recognition of shared humanity, recognition of rights, etc begin at a familial & tribal level and radiate outward. People learn first to act decently toward their own group, only afterward does it occur to them to identify with a broader and broader group. Yes, this identification usually arises through fighting---e.g. Homer's "All Greeks" coming together to fight Ilium, an aggressive nation-state in all the essentials---but that's just as true of the tribe and the city state. This close-knit group comes together in violence, then recognizes its members' rights, then eventually comes to acknowledge the rights of certain outsiders, and the longer the tradition lasts, the more inclusive it grows.
The point is, it doesn't grow any other way. Can you think of ANY tradition of democracy or human rights that did? It's fine to say, in the 21st Century, "I'm a modern liberal and have no use for these tribal loyalties"; but such ideas only came of age after incubating in tribal loyalties.
My point is that I can't see Americans as a whole thinking of Iraqis, Nicaraguans, or Afghans as equals until we've learned to see all our fellow Americans as equals, and this remains a sadly distant goal. But I feel we should attempt a national social ideal (as distinct from national bellicosity), and try to treat our fellow citizens as comrades---not because this is better or truer than a conception of universal citizenship and comradery, but because it is easier (i.e., it is possible) and because it is a necessary step toward the latter. America has made the attempt, more or less consciously, at several stages in its history, and these are our proudest moments.
I think a more direct way to have fewer dead children would be to stop killing children.
I'm not sure if nations are a good thing or if they're necessary in the long term. I suspect that's impossible to know. (Einstein was against nations, IIRC. So you're in good company.)
But I think all you need to make your argument though, Freddie, is a much weaker premise that everyone will have to agree with. (If they're at all moral.)
All you need to claim is that a.) our commitment to acting morally entails that we treat each persons rights, happiness, and sovereignty equally and b.) any commitment or loyalty we might have to our own nation is always, always, always trumped by morality. (This allows us to have civic duties and duties to our nation without those duties ever leading to immorality.)
Pretty much everyone ought to accept a. and b.
So, if action X takes rights away from people or treats people unequally or maximizes unhappiness, then action X is wrong and should not be supported even if action X is the most loyal action to Israel, Germany, Sumeria, or Gondor. If action X is morally acceptable, and doesn't infringe on the rights of people, etc., then there may be a thin duty to engage in X if X is a "loyal" action.
The problem is that local, tribal, and national loyalty often leads people to think the rights, happiness, and sovereignty of "us" is more important than the rights, happiness, and sovereignty of "them." This is the root of much evil, as we all know.
How is the American nation-state helping advance humanitarian values when one of the important things it does is send some of those not-so-equal "citizens" to far-off places of the world where they kill children? Not that we kill children on purpose. Usually. Mostly.
Freddie, it seems to me that the German nation-state arose as a counterweight to the large states around it: France, England, Russia. Do you think something special arose at the end of the 19th century? It seems to me that the essential coercive war-making power has been around a lot longer than that, like since Akkade.
I would tend to agree the shift to the Autocratic Corporation seems inevitable and unhelpful. But maybe anarchy will overtake us first.
"How is the American nation-state helping advance humanitarian values when one of the important things it does is send some of those not-so-equal 'citizens' to far-off places of the world where they kill children?"
Do you think the ideal of American citizenship is responsible for the bombing of children in far-off places? In other words, if America regressed to a patchwork of loose coteries of tribal-ethnic loyalties, which has always been a very real threat, the U.S. war machine would be any less powerful or aggressive?
I don't. I think Americans stand a better chance of recognizing the humanity of our military's victims once we recognize the humanity of our countrymen. In the meantime you won't succeed in making any practical appeal on behalf of foreign children to a populace that has yet to respect domestic children that don't look like them.
Excellent post. I am not sure exactly what people are finding in it to argue with.
I hate to post unqualified praise without offering some sort of suggestion or original point, but I can't think of anything more to add.
"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace"
This might be one of the best posts I've ever read, and by best I mean the most ridiculous post ever written by a smart liberal.
My two favorite parts are:
1) "Nationality, religion, and ethnicity are all constructs..."
At which point we discover Freddie is allergic to science and rational inquiry;
2) And then this part in the comments:
"I try to just let history be my guide. Until the end of the 19th century, there was no such thing as the German nation state. Within 50 years, the people in Germany believed in it so much they were willing to plunge the world into two horrific wars."
At which point we discover that Freddie hasn't studied much history.
"My commenters yesterday fixated on the term "Israel firster," insisting that the point was whether the term has a bigoted history. "
How come no one seems to have demanded the evidence for this?
