Campuses are always removed from reality. Credit: Roger Sedres/Gallo Images/Getty Images
The meme of the First World Problem first hit the internet a decade ago, to satirise what pampered pooches we’ve become — “can only get 3G not 4G”, “had to stand on public transport” — when, really, we should all be pathetically grateful for our tech-enabled, progress-enriched lifestyles. Into this category, you could also tip many of the ‘problems’ that have come to dominate our news cycle. How should Afro hair be incorporated into British schools’ dress codes? Is it a ‘sexist’ fabrication that Carrie Symonds tried to get a minister fired — or is it just a fabrication? Should The National Trust celebrate LGBTQI+ culture, or should it perhaps get on with preserving historic buildings?
We spend so much time raking over this kind of tattle because the broader culture war tends to play out through small news cycle flash points. But also because we don’t have to talk about Jim Crow. It is a sign of precisely how well we’re doing.
By that yardstick, nothing should refute First World Problems more than Third World conditions. In the Third World, the obvious answer to the problematising of haircare regimes is: “Look out your bloody window”. Who needs micro aggressions when you have macro? Consider the woman begging for scraps at the traffic lights and vomit up your rainbow of intersectional identities.
Yet just as Rambo once became a hero to kids in Angola, so too the West is exporting its culture wars to places it barely understands. This is the emerging story at the heart of Helen Zille’s new book Stay Woke Go Broke: Why South Africa won’t survive America’s culture wars (And what you can do about it).
Zille has dominated South African opposition politics for nearly two decades. Once, she was the crusading liberal journalist who broke the scandal of Steve Biko’s murder in police custody. More recently, she has racked up eight years as leader of the Official Opposition — the Democratic Alliance — and a decade as Premier of the Western Cape. She is also a pugnacious Twitter power user, with over a million followers, and has, the reader senses, swallowed the site’s obsessions more than most.
The book’s extensive subtitle alludes to where the South African state of play is right now: it’s a primer, for an audience who are lucky enough never to have heard of James Lindsay or Robin DiAngelo. Despite the homogenising power of the internet, South Africa has remained insulated from the full depth of the culture wars, by both the deep reality of its problems, and by its standing start. There has never been a culture of “political correctness”. While the racial fault lines are obvious and vast, the conversations around them have always been suitably robust. The gentility and euphemism that characterise First World conversations just don’t exist. It’s much harder to talk of “systemic racism” being invisible yet everywhere, as the Intersectional Social Justice movement does, in a country where only 30 years ago there was a literal system of apartheid.
But as in the West, in South Africa it’s university campuses — and particularly the importation of Critical Theory sub-genres like Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory — that have provided the initial incubator to wokeness. In 2015, the University of Cape Town held an early dry run, with the Rhodes Must Fall protests. Initially focused on a prominent statue of the man who built the campus, soon the protests’ literature began to include phrases like: “the fall of ‘Rhodes’ is symbolic for the inevitable fall of white supremacy and privilege at our campus”. Before long, Critical Theory had usurped the entire movement, to the point where the university hosted a “Science Must Fall” meeting that rejected the white devilry of Newtonian physics, in favour of a suitably decolonised alternative: essentially an African witchcraft theory of causality.
Since then, the stain has spread slowly and unevenly. Universities are elite cloisters, whether they are in Kigali or Copenhagen. They are always First World. But what happens when the Nitrogen of First World problems meets the glycerine of Third World Problems?
Most developing countries are Bosnia to some degree: where there are ethnicities, there are tensions, and where there is fledgling democracy, there is only ever fragile order. The key question is whether identity then becomes the fault line on which all politics is built. For an opportunist as cunning as the South African politician Julius Malema — whose Chavista party is known as the Economic Freedom Fighters — the coming of Woke serves as a rhetorical cloak that speaks to some of his followers’ most base instincts: the belief that The White Man is evil, and ought to be pushed back into the sea. Malema’s lot might not be high theorists, but they instinctively grasp the rhetorical power of problematising. In 2018, while the “H&M Monkey” controversy raged across Europe, Julius and his freedom fighters deployed to suburban shopping malls from Cavendish to Sandton, knocking over rails of H&M clothes in protest — which later had to be picked up by low wage, mostly black workers.
