Myths of race and nation
‘Nationalism teaches you to hate people you never met and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.’ So said the American comedian, author and actor, Doug Stanhope. Given that this dictum appears to state something obvious and irrefutable, we might expect it to be widely accepted and so for nationalism to get overwhelmingly rejected by the large-brained creatures that we are. Yet we know that this is not what happens. Almost wherever you look in the world, nationalism is alive and well, and in fact, with the rise of populism, an increasing number of people seem to be openly espousing it together with its brother-in-arms, racism.
Why? The simplest explanation is to be found in the word ‘insecurity’. The system of society that dominates the world – capitalism – by its very nature makes most of those who live under it feel insecure. It forces the overwhelming majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage or salary throughout most of our lives. And we never quite know whether the living provided by that wage or salary will continue, become precarious or be thrown into disarray by the uncontrollable market forces that govern the capitalist system. The instability this generates makes most of us easy prey to the idea, often spread or at least bolstered by governments (or by those waiting in the wings who would like to govern), that people who don’t appear ‘native’ to a particular country are somehow to blame for that insecurity. The idea prevails among many that it is those non-natives that cause it, that make things go wrong by taking ‘our’ jobs, consuming ‘our’ resources, and even committing most acts of criminality.
Of course such a notion is not just recent. It has been present throughout the history of capitalism and indeed, despite its apparent surge via ugly right-wing populism in recent times, it has actually been far worse in past times. In the recent news has been the outcry over the alleged blatant anti-semitism exhibited by Nigel Farage in his youth, and all Jewish people will know that in those years such anti-semitism was widespread and almost ‘normal’. This writer has a clear memory of such incidents in his own school years, for example an occasion when in front of the whole of the class one pupil turned to someone and loudly addressed him as a ‘big fat yid’. No one batted an eyelid then. Now they certainly would. In fact such an incident would be far less likely to happen at all today or, if it did, would cause significant consternation and lead to consequences for the person responsible.
Of course, even worse humiliation and discrimination was suffered by people of colour in those years. Older generations sometimes talk about the open, unabated, taken-for-granted racism they suffered. In a recent BBC Profile programme, for example, about the black screen and stage actor David Harewood, we heard of him being chased through the streets by skinheads and bricks being thrown through the family’s windows. Such open racism is clearly far less virulent today. And even if the clock may seem to be turning backwards in certain ways and in certain countries, the fact is that not long ago the US had a black president, it currently has a Moslem mayor in its major city, and in recent years in the UK too, many major political figures have ethnic minority backgrounds, including the current leader of the Conservative Party. All this would have seemed unimaginable just 40-50 years ago.
Further evidence of this increased acceptance of ‘others’ and diminution of racism is to be found in the UK’s most popular sport, football. People from a great diversity of backgrounds play together on the pitch and are often idolized by supporters, themselves often of diverse origins and skin shades, who mingle together in the stands. Again this is something new compared to previous years when teams had few foreign or black players and football fans from ethnic minorities even avoided going to matches for fear of abuse or attack. One incident among others that this writer remembers from the 1980s (so a relatively short time ago) was being in the crowd at a match between Manchester United and Norwich City and hearing the one black player on the pitch, Ruel Fox, repeatedly having the word ‘coonie’ shouted at him – something that no one seemed to find unusual. One could almost rule out such a scenario today.
Overall, therefore, despite the fact that those with racist notions and tendencies may feel emboldened by phenomena such as the Brexit vote, the rise of Reform UK, the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence in Europe of right-wing populist parties and governments, it remains very much the exception rather than the norm for racism and nationalism to be expressed crudely and publicly. Such expression tends to exist rather in the echo chambers of social media. That is not of course to say that the divide and rule weapons of nationalism and racism are likely to be put aside by those governing – or aiming to govern – a system that is by its very nature riven with insecurity and instability. It serves the purpose of distracting attention from the real reason for that insecurity and instability, which is the division of society into two classes – on the one hand the minority who own most of the wealth (the capitalist class) and on the other the overwhelming majority who own little and can only survive by selling their energies for a wage or salary (the working class). Divide and rule will only be transcended when the members of the majority class decide to act collectively and democratically to win the political power which is needed to shift society from production for the profit of the few to production for the needs of all. Then we will be free of the divisions of ‘race’ and of ‘nation’ that afflict humans across the planet. Then we will be able to focus on what unites rather than divides us.
HKM