Zionism and Ethnonationalism

Seeing Israel through that lens

One of the more heated esoteric debates among intellectuals is over the topic of ethnonationalism. Most of the Anywhere elites¹ have, since World War II, adopted a contemptuous attitude toward the concept of a nation state dominated by a majority ethnic group. The Anywheres instead prefer to see stronger international institutions, while states adopt multicultural values.

The less cosmopolitan Somewheres are uncomfortable with globalization and multiculturalism. It is difficult to dislodge them from loyalty to such anti-elite causes as Donald Trump and Brexit.

To the Anywheres, the Somewheres can be dismissed as uneducated xenophobes and racists. This obvious contempt only further infuriates the Somewheres.

Zionism is Ethnonationalism

After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, Europe organized as a collection of ethnonationalist states. Italy, and especially Germany, were forged in violence. But otherwise, the period from 1815 until World War I was a period of long peace.

There were some exceptions to ethnonationalism: the empires of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans. Notably, all of these empires broke up during the first World War.

In the late 19th-century ethnonationalist era, Jews living in Russia suffered constantly from pogroms. They also were victims of prejudice in Western Europe, as highlighted by the Dreyfus Affair.

This led many Jews to hypothesize that Jews suffered because they were aliens within European states. How to solve this problem? It was as if they went to the Wizard of Oz, who said “What you need is an ethnonational state!” Hence Zionism.

Zionism was the belief that Jews would achieve safety and dignity when and only when they obtained their own ethnonationalist state. Having their own ethnonational state would serve to normalize the Jews. It seems to me that ethnonationalism was at the very core of Zionism.

As we can see now, Zionism has run into difficulties. Arabs resisted the Zionist project from almost its late 19th-century beginning. In 1948, the moment that Ben-Gurion declared the Jewish State, the Arab neighbors around it launched a war of extermination. The desire to exterminate Israel has surged several times since then, and it seems particularly difficult to contain now.

Among the global elites, ethnonationalism is no longer considered a way to organize the world to reduce conflict. Instead, modern elites put their faith in globalization and multinational institutions, such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, and the World Health Organization. National patriotism should give way to multiculturalism. The shift in elite thinking from ethnonationalism to multiculturalism and globalization makes elites tend to want to distance themselves from Zionism.

Erik Torenberg writes,

“A people” is the historical norm. Everyone prior to 100 years ago knew the concept. It’s conjoined ethnicity, religion, culture, society, and land. Then liberalism comes along and says, oh no, you can’t have that. It's why Israel is forever a pariah state

But the heinous attack of October 7 has resurrected Zionism for President Biden and other world leaders. That attack revealed today’s Arab anti-Zionism to be, if anything, more genocidal than the anti-Zionism that greeted the declaration of the Jewish state in 1948.

Intellectuals for Ethnonationalism

In the last few years, a number of intellectuals on the right have taken up the Somewhere cause. Matt Goodwin, for example. The National Conservative movement is dedicated to preserving/reviving the ethnonationalist state.

I catch a whiff of stochastic antisemitism (individuals who dislike Jews, not a systemic ideological hatred) within the National Conservative movement. But Yoram Hazony, an Israeli Orthodox Jew, is a prominent figure in it. One can see in Hazony the correlation between Zionism and ethnonationalism.

Is it time for ethnonationalism to stage a comeback? Will the global elites switch horses?

In general, I think that political alignments are very sticky and hard to change. People dig in hard. In the WSJ, Shany Mor writes,

You might think that an atrocity like Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel would lead opponents of the Jewish state to temper their attacks. Instead, from college campuses to mainstream media outlets, elite left-wing circles have responded to the terror group’s barbarism by intensifying their denunciations of Israel. That may seem counterintuitive, but it’s typical. The worst demonization of the Jewish state has typically followed the worst atrocities against it.

…If the only thing that can explain a Palestinian action is Israeli evil, then Israel’s opponents have to imagine a level of Jewish evil commensurate with what Hamas did

But I have got to believe that some of the Anywhere elites who have championed multiculturalism will rethink their views. I imagine that seeing London streets filled with an estimated 100,000 anti-Israel demonstrators will add to the discomfort about immigration. In fact, Germany’s interior minister reportedly suggested that Hamas supporters be deported to Iran. I know that I personally am now more willing to listen to the ethnonationalists than I was a few weeks ago.

The debate between multiculturalists and ethnonationalists has been stoked by recent events. Will they can engage productively with one another, or will just fall back on name-calling and straw-manning?

I see it as an argument that pits mainstream elites on one side against populists and National Conservatives on the other. Libertarians probably would side with the elites.

On the left, of course, there is a different factor concerning the Israel-Gaza conflict. That is the oppressor-oppressed framing. At the extreme, some Progressives are cheering the October 7 pogrom.

These doctrinaire Progressives’ reaction to October 7 was to say “Hooray! The oppressed team scored a goal!” I see that as an even more consequential challenge for elites than that posed by the National Conservatives. I will have more to say about this in a subsequent post.

[Note: because this is a “current thing” post, I am limiting comments to paid subscribers only, in order to keep moderation efforts manageable.]

substacks referenced above:

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Fukayama and Capital H History

1. I refer to David Goodhart’s Somewhere/Anywhere dichotomy. This was recently discussed by Lorenzo Warby here and here. If you are unfamiliar with Somewhere/Anywhere, that you must not have read any of Matt Goodwin