Morgan Marietta’s and Will Wilkinson’s replies to my essay on nationalism could hardly be more different. The differences bear not only on how we account for Donald Trump’s surprising political success, but on the purposes and procedures of social science.
Like my essay, Marietta’s extends the principle of interpretive charity to Trump supporters. In my view, interpretive charity should be the first principle of social science. If anything, however, I think that Marietta takes interpretive charity a bit too far by endorsing nationalist sentiments as morally legitimate. It’s true that if we use interpretive charity to try to understand ideas with which we disagree, we might become proponents of those ideas. Indeed, one of the advantages of interpretive charity is that it can change our minds. Conversely, if a scholar of nationalism, for example, fails to agree with the ideas of nationalists, it seems at least possible that this is because he has failed to understand those ideas. If I really comprehended why you believe X, I would have had to assemble all the considerations that led you to believe X. But, having assembled those considerations, shouldn’t I, too, believe X?
Not necessarily. I may know of counter-arguments against X that you don’t know about, and these may lead me to disagree with X even when I completely understand your reasons for agreeing with it.
I think this is the case with nationalist beliefs. One can be fully charitable toward these beliefs even while noticing that they tend to be inculcated very early, among children, through symbols (such as the national flag) and biased information samples (such as the media’s massive overweighting of attention to the citizens of one’s own country rather than people who live elsewhere). By the time someone is capable of thinking critically about her own nationalist assumptions, she may find it hard even to identify them—and unnecessary, too, since everyone around her will tend to take the same assumptions for granted.
Thus, while I argued, in the spirit of interpretive charity, that nationalism is distinct from xenophobia, I also maintained, and continue to maintain, that nationalism is morally indefensible: most nationalists have simply failed to think about the arbitrariness of the group loyalties that were pre-rationally constructed for them long ago.
Interpretive charity is not Wilkinson’s project. He argues that a significant proportion of Trump supporters are xenophobes beholden to an irrational hostility to foreigners. I am suspicious of such explanations because they tend to demonize “the other”—in Wilkinson’s case, Trump supporters—which is exactly what Wilkinson accuses Trump supporters of doing (when it comes to foreigners). Demonization amounts to a confession that one has failed to understand the other on his or her own terms. This usually means that social science has run aground. Not always, though. It’s possible, in a given case, that people’s behavior or their ideas are so irrational that they can be explained only by appealing to influences of which they are unaware and which they would deny if they were asked about them. In such cases, we may need “deep” psychological theories to explain “the other.” Like the authoritarian-personality theory of Trump’s support, which I discussed in my last post, the xenophobia theory posits a subterranean force that has erupted in the form of Trumpism. This isn’t inherently unbelievable, but the evidence for it is weak; there is powerful evidence against it; and there is an interpretively charitable alternative, nationalism (as opposed to xenophobia), for which the evidence is compelling. The nationalism theory can explain Trumpism in terms that its own adherents would probably accept as accurate. Another advantage of this theory is that it shows how Trump’s support is congruent with the nationalist presuppositions of everyday politics. The xenophobia theory is not only weak in evidentiary terms, but it allows us to conveniently locate Trumpism far away from “liberal” traditions, where it can be vilified without threatening the status quo.
Trump as Deep Nationalist
Marietta’s essay begins by underscoring an important and neglected fact: that Trump constantly and unreflectively treats the interests of “America” as the supreme good. Marietta is willing to call the basis of these appeals an ideology: “deep nationalism.” For, in addition to being pre-rational, Trump’s nationalism seems to be the prism through which he views nearly every policy issue—at least those issues in which he takes an interest. The four most important of these are immigration, U.S. relationships with foreign allies, military policy, and international trade. All one need do is listen to what Trump says, as Marietta has done, to discover a connective ideological thread among these issues: nationalism. At the same time, Trump’s deep nationalism explains his lack of interest in a host of policy issues that preoccupy conservative and liberal ideologues, such as Obamacare, the minimum wage, regulatory policy, global warming, income inequality, tax rates, etc., ad infinitum. These latter issues do not easily lend themselves to “America-first” analyses, and thus are not clarified by the nationalist lens through which Trump (and, both Marietta and I suggest, many of his supporters) view politics.
Marietta makes an excellent point. Nationalism does seem to function for Trump in an ideological manner, at least in the sense in which political scientists tend to use this term: as a master heuristic that orients the ideologue politically and organizes most or all of her political ideas. However, at the risk of quibbling, I think Marietta dilutes the power of this analysis of deep nationalism by describing it not only as an ideology but also as a branch of conservatism, as a symbol, as an identity, and as a value. Let me say a few things about each.
