Is anti-Semitism inevitable?

[Phrossack]

What do you imagine we're derailing here? No one has discussed the OP since page two.

I mean that I didn't want to turn this into a thread about my opinions on Russia and Israel, or about you accusing me of some sort of mental unhealthiness, which is inaccurate, ironic, and frankly rather insulting. But if that's what you want...

Is it possible to discuss Israel without claims that Zionists are calling critics of it anti-Semites? I see it in pretty much every thread, and try as I might, I can't recall a single instance of these accusations being made. It seems like this is simply a tactic used when critics feel they're losing an argument.

Is it possible to discuss Israel without accusations of anti-Semitism? Tovergieter said quite clearly:

Distuinguishing the actions of the Jewish state to that of Jewish people at large from an abstract point of view is a difficult feat for most people on both sides of the debate. Those who are critical of Israel because of genuine concern for the victims of Israeli policies are a rare breed indeed.

In other words, he thinks most people who can criticize Israel do so out of anti-Semitism because they can't tell the difference between Israel and Jews as a whole. I pointed out that while I criticize Israel, I am no anti-Semite.

I'd ask, is it possible to have a discussion of Israel without accusations of anti-Semitism?

 

[Traitorfish]

Run too far with that and you have to explain why there have never been Catholic nationalists. After all, they only stopped insisting on the dead language a couple of decades ago.

Well, as Lexicus said, the Catholic Church just barely demanded literacy in Latin from the priesthood, let alone the general populace, which is quite different from the Muslim demand for elite literacy in Classical Arabic, let alone the Jewish demand for universal male literacy in Hebrew. Further, Catholics have always been aware that their church, while "the best", is not the only Christian Church, nor Latin the only liturgical language used by Christias or even by Catholics, or for that matter even by Roman Catholics: Christianity used as many as nine liturgical languages before the Reformation, a half dozen of which were used in various Eastern Catholic Churches, and the Roman Church itself continued to use elements of Greek alongside Latin well into the modern period. There's a big difference between "everyone use Hebrew/Arabic for all religious purposes" and "some people use Latin for some religious purposes", at least so far as this issue is concerned.

 

[Tahuti]

I pointed out that while I criticize Israel, I am no anti-Semite.

I already know that. Thanks for treating me like a moron.

For the record, I'd be in favour of dissolving Israel. And any state for that matter.

 

[Phrossack]

I already know that. Thanks for treating me like a moron.

For the record, I'd be in favour of dissolving Israel. And any state for that matter.

I'm absolutely not treating you like a moron. You said that it was rare for people to criticize Israel due to its government policies; instead, you implied that most who criticize Israel are anti-Semites. Now, you apparently consider me an exception to that rule, but you can see why someone who criticizes Israeli policies might think that you were accusing them of anti-Semitism.

 

[Mouthwash]

Sorry for the late response, I've been bogged down with modding FFH2.

It's easy for us to say that the Bundist goal of cultural autonomy within a multi-national state was far-fetched and without precedent. But the creation of a sovereign Jewish state, the revival of the Hebrew language, did these not once seemed far-fetched? Were these not without precedent? And would they not seem absurd to somebody living in a world in which they had not already been established as a matter of fact?

Perhaps, but you're forgetting the elementary point that nationalism works and socialism doesn't. Even if the Bundists had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, they wouldn't be around today as a serious political movement.

So I don't think it can be reasonably argued that, simply because Zionism has been reasonably successful, it can therefore claim the status of the one "true" Jewish nationalism. That is, again, confusing the contingent with the inevitable.

I'm not saying Zionism's success wasn't, at least in part, contingent. I'm saying that no other form of Jewish nationalism could have reached out to Jews globally and provided them with a sense of shared nationhood. That is something unique to Israel.

