The New European Political Racism, Pt. 3: From Nationism to Conditionalised Citizenship to Ethnic Cleansing

In the first part of this series, I distinguished the rhetoric of the new racism from its actual ideological core, as it appears from analysing original, concrete and comprehensible policy suggestions. These being mainly about conditions for citizenship, what transpired was that the ideology of the new racism is about, what I called, Nationism; the idea that states have a basic moral reason to make a fundamental moral distinction between people who are born of citizens of this state (or who meet some similar immediate citizenship condition) and other people (who need to perform according to some conditions to attain citizenship). At the same time, the new racism is indeed wielding a lot of classic ethno-racist rhetoric. However, as it turns out, this is only a smokescreen for what is the real deal. This is shown, besides the fact that the rhetoric makes no comprehensible mark on what is actually suggested with regard to policy, by the way in which the new racists immediately back down from the ethno-racist claims as soon as they are being challenged. On this basis, I made the point that one of the reasons for the recent success of the new racism in elections is that the nationist ideology has not been adequately seen, exposed, explained and distinguished from ideas about making a difference between different people with regard to citizenship for purely pragmatic reasons (the latter supporting far less drastic conditions for citizenship for people who do not become immediate citizens). The new racists have been able to triumph simply because of the uncertainty of voters and political opponents on this basic point.

In the second part of the series, I continued to demonstrate that this, what looks as the new racists' best political weapon, is actually also their weakest point. This since the strategy of ducking away from objections to the ethno-racist rhetoric is only smart as long as the nationist ideological core is not clearly visible and thereby provides a sort of political hideout camouflaged as something far less sinister than what it in fact is. When we see it for what it is – nationism – we can also see that the joint political message of the new racism is genuinely paradoxical. Nationism is, as a matter of fact, contradicting ethno-racism, and vice versa.

So, suppose that the nationist ideology is effectively exposed (as it surely will be, eventually). Where will this lead (besides having the new racists loosing votes faster than you can say "citizenship test")? Well, the new racism will then have to face the nationist - ethno-racism paradox head on. Facing a contradiction they will, of course, as Robert Nozick once observed, have the option of remaining inconsistent. That, however, will surely lead to the effective end of this sort of political movement for a long time. Simply put, being openly inconsistent is not a trait being favored by very many people - not even with regard to immigration policy. And I'm sure that the leaders and strategists of the new racism are perfectly aware of this. So, then, what will they do?

Well, besides remaining inconsistent, the only available way of reacting to a contradiction is to reject one of its sides. That is, the new racism will have to purify its message into one that is about nationism, and nothing more than that, or drop the nationist ideological core and wander down the more well-known ethno-racist route.

My suggestion is that an openly nationist political movement with no access to further rhetorical sources will not win the hearts of many voters. This for three reasons. First, nationism, when seen clearly is a basic moral position as reprehensible as the idea thatpeople have a right to treat other people much worse just because they happen to have another hair colour, another birthday date, living on another street, et cetera, compared to oneself. It doesn't help very much here that the new racists perform the universalisation trick and thereby avoid the most obvious objection of being simply arbitrary in singling out themselves, their own group, yard, neighbourhood (or what have you) as enjoying a moral privilege that nobody else does. This was one of the factors that made the racism of the first half of the 20th century unsustainable under any other condition than war (which tends to make us all into infantile 1st person egoists). When universalised, nationism avoids this by acknowledging the same moral privilege to all states visavis their own citizens. But since we are not here talking about favors to citizens based on the need for pragmatic adaption to the condition of a multinational world, but of nationism (see part 1 for more about this) clearly spelled out, I suggest that not many people would be attracted to this evolved version of the new racism. In particular, and this is the second reason, they would understand immediately that nationism actually professes measures that are clearly against the national interest as well as the interests of most citizens! How this is so is developed in part 1 as well. Third, part of the success of the new racism surely has to do with the pull that the ethno-racist rhetoric exerts on some people. Without it, the new racists have lost a significant lever of popular seduction.

So, that seems to leave the ethno-racist route, but with some crucial differences to what used to be possible for the new racist movement to do politically. First, the new racism will not hold up for very long if they try to support ethno-racist policy claims with various alleged pragmatic arguments (as they have been trying to do in their recent rhetoric). Not when they no longer have have a nationist ideological core that nobody else sees clearly to hide behind. This means that, rather than a shallow rhetoric, the ethno-racist claims have to become the new ideological core. What will that imply?

