Borderline Crimes

A synecdoche is a figure of speech used to refer to something by using a name other than its own. Totum pro parte is a particular kind of synecdoche, whereby the name of the whole is used to refer to only a part. I might say, for example, “Beijing” when I really mean the Chinese government, or “Detroit” when I really mean the auto industry.

Patriotism in many right wing visions, especially nationalist ones, perceives the nation only synecdochically. Under this framing, the nation as a whole is used to refer only to the self. Thus when the nationalist right-wing says it “loves America” it is really only referring to a specific part of America, namely the part that it composes. In effect, then, what nationalist right wingers are actually saying when they profess that they love “America” is that they love themselves.

It first occurred to me to think of patriotism and right-wing nationalism in this way when I was reading a reflection by Frank Schaeffer, a former Christian Evangelical leader, who writes,

I came to realize that I was in bed with a group of people who were profoundly anti-American [the Religious Right and far right of the Republican Party]…. They wrapped themselves in the flag and ‘loved America,’ but it was an America in their imaginations only and cast in their image: white, middle-class, straight, born-again, homophobic and tinged with racism, not to mention misogyny.

The America most Americans lived in; diverse, open, tolerant, and multi-ethnic was the America that the right would hardly acknowledge. They ‘loved’ an America that didn’t exist, and hated the real country we live in.

Similar imaginations abound in Israel, which many nationalists (and many abroad) call a “Jewish state.” But over 20% of Israel’s population is not Jewish, just as the real America is not entirely white, middle-class, straight, or born-again. In other words, Israel is only a Jewish state in the imagination; in the real world, it is a state within which many different people live, even though government institutions marginalize and discriminate against those who don’t fit the norm of being Jewish–all with the encouragement of that subgroup of nationalistic Israelis who see the country as belonging to them and not to the others who dwell (or used to dwell) within it.

Nationalists attempt to re-inforce their imaginary version of the nation by designing institutions so that they are biased against other voices within the nation. The notion of being “unpatriotic” is really a byproduct of this hegemonic assertion. If a proclamation that you love “America” is really a proclamation that you love yourself, then an accusation that somebody is unpatriotic is actually an accusation that somebody else is merely against you and your ideas. The attack loses its force when it’s not about betraying a grandiose collective, but is merely a disagreement between two people.

Once the right wing’s nation is exposed as synecdoche for the self, it becomes illogical to accuse somebody of being unpatriotic unless by the accusation what is meant is that the accused is actually against himself. This is certainly a conceivable scenario, but it is unlikely to be the case in most situations where this crude accusation is leveled. To insist on the existence of a nation with regards to which one might be unpatriotic, an exclusive nation whose sanctity and purity is paramount to that of each person’s belonging to it, is to violate some of the most fundamental democratic principles regarding inclusion and equality–not to mention that it fails to recognize the dissenter as an actual person, rather than a mere enemy or threat.

Reading right-wing patriotism in this way–as “profoundly anti-American”–also draws into question paradigms about tolerance. Though tolerance is often a subject of praise, it is actually a sinister way to white-wash implicit inequality. That you will tolerate somebody merely means you are not out to extinguish their existence; it does not mean you recognize their independence, their equality, or their rights. It is one thing for Americans to “tolerate” homosexuals and homosexuality, for example, but it is entirely another for us to acknowledge that they have full rights and full equality to us. Tolerance is still a means of exclusion.

I believe it is important to think about notions of patriotism like this critically. Many Arabs and Muslims in the United States post-9/11, for example, sought to fit themselves within a particular notion of American-ness to guarantee their safety and security. Suhail Khan, a former Bush ally, is one example of the kind of approach that I’ve railed against in the past.

Under Khan’s approach, Muslims and other marginalized communities in the States should say, “we are Americans, like you [white, straight, middle class, born-again Americans].” That is the paradigm of oligarchic assimilation and integration. The appropriate response–the response that fights in the name of pluralism rather than uniformity–should instead be that “we are also Americans” (in addition to whatever else we are). This is the paradigm of democratic inclusion. It suggests parallelism and mutual legitimacy, without imposing uniformity of any kind, or requiring unshared belonging.

While the first approach might grant temporary security, it also comes at the cost of one’s own legitimacy. It makes difference illegitimate and is thus inherently unsustainable. The second approach resists the oppressive force of a category (like “American”) that has been usurped by some elite or nationalist sub-group that treats the nation as a synecdoche for itself. It takes back the category from those who try to selfishly possess it, transforming it into an inclusive one rather than an exclusive one. It also refuses to belong to only one category.

This methodology, of course, does not have a universal applicability, as it presupposes a container for itself. There can be cases where the category/container itself is hegemonic. One might think of the Palestinians in Israel–why should they be forced to identify as Israelis, with the state that dispossessed them of their lands, violently repressed them, and exiled their relatives, when their presence is not conditional on Israel’s existence but precedes it? Another might be the Tamils or the Irish. I am not sure that a universally useful and fair rule exists that applies to these cases where settler colonial populations expropriated the land of the indigenous peoples, especially as circumstances for those communities change over time.

It is nevertheless possible to identify the racist nature of the reigning regimes in these cases, which, as a by-product of their colonial roots, require subjugation and disempowerment of those peoples rather than genuine inclusion. In these exceptional cases, the mission is not necessarily to “expand” the nation (as it constitutes and purifies itself only by the institutional, geographical, and cultural exclusion of the aforementioned groups) but rather to burst its bubble, if only so that a new one might be formed.