Are We Not All Human Underneath?

The events of the past week have reignited the debates on immigration and racism whose embers have been glowing for some time.  The brutal murder of a British soldier in Woolwich was purportedly revenge for the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In response to the attack, the English Defence League sent out a rallying cry to its members, galvanising them into organising anti-Islamic demonstrations across the country.  Viewed from some angles, the Woolwich murder and the subsequent EDL protests might suggest that white westerners and Muslims are further than ever from understanding one another, masking the more hopeful reality that extremists on all sides represent only a minority opinion.  Today’s Britain is a truly multicultural society, yet tensions between the myriad cultures are omnipresent.  Thirty-five years after Edward Said’s seminal work was first published, is it pertinent to ask whether Orientalism is alive and well in 21^st century Britain?

The central tenet of Said’s Orientalism was that Western discourse about the East (the Orient) was, and always had been, inherently prejudiced and based on a false assumptions.  Said defined ‘Orientalism’ as a “Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient”, describing the Orient as an almost “European invention…a place of romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences” (Said, Orientalism, (Penguin, 1978), p.1-3).  Said argued that a European or American studying the Orient could not escape the fact that “he comes up against the Orient as a European or American first, as an individual second” (p.11).  In the third and final chapter of Orientalism, “Orientalism Now”, Said asserts that “human societies, at least the more advanced cultures, have rarely offered the individual anything but imperialism, racism, and ethnocentrism for dealing with ‘other’ cultures” (p.204).

Discussion of Orientalism resurfaced in 2011, with the arrival of the Arab Spring.  It appeared that, contrary to the expectations of the western experts, the people of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya were taking their future into their own hands. The results have been uncertain, chaotic and far from perfect – everything that is to be expected of emerging democracies.  The recent high turnout for the elections in Pakistan, including large numbers of women, despite threats and violence by the Taliban, should be a lesson for us in the West not to impose our own values on other countries, nor to assume them incapable of shaping their own civil society.  Pakistan’s fledgling democracy is being built by Pakistani people.

Said touches on the dangers of “self-congratulation” when representing your own and “hostility and aggression” when representing another (p.325).  Immanuel Kant believed that “partiality, the tendency to make exceptions on one’s own behalf or one’s own case” was “the central human weakness” from which all others flowed, and that this could be applied to nations too (quoted in Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), p.2).  Human beings also appear to have a predilection for defining themselves as different to the ‘other’.  Indeed, it has been argued that a sense of British identity was forged following the Act of Union, joining Scotland with England and Wales, in 1707 on the basis of being 'Not French' (Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico, 1992).  These concepts – warped love of one’s own nation and seeing oneself in contrast to the other – sit at the heart of the EDL’s twisted ideology.  The same can be said of Islamic extremists.  And our response, in no uncertain terms, should be to reject Said’s assumption that we will never truly understand one another.

Despite being an atheist, I can appreciate the values enshrined in Martin Luther King’s interpretation of Jesus’ command to love your enemy.  “It is love that will save our world and our civilization," King said; "love even for enemies” (Montgomery, Alabama, 17 Nov 1957).  King went on to add in a speech on Christmas Day, 1957: “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The thirty articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights unequivocally define a common humanity, recognising that “the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”  There are many different ways to see the world, but none of them excuse the mistreatment of others; subjugating women, persecuting minorities, or resorting to violence and murder.  Education has a role to play in teaching us about other cultures, in bringing the people of the world together, and in combatting Orientalism in all its guises.  Western capitalist democracy, with all its overindulgences, is certainly not the only way, nor indeed is it the best way.  There are many things we can learn from the other – from all others – which will enrich our world views, but there are other lessons, of cruelty and oppression, that we should abandon by the wayside on humanity’s journey toward enlightenment.  The values we share are far greater than those on which we disagree.  Universal tolerance will be humankind’s greatest triumph over extremists of all shapes and sizes.  In 2013, this goal is a distant dream, but the more people believe it to be achievable, and refuse to fall prey to the call to arms, the sooner we will accomplish it.

One nation...in isolation?

Thursday’s local election results have an eerily familiar ring to them.  An electorate dissatisfied with the establishment, in the throes of an economic crisis, looking for someone to blame, votes for the party which claims to represent the frustrations of the average citizen.  In the 1930s, when Germans were pushing their life savings around in wheelbarrows just to buy a loaf of bread, a vote for the National Socialists seemed like the only way to make a change.

