For a while now I have been meaning to write about a topic that has been of great concern to me (I am pretty sure most of my co-bloggers are as disturbed by it as I am). I have noticed that the blogosphere, with its ability to confer an anonymous voice to anyone, is often the venue for ignorant and naked jingoism. A blog like ours, which mostly covers items about, and of interest to North Americans of South Asian origin, offers a particularly unique window into what I am referring to. All of the bloggers who write for SM live in North America. Some were born here and some were not. The resulting mix of loyalties, the perception of mixed loyalties, our readers expectation of mixed loyalties, or our readers anger at a lack of loyalty toward the lands of our “origin,” results in a perfect storm. SM and a few other sites like it are being viewed by some as a sort of virtual ideological battlefield where the hearts and minds of several thousand readers hang in the balance.
Jingo: (n) One who vociferously supports one’s country, especially one who supports a belligerent foreign policy; a chauvinistic patriot. [link]
In its traditional use the word “jingo” (a pejorative term) means something far different than the word “patriot.” A patriot loves their country or geographic region and is ready to defend it…but is not above questioning it or beyond introspection. A true patriot is willing to defend against all enemies both external and internal. A jingo is the worst kind of nationalist (even worse when mixed with religion). They lash out at the tiniest hint of criticism directed at “their own.” A few days ago a reader commented on what he saw transpiring on our News Tab:
Off topic, but also in a strange way, slightly related to this topic, is the way in which the news tab here on Sepia Mutiny is used as a repository for anti Muslim chauvinism. This goes beyond the legitimate posting of stories on Muslim extremism and runs to the extent of posting articles from the RSS newspaper, posting about Little Green Football style documentary screeds about ‘The Truth About Islam’. I have noticed how these posts amazingly get large numbers of ‘Interested’ clicks in a short amount of time. Amazing!Amusingly, someone has now posted a ‘Trouble with Hinduism’ article in response to this bigotry as a means of showing how it works both ways. Good. Chauvinists are using the news tab for their bigoted agenda. You should at least be aware of it. It is so tedious to see these monomaniacs waging their campaign and abusing what is an open and useful facility on SM. [link]
Yes, we are well aware of this phenomenon and will work to stamp it out as best we can. You can accuse us of censorship if you’d like but this isn’t about censorship but about remaining true to belief that communication is more important than simply being heard. A few weeks ago Anna sent her co-bloggers the following email:
Subject: I find the popularity of this news item a bit disturbingThe article linked reads like a SpoorLam rant…except it’s not funny.
That was one of the most popular articles in terms of number of votes we had that day…and it was little more than anti-Muslim propoganda.
Last week when I posted about Bill Clinton’s foreword in Madeline Albright’s new book, I was accosted by jingoes (not only on this site but on another one). By posting about a newsworthy item, and one of interest to members of the South Asian American community, I was deemed complicit by many in some sort of character assassination of the Indian Army. It didn’t matter that I had quoted in the same post from an article which layed the blame for the incident mentioned therein on Lashkar e Taiyba, or that I had linked to Nitin Pai’s excellent blog posts on the topic (which provided a viewpoint different from Clinton’s). Instead, the very fact that I would provide a mic for Clinton’s beliefs or exhibit curiosity about the motivation behind his thoughts elicited an angry response from many who accused myself and SM of disliking Hindus and Indians (some comments were deleted before I closed down the post). Other readers may have had valid and reasonable points to make, but as someone who blogs on SM as a hobby I don’t have time to spend an entire afternoon moderating comments. None of us do.
In the same post mentioned above I quoted from author Pankaj Mishra’s new book in which he writes about the same incident that Clinton referred to. That elicited this response:
It is also wonderful that you mention that arch traitor, Pankaj Mishra in this context, since it is he with his wonderful investigative reporting, who first started this canard about the Indian Army’s involvement in the massacre. [Link]
You see, Pankaj Mishra is an arch traitor because he dared to criticize the Indian government or voice his opinion in a reasonable manner. Maybe I am now considered a traitor to many Indians (even though I am American) for even citing him in a post. That commenter was by no means the only one who felt that way. Coincidentally, the same Pankaj Mishra had an op-ed in this week’s NY Times. It is titled “The Myth of the New India.” A reader let us know about this article by posting it to our News Tab. This is how the reader described the article in their own sarcastic words:
India should stop trying to pretend that it’s a success. India should know its true place as the disgusting, third world country it really is! Or so says the article. [link]
I really liked that last sentence, “or so says the article.” For the record, the article said no such thing. Yes, it was critical of India on some points. A jingo however cannot let such an insult pass. How dare Mishra say anything bad about India. Here are some of the critical points Mishra makes:
In recent weeks, India seemed an unlikely capitalist success story as communist parties decisively won elections to state legislatures, and the stock market, which had enjoyed record growth in the last two years, fell nearly 20 percent in two weeks, wiping out some $2.4 billion in investor wealth in just four days. This week India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy “Western standards of living and high consumption.”
There is, however, no denying many Indians their conviction that the 21st century will be the Indian Century just as the 20th was American. The exuberant self-confidence of a tiny Indian elite now increasingly infects the news media and foreign policy establishment in the United States.
Encouraged by a powerful lobby of rich Indian-Americans who seek to expand their political influence within both their home and adopted countries, President Bush recently agreed to assist India’s nuclear program, even at the risk of undermining his efforts to check the nuclear ambitions of Iran. As if on cue, special reports and covers hailing the rise of India in Time, Foreign Affairs and The Economist have appeared in the last month. [Link]
Even after the hundreds of positive articles about India that have been published this past year, a jingo cannot let such a few critical comments pass without stringing Mishra up. How dare his criticisms reach impressionable readers in a place like the NY Times op-ed page? This is an insult to India!
In this past week’s Newsweek, Christopher Dickey has an article about the rise of American Nationalism that I feel is a must read. He effectively captures what I have been feeling and his article served as the catalyst for me finally sitting down to get this post off my chest [yes, I know it is soapboxy but it is my soapbox :) ]. In it he liberally quotes from Orwell:
Orwell wrote that nationalism is partly “the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects.” He said it’s not to be confused with patriotism, which Orwell defined as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people…”But American nationalism, unlike American patriotism, is different-and dangerous.
The second part of Orwell’s definition tells you why. Nationalism is the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” Patriotism is essentially about ideas and pride. Nationalism is about emotion and blood. The nationalist’s thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations. ⊠Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.”
One inevitable result, wrote Orwell, is vast and dangerous miscalculation based on the assumption that nationalism makes not only right but might-and invincibility: “Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.” When Orwell derides “a silly and vulgar glorification of the actual process of war,” well, one wishes Fox News and Al Jazeera would take note…For Orwell, the evils of nationalism were not unique to nations, but shared by a panoply of “isms” common among the elites of his day: “Communism, political Catholicism, Zionism, anti-Semitism, Trotskyism and Pacifism.” Today we could drop the communists and Trotskyites, perhaps, while adding Islamism and neo-conservatism. The same tendencies would apply, especially “indifference to reality.”
”All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts,” said Orwell. “Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage-torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.⊠The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them…” [Link]
That last quote summarizes quite well what many of us are witnessing play out before us in this new anonymous blogosphere. It is jingoistic one-upsmanship. If one guy posts a news article about a crime committed by a Hindu then another will post one about a crime by a Muslim. If one guy puts up an article critical of India then another will follow with one about how evil Musharraf is. Anyone that criticizes what is perceived by some as “their proper side,” is a traitor. And so on and so on. Orwell had it right.
