I think you can cover a lot of ground of why paranoid nationalism is so popular in the UK (and the US) by tying it back to the national heritage of colonialism. Old canards like "the sun never sets on the British empire" expresss exactly the same kind of educational/cultural problem as described in de Dijn's article about anti-Semitism.
It's also worth reflecting how much of this sort of a dynamic is simple culthood. There's a famous discussion of Karl Rove regarding 'Reality Creators' and the obsession with projecting a strong national image to the rest of the world, as opposed to immigration weakening how (privileged) people look at their own nation:
"The [White House] aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”"
I feel like I have many things to say here but not quite sure where to begin. Thanks, Helen, for bringing this to our attention. Is our world shrinking on a spiritual scale despite the fact that we live in the age of technologies that bring us nascent AI?
Great piece, as always. I think you know it, but I wrote something about immigration and scapegoating a while back: https://alexanderdouglas.medium.com/immigration-and-scapegoating-c6450e48ebb5
Ah yes, that's a wonderful piece. And it must've been subconsciously in my mind as I was thinking of Girard when I saw the announcement by Sunak!
I think you can cover a lot of ground of why paranoid nationalism is so popular in the UK (and the US) by tying it back to the national heritage of colonialism. Old canards like "the sun never sets on the British empire" expresss exactly the same kind of educational/cultural problem as described in de Dijn's article about anti-Semitism.
It's also worth reflecting how much of this sort of a dynamic is simple culthood. There's a famous discussion of Karl Rove regarding 'Reality Creators' and the obsession with projecting a strong national image to the rest of the world, as opposed to immigration weakening how (privileged) people look at their own nation:
"The [White House] aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who ”believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ”That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/28/zen-and-the-art-of-american-foreign-policy/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
*stunned but not really*
I feel like I have many things to say here but not quite sure where to begin. Thanks, Helen, for bringing this to our attention. Is our world shrinking on a spiritual scale despite the fact that we live in the age of technologies that bring us nascent AI?
We definitely are not spiritually improving (that makes the AI situation also more difficult for us to deal with!)