So much has already been written about 911 & the War on Terror (WoT) that my small contribution seems a little laughable. Future historians will write much more I’m sure. I have the luck of being able to review my reactions to 911 & the beginning of the WoT by re-reading forums posts and emails. From a personal perspective, the events of 911 almost killed a friend and his boyfriend. The friend travels past the WTC on Mondays & Wednesday - he had the luck (for him) that the planes hit Tuesday. His boyfriend drove under the WTC daily around 9.00am - but on Tuesday he was ill and couldn’t make work. Another friend who lives closed to the ruins has experienced terrible rage, fear, anxiety, as well as help and sympathy from strangers, a sense of camaraderie and a re-appreciation of the important things in life - all due to the disaster. There are lots of other stories like these.
911 and historical issues
But 911 was more than a disaster for NYC. 911 was the catalyst for the WoT. How to approach this complex subject? In a historical context, the WoT is part of an increase in tensions between Islam and modernity, or East and West respectively. The tensions are due to two major factors - 1. Middle Eastern countries have been slower to modernize. “The modern spirit had two main characteristics. The first of these was independence. Modernization proceeded by declarations of independence on all fronts: social, political, intellectual, as scientists, for example, demanded the freedom to pursue their insights, despite the disapproval of the established churches. Freedom became a necessary hallmark of the modern state. The second mark of the new society was innovation: western people were constantly breaking new ground and creating something fresh; they institutionalized change in a way that had been quite impossible in a preindustrial civilization. This process of modernization took a long time; modern society did not come fully into its own until the 19th century. Like any major social change, the period of transition was traumatic and often violent. Today we are witnessing similar upheaval in developing countries, including those in the Islamic world, that are making their own painful journey to modernity. In the Middle East, for example, we see constant political upheaval.”
This upheaval is not just due to modern changes though, it is exacerbated by the historical problems caused by the European invasion of the Middle East in the 19th century. “The new economies of western Europe needed a constantly expanding market for the goods that funded their cultural enterprises. Once the home countries were saturated, new markets were sought abroad. Between 1830 and 1915, the European powers occupied Algeria, Aden, Tunisia, Egypt, the Sudan, Libya and Morocco - all Muslim countries. These new "colonies" provided raw materials for export, which were fed into European industry. In return, they received cheap manufactured goods, which naturally destroyed local industry. The colony also had to be modernized and brought into the western system, so some of the "natives" had to acquire a degree of familiarity with the modern ethos. After the collapse of the Ottoman empire during the first world war, Britain and France set up mandates and protectorates in its former provinces, in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine This new impotence was extremely disturbing for the Muslim countries. Until this point, Islam had been a religion of success.” The Middle East has yet to fully modernize and is going through the political actions and reactions of those wanting to modernize and those who don’t.
The 2nd major factor in tension is Israel. “The creation of the state
of Israel, the chief ally of the United States in the Middle East, has become
a symbol of Muslim impotence before the western powers, which seemed to feel
no qualm about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who lost their homeland
and either went into exile or lived under Israeli occupation. Rightly or wrongly,
America's strong support for Israel is seen as proof that as far as the United
States is concerned, Muslims are of no importance and simply do not count.
In their frustration, many have turned to Islam. The secularist and nationalist
ideologies, which they had imported from the west, seemed to have failed them,
and by the late 1960s, Muslims throughout the Islamic world had begun to develop
what we call fundamentalist movements.”
(LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,568512,00.html).
Recent history
Narrowing the focus of this historical perspective we can begin to ask specific
questions: 1. Who is the war against? 2. What are the war’s effects?
1. The enemy in this war is terrorists. Not just OBL & al-Qaida, but all
terrorists. What a terrorist is, is a matter for debate. Broad and fluid definitions
have allowed various countries to brand who they wish as terrorists (LINK-
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4138438,00.html). In the
UK, the Terrorist Act introduces the criminal offence of "incitement"
- an offence which could catch, for example, anyone calling for the overthrow
of undemocratic regimes abroad. It would have caught Nelson Mandela and other
ANC leaders who supported armed struggle against the apartheid regime in South
Africa. The Act gives police stop and search powers on the basis of "expediency"
and of "suspicion", not of committing any offence, but of being
connected, or potentially connected, to the bill's vague description of "terrorism".