As I explained in part 1, and elaborated further in part 2, ethno-racism as an ideology is about making a fundamental moral difference between people sorted in different groups in terms of some selected socio-cultural signifiers, "muslim" being the latest term of division in a long line. Also this idea can be universalised with regard to ideas regarding conditions for citizenship, effectively stating that every state has a basic moral privilege (not implied by pragmatic necessities in a multinational world, but of value in itself) to award citizenship only to people who belong to the group defined by the socio-cultural signifier selected. This is the origin of the idea of a citizenship test that needs to be passed in order for citizenship to be awarded, as well as the notion of revocable citizenship. Now, as demonstrated in part 1, recent new racist policies of such tests are in fact not ethno-racist but nationist, since people who are born by citizens are not required to take any test or conform to any standard of behavior to attain or keep citizenship. However, it is perfectly possible to modify these sort of policies so that they fit perfectly with an ethno-racist ideological core. The only thing needed is that the ethno-racist conditions of citizenship are applied to all people - also those who are born by citizens.

In other words, the ethno-racist ideological turn will force the new racism (at pains of being caught in another paradox) to advocate the idea of conditionalised citizenship all across the board. No one, born in the country or immigrant, can become a citizen unless they are demonstrated to conform to some sort of socio-cultural standard. Moreover, even if they do so and are awarded citizenship, they can be stripped of it if demonstrated to depart significantly from this same standard. This, of course, is the same cluster of ideas where we find the notion of more or less enforced repatriation programmes and, of course, ultimately, ethnic cleansing. Luckily, not many people will be attracted by such suggestions, unless we have a socio-economic meltdown of the sort occurring in continental Europe during the 1930's and a subsequent period of serious violent conflict. Hitler, in his way, understood this perfectly - thus, the gradually sharpened provocations to boost the emerging chaos of Germany.

This is where I end my attempt to understand the ideology of the new European political racism and its role in current, as well as forthcoming, politics. Hopefully, by reading this blog or by just thinking for themselves, political parties and people in general will soon pick up on the trick I tried to expose in part 1 and see what measures are needed to have the new racism caught with its pants down rather soon. This means that the sort of critical reflections on the prejudices residing within the shallow ethno-racist rhetoric so popular among anti-racist, liberal or left-leaning intellectuals are, perhaps not bad or unnecessary, but of secondary priority. Some new topics, such as the crucial difference between nationism and pragmatic accommodations to a multinational world, need to be addressed and some new tactics need to be developed on the basis of that. Godspeed!

The New European Political Racism, Pt. 2: The Nationism - Ethno-racism Paradox

In the first post of this series, I argued that – rhetoric suggesting the contrary notwithstanding – the ideological core of the new European political racism is actually about neither race biology, nor ethno-racism (or -centrism). Instead, it is about what I called Nationism; roghly, the idea that there is of some value in itself for a nation state to apply lower standards of treatment to people who are not born by citizens of this state (or who do not meet some similar condition for immediate citizenship, ICC). I contrasted this idea with the notion of applying such lower standards for pragmatic reasons connected to the fact that the world happens to be organised into a multitude of nation states, and held out the lack of understanding of the difference between this latter idea and the nationist one as a crucial factor for explaining the recent success of the new racism.

Now, even if I am right about this analysis, it would be foolish to think that such an explanation is to be found only in the ideology of the new racism and the inability of people and other political parties to spot it in time. For sure, the rhetoric employed by the new racists also plays a part. In the first post, I described how this rhetoric wields familiar ethno-racist elements, where socio-cultural signifiers (such as language, clothing, traditions, mores) are allegedly associated with features that many people would indeed find to be reasons for less favorable treatment (criminality, cruelty to others, general antiociality, blameworthy costliness for society, and so on). Moreover, I pointed to how the introduction of the nationist ideology actually has helped this rhetoric to function more effectively: whenever an alleged link between a socio-cultural signifier (e.g. "muslim" or "gypsy") and some feature held to be morally important is questioned – factually or morally – the new racist campaigner can simply drop it and retreat into the nationist position. This since the latter is, as a matter of fact, not dependent on any ethno-racist arguments or assumptions, neither factually, nor morally. So, summing up, while nationism is the ideological core of the new racism, its success is best explained by the combination of (1) an initial rhetoric making use of classic ethno-racism, and (2) an ideological core of pure nationism and political suggestions built on that.

