American professor of history Adam Rothman, in a November 14, 2018 article for the Washington Post, writes that ‘tribalism’ has become a ‘hot topic’ to explain the deep divisions within the American polity. Tribalism, in this context, means that societies are rejecting conventional notions of ideological nationalism and pluralism, and the economics of globalisation and the multiculturalism that it inspired, and adopting the primacy of tribalism.
Rothman cites examples in which various American analysts have posited tribalism as the thing that is making American politics so polarised and toxic. These analysts believe that the same is happening in many European countries as well.
Interestingly, this debate has erupted with the rise of right-wing nationalist parties and individuals in various countries. Yet, a controversial book by the Chinese-American academic Amy Chua, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, claims that political tribalism can be found among liberal and/or progressive groups as much as it can in conservative or reactionary ones.
Chua writes that thousands of years ago, when humans began to organise as tribes, tribalism offered safety and identity for which one had to fully identify, with whatever the tribe stood for. The tribal mindset was overcome by ideas such as constitutionalism, nationalism, science and modern economics. Nationalism, in fact, was a more sophisticated form of tribalism, but one which attempted to eschew ethnic and religious divisions within a nation, even if through force.
Are we more concerned about who is saying something than what’s being said?
Chua argues that, once the nation states based on nationalist impulses and ideas consolidated themselves, economic factors such as rising income inequalities and the formation of ruling elites created severe divisions within these nations’ polities. This is when, according to Chua, the tribal mindset, which is still ‘hard-wired’ in the human psyche, reappeared.
Chua sees the polities of many nation states now as extremely polarised by modern-day tribes competing against each other. These tribes all see themselves as victims of an economic and political elite. These tribes include working-class whites, working-class blacks, gays and lesbians, feminists, white supremacists, anti-immigration activists, anti-racist groups, Islamophobes, anti-Islamophobes, etc. Chua writes that the US and Europe became too haughty about their scientific, political and ideological triumphs and completely undermined the fact that tribal mindsets not only existed in developing nation states, but also within developed ones.
Chua’s thesis has faced severe criticism by many of her peers in the Western intelligentsia (her own tribe?). Professor Rothman writes that, indeed, the tribal mindset has been a reality for centuries, but it has been constantly checked through progressive political, economic and social legislation. The US has had a history of producing violent groups which undermined American democracy long before the emergence of Chua’s modern-day political tribes, he writes. But eventually they have all been relegated to the fringes.