My former colleague Jonah Goldberg writes a nice column on “One Thingism” — and the way that anti-Israel sentiment is now used as moral cover for all sorts of selfishness and wickedness geopolitically that has little to do with the supposed “struggle” against Zionism.
But he has one drive-by observation I wanted to take up briefly. He writes:
When you look under the hood at the most virulent forms of anti-Israel madness, it becomes obvious that the arguments supposedly supporting it are pretextual. The people who prattle about Israeli “theocracy” have very little to say about Iranian or Saudi theocracy. The people who insist Israel is an “apartheid” state say little or nothing about Chinese “Han supremacy” and Jim Crow with Chinese characteristics. How many protests against the erasure of the Uyghurs and of Tibet have the people who wake up every morning shouting about Israeli “genocide” attended?
For that matter, how many of the “NatCon” nationalists who claim to consider national borders and national sovereignty to be their lodestars have spent much time condemning Russia’s brutal violation of both in Ukraine?
How much time is necessary? Russia’s war is unjust, in part because some its aims are inherently wrong, in part because it wasn’t a last option, and in part because of its unjustifiable conduct in the war. That’s all true, and yet I still felt Russia’s invasion was a predictable consequence of a collision of U.S., European, and Ukrainian policy that, rather than deterring, provoked. Not everything provoked is justified. When Ukraine defends itself, it does so justly. Sometimes, in pursuing its nationalist project, I do think it overshoots the limits of justice. For moral sanity, it’s important to distinguish Ukraine’s just cause in resisting Russia from the unjust actions it takes to “Ukrainize” society. But naturally, ultranationalists in Ukraine conflate these two. In any case, non-Ukrainian American nationalists perhaps spend less time publicly dwelling on the justice of the matter because they don’t think it’s America’s fight either way. Some people, of course, are so convinced that America should stay out of it that they foolishly try to make Russia out to be not so bad after all. That’s deplorable, but motivated thinking and the temptations of polarization always present these hazards.
To give another example: I thought the recent war by Azerbaijan ethnically cleansing Armenians was wicked beyond words. But hardly anyone thought it implicated Americans in any way at all. So most people didn’t rage about it like Russia invading Ukraine, because very few of us are motivated about borders or even ethnic cleansing when it seems not to involve us. We are all much more motivated by debates about America’s geopolitical position, its commitments, and what is involved in pursuing them. Obviously that was more the substance of the debate about Ukraine. That is to say, to some degree, we’re all nationalists about geopolitics.
I’ve written about Han supremacy a few times, too. Not because I want the U.S. to take extraordinary military means to end it but because I think it highlights and to some extent dramatizes how foreign and differently regulated the Chinese economy is. Uyghurs have been used in forced labor in factories that exported to America. I find it difficult to call a market in which that kind of participation is legally mandated “free trade” and was happy to see Marco Rubio sponsor legislation to exclude those goods from our markets; that’s doing what we can do to extricate ourselves from an enormity. China’s system and values are for Chinese people to decide, and I hope a larger share of them are given the chance someday. My primary political interest in Han supremacy isn’t purely humanitarian but instead is focused on how it affects us. On the edges, I think it betrays a mentality so at odds with our own that we should expect, prepare for, and try to deter a Chinese attempt at becoming a global hegemon.
I also try to be a moral realist, in the sense that I don’t confuse expressing opinions about various evils done by foreigners with providing material assistance to the victims of those policies. Condemning Han supremacy from my desk in New York State is not brave, it involves no sacrifice or risk, and it doesn’t even take much in the way of moral acuity. At most I might be holding up norms where I have influence. At worse, and when done with too much self-regard, bombastic moral pronouncements on activities over which you have no real influence is a kind of seductive substitute for real moral action. I’ve always admired more the European aristocrats who, when really scandalized by an evil in a world beyond their borders, go out and travel to it themselves and get directly involved by volunteering in some way. Some, of course, get caught up in horrible enthusiasms. But Roger Scruton actually helped to hold seminars behind the Iron Curtain. That may not be as glamorous as carrying a gun against some tinpot and his militias, but it involved real work, and potentially real danger and sacrifice.