In 1916, the so-called “War to end all wars” was throwing its tantrum across Europe. It was a war
that came about largely, as are all wars, due to vast disparities between
nations who were wealthy and those who were not. But, to an equally large extent, it was a massive
tangle of allegiances between the members of Empires that resulted in one of
the most terrifying eras of nationalism the world has ever seen. The rise of fascism in Spain, Italy, Germany, of militant expansionism in Japan, and the Cold War imperialist pissing contest between the Soviet Union and the US, have provided lessons in human nature for
all of us to reckon deeply with if we are to avoid repeating the same
mistakes.
And here we are in 2016.
The last two decades have seen the disastrous fallout of financial feudalism resulting in a handful of market crashes and trillions of dollars
handed out to the institutions that caused them. We have witnessed, in the EU, an
unprecedented collaboration between European nations that was conceived in
order to intentionally generate the kind of interdependence in trade, travel
and civil liberties whose absence makes war far more likely. (Said another way: the EU was conceived and
was purposefully established to create a more peaceful future for Europe; with
trade barriers gone, with more fluid travel between member states, and with
consistent rights and privileges across borders, many of the conflicts that
arise between those states are pre-empted before they begin.
And yet, this kind of Federalism has its downsides. Here in the US, the phenomenon which is being
called “coercive federalism,” or more colloquially "Big Government," where the federal government forces States to
comply with national mandates or risk losing funding, has grown in the last two
decades. (Ironically, the biggest
perpetrator of this philosophy in recent years has been staunch Republican George
W Bush with his No Child Left Behind Act and the trifecta of Patriot 1, 2 and the Military Commissions Act; stick that in your Big Government
pipe and smoke it, Republicans). In Oregon
last year, a group of half-cocked, half-educated ranchers decided to stage an
armed occupation of a Federally run wildlife refuge to protest federal control
of grazing land that was making things difficult for them. To be fair to the occupiers, I think there is certainly something to be said for local ranchers having a voice in the decision making process of federal grazing rights-- no taxation without representation, so to speak, however the issues underlying federal control were, I think, lost on them, like important protections of endangered species and the
broader perspectives that federalism affords. Add the fact that the main supporters who
turned out for this protest were largely white supremacist separatists and the whole righty revolution lost any validity for me, except ethnographically..
Across the Atlantic, in the wake of Great Britain’s narrow vote
to exit the European Union, we are seeing another kind of response to
federalism—or in the case of the EU, more of a confederalism (a treaty-based contract where member states receive rights, securities and privileges of the larger body in exchange for the supremacy of the Union's laws if they ever conflict with their own.) The issues
that are moving people to reject what the EU represents have lot to do with
fear: fear of the threat that ISIL poses to open borders; fear of scarcity when
migrants and refugees flood into your area, fleeing war-torn places like Syria;
but also the plain old xenophobic kind of fear that so often characterizes a
racial majority.
Underneath all of these fears and conflicts, lurks the
specter of identity. If we identify
ourselves too narrowly in our groups—if I see myself primarily as British,
rather than European, as an uneducated rancher rather than a member of an
interstate republic, as Christian rather than spiritual, as white rather than
human, then I will grow fearful and more likely violent when those smaller
identities become threatened. And even
worse, I am more likely to threaten with violence those whom I identify as
Other in order to maintain the righteousness of my identity.
The Brits who have pushed through the Brexit vote and Donald
Trump who is the mouthpiece for similar fears in the US—these are the exemplars
of a super-narrowed nationalist identity that is a dangerous precursor to
Fascism. Xenophobia, racism,
discriminatory reactions, all of these are the direct results when some
misbegotten notion of national pride becomes threatened by a broader identity.
If these are the things we have to lose by widening our
sense of who we are, a loss that doesn’t have to include some kind of blanching
homogenization of your own unique culture, is that really a loss you will
grieve?
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