This is hopelessly abstract, with not a single reference to any actual historical group or political regime, let alone any rigorous research or writing. For nearly a decade I've watched people use the word "tribalism" to avoid thinking and have never seen anything to convince me of its value. Calling this high school level writing is unfair to thoughtful high school students.
I think this is a good piece of writing, the only part I disagree with is the claim that these thoughts would be broadly overlooked or disagreed with.
Seems I'm pretty much alone with this, but that's OK.
I agree with other comments that it should have more links to prior philosophical and anthropological studies.
This is not academic writing or an essay arguing for a point. At least, the point at rhetorical end seems a bit tacked-on.
To me this is a stream-of-consciousness like text.
Sometimes, being reductive helps in bringing a point across.
I think that the article does this well.
The close similarity of cronyism and tribalism is pointed out especially well, too.
My critique would be that the text is a bit engagement-baity. And it uses the simplistic rhetoric so well that for the most part it feels as if the author is arguing for an abandonment of law and a return to "tribalism".
The claim that people have "forgotten" the ideas of this essay seems unneeded.
A more humble tone would maybe make this post more interesting to many readers.
This article is so reductive that by the end I don't know who "we" are and what "we have" to preserve and appreciate or what modern state is worth fighting for if it's the one that raised us on the rule of law that that made us illiterate to the tribal nature that this same state is reviving through its failures?
One can present these two systems as equal alternatives but there is a very big difference. The system with the rule of law leads to much more prosperous societies than the tribal one. Corruption is economically extremely expensive. Like, one it really gets going, it can easily decrease GDP by a factor of 10. The same with dictatorships. As long as the dictator makes somewhat reasonable decisions it is more or less okay but any dictatorship is only a few bad decisions away from becoming much poorer. And when it depends on the good judgement of a single person these bad decisions are certainly going to come.
The problem as usual is the tragedy of the commons. We might be collectively better off under rule of law, but the tribal law of the jungle system produces concentrated winners, who will use their winnings to continue to subvert rule of law.
I think many of the comments in this discussion are confusing the concept of "tribes" (in-groups & out-groups) with 'tribalism' - the form of civic society. This article is about the civic society called 'tribalism'. The contrast to 'tribalism' is 'rule of law'.
Tribalism is essentially a belief that the only reason others won't bully you is because they can't. Bully or be bullied. Rule of law instead says that it is the civic code who is the arbiter of right. 'Tribalism' vs 'rule of law' are both essentially frameworks of society and government.
There are a lot of big claims here and literally not a single reference to anthropological research or even anything resembling it. This article is very badly argued.
I think there's something about the way this is written that's endemic to our time -- it basically feels right because it gives a possible explanation of current events that has some internal consistency. It doesn't mean it's right, but neither the author nor (most of) the audience care about that part.
Specify what argument is bad? I don't think it needs references. If after "The reason modern individuals agree to give up their right to personal protection is due to their belief in institutions" there was a footnote that said something like "Bigbeard, 1983" how would that help?
This article seems to reduce the world to "fair and non-tribal" vs "unfair and tribal". These probably correlate. But it's not that simple.
For example, in many tribal societies, if a man from tribe A harms a man from tribe B, his own tribe might offer restitution to tribe B (or punishment for the criminal). In fact, disputes would often escalate to tribal leaders, who of course might be biased and only look out for their own, but not always. This was how peace was generally maintained. Otherwise, anytime someone from a tribe harmed someone from another tribe, there would be war.
Interesting framing. Tribalism, or 'rule-of-the-strong' is inherently not fair. "Fair" is not the driving consideration. "Rule of law" does have 'just' as a driving consideration.
> For example, in many tribal societies, if a man from tribe A harms a man from tribe B, his own tribe might offer restitution to tribe B (or punishment for the criminal).
I'd suggest the restitution is offered because either tribe A & B are of equal strength, or tribe A is weaker. In both cases, tribe A is "offering tribute" to show subservience, to show they are weaker. If they do not, tribe B is forced to show they are stronger; lest other tribes think that they can take similar advantage of them.
