the issue of nationalism

8/9/2019 The Issue of Nationalism

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The Issue of Nationalism

(A Personal Perspective)

by

Charles W. Bevel


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01 Taking the course, "Slovenian in Perspective" was a

"requirement"; one of those college courses that someone,

sitting in an office somewhere, has decided is "good for you";

that is, it will perhaps broaden your horizons or make you a

better citizen, or something of the kind. I am always a little

resentful of someone making assumptions about what I ought to

know or see. Perhaps some Freudian psychologist would attribute

my attitude to bad toilet training around the age of two. I

attribute it to the fact that at about the age of ten, after

having to fake a religious conversion because of what was "good

for me", I became firmly convinced that I really did have a much

better sense, than did others, of what was good for me. Or at

least a better sense of what felt good to me. And the use of


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what feels good for deciding what is good, as provincial as it

might sounds, has become a powerful barometer for me. Not in a

hedonistic sense, but in the sense of knowing what not to do;

what things to avoid.

02 "Requirements" don't feel good to me and I avoid them when

I can.

03 Undoubtedly I would have taken "Slovenian in Perspective"

anyway. One of the things that does feel good to me is

traveling into heretofore unvisited places, minds and hearts.

And taking the time to know something of another place, and its

people has always felt good to me.

04 Several years ago, I revisited the cotton plantation in

Mississippi where I had grown up as a child. I found a

childhood friend who was still living there. As we talked, I

was struck by the thought of what might be the difference

between the two of us that had caused him to stay there on that

cotton plantation and for me to have spent years of my life

traveling to 44 of the fifty States of this union and at least

ten foreign countries. I didn't ask him, but I suspect it came

down to what felt best to each of us at certain given moments in


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our respective lives. Permanence and stability is how some view

the world and their place in it. Change and chance is the

accepted norm for me.

05 Who are Slovenians? The map of Europe flashed into my

mind. A big black hole loomed between West Germany and Russia.

The Slovenians were in that hole somewhere. I was sure I had

seen signs somewhere along St. Clair Avenue here in Cleveland

with that name. My mind raced back to the early 1950s, when I

had first come up to Cleveland from Mississippi as a twelve-year

old. During my first summer I had stood toe to toe and slugged

it out with an onslaught of sights and sounds, some stranger

than fiction; sounds coming from factories and people; people

speaking foreign languages. Given pocket money I would not

spend it all at the corner store buying pretzel sticks and other

things I had never seen or eaten before. In fact, most of my

money would go into the cash box of the 79th Street bus line. I

would ride all day, transferring and repaying when I had to. I

had to see all of this city; hear all of those sounds.

06 I had never heard "foreigners" talk in their own language

before then, well... Sitting on the bus, my mind flew back to

Mississippi, World War II and cotton fields. We were picking


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cotton next to a group of German prisoners of war who did speak

in their own language. I had developed this strange and

ambivalent feeling toward them, a mixture of intrigue and

resentment. I was intrigued by their language and what Germany

might be like. The resentment came not from the fact that they

were enemy soldiers, but from the fact that they were "white"

and thus were treated much better than we, the black cotton

pickers, although we were Americans.... An animated

conversation between two old ladies wearing "babushkas" brought

me back to Cleveland; foreigners speaking their own language.

Who were they? Poles? Hungarians? Lithuanians?

07 Just as I rode the bus, alone, most of my activities even

at home were alone. I never joined in the fights between my

other brothers and sisters over which radio station to listen

to, or which record to play on the phonograph. I hung back,

waiting for Sunday--my day with the radio. Not understanding a

word, my ears would be glued to it listening to all those

foreigners, listening to polkas. Czechs? Armenians?

Slovenians?


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08 Before the quarter started, I had thought to go to the

library to get a book and read up on Czechoslovakia; to get a

head start on filling in the black hole between West Germany and

Russia. I never got around to it. On the first day in class, I

was momentarily confused when we were given a handout, a travel

booklet about Yugoslavia. I chuckled to myself and was thankful

that I hadn't made it to the library to get that book on

Czechoslovakia. I would have been reading about the wrong

Slavs! Czechoslovakia? Yugoslavia? Slovenians? O. K. Now

that we got that straight!

