I was asked to comment on the following:
Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Gorbachev could not be more different as leaders. But they are both proud Russians who don’t think their nation is getting its due. They are like “ bent twigs springing back after being stepped on,” in the phrase Isaiah Berlin used to describe how resentment and aggressive nationalism are rooted in the backlash against humiliation.
The narrative of the Russians’ hurt feelings is spreading like a forest fire. For the past 20 years, Russia has done nothing but invade, torture and persecute its neighbors. Today, a massive number of Russian troops is edging closer to the border with Ukraine.
For some reason, though, there are no articles about the hurt feelings, resentments or humiliations of Georgians or Ukrainians. This is the weirdest situation anybody can imagine: everybody is fussing over the hurt feelings of victimizers while paying no attention to the victims.
” Not getting their due” is the central organizing idea of Russian national identity. As all national identities, it’s a fiction, a myth. If every other country on the globe were to disappear, Russians would still feel aggrieved and slighted because that’s the foundation of their identity building.
This is all so clear and so obvious, yet the idiot Liberals are joyfully lapping this shit up because the narrative of aggrieved Russians feeds into their intense negative – vector patriotism. They find it intolerable that the US was omitted from the narrative of Putin ‘ s invasion of Ukraine. The story of aggrieved Russians allows these American Liberals to return to their favorite pastime of delicious, narcissistic self flagellation.
Clarissa's Blog 
“This is the weirdest situation anybody can imagine: everybody is fussing over the hurt feelings of victimizers ”
It is weird but oh so common. The victimizers, by definition, have more power and resources than the victims, and use them to shape the ongoing narrative. See Israel. Or, on a much lower scale, what happens when a powerful celebrity is accused of sexual assault.
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\\ The victimizers, by definition, have more power and resources than the victims, and use them to shape the ongoing narrative. See Israel.
Are Muslims the victims in India too? What is the narrative there?
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“Are Muslims the victims in India too? What is the narrative there?”
– The volume of literature on the Partition is enormous. I especially recommend Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India: http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-India-Novel-Bapsi-Sidhwa-ebook/dp/B0042JSRVY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415632695&sr=8-1&keywords=bapsi
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One blogger on the Zero Hedge website referred to Putin’s speech as the greatest speech since Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech on March 5th, 1946. I’m waiting for some liberal to compare it favorably with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Of course, the conservative blogosphere doesn’t like it but they just give a crude caricature of the Russian bear reaching for global hegemony without any substance.
Your series is the only substantive analysis of it. Have you considered coalescing it and submitting it to a website like AlterNet?
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Thank you, NG. I’m glad you enjoyed the series. People often tell me that I should try to publish my non – academic articles elsewhere but I don’t have much enthusiasm for the idea. The only non – academic audience I’m interested in is that of my blog. Maybe I will analyze this reluctance further in a blog post. 🙂
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I think this is a great way to drive more traffic to your blog. Certainly an option worth exploring.
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“This is the weirdest situation anybody can imagine: everybody is fussing over the hurt feelings of victimizers while paying no attention to the victims.”
Actually, that’s not weird at all. Victimizers typically possess more cultural capital than their victims, so it’s only natural that their feelings are addressed first in the media.
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“As all national identities, it’s a fiction, a myth.”
You’ve talked about this many times on this blog. I’ve never thought this way about national identities before, but it seems quite interesting. Could you please recommend some reading on this subject?
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Yes, absolutely! Thank you for asking because this is my favorite subject. 🙂
The first historian to create the really foundational work on this subject was the great Benedict Anderson: http://www.amazon.com/Imagined-Communities-Reflections-Origin-Nationalism-ebook/dp/B004OA6KII/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1415565711&sr=8-1&keywords=imagined+communities
Then we have my favorite Eric Hobsbawm: http://www.amazon.com/Nations-Nationalism-since-Canto-Classics-ebook/dp/B00E3UR8C6/ref=pd_sim_kstore_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S6TYY80SRRN2XT2B7BP
And, of course Antony Smith: http://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Polity-Concepts-Social-Sciences-ebook/dp/B00CFHIMT2/ref=pd_sim_kstore_9?ie=UTF8&refRID=1S6TYY80SRRN2XT2B7BP
And the great Elie Kedourie: http://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Elie-Kedourie/dp/0631188851/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415565900&sr=1-1&keywords=Kedourie
And some of my favorite quotes that I’m quoting from memory:
Kedourie: “The members of a nation reach freedom and fulfillment by cultivating the peculiar identity of their own nation and by sinking their own persons in the greater whole of the nations.”
Hobsbawm: “Nationalism requires too much belief in what is patently not so”.
Foster: “Nations, and national cultures are artifacts”.