All of which speaks to something the founders of Critical Race Theory never seemed to have taken into account, from their privileged positions in the rich West. Ordinarily, the pyramid of victimhood that puts Black at the top depends on Black being a minority, and so perhaps in need of special protections. So what happens when the “system” from which systemic racism is supposed to emerge has been run by an entirely black cohort for over 25 years? To really root it out, what should you do, in a country where the oppressor with the foot on your throat is actually only 7% of the population?
History is unfortunately replete with examples. From Amin’s Ugandan Asians, to Zimbabwe, to the expulsion of half a million whites from Mozambique, nationalist rhetoric has done just fine without “Woke”. But as the West is now finding out, it can be a fantastic way to put yourself into reverse gear, re-racialising, driving that initial wedge. Its logic pushes that wedge ever deeper. This is perhaps the best way to think of Woke in the Third World: as a new tool in the arsenal of power; a justification for retaining power for your racial in-group, rather than the First World ideal of giving it away.
In the 1990s, the ANC government implemented wide-ranging Black Economic Empowerment laws, which were designed to redress vast imbalances of opportunity and wealth. These were initially conceived of as temporary measures: affirmative action and share giveaways designed to build a black middle class. But since then, the Black Economic Empowerment laws have become little more than a mechanism for securing cascades of patronage by the kleptocrats at the top. ANC cadre can gift shares in various state monopolies, mining companies, and the like; who gets them is a function of whomever controls the BEE system — just so long as they happen to be black. It is also a dead cert they will also be rich and well-connected. In this new world, then, oppression is only real if it is racial, yet the poor and the needy are just as excluded as they ever were under the National Party.
And just as in the West, wherever diversity becomes the cardinal value, competence inevitably suffers. In the First World, this might only mean a slightly lower standard of ITV comedies. But in the developing world, the margin between getting by and cataclysm is simply much finer. Zille picks out the case of Mpho Letlape, the former Human Resources Manager at Eskom, the state electricity monopoly. Letlape’s official target specified that one in every two hires had to be a black woman, to meet “representivity quotas”. But because the skilled locals who had applied for these jobs refused to be the right colour or gender, Letlape reportedly spent a small fortune recruiting more than 300 black Americans in 2006/2007 who, through some privilege equivalent of the Transubstantiation of the Eucharist, could be made to count under the quota.
Most of them didn’t stick around: it wasn’t long until only 68 of the 300 remained in Eskom’s employ. It is perhaps not a coincidence that in 2009 a disastrous wave of rolling blackouts began to affect the entire country, crippling industry. A decade later, these blackouts still roll on and on.
The story of the country’s economic woes is of course vastly more complicated than this simple vignette, but it does speak to a thread that unites Wokeism in the First and Third worlds. In the same way that you can’t get a permit to sell fruit in Tunisia without paying baksheesh to someone’s cousin’s brother’s uncle who’s in the cops, lately in the West, it is becoming harder and harder to do business with large organisations, both public and private, without first paying tithes to their diversity systems, their climate goals and all manner of gestural politics, rather than their basic economics.
Inevitably, whenever an organisation ceases to be interested in its core mission, and instead becomes wrapped up in side-quests like race balancing or “decolonisation”, its output begins to sag. Today, that everyday Third World issue, the detachment of efficacy from employment, is beginning to visit itself upon the First. For those in the West who like to lean into their White Guilt, it might even be inspiring to know that — just by wandering through yet another listless art exhibition made to serve political ends rather than cultural — they too can experience a very common kind of Third World problem.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeNot an issue for Critical Theory types – they talk of ‘minoritised’ groups, not actual minorities. The numbers don’t matter (mathematical concepts being ‘whiteness’, and all). This ‘minoritisation’ is applied to anyone not part of the ‘Devil’ groupings – straight, male, and especially white. Critical Race Theory relates everything to Blackness, and it’s supposed opposition.
“Coconut” was a term I heard often back in the day; black on the outside, white on the inside.