Hence, it is a lot more of a "I'm sorry - please don't hurt me!" rather than a "well, it is only fair that we compensate you". In tribalism, if you are strong, then you don't offer the compensation.
> In fact, disputes would often escalate to tribal leaders, who of course might be biased and only look out for their own, but not always.
Is it not always? The reason to offer restitution to a stronger tribe is so that the stronger tribe does not retaliate.
> Otherwise, anytime someone from a tribe harmed someone from another tribe, there would be war.
I think this is overlooking the case where tribe A is actually stronger. In tribalism, if tribe A is stronger then there would be no recourse for tribe B. By showing dominance over tribe B, tribe A is sending a message to all other tribes that they are not to be messed with.
wow:
"Why would a clan that guarantees its own justice ever yield to a system that promises justice to its enemies? To do so is to voluntarily surrender its greatest strengths: the power to protect its own, punish its rivals, and maintain its position in the world. It is not merely a loss of advantage; it is the dismantling of the clan’s very foundation."
White nationalism and conservatism in a nutshell...
Yes, I find folks in other countries are highly collaborative in a way that my own country (USA) often is not.
I think the general sentiment in my country is driven by goal-seeking behavior dominated by individualistic fear, and I see less of that elsewhere. "Political charged"-ness is both a contributor and an outcome.
That is true everywhere though, locals only have a say when they rebel and throw out their overlords. It isn't like the Irish were particularly happy about England pushing them around and so on.
Has it occurred to you that a White nationalist and conservative may be reading that same passage and bringing whatever you are to mind? Or the entire article for that matter.
This is not a novel insight. The attitude described is basically textbook conservatism, as per Wilhoit's law [0]
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect
For a majority of HN readers (and I assume the commenter you're replying to) that in-group is their country's white majority but in other circles it's other groups. They may be groups who don't call themselves conservatives but that doesn't mean they aren't.
In other words, I agree with their claim that said quote is conservatism in a nutshell. Anti-conservatism isn't rooting for some other group, it's being against this kind of tribalism wholesale.
That's a pretty wild definition of conservatism, I don't think even uncharitable historians/political scientists would define conservatism in that way. And in fact it's not a textbook definition; looking at the link you posted seems like that quote is from a composer's blog in 2018.
The scary thing is that if we take that (misattributed, but interesting) definition ("There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect") into consideration then its interpretation could be employed by whoever conservatives are supposed to be to describe the contemporary ideals of whoever isn't a conservative (or at least they don't call themselves conservatives but that doesn't mean that aren't).
And I don't think that the grandparent comment portrayed anything like anti-conservatism as you've defined it.
There's pots and kettles here clanging and banging against each other fighting to get the noose around the other's neck the quickest.
"Some random 59 year old from Ohio wrote this, so it's well known that that's conservativism in a nutshell" is a strange stance.
> Anti-conservatism isn't rooting for some other group, it's being against this kind of tribalism wholesale.
Do you have any examples of that? I've never seen someone who doesn't go mild on people who share beliefs he holds dear and judges harshly those who don't.
The ACLU was pretty anti-conservative in the past (before they got captured by the regressive left). Eg they helped protect the right of free expression of nazi groups, stuff like that.
ps. Fair, I agree that it's weird to elevate one random blog commenter's words to a "law", though this particular one is widely quoted because, I think, it resonates and hits the nail on the head. I do feel that "tribalism" is a better word for the concept, but "conservatism" isn't far off since every conservative group I know of (at least in the US and Europe) support this kind of tribalism to a fair extent.
We'd have to see how ACLU-members react/reacted to transgressions of friends or allies vs opponents. Would they not be affected when evaluating e.g. corruption charges? It'd be very rare.
Defending both left and right against the government is another story, I think. There are more tribes than just left and right, and even left and right I'd see more as meta-tribes, tribes made up of other tribes. Depending on the issue you're looking at, alliances shift, e.g. on Ukraine or Israel where the fault lines are not the typical left/right divisions in most Western countries.
