The Patriots

Patriotism’s gotta go. Of all the –isms it is one of the least contested, so pervasive that it escapes criticism, (indeed, punishes criticism wherever it meets it.) And yet it is one of the deadliest modes of thought, closest in spirit to racism. Both patriotism and racism design a group of people as superior and defendable, (one based on race, the other in geography.) Racism has long been exposed as a virulent ideology, but one has to remember this wasn’t always so, and that a defender of the race was once a hero. Might not a patriot, then, years from one, be exposed the way racists are now exposed? Might not patriotism be exposed as the xenophobia it really is?

Let me propose this: you’re in a foreign land, perhaps you’re a Yankee doing a tour of Italy, and a certain cultural and geographical isolation will cause to latch on to a Southerner on the same tourist group. Great! A friendship! But this positive veil cannot obscure the fact that anything that unites two or more people is also potentially dividing them from the rest. The friendship between those two American tourists is an act of hostility towards the whole of Italy, because they are implicitly saying that while Italy may have fine ruins, they’re better appreciated from an American perspective.

A pattern of cultural superiority, (or at least cultural preferability) is created. One might say that the friendship between those two American tourists is harmless, (they don’t hate Italians, they just prefer being with someone with a shared cultural background). But isn’t this how racism was conducted? Few white slave owners actively hated their slaves; instead most felt a paternal sort of love. Does this not make the separation between black and white as abhorrent as the separation between, say, American and Italian? (I use Italians to follow our little touring metaphor: more obvious examples are plentiful.)

It’s interesting that while extreme religiosity or differing economic systems are often blamed for war, it is patriotism, geographical combat, that most often leads to armed conflict and death. It kills. Growing up in a Communist country we were made to memorize (without irony) a famous speech from a 19th century verse play by the Cuban national poet, Jose Marti. The quote goes like this:

El amor madre a la patria
No es el amor ridículo a la tierra,
Ni a la hierba que pisan nuestras plantas;
Es el odio invencible a quien la oprime,
Es el rencor eterno a quien la ataca...

Roughly translated (by me) it reads:

The love, mother, for a country
Is not the ridiculous love for the land,
Of for the grass on which we step;
It is invincible hatred to those who oppress it,
It is eternal wrath towards those who attack it.

The Communist teachers meant it as a rousing speech to arms, (this is what patriotism was built to do: rouse to arms). But it perhaps unintentionally exposes the truth: patriotism isn’t about love, it’s about hatred. In an age in which we must accept either global cooperation or destruction, patriotism is a threat to all. It will be shown to be parochial close-mindedness at best, and deadly racism at worst.