This past week a British member of Parliament suggested the United Kingdom would go to war with Spain if necessary to maintain Gibraltar as part of the Commonwealth.  Our regular writer, Terry Field, a British citizen sojourning in Florida for the winter, has recoiled in horror and pessimism to this statement.  Thus he has written the following item, a pessimistic one, in which he decries the growing tide of nationalism as the Post-World War II order of western alliances appears to be breaking down. This is a piece requiring our reflection. - Glenn N. Holliman

Nationalism is an infection of the Soul 

by Terry Field

In these current times, there is a change in the air.

In the West, since 1945, the experience of American peace, and Soviet eastern hegemony, with mutually interlocking alliances that protected the nations in bondage on both sides of the political divide from expressing themselves, one could be forgiven for thinking that stability, continuity, quietness surrounded by unusable military power (except in remote peripheries where proxy wars raged) prefigured a future where it was possible to reduce the awareness of, and potency of distinct national difference.

Only in America and Russia, the centres of control for these new unchanging times, was there a little more awareness of the pride of nationhood. In all other states, that pride was stained with failure, collapse, murder, horror. Across the globe, people looked to a future of quiet, family and individual-centred lives; less and less military service – volunteer armies became the norm – nobody heard any more the sound of marching regiments, the stir to the heart from martial music. No speeches to enhance forlorn hopes of glory and of conquest. Every minority became our obsession.

'The impulse to clump together with other citizens of the nation state is seductive - it allows one to avoid rational complex thinking.' - TF

All became, by reference to the past two centuries, relatively quiet. Quiet is the word that characterized our lives until recently.

The computers talk to each other over the globe. We request goods. They arrive. We enjoy those goods, and see only our pleasure; all the while, the dispossessed who used to work as labour in factories, all now closed, live at the margins; eat poorly; weep inside for the past; die conveniently young. Often assisted by opiates.

From recent experience, as well as from the 20^th century in Europe, it is fairly obvious that in a secular society morality is plastic and deforms at will. Our love of companionship used to be based on all the people in our villages, our small towns, only rarely in big city neighborhoods. All were welcome to join the celebration of togetherness.

It is striking, for example, how rapidly populations switch from liberal democracy to socialism. When that fails, as it has in most places in Europe (when it is financed by irresponsible debt by corrupted politicians, be it in Britain, France, Italy, Spain, the list is long), socialism morphs to national socialism. That is in rapid progress in Britain, is clearly possible now in France, and has established itself in other North Sea countries recently, deforming their prior-constructed open societies.

Strangely, the weak, southern states bordering the Mediterranean have not declined to this condition; a possible reason may be that these areas are less confident in the concept of the nation state. Italy was never a cohesive nation, and Mussolini leaves a recollection of disaster, whilst Spain has the association of Franco and that schism in society whenever the nation state is closely regarded.

The post war European political space was dominated by togetherness, coddled in a nest built by bothRussia and the United states. Both nest-builders are now ripping the twigs and moss away now.

The response of Europeans to economic stress, global competitiveness that they can, in general, not survive well in, and pressure from a massive Muslim violent competition to the south, together with a vibrant Russian autocracy in the east, has generated national awareness in the northern states not seen since the 1930s. Except, possibly, for Germany. In Germany, they still recall the collapse and the consequences after the most bass-relief nationalism ever constructed.

But time passes; I do not consider German revanchist nationalism as improbable.

The post-war order of alliances linked to the super-powers is coming to an end. This leaves vacuum.

I have seen nothing to suggest that, should nationalism rise across the globe, to include the United States, that it would not include aggressive fascism. Fascism is simply the weak binding together to become unbreakably strong. The United States celebrates a benign version of this – in its parliamentary halls, there is a bundle of fasces ensconced either side of the speaker’s chair in the lower house. E Pluribus Unum is the Latin representation of a fascistic ideal. Out of many  (weak) one (strong).

It is not at all inevitable that the unity of the many otherwise weak reeds results in vicious fascism in the mould of 1920s and 1930s Europe. The actions and high-mindedness of the United States since 1914 attests to this; but the reason this great power has behaved so kindly and well in accommodating and respecting small states, and in promoting human rights may in part – even in large part – be because everything was acting to reinforce comfort, prosperity and ease in that continent.

That tide turned some decades ago, and the rise of the internet has commoditised news, and degraded quality and truthfulness of information, as well as having made finding truth and honest reporting harder to achieve.

This degraded environment of wise thinking is a return to the days of press supporting irrational and violent nationalism.

In the mind of the citizen, the impulse to clump together with other citizens of the nation state is seductive - it allows one to avoid rational complex thinking, to avoid economically rational decision making that can be so tiresome, to disregard the perils minorities find themselves exposed to.