That "law" probably resonates with lots of people who aren't fans of conservatives, but that's a low bar to clear and doesn't say much about whether it's true and only conservatives form tribes (calling everything conservative that forms a tribe would turn it into tautological reasoning). Every political movement I've ever witnessed was tribal at its core. I'm not sure it's impossible to have a cohesive movement without forming a tribe, but it doesn't seem to be easy or we'd see it more often.
I don't think 'Tribe' is really defined as merely a "political" group in the OG article. It's more a system of government rather than political affiliation. In tribalism, it is rule-of-the-strong, dominance over the weak; it is not 'rule of law'. Any group that believes in rule of law rather than dominance of the weak is not tribalistic. The article posits that the shift of tribalism comes about as a group can tear down the barriers that the rule of law provides - at which point society readily devolves to tribalism.
The tribes in the United States used to be called Yankee and Dixie. Now they're called other things, sometimes "red" and "blue", sometimes "MAGA" or "woke", but the geography (Mason-Dixon line), the sympathies, the prejudices, all very visible to this day.
Americans have no trouble seeing tribalism or clannish behavior when its in the Middle East, or in Africa, but seem to think America is differentnt (a phenomenon that also has a name: American Exceptionalism).
In my view, the Yankee/Dixie tribal cold war combined with American Exceptionalism is some pretty stiff stuff indeed.
Not american and have no idea what the situation there is like, but from election county maps it seems that the divide is much more fine-grained than you make it sound (nowhere near the sort of thing you see in Germany for example).
> (a phenomenon that also has a name: American Exceptionalism).
I’m not American by live in the US, and I agree. This inability of Americans, on average ofc, (regardless of the degree, social status, race, etc) to accept that people in other countries may view A THING differently than what Americans think these said people think is mind boggling.
I think its much more useful to think of those divides as artificial or manufactured creations, as a tool for pacification, divide and conquer. You can also see that expressed in US foreign policy, the sunni/shia/kurdish divide in Iraq after the war, that too was an artificial creation by the US ruling class.
US foreign policy might have exacerbated some tribal or sectarian conflicts but historically those groups have never gotten along very well. There is a long history of violence stretching back centuries before the US even existed.
I think you downplaying it, but I understand the need to defend the US at all times. A source on the matter for example:
> "This analysis paper begins by examining how the U.S. occupation effectively
dismantled the Iraqi state post-2003, paving the way for sectarian conflict
and allowing for armed groups and sectarian elites to fill the resulting gap. It
explores the weaponization of sect and identity and its devastating consequences
for the country. The second part focuses on the Baath Party-enforced political
and institutional order to explain how the former regime was able to constrain
the space for group identities."
> "Sectarianism would not have become the powerful, destructive force that it did were it not for the weaponization of identity and sect by the exiled opposition and a series of disastrous post-conflict reconstruction policies"
I think John Dolan's take is the ruthlessly honest one: some neighborhoods are rougher than others, and that's not a parochial or imperialist sentiment a-priori the way some would try to paint it (the Troubles are far too recent to think that white/Empire-descended people have forgotten real sectarian conflict).
Saddam Hussein was siting on top of one of the most complex and high-intensity sectarian fault lines on Earth (not unlike other Baathist proto-commies-turned-strongmen who have since been replaced by Islamist hardliners) and he kept order with the kinds of brutality that keep order when salients like that are in play.
I don't know what the long-term humane solution will be, but it won't be sanctimonious twittering on the heels of an Arc Light strike. I think self-determination is an easy talk to talk but a harder walk to walk for cultures like America.
Americans see tribalism just fine: we’ve been discussing since Malcolm X how the tribal sentiments of minorities are utilized by a political party in the pursuit of power.
And the primary division these days is urban vs rural, with the secondary PMC vs working class. Woke vs MAGA maps onto that divide more cleanly than anything else.
Yes. This put what I have been saying... "every day feels more and more like survival mixed with fuck you I got mine"... into much better words and concepts. I grew up poor and got involved with "tribes" where power was the goal and we learned growing up that you demonstrated your power. Lucky enough to have escaped that and to have matured into a passivist of sorts- I am troubled by the increasing tribalism and more and more feel my patience eroding and that itch in my id to demonstrate power...
