Nationalist Masochism

• Book: Göran Adamson. Masochistic Nationalism.

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Contextual Quote

T.M. Murray:

"The cult of powerlessness, no less than the cult of power, is infused with political romanticism. The fury unleashed by the masochist nationalist, no less than the positive nationalist, contains its own justification because fury must be caused by external defamation. ‘They should have known’, says one nationalist. ‘We should have known’, says the other. Both positive nationalism and masochist nationalism are societal pessimists. One says strangers are dangerous. The other says natives are dangerous. Both types of nationalist end up taking a surprisingly callous, ungenerous attitude towards suffering individuals in overseas cultures. Brandishing their exoticism and moral relativism, multicultural leftists perceive other peoples’ suffering romantically while stubbornly disavowing the virtues of progress that they themselves enjoy."

- T.M. Murray [1]

Review

T.M. Murray:

"Masochist nationalists groomed in post-modernity transform a quest for truth into a codified call for authoritarianism with its stamping out of dissent. When masochist nationalists mistake criticism for fascism, all conflicts – whether civil or not – will be deemed politically suspect. Democracy will be defined by groupthink. Here too, Orwell is instructive. He predicted that racists were bound to come back, next time under the name of “anti-racists”.

Reading Adamson, I was reminded of a talk given by Jonathan Rauch to the UK’s Free Speech Champions in which he pitted democracy against free expression and implied that the former was threatened by the latter, a false dilemma that no one need accept.

Adamson argues that, despite their progressive self-perception, masochist nationalists surpass positive nationalists in their attachment to primitivist images such as Rousseau’s “noble savage”, as exemplified by the myth of the Noble Eco-Savage and the perception that non-Western primitive societies are peaceful, harmonious and “respect nature”. The masochist nationalist combines historical kitsch – sentimental and romantic clichés about traditional and exotic communities – with a full-blown anti-modernist posture. This is despite his citizenship in progressive and successful Western liberal democracies to which his entire outlook is nevertheless opposed.

Masochist nationalists are quick to condemn history books written by positive nationalists, labelling them as Eurocentric, ethnocentric, monocultural, imperialist or plainly nationalist. And while there may be some truth in these assessments, the masochist nationalist then prescribes his own version of the same. Rather than wiping out ‘monoculture’ or ‘ethnocentric’ texts as such, illiberal leftists merely offer their own “Afrocentric” texts that, according to Yehudi O. Webster, “lack even the pretence of scholarly neutrality” and inculcate ancestor worship. Afrocentricity only leads to politicization of the curriculum. Rather than countering the practice of group selection per se or in principle it merely reinstates it from the opposite direction.

Collectivism and Communitarianism

Adamson homes in on the illiberal left’s obsession with culture and its preference for groups or “communities” over and above the individuals within them. In keeping with conservatism’s organic metaphors that imply a harmony of interest between ‘natural leaders’ and their people, class tensions and individual self-determination are erased. Nikolaos Michaloliakos, leader of the Greek far-right Golden Dawn, says “individuals do not have historical significance”. In similar fashion, the masochist nationalist defines “identity” as a euphemism for the individual’s submission to the group. He defends organicism in overseas cultures. Adamson cites Ayaan Hirsi-Ali’s story of how the UN distributes food to self-described clan leaders who then keep it for themselves or sell it. The multicultural leftist’s persistent (and seemingly deliberate) misperception is that relations between individuals within non-Western societies are harmonious. This colossal political fiction fools only the most obtuse Westerner. Yet when our pet ideas of anti-racism and exoticism are at stake, reality is the first victim.

Colonialism’s most ruthless critics spin the myth of organic harmony of distant cultures, which entails the related assumption that minorities in the West are homogeneous “communities” free of political or religious tensions. The result is that when left-wing dissidents from other cultures are under attack by religious reactionaries, Westerners offer no help, or worse, they lend fawning support to self-appointed right-wing religious ‘representatives.’ This disproves the left’s claim to be opposed to conservative oppression of minorities. Leftists are currently religious conservatism’s greatest defenders, so long as their support is cloaked in ethnicity. The West’s masochist nationalists ignore political views altogether and lump individuals – oppressors and dissidents alike – into one box labelled “Syrian Nationals” or “Iraqi co-patriots” or just “Muslims”. From this pseudo-leftist perspective, any member of the ethnic group speaks on behalf of the entire group (unless of course the individual is Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, or any genuine liberal). The nationalist’s belief in unity between representative and Völk is given a brush or two and re-tooled as an emancipating idea for the benefit of minority populations. At the same time, progressive individuals from within the minority society are merrily thrown to the wolves.

