Based Globalism

Love the World, Your Part of It Especially

Globalism, too, can be based and upheld by Chads. Source: Wikimedia Commons

In case you hadn’t heard, populist nationalists really don’t like globalists. In a 2019 speech to the United Nations, President Donald Trump said, “Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots.” More recently, he blamed “globalist countries and companies” for the stock market’s decline in response to his tariffs. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has warned that “the globalist-liberal-Soros NGO network is fleeing to Brussels after President Trump dealt a huge blow to their activities in the US.” And, in France, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen rejects the “far-right” label often ascribed to her, instead insisting that “There is no more left and right. The real cleavage is between the patriots and the globalists.” The American Jewish Committee calls “globalist” a “coded word for Jews who are seen as international elites conspiring to weaken or dismantle ‘Western’ society using their international connections and control over big corporations.” Yet Israel’s advocates also blame “globalist elites” for attacking the legitimacy of the nation-state in general, and the Jewish nation-state in particular.

While “globalism” may sometimes serve as an antisemitic dog whistle, it can also point to a real sociological phenomenon. David Goodhart uses the less charged labels “Anywheres” and “Somewheres” to describe the divide in Britain’s Brexit debate. For him, “Anywheres” are “the educated, mobile people who see the world from ‘Anywhere’ and who value autonomy and fluidity,” while “Somewheres” are “the more rooted, generally less well-educated people who see the world from ‘Somewhere’ and prioritise group attachments and security.” The populist critique of globalism is that the “Anywheres” wield disproportionate political and cultural power, while the values and interests of the “Somewheres” are scorned and undermined. Insofar as Jews qua Jews are identified as the malicious driving force behind globalism, anti-globalism becomes antisemitism. But the populist narrative stands on its own without the need for a Jewish conspiracy. Indeed, it can be applied within the Jewish community itself, insofar as Jewish progressives promote a universalist, “Anywhere” version of Judaism, whereas nationalist Jews espouse attachment to a particular land and people.

But even though globalist does not equal Jew, it can still serve as a similarly convenient scapegoat and bogeyman. Most of us are not pure “Anywheres” or “Somewheres.” We imperfectly balance what Simone Weil calls “the need for roots” with the desire to branch out. We feel the tug of loyalty to our hometown and homeland, but also the urge to broaden our horizons. Over the course of our lives, we may transition from a “Somewhere” childhood to an “Anywhere” young adulthood to a “Somewhere” middle age, hopefully growing wiser along the way. While some of us are decidedly more “Anywhere” than “Somewhere,” or vice versa, society benefits from the presence of both types. We rely on the deeply rooted “Somewheres” to protect our borders and patrol our streets. But by starting businesses and advancing knowledge, the “Anywheres” also contribute to the common good by increasing our prosperity and quality of life. To mash together liberal condescension, most “Somewheres” aren’t “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” “deplorables” who “bitterly cling to guns and religion” and should “learn to code.” But most “Anywheres” aren’t America-hating, drag-queen–loving, godless “cultural Marxists” seeking to replace white people with cheap Mexican labor, either.

The Dark Side of Cosmopolitanism

The less pejorative term for “globalist” is “cosmopolitan,” which derives from the Greek word for “citizen of the world.” (Sorry, you can’t blame the Jews for this one.) In the ancient world, the ideal of cosmopolitanism was given philosophic expression by the Stoics. According to Plutarch: “The much-admired Republic of Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, may be summed up in this one main principle: that all the inhabitants of this world of ours should not Iive differentiated by their respective rules of justice into separate cities and communities but that we should consider all men to be of one community and one polity.” Alexander the Great first implemented the cosmopolitan vision, since “he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men's lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life.” He ordered his subjects to “consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth” and to transcend ethnic division: “the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.” Thus ancient cosmopolitanism was imposed by imperial decree; a critique often made of modern globalism, with Washington, Brussels, or Davos replacing the Greek polis as the seat of power.

Consider also Saint Paul, who was clearly influenced by Greek cosmopolitanism (if not the historical Jesus) when he wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” A fine universalist message, to be imposed by the sword once Christianity achieved worldly power. So too with Muslim cosmopolitanism, which promises equality between all races, but not faiths, since there’s only one true faith; and it happened to be revealed to the Arabs. Thus Greek cosmopolitanism degenerates into Hellenistic imperialism, Christian cosmopolitanism legitimizes European imperialism, while Muslim cosmopolitanism looks suspiciously like Arab imperialism. We must all become citizens of the world, but “the world” happens to speak my language, worship my god(s), and practice my culture. Once you give up your backward way of doing things, you’ll become worldly, too. Of course, imperialists have never needed the excuse of universalism to seek conquest. But the drive to conquer souls—to convert whole peoples and destroy their identities in the process—is a uniquely cosmopolitan legacy.