Under the Act it is a criminal offence to possess any "article"
or "information", including photographs, in circumstances which
give rise to a "reasonable suspicion" they would be used for "terrorist"
purposes - a clause which has serious implications, not least for journalists.
The Act reverses the burden of proof - it will be up to the accused to prove
their innocence, in other words, to prove a negative. That is not all. The
definition of terrorism in the bill includes "the use or threat, for
the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause, of
action which involves serious violence against any person or property".
This could embrace not only armed extremists but also environmental activists
attacking GM crops. The US has an equally malleable “definition”
of terrorist.
Indeed, this is not a “War on Terror”, but a “war against
certain terrorists as we choose to define them”, just as the “War
on Drugs” was just a “war against some drugs we don‘t like”.
The UK and USA have both ignored or supported terrorists in recent history,
despite Bush announcing "If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers
of innocents," on the day he began bombing Afghanistan. He continued:
"they have become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take
that lonely path at their own peril." I'm glad he said "any government",
as there's one which, though it has yet to be identified as a sponsor of terrorism,
requires his urgent attention. For the past 55 years the US “has been
running a terrorist training camp... called the Western Hemisphere Institute
for Security Cooperation, or Whisc (previously known as the School of the
Americas). It is based in Fort Benning, Georgia, and it is funded by Mr Bush's
government.” An example of the camps activities: “In 1993, the United
Nations truth commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed
the worst atrocities of the civil war. Two-thirds of them had been trained
at the School of the Americas. Among them were Roberto D'Aubuisson, the leader
of El Salvador's death squads; the men who killed Archbishop Oscar Romero;
and 19 of the 26 soldiers who murdered the Jesuit priests in 1989. In Chile,
the school's graduates ran both Augusto Pinochet's secret police and his three
principal concentration camps. One of them helped to murder Orlando Letelier
and Ronni Moffit in Washington DC in 1976.”
(LINK- http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,583254,00.html).
Both The US & UK were complicit in the assassination of up to a million
dissidents by the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia in the 1960s. The US government
trained deadly Contra terrorists in Nicaragua in the 1980s resulting in up
to 50,000 deaths and the overthrow of a democratically elected government
(LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,589011,00.html). Britain
and America ignored the Indonesian genocide of 200,000 East Timorese in the
1970s and 80s, while selling arms to the Indonesian dictatorship. NATO systematically
tore up international law in 1999 in bombing civilian targets in Yugoslavia,
which left 1,500 civilians dead. The US and UK governments are waging a modern
form of siege warfare against Iraq, in which economic sanctions supposedly
meant to hurt Saddam Hussain have killed up to a million civilians, half of
them children. (LINK - http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2001/09/uturn.html).
Further evidence of the US’s belligerence is provided by the fact that
it has been at war every year since World War 2. Here is a list of the countries
that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war:
China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia
(1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73),
Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador
(1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995),
Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan. (LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,579196,00.html)
So as it stands, this is not a war undertaken to liberate the world and defend freedom. This is not a war undertaken by two virtuous and just countries. This is a war undertaken by hypocritical countries, that define terrorist as they see fit, and who support and maintain violence in other countries, violence which most people agree has the appearance of terrorism. As it stands, the WoT is simply a “War on those who don’t agree with us”. 911 is just an excuse to coin a phrase and carry on business as normal - aggression against countries that don’t obey the USA.
