‘If you believe you are a citizen of the world you are a citizen of nowhere.’ Mrs May will pass into folklore with that line, just as Mrs Thatcher is remembered for ‘There is no such thing as society.’ It’s her own Mad May Queen utterance. And yet the sentence reveals a lot. It comes out of a solid, unexamined nationalism. (Neal Ascherson)
As an unabashed citizen of the world I believe in the Epicurean ideal of moderation in everything: courtesy, kindness and tolerance and getting on with all the people of the planet. On balance I believe that most people have good instincts and mean well. I thought, or hoped, that Teresa May would not prove to be a typical, narrow-minded conservative, still harbouring out of date ideas about the Empire and British Exceptionalism, and hoped that she hadn’t added moslems to the list of (mostly European) countries to be suspicious of. Teresa May could be throwing red meat to her Right Wing of Little Englanders (which means they despise foreigners, and have roaring superiority complexes). But the jury is out on the lady May.
We have been through various spurts of nationalism, all of them disastrous. We need more citizens of the world, open-minded, and educated in the histories and cultures of the world. Shameful ignorance of history and culture got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the conservatives in America want to “make America great again” (meaning, I suppose, even more wars on behalf of the military industrial complex) , and the British Tories, living in a mythical past, think that the world can’t wait to deal with an “independent” Britain, whose GNP is a rounding error next to that of, say, China.
If there is anyone up there, please help us!
From Owen Bell, posted by fhanrott:
Owen Bell
I’m tired of politicians forcing us to choose between identities. Personally, I consider myself English, British, European, and a citizen of the world. I don’t think there’s a contradiction between any of them, they simply describe different bits of my identity.
May said the quote as part of a broader attack on the so-called liberal metropolitan elite that voted Remain. How Northern Irish Catholics, Scots, Scousers, EastEnders, and a majority of black and Asian people constitute an elite I will never know. There are wealthy people who disproportionately hold liberal views, sure. But they are far from a homogeneous bloc- they hold different views on all sorts of things, and support lots of different political parties (except UKIP of course.) The elite we should be worried about is the conservative-nationalist elite currently in power. The like of Fox, Johnson or Davis do not have our best interests at heart. They shout down any scepticism of Britain’s prospects in the Brexit negotiations as unpatriotic, with the help of the Eurosceptic tabloids of course. Sensible Tories like Kenneth Clarke, Anna Soubry or Ruth Davidson are being sidelined.
There’s also a horrible strain of anti-Semitism in what May said. Jews have often been called citizens of the world as a pejorative, meaning that they have no loyalty to any country, only to themsel ves. Its a horrible smear, lending itself to conspiracy theories of a global Jewish elite running the world. I know May isn’t anti-Semitic herself, but she ought to be more careful.
Look, there’s a fair bit liberal internationalists have got wrong. You quite rightly cite the War on Terror as an example of a policy failure. For all their liberalism, liberals have been too keen to infringe on civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. The long detention periods without trial during the Blair years are such an example. International institutions like the EU and the IMF seem incomprehensible at best, out of touch and indifferent at worst. But that doesn’t warrant the retreat into nationalism we saw over 2016, not only with Brexit and Trump, but all over the developed w orld. Turning in on ourselves will only make us poorer and more ignorant. If immigrants no longer feel welcome, they will leave, taking their money with them. If we enact protectionist tariffs, consumer goods will be pricier, reducing our standard of living. The movement of good, capital, services and people has vastly reduced poverty all over the world. The authoritarian demagogues we see on our TV screens may seem appealing. But never give up on your freedom for promises that won’t be delivered.