That’s the dark side of globalism. It’s Antiochus IV, ruler of Alexander’s Seleucid successor state, decreeing that “the whole kingdom should be one people and that each nation must give up its customs.”¹ Prior to the Maccabee Revolt (memorialized on Chanukah), Antiochus sacrificed a pig at the Jerusalem Temple and forced Jewish priests to consume its flesh. After all, why shouldn’t Jews eat pork, or practice pederasty, or leave unwanted babies to die, like good progressive Hellenists? It’s Oviedo, Spanish historian of the West Indies, cheering the violent expansion of Christendom: “Satan has now been expelled from the island [Hispaniola]; his influence has disappeared now that most of the Indians are dead. . . . Who can deny that the use of gunpowder against pagans is the burning of incense to Our Lord?”² In our own times, it’s Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi inciting Muslims to “trample the idol of nationalism” and fight for the aspirationally global Islamic State. An estimated 40,000 foreign fighters heeded his call and helped perpetrate the Yazidi genocide. Of course, the Islamic State arose in the vacuum created by the Iraq War, which was partly motivated by the well-intentioned, but no less hubristic globalist vision of President George W. Bush: “to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.” Global citizens don’t recognize borders, or limits to their ambitions.

Rooted with Wings

But regardless of its iniquities, cosmopolitanism is based on a noble truth. Humans are, of course, members of the same species, sharing the same basic nature. Insofar as Hellenic concepts like philosophy and democracy have spread across the globe, Alexander was right in his universalism. The trouble comes, as the Iraq war more recently demonstrated, when universal ideals like democracy are imposed by force and fiat. Our shared humanity is always filtered by particular qualities, like culture, history, nationality, and religion. So while Iraqis may be just as deserving of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as Americans, they’re not liable to become Americans at the drop of a bomb. Likewise, globalists often believe that mass migration will result in a more diverse society without harming social trust, since we’re all just citizens of the world. But open borders can result in Lebanonization instead: a nominal country fractured along tribal and sectarian lines. In the vernacular, the word “cosmopolitan” has positive connotations: worldly, sophisticated, glamorous. But Beirut was once a byword for cosmopolitanism (“the Paris of the Middle East”) before it became associated with civil war. The flip side of cosmopolitan imperialism is cosmopolitan weakness.

Yet the answer to globalism’s failings isn’t a retreat to provincialism. Like it or not, we live in an irreversibly interconnected world. It was made that way by Europeans, who advanced beyond rival civilizations in large part due to their (relative) worldliness. For example, while Europeans were eager to learn from the past and other peoples, Bernard Lewis notes that “medieval Muslims were not interested in non-Muslim history, nor in pre-Muslim history,” while “the Renaissance, the Reformation, the technological revolution passed virtually unnoticed in the lands of Islam, where they were still inclined to dismiss the denizens of the lands beyond the Western frontier as benighted barbarians.”³ Meanwhile, pre-modern China was, in David Landes’ words, “a culturally and intellectually homeostatic society” in which a “sense of completeness and superiority” induced hostility “to outside knowledge and ways, even where useful.”⁴ The New World, of course, was completely isolated from developments in Eurasia, which contributed to the quick collapse of native societies in the face of European conquerors. In the broad sense of the word, cosmopolitanism provided a competitive advantage to Westerners, and still does so today. Openness to new ideas and people (both immigrants and arrivistes) is a net benefit, so long as that openness doesn’t undermine social cohesion.

What we need, then, to update a Stalinist slur, is rooted cosmopolitanism, or based globalism. The Stoics, cosmopolitanism’s original proponents, developed the concept of oikeiôsis (roughly meaning “affinity”), which is a theory of concern based on concentric circles. Our first “circle of concern” is self, followed by family, then ultimately community, nation, and the entire human race. We should bring the circles closer together, so that we feel connected to those distant from us. But we must still retain our deepest responsibility to the people closest at hand, and not hubristically seek to collapse the circles. Likewise, the Bible teaches that we all descend from Adam and Eve to emphasize our shared human bonds, but also details the lineages of specific nations. The message is that we are related to each other and created in the image of God (Himself conceptualized as a mutual relative, our Father). But some of us are more closely related than others, and it is, paradoxically, universally human to order our affinities based on that unique kinship.⁵ In practice, then, based globalism means putting your own country first, but not placing the rest of the world last. It means avoiding a zero-sum approach to relationships with others, but instead seeking mutual advantage. It means recognizing that we are not purely “Somewheres” or “Anywheres,” but, in our essence, both particular and universal, rooted and winged.

1. Alexander himself reportedly got along well with the Jews. According to Josephus:

For Alexander, when he saw the Multitude [of Jewish emissaries] at a Distance, in white Garments; while the Priests stood clothed with fine Linen; and the High Priest in Purple and scarlet Clothing, with his Miter on his Head, having the golden Plate, whereon the name of GOD was engraved; he approached by himself, and adored that Name, and first saluted the High Priest. The Jews also did altogether, with one Voice, salute Alexander, and encompass him about.

2. Quoted in Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America (1984), p. 151. Other Spaniards, like the Dominican missionary Bartolomé de Las Casas, did defend native peoples in the face of their destruction. But as Todorov notes, they did so on the basis of a Christian assimilationism that required natives to forgo their own identities. Las Casas quoted Saint John Chrysostom to make his point: “Just as there is no natural difference in the creation of man, so there is no difference in the call to salvation of all men, barbarous or otherwise, since God’s grace can correct the minds of barbarians, so that they have a reasonable understanding” (p. 162, emphasis mine).

3. Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (2002), p. 140, 7.

4. David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor (1999), p. 38.

5. See also the Catholic concept of ordo amoris (“order of love”), popularized of late by Vice President JD Vance.