All that said, 911 did divert the US’s attention to Afghanistan. Though they were happy to support the Mujahideen in the past (LINK http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html) and ignore the crimes of the Taliban and Northern Alliance (LINK - http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/rights/articles/eav100301.shtml), the US did succeed in overthrowing an oppressive and hateful regime. This takes us to our next question:
2. What are the war‘s effects?
The Taliban are now mainly defeated. Though there are fears that they may regroup (LINK - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=119313) they seem scattered. And a good thing too. As we well know the Taliban were a cruel and oppressive regime which needed to be removed. Better yet, they should have never existed. But who has replaced them? The shaky interim government lead by Hamid Karzai is not receiving the support he need. (LINK -http://www.stuff.co.nz/inl/index/0,1008,1098961a12,FF.html) Will history repeat itself? Hopefully, the West won’t ignore Afghanistan again. The rebuilding of Afghanistan will take a long time. It is still unclear how this war has affected this process.
As far as America’s war aims go, none have been achieved. OBL is missing. He could be dead in a cave or in hiding. In either way, the US has no clearly defeated him. That said, it is hoped his image will be tarnished and his absent interpreted as cowardice. Unfortunately, OBL is very popular. That he stood defiant against the hated US will still give him great kudos. Al-Qaida are similarly vanished. Though plenty of prisoners languish in Camp X-Ray, the other cells world wide have a low profile. This provides the US with further reason to carry out their bogus and so called War on Terror.
One of the major effects of the War on Terror is the increasing loss of rights throughout the world. “Governments may be using the war against terror in Afghanistan as an excuse to lower their own standards on civil liberties, Human Rights Watch said. The group, which monitors human rights abuses around the world, issued the warning in its 2002 annual report. In central Europe and central Asia, it said: "In much the same way as the Cold War once distorted the human rights agenda, the prospects for tackling the region's persistent and newly emerging human rights problems seemed suddenly to dim in light of the competing and overriding anti-terrorism imperative".” “LINK - http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=114689). There are plenty of examples in the US & UK alone. In the same way the UK is loosely defining terrorism, so too the US. The US has updated <a href ="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4260129,00.html"target="_new">terrorism laws. Formerly terrorism was defined as "any use or threat of use of a firearm other than for mere personal monetary gain" (which thus excluded armed robbery). Now any weapon can be involved, which means a foreigner could be detained without trial for pulling out a penknife. Professor David Cole of the University of Georgetown Law Center said: "My concern is that the US has historically over-reacted in times of fear, indulging in guilt by association and giving government the power to act against individuals without procedures necessary to distinguish the guilty from the innocent."
Precedents include not only the long-discredited round-up of Japanese-born
Americans after Pearl Harbor and the anti-communist excesses of the McCarthy
era in the 1950s but the lesser-known Red Scare roundup of 1920. There is
also the response to the Oklahoma City bomb of 1995 which first widened the
definition of aiding terrorism so that, according to Prof Cole, anyone sending
a textbook to a West Bank school which turns out to be run by Hamas could
face a 10-year jail sentence. If apartheid still existed, supporters of the
African National Congress would have been equally vulnerable.
Most citizens are docile in their submission to authority, and neither Congress nor the public has any taste for rebellion at present. But the lesson of history is that the consequences of ill-considered legislation usually outlast the danger - however extreme - it is designed to combat. Once lost, these freedoms will be impossible to restore. (LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukresponse/story/0,11017,616853,00.html) The US & UK instituted regimes that remove the rights of anyone whom the security authorities merely suspect of aiding and abetting terrorism, a word both of them are prepared to define widely remember. “Ashcroft has already arrested 1,200 people, though that number is unofficial since their names are nowhere collectively available. Blunkett is pushing through parliament a power of detention without trial, though in Britain the list of detainees will probably not be secret. These ministers, secondly, share a similar attitude to critics. Ashcroft implied last week that critics were traitors to US interests. "Your tactics only aid terrorists," was his brutal verdict. Criticism, he told the Senate, "gives ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends". For his part, Blunkett charged anyone who declined to let his anti-terrorism bill go through with complicity in future terrorist attacks.”