It also allows one to live for today, and to hell with tomorrow.

More sinister is the camouflage that nationalistic fever offers to those who would do violence to people, ideas, property, fragile human relationships, in order to coral the minds of the stupid to support their corrupted desires.

Europe, under the Divine Right of Kings, with the imprimatur of the Universal Church, allowed for unending super-violence against groups of citizens, against cities, indeed against whole populations to have no moral challenge. Ultimately, this institutionalized freedom to kill with impunity led to the horror of the Fist World War.

The ultimate face of nationalism combined with machined steel and explosives came in the Kaiser's definition of conflict: ‘We do not kill people – we simply destroy the enemy’.

After him, when the German state had failed to overcome the massive strength of Soviet armies, the defeated Fuhrer combined Darwin – his version – with nationalism, in the nihilistic acceptance that the German State (and the people within it) could be destroyed utterly by the greater competitor power.

When Goebbels, late in that war, rallied the faithful, by now almost starving, with horrors visited on them from the air daily, and asked ‘do you want total war?’, the screamed their assent.

These things are the end product of nationalism. It is the ultimate evil.

The tribe together – that must find enemies outside, and is happy to suffer together. With nationalism, suffering becomes a proof of participation; it can be seen as desirable. Dissociated maleness twisted to self-destruction by the new world of massive power, the inconsequential individual, the leader. All this lives within nationalism.

I note Farage (UK Independence Party leader) was kind to the idea of the leader; was kind to the leadership of Putin. He is on record as sneering against representative democracy.

Trump is recorded as being admiring of the strong leader.  For these people it is an end in itself.

I further note that the Tory Party in England is less concerned with the economic result of Brexit- which clearly will be unfavorable, and much more concerned with shoring up the national pride and national awareness.

This week, a failed previous Tory Party leader, one Michael Howard, stated that Britain would make war on Spain to ‘protect’ Gibraltar.

We have thus got to the point where the post war togetherness in Europe is replaced with the contemplation of war. That the British State is poor, hemmed in by problems, almost non-functional militarily, actually adds to the imperative to jingoistic bluster.

In the wider world, the Trump new American nationalism suggests a final treatment of the North Korean ‘problem’, with senior people talking about final defeat of Korea, whilst contemplating the attack by North Korea on the South. Seoul is close to the border. It could be destroyed before the American ally turned the tide of attack.

No matter.

Nationalism and all that goes with it is back again.

The press in the USA are reduced, as would be expected where nationalistic tribal togetherness reduces tolerance for diverse discussion and subsequent cohesion by consent.

All this was seen long ago.

Aristotle saw mass democracy as inevitably falling to autocracy, as corrupted politicians buy the votes of the millions and impoverish the state. The Browns of this world; the Hollandes of this world.

It happened in Europe in the 1930s.

It has happened again.

Will the system finally collapse to violent nationalistic autocratic poverty? It appears to be really quite probable now.

Trump, Farage, Howard, Johnson, May, Le Pen, Putin, all tend to this outcome.

How can it now be stopped?

I have no idea.

The structure of the liberal democratic order born of war has crumbled and is falling to pieces before our eyes.

At root, we are tribal, aggressive, tend to mass murder when possible, and have decided not to protect our climate, nor our vital world that sustains us.

We are indifferent to what we do to creatures under our care; we care not at all about the mass destruction of habitats and their occupants.

Why?

In every case, our nationalistic, tribal, dissociated cushion anesthetizes our care.  Morality is plastic.

Can anyone see a way out of the horror that is our increasingly probable future? - Terrance Field

Comments:

Hi there Glenn

As far as Terry’s concerned, sounds like we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, and I believe this may be true especially after all the posturing and Trump upping the ante in Syria after those emotive pix of chemical warfare. Even stupid Australia sent a ‘show of force’, whatever that means. I really do despair. An Aussie expert on this matter has gone against popular opinion and said that for all Assad’s ‘imperfections’, we would be much better to support the regime. As things are, we are supporting - who? I’m not really sure. And who are we fighting? Er, I’m not really sure.

Maybe nationalisation is to blame for many of our current woes, but nationalising doesn’t have to mean fascism and atrocity. It can simply mean, let’s revert to having a bit of say in the running of our own country, and pull back on this recent worship of globalisation. I know we have to think big when it comes to trade, but I hate the way we have to kowtow to China, no matter how China abuses human rights and supports others who do the same, because we need China for our trade deals. Not sure what the answer is to this if I had to be a pragmatic leader. It represents a moral stance up against an economic one, and there are no prizes for guessing which always has to win.

And the major world leaders, including my own, have withdrawn from any ideas of putting the planet first. So, I think Terry is right. Sooner or later, we are going to hell in a handbasket.

Happy times!!

Steph Mc