Oreo and apple were terms applied to blacks and natives,getting an education and some success is a form of betrayal.
I remember thinking a while back when Elton John was banging on about gay marriage or surrogate mothers or something was that all this stuff could be called Elton John socialism.
You can support all the socialist and other causes things you like (some genuinely good such as protecting the environment). BLM, pro-abortion, save the poor immigrants, do not be Islamophobic etc. etc. ad nasueum.
But for Elton and the gang, one traditionally socialist topic is utterly off the agenda and that is higher taxes on the super-rich.
Elton is a ‘type’ that just needs to harp on about something no matter; his utterances appear to be cathartic reactions to the angst of the moment. It clearly must serve a psychological or emotional purpose for him and others of his type (left leaning). A number of studies have pointed out that lefties in the never ending search for nirvana or utopia are never really satisfied, never really happy.
In my less rational days, I attended a rather large benefit for Hillary Clinton at Radio City Music Hall (circa 2008/9) where Elton John played. The music was fun until he pulled a real Debbie Downer, declaring the USA to be ‘misogynistic and – not worthy of the valorous Hillary’ and this was going into the election – no results as to her demise at that point – go figure? He deflated the entire mood of the house. What a waste of money it was for me, but I am sure there were hundreds if not thousands in that auditorium that night who just sucked that negative ju-ju up, as if eating manna from heaven.
Elton john is a remainer, and Overatted as a musician, Bowie,Dylan,otis Redding,Roger mcGuinn,joni mitchell,carole king more important music influencers 7fashion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5_pz2TM50
Elton John can’t see the contradiction
That’s the beauty of the ‘victims of colonialism’ meme.
Despite having been independent for what is now several decades, the elites of countries that are mired in corruption, shi*thole countries, to borrow a phrase, can avoid responsibility indefinitely provided they’re not white-looking. Not their fault. It was whitey wot done it.
Power without responsibility, and predictable results. I feel sorry in a way for them. The western intellectual elites have given them excuse after excuse, cosseted and pandered them, held them to lesser standards, patted them on the head and generally condescended.
Good luck with your new Chinese overlords.
The damage, loss , injustice , violations , pain, cultural destruction , blatant racism and deluded hypocrisy the woke left inflicts on humanity is vast and well documented.The left progressive movement, the marriage of self hating irrational liberal neurotic guilt with discredited ,obsolete marxist political memes of the defunct Soviet tyranny, violates every principle they claim to stand for and are clearly a racist, divisive , destructive , unhinged , intolerant totalitarian tyranny to mankind.
The peoples of the free democracies of western civilisation have every right and reason to stand up and speak out against the left woke progressives one sided hypocritical racist attack on their people , culture and society .
What to do about them is the question now.
They are guilty of everything they accuse. They can be brought to justice and proven guilty and it would be fitting karma they are given the same consequences they demand and inflict on those they accuse.
We have prevailed over powerful entrenched tyrannies, and can over this one.
Humanity needs liberation from the woke progressive tyranny.
ONLY 9.85 million people watched the Oscars over the weekend in the USA – a record low. It was a night of ‘never-ending wokeism’, giving the phrase – ‘Go woke, Go Broke’ – real meaning.
Obsessive wokism will be unfashionable soon enough …
I guess you could say that importing wokeism to the Third World is a form of imperialism: “this is what real civilisation looks like and we intend to introduce it; we shall impose it on you by force through economic sanctions.”
‘who gets them is a function of whomever controls the BEE system — just so long as they happen to be black. It is also a dead cert they will also be rich and well-connected. In this new world, then, oppression is only real if it is racial, yet the poor and the needy are just as excluded’
BEE is often referred to as ‘Black Elite Enrichment’ in S. Africa and has been much criticized by major black figures including Desmond Tutu in the past for exacerbating economic inequality, feeding large scale corruption and expediting a hugely damaging brain drain due to its employment policies that discriminate against those best qualified to do a job.
If nothing else, this piece goes to illustrate that the Trojan Horse of identity politics isn’t just consuming the attention of the well to do so called Left only in the UK and the US.
