Repost of "On Appeals to Orwell"

About three years ago, I did a series of posts under the title "On Appeals to Orwell," based in part on what I thought was a serious -- and likely deliberate -- misapprehension of Orwell's thoughts and politics among a cadre of Libertarians and their fellow travelers who had adopted him as One of Their Own. The triggering issue was what I saw as the misuse of the term "tribalism" to refer to "mindless loyalty" which was being justified by reference to Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism" -- which never mentions tribalism, and in my view is not meant in any way to confuse tribalism with nationalism.

However, there is much more to Orwell and his perspectives as expressed in his writing, including his dismay at the march of totalitarian nationalism in his lifetime, including the many elements of it found in supposed western democracies. He was anti-imperial, anti-totalitarian, anti-surveillance, and anti-conformity. Yet he was, he said, politically a Democratic Socialist, far from the Libertarian Hero he's been made out to be.

He came to his highly negative views of totalitarianism and nationalism and their march throughout the western world, including Britain, from his grim personal experience in British Imperial Service in Burmah, and as a propagandist with the BBC during World War II, among many other experiences in his life.

I initially wrote this series of posts in response to what I saw as the misuse of his legacy as a means to promote ideas and an ideology that were quite contrary to his point of view. But looking over them again, I see they may have some utility again as we realize just how comprehensive the American -- and by extension, global -- surveillance state has become, something we might say Orwell was in on the ground floor of developing and implementing, and which he came to reject utterly.

So. Here are links to the series. Make of them what you will. I am quite fond of the early BBC kinescope of "1984" that is embedded in one of them!

On Appeals to Orwell, June 26, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- furthermore, June 28, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- furthermore II, June 28, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- UpSide Down, InSide Out, Round and Round, June 29, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- Attacking the Weak, Flattering the Strong and Evaluating Every Contact on the Basis of Advancement, June 30, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- The -Isms on the Home Stretch July 1, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- The Wrap Up and a New Day Dawning July 1, 2010

Nationalism vs Tribalism vis-à-vis Iraq

I've taken some commentators apart over their ignorant and arrogant misuse of "tribalism" to describe what is really Nationalism. It's a fairly easy task given that one of the justifications they use for their mischaracterization of tribalism is George Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism." Orwell doesn't mention "tribalism" but he describes Nationalism in starkly specific detail, pointing out that many, many "isms" of the modern era are all versions of Nationalism. That is apparently a difficult concept for some folks to grasp. They seem to need to believe that nationalism and tribalism are the same thing. They're not.

The difference is that of scale, most obviously. But there is also the difference between "mindlessness" and "mindfulness." Tribalists are for the most part "mindful" of their loyalties and their sense of place and purpose. It's really quite remarkable. Nationalists, on the other hand, are deliberately made "mindless." De-tribalization is a necessary step in the process of creating a Nationalist enterprise because it is necessary to replace the mindfulness of the tribe with the mindlessness of the Nation.

I'm reminded of all this again because of the hooey over the "End of Combat Operations" in Iraq, once again, supposedly, solidifying the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iraq as an Independent Nation.

Well. Hold on. This "sovereignty" thing has been something of a bête noire with regards to Iraq throughout the last 20 years or so, since the end of Combat Operations in the first Gulf War. Shortly thereafter, Northern Iraqi Kurdistan was calved off as an Autonomous Region under an American protectorate. A "no fly zone" was established over the southern and largely Shia part of Iraq which was lethally enforced by American military might. At that point, Iraq as a "sovereign nation" ceased to exist in any sensible form.

But then, as a Nation, Iraq was created by Winston Churchill drawing some lines on a map of Mesopotamia in the British Colonial Office after WWI and the break up of the Ottoman Empire.

Mesopotamia was never a Nation. It is not in any viable sense a Nation now. There is no national government to speak of, and despite all the stresses and strains they have been under during the Saddamist years and under the Occupation, city-states, tribes and tribalism endure as the fundamental units of society and such governance as there is.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Much as Tito in Yugoslavia tried to form a Nation out of the disparate afterthoughts of Ottoman and Austrian Empires in Europe, Saddam tried to make Iraq into a Nation in Mesopotamia. Both temporarily succeeded, ultimately failed. Such failure was almost foregone.