I've checked online myself, but the earliest
reference to it I can find on the internet is this 1986 article from the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs:
http://www.washington-report.org/component/content/article/95-1986-december/697-in-toto-outrageous.html
Goldberg links to David Bernstein saying that the term was used in an anti-Semitic book in 1988, two years later. Was this a term used in critiques of Israel, that some anti-Semitic groups, interested
in that criticism for the wrong reasons, also used at some points?
I don't like to dwell on terminology, but if people like Goldberg can tar people by claiming that they're using neo-Nazi rhetoric, and that claim never gets challenged, they succeed in controlling the debate.
For a slightly less flip response, I think well-meaning people believing this:
"Nationality, religion, and ethnicity are all constructs, and ones totally incompatible with an egalitarian, liberal political ethic."
is one of the things that leads to lots of dead children.
OK, just did a lot of research. Israel-firster doesn't seem to be of neo-Nazi origin:
http://www.thesignalwire.com/2012/01/history-of-israel-firster.html
I've not followed all the turns of this particular little internet crapstorm.
But one thing that I haven't seen explained is whether whoever allegedly used the term "Israel-firsters" used it only to describe a group of Jews.
Aren't there lots of evangelicals (e.g., Sarah Palin), who have very strong views about Israel who might have been covered by the unfortunate phrase?
And if that's the case, how can the use of that term be anti-semitic?
Maybe that's just another way of saying that I agree with Freddie that the term should not be used because of its history but that the question is still the attitudes of those who used it, who may well not have been aware of that history.
You should probably stop calling yourself an internationalist, since internationalism presupposes the legitimacy of the nation.
This whole comment thread reminds me of the yglesias line where he notes how conservatives don't believe racism actually exists, except to the extent it's used to silence and smear conservatives. Well, I guess we have found the equivalent on the left.
I'm not sure why it's so relevant whether there are actually Jews who accurately fit the old jewish stereotype of holding dual loyalties? Is this surprising? Individuals can always be picked to confirm any ethnic or racial stereotype. It was true in 19th century france and its true today. Ooh, so podhoretz considers Israel his most important issue! Better make sure people know there's a famousish Jew out there who has dual loyalties. And we have to create a term for such jews to indicate that they are a group and so we can easily add more as we identify them.
In all seriousness, I can see the relevance of exposing the all powerful Israeli lobby and its influence on american foreign policy, but the need to expose people who consider Israel their ultimate issue? What does this achieve, other than a Steve Saileresq quest for truth?
"Maybe that's just another way of saying that I agree with Freddie that the term should not be used because of its history..."
Did you read my link? What people like Goldberg are saying about the history of the term ISN'T TRUE. For some reason everyone took them at their word, even though Goldberg has been dishonest before (recently, even):
http://flapola.blogspot.com/2011/07/no-shame-at-atlantic.html
http://flapola.blogspot.com/2011/07/jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-and.html
It's part of the tactic - just lie, and many people will believe you, because hey, you're a well regarded journalist, right? If anyone disputes your claim, the burden of proof is placed on them (where as the burden of proof should be placed on those making the claim, for obvious reasons). Either no one will go to check that, or if they do and find out you are being dishonest, you already have three other lies lined up for them to disprove.
It's a cheap trick but people seem to fall for it over and over again. At what point do we say, "this guy is dishonest, we aren't going to run around after every claim he's made until he shows a lot of evidence"?
That's not a slightly less flip response. It's, in fact, a far more flip response.
Here is what I have no time for on this blog: people who do the troll dance, where they jump back and forth from arguments they want to be taken seriously to provocation. I've got my share of trolls-- hi, Fuzzy Bastard-- and I've got people who engage. Do one or the other.
OK, I'm actually trying to engage, but I don't know where to start. I suppose I've made some posts where I allude to arguments that are pretty well-worn so I assume you, or whoever else is reading, will fill in the gaps. I admit this is lazy.
America's recent wars would not have been possible if you did not have a lot of well-meaning liberals convinced that they would spread liberal values. I am absolutely not saying that YOU believe liberal values can be spread that way. I know you don't believe that. What I'm objecting to is the idea that your liberal values--which I basically share--are the product of our awesome faculty of reason or whatever where we've thought through the problems and figured them out, and we have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up. I do not believe that questions about how we ought to live are susceptible to that kind of thinking in the first place.
I mean, there are so many huge issues here that you can't set it all out in one epic blog comment. It has to be a conversation. I think what I try to do is start a conversation that might go somewhere useful, and as far as I can tell that's what Fuzzy Bastard is trying to do too, not troll.
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Fuck. Yes.
Thank you, Freddie. I've been yelling stuff at my screen (far less eloquently) for a long, long time.
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