09 As it was to be, we spent as much time in the class talking

about the Slovakians as we did the Slovenians anyway. Professor

Rupel, a tall, sloped-shouldered man, with disheveled hair and a

slightly bohemian air about him, bulldozed an astounding amount

of cultural, political and military history into the "black

hole" between West Germany and Russia; sometimes too fast,

sometimes too detailed for the time frame. I was frankly

fascinated by it all as I watched his mind race ahead of his

sometimes halting english. "What does all of this history and

politics have to do with Slovenians?", I was asked, by one of

the students with whom I shared a second class. I understood

the question behind the question. And the answer had to do with


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the similarity between that student and my childhood friend who

still resides on the cotton plantation.

10 I know that everything that exists in the Universe is

related to everything else. So I knew that all this history

about Eastern and Central Europe, that seemed so removed from

Slovenia and Slovenians, would serve some purpose in my life.

The connections would be made sooner or later. It was to be

sooner than I thought. It was during this quarter that the

evening television news began to chronicle the crumbling of

governments in east and central Europe. It is ironic in

retrospect, it seemed as if Dr. Rupel knew in advance about the

tidal wave of changes that was now breaking over central Europe,

and felt obligated to prepare us in some way. Whether it was

his intent or not, the things being shoved into the "black hole"

made the breaking news from Europe understandable in a different

way.

11 It is not that my childhood friend or the student who asked

me that question does not also know that everything in the

universe is connected to everything else, they are just

satisfied to accept it and let it be so--an accepting nature


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that I sometimes wish that I had. Will knowing anything at all

about Slovenia make a difference in my life? Will I, or my

skeptical fellow student, ever go to Ljubljana?

12 Slovenia. We watched two Slovenian movies, "The Tenth

Brother" and "Autumn Flowers". What could one learn about

Slovenia from movies, the ultimate vehicle of fantasy? Well, at

least the ultimate before television advertising. I had spent

seven years in Hollywood working in the television and movie

industry, so I saw a part of Slovenia that maybe some of my

fellow students missed: I saw how differently acting and

directing is done in Slovenia. Also in the class I met Eda

Pusl, a Slovenian woman by birth, and fiercely proud of it. Her

own post-war experiences in Yugoslavia had left her extremely

skeptical and distrustful of anyone with official ties of any

kind with the present government in Yugoslavia--including this

visiting University professor, Dr. Rupel. I remembered

Mississippi and understood her feelings. I knew, somehow, I

would find the time to talk with her after the quarter was over.

13 One of the most moving moment that I was to spend with Dr.

Rupel was in a small room in Rhodes Tower, the "ivory" tower of

Cleveland State University. He was to read a paper before a


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joint session of the professors of the Sociology and History

Departments. I arrived late, and he had already begun to read

his paper. It apparently related to the question of Slovenian

independence within (or without!) the state of Yugoslavia, but

placed within the larger issue of the constantly changing face

of Europe through the centuries, of the migration of peoples and

the redrawing of borders, not by human interest but by political

interest, and military might.

13 After he had made his presentation, sensibly and

sensitively outlining the case for Slovenian sovereignty, his

American counterparts, their gills puffed up with the arrogance

of being "Americans" (which they apparently assume provides them

with a God given right to know more about freedom than anyone

else) gathered under the banner of "freedom of speech", and

almost to a man, pounced on him like a school of piranhas, the

flesh eating fish of the Brazilian Amazon.

14 In his paper Dr. Rupel had mentioned the 1956 Hungarian

uprising. I was extremely puzzled by the position taken by one

of the CSU professors, who decried the occurrence of the 1956

Hungarian uprising and was glad that it had been a failure!?

What could be the reasoning behind taking such a position by


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this man who now holds a professorship in the heart of the

"bastion of freedom?" His answer was even more puzzling to me,

"There were no 'democratic traditions' present in Hungary at the

time to be put into place had the Russian tanks failed to crush

the revolution". "What 'profound' reasoning!", I mused. Was

duck to be eaten because one had developed good table manners or

because one was hungry? Did democracy grow on trees only in

American, to be boxed and exported like a monopolized commodity?

I looked at Dr. Rupel and saw that absolute astonishment looks

no different on a Slovenian face than it does on any other.

15 Riding down in the elevator, I couldn't help but wonder

aloud to another professor what might really have been on the

mind of an American professor who would be happy for the failure

of the 1956 Hungarian revolt.