I feel like tribalism is natural (as in, it's the law of nature): our prime concern is the survival of our individual selves. And then of our families. And since we are social creatures, the survival/well-being people around us. And if we're programmed to identify "people who look like me are family", then a tribalism based on appearance is pre-programmed. The next level of programming is "people who think like me and share my values are family"...
And the pessimist in me doesn't see how the tribes won't get smaller and more egoistic in this world: population is growing, the melting/burning planet provides less and less resources, and social media is building up the jealousy...
Eh, the west has forgotten it. The rest of the world, played along and embraced it. The middle east- genocided flat along tribal lines. 99% shia, 99% sunnis, the rest all gone or about to go, copts, zhorotastrians, jesidi, druse, alewite, jehudi - and the genocide is still going on, burning its way through sudan.
Nobody cares about it, its right there in public, in the population statistics of the middle east- provided by the UN who never made a single resolution against it.
China is a pure ethno-state where every minority dwindles and vannishes - and some are kept around for a happy Disney dance around the reservation.
Turkey has thrown its proxxies ISIL/HTS into syria to continue the genocide on the kurds, driving them out of the towns towards the mediterranean, after its ally to the east has driven the armenians into retreat in mount kharabach.
Russia is deeply tribalist, the moscowian throwing the other minorities into battle to capture new minorities to throw into battle.
Its a grim world out there, once you rip the western centric googles from your eyes. Nobody cares about the law, about the west and about morals or history books.
This is hopelessly abstract, with not a single reference to any actual historical group or political regime, let alone any rigorous research or writing. For nearly a decade I've watched people use the word "tribalism" to avoid thinking and have never seen anything to convince me of its value. Calling this high school level writing is unfair to thoughtful high school students.
Hey, watch it there! This article was written by my nephew.
.
Ironically that applies more to your reply than the comment you replied to.
I think this is a good piece of writing, the only part I disagree with is the claim that these thoughts would be broadly overlooked or disagreed with.
Seems I'm pretty much alone with this, but that's OK.
I agree with other comments that it should have more links to prior philosophical and anthropological studies.
This is not academic writing or an essay arguing for a point. At least, the point at rhetorical end seems a bit tacked-on.
To me this is a stream-of-consciousness like text.
Sometimes, being reductive helps in bringing a point across.
I think that the article does this well.
The close similarity of cronyism and tribalism is pointed out especially well, too.
My critique would be that the text is a bit engagement-baity. And it uses the simplistic rhetoric so well that for the most part it feels as if the author is arguing for an abandonment of law and a return to "tribalism".
The claim that people have "forgotten" the ideas of this essay seems unneeded.
A more humble tone would maybe make this post more interesting to many readers.
This article is so reductive that by the end I don't know who "we" are and what "we have" to preserve and appreciate or what modern state is worth fighting for if it's the one that raised us on the rule of law that that made us illiterate to the tribal nature that this same state is reviving through its failures?
One can present these two systems as equal alternatives but there is a very big difference. The system with the rule of law leads to much more prosperous societies than the tribal one. Corruption is economically extremely expensive. Like, one it really gets going, it can easily decrease GDP by a factor of 10. The same with dictatorships. As long as the dictator makes somewhat reasonable decisions it is more or less okay but any dictatorship is only a few bad decisions away from becoming much poorer. And when it depends on the good judgement of a single person these bad decisions are certainly going to come.
The problem as usual is the tragedy of the commons. We might be collectively better off under rule of law, but the tribal law of the jungle system produces concentrated winners, who will use their winnings to continue to subvert rule of law.
I think many of the comments in this discussion are confusing the concept of "tribes" (in-groups & out-groups) with 'tribalism' - the form of civic society. This article is about the civic society called 'tribalism'. The contrast to 'tribalism' is 'rule of law'.
Tribalism is essentially a belief that the only reason others won't bully you is because they can't. Bully or be bullied. Rule of law instead says that it is the civic code who is the arbiter of right. 'Tribalism' vs 'rule of law' are both essentially frameworks of society and government.
[dead]
There are a lot of big claims here and literally not a single reference to anthropological research or even anything resembling it. This article is very badly argued.
