Collaborators
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Noah Millman has an answer to the part of this post where I talk about collaborators:
I’m pretty sure he’s wrong, because that would make Konrad Adenauer a traitor.
As a general rule, I think my red line dividing patriots from traitors holds up quite well, and I would maintain as part of the general rule that it really doesn’t matter why the invader is there. One might be able to find rare occasions when the latter part of this rule doesn’t apply, but the rarity of it should tell us something. Collaborating with an invader is as clear an example of betrayal of one’s country as I can imagine, because whatever objections one may have to the regime or constitution prevailing in one’s country part of any patriotic duty is to oppose foreign invasion. The people who conspired with a foreign prince in 1688 to overthrow their king were traitors on every level; the people who resisted them were the opposite. We applaud the former because we largely share their politics, or at least we share more of their politics than we do those of James II, and so most of us approve of past treasonous acts when they are committed for the “right” reasons.
Venizelos turned against his king and plunged his country into an unnecessary war with the backing of foreign powers to advance a nationalist territorial agenda. I don’t see how anyone could fairly call him a patriot. He welcomed foreign troops into his country to force the abdication and exile of the legitimate head of state in a blatant power play to pursue his own agenda and the wartime goals of foreign empires. He was certainly a nationalist and a political liberal, who believed he was justified in his betrayals on the grounds of possibly regaining historically Greek territories and resisting the decisions of the monarch, but everything he did from 1916-1919 was nothing but an extended betrayal of his country facilitated by foreign backing. It requires the embrace of an ideology or at the very least a religious or confessional politics to make such betrayals seem like virtuous and noble acts.
I think it is telling that Noah has to resort to the fairly atypical example of post-WWII West Germany to make a counter-argument. It is much more common for collaborationist regimes to be like that of Quisling, Horthy and Rallis in the basic alignment of a relatively small clique of collaborationist politicians and officers with the occupier against a large part of the population, which is then subjected to reprisals and punishments by the occupying forces working in tandem with collaborationist security forces. Noah would presumably not say the same thing about Walter Ulbricht, but then that might be because Ulbricht is a far more typical example of someone collaborating with an invader (in this case because of ideological affinity) than Adenauer could have ever been. Part of this does depend on the specific circumstances of the Allied invasion of Germany and the postwar settlement, but this would require us to acknowledge the rather exceptional nature of this settlement that distinguishes it significantly from just about every other occupation regime, which I think weakens the force of Noah’s reply considerably.
I suspect that if we worked our way through all the relevant cases in the modern era from the French creation of satellite revolutionary regimes in the 1790s to today, the examples of collaborators who might still qualify as patriots would be exceedingly few and the exceptional nature of their cases would confirm the general rule. Quisling has entered our language as a shorthand to describe collaborators; Adenaueur’s career was one of only a few of its kind, and we do not usually come across collaborators who prompt us to say, “Oh, so-and-so is a real adenauer.”
Filed under: politics
I would think the most obvious counter-example to your definition of traitor would be the American Revolution, in which British subjects rebelled against the Crown and fought a bloody war against their own countrymen. They were of course labelled traitors to the Crown, and condemned to death. The only reason the punishment wasn’t carried out is that they won. But we don’t think of them as traitors today. Nor, I think, do the British. Why? It perhaps has something to do with the other principle you brought up earlier, which is that patriotism is local. The American colonists felt less and less patriotic about their distant rulers back in England, and more and more loyal to their own local community, state, and new world interests.
Notions of loyalty become deeply strained whenver empire appears. Was Mary Queen of Scotts a traitor to the British Crown, or was she a patriotic Scot with religious fidelity to her Catholic faith? By your standards of local patriotism, one can’t help but argue the latter, despite her intrigues. Was she a traitor to Scotland to have “collaborated” with her English invaders, or a traitor to have turned against the English Crown? Patriotism turns out to be very complicated in actual practice, especially in populations with overlapping ethnic, political, and religious boundaries.
Further, were those in the German underground traitors to their country, or merely traitors to the Nazi regime. If they never were a part of the Nazi regime, how can they be traitors to it? When one considers the ruling party of one’s own country to be illegitimate, what is the patriot’s true loyalty? To the regime, or the country the regime has seized contril of and is driving to ruin?
Separatist and anti-colonial wars have an entirely different character about them, which makes things more difficult. At first, it might seem tempting to conclude that the Loyalists represented a collaborationist faction working with the imperial government, and this is certainly how our historiography and popular attitudes have treated them, but their devotion to their places was no less than the other faction’s devotion. It is important to distinguish between wars of this kind, which involve civil war among colonists, and foreign invasions.