First World sociology has solved the problem of majorities demanding minority victim status, as in its oft used phrase “women and other minorities.”
As Lumen explains: “Women are considered a minority group because they do not share the same power, privileges, rights, and opportunities as men.”
Because of course, as progressives everywhere know, mathematics is a tool of the patriarchy.
A rational piece by someone associated with Vice! Gavin’s phrase ‘the detachment of efficacy from employment’ is a very good one that I will try to remember and deploy. And one could add to it with ‘the detachment of ethics from employment’. We see it everywhere, from the art galleries he mentions to the media and broadcasting organisations, to the public sector and politics, and increasingly to the corporate world.
That aside, I didn’t know that Helen Zille was the leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, which has done such a good job of running the Western Cape. Hopefully the Western Cape will secede from SA, as has been suggested elsewhere.
In truth, much of the so-called First World only retains that status by virtue of money printing and many countries can only cover the cracks – or canyons – for so long.
As I have said many times, there has been a complete failure to turn the Third World into the First World, so those in power have decided to turn the First World into the Third World.
I thought for those in power it was more bring a workforce used to Third World levels into the First World, then you can scrap the overpaid workers in the First World.
To me, the most beautifully sinister example of that is importing lots of Chinese into Italy, so they can make genuine Italian over-priced fashion goods in sweatshops there – and even export them to China!
Care to explain why you think subsaharans will never be ‘any sort of worforce’? Sounds racist to me but I’m willing to be corrected.
So presumably you’re in support of a minimum wage at a sufficient level to make it commercially unviable to import third world workers and government regulation of exploitative business practices? You sound like a socialist, George.
???
if you’re not importing third-world workers, then wages tend to take care of themselves. And it has nothing to do with the minimum. The minimum could be $3 an hour but if a business could import third world people to do the job at $2/hour, they’d do it.
What ???
Many inner cities in the USA – Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago – are being run almost entirely by blacks, so are we to assume that they are perpetuating ‘systemic racism’ as they endure high crime rates, failing schools & dysfunctional family life (high illegitimacy rates, single-mom homes) ? Ditto the largely liberal/leftist colleges and universities, Hollywood, the Main Stream Media, etc. I guess these institutions have been perpetuating ‘systemic racism’ as well?
“Consider the woman begging for scraps at the traffic lights and vomit up your rainbow of intersectional identities.”
This should be turned into a poster!
Except that the Rhodes must Fall man rather tarnished his image when he decided to be rude to a waitress in a restaurant. Seems she had so much ‘privilege’ she not only couldn’t go to university but was working to pay for the health care of her mother who had cancer. I don’t think the rich in the third world care at all about their poor-why we keep sending money I don’t know.
It’s hard not to feel the heavy weight of the irony (no pun) when it’s hanging around our necks. The best example is in Chicago, IL, where just about everyone from the mayor, police chief, attorney general, county president, Oprah Winfrey and on and on is black, yet they continue to blame “systemic racism” for our myriad problems.
The second best example is the Duchess and Oprah lamenting to each other about their experiences with racism. The third is LeBron and many other hugely overcompensated celebrities complaining about anything from the upper decks of their yachts, from one of the pools at their Caribbean Island retreats or from the cocktail lounge in their private jet.
As Dr Jordan B Peterson exhorts,
“Carry the heaviest load that you can”
“Stand up straight”
“Take on responsibility”
“Clean your room”
“Sort yourself out”
No wonder victims hate him. Responsibility sucks. And it’s hard.
Here we go again – every single comment i made on this one, plus all the related replies, disappeared in thin air. That’s a total of 10 deleted comments (of which 3 or so were mine), going by the current count of “29”. And no, it wasn’t a censor-sensitive word – those trigger the orange warning outright -, but likely someone flagging the comments they disapprove of to make them disappear.
Lately there seems to be an effort here to create a safe space where context and intent do not matter and some words either alone or in combination are just bad.
I recently had a comment deleted that suggested that there will almost certainly be some people who wish our current Covid death rate to be higher – purely to be able to criticise the government.