I think there's something about the way this is written that's endemic to our time -- it basically feels right because it gives a possible explanation of current events that has some internal consistency. It doesn't mean it's right, but neither the author nor (most of) the audience care about that part.
The same blog has another post for you about this:
"The rise of marketing speak: Why everyone on the internet sounds like a used car salesman" :)
Specify what argument is bad? I don't think it needs references. If after "The reason modern individuals agree to give up their right to personal protection is due to their belief in institutions" there was a footnote that said something like "Bigbeard, 1983" how would that help?
This article seems to reduce the world to "fair and non-tribal" vs "unfair and tribal". These probably correlate. But it's not that simple.
For example, in many tribal societies, if a man from tribe A harms a man from tribe B, his own tribe might offer restitution to tribe B (or punishment for the criminal). In fact, disputes would often escalate to tribal leaders, who of course might be biased and only look out for their own, but not always. This was how peace was generally maintained. Otherwise, anytime someone from a tribe harmed someone from another tribe, there would be war.
> "fair and non-tribal" vs "unfair and tribal".
Interesting framing. Tribalism, or 'rule-of-the-strong' is inherently not fair. "Fair" is not the driving consideration. "Rule of law" does have 'just' as a driving consideration.
> For example, in many tribal societies, if a man from tribe A harms a man from tribe B, his own tribe might offer restitution to tribe B (or punishment for the criminal).
I'd suggest the restitution is offered because either tribe A & B are of equal strength, or tribe A is weaker. In both cases, tribe A is "offering tribute" to show subservience, to show they are weaker. If they do not, tribe B is forced to show they are stronger; lest other tribes think that they can take similar advantage of them.
Hence, it is a lot more of a "I'm sorry - please don't hurt me!" rather than a "well, it is only fair that we compensate you". In tribalism, if you are strong, then you don't offer the compensation.
> In fact, disputes would often escalate to tribal leaders, who of course might be biased and only look out for their own, but not always.
Is it not always? The reason to offer restitution to a stronger tribe is so that the stronger tribe does not retaliate.
> Otherwise, anytime someone from a tribe harmed someone from another tribe, there would be war.
I think this is overlooking the case where tribe A is actually stronger. In tribalism, if tribe A is stronger then there would be no recourse for tribe B. By showing dominance over tribe B, tribe A is sending a message to all other tribes that they are not to be messed with.
Forgotten it? Tribalism has been one of the single biggest tropes in pop political rhetoric for at least a decade.
It's hard to find a political post on HN that doesn't invoke it in the comments.
wow: "Why would a clan that guarantees its own justice ever yield to a system that promises justice to its enemies? To do so is to voluntarily surrender its greatest strengths: the power to protect its own, punish its rivals, and maintain its position in the world. It is not merely a loss of advantage; it is the dismantling of the clan’s very foundation."
White nationalism and conservatism in a nutshell...
> White nationalism and conservatism in a nutshell...
Do you think people in Africa think otherwise?
I know the political climate is charged right now, but cmon people.
Yes, I find folks in other countries are highly collaborative in a way that my own country (USA) often is not.
I think the general sentiment in my country is driven by goal-seeking behavior dominated by individualistic fear, and I see less of that elsewhere. "Political charged"-ness is both a contributor and an outcome.
> driven by goal-seeking behavior
This is a bad thing now?
Huh? There’s plenty of deeply divided countries. Especially in Africa where many borders were drawn with no respect to ethnic and tribal situation.
Most of the borders in the Middle East and Asia are drawn without any consideration of the locals
That is true everywhere though, locals only have a say when they rebel and throw out their overlords. It isn't like the Irish were particularly happy about England pushing them around and so on.
Has it occurred to you that a White nationalist and conservative may be reading that same passage and bringing whatever you are to mind? Or the entire article for that matter.
This is not a novel insight. The attitude described is basically textbook conservatism, as per Wilhoit's law [0]
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect
For a majority of HN readers (and I assume the commenter you're replying to) that in-group is their country's white majority but in other circles it's other groups. They may be groups who don't call themselves conservatives but that doesn't mean they aren't.