In the Former Yugoslavia, after an intense period of domestic upheaval and civil war -- and international intervention -- a series of independent states were established based on essentially ethnic and to some extent tribal lines. Czechoslovakia was broken up, too. The smaller states that have taken the place of these former Nations are more comprehensible and appropriate to the will and interests of their citizens, whereas the more or less artificial amalgamations of ethnic, religious, and tribal affiliations that had been assembled into Nation-States by the Great Powers after World Wars I & II never really made any local sense.

So it is in Iraq.

It seems that Iraq has been trying to come apart into its constituent parts since the invasion, but the occupiers, not knowing what to do, fought shadows and demons, while the peoples of Iraq attempted to sort out a future for themselves -- and were thwarted at every turn.

Autonomous Kurdistan was the exception to the rule of constant interference with and destruction of everything the Iraqis tried to do to govern themselves. They were trying to do it almost from the moment Saddam was overthrown, and every step they took toward their own forms of self-government was thwarted, often quite brutally.

They were to submit, first, to the occupation forces, subsequently to the puppet regime installed by the occupiers, thence, they were to be subjected to a "managed democracy" that had some of the forms of democratic institutions but was in essence a sham.

What the Iraqis have been saying to the occupiers is that they are capable of governing themselves. They've been doing it for thousands of years, even under the many harsh (and/or benign) occupations of the past. They don't have to have a strong central government, they don't even need the trappings of Nationalism. Tribal structure is still very strong. And from their tribal base, Iraqis can assemble a functioning self-government. They know how to do it.

If only they were left alone.

The struggle comes when one group tries to oppress another or steal their means of living or survival.

Some months back, most of the ministries in Baghdad were blown up -- apparently by the Insurgency (that amorphous assembly of resisters.) More than likely the deed was done -- as so many similar instances in Baghdad and elsewhere have been done -- by Sunni resisters who hold a grudge and a grievance against the ruling Shia majority. The Sunnis largely stopped their resistance during the relatively brief period of the so-called Surge when they were being paid by the Americans not to fight. When those payments stopped, the resistance resumed with great violence and bloodshed.

What seems clear is that the Sunni Arabs are intent on making Iraq ungovernable -- unless their demands are met. They were the ruling minority under Saddam, and before that under the British and before that under the Ottomans. They seem willing to give up rule so long as they receive fair compensation on negotiated terms. Which the ruling Shia majority won't countenance. In fact, the ministries were blown up soon after the so-called Government in Baghdad decided not to resume payments to the Sunnis. It was obvious the one led to the other.

This whole No-Negotiation regime was part and parcel of the early stages of the occupation, and it was soon obvious where that path was leading. It was years into the occupation before it dawned on the real rulers of Iraq -- the military -- that it was a simple matter to stop the insurgency, something they might have realized the day they took over the Republican Palace.

But their neo-con ideology, utopianism, and deep contempt for "Sand Niggers" forbade it.

Tribalism is actually the solution to the Nationalist problem in Iraq.

But how many more years must go by before that is figured out?

On Appeals to Orwell -- Attacking the Weak, Flattering the Strong and Evaluating Every Contact on the Basis of Advancement

In "Why I Write" (1946), George Orwell put together a remarkably honest dictum on the topic of his ongoing literary activities.

Writers, after all, have plenty of motivations -- much like actors and circus clowns -- with the upshot, for many, that they want to Do Good. Somehow. And writing is the way they have found to do it.

Let's let Orwell speak for himself:

[After a lengthy and humorous description of his background and how he came to writing, he states his personal (and generalized) motivations...]