All of this is taking place in an atmosphere of paranoia where UK & especially US citizens are constantly mobilized for action. The US populace has been kept taunt and afraid by constant warnings to “keep watch”. This mass paranoia born of a misguided patriotism has resulted in many rights abuses and injustices. On November 9, Muller and his colleague Andrew Mandell went to pick up stamps at the Chicago post office they regularly visit. They were paying with cash. "We needed 4,000 stamps for a mailing we were doing, and I asked for ones not with the American flag on them." "No one said anything to us for about twenty minutes, and then two cops came in and asked for our IDs. They asked if we had any outstanding warrants. They ran a check on us. They asked us why we had asked for stamps without American flags on them. Mandell got his stamps the next day, but he also was asked to meet with a federal postal inspector for more than a half-hour. (LINK - http://www.progressive.org/webex/wxmc120801.html). There are other, more serious, like Katie Sierra who was suspended from Sissonville high school in Charleston for founding an anarchy club, and wearing a T-shirt on which she had written "Against Bush, Against Bin Laden" and "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God bless America." There are others too, like AJ Brown, a 19-year-old woman studying at Durham Tech, North Carolina, answered the door to three security agents. They had been informed, they told her, that she was in possession of "anti-American material". Someone had seen a poster on her wall, campaigning against George Bush's use of the death penalty. They asked her whether she also possessed pro-Taliban propaganda.
On October 10, 22-year-old Neil Godfrey was banned from boarding a plane
traveling from Philadelphia to Phoenix because he was carrying a novel by
the anarchist writer Edward Abbey. At the beginning of November, Nancy Oden,
an anti-war activist on her way to a conference, was surrounded at Bangor
airport in Maine by soldiers with automatic weapons and forbidden to fly on
the grounds that she was a "security risk".
(LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukresponse/story/0,11017,620413,00.html)
This atmosphere of fear and repression and the laws that support them means that the US is suppressing its own freedom of speech. “There is not so much an absence of dissent as an almost total prohibition on questioning of the war. The few who do stick their heads above the parapet invariably belong to the radical left and are shouted down with unprecedented ferocity. Witness the treatment of Susan Sontag when she challenged the war's prosecution in an article for The New Yorker. It says something about the current state of affairs when a columnist on the conservative Washington Times worries about the absence of serious debate on the war and suggests that the American media may be giving George Bush a blank check for the creation of powerful central government. There exists instead a vituperative "jock" journalism that mocks concerns about human rights and acts as a cheerleader for the White House. America has been down this road before. The existential threat posed by the rebellion of the Confederacy in 1860 enabled Abraham Lincoln to suspend habeas corpus; the Second World War saw the internment of Japanese Americans, under the most liberal president in the nation's history; and the Cold War era unleashed the witch-hunts of McCarthyism. The First Amendment may guarantee freedom of speech, but it is no protection against an atmosphere that makes traitors of the independent-minded. As Thomas Jefferson was only too aware when the Bill of Rights was drafted, the will of the majority must be subjected to checks and balances if an elective dictatorship is to be avoided.” (LINK- http://argument.independent.co.uk/regular_columnists/fergal_keane/story.jsp?story=115249).
Riding on the back of this draconian laws are plans to make ID cards compulsory to access schools, hospitals & other public services in the UK. (LINK - http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,560736,00.html). Added to further invasions like face-recognition software coupled with massive CCTV presence, the possible selling of genetic information to private companies and the increasing trend towards voyeuristic entertainment like the puerile Big Brother, privacy & other civil rights in the UK are endangered as never before.
As a terrorist could be a peaceful protestor, and as the citizens of the West are coming under the heal of repressive laws, one can ask who is this war really against? The answer is probably that the real enemy of the State is the disobedient citizen who does not follow his government blindly into war and oppression. We - the disobedient and the critical - are the Terror.