After all, who's to say that Israel is "binding or final"? I'm contending that isn't, not for all Jews, not forever. Indeed, I think it's quite probable that the more entrenched Israel becomes, the less Jewish it becomes, in the sense that as its culture becomes more distinctly and coherently "Israeli" and less a collage of groups from across the Jewish diaspora, and the less Jewish it becomes, the less strongly it will resonate with diasporic Jews. The less French or British or American Jews can look at Israel and see people much like them, the more foreign Israel becomes, and despite whatever political sympathies they might retains, it's going to become harder and harder for them to think of it as a "homeland". Israel, unlike Poland or China or Nigeria, isn't able to stand for its diaspora as a great repository of history and culture, because its history and culture is the outcome of rather than the condition for the existence of a Jewish diaspora, and so not something that diasporic Jews can feel themselves to be participants in, at least not in the same way that a Polish-America or a Chinese-Canadian or a Nigerian-Briton are able to do. Israel-as-homeland was always aspirational, and the less Israel seems to be the realisation of a long-held dream, the more it seems to be just a regular old country, with the same sort of mundane problems that any country has, the less that aspirational view makes sense. There'll always be something there- when half of global Jewry inhabit its borders, it would be hard for diasporic Jews not to feel some connection to the place- but it won't be the same as it was in the early days of nation-building.

Give it another generation or two, and Israel will appear less "the Jewish homeland" and more just "a place where lots of Jews live".

You're thinking of Jews as a regular ethnic group, where regional or cultural differences can alienate long-separated populations. The religious aspect of Judaism, the veneration of the land of Israel (which was maintained for thousands of years) undergirds the Jewish attachment to the State of Israel. I don't see that going away. Secondly, linguistic or cultural difference matter far less to Jews than they did in the past. American Jews live in a country where the very concept of ethnicity is anathema, and Israeli Jews, which are more diverse, have been crammed together in a country the size of Wales (but with double the population). The religious identity is going to come to the forefront in both populations. And thirdly, Israeli Jews aren't becoming regionalized but exactly the opposite. Israel is extremely Americanized. Something like half the population speaks English, and the younger generation absorbs as much Western/American media as we do. (I'm also not mentioning the psychological need that Israelis have to travel, which is probably a result of the size of the country and the hostility of its neighbors.)

But again you sidestep the issue which is that "physically return to Israel" is hardly the same as "create a Jewish state there."

The Westphalian model of the nation-state is the only viable one, if we're talking about numbers larger than a million or so. The Messiah is expected to bring about world peace, so it's hard to see him as a nationalist figure, but the entire point of Zionism is that Jews don't have to wait for the Messiah.

No - Islam's political manifestation is not 'nationalist' at all. It is explicitly conceived as a religious community, not a "national" one.

Why do you insist the two are mutually exclusive?

We've had this discussion before, and it didn't get far. Suffice to say that you're going to have a difficult time arguing that a certain religion is necessarily nationalistic, when it chugged along for well over a millennium before anybody had come up with the idea of nations and nationalism. This is equally true for Judaism and for Islam.

How do you claim that an ideology which emphasizes the duty of all its members to defend their sect from outsiders isn't nationalistic?

Is it possible to discuss Israel without accusations of anti-Semitism? Tovergieter said quite clearly:

This is a thread about anti-Semitism. He didn't just bring it up for fun.

In other words, he thinks most people who can criticize Israel do so out of anti-Semitism because they can't tell the difference between Israel and Jews as a whole. I pointed out that while I criticize Israel, I am no anti-Semite.

I'd ask, is it possible to have a discussion of Israel without accusations of anti-Semitism?

Yes. This is an example of such a discussion. In my own response I very clearly rejected the claim that most critics of Israel are anti-Semites. But, well, it didn't stop both you and Lexicus from saying the opposite!

I already know that. Thanks for treating me like a moron.

For the record, I'd be in favour of dissolving Israel. And any state for that matter.

Now anarchism? I'd advise you to try your hand at moderation, but I consider myself an imperialist, so do I really have the right?

 

[Flying Pig]

How do you claim that an ideology which emphasizes the duty of all its members to defend their sect from outsiders isn't nationalistic?:

Essentially, because what you've just set out is necessary but not sufficient for nationalism. 'The duty of all members to defend the group from outsiders' is a belief (expressed formally or not) of Freemasons, football fans, and the Three Musketeers. One obvious thing I see missing is the concept of nationhood. You may fairly say that Jews or Muslims believe that their own religion constitutes a special community, but you do not see the basic theory behind nationalism - that the world is fundamentally divided into groups of people who, based on some combination of language, genetics, 'shared history', territory and so on, form the most natural political and social communities, and that an ideal system will make the extent of states and the extent of nations one and the same.