16 "He's Jewish", he replied. Immediately, I understood.

From the bottom of my heart, I understood. I really did. I

understood because I knew the outlines of Jewish history from

Masada, the finale of the failed, two-hundred-year war against

the Roman Empire that lead to the Diaspora, through the bloody

pogroms whose names forms a litany that sounded like the roll

call of practically every European state that has existed since


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the Roman Empire, to the founding of present day Israel. Was

Hungary on that list of pogrommers? Off the top of my head I

couldn't recall. But I understand "Never, again!", and why a

man would prefer the shackles of tyranny enforced by Russian

tanks to the specter of another pogrom.

17 I sometimes wish I didn't know that everything relates to

everything else. Before the elevator had reached the first

floor, my mind had taken up the issue of the founding of the

modern day state of Israel, including all the plans and

discussions concerning where the "new" Israel would be

located--among them a rejected proposal to locate it in Africa,

in what is now present day Uganda. As an African American, I

once wondered how I would have felt if the "Ugandan Plan" of

Jewish resettlement had been carried out, and the American

Government now was pouring nine billion dollars a year into

maintaining another "bastion of freedom" in a fight between

Ugandans and Israelis for a homeland territory. But I already

know what I would feel. I would feel just what I now feel for

the Palestinians.

18 When I look at the history of Jews as a culture, a people,

a race, a religion, the reason behind the necessity for a Jewish


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state is crystal clear to me. But, when I look at the history

of how the present Jewish state came into being, it is hard not

to retch. A Jewish state isn't necessary because of who and

what Jews are. Judaism, whether viewed as a race, religion, or

a culture, has demonstrated for two thousand years that it can

thrive honorably and peacefully anywhere, among any kind of

people. Its language, location and racial makeup, since Masada,

out of necessity, has metamorphosized like a chameleon down

through the centuries. (It had to. Before the present state of

Israel, there had not been a Jewish army since Masada.) Yet

underneath that changing skin, a tradition of religion, culture

and education has run like a deep ocean current carrying in its

swells the gifts of science and common sense. Science tells one

what is. Common sense tells one how to deal with what is.

19 Whatever a Jew or Judaism is, they, or it, stands at the

pinnacle of what I admire about human beings. They know what

is, and they use it to survive. Yet I am uneasy about the

modern state of Israel. I see its birth as a bad omen. A birth?

Shall I be totally outrageous and call it a miscarriage?

Certainly of justice, if no less. I see lots of science; I see

deserts blooming in Israel. But I don't see common sense.


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20 The irony of the whole question seems to escape most

observers. The history of toleration of Jews by Arabs, and vice

versa, when placed next to that of the toleration of Jews by

Europeans is like placing gold next to pig iron. But it is now

the Europeans (who after chasing Jews from pogrom to pogrom

across the face of Europe for two thousand years, ending with

the ovens of Auschwitz) who support the Israelis and justify

their desperate and agonizing attempt to dislocate millions of

Palestinians who just happen to be born on a plot of land that

more Christians than Jews claim belong to the Jews by a two

thousand year old God given mandate.

21 Is American and European support forthcoming because of our

belief in the Jews historical or providential claim to the land?

Or is it because of a mixture of guilt and relief? Is it guilt

over our own shameful (and shameless) histories of anti-

Semitism, and relief that there is finally a place to which Jews

can flee when the anti-Semitic monster raises his head again.

Would Europe and America be just as supportive of my claim if,

as an African American, I ran my small boat upon the shores of

West Africa demanding that the Hausa, Ibo, Kpelle, or Bassa

peoples make room for me because of some religious or

grandfatherly connection that I had to Africa? I doubt it. Yet


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I have been absent from Africa for only four hundred years, not

two thousands. Common sense says that a seven year absence is

the limit on territorial claims.

22 Sometimes desperation will cause us to cast common sense

aside. Facing a monster that has no common sense, to survive,

you become like the monster. The monster was (and is) European

anti-Semitism. The present state of Israel has nothing to do

with Jews or Arabs. It is the bastard child of European racism.

The trauma of World War II brought a two thousand year gestation

to an end. Auschwitz was the delivery room; Hitler was the

physician in attendance. And we all rushed to Palestine to

prepare the nursery.