Has America avenged itself? Many wars are waged for this reason. What revenge means for individual Americans will differ, but there has certainly been catharsis during the war. This is the most clear achievement of the WoT - death suffering & continued misery. But it this has come at the cost of the ordinary Afghans, “who had nothing whatever to do with, the atrocities, didn't elect the Taliban theocrats who ruled over them and had no say in the decision to give house room to Bin Laden and his friends. Now, for the first time, a systematic independent study has been carried out into civilian casualties in Afghanistan by Marc Herold, a US economics professor at the University of New Hampshire. Based on corroborated reports from aid agencies, the UN, eyewitnesses, TV stations, newspapers and news agencies around the world, Herold estimates that at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10. That is an average of 62 innocent deaths a day - and an even higher figure than the 3,234 now thought to have been killed in New York and Washington on September 11.” (LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,622000,00.html). It seems callous to measure the dead in NYC against the dead in Afghanistan. But isn’t war a matter of an eye for an eye? Evening the odds? Paying back in kind? What these figures fail to take into account are the Afghan dead who will die of starvation, disease and in the continuing civil disruption and violence to come (LINK- http://www.peoplesgeography.org/Impending%20starvation%20in%20Afghanistan.htm). They also fail to take into account the American dead who may well die from leukemia, cancer or the other poisons effects of the cloud of pollution that the WTC collapse kicked up (LINK http://www.immuneweb.org/911/news/sept01.html). And again, the mental distress to survivors of the disasters in both countries cannot be accounted for.
Finally, the WoT has managed to achieve an increase in Middle Eastern tension. (LINK - http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:TKeN1M7UcGcC:www.unc.edu/depts/pfn/pfnwar.pdf+War+on+Terror+increase+middle+eastern+tension&hl=en). As the WoT is still to be still raging, it is likely that there will be more terror, more fear and more death in the middle East, and perhaps also in the US and the rest of the West too. Once again, war is shown to be a vicious circle which creates more war and death. War is shown to not only oppress the supposed enemy, but also ones own nation. It is paradoxical to claim that one can wage war against terror. “War is terror, magnified a thousand times.”
Recently, the US has quietly extended its "war on terrorism" to
include weapons of mass destruction. One of the war's new aims, Mr Bush said
in his state of the union speech, is "to prevent regimes that sponsor
terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of
mass destruction".
(LINK - http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,648683,00.html).
This re-defining of the wars aims exposes the real agenda - American imperialism
disguised as pre-emptive defense against countries with which all options
have not yet been exhausted. “Take this war to its logical conclusion
and we'll soon be in the business of installing authoritarian regimes in all
the fragile countries around the world, and propping them up endlessly with
dollars and weaponry in order to preserve our liberty in the west.”
Part Two - Patriotism
Is makes sense to think about patriotism when so much has been said about it due to 911 & the WoT - and so much done for it too! There are three questions that to me seem to be the most important. 1. What is patriotism? 2. What is it to be British? (or American or Canadian or whatever - as I happen to live in the UK, I’ll address the former nationality) 3. What do you owe your country?
1. What is patriotism?
Patriotism must be differentiated from another, similar concept, nationalism. Patriotism is commonly defined as love or devotion to ones country. This often involves a willing, sometimes unquestioning service to ones country. Patriots must also be nationalists, but nationalists do not have to be patriots. Nationalism is the sense of belonging to a group united by common racial, linguistic and historical ties and is usually identified with a particular territory. One does not have to like this association though, however a patriot loves it. It is very important to them and integral to their sense of self and worth. Nationalism exalts the nation-state as the ideal form of political organization with an overriding claim on the loyalty of its citizens. This ideology of exaltation and loyalty involves several notions: that national identity ought be accorded recognition, that nations have rights (autonomy, self-determination, sovereignty) and members ought to defend them. The limits of these rights are fixed by the next nation (in this sense individual rights provide a sound analogy). Nationalism is not necessarily aggressive, but it certainly is when it develops into chauvinism. This doctrine demands no limits to national rights except those dictated by national interest. For national chauvinists, national identity is the overriding moral-political consideration (here egoism is analogous). Xenophobia is chauvinism exacerbated by the disliking of individuals or groups thought foreign. These groups may range in size and dislike in intensity. This social psychosis is commonly ethnic in form. As an ideology of identity, attaching political significance to the history and culture of an nation or people, nationalism and patriotism are modern phenomenon (though not without ancient parallels). Citizenship, religious faith, common language and defining historical experience are formative (or used by politicians/media to manipulate/exploit) for national identity and patriotic feeling.
