WHEN NATIONS ATTACK

We live in a world that may be called drunk with nationalism.

But it was not always thus.

Our forebears dwelled in another world, where one's faith, one's class, or one's tribal grouping formed the deepest meanings of the extended self, and where boundaries seemed surprisingly more porous than they do now.

In the mid-Eighteenth century, those who lived in the grand cities of Europe moved easily, and comfortably between Bonn and Paris, or London and Vienna. Those of the elite read in Latin, spoke in French, and addressed waiters in perhaps English or German.

Those of the poorer classes (the vast majority) spoke, rather than read, their local tongue, while the princes of the church or the nobility spoke a quite different one.

During this same time, in quite another world, the Ottoman Empire held sway on three continents, and merchants and scholars traveled between Samarkand to Cairo, or from Cordoba to Timbuktoo, with much the same facility as did their European contemporaries.

They often wrote in Arabic, while speaking in a hundred other languages, from Chinese to Wolof, or Turkish to Urdu. They saw themselves as subjects of a world order, defined by faith, learning, and ability.

When one looks at the agility of these people, the present era, defined by borders and spheres of political influence and rivalry, seems rigid indeed.

This is not to paint those days with a far-too-rosy picture, for this was also a time of unbridled slavery, serfdom and class oppression.

It is just interesting to view a world that did not concretize the notions of nationalism as the end-all, be-all, of human existence.

Today, when the economic forces of globalism consumes whole societies for the voracious 'market', it is also interesting that this rapacious form of internationalism (and that's what it really is -- the internationalization of capitalist domination) has not spawned an even bigger form of internationalist solidarity and resistance to this new form of colonialization. For the forces behind this new globalism are relatively few, while those who are, and will be impacted by this new expression of exploitation are vast.

I am convinced that the learned ideas of nationalism are impeding the growth and development of this new internationalism of resistance.

When one thinks about it, and looks beyond the barriers of race, of language, and, yes, even beyond nationality, there are billions of people who dwell upon this earth, with far more similarities than dissimilarities.

It has often struck me that there is really far more in common between the everyday American (yes, Black or white) and the average, everyday Iranian, than there is between either of them and their political leaders. Think about it. The average world leader has had far more education, travels relatively widely, and has contacts on an international scale. The average working person in both Iran or the States probably has never left his country (except when forced to do so by his leaders, to fight another people).

There are millions of people in Pennsylvania who have never the left the state of Pennsylvania -- and never will.

Most folks worry about finding, buying, or begging enough food to feed one's family, about getting a decent education for their kids, and perhaps keeping a job that will provide shelter and other necessities for the family. They rarely think of nuclear winter, or National Missile Shields, or what their national GNP is.

Yet, that typical American or Iranian hates each other, even though they've never met. They have been conditioned by nationalism, and their respective media, to react -- Pavlov-like -- to a false stimulus.

The French thinker Voltaire once opined that "Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels," because he lived in a cosmopolitan world.

The people of the world have to determine what is in their own interests, not those of their so-called 'leaders', and develop global associations and relationships that deepen and enrich them. For the leaders, are the leaders, in the interests of the wealthy, the globalists, and those that pay them. They couldn't care less for the poor, the un-influential, the workers, and the non-donor class.

It's possible to think beyond, and act beyond, nations (the world's mega-corporations have been doing this for a generation, at least!).

It's not only possible, but necessary, if the global environment is ever to survive, if human suffering is ever to be addressed, and if we are to have a world worth living in.

We must make it happen.

Mumia Abu Jamal
February 2002