 

[Mouthwash]

Essentially, because what you've just set out is necessary but not sufficient for nationalism. 'The duty of all members to defend the group from outsiders' is a belief (expressed formally or not) of Freemasons, football fans, and the Three Musketeers. One obvious thing I see missing is the concept of nationhood. You may fairly say that Jews or Muslims believe that their own religion constitutes a special community, but you do not see the basic theory behind nationalism - that the world is fundamentally divided into groups of people who, based on some combination of language, genetics, 'shared history', territory and so on, form the most natural political and social communities, and that an ideal system will make the extent of states and the extent of nations one and the same.

Even if it isn't technically nationalism, it doesn't refute my point, which is that Islam can quite naturally fit into a nationalist mold, to any degree whatsoever.

 

[Lexicus]

It does, because Islam explicitly rejects the premise of nationalism as FP set it out there.

Islam is (and was always intended to be) a transnational phenomenon, a universalist faith that would appeal to people of any cultural background.

Why do you insist the two are mutually exclusive?

For the reasons above. We might ask ourselves why the goal of, for example, German nationalists is not to "convert" the French to Germans. In any case a spiritual community of people defined by their relationship with God is different from a community of people defined by their relationship with one another.

I think you should probably do some reading up on what nationalism actually is, because you seem to think it is synonymous with "group identity" which is simply not the case.

 

[Traitorfish]

Perhaps, but you're forgetting the elementary point that nationalism works and socialism doesn't. Even if the Bundists had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, they wouldn't be around today as a serious political movement.

I didn't mention socialism. The Bund were socialists, certainly, but so were most of the early Zionists: it's not central to either program. What distinguished the Bund was their advocacy of cultural pluralism, as opposed to the cultural seperatism advocated by the Zionists. Does the former work? I'm not sure if we can say; there are few comparable examples, because there are few ethnic groups with a population as substantial but widely-spread as pre-1945 European Jewry, so it's hard to draw analogies. Does the latter work? Maybe. It's kinda-sorta working in Israel- but, as I said, not as the Zionists expected, in that the outcome hasn't really been a united Jewish national culture so much as an Israeli national culture within global Jewry.

I'm not saying Zionism's success wasn't, at least in part, contingent. I'm saying that no other form of Jewish nationalism could have reached out to Jews globally and provided them with a sense of shared nationhood. That is something unique to Israel.

It is, but so what? The Bund never intended to reach out to Jews globally. They didn't define "the Jewish nation" as identical to global Jewry, and indeed regard that definition as fanciful, conflating semi-mythical genealogies with the lived experience of culture.

Further, I'm not convinced that Zionism was particularly successful in that goal. Most Mizrahi Jews were indifferent to Zionism before they were expelled; their current enthusiasm is born of the trauma of refugees, not the natural love of all Jews for the State of Israel . (Comparably, how many Palestinian Arabs actually cared about being "Palestinian" until 1948? Very few. Yet it's clear that many feel strongly about it today.) The appearance of having united world Jewry in Israel owes more to the decisions of Arab leaders and the response of Mizrahi Jews than it does to any fundamental soundness of the Zionist program. At no point did Israel succeed in "reaching out" to these Jewish communities: they were forced into Israel at gunpoint, and chose to make the most of the situation.

You're thinking of Jews as a regular ethnic group, where regional or cultural differences can alienate long-separated populations. The religious aspect of Judaism, the veneration of the land of Israel (which was maintained for thousands of years) undergirds the Jewish attachment to the State of Israel. I don't see that going away. Secondly, linguistic or cultural difference matter far less to Jews than they did in the past. American Jews live in a country where the very concept of ethnicity is anathema, and Israeli Jews, which are more diverse, have been crammed together in a country the size of Wales (but with double the population). The religious identity is going to come to the forefront in both populations. And thirdly, Israeli Jews aren't becoming regionalized but exactly the opposite. Israel is extremely Americanized. Something like half the population speaks English, and the younger generation absorbs as much Western/American media as we do. (I'm also not mentioning the psychological need that Israelis have to travel, which is probably a result of the size of the country and the hostility of its neighbors.)

What I'm contending is that Jews are becoming a "regular ethnic group"- or at least, they are in Israel. The traditional uniqueness of Jewish ethnic identity was tied to the diaspora, to the sense of difference Jews felt with their immediate neighbours and sameness with distant Jewish communities, and attempts to make sense of these conflicted feelings of belonging and distance. These aren't forces that act on modern Israelis, because they're among Jews- and not only among Jews, but Jews who share their language and culture and broad political outlook. In the early days of the state of Israel, there was still enough variety there that Israelis had to appeal to a more traditional sense of Jewish to bind them together- to make a Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian and an English-speaking American and an Arabic-speaking Egyptian all feel "Israeli"- but that generation are quickly sinking into the past, and there can't be many Israelis remember a time when they didn't live among people who didn't have to be described as "Poles" or "French" or "Yemenis", but simply as "Israelis".