Alonso: ““Pasts which cannot be incorporated are excluded by national history. Privatization and particularization consign recalcitrant memories to the margins of the ‘national,’ where they are denied a fully ‘public voice’”
And the great Ernest Renan: “To forget and to get one’s history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation; and thus the advance of historical studies is often a danger to nationality”
I have a lot more but I don’t want you to be sorry you asked. 🙂 A teacher tends to answer the question of “Can you pass the bread?” with a long lecture starting from the time of the pharaohs. 🙂
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“Nations, and national cultures are artifacts”.
Isn’t this arguing that the idea of culture itself is an artifact? In my experience there are real differences in how people relate to each other and the values that they act on. Is that fiction?
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“In my experience there are real differences in how people relate to each other and the values that they act on. Is that fiction?”
– They act in these different ways because they’ve been told to. It’s the same for any collective identity. Let’s take gender. Men repress their emotions and steer themselves into liking sports, screwdrivers, farting and beer not because there is something genetically driving them to that but because they were handed this script and they are too stupid and weak to come up with a script of their own. Of course, those men who are not stupid and weak find their own way and let go of these facile narratives. But they are still not a majority. (The exact same goes for women, obviously.) Most people find life too terrifying to dispense with the scripts of collective identities.
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“They act in these different ways because they’ve been told to”
So? When I’m outside and have to piss I hold it in till I find a toilet rather than find a doorway or bush because I was told to. The same with waiting till I find a trash can for small bits of garbage.
“Most people find life too terrifying to dispense with the scripts of collective identities.”
Collective identities are convenient and efficient for a lot of people they fill in for the lack of biological programming that other species have. A society full of people doing the long, drawn out process of constructing individual identities from scratch isn’t going to get much else accomplished (especially not the grunt work needed to keep societies going).
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“So? When I’m outside and have to piss I hold it in till I find a toilet rather than find a doorway or bush because I was told to. The same with waiting till I find a trash can for small bits of garbage.”
– “Civilization is a system of limitations” (Freud.) 🙂
” A society full of people doing the long, drawn out process of constructing individual identities from scratch isn’t going to get much else accomplished (especially not the grunt work needed to keep societies going).”
– The process of constructing collective identity is not simply drawn out. It’s endless and based on constant repetition of the same very primitive and basic ideas. Those ideas are so erroneous and patently ridiculous that people need to zombify themselves with them all day and every day to make them stick. If the endless repetition stops for a second, a doubt as to why one believes something so ridiculous starts to creep in. This proves destructive to the psyche that suddenly glimpses the possibility that the individual’s entire life has been based on a set of egregious lies. See, for instance, the high incidence of the desperate “But men and women are different!” commenters. They are very obviously not arguing with me. They are defending against their inner doubt that is suggesting to them that they have been living in a prison cell of somebody else’s lies.
On the subject, I highly recommend Michael Billig’s Banal Nationalism: http://www.amazon.com/Banal-Nationalism-Theory-Culture-Society/dp/0803975252/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415569491&sr=1-1&keywords=banal+identity
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Thanks for the list, Clarissa, it was quite informative :). I think I will start with the Imagined Communities, after I finished the book I read now.
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Yes, Imagined Communities is the foundational classic of the genre. 🙂
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A heads up, I don’t get the “national identity is a fiction, a myth” idea. Partly it’s linguistic, as an American “nation” means “country” to me and so I constantly have to mentally edit for whom nation means something else and that interference might be getting in the way.
Of course there’s a lot of myth making and selective reading of history involved in nation building (however you define nation). But once a collective identity exists dwelling on the mythical origins doesn’t seem very productive. The idea of Catalonia as an entity that should be independent of Spain is a very new idea (it was a fringe idea no one took seriously less than 20 years ago). Now it’s real and has to be taken into account and the fictional nature of its origins will get you precisely nowhere if you want to convince anyone that it’s a bad idea.
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Actually, the sufferers of the patriotism disease do experience a significant relief when they realize and accept that their emotional attachments to an imagined community have been fostered in them with the express purpose of using them to enrich those who have no such silly emotional responses. 🙂 One has to treat such people gently and carefully, slowly disentangling their passionate attachments to invented histories. I’m too impatient for that but I find the study of these manufactured attachments fascinating. It fosters my sense of extreme superiority, and let’s all appreciate my honesty on the subject. 🙂
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Here is my somewhat different take on the matter of cultural identity — which also reaks of major superiority.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI6lp-j2emQ
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\\ Actually, the sufferers of the patriotism disease do experience a significant relief when they realize and accept that their emotional attachments to an imagined community have been fostered in them with the express purpose of using them to enrich those who have no such silly emotional responses.