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all — and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

(ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

(iii) Historical impulse. Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

(iv) Political purpose. — Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It's hard to argue with Orwell on those four broad motivational points; every writer I've known has shared them to one degree or another, and these motivations are shared by many other professionals as well. I mention actors and circus clowns in part because of my own long association with such people through the Show Business (one of my previous careers), and by and large, they share many of the same motivations as writers and so many others who seek to have some kind of impact on people.

Egoism is the main point. Orwell, to his everlasting credit, is fully aware of his own egoism in becoming a writer. Makes no bones about it. His insight that the mass of humanity is not particularly egocentric, selfish or self-obsessed is interesting. From the indications of his writing in this essay and other works, he came to this insight through his contacts with the lower classes of Britain, the servile masses of Burma, and his experiences in Europe between the Wars -- particularly during the Spanish Civil War. "They" -- the unselfish masses -- are not like "us:" The egoists. The self-obsessed. The Writers.

Further to his credit, Orwell does not judge the unselfish mass of humanity to be lesser than himself and his kind. For his time and his culture, that is amazing.

But in other works, such as "Notes on Nationalism," he proposes that the British intelligentsia -- of which he is of course a part, though he insisted on his own independence of mind -- is largely captivated with the notion that the Oppressed Peoples of the Empire and the World are actually better than their Betters who rule over them with guns, an iron rod and the lash.

How is an Empire established and how is it maintained and ruled? There were only ever a handful of British colonial officers ruling over vast seas of Natives around the globe, and how it was done is of some interest today as American and British Ruling Class interests conspire to put Our Brown Brothers under the gun, the iron rod and the lash once again in a sort of cracked reimposition of the Empire in those areas where the Lessons of Democracy obviously didn't take.

How could a handful of British soldiers and colonial officers have managed it?

Given that the reimposition is being handled by relatively even fewer Americans and Britons -- leaving out the other nations' few and proud -- than the deed was first done, we may wish to reflect on how it was managed to begin with and that may differ from the way it is being done now.

Attacks on the weak was one of the most obvious means the Empire was established and maintained. Flattery of the strong didn't hurt. And evaluating every contact in the field of interest on the basis of how it could be used to advance the aims of the Companies and the Crown was fundamental.

We see much the same going on now in the attacks launched against the weakest states and peoples: Iraq and Afghanistan most prominently, but including Somalia and the few enclaves of the Palestinians and other Lesser Peoples of the Middle East. Probing for weaknesses in the Other is ongoing, and more and more states and peoples will be added to the list of territories to conquer as time goes by. Iran, of course, is in the gunsights as we speak, and there will be more weak and weakened states to be gathered in to the New Empire.

Flattery of the strong was one of the keys to British success in building its Empire in the 19th Century. While weak Native states and tribes would be attacked brutally and mercilessly, strong ones would be flattered and persuaded with gifts and the preservation of status, revenues and control. By this means, loyalty was purchased or otherwise obtained. Thus, for example, India could be ruled effectively through Native agents, simply by convincing a sufficient number of Native princes to submit to the Crown and be rewarded. It worked well enough so long as the Natives did not rebel, but as is the way of these people, rebellion was commonplace, and each one became harder and harder to suppress.

Finally, as Britain trolled the earth for new conquests, their agents evaluated every contact they made with the Natives on the basis of how those contacts could be used to advance their aims and ambitions. They became very adept at recognizing who could be used to their advantage, who could be ignored, and who would have to be taken on and defeated.

All of these factors and more are once again in play as Anglo-American Imperial might asserts itself.

Yet the lesson from the failures of the British Empire was never really learned either in Westminster or in DC. No, in those realms, the Empire was a success, and withdrawal from Imperial control was only made necessary by other events. For example, the two world wars.

Just look at India today if you need an example of the success of the Empire. It is free, self-governing, democratic and an economic powerhouse. Any former colonial officer would say it is so because of the example of the British. Had India not been put under the Crown, think what a mess and what a failed state -- or states -- it would be today.

So God Bless the Queen, and don't you forget it.

But the Imperial Road is the wrong road according to Orwell. The road of liberation and Democratic Socialism is the right road.

How you get from one to the other is the problem.