Granted, as long as the diaspora exists, there will still be a sense of Jewishness that transcends national identity, which binds an Israeli Jew to an American Jew in a way which neither are bound to non-Jewish co-nationals. But the same could be said of the Irish or Chinese or even Danes. (Danes love Viggo Mortensen, f'rexample, even though he was born and raised in America.) It doesn't necessarily make Jews anything other than a "regular ethnic group".

Also, I think you overstate the "Americanisation" of Israelis. Yes, they speak English and consume American media- but so do Britons. So do Canadians and Australians. So do large minorities in Sweden or France or Germany. It doesn't make any of us Americans. It just makes us Westerners, and that's what Israeli is becoming: another Western nation. The uniqueness of the "Jewish state" was the uniqueness of a polyglot nation comprised of refugees from every corner of Eurasia; nowadays, Israelis are just... Israelis. A nationality.

 

[Flying Pig]

Even if it isn't technically nationalism, it doesn't refute my point, which is that Islam can quite naturally fit into a nationalist mold, to any degree whatsoever.

Perhaps, but now you're arguing something different entirely - only that it is not incompatible with nationalism. I agree. However, taking your tea with sugar can fit quite naturally into a nationalist mould, and you'd struggle to convince me that it is a 'nationalist' practice in any sense.

 

[Mouthwash]

It does, because Islam explicitly rejects the premise of nationalism as FP set it out there.

Islam is (and was always intended to be) a transnational phenomenon, a universalist faith that would appeal to people of any cultural background.

No, it appears that way because you're defining group identity as being cultural. Islam provided a new definition for it: the group is defined by belief. Islam didn't remove ethnic identity so much as replace it with a broader one.

For the reasons above. We might ask ourselves why the goal of, for example, German nationalists is not to "convert" the French to Germans. In any case a spiritual community of people defined by their relationship with God is different from a community of people defined by their relationship with one another.

Sure, but that pretty much only holds true for Christianity, and even then not all of the time (Irish nationalism is pretty closely tied to Catholicism from what I understand). Almost anywhere in human history outside of the Protestant West, religion has been tied to identity.

I think you should probably do some reading up on what nationalism actually is, because you seem to think it is synonymous with "group identity" which is simply not the case.

See the post directly above yours. (Which I just now realized contains a major grammatical ambiguity. Ugh.)

I didn't mention socialism. The Bund were socialists, certainly, but so were most of the early Zionists: it's not central to either program. What distinguished the Bund was their advocacy of cultural pluralism, as opposed to the cultural seperatism advocated by the Zionists. Does the former work? I'm not sure if we can say; there are few comparable examples, because there are few ethnic groups with a population as substantial but widely-spread as pre-1945 European Jewry, so it's hard to draw analogies.

I meant that socialism is the way that this sort of 'nationalism' (for lack of a better word) could be practiced.

Does the latter work? Maybe. It's kinda-sorta working in Israel- but, as I said, not as the Zionists expected, in that the outcome hasn't really been a united Jewish national culture so much as an Israeli national culture within global Jewry.

Is that really true, though? While Jews of different countries might prefer their own languages, and indeed even take pride in them, Hebrew is still something that all their children study. So Jews everywhere still have the Israeli national language as a common point of reference. If that's not an example of united Jewish culture, what would fulfill that definition?

It is, but so what? The Bund never intended to reach out to Jews globally. They didn't define "the Jewish nation" as identical to global Jewry, and indeed regard that definition as fanciful, conflating semi-mythical genealogies with the lived experience of culture.

As I recall, what started this whole line of argument was you claiming that Zionism wasn't necessarily destined to be the most "successful or enduring" Jewish nationalism. Even if we don't define that as meaning, necessarily, a unified Jewish nationalism, I'm saying that that the only thing that could have endured.

