Nationalism's blinders and the derision of critique.
How does the interplay of nationalism and pride undercut the ability to think critically about history. Can one be patriotic while still accepting abhorrent acts by those in the nation who came before us?
In December, The International Review of Law, an academic journal, published a paper online by the Harvard economist J. Mark Ramseyer in which he called the victims of Japanese rape and torture “prostitutes.” The Paper argued that the so-called “comfort women,” women stolen from their homes during the second world war in order to act as sex slaves for the imperial Japanese army, were actually free and legal participants in the economic trade of sex. The paper has raised the hackles of survivors, historians, over 1,900 economists, and students at Harvard. The veracity of the paper has been questioned by historians of the time period who claim the paper is not consistent with decades of research on the subject. Ramseyer is himself an expert on Japanese law and has found support for his claims among far-right Japanese newspapers and research organizations.
The matter of Ramseyer is an example of Japan’s unwillingness to own it’s national history. The behavior of Imperial Japan was monstrous in many respects. As was the United States decision to use atomic weapons on two Japanese urban centers. States, like any institution of power, are apt to misuse power. Almost every state today has reason to be sorry, something in its past worthy of reflection and solemnity. America is not without its history of terrible behavior: removal and genocide of Native Americans, internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, the undue harm and destruction caused by supporting regime change in other states, and its original sin of human enslavement and degradation. But the ability to think critically about one’s past and accept the past as contextual but not definitional is a necessary for any mature society.
A state’s worst deeds need not be a nation’s eternal shame. Nationalists like those in Japan wish to change the story, cast doubt on the veracity of abuse they’ve caused, diminish the perceived harm caused. It's a natural behavior, people rarely like accepting fault, even when we know better. The more extreme the wrong, the more likely we are to shirk from the responsibility of that action. The nationalist attempts to diminish past wrongs because it would undermine their story of national glory. A nation with a troublesome past cannot embolden the noble spirit that nationalists wish to purvey.
We’ve seen similar sentiments bubble up in America, where criticism of our shared past is somehow viewed as diminishing our story. The fight over critical race theory often dissolves to perceptions about American glory. Those who most loudly protest the concept feel that they as Americans are being disparaged, that they are being cast as their nation’s worst past actions. This is of course a failure in perception. It isn’t helped by some of the woke dialogue which frames history as being a burden and sin that present generations have little ability to rectify or cast off.
The matter of history is that we are incapable of doing anything to change the reality of it. Instead, as has always happened, we seek to reinterpret and skew the importance of various events and periods. While actual history exists, the history we tell ourselves is always necessarily the interpretation of some other human being or institution. Regardless of intent, individual biases find ways to color one’s work, even of the most factually focused historians. But in order to make the work of history easier, we as consumers can be more cognizant of how the stories of our ancestors are not and never will be our stories. Even though we are shaped by the forces of our past, we need not take those forces as our logical end.
There is an inevitability that runs through the users of history. That somehow those who came before us, who called themselves by the same names we call ourselves by, are linked to our sense of who we are. It is possible to be proud of parts of our national past and regretful of others. Life is not a marvel movie. There are no universal heros or villains. Human beings, societies, states, and communities are capable of wonderful evils and terrible accomplishments. But they are also capable of the most sincere compassion. Our complications as a species is not reason to despair.
Nationalism struggles with past misdeeds because it is a political movement built off of heroism. To accept terrible actions of the state or the nation in the past is to accept that the nation isn’t so great. If the nation isn’t great then the nationalist story has no point. Why would we fight and die to protect a nation that has previously been so depraved? The second tool in the nationalist historical toolbox is to diminish. If the past is filled with perceived misdeeds that cannot be ignored, than it may be necessary to cast derision upon the victims. We think of this tool being used in decades past by fascists, communists, and imperialists. The justification of Blacks as inferior to continue the practice of slavery. The demonization of the Jews leading to their liquidation by Nazi Germany. The criminalization of thought-crime in order to purge the Communist party of inconvenient actions.
This tool is the most damaging in the nationalist toolbox because it makes the impossible possible. If it can be rationalized that everyone outside the nation is lesser or unworthy than any and all actions against those people are possible. This rationale is coming back in vogue today. Muslims in particular have become a convenient target of derision and demonization. In India, the Modi government has passed unconstitutional laws that purposely discriminate against Muslim members of society for the benefit of Hindu majorities. Across Europe, nationalist parties have taken advantage of larger Muslim populations on the continent to foment hate, spread christian supremacy, and cast a picture of the backwardness and inability to integrate. In the United States, Donald Trump’s bumbling regime had to try three separate times to pass a Muslim travel ban that appeared facially neutral enough to pass constitutionality. The political provocateur, Nigel Farage, successfully used imagery of a Muslim “other” destroying English society in order to push Brexit.
This is and continues to be the danger of nationalist thinking, it requires taking an ahistorical world view. It requires bending reality for the sole purpose of advocating a group ideology. It isn’t necessary. The anti-nationalist coalition: liberals, leftists, progressives, libertarians, moderates, and even conservatives must do a better job of reclaiming patriotism. There is nothing wrong with finding reasons to be prideful in one’s nation, culture, language, and even history. Too often the liberal response to vicious nationalism is to accept their terms of the debate, to shrink from national pride, to stop identifying with others of their cultural and linguistic kin. This has been the mistake taken repeatedly by the rational minds who recognize that history is not something we can bend for our own desires. To refute the nationalist worldview we cannot retreat from national pride, from patriotism.
I can understand the desire to find such extreme revulsion in the nationalist vision that you retreat from anything that even resembles that sight. But we must persist, to cast a nation as being without merit or as not deserving support then the battle is lost before it’s even begun. My own conversion to patriotism required moving away from home. I had grown up learning about America’s past misdeeds, sharing disgust with my peer group about the many oversteps and terrible incursions taken by the American state. That history is very real. But so too is the aspirational nature of America. Which is stronger than history, because while we cannot change historical fact, aspirations are our own to shape and implement. America is a land that has perpetuated great evil while also taking in peoples from the world round. America as the immigrant nation is its most incredible accomplishment. Problems remain, but casting out the nation with the nation’s history will do nothing more than allow the nationalist to collect those stories and warp them to their own twisted ends.
We do not need to be blinded from history by the nationalists, just as we need not condemn all our terrible history as signs of irredeemability. The path towards a more rational, just, and equitable world requires a sobering look at the worst elements of the past with a patriotic optimism for the power of the people here and now.