Doesn’t seem to be inflammatory to me …. and certainly not in a way that people need “protecting from”
There’s that too, a seemingly arbitrary choice of words triggering the censorfilter (one such example is b u t t, used as in “b u t t of all jokes”. Really???). However, when it’s a word issue the orange warning comes up automatically and remains with each new comment attempt until you find the incriminating word and change or tweak it sufficiently.
A different story though with comments without word issues; those which get published right away without orange warning problems and stay up for hours (days, even) – but disappear without a trace suddenly. With those it is the context and the intent what gets them pulled i presume. Someone (either a reader or a moderator) disliking the content of the comment.
In a way i find it more insidious than the Grun’s default “this comment violated our community standards blah blah” blurb they replace a deleted comment with. I understand why Unherd is not doing it that way: not exactly the best optics for site priding itself on being a valiant standard-bearer of freeespeeech.
As of the current count, there’s 31 comments and the counter says “46”. That’s 15 comments pulled = ⅓, roughly. Well done, Unherd.
No subscription without representation.
The irony of Woke Culture is that it only thrives on a national platform. Once the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion agenda expands from the national to the global, then the Woke rich have to explain why they aren’t distributing and equalising their Woke wealth with their global cohorts.
Thus, not only is Woke Culture overtly a nationalisation of homophilic segregation but covertly is a globalisation of homophilic segregation too.
https://quillette.com/2021/04/16/the-permanence-of-segregation/
It’s not clear it’s translating at the local or state level in the USA either. It often surprises me when I ask folks about ‘wokeism’ they don’t know what it is, for it has nothing to do with their daily lives. They just don’t care. To them it is a far away occurrence of ‘insanity’. Ordinary people have many other things to deal with than ‘being woke’.
They will know what it is when their children get indoctrinated and start to hate them. But by then it will be too late.
being woke will be a requirement, they are blind to what is going on and when they actually do realize it, it will be much more difficult to rout it out.
About 30 years ago my wife and I were adopting a group of children. We needed to be “blessed” by a psych eval. The social worker visited and wrote. He labeled us as “lower middle class.” Thus, we will never qualify as woke. Thank God for hidden blessings.
very interesting article
Well I wouldn’t really call it ‘interesting’. Essentially, it merely states the obvious. But even that is a giant leap forward in the current environment.
I went away for a much-needed haircut, and the current environment deleted all my comments and their replies in the three hours i was away.
Makes me feel like i’m a teenager in the eastern bloc again. Not a good feeling.
Sorry your haircut went so badly.
The haircut went pretty well in fact (i went for a messy version of the “karen” cut), but my other half lost all his sweet pretty ringlets he grew over the course of 13 months, and that makes me sad.
I know a lot of people seem to be having quite radical haircuts just incase they shut down for another year.
When writing I now do my best to avoid ever putting the word black at the beginning of a sentence, because then I would have to put it in capitals.
So instead of Black people, however, unlike white people…..I will have the greatly preferable However, black people, unlike White people…..
Something is definitely amiss here in terms of number of comments shown ’53’ and actual number of comments counted as 38.
Some just keep disappearing.
Even had my totally uncontroversial comment relating to ITV comedy commissioning removed, bizarrely, so it can’t be censoring I’m sure.
My reply, perfectly uncontroversial and polite, is awaiting approval
whose approval?
what’s the point in posting, if you have to be approved? Echo chambers all.
Zach’s just checking it over, to make sure it’s not getting “far too many likes”.
As a citizen of the USA I point out to woke zombies that the US is the most racially diverse country in the world. Using rough numbers 60 percent white, 20 percent hispanic, 10 percent black, 5 percent asian, and 5 percent others. No other nation even comes close. Singapore has a pretty diverse spread too but it is a small island nation. Does having such a diverse population with different customs, languages, religions, beliefs, etc cause a lot of issues and conficts? Certainly it does but what other country has even tried it? Look at the conflicts that have arisen in Europe over immigration and their numbers don’t even come close to those of the USA. It would be one thing if the woke zombies could point at some other place on Earth and say see how well they are doing it! But they can’t. Because that place doesn’t exist yet the USA is being portrayed as some kind of racist hell hole. It is ridiculous.
imo your points only prove that the past 50+ years of this has proved to be a mistake. the immigration and nationality act of 65 is proving to be the slow death of this country if not the west overall.