Further, I'm not convinced that Zionism was particularly successful in that goal. Most Mizrahi Jews were indifferent to Zionism before they were expelled; their current enthusiasm is born of the trauma of refugees, not the natural love of all Jews for the State of Israel . (Comparably, how many Palestinian Arabs actually cared about being "Palestinian" until 1948? Very few. Yet it's clear that many feel strongly about it today.) The appearance of having united world Jewry in Israel owes more to the decisions of Arab leaders and the response of Mizrahi Jews than it does to any fundamental soundness of the Zionist program. At no point did Israel succeed in "reaching out" to these Jewish communities: they were forced into Israel at gunpoint, and chose to make the most of the situation.

Well, I'm not sure to what degree that is true; I know at least some Mizrahi Jewish immigrants felt a sense of patriotism towards a Jewish country (my own grandparents came from Morocco, which was much more removed from the conflict). But the point is that the Mizrahi Jewish population in Israel today is very much Zionist, and arguably the existence of a safe haven for Jews everywhere is as much 'reaching out' as any amount of proselytizing. The Arabs who still live within the Green Line aren't Zionist at all, to this day. Is that just a coincidence?

What I'm contending is that Jews are becoming a "regular ethnic group"- or at least, they are in Israel. The traditional uniqueness of Jewish ethnic identity was tied to the diaspora, to the sense of difference Jews felt with their immediate neighbours and sameness with distant Jewish communities, and attempts to make sense of these conflicted feelings of belonging and distance. These aren't forces that act on modern Israelis, because they're among Jews- and not only among Jews, but Jews who share their language and culture and broad political outlook. In the early days of the state of Israel, there was still enough variety there that Israelis had to appeal to a more traditional sense of Jewish to bind them together- to make a Yiddish-speaking Lithuanian and an English-speaking American and an Arabic-speaking Egyptian all feel "Israeli"- but that generation are quickly sinking into the past, and there can't be many Israelis remember a time when they didn't live among people who didn't have to be described as "Poles" or "French" or "Yemenis", but simply as "Israelis".

Granted, as long as the diaspora exists, there will still be a sense of Jewishness that transcends national identity, which binds an Israeli Jew to an American Jew in a way which neither are bound to non-Jewish co-nationals. But the same could be said of the Irish or Chinese or even Danes. (Danes love Viggo Mortensen, f'rexample, even though he was born and raised in America.) It doesn't necessarily make Jews anything other than a "regular ethnic group".

You're defining national identity and religious identity as two strictly divorced categories, through which themes and ideas can be shared, but nothing 'real.' Plenty of groups (Sikhs, Copts, Druze) with large diaspora populations have a religious basis for their identity as well as an ethnic one.

I'd also recommend The Beginnings of Jewishness, which explains how an ethnic term can turn into a religious term while still referring to roughly the same group of people, simply with different aspects of their identity emphasized.

Also, I think you overstate the "Americanisation" of Israelis. Yes, they speak English and consume American media- but so do Britons. So do Canadians and Australians. So do large minorities in Sweden or France or Germany. It doesn't make any of us Americans. It just makes us Westerners, and that's what Israeli is becoming: another Western nation.

No, young Israelis are definitely very American in mentality; there's been a 'Walmart-ization' of the country in the past couple of decades. But I have to question the relevance of this point to the discussion.

Perhaps, but now you're arguing something different entirely - only that it is not incompatible with nationalism. I agree. However, taking your tea with sugar can fit quite naturally into a nationalist mould, and you'd struggle to convince me that it is a 'nationalist' practice in any sense.

If you're arguing that the duty to defend your own people (howsoever they are defined) and taking your tea with sugar are equally nationalistic practices, well, I really don't know what I can say to respond to that.

 

[Vectors]

Mouthwash, why do you seem to believe that Jews are inherently incapable of being loyal citizens of any country other than Israel?

 

[Flying Pig]

If you're arguing that the duty to defend your own people (howsoever they are defined) and taking your tea with sugar are equally nationalistic practices, well, I really don't know what I can say to respond to that.

I didn't argue that, but I argued that neither is incompatible with nationalism, and that neither is enough to call a person or a movement nationalistic. To use a blindingly obvious example, [Judaism/Internationalist Socialism] situates the believer within a worldwide community of [Jews/the Working Class], and believes that it is the duty of all [Jews/Communists] to liberate [Jews/the Working Class], wherever they may be, from the oppression of [gentiles/capitalists], to create a [Jewish/proletarian] political community, and to work to further the interests of those who share their [religion/class]. I mean, your definition of nationalism encompasses movements which explicitly reject the most basic ideas of nationalism. You need to put a bit more detail into it.

