A Few Thoughts on Patriotism and Localism
Posted on July 5th, 2009
by John Schwenkler in patriotism |
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I’ve so far stayed out of the recent discussions of localism, but this post of Patrick Deneen’s gets at something that bears emphasizing on this Independence Day weekend:
To say the least, it’s peculiar to insinuate that localism was somehow the animating spirit behind the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. By that argument, fierce militaristic expansionist nationalism would have to be seen as a form of localism. True, it may have fed off of some localist anxieties in the midst of rising nationalism and imperialism, but that’s a very different argument – an argument that may end up bolstering the case for localism more than undermining it. We need a suppler, more tentative, and nuanced discussion than a heavy-handed slap charging localists with inherent racism.
This is a distinction that I wrote about at length last spring, when I made the point that it’s a mistake to regard healthy patriotic affection as a unitary sentiment; that is to say, a patriot’s loyalties should always be to a number of distinct overlapping and non-overlapping groups, communities, and institutions, and he will never take lightly the possibility of violating some of those loyalties for the sake of some others. It is, as I put it, in the mindset of an individual who recognizes himself as embodying “a range of identities”, and so does his best “to negotiate between the specific demands—both genuine and merely apparent—that each of them tries to make” on him, that the sorts of nationalistic and imperialistic temptations which Deneen rightly distinguishes from authentic localism can best be resisted. On this understanding, then, it is precisely an authentic localism that provides a bulwark against the dangerously prejudicial attitudes that localists have wrongly been charged with encouraging.
By a similar token, I think this distinction can also help us to mark off the difference between a healthy and natural love of place and people and what Caleb Stegall has rightly criticized as the temptation to “over-articulation” of localist sentiment. (“Movement localism” might be another term we could use here.) For it is precisely the person whose loyalties are shared out in the proper ways who is most able to resist the kind of all-encompassing obsession that twists devotion into ideology, and so undermines the properly sentimental roots of any particularistic attachment. So twisted, localist attachment becomes like a tradition that has been turned into a traditionalism: instead of an organic starting point from which one proceeds to heal defects and work through internal tensions as they arise, it becomes the place where all discussion ends, a mindset in which outsiders are demonized and faults never brought to consciousness. It is this kind of localism that gives us faux-patriotic slogans like “My country, right or wrong”, and that turns mere preference for the local and familiar into hatred for outsiders, as well as the absurd conviction that that which is local and familiar is guaranteed to be the best. It cannot be disputed that this is the path to ruin, but it is foolish to think that it is a path that the localist seeks.
Filed under: patriotism
So then the question becomes a practical one, right? Will decentralization yield shared loyalties to “overlapping or non-overlapping groups, communities, or institutions,” or will it narrow our horizons to such an extent that parochial close-mindedness becomes the order of the day? It’s all well and good to speak of “localism, rightly understood” (or something to that effect), but the historical record of decentralization is pretty ambiguous.
I suppose I don’t think that parochial closed-mindedness is universally a bad thing; it all depends on its specific character. But yes, the question is a practical one, as almost ever.
Can you elaborate? (Though by the way, I didn’t really mean this post to be on the question of political decentralization, but rather just about the virtues of a decentralized patriotism.)
I suppose I’m thinking of the American South, which is home to both a robust local culture and a troubled history (to put it mildly) of race relations. Can you separate the two? I suspect that a fundamentally inward-looking polity is more prone to narrow-minded parochialism and more likely to develop unique cultural traditions.
The fear of localism expressed in some quarters may have something to do with memories of how the Nazis former their movement in part by subsuming the various German volkisch parties. In some minds a close attachment to a place or local culture or ethnicity carries with it the danger of manipulation toward unrestrained ends. Personally, I think this is overblown.
Will: Given the history of slavery, do you really think that Southern localism can really be viewed as a cause of Southern racism? It strikes me as an enabling condition, at best - though I’m happy to be debated on that point.
Moreover, it seems to me that the localism of the American South is very much “over-articulated”, and that the attendant racism is certainly an expression of that. Obviously the question of how to keep localist sentiments from becoming excessively articulated in such ways is a challenging one.
And TM: The Nazi Germany analogy is actually what Deneen was discussing in the post I linked; his point was that Nazism was a nationalistic phenomenon, not a properly localist one.
I was talking to a group of 7th graders once about nationalism, localism and the slippery natural of loyalties. The best analogy I could come up with is one of watching two guys fight in a parking lot. What if you were told one was an American and the other was Canadian? Who do you help? What if you were told one was from your state and the other was from the state next door? Who do you help? What if you were told one was of your religion and the other was frm a different faith? Who do you help? What if one went to your high school and the other went to your rivals? Who do you help? What if one was your 3rd cousin and the other one was your 1st cousin? Who do you help?