Trump and Conservatism
Marietta’s conception of conservatism strikes me as too schematic. I know many conservatives who do not see society as fundamentally fragile and in need of social glue, and many who do not care about anything like “ordered liberty” or a golden mean between freedom and authority. Marietta’s description fits certain conservatives, such as Straussians, but they are a tiny band of intellectuals without any discernible popular influence. At the mass level, standard journalistic depictions of three main groups of conservatives—Tea Partiers (small government/constitutional conservatives), cultural conservatives, and foreign-policy conservatives—do not seem to be in need of updating, at least not yet.
What Trump’s surprising popularity does show, I think, is that nationalism unites many conservatives of all three types—along with many non-conservatives, too. The transcendent appeal of nationalism makes considerable intuitive sense, as nationalism is more elemental than the ideologies that attract well-educated and politically literate adherents. It’s so basic that small children can understand it. Indeed, no matter how little you know about politics, it is likely that you were indoctrinated with nationalism when you were a small child. Trump, indoctrinated in the same way, and having learned little else about government, policy, or history in the meantime, is thus the ideal exponent of the most simplistic possible political ideology: that of “America first.”
This ideology offers its adherents a key to understanding the otherwise-confusing world of politics even if they lack much interest in or knowledge of it. The key is to ask oneself whether a politician intends to put the interests of “Americans” before those of “foreigners.” The question of whether the mere intent to help Americans will accomplish the objective (let alone the question of whether Americans deserve priority over non-Americans) goes unasked. This immensely simplifies what would otherwise be a complex world of public policy: the world of policy debate. In policy debate, what is at issue is usually whether a given proposal that sounds as if it will serve the interests of Americans (for example) will actually do so. The answer is rarely as straightforward as deep nationalists believe. But this is part of the appeal of deep nationalism, which has little to do, as far as I can tell, with conservatism.
Nationalism and Symbolism
Part of the way nationalism gets inculcated is through the apotheosis of symbols such as the American flag. These symbols certainly acquire emotional resonance, and this emotional resonance may help to explain why people turn “naturally” to their nationality when they think about politics (especially insofar as they know relatively little about it). So a full analysis of the cognitive role of nationalism might very well need to explore the emotional power of nationalist symbols. Such an investigation would have to go beyond both hyper-rationalist (rational-choice- inspired) theories of political heuristics and the irrationalist, psychological understandings of politics that I have been trying to challenge in my ongoing series of essays, where I have pushed back against accounts of Trump voters as xenophobes and authoritarians.
For this very reason, however, it is important to spell out carefully how the emotional or a-rational appeal of nationalism is connected to its cognitive function. Until we succeed in doing that, I worry about the confusion that might be created if we use the language of “symbolism” to describe nationalism, since this language currently connotes the groundlessly emotional. My position is that nationalism is illogical, but that the lapse in logic is not apparent to people who have been indoctrinated with nationalist presuppositions. It would be unfair—uncharitable—to say that they are irrationally clinging to a viewpoint that (in some sense) they know is wrong. But to say that nationalism is symbolic may suggest that it is merely an empty screen onto which people project their irrational desires. I don’t think Marietta is saying that, but it’s a connotation of calling nationalism “symbolic” that I think it’s best to avoid.
Nationalism and Identity
The same worry colors my reaction to using the language of “identity” to describe nationalism. There’s no denying that nationality is probably the central “identity” of most people in the modern world—at least in the bare sense that, if asked “who they are,” they are likely to answer “an American,” “a Mexican,” etc. Yet, without doubting the existence of national identities (in people’s heads), I wonder how important “identities” are to people who have not been influenced by academic discussion, where identity politics has been extremely important for several decades.
National identity can be very important in helping people to organize their thoughts about politics. Yet thinking about politics isn’t all that important to most people. So we may mischaracterize the situation if we project onto such people an obsession with their national identity. Similarly, identity itself may not be important to most people. Non-intellectuals’ answer to the question of “who I am”—namely, that I am the person behind my eyeballs—may feel so unproblematic that the very question of identity is a non-issue for them. The language of “identity” may inappropriately import the preoccupations of academics into our understanding of mass politics.
Nationalism and Values
Unquestionably the ideology of nationalism takes certain values for granted, but I don’t see the sense in calling nationalism a value, as Marietta does. Nationalism—the ideology—is not itself valued by nationalists (except perhaps by those who derive so much meaning and purpose from it that they love it for its own sake—members of the alt-right, for example). Nor, at least in the American context, does it seem right to say that “the nation” is valued, as such, by nationalists. There is no tradition of extolling “the American nation” as if it were an end in itself. But that’s what I take a value to be: an end in itself.
