Patriotism, by Albert Meltzer (1943)
Article from ‘War Commentary: For Anarchism’, June 1943, London, UK
Patriotism was not always existent; certainly the type of patriotism known today (loyalty to the nation’s government — expressed “the country” but covering empire too) is quite recent.
Since the growth of nationalist movements in Europe during the last century, nationalism has grown to a formidable menace. We doubt, however, if it can outlast this war.
It is in the nature of imperialism to contradict the old-fashioned type of local patriotism, because if one is asked to love the green fields of one’s homeland one may well ask why one is sent to conquer a few miles of arid desert a thousand miles away.
Imperialism therefore produced the Kipling type of patrioteer, who borrowed the crusading myths of the “Lord of Hosts” in the Bible, and worked up a fairy talc of our mission in the world (“Take up the white man’s burden, Send forth the best ye breed”).
This of course has been directly copied, and worked upon to fantastic limits, by Hitler and Goebbels. In Japan the Emperor utilised the feudal religion of a century ago, to serve the same purpose in modern Japan, which industrially had advanced five centuries in the meantime. This is perhaps the best example of how the modern industrial state can make use of the myths of the dark ages; essentially, the idea was the same that inspired the Kiplings and the Hitlers.
Kipling (and the type of imperialist typified by Rhodes), made a virtue out of the sordid necessity that Britain had to conquer the “backward countries” in order to protect the trade routes her merchants had established there. In India, the British Government took over long after the East India Company was a flourishing concern, with despotic powers of its own. In Africa, she took over to protect her traders. “Trade follows the flag”, it was said; actually, “the flag” followed those who were trading, in their own interests.
Germany came in late in the greedy scramble for colonies to exploit. She became a nation in 1870, when the British Empire was already in being — she had first to conquer in Europe before she could put in her ignoble contribution to conquest in the rest of the world; hence, the struggle for empires, that had previously been between England and Spain, England and Holland, England and France, became between England and Germany, and England, replete with an early start in colonising while the rest of Europe had been hamstrung, made a satisfactory alliance with the other great colonising power, France, in order to keep Germany out of further conquests.
In this tale there is nothing about conflicts of peoples with different “missions” in the world; the stories of capitalist propaganda were far more content to explain how the other country mismanaged its colonies and how its peoples were oppressed. There was plenty of scope for truth on both sides.
Hitler; representing the revivified German imperialism, has utilised the old myths of a superior race leading the rest of the nations; his conception of the master-people (“Herrenvolk”) is that of the old imperialist.
Because imperialism is concerned with adding to territory, and defending territory already conquered, and only in times of danger with the patriotic idea of “defence of the homeland”, it is killing patriotism in the old-fashioned sense.
Some diehards claim indignantly that the term “quisling” is nothing but the old word “traitor” and that word was more expressive. This is not quite so in France — we see there that the traitors are the most extreme “patriots”; in every country, in fact, they come from the Right Wing, which has always claimed to be loyal, nationalist, and conservative. The quislings, in fact — referring to such as Petain rather than the opportunists such as Laval — don’t feel they are traitors to their country, because they believe their country can only be preserved by accepting the “New Order”; in other words, to put it in realistic language, what the Right Wing means when it says “country” is in fact, “ruling class” , and Petain believed the ruling class of France would only stand to lose by a protracted war as it could only mean defeat or revolution; he preferred defeat.
This is the case in occupied Europe, where the bulk of the Nazi administrators are the conservative and Catholic, fascist and Royalist, elements which are the most patriotic in the old sense. The Quislings are in bulk the Right-Wing of pre-war Europe: Austrian Monarchists, Belgian Rexists, French Royalists, the Croix-du-Feu and the so-called Radicals; Russian “White” aristocrats, Dutch Nazis, Italian Fascists, legitimists and Royalists; the Catholic clerical-fascist movement everywhere; the Spanish Falange and officer caste; Norwegian business-men and Civil Servants; all of them patriots in the Conservative Party sense of the word.
THE MILITARIST LEADER MYTH
Having seen the effects of this out-moded belief in Europe, let us not encourage the same fate to ourselves here. We saw how Petain was built up as “the hero of Verdun“, and he appealed to that militarist myth to help create a fascist state in France. And yet, knowing what became of the “old soldier, Petain” we build up a militarist myth about General Montgomery! The halo round Montgomery’s head may not be used for reactionary purposes; that does not make it any the less dangerous. We presume it will not be because heretofore Montgomery has not been a politician; yet British history teaches us that the Duke of Wellington rose to glory in just such a way as did Montgomery, and he used his prestige to push on to the people of this country an unmitigated despotic and reactionary government, until at last the policies of Sidmouth, Castlereagh and Wellington infuriated the people against even the “hero of Waterloo” and he lived long past his popularity.
While, because Montgomery has been heretofore a military man we do not know if this will be his case, we have not the least doubt that this will be Churchill’s case, since his record throughout his political career has been one of reaction; in particular his role in the General Strike, his diehard attitude to India and the Empire, and towards revolution in Europe. Because this war has made him leader of a Coalition that flirts with the labour leaders, makes “conciliatory gestures” to India while declaring flatly that it will not part with India, and encourages Hitler’s subjects to throw him over and accept instead double-double-crossers of the Darlan type, none of this proves that Churchill has changed. His prestige, gained solely because the political parties have assigned to his leadership and hence anything done by anyone does to his credit, will certainly be used to enhance his reactionary policies when the leader of the Conservative Party returns to solely Tory politics.
“Loyalty to the leader”, “honour to the victorious general” — these are slogans leading to disaster now or in a dozen years’ time. Patriotism, militarism, blind loyalty, these have been held up for our adulation by those who scorn “treason in war-time”, and we have seen that that is just exactly what they have come to. Not deliberately, but in an attempt to maintain the ruling class structure which they are put up to camouflage.
Much though it may disappoint the readers of Phillips Oppenheim and the Sunday People, the Fifth Column is not composed of mysterious spies, glamorous ladies, or gentlemen with square heads drawing maps on the top of the Monument. This present war is a war between the dynamic Imperialisms as to which Imperialism shall dominate. “Which shall guide the New Order,” “which shall reconstruct under control”. Therefore patriotism as a vital force is finished: the struggle is not between one nation and another — people are fighting against their own nations, nations are divided amongst themselves: De Gaulle, Giraud and Petain represent “France”, William Joyce broadcasts to England and Thomas Mann to Germany, Gandhi, the Aga Khan, and Subhas Bose have not identical opinions as to who should defend India.
The choice to the peoples of the world is not the feudal choice of patriotism, but the choice of which Imperialism they want to be dominant. Against that is our own choice, the rejection of all Imperialisms, and the taking over of the world by the free workers.