Imperialism redux?

One book with which I fell in love when I was younger was Martti Koskenniemi’s The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, purportedly a history of international law but in reality a history of the civilising mission of imperialist powers.

Indeed, much of the imperialist impetus was justified by the ideology of the mission civilisatrice, the civilising mission. In reality, we know that – as the Italian thinker Domenico Losurdo has pointed out in no uncertain terms – imperialism was but a tool of 19th century liberalism.

The expansion of commerce and, more importantly, industry required more sources of raw material and new markets for the manufactured goods. No wonder then that certain international scholars, and others too, have been drawing everybody’s attention to the similarities between our times and the 19th century, calling our times ‘neo-Victorian’ and even ‘neo-Liberal’ and highlighting the ever-growing northsouth divide in the world. (The modern version is not limited to the manufacture of goods, but includes the provision of services.)

Within the Labour Party, Alfred Sant was very much aware of – and averse to – the neo-Liberal threat to the middle and working classes. Joseph Muscat, on the other hand, chose the easier path of going with the flow, and embraced it wholeheartedly.

When all is said and done, accepting the domination of the current dominant ideology means civilising a nation, because ‘civilisation’ means conforming to a dominant ideology. Clearly, Dr Muscat has embarked on this civilising mission by enacting what he calls ‘liberal’, but I prefer to call ‘neo-liberal’, legislation. Those who oppose such legislation are unceremoniously branded ‘dinosaurs’ or ‘ayatollahs’, confirming the intuition of Slovene philosopher Slavoj Žižek that the future of the West is similar to Singapore’s present: liberalism without democracy.

I began this article by quoting the book The Gentle Civilizer of Nations. There can be no doubt that the author, Koskenniemi, used the adjective ‘gentle’ because there are other, less gentle civilisers of nations: cannon, machine guns and the gallows.

But I quoted that book because it seems to me that Simon Busuttil attempted to be the gentle civiliser of the Maltese nation, endorsing ‘civil liberties’ legislation while advocating the other face of the civilisation coin, namely good governance. On the other side, Joseph Muscat embraced only the ‘civil liberties’ aspect.

Imperialism seeks to strike a balance between ‘cosmopolitanism’ (a word Dr Muscat briefly used earlier this year) and ‘localism’. From a certain perspective, imperialism weaves internationally-promoted models of civilisation into local fabrics, a bit like the ecclesiastical powers of the past used to adopt a local deity into the mainstream system of beliefs by renaming it after a Christian saint. Both party leaders adapted themselves to this seemingly unstoppable ideological current.

Labour espoused the ‘civil liberties’ dimension of neoliberalism and the pangs were drowned by the din of the vacuous but powerful battle cry, “Viva l-Labour! Viva l-Labour! Hey! Hey!”

The Nationalists went for the less popular but more honourable path of insisting on the ‘good governance’ aspect. At least 35,000 voters failed to warm up to this narrative, possibly even disdaining the very notion of it.

While Labour was marketing identity politics, the PN was going through a deep identity crisis that it could neither handle nor efficiently resolve. Since there was no crowd shouting “Viva lPN! Viva l-PN! Hey! Hey!”, the PN had to keep silent on the divide between its communitarian

At this point, I have to refer to Evarist Bartolo, who has been quoting the Cretan novelist Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Fratricides for many years – I think even since the 1990s. The last time I know of was 4 May, 2016. If I understand him correctly, Mr Bartolo quotes Kazantzakis because he believes in the concept of brotherly democracy. One cannot but agree with Mr Bartolo: the country needs brotherly democracy, real democracy.

Real, brotherly democracy does not need two, almost-identical but fratricidal clans. It does not need one ideologically-united people who owe their individual fulfilment to their transcendental relationship with the state. If we achieve that kind of situation, we will have installed a Fascist system – Liberal Fascist but still Fascist. We need a strong state, but a Liberal Democratic state, not a Liberal Fascist state where you either agree with the dominant ideology or else are branded a ‘dinosaur’ or an ‘ayatollah’ and exposed to unadulterated intolerance.

Real democracy needs a clear choice between clear political alternatives. This is liberal democracy – the liberty to choose, among other things, whether you want to be communitarian or liberal. Being denied that choice is illiberal, therefore not really democratic and therefore Fascist, giving rise to the oxymoron ‘Liberal Fascism’ – a term I have borrowed from the American pundit Jonah Goldberg.

It is illiberal to deny the non-liberal, that is communitarian, option. Only thus can we protect ourselves from the new (or perhaps recycled) imperialism that sacrifices the spirit of the nation on the altar of capital and the soul of individuals on the altar of atomistic anarchy.