Masochist nationalists rightly denounce European politicians like the Greek Golden Dawn and the Bulgarian Ataka when they defend national ancestry, but these same critics go on to re-frame hard-core nationalism from outside of Europe positively as “self-determination” or “cultural pride”. In their self-contradictory, unprincipled alliances, the illiberal left’s anti-Western zealots betray their support for group fanaticism, so long as it doesn’t happen at home. The anti-Western left (or stealth right-wing?) has re-defined identity in a way that severs it from individuality, turning “identity” into Newspeak for communitarian dependence and conformity, which have always been ultra-conservative political values.

Adamson concludes that both positive nationalists and masochist nationalists fuel support for right-wing parties, even if the latter’s grandiloquence and labelling makes it seem otherwise. Influential sections of the elite have pushed the notion that even moderately social conservative values at home (safety, family, and social cohesion) are ‘extreme right wing’. The majority is not convinced. The success of the global elite’s propaganda has been confined to self-described ‘left-wing anti-racists’ whose smug superiority and categorical rejection of all Western values only boosts public support for right-wing parties and radicalizes the European electorate."

The Root of the 2 movmenents: the Counter-Enlightenment Romantics

Crucially, Adamson locates the common ideological backbone shared by these two forms of nationalism in their underlying Counter-Enlightenment worldview. The Enlightenment cherished the individual. It prized reason, open debate, intellectualism, scepticism and the virtues of aimless conversation. It defended progress and science, cherished equality, and the optimistic quest for understanding. Its scientific method rested on doubt, rather than certainty based on belief or authority.

However, the romantics of the early 19th-century Counter-Enlightenment pushed the individual aside for the benefit of group cult. They promoted emotions and passion, historical mysticism, organic collectivism, nationalism based on myths, cultural relativism and the virtues of uniqueness and difference over universalism and human commonalities. One of the most celebrated proponents of this early Counter-Enlightenment was the German philosopher Johann Herder. According to Herder, it was impossible to judge any society from the perspective of another society. Attempts to understand another culture were futile. Herder replaced understanding with an almost mystical veneration of culture for its own sake. Herder often discussed the “organic” nature of cultural entities, as though a society were a body with a thinking head and active limbs. Nowhere did he glimpse internal tensions nor recognise that cultures evolve or mutate. Herder’s notion of “belonging” described his understanding of the individual’s bond to his group and its destiny, a theme that is also crucial to positive nationalists.

Both positive nationalists and masochist nationalists oppose the liberal idea of self-determination. Two forms of culturalism result. When confronted with foreign cultures, Herder invokes a drastic image: they devour our indigenous culture “like a cancer”. From this perspective, the only cure is separation of cultures. Masochist nationalists cling to Herder’s pessimism and separatism with no less determination. Adamson cites Charles Taylor’s idea that societies must “take steps to ensure the survival of” any fragile culture or completely ring-fence them to protect them from the gruesome impact of Western modernity. Here the same romantic and collectivist rhetoric about the frail and the indigenous, and about the vile nature of foreign influence, prevails. Masochist nationalists share with positive nationalists a longing for organic wholeness unspoiled by the impact of dissent or invasion. Both are völkisch forms of culturalism. According to Patrick West, this makes Herder an early exponent of “hard multiculturalism”.

But Adamson demonstrates that the relationship between Herder and his modern nationalist offspring is not seamless. Herder’s “primitive savage who loves himself and his family” is more of a passive and forbearing conservative than a vengeful proto-fascist. Another difference between Herder and his modern Counter-Enlightenment nationalist counterparts can be found in the value he gave to self-determination not only for “us” but as a principle. He sided with the ‘everyman’ against authority and utopian aspirations. So, while his writings resonate with holistic images, they never fuse into a nation as a beast. Herder was also adamant that “empathy” with foreign cultures is crucial and that we must try to understand them “from within”. Adamson concludes that the ruthlessly collectivist, anti-humanist implications of masochist multiculturalism exceed Herder’s outlook, which contained a distinctly modernist strain despite his conservatism and his relativism."