In the war for independence, those whom we call the patriots were legally traitors to a regime they had hitherto accepted. However, there is a significant difference between separatist and secessionist wars that seek to create a new polity and regime, even to the point of enlisting foreign aid, and conspiring with foreign powers to invade one’s own country and overthrow the government entirely.
It’s interesting to me that, in order to maintain a generally positive meaning for “patriotism,” “treachery,” a word which has almost exclusively negative connotations, needs to also be given some positivity.
Apropos of Venizelos, Nikos Gatkos wrote:
Τα ψεÏτικα τα λόγια τα μεγάλα
μου τα ‘πες με το Ï€Ïώτο σου το γάλα
Κιι όταν εγώ στη μοίÏα μου μιλοÏσα
είχες ντυθεί τα αÏχαία σου τα λοÏσα
και στο παζάÏι με πήÏες γÏφτισα μαιμοÏ
Ελλάδα Ελλάδα μάνα του καημοÏ
Τα ψεÏτικα τα λόγια τα μεγάλα
μου τα ‘πες με το Ï€Ïώτο σου το γάλα
Μα Ï„ÏŽÏα ποθ η φωτιά φουντώνει πάλι
ÎµÏƒÏ ÎºÎ¿Î¹Ï„Î¬Ï‚ τα αÏχαία σου τα κάλλη
και στις αÏενες του κόσμου μάνα μου Ελλάς
το ίδιοψ’εμα πάντα κουβαλάς
Along with your first milk
you told me those great and lying words;
But when I was talking to my destiny
you had put on all your ancient gear,
and you took me to the bazaar like a gypsy
woman does a monkey,
Along with your first milk
you told me those great and lying words;
But now that the fire has flamed up again
you just look at your ancient beauties
and, my Mother Greece, you told the same old
lie round the arenas of the world
Daniel -
I’m curious how you would apply this analysis (e.g. Venizelos) to Savonarola and his (attempted?) use of Charles VIII as a tool for purging/redemption of Florence.
I laughed out loud at this statement from your previous post.
“My final point would be that it seems to me that all patriotism, properly speaking, is local or at most regional. One of the frauds of nationalism is the idea that one can feel real loyalty and attachment to a part of a nation-state that is hundreds or even thousands of miles away.”
Empires have generated deep and long lasting patriotic feeling thoughout history. The feeling of Romanitas lasted through and beyond the period of the fall of Rome. The British Empire is gone but the UK Parlement just granted the undisputed right of return to all retired Gurkha soldiers. You can claim that patriotism of empire is a delusional thing, but it is a thing many have willingly died for. A delusion that endures for centuries and builds much. may just not be a delusion at all.
The question of collaboration with occupiers is fascinating. It seems to me that once your government has capitulated you are bound to obey the lawful orders of the occupier. Thus Petain was the lawful representative of the French. This brings up a conundrum. At what point was he an illegitimate leader? At what point could one join the resistance in good conscience? For many Frenchmen, even Anti-semitic ones, it was at that point when the German occupation began rounding up Jewish war veterans. So I would say that the right of resistance begins when the occupier behaves dishonorably and or tries to erase or corrupt the national character. At that point the occupier looses his right of conquest and should understand that resistance is to be expected and is not of a specifically criminal nature.
In the French case, the early resistance was organized by the Communists who had been allied to the Germans and so were even more evil than the Germans. I stand with Waugh in the belief that the alliance with Moscow tainted the allied cause. If the case were revised so that our country were invaded and the resistance was composed of leftists I would not join the resistance. Leftists being the enemy of all humanity and of God while the invader might not be.
Adenauer ’s case was different. He unlike Willy Brant stayed in place in German and only “collaborated” with us, when the Third Reich totally ceased to exist.
First of all, empires aren’t nation-states. Loyalty to empire was very often focused on dynastic loyalty or loyalty to a monarch. Rome was an empire of cities, and Romanitas was mediated through local civic obligations. It is questionable whether fidelity to an empire is the same thing as patriotism. A large nation-state is a perfect example of something that cannot generate patriotic loyalty.
Regarding the Gurkhas, there’s no doubt that there is a long and impressive military tradition there and there are bonds created by the legacy of empire, but patriotism for Gurkhas would be offering military service for Nepal, not Britain. The reality is that a citizen of a large nation-state does not feel real loyalty to the parts of his nation-state to which he has no direct connection, but instead feels loyal to the nation-state because it includes his own land.
“But patriotism for Gurkhas would be offering military service for Nepal, not Britain.” Daniel, do the Gurkhas know this? Have you polled them?
