Does exceptionalism drive hatred?

Throughout his presidency, Barack Obama was questioned about his view on American Exceptionalism. In speech after speech he affirmed that America was an exceptional nation, citing its role in geo-politics, and offering opportunities to all people who chose to call the US home, yet time after time his true patriotism was questioned.

What is it about America which makes it ‘exceptional’, and is that self proclaimed description a good thing or a term of self-aggrandisement… Or could it be something a bit more cynical than that?

Obama pointed out one time that most people think their countries are exceptional, and although he did not use this example, the newly minted definition of what it meant to be German in the lead up to WWI and again in the rebuilding between the wars, the Nazi party clearly determined that being a true German made one exceptional, and using the Nietzsche thesis that ‘God is dead’ and that the superman, the human embodiment of divinity, is his successor, applied exclusively to ‘true’ Germans.

Germans became the ‘super-race’, exceptional, and all who did not fit that definition were disposable, having no place in the expanded Germany, especially in eastern Europe, the Slavic regions, using forced displacement and extermination of ‘inferior’ populations.

I was reminded of the power of exceptionalism recently as I engaged with people from a church I left many years ago. As with so many churches, this one was established as a cultural home to immigrants, especially post war immigrants as many left Europe to start new lives here, or in Canada, the US, South Africa and New Zealand.

We are an immigrant nation, and each wave of immigrants brought with them the comforts of their cultures, churches, mosques, temples, social clubs even sporting clubs, as stepping stones to becoming ‘Australian’.

Being warmly greeted by so many I had lost contact with was interesting, yet disturbing, as questions of faith were raised, and the Calvinist teaching of predestination and election were evident in service and subsequent socialisation over coffee snacks after the service I was attending a funeral.

Exceptionalism, in the religious context, being predestined and elected by God to be of his people is embedded in Calvinist teachings and serves to lay a veneer of self-righteousness and judgementalism, a sanctimoniousness which was expressed so eloquently as one person condemned ‘the sins of the world’, where I would have thought that greater emphasis could be place on the ‘sins’; the lives we live.

This same form of exceptionalism, that teaching of predestination and election, the understanding that God has fore-chosen people, placed them somehow above the rest of humanity led to apartheid in South Africa, but the same sense of superiority, the idea that Christians, and in particular Europeans are somehow superior to other races, the peoples who have traditional, animistic religions. The idea of ‘Manifest Destiny’ in the westward push of European settlement in the USA, the idea that god has given the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the settlers, allowing the decimation, the genocide of native Americans.

While in the settlement of the US, it was mainly people from protestant religions which dominated the displacement of indigenous peoples throughout the Caribbean. In Central and South America, it was Catholicism which was used to justify the colonial push and subsequent displacement of indigenous peoples and cultures.

The confirmation that god had a hand in the settlement was through the seemingly easy path to colonisation, there was not a lot of resistance, and that of god sanctioning the take over of lands, had nothing to do with sophisticated weapons, the bringing of smallpox and other diseases Europeans had built immunity to, no, god said it was OK, spread the gospel of love to all corners of the world as lands were taken and restive natives slaughtered.

Perhaps the most visible sense of exceptionalism, of ‘god’s grace’, was the settlement of the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock to find a deserted village complete with crops growing, waiting for the new arrivals, ignorant of the smallpox epidemic which had killed over half the population of the village, and rest had left thinking the soil was poisoned. Today, that settlement and the expression of god’s grace is celebrated as Thanksgiving Day.

Throughout the period of European colonial expansion indigenous people were seen as heathen, as less than the invaders. Very little is recorded of what the dispossessed thought of the invaders, but we do have a record of the devastation caused by diseases.

In ‘Guns, Germs and Steel,’ Jared Diamond lists:

‘… diseases transmitted peoples lacking immunity… Smallpox, measles, influenza, typhus, bubonic plague… Throughout the Americas, diseases introduced with Europeans spread from tribe to tribe far in advance of Europeans themselves, killing an estimated 95%of the pre-columbian Native American population. The most populous and highly organised native societies of North America, the Mississipian chiefdoms, disappeared in that way between 1492 and the late 1600s, even before Europeans made their first settlements on the Mississipi River.’ (Page 77-78).

So was it ‘manifest destiny’ or just a stroke of luck that the indigenous populations had virtually disappeared? Or could it be that by 1850, the westward push which led to the ‘Indian Wars’ and the final battle at Wounded Knee saw the victory of the settlers over the indigenous tribes in fierce battles as treaty after treaty had been ignored by the invading settlers, was it ‘manifest destiny’ or ‘guns, germs and steel’ that brought victory to the settlers?

With so much of the colonising – the theft of traditional lands – done by people bringing with them Christian faith, and the exceptionalism embedded in that belief, to have easy victories seems like a confirmation that ‘we, god’s people’ were blessed with the new lands. And the Christian religions are very influential in each of those lands.

