The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Speech given at the “Nordic festival,” Gothenburg, Sweden, Aug. 30, 2008
Which European Identity in Our Postmodernity?
by Dr. Tom Sunic

We start to wonder about our identity at the moment when we are about to lose it. Our fathers and our grandparents never asked questions about their identity; they never worried about it. They took for granted their affiliation to a given religion and to a given tribe or a people. It is with the rising tide of globalization, along with the waning of the traditional nation-state, and with the rising tide of multiculturalism and multiracialism that we start asking a question about who we are. The minute we raise the question of identity we start thinking about national identity.

But is this still really so today? How do we define our modern identity? Let us propose a couple of modern definitions that are onerous to Europeans.

First, we must mention the “substitute” identity, or ersatz identity, or identity by proxy. It is no accident that along with the loss of their own identity, white Europeans resort to ersatz identities. For instance they espouse the Palestinian or Tibetan identity or some other distant Third World identity as if it was their own. They spot some lost Indian tribe in the Amazon forest and then, with all their passion, strive to protect and preserve it. But when it comes to defining and preserving their own identity they remain silent. To say aloud “I am proud of being European,” let alone “I am proud of being a Swede,” or “proud of being a Croat,” smacks of nationalism. It must be avoided in modern discourse.

So which is the defining factor of identity today? Here in this place, you and I can talk about primary identity, secondary and tertiary identity. Does our local national identity today, in the epoch of globalism, precede our secondary European identity? I may have many more things in common in terms of my identity here with young Swedish identitarians than with my fellow Croat nationalists. But in a multicultural and multiracial society it changes. I may find common bonds even with my former enemies, the Serbs, who may also have difficulties identifying themselves with non-European residents coming to their shores.

Now, that second, onerous definition, is that regarding “negative identity.” That substitute or foreign-inspired identity is particularly strong when it is couched in the narrative of victimology. Europeans erect monuments to exotic tribes that they never heard of until the day before last. Days of atonement keep accumulating on the calendar. Every white European or American politician is obliged to pay moral and/or financial tributes to peoples whose identity has nothing in common with his own. While Western media and opinion makers assure us that history is creeping toward an end, we are witnessing a staggering demand for the revival of new non-European micro-identities often expressed as unique victimhoodds. Yet, each non-European victimhood requires an expanding number of its own dead and culprits. Culprits, as a rule, must always be white Europeans, forced in turn to practice the ritual of remorse. The old sense of the tragic, which until recently was the fundamental pillar of European historical memory, cedes its place to European jeremiads for victimhoods of Asian and African tribes. Slowly but surely, the European culture of death is being supplemented by a fixation on non-European identities. What a scandal if a white European or American statesman fails to display remorse for the past suffering of some non- European people!

One must, however, make a clear distinction between the culture of death and the cult of death. The old culture of death, so common to ancient European identity, is being replaced by bizarre cults of the dead, stripped of any redemptive meaning. What counts in each non-European victimhood identity is its impressively high figures for the dead, the endless enumeration of surreal body counts, which serve as an additional weapon to impose guilt feelings on white Europeans. And where does the appetite for the foreign dead stop? On the hit parade of various victimologies or, as the buzzword now goes, in the “battle of memories,” victims can never be equal. Some must take precedence over others, as is the case with the Jewish Holocaust. Given the victimological atmosphere, which prevails today in the multiracial West, each non-European tribe, race or community is led to believe that its own victimology is unique. This is a dangerous phenomenon in view of the fact that each victimology is by definition conflictual, inevitably aiming at the removal of the other competing victimology.

The essence of victimology lies in the liberal dogma of human rights. The dogma of human rights and its most logical social consequence, the foundation of the multiracial world system, is the main motor behind the resurgence of the spirit of victimhood. When all men are declared equal, each human being and each tribe on Earth must be automatically entitled to the status of victimhood. By their nature, multicultural countries in the West are required to allot the victimhood status to every human being. Each ethnic group, every racial, and even every sub-group, practicing some exotic lifestyle, such as gays, lesbians, or sun worshippers, needs it own martyrology in order to legitimize its identity. To illustrate this point, let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the non-European Other, i.e., a Congolese, a Samoan, an Tamil, residing in Paris, London, or New York. Is he or she not entitled to pose the following question: “Why do the others, for instance the Jews, have the right to their victimhood, but not my group?” Indeed, in the name of humanity, some of the largest genocides were made possible during the twentieth century. In the name of an abstract victimology and human rights, dissident intellectuals or political opponents, or whole groups of people, have been dehumanized. To put it differently, each spirit of victimhood searches for its negative identity by negating Otherness, i.e. by abolishing the Other, who is henceforth no longer perceived as human, but depicted as a monster who needs to be eliminated as quickly as possible. The spirit of victimology does not serve to prevent the conflict. It often enhances and renders the conflict inevitable.

There is a serious problem regarding the viability of diverse identities in the multicultural system in the West. On the one hand modern liberal Western societies require that each non-European ethnic group receives an appropriate identity and its right to historical grievance; yet on the other liberal societies are unable to function in an environment beset by ethnic balkanization. Therefore, the contest of diverse victimologies makes the functioning of the liberal system extremely precarious. In essence, each victimological spirit in multiracial society is confrontational and discriminatory. It creates the climate leading up to latent civil war.

Europeans are facing a perilous postmodern situation. On the one hand, they are being overwhelmed by the rhetoric of negative identities, i.e. anticolonial victimologies, and by the endless palaver about past European fascist crimes. Yet on the other hand one can barely hear a word about crimes committed by Communists and their liberal allies against different peoples around the world. Who can still remember Europe’s victims of communism, who have no victimological status in Western Europe, at least?

In our postmodernity we have to overcome the sense of territorial rootedness. Our European racial and cultural identity stretches from Argentina to Sweden and to Russia. We do not wish to waste our time and search for the appropriate word for this prospective political entity: it could be called the “Reich,” “the “Empire,” or the “European Union.” What counts, though, is the substance and the values behind this political structure and not the name per se. Furthermore, our identity must not be posited on the exclusion of the Otherness, but on the clear acknowledgement of Differentiation of different identities. We must not define our racial and cultural identity by make the Other a Xerox copy of ourselves - as modern Liberals and Christians do with their vague universalism. Our identity lies in the transcendental sphere of our own uniqueness - but not at the price of excluding the uniqueness of other peoples and other races.

Thank you for your attention.