The problem is the nation-state

Obviously people are shocked, and particularly shocked at the rejection of normal sensible politics by the rubes who have elected an oaf, a criminal and a rapist to the White House, again. But the trouble is that this kind of thing keeps happening, or nearly happening, and not just in the United States. And it turns out that the policies pursued by the MAGA extremists, by Le Pen, Meloni or Farage, aren’t really all that different from the ones followed by the normal sensible people, albeit that the rhetoric from the sensibles is less crude and laced with sweeteners about “compassion”.

The underlying problem is nationalism and the organization of the world into nation states, a form of organization that fosters and promotes nationalist sentiment and attachment and downplays transnational concern and solidarity, which is “all very well” but shouldn’t come “at our expense”. This has been the problem since well before 1914, but was particularly in evidence then as the greatest movement of international solidarity that had ever been built largely collapsed in favour of supporting “our boys” against theirs. It was there in the 1930s, not only in the rise of particularly agressive nationalisms but in the failure of normal sensible states to come to the assistance of those threatened by it, such as Jews fleeing across borders. All very well, but not at our expense. And it is, rather obviously, in evidence now as countries struggle with people moving and with climate change. All very well, but not at our expense.

It took the catastrophe of global war and genocide to get people to step back a little from national selfishness and to build the rather feeble and compromised global and transnational institutions that we have such as the United Nations, the Refugee Convention and the European Union. And now those are very much under threat from nationalism, and from the fear that accepting constraints on the pursuit of national self-interest might cost “us” something. Hence Brexit. Hence Trump. But also, sadly, hence a large chunk of the self-described liberals and the social democratic left.

Social democrats are nationalists too. They promote solidarity, sure, but they promote it primarily among co-citizens. They want to reduce inequality and they want to use the state to do that, but the inequality is among fellow-citizens and the state is a national state. So they drape themselves in national flags and enunciate slogans like “British jobs for British workers” in an effort to ingratiate themselves with “the British people”. After all, they want to get elected and to get elected you have to pander to, well, the electorate. Sure, theirs is a new, shiny, multiracial and multiethnic conception of the nation and there’s a lot of work goes into promoting inclusive patriotism. But the patriotism is inclusive only of the people with the right passport and not of the others who fall on the wrong side of racialized nationality laws that were actually designed to keep people of the wrong origin out. Minorities who are admitted to the nation know full well that such admission might be reversed one day. Those of immigrant origin get berated for their “failure to integrate” for the benefit of a nativist audience who are just never going to be satisfied that those people over there who don’t look like us, who eat funny food and who worship the wrong religion can ever be part of “us”. So it goes, and toleration and inclusion are all very well, but shouldnt be at our expense.

Donald Trump campaigns on a slogan of mass deportation and is met by wild enthusiasm from the MAGA faithful. The British government, the Labour one, also talks of increased deportations of people who “aren’t entitled to be here” and the need to “secure our borders” and blames unauthorized migration on “criminal gangs” (“bad people” in Trump-speak). The German government, faced with nativist electoral competition, has moved from Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” to sending people back to Afghanistan and Syria. The European Union itself has been subverted by the exclusionary impulse. And all these governments talk about sending the unwanted somewhere else and pay dictators in nearby countries to stop them coming, even if everyone knows that means torture, rape and murder in practice. And for those who get past the gatekeeper states, there’s the prospect of drowning in the sea or heat-death in the desert. But “we” don’t see that, and human rights are all very well, but not at our expense.

Well, what is to be done, you say? And to be honest, I’m not full of clever solutions right now. The organization of the world, after all, promotes national identification which inevitably has an ethnocultural flaour even when we pretend otherwise and all the incentives to politicians are to pander in ways that reinforce this. After all, they want to get elected, and (sotto voce to the uncomfortable faithful at the back), the other guys would be far worse than us. So maybe we’re stuck with mass death outside our gated nations to be succeeded by mass death for all as we don’t want climate co-operation at our expense. But in the meantime, we can defend the international institutions we have and we can resist migration cruelty and climate suicide in the familiar ways of solidarity with victims, protest, civil disobedience etc. The odds seem against us now, the arc of history may not bend towards justice, but what else can we do?