In other words, I agree with their claim that said quote is conservatism in a nutshell. Anti-conservatism isn't rooting for some other group, it's being against this kind of tribalism wholesale.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#Misattribut...
That's a pretty wild definition of conservatism, I don't think even uncharitable historians/political scientists would define conservatism in that way. And in fact it's not a textbook definition; looking at the link you posted seems like that quote is from a composer's blog in 2018.
The scary thing is that if we take that (misattributed, but interesting) definition ("There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect") into consideration then its interpretation could be employed by whoever conservatives are supposed to be to describe the contemporary ideals of whoever isn't a conservative (or at least they don't call themselves conservatives but that doesn't mean that aren't).
And I don't think that the grandparent comment portrayed anything like anti-conservatism as you've defined it.
There's pots and kettles here clanging and banging against each other fighting to get the noose around the other's neck the quickest.
"Some random 59 year old from Ohio wrote this, so it's well known that that's conservativism in a nutshell" is a strange stance.
> Anti-conservatism isn't rooting for some other group, it's being against this kind of tribalism wholesale.
Do you have any examples of that? I've never seen someone who doesn't go mild on people who share beliefs he holds dear and judges harshly those who don't.
The ACLU was pretty anti-conservative in the past (before they got captured by the regressive left). Eg they helped protect the right of free expression of nazi groups, stuff like that.
ps. Fair, I agree that it's weird to elevate one random blog commenter's words to a "law", though this particular one is widely quoted because, I think, it resonates and hits the nail on the head. I do feel that "tribalism" is a better word for the concept, but "conservatism" isn't far off since every conservative group I know of (at least in the US and Europe) support this kind of tribalism to a fair extent.
We'd have to see how ACLU-members react/reacted to transgressions of friends or allies vs opponents. Would they not be affected when evaluating e.g. corruption charges? It'd be very rare.
Defending both left and right against the government is another story, I think. There are more tribes than just left and right, and even left and right I'd see more as meta-tribes, tribes made up of other tribes. Depending on the issue you're looking at, alliances shift, e.g. on Ukraine or Israel where the fault lines are not the typical left/right divisions in most Western countries.
That "law" probably resonates with lots of people who aren't fans of conservatives, but that's a low bar to clear and doesn't say much about whether it's true and only conservatives form tribes (calling everything conservative that forms a tribe would turn it into tautological reasoning). Every political movement I've ever witnessed was tribal at its core. I'm not sure it's impossible to have a cohesive movement without forming a tribe, but it doesn't seem to be easy or we'd see it more often.
I don't think 'Tribe' is really defined as merely a "political" group in the OG article. It's more a system of government rather than political affiliation. In tribalism, it is rule-of-the-strong, dominance over the weak; it is not 'rule of law'. Any group that believes in rule of law rather than dominance of the weak is not tribalistic. The article posits that the shift of tribalism comes about as a group can tear down the barriers that the rule of law provides - at which point society readily devolves to tribalism.
The libertarian stance leans toward magnanimity over those who don't share one's own beliefs. Provided their conduct doesn't interfere with others.
The tribes in the United States used to be called Yankee and Dixie. Now they're called other things, sometimes "red" and "blue", sometimes "MAGA" or "woke", but the geography (Mason-Dixon line), the sympathies, the prejudices, all very visible to this day.
Americans have no trouble seeing tribalism or clannish behavior when its in the Middle East, or in Africa, but seem to think America is differentnt (a phenomenon that also has a name: American Exceptionalism).
In my view, the Yankee/Dixie tribal cold war combined with American Exceptionalism is some pretty stiff stuff indeed.
Not american and have no idea what the situation there is like, but from election county maps it seems that the divide is much more fine-grained than you make it sound (nowhere near the sort of thing you see in Germany for example).
Yes geo-wise it’s often urban vs in USA. What’s it like in Germany?
East Germany border is very very visible.
> (a phenomenon that also has a name: American Exceptionalism).
I’m not American by live in the US, and I agree. This inability of Americans, on average ofc, (regardless of the degree, social status, race, etc) to accept that people in other countries may view A THING differently than what Americans think these said people think is mind boggling.
Exactly my point, this has been going on in America for a long time.