The Goran Adamson on the New Racist Anti-Racism

T.M. Murray:

"Adamson’s most topical chapter is titled ‘Racism’. The 1960’s civil rights movements combatted racism by criticizing all those generalisations and assumptions upon which racism ultimately rests – stereotypes, segregation, hierarchies and physiognomy. It aimed to deconstruct ethnic walls and defend the rights of the individual and critical thinking. Anti-racist politics is about principles, not about activism. If the spectre of positive nationalism is to be vanquished, its underpinnings must be dismantled. But masochist nationalists have kept them intact, merely replacing the racism of the brute bully with the racism of the gentle patron. Western academics with a soft spot for non-Western cultures begin by rejecting the idea that any race is inherently superior to others. This is outdated essentialism, we are told. At first, they seem to espouse the constructivist, plastic account of human nature that gives emphasis to our social conditions, upbringing and environment – these are what shape our ‘identity’. But, as Laurie Wastell has pointed out elsewhere, the prevalence of essentialist reasoning in woke identity politics is staggering. Writers like Delgado and Stefanic, for example, in their book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction display a remarkable awareness of the problem of essentialising people by their race, but soon the veneer comes off and we are back where we started because they substitute ‘intersectionality’ in its place, which means that everyone has potentially conflicting, overlapping identities, loyalties and allegiances. In setting up ‘intersectionality’ as the ostensible antithesis of essentialist thinking, when intersectionality is riddled with it, they manage to capture all the ground from which any counterargument could launch. In effect, intersectionality represents a co-opting of their opponent’s rebuttal, onto which they slap their own label while redescribing race in essentialising terms. Having captivated and hooked anti-racists with the ‘bait’ of actual anti-racist ideas, they then ‘switch’, replacing the defining tenets of actual anti-racism with their own essentialist jargon. This mesmerising bluff is delivered with stunning verbal fireworks that beguile impressionable people who fear looking stupid. Linguistically, CRT’s spokespersons construct an insidious dichotomy, reductively dividing society into two camps: white people and everyone else. This non-sequitur somehow follows from their previous observation that “[n]o person has a single, easily stated, unitary identity”. With mind-boggling inconsistency, intersectional feminists argue as though all members – male and female – of a particular racial subgroup have uniform experiences owing to their membership of that sub-group, while all members of a particular gender subgroup – black and white women – cannot have uniform experiences owing to their membership of that sub-group.

Skin colour, the emblematic aspect of racism, has been resurrected under the banner of anti-racism. A tourist leaflet produced by the German city of Koln announced: “All whites are racists.” In 2020, Black Lives Matter activists are shouting the same thing. All whites are innately disgraceful. But Adamson asks why, if self-idealization is a lie, then why not also self-hatred? And if we are all racists then why do we preoccupy ourselves with the struggle against racism? Shouldn’t racists support racism?

Adamson cites Yehudi O. Webster’s observation that, “[r]eferences to human beings as white people and black people are part of a tradition of anatomical reductionism that … belong to the blunders of a bygone biology.” The only ones who have defended ethnic belonging in terms of skin colour are the National Socialists, which does not enhance the masochist nationalist’s progressive self-image. Webster points out that “the racial inventory” used by certain critics of white supremacy smacks of the pseudoscience of Cesare Lombroso’s mid-nineteenth century physiognomy. An editorial in the leaflet distributed by the town of Koln stated, “We love human beings with different skin colour and shapes of their head.”

On one hand we have Martin Luther King, enlightened leftists and Marxists, feminists un-crippled by relativism, cautious universalists, liberals who take this label seriously – who all say colour doesn’t count; and on the other hand, we have an unholy alliance of nationalists, multiculturalists, adherents of political correctness, Islamists and intersectional feminists who all insist colour does count.

What, asks Adamson, is the difference between one form of segregation and native pride and the other? Both hold deeply conservative views and prefer the company of their own kind. Skin colour may make learning more interesting, but you cannot escape racial segregation by replacing negative stereotypes with positive ones. From the point of view of principle, it is no different if you wish to fence off whites from the lives of black people or the other way around. In both cases it is about amassing all things exotic into a cage of colourful splendour for us Westerners to marvel at – either on our high horses or in post-imperialist shame and fascination."

(https://dontdivideus.com/t-m-murray-reviews-goran-adamsons-latest-book-masochistic-nationalism/)