Nationalism then is to be understood as an ideology of a particular national identity which belongs to a common majority culture within the nation-state. Here one should add the proviso that the above criteria are formative for nationalist forms of national identity. This is because it is necessary to distinguish national identity from nationalism. National identity cannot be found in a single culture, language or history within a nation. “National identity is always a shifting, unsettled complex of historical struggles and experiences that are cross-fertilized, produced, and translated through a variety of cultures. As such it is always open to interpretation and struggle.” This is due to the multinational and multicultural dynamic of modern nation-states. In this way identity is to be differentiated from ideologies that sometimes inform it. Most identities are somewhat fluid and changeable, whereas certain ideologies are not. Patriotism is the love of a national identity attached to a particular territory.
2. What is it to be British?
The national identity in question is the British one. If you love being British,
you are a patriot. But what is this national identity, what is it to be British?
“The government is being asked to rethink what it means to be British
by a new report examining the nation's ethnic mix. But everyone has their
own definition. The Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain wants
a formal declaration that the UK is a multi-cultural society. The chairman,
Lord Bhiku Parekh, says such a declaration would be "a statement of who
we are", a way of saying to ethnic minorities and the world that the
UK cherishes its diversity. But being British is many things to many people.
John Adams, of the Campaign for English Regions, says ethnicity should not
come into equation. "Someone who is British is someone who lives and
works in Britain. You have to be inclusive - if someone wants to commit to
Britain then we should welcome them."
Roger Scruton, the author of “England: An Elegy”, has said that the only group of Her Majesty's subjects who describe themselves as British are those who emigrated to the UK from the former colonies. They have done this, he said, as a means of having "no real nationality at all, certainly no nationality that would conflict with ethnic or religious loyalties forged far away and years before. "There are black or Bangladeshi Britons, but not black or Bangladeshi English." Unlike the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh, the English appear almost reluctant to identify themselves as such.
Yet definitions of the national character are typically less than flattering. In his 1941 essay England, Your England, George Orwell described the national character thus: "The English are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit, are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the world."
Ex-Conservative Party leader William Hague has said that to be British means being, "ambitious, sporty, fashion-conscious, multi-ethnic, brassy, self-confident and international." Earlier this year he spoke of Britain as a place where "hundreds of thousands go to the Notting Hill Carnival and the Eisteddfod, the Britain which watches MTV and Changing Rooms, and which is fascinated by Ricky and Bianca's ups and downs".
Obviously, the problem is that there is no clear definition of Britain anymore (if ever there were), never mind what being British is. So how can one love ones country ands being a part of it if it is so multiple and complex? This variety is due to several, complex issues.
Britain, like the US & Canada is a multinational state.
A nation is a historical community, institutionally complete, with territory
and a shared lang. & culture.
A multination is the coexistence of several nations within a state. This is
not a nation-state but a multination state with national minorities e.g. Britain
= Wales, England, Scotland, N. Ireland. Multinations require allegiance to
wider political community to survive. These are patriotism (the feeling of
state allegiance) and national ID (sense of membership to national group).
without these feelings, multinations tend to break up. The problem with multinations
is not just that they are more than one nation, but nations and multinations
are often more than one language and more than one culture.