Nationalism and Egalitarianism
Even more important than Liah Greenfeld’s distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism, cited by Marietta, may be her observation, in Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, that nationalism is inherently egalitarian—within the borders of a given nation-state. Thus, the end in itself that is presupposed by nationalism is the equal worth of the lives of one’s conationals. In this view, rather than being a value, nationalism is premised on a value: the equal worth of one’s fellow citizens. (The causality may run from the establishment of a nation-state to the presumption of equality among its citizens, but this is probably because the idea of nationality implicitly contains the presumption of equality.)
Since I share Greenfeld’s view, I resist Marietta’s suggestion that nationalism embodies a value that competes with egalitarianism. It seems to me that nationalism is a form of egalitarianism; and that it is, in fact, the form that egalitarianism almost always takes in the modern world.
However, nationalist egalitarianism is self-contradictory in limiting itself to equality among the human beings who happen to live within historically arbitrary national borders, while treating the lives of those outside those borders as if they have no worth. This is what makes nationalism illogical. Its tacit definition of who should be treated equally is arbitrary.
Wilkinson’s reply illustrates the illogic. So let me analyze his response before turning, at the end, to Marietta’s qualms about the psychological practicability of cosmopolitanism.
The Nationalist Scapegoat, Xenophobia
Wilkinson is an egalitarian and extols the egalitarianism that nationalism makes possible within the borders of a nation-state. Yet, according to nationalism, equality stops at those (arbitrary) borders. Viewed from outside of those borders, nationalism is inescapably inegalitarian.
Wilkinson is aware of this problem but does not really address it. Instead, he presses hard on the distinction between nationalism and xenophobia, with xenophobia taking the rap for inegalitarianism. But even if xenophobia did not exist, nationalism would remain inegalitarian from the perspective of those outside a given nation-state’s borders.
Thus, non-xenophobic nationalism can easily justify the immigration restrictions that Wilkinson opposes, as well as the trade restrictions and the foreign-policy isolationism that Trump advocates (or used to advocate, before being enlightened about its adverse consequences by his generals). Such policies can be seen—indeed, are seen, every day, in the normal state of our political discourse—as serving the interests of one’s fellow citizens, not as punitive exercises directed at despised outsiders. This is the political discourse that I am trying to get us to examine more critically. Insisting that Trump is set apart from this discourse, because instead of nationalism he appeals to xenophobia, inadvertently blocks an examination of the discourse itself. It entrenches the complacency with which nationalism—“good,” non-xenophobic nationalism—is typically viewed by contrasting it against evil, xenophobic nationalism. However, both types of nationalism can produce the same policies—the very ones Wilkinson opposes.
How Non-Xenophobic Nationalism Works
A nice example of the inegalitarian logic of non-xenophobic nationalism is contained in Wilkinson’s odd paean to the GDP growth that could be unleashed by open borders. It almost reads as if Wilkinson thinks that open borders are justified by the contribution of migrant laborers to the stock of global wealth. (There’s gold in them thar migrants—trillions and trillions of dollars of it!) But what if migrants contributed little to GDP? What if they reduced it? By Rawlsian standards at least, their contribution to GDP does not matter. What matters is that migrants, frequently among the least advantaged people in the world, would be helped by open borders. I think Wilkinson means to say that, because he asserts that most of the GDP gains would go to the poor. It is that fact, not than the “trillion-dollar bills” left on the sidewalk by closed borders, that matters.
Why, then, do developed countries block the world’s least advantaged from migration?
Wilkinson points out that closed borders are “constantly re-affirmed” by the democratic polities of the West. But what exactly are “the political dynamics of the liberal-democratic institutions” that account for this?
The answer, I believe, is nationalism, which is taken for granted in the politics of Western countries (and all other countries). From a nationalist perspective, the welfare of one’s conationals is what matters; the welfare of “foreigners” does not. To sustain the high wages of one’s conationals, then, closed borders, tariffs on manufactured goods, and trade wars are justified—not because nationalists want to hurt workers or would-be workers in other countries, but because they want to help their fellow citizens at home.
Foreign workers, as such, are invisible in the political discourse of the nationalist status quo. The policies to which Wilkinson objects are of long standing; Trump did not implement them. These policies display a callous indifference to foreigners (nationalism) but not hostility toward them (xenophobia). The fact that closed borders hurt potential immigrants is never praised, as it surely would be if substantial numbers of voters supported closed borders out of xenophobia. The fact that closed borders hurt “foreigners” simply goes unnoticed—just as we would expect if
from nicholemhearn digest https://niskanencenter.org/blog/nationalism-ethnocentrism-redux/
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