The language of exceptionalism denigrates the people being colonised, defining them as ‘less than god’s people’, less than ‘us’, if you will. That is done in a number of ways, and the game is about the same in all colonised countries. The indigenous are defined as somewhere between animal and human. The language used, the inflicting of collective punishment, the criminalising for not being ‘exceptional’ dehumanises the colonised.

We witness this in the way ‘youth crime’ is dealt with when ‘youth crimes’ are committed by Aboriginal children or ‘African gangs’, Indigenous criminality is dealt with differently that that of the colonisers, of the non-indigenous. A recent example is the of this is the punishment handed out in the Northern Territory when a young man killed an Aboriginal person in a traffic accident, driving over the prescribed alcohol level, but failed to stop, instead proceeded to brag about it on social media. He was handed a suspended sentence with community service. If the case had been the other way around, young man killed by a drunken Aboriginal who failed to stop, the sentence would have been decidedly different.

The benefit of exceptionalism.

I was thinking this through both in terms of the religious background I have, growing up as an immigrant kid with the cultural influence of predestination, election, being of god’s chosen and other biblical messages used to reinforce the sense of exceptionalism. But mostly I was thinking about how the vileness of hatred, how the politicisation of antisemitism has grown, how a religious celebration can become a hate filled murderous act of terrorism.

I need to state categorically that I am not antisemitic, nor am I islamophobic, I consider myself to be humanitarian and respect the right for all people to hold dear whatever faith they have, even a lack of faith, and condemn those who hold themselves, because of their faith to look down on people who are not of their faith. The dogmatism of religiosity which sees that ‘being chosen to be his people’ as affording the right to discriminate against those deemed to not be chosen, and all dogmatic religiosity follows pretty much the same script.

We have seen that throughout history, and most particularly during the European colonial expansion, we have seen it during the European 100 year war where after the Reformation people were pushed aside, murdered, burned at the stake for being of he wrong religion, and many of those who fled the oppression settled in the various ‘new lands’, to continue that same persecution as the indigenous were pushed from their lands. We have seen it in the enslavement of Africans to be beasts of burden as the colonisers established plantations and enriching themselves of the labour of the enslaved.

This list can be a very, very long one, even here in Australia as we delve into the history of British colonialism, the taking of these lands from the many First Nations which lived (and continue to live) here.

What I find disturbing about the current wave of antisemitism is on a couple of fronts, firstly that Zionism and Semitism are seen as one, where they are decidedly separate. And secondly, that the very peoples who decry the antisemitism are the descendants of the colonisers.

When we consider the treatment of the Arab world through recent history, the overthrow of a democratically elected socialist government in Iran in 1953 which had sought to nationalise their resources, specifically oil, but replaced with the Shah who was more than willing to allow foreign powers to capitalise, enrich themselves from that resource, and the same foreign powers object when the Shah was overthrown by religious zealots.

Or ‘the weapons of mass destruction’ excuse for invading Iraq for what later to be found was that Saddam Hussein wanted to trade Iraq’s oil in currencies other than US dollars.

That the language and attitude toward Islam was one of put downs, insults, dehumanisation, marginalisation, the same language which has been used to describe the indigenous peoples whose lands were stolen whose cultures were cancelled as the new lands were taken over.

In each situation, exceptionalism, the sense that these somehow superior people has the right to take whatever they wanted since the people who were in those lands were not exceptional, indeed, they were considered less than human. Listen to the language used to describe indigenous peoples in the various history books, listen to the language used by the Zionists as they lay claim got the lands of Gaza and the West Bank. Consider the ‘negotiations’ which took place in any of the colonised lands, and look at the ‘negotiations’ Palestinians have had as their lands have been taken, watch as the military might of Israel is used to subdue potential threats from neighbouring countries.

Listen to the repeated claim of the Zionists, that they are merely retaking the lands promised to their ancestor, Abraham, so many thousands of years ago, effectively politicising the religion of Judaism under the banner of semitism, and marrying that with the political movement of Zionism.

My opening question is important, since without considering why so much hatred exists, why a blind eye is turned to the genocide of Gaza, why illegal settlements continue on the West Bank as the Bedouin are pushed aside, that the same exceptionalism drove the holocaust, that same exceptionalism drove slavery and drives the racism which is so evident in the US, and that same fear of immigrants drives the hatred the NeoNazis express here and in various parts of Europe, the MAGA politics of Trump’s America, the blatant racism of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, the anti-immigrant hectoring from Andrew Hastie, the knee-jerk response to lay blame of the Bondi attack at the feet of the Prime Minister.

Each time we see hatred being directed at difference; different religion or faith, different skin colour, different speech accents, different sexual identities, is the motivation not ‘exceptionalism’? Is it not an unwillingness to grant the same human rights we demand for ourselves, but can only apply to those who are more like us… Not some ‘other’?

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