Who are “those who have no such silly emotional responses” that are enriched by me? Netanyahu and other Jewish politicians imo do care about Israel as a Jewish nation state. If you talk about the rich 1% (businessmen), how do they foster patriotism? They may benefit from it sometimes, by fostering it isn’t their “secret plan” or a “project” they invest money in.
Also, if I think that not every Jew can / should / wants to live outside of Israel and think Israel is a project worth investing in for Jewish people, does it mean I am a “sufferer of the patriotism”? If I am not interested in running away to Berlin, but want normal life here?
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“Netanyahu and other Jewish politicians imo do care about Israel as a Jewish nation state.”
– Caring and feeling intensely emotionally attached are 2 different things. I definitely am interested in the US politics, I like the country, I find it fascinating. But from that to a self-abnegating unthinking adoration we so often see displayed by Americans on this very blog the distance is enormous. Power is more valuable than money, if the question is how a country’s leaders benefit from the subjects’ patriotism.
“Also, if I think that not every Jew can / should / wants to live outside of Israel and think Israel is a project worth investing in for Jewish people, does it mean I am a “sufferer of the patriotism”?”
– No, it doesn’t. But everything else does. Are we going to argue over whether you are profoundly and passionately patriotic towards Israel?
“If I am not interested in running away to Berlin, but want normal life here?”
– I’m not exactly dedicated to the idea of moving to Berlin right now. But I only live in the US as long as it is comfortable and convenient for me to do that. The second something else becomes more convenient, I will pick up and leave. As I have already done before. 🙂 My life and my individual journey is a lot more precious to me than anybody’s manipulative constructs.
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\\ – Caring and feeling intensely emotionally attached are 2 different things.
I am sure many of Israeli politicians are “intensely emotionally attached.” Most likely, including our PM. Wanted to say it was the difference between democratic Israel and a country like Russia, but then thought that Putin also may honestly see himself as a patriot. Probably of the imagined community called “Great Russia” or “USSR.”
Do you think American politicians don’t care about America more than you? Are simply “interested in” it?
May be, people in Israel, including politicians, are more patriotic than in the West because of the “older character” of the country. By “older character”, I mean that when you talk about “post nation state” situation in Europe with EU and immigration and multiculturalism, it sounds completely unlike Israel. My country is like old European nation state: extreme nationalism, if you aren’t Jewish – you don’t belong, extreme separation between Israeli Jewish and Arab citizens, melting pot approach to immigrants, etc. To be honest, despite hearing about the evils of multiculturalism, I wish we could have peace and be more like Europe.
\\ Are we going to argue over whether you are profoundly and passionately patriotic towards Israel?
I don’t think I am since I can imagine myself immigrating because of career or other reasons. I am sure our average (Jewish) politician is more patriotic than me.
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“I am sure many of Israeli politicians are “intensely emotionally attached.” Most likely, including our PM.”
– You have a very rosy view of politicians. I have no idea how can one be a successful politician without being a profoundly cynical, cold and calculating individual. And that’s not bad, that’s in the job description.
“Wanted to say it was the difference between democratic Israel and a country like Russia, but then thought that Putin also may honestly see himself as a patriot.”
– Putin is a great example because there is no chance he would get where he is without knowing what emotional tugs to pull at in his subjects and being capable of doing that coldly and efficiently.
“Do you think American politicians don’t care about America more than you?”
– I like you very much. You have such a young, fresh and idealistic vision of the world. Oh youth, oh innocence. . .
“May be, people in Israel, including politicians, are more patriotic than in the West because of the “older character” of the country.”
– Of course, new myths need more foaming at the mouth than older and more established ones.
“My country is like old European nation state: extreme nationalism, if you aren’t Jewish – you don’t belong, extreme separation between Israeli Jewish and Arab citizens, melting pot approach to immigrants, etc.”
– Exactly. And let’s remember how many deaths were needed for people to convince themselves that their myth-making was based on reality.
“I don’t think I am since I can imagine myself immigrating because of career or other reasons. I am sure our average (Jewish) politician is more patriotic than me.”
– 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Wanted to ask something: sometimes you see comments on Israeli news sites “if we had Putin …”. Supposedly, he would’ve “shown strength” somehow and f.e. made Israeli Arabs afraid to support terror and participate in riots. I am glad we have real democracy, but just as a thought experiment: do you think hypothetical “Putin” would have been able to get results, which would’ve been good for Israel in the long term?
May be, we should completely separate from Arabs, including East Jerusalem and the triangle area currently in Israel, with them going to their new country?
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\\ May be, we should completely separate from Arabs, including East Jerusalem and the triangle area currently in Israel, with them going to their new country?
That separation wouldn’t be easy to do, thus the connection I made to “Putin.”
Other people don’t talk about him in that context, but in “they would’ve been afraid to…”.
Thought you would be amused by the Israeli “Putin” supporters.
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