[lbo-talk] RE: Calculated provocation

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Apr 9 11:52:17 PDT 2004


Michael Perelman:
> Many pro-Israel voices suggest that one cannot be anti-Israel without
> being antisemetic. Could it be that this attitude lends itself to
> anti-Jewish responses?
>

I see your point, but how is that different from nationalistic propaganda anywhere? In the good old US, criticizing the Bush gang is also equated with Amerika-hating - yet it would be hard to argue that Republican propaganda lends itself to anti-American responses abroad.

The point I am rising is that nationalism has the pretty much the same form anywhere - the heads is unquestioned loyalty to national leadership and the tails is the hatred of outgroups. In this binary logic, (i) if you are not the heads (loyal member of the ingroup) then you must be the tails (a member of a hated outgoup); and (ii) the same motivation, only in reverse is attributed to any outgroup.

However, that topsy-turvy logic of nationalist discourse hardly explains the reasons of people's attitudes toward other ethnic groups. That is to say, societies that are high on ingroup loyalty and outgroup rejection are not necessarily despised by outgroups (e.g. Japan) - which shows that the connection between a group's view of outgroups and outgroups' views of that group is at best problematic.

Wojtek



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list