23 Once while working in Hollywood, in a discussion with a

Jewish friend, I proposed that instead of us sending nine

billion dollars a year to Israel, why didn't we just give them

the State of Arizona and provide them with nine billion dollar a

year until the deserts there bloomed like the one's in Israel?

Though I'll never make the mistake of offering that suggestion

to another Jew, again, that plan would still makes more sense to

me than the present one. But even if such a plan was carried

out, I would clearly understand the violent objections to it by


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the Hopi nation, descendants of the first humans to inhabit that

breathtakingly beautiful land now called Arizona.

24 I understand the Jews who long for a nation. I understand

the Palestinians who long for a nation. I understand Slovenians

who long for a nation. I understand Hopis who long for a

nation. I understand American Blacks who long for a nation. I

understand--I was born in Mississippi. As mentioned earlier, I

once picked cotton in a field next to German POWs, whose country

was killing Jews and Americans, yet they were treated better

than I. At noon time they were trucked into town to eat at one

of the two local "white" restaurants. I sat under a tree in the

field and ate cheese and crackers. I understand what

nationalists feel.

25 Yet, I am not a nationalist, in no sense of the word.

Every time I've had to cross a state "border", something

poisonous has rubbed off onto my skin. Every time I have pushed

on a locked door, something foul and smelly has come off onto my

hand. Borders and locked door don't feel good to me.


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26 My knees buckled slightly as the elevator came to a stop at

the first floor of Rhodes Tower. The doors slid open and I

headed home, thinking about Dr. Rupel and nationalism.

27 To arrive at an understanding of nationalism, where does

one begin? What does it mean anyway? What is a nation? Who

gets included, who excluded? Who does the including, and the

excluding? What are the criteria for citizenship? Swearing an

oath? Saluting a flag? Singing a song? Why does one need a

nation? What are the important elements; the history, the

culture, the racial makeup? Whose history, mine or someone

else's; the public history or the private one? What is "race"

anyway; this word that has no scientific basis, but is

nevertheless used to classify and codify people. Is language

the central issue? Does it come through religion? Is a Jewish

state an oxymoron? If not, is a Catholic state justifiable? Can

there be freedom of religion in a Jewish nation? Can there be

inter-racial marriages in a Black nation? Can one be made a

citizen of a nation against their will? To every one of those

questions, I have found a yes and a no.

28 For me all those questions are moot. Mooted by the very

reality of how I have lived my life. In some cases, how I then


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thought I had to live it. I was born in America. Steeped in

the tradition of saluting the flag, singing the anthem, and

served in the armed forces. Yet I have never truly felt any

allegiance to America. If my personal history counts for

anything, why should I? If America's history as a nation counts

for anything, why should I? Both the African and Choctaw blood

in my veins serve as a constant reminder of chattel slaves and a

people massacred wholesale; those who physically built America

and those who truly "died" for it. The rest of the blood in my

veins, European, serve as a constant reminder of what I can

never be by social custom and by law--a case rejected for review

by the U. S. Supreme Court has taken care of that. Only people

of "pure" European blood can classify themselves as white in

America. Ironically there is not even a racially classifiable

middle ground in America as is in much maligned South Africa.

Not that I ever want to be "white", life has enough burdens

besides having to carry the tiresome and sickly burden of

"whiteness" around on my back. But neither is my life bitter,

it is just beyond all that contradictory and nonsensical stuff.

Not that I ignore it. It is emotional stuff, I never try to

ignore emotional stuff. I just deal with it with knowledge and

common sense.


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29 Nations and nationalities need histories, whether they are

real or fabricated. I don't need history as a means to tell me

who I am. My only need for history is as a compass to tell me

where I will be tomorrow should I not change my course today.

30 With no feeling of allegiance, should I be put out of this

nation? Where should I be put? Where is my nation, if this one

isn't it? Again, I don't feel a personal need for one, not

really. What personal values and worth do I have that needs to

be muasoleumed in nationhood? What things can I say, or do,

that would belong to "my nation" only? Frankly, I can think of

none. A nation usually only takes those things that it can

consider a feather in its cap; leaving the rest of its real

"life" without life. I have no need to deny any of me. I have

a profound need to express all of me.