I think often (not always) our gut will choose the more local person to help / support / pal around with. I remember in high school seeing classmates that I thought were complete jerks get into squabbles with kids from other schools after football games and feeling compelled to stand next to them just because we wore the same school name on our jackets.
I guess the point I am clumsily trying to convey is that I agree localism is hard to ignore and often artificial. I also agree that it can be terribly destructive at times. But I don’t know if ‘over-articulated’ is the correct phrase. Perhaps ‘elusive and fleeting’ are better?
Southern racism and localism seem to have been mutually-reinforcing tendencies; the latter may not have caused the former, but it certainly contributed to a very hostile environment for black Americans. I also find it striking that Southerners came to accept institutionalized racism as part of their cultural inheritance - slavery may have been a “peculiar institution,” but it was our peculiar institution, gosh-darnit!
Maybe I’m being unfair, but many of the characteristics we think of as necessary for decentralized self-government - reverence for local institutions, suspicion of outside interference etc. etc. - are also things that tend to make people very resistant to reform. So while localism may not cause bad things to happen, it frequently contributes to a social and political arrangement that makes effective reform very difficult.
Maybe this is only relevant if some bad preexisting tendency becomes institutionalized. I’m very sympathetic to your defense of local patriotism, but the United States’ unique experience with states’ rights and all the rest has left us with some very uncomfortable baggage.
That’s all quite fair, Will. I think the points I wanted to make in that rather muddled comment were:
1. Obviously slavery wasn’t a product of localism; indeed, it’s probably best viewed as a product of globalistic tendencies, depending as it did on international trade and with an eye toward greater productivity.
2. Inasmuch as racism became a defining characteristic of Southern culture, the localism that drove that was pretty degenerate, and took on many of its more angry and ideological characteristics in response to the perceived threat of Yankee hegemony.
3. It’s not like non-localist sentiments have a perfect record when it comes to things like racism and anti-Semitism, either.
But perhaps we’re not really in disagreement, since I’m not going to deny the reality of the dangers you describe.
Also, cf. this post by H.C. Johns on the non-prejudicial character of Minnesotan localism.
[...] John Schwenkler goes [...]
John, That’s what I get for not making my point clearly. What I referred to was not Nazism as localism, but the manner in which the early Nazi movement wooed the many localist political parties in Weimar Germany. In the aftermath of WWI a multiplicity of particularistic parties representing peasants, regions, religions and causes sprung up. Individual States like Bavaria even attempted to escape the Republic. The Nazi’s were successful in appealing to these individual aspirations and vanities. eventually bringing many into the National Socialist fold. None of these groups seems to have smelled the rat until it was much too late.
My point Isn’t to denigrate localism but a pedantic one, to mention at least one example of localism playing into evil hands. This does not delegitimize the localist impulse but serves as a warning of what can happen.
On the other hand, the argument that localism equates with anti-semitism can only be somewhat true. The experience of Jews in the antibellum South is not one of repression but of tolerance. There was a Jewish Confederate cabinet member after all. Southern Jews of my acquaintance report that, at least until the 1960’s Jews living in southern communities were integrated into society as a community. Shelby Foote the late Historian of the Civil War was both a southerner and a Jew.
The nexus between German localism and antisemitism is far deeper and more complex. While American localists feel rootedness in a particular locale, German localists had long standing identifications with actual kingdoms and even tribes. To be a Kentuckian is a matter of at most two hundred years of history. To be a Saxon or a Thurigian is a matter of blood and millenia. With the collapse of the Prussian led Second Reich, these ancient attachments were all German citizens had to fall back on. As to antisemitism, ordinary Germans lived through a period of civil war after the WWI that attempted to replicate the Bolshevik Revolution, with all the attendant blood and dispossession. They also witnessed at close hand a similar revolution in Hungary. Jewish names and personalities were at the forefront of these fearful events. A great many Germans lived rural lives with poor access to multiple points of view. So it’s no surprise that in a deeply divided collection of former duchies, electorships, free cities etc. people would coalesce into multiple parochial parties and movements. Obvioiusly, America is nothing like this.
The fear of antisemitism it seems to me flows from the belief that Jews are seen as the rootless cosmopolitans and so have no place in local polities. An interesting assumption emerges from this. Does Bottum assume that Jews are automatically disloyal to their localities? And if this is so, wouldn’t this be their problem rather than the localities? The example of the Confederate Jews would seem to argue against this. Many have pointed out that if the Jews were the original rootless cosmopolitans they are far from alone now. The entire upper strata of our society can be said to be advancing in this direction, with globalization, adoption of international legal models, disdain for traditional American cultural norms, etc. It’s also a bit bizarre to speak of the menace of localism as antisemitism when Jews have their own localist, blood and soil experiment going on in the Middle East.