 

[Tahuti]

No, it appears that way because you're defining group identity as being cultural. Islam provided a new definition for it: the group is defined by belief. Islam didn't remove ethnic identity so much as replace it with a broader one.

The Ummah is best compared with a hypothetical identity that could arise of a unified Europe: It subsumes ethnic identities into a common identity created by a common political umbrella, in this case, Islam.

Cultural and religious identities intersect often: Before Christianity, there was little in the way of a common cultural heritage for all of Europe. Celts were very different from Germanic peoples, aside from the fact both spoke an Indo-European language. Christianity arguably modulated these differences and arguably acted as a vehicle for spreading Roman, Greek and Jewish heritage throughout Europe too, laying the seeds for a common European identity which works with, yet is independent of any supranational Pan-European project. Hungarians and Finnish do not even speak an Indo-Eurpoean language, yet still are considered part of Europe. One can ask the question to what degree Christianity played a role in that too.

Anyway, I strongly implore to change the thread title to 'Is racism inevitable?'. It's your thread so it's up to you, yet there is little reason to see why antisemitism is an entity distinct from racism directed against other groups.

Now anarchism? I'd advise you to try your hand at moderation, but I consider myself an imperialist, so do I really have the right?

Next year I will try National Socialism.

 

[Flying Pig]

Words like 'Celt' and 'Germanic' come from the Greek and later Roman way of categorising people. There's no evidence that anybody saw themselves as a 'Celt' before the 19th century, when that was re-appropriated by Irish, Welsh and Scottish people to construct something against Britishness, which became associated with the Romans as invaders. 'Germanic', too, largely got its force as a label in the late 18th century, from German nationalists trying to construct a non-Roman history for themselves, based on a smattering of ancient texts (particularly Tacitus' Germania and Jordanes' Getica) in opposition to France. There's no reason to think that 'Celts' and 'Germanic peoples' at any point in Antiquity saw those two categories as having any meaning for how they defined themselves relative to anyone else.

 

[Tahuti]

As a point of history, words like 'Celt' and 'Germanic' come from the Greek and later Roman way of categorising people. There's no evidence that anybody saw themselves as a 'Celt' before the 19th century, when that was re-appropriated by Irish, Welsh and Scottish people to construct something against Britishness, which became associated with the Romans as invaders. 'Germanic', too, largely got its force as a label in the late 18th century, from German nationalists trying to construct a non-Roman history for themselves, based on a smattering of ancient texts (particularly Tacitus' Germania and Jordanes' Getica) in opposition to France. There's no reason to think that 'Celts' and 'Germanic peoples' at any point in Antiquity saw those two categories as having any meaning for how they defined themselves relative to anyone else.

Thanks for that bit of info.

From what I gather about ancient 'Celts' and 'Germans', both had a very decentralised political structure, not unlike Ancient Greece though very much unlike the Roman Empire. People belonging to these groups more closely identified with a particular tribe rather than language or customs.

 

[Flying Pig]

Precisely. The idea of identifying with people based on language or customs wasn't one that they shared with the modern nationalists using their names. Identification based on customs is always somewhat arbitrary anyway - you always have to emphasise some of them and play down others. Nationalists say that communities form naturally from shared 'culture', but what usually tends to happen is that somebody draws a line around the territory or groups that they want 'the nation' to encompass, and then looks for the things that everyone in there has in common, and decides that those are what they should define 'the nation' around. Sometimes they just make them up. A particularly interesting example is the invention of Pad Thai:

By coup-plotting standards, Plaek Phibunsongkhram was in a good position.

The year was 1938. Six years earlier, Phibunsongkhram, better known as Phibun in Western historical accounts, had played a prominent role as a military officer in a coup that stripped Thailand’s monarchy of its absolute powers. A year later, he became the equivalent of the Minister of Defense after crushing a rebellion launched by royalists, and in 1938, he became prime minister.

Yet Phibun worried as he assumed power. Thailand, which was then known as Siam, had never been colonized, but it was surrounded by French and British colonies. Siam was also an ethnically diverse country with strong regional identities, and Phibun had wrested power from the monarchy, the institution that had long held it all together.

Worried about his country’s independence, disintegration, and, most of all, support for his rule, Phibun decided to transform the country’s culture and identity. The European-educated Phibun saw his country as provincial and backward; he aimed to make Siam a strong, nationalistic, and modern country.