Is it too simple to say that the desired outcome of ‘woke politics’ = “now it’s our turn to eat” = African politics?
You’ve just reminded me of 20 years ago when my sibling worked in Tanzania.
A house-maid was provided with the house. She was a second wife of a man who lived hundreds of miles away. When her infant son got malaria, my sibling offered to pay for the boy to to to a doctor and for all the medicine the boy needed. The offer was turned down in favour of the local “witch doctor” (if we are allowed to use that word any more).
It’s one of those irritating americanisms seeped into English journalism, as they all do.
Trying to do my best to counter the mission creep, i decapitalised ‘bame’ and turned it into a common noun / a root of its variant neologisms such as bamery, unbame, bameing & so forth.
we’re not thrilled with it, either.
I know.
Wish some of the nice americanisms (of which there are many) would make their way into mainstream English journalism too.
And so we have Haynes taking a dig at James Lindsay yet all of Haynes’ understanding of critical theory and its detrimental effects have been taken from, yup, James Lindsay (and Helene Pluckrose and Peter Boghossian). Funny how some sort of jealous resentment always creeps in with those who consider themselves as virtuous intellectuals.
I think that “dig”: “an audience who are lucky enough never to have heard of James Lindsay or Robin Di Angelo” was a reaction to the whole sorry business of critical theory in general, hence the inclusion of Di Angelo.
I didn’t read it that way. Grievance studies is a reaction, so if you have no concept of the initial cause (e.g. Di Angelo, et al.), you would have no concept of Lindsay as the reaction to it either.
Rights seem to have trumped responsibilities at every turn for a long time. It is a conundrum that has taxed society, constitution making and cultures. For me, the balance is way out of kilter…
I rather like Sartre’s association between being free and being responsible.
I’ve been using this example of the absurdity of CRT since early last year.
Critical Race Theory claims that majorities are oppressors and minorities are oppressed. Based on that, a black man from Nigeria who tries to hurt white people is a racist oppressor. But if he moves to Boston to attend MIT and still triers to hurt white people, he becomes an oppressed anti-racist. When he graduates, he goes back to do civil engineering in Nigeria, and when he crosses the border, becomes a racist oppressor again. All this even though his actual behavior toward white people has never changed one iota.
I’m sure that DiAngelo or Kendi would be ready to school me that Nigeria suffers under the yoke of hundreds of years of European colonial oppression and enslavement, so even a 95% black, African country is actually controlled by white supremacy. This is clearly absurd, even ignoring the the Arab enslavement of Africans for centuries before we arrived, but logic has never stopped committed fanatics. Besides, logic is white supremacist.
Luxury beliefs?
Questions for those who are ‘students of woke-ism’:
It seems to me that being ‘woke’ is an extreme form of superficial and contrived sense of social justice / injustice by mainly ‘white’ wealthier folk.
If this is so,
And, lastly. It seem to me that Helen Zille – as a politician and a social voice – is a solo crusader because other South Africans are terrified of speaking to principles, rather than power, correctness and expediency, or simply indifferent. Unless there is a general movement amongst all South Africans to stand for sound economic, political and social principles then there will never be an alternative to the ANC or EFF rhetoric and behaviour. The current system will continue to roll along unless there is a credible alternative – and that must come from the citizens.
No Greta Thunberrgs in Bangladesh, as John Tamny says.
Black people are a pox? Not nice.
As always taking an argument to it’s full logical end results in obvious absurdity. So there we have it. It was so much fun getting there. The destruction in the wake of bad idology, just more trash for the next batch of fools.
Yes, accept that you are no longer oppressed, it must have happened in England some time after the Norman conquest and the extended period of (largely) national security that followed. If we played our cards right we could still be playing the oppressed card and seeking retribution from France (and Rome) what a mistake we made…
We should be seeking redress from the Vikings – Normans = Norsemen.
“In the First World, this might only mean a slightly lower standard of ITV comedies.” it’s about to get much more serious than that.