I think its much more useful to think of those divides as artificial or manufactured creations, as a tool for pacification, divide and conquer. You can also see that expressed in US foreign policy, the sunni/shia/kurdish divide in Iraq after the war, that too was an artificial creation by the US ruling class.
US foreign policy might have exacerbated some tribal or sectarian conflicts but historically those groups have never gotten along very well. There is a long history of violence stretching back centuries before the US even existed.
I think you downplaying it, but I understand the need to defend the US at all times. A source on the matter for example:
> "This analysis paper begins by examining how the U.S. occupation effectively dismantled the Iraqi state post-2003, paving the way for sectarian conflict and allowing for armed groups and sectarian elites to fill the resulting gap. It explores the weaponization of sect and identity and its devastating consequences for the country. The second part focuses on the Baath Party-enforced political and institutional order to explain how the former regime was able to constrain the space for group identities."
> "Sectarianism would not have become the powerful, destructive force that it did were it not for the weaponization of identity and sect by the exiled opposition and a series of disastrous post-conflict reconstruction policies"
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Sectari...
I think John Dolan's take is the ruthlessly honest one: some neighborhoods are rougher than others, and that's not a parochial or imperialist sentiment a-priori the way some would try to paint it (the Troubles are far too recent to think that white/Empire-descended people have forgotten real sectarian conflict).
Saddam Hussein was siting on top of one of the most complex and high-intensity sectarian fault lines on Earth (not unlike other Baathist proto-commies-turned-strongmen who have since been replaced by Islamist hardliners) and he kept order with the kinds of brutality that keep order when salients like that are in play.
I don't know what the long-term humane solution will be, but it won't be sanctimonious twittering on the heels of an Arc Light strike. I think self-determination is an easy talk to talk but a harder walk to walk for cultures like America.
Americans see tribalism just fine: we’ve been discussing since Malcolm X how the tribal sentiments of minorities are utilized by a political party in the pursuit of power.
And the primary division these days is urban vs rural, with the secondary PMC vs working class. Woke vs MAGA maps onto that divide more cleanly than anything else.
Despite your clumsy attempt to tie tribalism exclusively to white conservatives, there are many other groups far more tribalist across the spectrum.
Who said exclusively?
the only example being used.
you guys always tell on yourselves
Yes. This put what I have been saying... "every day feels more and more like survival mixed with fuck you I got mine"... into much better words and concepts. I grew up poor and got involved with "tribes" where power was the goal and we learned growing up that you demonstrated your power. Lucky enough to have escaped that and to have matured into a passivist of sorts- I am troubled by the increasing tribalism and more and more feel my patience eroding and that itch in my id to demonstrate power...
I feel like tribalism is natural (as in, it's the law of nature): our prime concern is the survival of our individual selves. And then of our families. And since we are social creatures, the survival/well-being people around us. And if we're programmed to identify "people who look like me are family", then a tribalism based on appearance is pre-programmed. The next level of programming is "people who think like me and share my values are family"...
And the pessimist in me doesn't see how the tribes won't get smaller and more egoistic in this world: population is growing, the melting/burning planet provides less and less resources, and social media is building up the jealousy...
Eh, the west has forgotten it. The rest of the world, played along and embraced it. The middle east- genocided flat along tribal lines. 99% shia, 99% sunnis, the rest all gone or about to go, copts, zhorotastrians, jesidi, druse, alewite, jehudi - and the genocide is still going on, burning its way through sudan.
Nobody cares about it, its right there in public, in the population statistics of the middle east- provided by the UN who never made a single resolution against it.
China is a pure ethno-state where every minority dwindles and vannishes - and some are kept around for a happy Disney dance around the reservation.
Turkey has thrown its proxxies ISIL/HTS into syria to continue the genocide on the kurds, driving them out of the towns towards the mediterranean, after its ally to the east has driven the armenians into retreat in mount kharabach.
Russia is deeply tribalist, the moscowian throwing the other minorities into battle to capture new minorities to throw into battle.
Its a grim world out there, once you rip the western centric googles from your eyes. Nobody cares about the law, about the west and about morals or history books.
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