Britain, like the US & Canada is a multicultural and polyethnic state
In politics & law, multiculturalism is an approach that stresses the existence of a plurality of cultures within any given society. It can be used to apply to almost all forms of cultural diversity - along lines of age, class, gender or sexuality. In practices though, the term mainly denotes cultural differentiation according to race, ethnicity & language. It is scientifically discredited as a biological term. It is a social rather than biological construct. Racial distinctions are relative not absolute, tying in with culture. Ethnicity is a concept of group association and can refer to a range of communal characteristics: lingual, ancestral, regional, religious etc forming basis of distinctive identity. In nations formed by immigration, ethnic characteristics were assumed to quickly disappear or remain as mere sentimentality. The US ‘Melting Pot’ ideology reassured the old European immigrants they wouldn’t be overwhelmed. Virtually all modern societies include substantial ethnic minorities.
Because of this complexity, multiculturalism recommends that minority cultures
be accorded the respect traditionally reserved only for dominant cultural
forms. A minority usually connotes real, threatened or perceived discrimination
of historically disadvantaged groups. Before the 19the century the minorities
were religious. With the growth of national consciousness, minorities acquired
significance in their demands for equality of treatment accorded to the majority.
Other minority cultures are new social movements: homosexuals, women, the
poor, the disabled - marginalized within their own culture or ethnic group.
This complexity of varying cultures intersected with different races, ethnicities,
nationalities and languages raises the problem of culture itself. “Culture”
is one of the most complex English words - partly due to long, intricate history
& its part as a central concept in several distinct & incompatible
intellectual disciplines. There are 3 broad categories of usage:
1. a general process of intellectual, spiritual & aesthetic development
2. a particular way of life for a people, period, group or groups.
3. works & practices of intellectual & artistic activity. Culture is music, literature, painting, theatre, sculpture, film sometimes also philosophy, scholarship & history. This is an applied sense of 1. , it is the work that sustains 1.
Within a discipline the conceptual usage has to be clarified. But the range & overlap of meanings in significant & useful. E.g. In archaeology & anthropology culture refers to material production. In history & cultural studies culture refers to signifying & symbolic systems. Obviously, there is a relation between material & symbolic.
Culture is so complex no one individual can never grasp its totality. Culture is thus fragmented, multi-faceted, plurivocal process of shifting mass of signs. within culture, meaning is constructed, the study of culture is more than examination of facts & institutions, but the discourses that shape them. Cultural concerns vary. In British the concern is with class & the 4 nations. In Australia, the US & Canada concern is with the place of Aboriginal peoples under white-domination.
Culture is often used in the place of nation, society or ethnicity. For example, the term Societal Culture is synonymous with nation (or people). In this sense culture provides members with a meaningful life: social, educational, religious, recreational, economic, public, private, territorially concentrated, shared lang. There are not just shared memories & values but institutions & practices. This is linked to modernization & its society-wide institutions & to the standardization of language & an end to medieval class stratification.
A common culture, like a multination, needs solidarity. There needs to be sense of common identity where people will make sacrifices for each other. Commonality seems to be a requirement for equality of opportunity. Though immigrants are no longer expected to assimilate entirely because of the commitment to multiculturalism is a shift in how immigrants integrate not whether they do. This can increase the sense of solidarity, but whether it does is always controversial (LINK - http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=118880). For a culture to survive it must be a societal culture (i.e., it must be national), otherwise it will be increasingly marginalized. If a cultural fragments, so will the nation (in the same way that if a multination fragments, there is usually conflict - witness separatist movements like the IRA in Northern Ireland). Patriotism is the glue which solidifies a culture together, maintaining the sense of national identity and the idea of a nation and people together.
To support the sense of patriotism, political rhetoric moves from the particular to the universal e.g. “The British People” obscuring difference. This also occurs in crisis e.g. “The Battle for Britain” & to a lesser extent other discourse like sport, advertising e.g. “Buy British Beef” & humor.