“The reality is that a citizen of a large nation-state does not feel real loyalty to the parts of his nation-state to which he has no direct connection, but instead feels loyal to the nation-state because it includes his own land.” So I simply cannot feel “real” patriotic loyalty to people in Arizona? OK, If you say so, but I could have sworn that I do. And why did all those Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders die on behalf of Great Britain a few decades ago?
I think the discussion would profit from a definition of patriotism, and an explanation of how it differs from other attitudes or virtues, such as loyalty or camaraderie.
“And why did all those Canadians, Australians, and New Zealanders die on behalf of Great Britain a few decades ago?”
I cannot think of a worse example for your argument. There may be something admirable and even virtuous in being willing to fight to defend the interests of the Mother Country, to which those states retained close political connections, but I genuinely fail to see what Australians fighting Afrikaners or dying at Gallipoli has to do with Australian patriotism. ANZAC Day, which was not that long ago this year, is a commemoration of their war dead, but it is also a reminder that they fought on behalf of an empire at the expense of their own countries and countrymen. I cannot think of a better example to cement my point about the anti-patriotic nature of empires and large states.
Patriotism is not simply a feeling, or a willingness to die for just any cause, but has some direct connection to serving and defending one’s own country. Britain is not the Gurkhas’ own country. This makes their service to Britain all the more remarkable, because it is exceptional and very different from the service that patriotic duty requires. No doubt Gurkhas believe they have other obligations that make sense of their military service to Britain, and I am not dismissing those obligations as unimportant, but I would insist that they are not the product of patriotic loyalties.
Also, one does not feel patriotic loyalty to other people at the other end of a nation-state, but at most to people in one’s own land.
But if one thinks that one’s land extends all the way to the other end of a nation-state, then does that person have patriotic loyalty to the people there?
It seems then what Dr. Larison is doing is pointing out the good the virtue aims at, and how it should be understood as opposed to counterfeit goods and habits of character. A Canadian may believe that one has patriotic loyalty to the Mother Country, but the Canadian is wrong in his understanding of his loyalty, even if he acts consistently with his understanding of the virtue.
This is precisely where we differ. Patriotism is in fact a feeling, and perhaps a silly one when applied to non-reciprocal arrangements. But a feeling of deep patriotism based on shared culture, language historical lineage has little to do with boundaries. The British Empire was a very real thing and had a culture of reciprocal duties and privileges. It inspired intense pride and feelings of affiliation. Like all empires, it came to an end. It was not a congress of angels and some people undoubtedly got the short end of the stick. Still, while it lasted, and people wove their identities into it, and they were not fools to do so.
The Canadians who died in the mud of France felt a patriotic attachment to the Empire. Now you can be against empires, and you can therefore describe patriotism for one’s empire as a kind of false consciousness, but you cannot deny that such patriotic feelings existed and were very real motivators in history.
Feelings of affinity between groups can take curious turns. During the Falklands War the staff in the office I worked in split into two acrimonious factions, the Hispanics siding with Argentina and the rest of us supporting the UK. The obvious linguistic and ethnic tacit identities bubbling up under the provocation of the the conflict.
I mention this because I think you believe that one can be patriotic towards only one place at a time. But it seems to me that patriotism is largely a matter of how one defines oneself. I am a patriot of my country but also to my religion, my race, The West, etc. And in speaking of collaboration I think this brings about the case of the tragedy of two sides, each earning the title of patriot , and each fated to fight the other.
Attachment to empire is not false consciousness, but it isn’t patriotism. I would like to think this is not a radical or unusual claim to make. “[A] feeling of deep patriotism based on shared culture, language historical lineage has little to do with boundaries.” You have just described nationalism and decided to call it patriotism. This is why we keep running into problems. As Lukacs said in Democracy and Populism: “Patriotism is the love of a particular land, with its particular traditions; nationalism is the love of something less than tangible, of the myth of a “people,” justifying many things, a political and ideological substitute for religion.”
You cannot be a patriot of religion or race. To apply the word to those things doesn’t mean anything.
The Falklands example you mention is a perfect example of identitarian responses based on language. Religious, ethnic and linguistic identity are all powerful, and a person can feel obliged to support others who share these identities, but none of this is patriotic. Indeed, it is possible for these identities to undermine patriotic attachment and cause excessive attachment to a side in a foreign conflict. To the extent that these attachments are more abstract, I continue to regard them as something different from and worse than patriotism.
“And in speaking of collaboration I think this brings about the case of the tragedy of two sides, each earning the title of patriot , and each fated to fight the other.”