“…the coming of Woke serves as a rhetorical cloak that speaks to some of his followers’ most base instincts: the belief that The White Man is evil, and ought to be pushed back into the sea.”
Interesting. I have noticed a very similar phenomenon developing in Hong Kong, where the more vehement pro-China types are increasingly using the slogans of Wokery – “white privilege”, “white supremacy”, and various historical crimes and misdemeanours etc. – as a fig leaf for their race hate.
I am highly critical of the essentialism of ‘woke’ politics, imaginary pyramids of hierarchy and the oppression olympics. Yet, I find nearly every comment on Unherd in regards ‘woke’ politics to be unhinged and in many ways even more problematic than the excesses on the left. There is a point blank refusal to consider social issues from another perspective on this forum and comments speaking about whites being replaced or the need to save European civilisation from the barbarian hordes get far too many likes. One suspects that the culture wars are a convenient excuse for many on the right to be more open about their nationalism or in some cases fascism. The right has even redefined what fascism is so that it’s left-wing. They crave to decry others as the real racists and for the legacy of the violence of fascism to not be theirs. Fascism is being re-packaged for 2021.
So what’s wrong with ‘nationalism’ * or as we called it when I was young ‘ patriotism’. Why shouldn’t I be proud of what my ancestors and my country achieved (Shakespeare, Cranmer, Newton, the overthrow of Hitler, penicillin, Elizabeth Fry…..) and try to preserve their legacy, and follow in their traditions? Why should I think that female genital mutilation, forced marriage, indentured labour, public execution for heresy or homosexuality are superior or even equal to my national inheritance of tolerance and freedom? Why should I pretend to believe that European civilisation is less worthy of preservation in Europe than the hijab and the machete?
I don’t care what other ‘cultures’ do in the lands they control, if that’s what their denizens enjoy or approve (though I’m sorry for the people at the bottom of the heap in those places). I don’t want to proselytise or patronise. I just want to preserve some vestige of the the last 3000 years of a culture which I still admire and enjoy.
In my mind nationalism is distinct from patriotism. Patriotism is the celebration of your national sports teams, cultural holidays or pride in your history. All of these things are fine and I think it’s great that people are vested in their history and culture. I spend a great deal of my time reading about British history, in fact, I am pretty obsessed with it. However, nationalism is the belief that ones own culture and history is exceptional and superior to others in the world. This quickly becomes tricky territory as these sentiments are easily used for nefarious ends by jingoistic leaders and political groups. It’s important to remember that as human beings we have far more in common with each other between cultures than often meets the eye. Harmless enjoyment of our culture and history is great but not so much when it requires whitewashing past wrongs and blind obedience in the name of the nation.
Your crass remarks regarding machetes (subtext for black one suspects) and FGM are typical of racist sneers. British culture is not defined in opposition to these cruel practices and nor is the rest of the world characterised by barbarism. Our own histories have more than their fair share of torture and death.
You don’t think that British culture is ‘exceptional’?
“nationalism is the belief that ones own culture and history is exceptional and superior to others in the world”
Frankly British culture is demonstrably superior and exceptional and this is true over and over again.
“Racist sneers”. You’ve lost already.
Widespread misconception. Nationalism is keeping society’s affairs at national level – as opposed to supranational / international -, and not some sort of hierarchy between nations. A better term for it would be nationism.
I’m Hungarian, and it would never occur to me, not for a split second, that my nation is somehow superior to the Czechs, or the English, or the Italians etc. Nor inferior. Different, therefore exceptional, yes.
Vastly superior to certain others though, case in point Africa throughout history. European civilisation (with all its distinctly different various nations) is quantifiably superior to certain others.
You may call them “racist sneers” as you please, that won’t make them any less correct and factual. Facts are racist, no matter how indignant you feel about them.
Excellent explanation of nationalism, which the left conflate with Chauvinism for their own purposes. The entire world should not be forced to copy whatever the USA does.
I think it is simply that the ends of the spectrum are getting further apart. Those on the right ought not to allow society to move too far to the left without reacting. All rather predictable IMVHO.