The reason why “culture” as a concept is so difficult to grasp is because it is not homogenous. Cultures are typically comprised of a mainstream which has subcultures sitting on the banks, or moving away as tributaries to the mainstream. No society has a uniform system of meanings, perceptions or artifacts common to all elements of its population. As noted above, the population has a wide variety of identities. The location of a social group in relation to power, authority, status, its own sense of identity, leads to the development of a sub-culture whose function is to maintain the security & identity of the group in question & to generate a set of meanings that enable it to tolerate the exigencies of its situation. This concept mustn’t be overextended to include all societal sub-groupings, or its meaning as an analytical tool is lost. The term is used primarily in summarizing visible & symbolic resistance to real or perceived subordination, high levels of role or status ambiguity etc. & this usage illuminates the ideological & material responses of diverse groups. as such, internet groups like Kult belong to a sub-culture identifying itself as counter-cultural. As culture is a difficult thing to pin down, how one is to be against it is also difficult to determine. Perhaps the problem lies in the mistaken notion that a culture is monolithic, but as we’ve seen this is not so. when a culture is recognized to be multiple, counter-culture is forced to specialize in a particular area. As such, counter-cultural groups are usually unpatriotic. They are against the feeling of a unified culture because they reject the general values of a nation. Sub-cultures however can be patriotic, many of them take patriotism to extremes and believe that they are the vanguard of the cultures values and identity (like xenophobic, racist and chauvinistic groups).
Speaking personally, my national identity is British because I was born here, I speak English and share lots of cultural baggage with other English. I am not a patriot as I feel no love for my country and neither am I a nationalist because I do not believe in the rights of my country (self-determination, sovereignty, autonomy), because I do not accept the definition of my country as it stands in relation to the EU & the rest of the world, nor do I accept the values of the mainstream culture of this nation and its government. A persons identity is the relatively stable & enduring sense a person has of her/himself. Elements include gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity and nationality. Some of these are more important than others, depending on who you are. These elements can be in conflict and informed by varying political and ethical concerns. As it stands, most of the elements of my identity are in conflict with my national identity, another reason why I do not love my nation. I believe in and want things many other Britons do not. However, my identity is constructed through experience & is linguistically coded. Its development results from culturally available resources & immediate social network - all of which are mainly, but not entirely, British. This is important as the outside influences in my life go towards my not having a patriotic feeling. I am also influenced by French, German, Slavic and American culture. In this sense I could consider myself a European, or even a Western, as opposed to a Briton. Again, this is another reason why I do not exclusively love my country. There is much in other countries that I value and appreciate, and much in British culture that I hate and abhor. Unfortunately, the rest of the world has had little influence on my experience and thought thus far in my life. Hopefully though, this will change. I’m likely to be even less patriotic as a result.
As it stands, patriotism seems to be evidence of a parochial mind-set. It is the attitude of someone who has not seen much of other countries, or who has dismissed other cultures as of little value. Patriotism is important to governments because it keeps their populations unified and easier to direct. If it is patriotic, a population will help each other (from a sense of commonality) and will work to defend a countries interests (not matter what they maybe). In short, patriotism helps a government mobilize a people for conflict, to direct opinion and to ensure no internal disputes. Britain has a problem with patriotism at them moment, probably why it is so anxious about the immigrant situation and why it is keeping a close eye (closer than any other Western country) on its citizens. America however, does not have a problem with patriotism, as illustrated by the evidence above. Patriotism is conformity on a national scale. There is nothing wrong with liking or agreeing with elements of your national culture. But to love it blindly and without criticism is dangerous.
What do you owe your country?
Another form of this question could be “should you be patriotic?” or “what are your national duties?” This final question I’d like to leave open for discussion. I have only just begun to think on this issue. As it stands, the Western countries allow a certain amount of expression, a certain amount of freedom (always in flux). They give a certain amount of care and provide certain services. They also make certain decisions on your behalf, take certain things and impose certain authorities over you. Not everything they do will you agree or disagree with. My own, brief answer to this question would be “it is up to the individual to decide for her/himself.” Perhaps the best analogy to draw examples from would be to ask what one owed ones parents? It would also be necessary to consider how an individual interacts with society at large.
Walpurgis
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