31 Personally, and I speak personally, a nation is a

suffocating thing. Yet they exist. Some people, human beings,

need them. And for that reason, and that reason alone, I think

that they should exist. Our needs for nations are founded

partially on the genuine fears that we have of each other. What

would happen to us if we are not surrounded by our kind in

culture, language, and religion? Some fears are justified, some


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are not. He who fears doesn't know the difference! He only

knows his fears.

32 I think that there should always be a Klu Klux Klan as long

some white people fear black people. I think that there should

always be a Black Panther party as long as black people fear

white people. The fears are real. That some men would rather

let others starve rather than share is a real thing. For that

reason, long live a democratic, communist nation somewhere! The

fears that the growth rate of non-white people will be the

demise of "white" people is a real thing. For that reason long

live a white nation somewhere! The fear that the greed of some

industrialist will take precedent over a safe, non-polluted

environment is real. Long live a nation of Greenpeacers

somewhere! The fear that the ignorance of others will affect

all of us is real. Long live a nation with mandatory education

somewhere!

33 Food to sustain our bodies cannot be found within the body,

so we seek it without. We all must seek without that which we

cannot find within. And when courage, self-identification,

peace, love, hope and physical safety cannot be found within, we

seek it without. It is not strange. It isn't dumb. It is very


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sensible. No one knows if tomorrow will come or what it will

bring should it arrive, but we all want to be here to see if it

does. And those things that we see as being most helpful to us

in reaching that small goal of seeing tomorrow we latch onto.

Nations, their anthems, flags and armies are a few of those

things that humanity has devised to try and make it to tomorrow.

34 War is real. Men with tank and guns do come trudging

across fields and through people's houses at dinner time.

Sometimes they will only stop when a group of men with like

equipment say, "Don't come this way, or we will blow your asses

off!"

35 Let's face it; we aren't dealing with kittens and parakeets

here. In humanity we are dealing with the most vicious beings

that creation has ever spawned on this earth; untrustworthy at

best and deceitful at worst. I wish we weren't but we are. I

still like us more than any other animal that I have ever

encountered. When I get lonely, I seek out not the company of

chickens or the rolling swells of the sea, but the company of

one of these vicious "beast", another human being. Although I

myself have no personal need that my language, culture, nation

or race be in any way specific, when the needs that I do have


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can only be fulfilled in a complementary way come to the

forefront, I seek out those creatures who need specific nations,

specific races, specific cultures and specific languages, if no

others can be found. And more often than not, they are all that

can be found.

36 Some see a nation as the soil where the seeds of their

personal hopes and dreams can grow eternal. Yet nations are

hardly eternal. They can at best serve as temporary stepping

stones for life's movement across space-time in human form.

Some of those stones will be more durable than others, but none

will be eternal. There are things eternal. Changing, but

eternal, is human life. And that is where my faith and hope

resides.

37 As Dr. Rupel prepares to depart for Slovenia, I don't know

in a personal way what his heart feels. I don't know where his

faith and hope resides. But having heard him speak about

Slovenia, and whether it was his intention or not, I am left

with the feeling that Slovenian nationhood is dear to his heart.

If that is the case, undoubtedly his heart is beating at a much

quicker pace than when he came to Cleveland some three short

months ago. I talked with him personally just once, briefly.


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And that was about this paper; which turns out to be not at all

what I had talked about or wanted to write for his class. I had

wanted to do some historical comparative studies of Black

Nationalism here in America to nationalism in Europe--Slovenia

in particular. But as the changing face of Europe is moving

faster than the news media can account for it, so it seemed that

this quarter has moved from fall to winter faster than I could

account for the time to either research and write that

comparative paper on nationalism.

38 I still would like to do it sometime soon, and though it

will not affect whatever grade I will have gotten from him, I

would like to send it to him. His life has affected mine. To

what extent I don't know yet. I do know that the "black hole"

between Germany and Russia has some foundation material in it

now. I also know that if the earthquake of change that has

rocked the capitals of eastern and central Europe should have

enough force to rent the graves of the dukes of Carinthia and I

should hear that the ghost of France Preseren is calling for

their re-installation to the thrones, I shall smile and know

that there is a place where a nationless soul like myself can

sojourn a while in peace.


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Charles W. Bevel

5/15/89

the issue of nationalism

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