gracchusdixit

In 1775, Samuel Johnson, who authored the first and arguably the greatest dictionary of the English Language, proclaimed:  “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”  The object of Dr. Johnson’s ire wasn’t patriotism itself; it was Britain’s then prime minister, William Pitt, the first politician of the modern age to recognize and consciously manipulate the power of public opinion.  And yet, Pitt was no demagogue or tyrant.  He exploited the patriotic emotions of the populace, not to benefit himself, but to advance what he deemed to be the interests of his country.  That cannot be said for the nabobs of nationalism who have taken his place.  

From Donald Trump to Boris Johnson, from Marie Le Pen to Narendra Modi, from Vladimir Putin to Bibi Netanyahu, a new generation of political charlatans has risen to power throughout the world by conjuring fictional tales of national identity, by pitting their respective nations against all others, and by recasting citizenship in terms of race, religion, and language.  Anyone who questions or opposes them is condemned as an alien to be cast out, an enemy to be cast down, or subhuman garbage to be cast aside.

These demagogic frauds mask their corrupt purposes with sentimental sloganeering and incantations of national “greatness”.  That is because such things make their victims feel good without imposing the irksome requirement that they pause to think or question.  From Trump’s “Make America Great Again” to Modi’s “India Rising,” Le Pen’s “Au Nom du Peuple,” and Johnson’s “Take Back Control,” every self-aggrandizing and jingoistic cliché in the book is dredged up, even though they signify nothing of substance and even less of moral consequence.  They do, however, serve the purpose of dividing the world into opposing camps.

The nabobs of nationalism are obsessed with pitting insiders against outsiders, because that is how they stay in power.  Donald Trump proclaimed, “A country without borders is not a country at all.”  In this, he merely plagiarized the words of that earlier nabob of nationalism, Ronald Reagan:  “A nation that cannot control its borders is not a nation.”  Demagogues like Trump and Reagan stoke and feed upon the paranoid fear of national danger and decay, for without it, they could not survive.  They must cast the world as an existential struggle of “us” versus “them,” for without a demonic “other” to denounce, without evil invaders to defeat, without a national race or religion to defend and glorify, they would have no purpose whatsoever.

The rationale for all this—if you can call it that—is the absurd proposition that the geographical accident of birth should supersede all other moral, civic, or political obligations.  Not only is this absurd, it is based on the flimsiest of historical foundations.  In fact, the very idea of national identity is a more recent and artificial concoction than most people realize.  Modern nation building did not begin until the 19th century.  Until the revolution of 1789, France was less a nation than the personal property of its monarchs, and a hundred years later, half the population still didn’t speak French.  Germany and Italy didn’t come into being until 1871, and even now, more than a 100 years later, their nationhood is far from certain. The former citizens of East Germany have never reconciled themselves to the reunification that was forced upon them after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the ever-fissiparous nature of Italian politics has from the start called into question whether the country will be able to hang together as a single state.  

Even that epitome of patriotic feeling, the “sceptered isle” of England, is in large part a political fiction, concocted by the Tudors, whose founder usurped the throne by murdering the last legitimate Plantagenet king.  To cover up this crime and weld together a divided society, the Tudors launched a program of systematic propaganda.  In this, they were helped by no less than William Shakespeare, whose history plays, particularly his malicious depiction of Richard III, is straight out of the Tudor playbook.  Even Henry VIII’s break with the Church of Rome had less to do with religious freedom (let alone his infatuation with Ann Boleyn) than with a consolidation of power by pitting the English “nation” against the higher authority of the Pope.  From the amorous Henry to the insatiably ambitious Napoleon Bonaparte,  the modern nation-state and the patriotic fervor it demands have always been tools demagogues and tyrants use to advance their own corrupt interests.  

Nationalism is also an impediment to human progress, and never more so than now.  Even the most powerful nation-states find themselves increasingly helpless as they confront so-called “non-state actors,” who reject the proposition that nation-states are entitled to monopolize political power and are the sole repositories of the legitimate use of violence.  When American drones kill civilians or assassinate foreign leaders, it is called preemption or self-defense.  When IEDs kill American soldiers, it is called terrorism.  In a world where nationalism has become a naked tool of tyrants, such moral dichotomies collapse.

Even more importantly, the modern nation-state is proving itself to be utterly incapable of dealing with the disruptions caused by global capitalism and the existential crisis of climate change. A system that pits one nation against another, that exalts competition over collaboration, that sees the world as a zero-sum struggle in which “we” win only when “they” lose, is fated to doom humankind.

The toxicity of this system was captured in a remark made by Theresa May, the former Tory prime minister of the United Kingdom:  “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.  You don’t understand what the very word ‘citizenship’ means.” Left unchallenged, that narrow and cramped conception of citizenship, confined as it is to the borders of the modern nation-state, will destroy us all.  

A much wiser and more humane view was voiced, two thousand years ago, by the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius:  “Consider the connection of all things in the universe…We should not say ‘I am Athenian’ or ‘I am a Roman’ but rather ‘I am a Citizen of the Universe’.”

The Theresa Mays of the modern world, nabobs of nationalism one and all, are dead wrong, whereas the long-dead Emperor of the Roman world was right.  We are all citizens of the world and the universe of which that world is but a small part.  If we continue to insist otherwise, it won’t be long before we cease to exist.