Tribalism

Just about every Sunday, I watch Fareed Zakaria’s news show, “Global Public Square.” Recently, I saw Zakaria state that the story of the year was the wave of populism sweeping across Europe and America. There’s a wave all right, but his description of it missed the mark. Populism is all about the virtue and rights of everyday people, with the implication of a class struggle. The right word is tribalism, in its broad sense: a powerful loyalty among members of a homogeneous group connected by blood, race, ethnicity, religion, or some combination of these. Tribal loyalty expresses itself as an us-versus-them mentality and carries enormous destructive potential.

Tribalism has driven human events for millennia. It’s only in recent centuries that a counterforce has developed. It has many names—pluralism, diversity, multiculturalism. The meaning of each is a shade different from the others, but they express the same idea, and they are central to the same value: We are stronger together. Ever heard that one before?

Generally speaking, tribalism has been dominant, but the impulse toward pluralism has had its moments, too. I think of Martin Luther King as a model pluralist. He asserted, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” He saw pluralism—respect, fair treatment, and equal opportunity for everyone everywhere—at the end of the rainbow. A great many see the same arc, but I’m a doubter. Certainly, tribalism is on the ascent today. Its voice is strong in every nation that is economically or militarily consequential; specifically:

• In America, Donald Trump is our tribal leader. When he descended on his elevator in April of 2015, deus ex machina style, he gave us permission to fear Mexicans. Later that year, he gave us permission to fear Muslim Americans and Muslim refugees. We already had a tribal anxiety about these groups, but now we had his validation that our uneasiness was justified and prudent. Malevolent others, the Chinese included, were cheating us out of jobs and wealth. Iran was cheating its way toward nuclear weaponry. We were once a great nation, but now we were a tribe of victims! This message was so powerful that Trump could have handed out business cards reading “I am a shameless fraud” and not put a dent in his popularity. He said as much when he talked about committing murder without losing support. Tribalism causes a scary suspense of rational behavior.

• In Britain, where in 1992 the euro was shunned in favor of the pound, the populous saw a transfer of sovereignty to Brussels. They railed against the European Union for wresting away control of agricultural production and costs. Their hostility toward the EU was dubbed Euroskepticism. Of course, other EU members became Euroskeptical, but the British felt particularly wounded. They were once a proud empire; London was the focal point of the world’s economy. Now they were dictated to by a quasi-governmental entity. They struck back by voting to withdraw from the EU, hardly aware of the consequences for their currency and the survival of the EU itself.

• In France primarily, and in Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, and Italy, Euroskeptical anger was exacerbated by the influx of Muslims, with their alien dress habits, their own ethical code, their repression of women, and their hypersensitivity to religious criticism. The fear of savage reprisals from Islamic terrorists intruded upon the European consciousness. The fear of being dispossessed of culture and country became acute.

• In Russia and China, the fervor of nationalism grew dangerously. Russia continued to press against its western borders, expressing a protective interest in ethnic Russians. It committed military might to Assad’s regime in Syria, most likely to secure naval access to the Mediterranean. China claimed ownership of disputed islands in the South China Sea and threatened shipping lanes by turning an atoll into a military base.

The most disconcerting development is that these instances have not been self-contained. Rather, they are reinforcing each other. Tribalism has begotten more tribalism. A crescendo has been building, abetted by the megaphone of the Internet’s social media. When will the wave crest? No one can say, but two things are certain. A great deal of human damage will be done in the process, and our most urgent problem, climate change, will grow more critical as the hourglass drains.