Like a drill sergeant breaking in new recruits, Phibun passed 12 Cultural Mandates that exhorted the Siamese people to be productive, well-mannered, and proud of their country.

Some of Phibun’s mandates—like his desire for everyone to wear hats in public—are now footnotes in history. Other edicts—like his decision to change the name of the country to Thailand—stood the test of time. And one changed culinary history, even if few people know it.

As part of his campaign, Phibun ordered the creation of a new national dish: pad Thai.

[...]

The exact origins of pad Thai remain contested. According to some accounts, Phibun announced a competition to create a new, national dish. Phibun’s son, however, told Gastronomica that his family cooked the dish before Phibun made it government policy, although he does not remember who invented it.

Either way, the dish’s roots are Chinese. Its full name is kway teow phat Thai. Kway teow means rice noodles in a Chinese dialect, and the entire name means stir-fried rice noodles Thai-style. Noodles and stir-frying are very Chinese, and immigration likely brought the practice to Siam. Flavors like tamarind, palm sugar, and chilies were the Thai twists.

By releasing a pad Thai recipe and promoting it, Phibun turned one potential take on stir-fried noodles into a national dish. He believed that pad Thai would improve the diet of people who ate mostly rice, and that cooking pad Thai in clean pans would improve national hygiene.

Most of all, Phibun wanted to unify the country by promoting a uniquely Thai dish. Despite its Chinese origins, pad Thai stood out from the wet or dry noodle dishes sold by Chinese vendors. It was, as Penny Van Esterik writes in Materializing Thailand, “part of Phibun’s nation-building strategy to develop ‘Thai-ness’ and impose a ‘Thai Great Tradition.’”

 

[Tahuti]

Precisely. The idea of identifying with people based on language or customs wasn't one that they shared with the modern nationalists using their names. Identification based on customs is always somewhat arbitrary anyway - you always have to emphasise some of them and play down others. Nationalists say that communities form naturally from shared 'culture', but what usually tends to happen is that somebody draws a line around the territory or groups that they want 'the nation' to encompass, and then looks for the things that everyone in there has in common, and decides that those are what they should define 'the nation' around.

To the nationalist's credit, language does constitute a genuine barrier for interaction, as do certain psychological barriers: A protestant may be deterred from entering a Catholic church and a member of the working class may be deterred from entering a store that sells custom tailored suits, despite neither are exactly forbidden. These barriers of interaction do constrain a political actor's ability to act and it is no surprise that the rise of nationalism coincided with advances such as railroads and telegraphs.

 

[Flying Pig]

Oh, absolutely - but then those barriers are all over the place. I'll give you language, but you've hit on pretty much exactly what I was going to say - that to a certain breed of Irish nationalist, for example, the barrier of the church is all-important, but the barrier of the tailor is totally unimportant. For a socialist, things are the other way around. Likewise, there's an immediate barrier between people who eat different kinds of food - if you go from London to Yorkshire, the sort of thing you'll see for sale in a takeaway changes dramatically. If you want to get some of what you ate at home, you're going to be looking around for a long time. Those barriers are all over the place, and any exercise in defining a community is about overlooking some of them but not others. Nationalism is no different. The problem is that nationalism is based on the idea of the 'nation' as an objective, self-evident category, and it's neither of those things.

 

[Mouthwash]

I didn't argue that, but I argued that neither is incompatible with nationalism, and that neither is enough to call a person or a movement nationalistic. To use a blindingly obvious example, [Judaism/Internationalist Socialism] situates the believer within a worldwide community of [Jews/the Working Class], and believes that it is the duty of all [Jews/Communists] to liberate [Jews/the Working Class], wherever they may be, from the oppression of [gentiles/capitalists], to create a [Jewish/proletarian] political community, and to work to further the interests of those who share their [religion/class]. I mean, your definition of nationalism encompasses movements which explicitly reject the most basic ideas of nationalism. You need to put a bit more detail into it.

What I was saying is that Islam has an inherent political element. Sweetened tea can be appropriated as a national characteristic, but the Islam will be. I honestly can't fathom how you misinterpreted this; I can only note that you do something similar in almost every discussion we have. Am I that bad at conveying my ideas?

The Ummah is best compared with a hypothetical identity that could arise of a unified Europe: It subsumes ethnic identities into a common identity created by a common political umbrella, in this case, Islam.

I would argue that Islam functions as an ethnicity under these circumstances.