What I want to point to now is that this combination, while indeed helping to explain the recent success of the new racism, is in fact also its Achilles' heel. For hidden inside this seemingly clever politico-tactical set-up lurks a bona fide paradox. This paradox, I suggest, is what must be exposed in a serious and convincing way by politicians, journalists and others, for the electoral support of the new racism to start to falter.

This is the paradox:

The ethno-racist rhetoric is about the idea that national states should apply lower standards of treatment to people who don't sufficiently conform to a "national culture". This is not to be confused with the idea that a nation is permitted to enforce its own laws - culture is not the same as actual single behaviors or actions, culture is composed by things like languages, worldviews, traditions and mores). Applied to the issue of what conditions for citizenship to apply (a favorite issue of the new racists), this idea implies that it should be more difficult to be awarded citizenship of a country, the more a person deviates from this country's (supposed) national culture or "identity". In contrast, the nationist ideology pays no attention to cultural belonging or identity. Its sole center of value is the distinction between those who are born by (or connected by lineage to) people who are already citizens of a country and those who are not. Applied to the issue of conditions for awarding citizenship this means that people who are born by citizens receive immediate citizenship (what I called the ICC), while people who are not need to perform according to additional requirements (what I called ACC) in order to be awarded citizenship. Now, as briefly pointed out in that context, the nationist idea implies no ideas whatsoever about the citizens of a country conforming to any particular culture or having a certain "national identity". Quite the contrary! By the awarding of citizenship via ICC, the nationist model leaves the country wide open to limitless cultural variation among citizens. In addition, people who do not meet ICC, but who indeed have the sort of national culture or identity that is valued by the ethno-racist are met by extra difficulties should they desire to receive citizenship. In short, nationism is open to awarding citizenship to exactly such people that ethno-racists want to deny citizenship to, and is open for impeding citizenship for exactly such people that ethno-racism want to award citizenship. Thus, ethno-racism and nationism are not only different, they are incompatible and, in combination, inconsistent.

This incompatibility or inconsistency appears just as clearly if we instead proceeds from a basis where the ethno-racist position is the starting point. From this point of view, then, only people who can demonstrate (sufficient) conformity to a national culture or possession of a national identity are to be awarded citizenship. That is, the fact that you are born by (or can demonstrate lineage to) a citizen is of no concern whatsoever. On the contrary, regardless of your heritage or where you come from, if you meet the ethno-racist culture/identity condition, citizenship is within reach. In other words, the ethno-racist citizenship idea will both block citizenship for people who, according to nationism, should receive automatic citizenship, and award citizenship to people, who nationism would want to impede from receiving citizenship.

Thus, combining the ethno-racist idea with nationism leads to a paradox. The message is that some people both should and should not be awarded or impeded from receiving citizenship. This paradox is built into the totality of the ideas conveyed by the new racist political movement. If the rhetoric and the ideological core is taken together, the result is a state of deepest confusion. Exposing this confusion, I suggest, is a powerful political and rhetorical weapon.

This leaves the question what wielding that weapon will result in. Hopefully and presumably, weakened electoral support of the new racism, of course – after all, voters are as a rule not prone to subscribing to obviously idiotic ideas. But where will that move the racists – those who have been engaged in these sort of parties or movements for decades? That will be the subject of the third, and last, posting in this series.

(Finally) the End of US. Gene Patents?

Today, the New York Times reports that the US federal government, through the Department of Justice, has decided to reverse the policy practice with regard to patenting of genes and genetic mutations. I blogged about this issue earlier this year, pointing to all the excellent reasons for revising US policy on genetic patents – not least the con artist like businesses that have been allowed to flourish in the genetic testing area thanks to the odd idea of exempting genes from the general principle that constituents of the natural world cannot be patented, only processes that manipulate such constituents. Interested readers can download the full so-called friend-of-the-court brief for closer inspection.

The article makes clear that most serious business in the area of genomics and gene technology will not be significantly disturbed by the change of policy, since these companies have actually developed unique processes to patent. Likewise, synthetic or otherwise modified DNA that is different from DNA occurring in nature will be possible to patent. Especially the latter means that some of the ethical problems connected to this issue will remain. However, hopefully, the new policy will make it more difficult for scam companies such as Myriad Genetics to run a profitable business, thereby saving many people from being deceived and helping medical research to help people with genetic diseases more effectively. See my earlier post on this issue for more details on that.