Outsiders make easy targets for election campaigns.  Why can’t you get a job?  Because the foreigners are taking them.  Why are your benefits being cut?  Because the government is handing out houses and healthcare to immigrants.  What’s the solution?  Send them back and cut loose from the control of the European Union and the floods of workshy scroungers that come with our membership.

It’s an argument that goes down well with people frustrated by a seemingly endless recession perpetuated by a remote and duplicitous political elite.  In taking an average of 25% of the votes in the seats in which it stood, UKIP registered itself as a serious force on the British political landscape, sending a clear message to the old guard.  A vote for UKIP was a protest vote – but a dangerous one.  As purveyors of “I’m not racist, but…” ideology, UKIP’s leadership know exactly how to target the susceptible.  Though not explicitly racist, political parties which advocate intolerance as a solution to economic difficulties, can conduct a creeping and far more worrying advance into the national psyche.

UKIP, by putting the United Kingdom in its party name, plays on misplaced notions of patriotism.  Patriotism in itself is not necessarily a negative concept, but when it spills over into nationalism, it becomes a dangerous force.  Albert Einstein called nationalism “an infantile disease.”  What are nations, after all, but arbitrary lines drawn on maps?  Imagined communities, as Benedict Anderson once argued, created by man as a method of controlling others.

Immigration, sometimes on mass, sometimes in small groups, has taken place voluntarily (and not so voluntarily) throughout history.  Immigrant communities have brought their own cultures, mixed them with local customs, and created unique new traditions.  They have become part of the landscape, absorbed into the national character, no longer questioned.  Things change.  Populations move.  Communities shift and adapt around them.

Peering out from behind Rawls’ ‘Veil of Ignorance’, one might ask why anyone should be denied the right to settle where they choose.  After all, it is generally acknowledged that a person should be free to move wherever they choose within their own country.  Joseph Carens, in making his influential case for open borders that would have Nigel Farrage choking on his celebratory pint, argues that this should be applied on a global level; after all,  “whether one is a citizen of a rich nation or a poor one, whether one is already a citizen of a particular state or an alien who wishes to become a citizen” is just as morally arbitrary as your sex, race or class (Joseph H. Carens, ‘Aliens and Citizens: The Case for Open Borders’, Review of Politics,  Vol.49, (1987), p.256).

Free movement across borders would not necessarily signify the erosion of national character.  I like to use football to support this theory.  I like football.  I support West Ham United.  I do not live in West Ham, and never have done.  I support West Ham because my Dad does.  He’s never lived in West Ham either.  He supports West Ham because his father did.  My joy at West Ham’s successes and despair at their defeats is not diminished by my distance from the East End of London; nor is it detrimentally affected by the presence of rival team supporters living in the area.  Over a hundred years since the team was formed, the players still play in claret and blue and the supporters will be forever blowing bubbles.  Why can this principle not be applied at the global level?

Membership of the European Union is not the poisonous domination of our laws and national freedom that UKIP and many Tory backbenchers would have us believe.  In this day and age we need greater integration, not isolation.  Isolationism, as a foreign policy strategy, hasn’t worked all that well in the past, as the US learnt in catastrophic manner on 7 December 1941.  As Signor Ferrari asks in Casablanca, Hollywood’s most iconic critique of the White House’s isolationist policies, “My dear Rick, when will you realize that in this world today isolationism is no longer a practical policy?”

This is true more than ever.  In an increasingly globalised world, to withdraw from the European Union would be a foolish move.  Eric Hobsbawm warned that “nothing stimulates nationalism on both sides as much as international conflict” (Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (CUP, 1991), p.91).  At the most pragmatic level, greater integration prevents wars.  Nations are less likely to declare war on nations with which they are politically and, most importantly, financially entangled.  The EU is not perfect; it’s a work in progress.  But human history is, despite how it might appear, on an upward trajectory.  Less than 70 years ago the nations of Europe were at war with one another.  The key to maintaining the upward trajectory is to move towards greater openness and integration.

The Conservative Party will undoubtedly run to the right on immigration and the EU to win back its supporters from UKIP.  Labour, wishing to avoid being seen as soft on immigration, will toughen its stance too.  The Westminster clique would do better to come down from on high, stop fiddling their expenses and granting privileges to the highest bidder, and learn how real people live.  Leading by example and preaching a little tolerance would be a good start.  We can only hope that calmer heads, and perhaps, cynically, traditional British apathy, will prevail.