But both sides don’t earn the title, and only one deserves it. Both sides may claim the title, but the collaborators who claim it are wrong. Alex Massie had an interesting idea that both Petain and De Gaulle were patriots, but on different timetables. That’s a generous way of saying that the collaborators thought they were doing the best they could under the circumstances, but even if we want to say that collaborators are patriots in some way I think it is perfectly fair to say that they are bad patriots.
I see. It strikes me that the appellation “patriot” comes down to favored attachments versus less favored attachments. And that this has to do with localism. Localism has its charm and I actually feel quite kindly toward its manifestations, but a definition of patriotism that holds that I may be a patriot of ruratainia but I cannot be a patriot of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is just an exercise in semantics.
I was not aware that Massey held that Petain and De Gaulle were both patriots, but I would agree, although perhaps not for his reasons. Petain becomes culpable to the degree that he came to collaborate with German acts of despoliation of France and her people. I am speaking of forced labor and deportations to the death camps.
Here is where I think we agree. Nationalism can manifest itself in a blind adherence to an amoral governmental framework. I would say that the government in Washington is such a cold soulless framework. I would go further and say that present day Conservatives have largely been seduced by this framework and are actively collaborating in the deconstruction of the society they think they are defending.
Was it Tallyrand that said “Treason is largely a matter of Dates.” Consider some of my remote ancestors. They were Celts with their own culture and all the trappings. The Romans conquered them and gradually they became as Roman as the Romans. Ultimately despite their spirited resistance, they fell under the rule of Germans and duly adopted German norms of conduct and culture. At what point were they traitors and to what? And given the history of Europe, aren’t we all descendants of traitors?
“a definition of patriotism that holds that I may be a patriot of ruratainia but I cannot be a patriot of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is just an exercise in semantics.”
Well, no, it’s a definition that pays attention to the patria in patriotism, which is quite different from a game of semantics. A subject of that empire might be a patriot of Tyrol or, more broadly, Austria or Hungary, but I think I am on safe ground to say that no one is a patriot of Cisleithania or Transleithania, much less of an empire spanning from Ruthenia to northern Italy. All of this becomes clear if we distinguish between regime, polity and country. When we start mixing up these things, the different obligations owed to them get confused.
Or, like a certain unemployed artist from Austria, one might decide that one is a German and not an Austrian at all, and run off to joint the Bavarian Army. My point is that people define their own patriotic affiliations without reference to your definitions. Your definitions make perfect sense. I just don’t see that they very useful in describing actual behavior. We are living in an era where people are scattered to the winds as atomized individuals and these definitions of patria, polity and country may become more tenuous still.
I just don’t see that they very useful in describing actual behavior. We are living in an era where people are scattered to the winds as atomized individuals and these definitions of patria, polity and country may become more tenuous still.
Even if they are tenuous, it doesn’t mean their irrelevant, especially if the virtues and their associated goods supply the principles for rightly-ordered living.
OK. So these particular definitions are valid as terms describing how things ought to be.
Sure. Without an account of the goods to which we should aim, and how they relate to one another, we would be unable to criticize a devotion or loyalty as being excessive or disordered–any such attitude or habit would always be justified in itself.
I have a difficult time accepting the designation of the men who overthrew James II as “traitors on every level.” As a king who himself conspired with a foreign power (Louis’ France) and by all appearances was dedicated to overturning the religious establishment of England and Scotland in contravention of the law, he could not, absent a theory of monarchical absolutism that was not operational in England, lay claim to the perfect loyalty of his subjects. He was a would-be tyrant, a fully-realized incompetent, and under the informal constitution of England in 1688, whatever its rights and wrongs, he was well out of line, and fortunate that he escaped with his head. To say that the English and Scots should have remained loyal to him is to put loyalty to the regime – actually just the part of the regime residing in James’s person – over the customs, religion, and well-being of the country. It is anti-patriotic.
How about “virtually every level”? Maybe there’s a level I didn’t taken into consideration. Patriots don’t get to collaborate with a foreign invader of their country to topple their legitimate government. “Would-be tyrant” doesn’t cut it as a justification. If you’re going to launch a coup, the tyrant had better be a lot more than “would-be.”
Speaking of Gurkhas and their devotion to Britain:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/clivedavis/3584516/the-case-against-the-gurkhas.thtml
The Gurkhas are indeed mercenary soldiers. But bear in mind that they got the right to immigrate due to the efforts of modern day Brits with a sentimental attachment to them. Further evidence of the emotional rather than rational nature of such attachments.
Gurkhas also serve(ed) both the Indian and the Sultan of Bruni. I wonder if this sentimental attachment is active in these places?