No Kings: Internationalism, Localism or Both?

You live somewhere. You care not only about there, but about elsewhere. You care about your home, neighborhood, state, country, region, continent, and world. A violation anywhere pains you. To help overcome violations everywhere attracts you. That is internationalism. It’s exemplary. Set aside differences you might have over what constitutes violations or what to do about them. What might nonetheless go wrong about being internationalist?

On the other hand, you live somewhere. That is where your opinion, your mobilization and your organizing can have most effect. In your home they have more effect than in your neighborhood. In your country they have more effect than in some other country. To act where you are feels more responsible and rooted. Its greater effectiveness attracts you. Call that localism. It too is exemplary. Assume your assessments of local circumstances are wise. What might nonetheless go wrong with being localist?

Consider the problems and benefits of internationalism’s emphasized focus and of localism’s emphasized focus. Can a worthy approach avoid the problems of each and embody the benefits of both?

Consider internationalism. What could go wrong? If we fix our eyes mostly on what is distant we may under-address what is near. We may talk and write about distant battles, wars, and oppressions. We may fill our minds with the intimacies and dynamics of distant things. If we are a speaker, we may increasingly give brilliant and caring accounts of distant circumstances, but say little about what’s happening at home. We may write, or, if we team together with some publishing project partners, we may post articles such that the preponderance of our daily articles increasingly address the causes, implications, personal thoughts, and movement motivations of distant events. Our attention to what is at our own doorstep in our own town or perhaps even in our own country, and to its causes, implications, and the associated thoughts and motivations may become increasingly sparse. The problem with this is not that we are concerned about distant events, their implications, and our possible effects on them. That is good. The problem arises when distant focus crowds out local focus.

You may reply that we can be internationalist but avoid the ills of becoming aloof from our own circumstances. I agree that we can do that, yes, okay, but how? After all, the ills of internationalism do often arise.

What about localism? What could go wrong? If we focus our eyes and emotions overly on what is close we may gloss over what is distant. What appears close may so dominate our feelings that we increasingly miss what is distant. We may increasingly miss or even deny distant oppressions. Our ensuing aloofness may so corrupt our values that it eventually distorts even what we can see locally. Consider discussions of the war on Iran which quite rightly oppose it, but may increasingly do so because Trump doesn’t have a clear plan, or because it costs so much, or because oil prices are hurting us, or because Americans may die. Point being, a localist may start to oppose the war due to its effects where the localist resides, not due to the murder and mayhem it rains down on distant others. But if we feel diminishing concern for what is distant we may start to minimize our sensitivity to the pain of others. We may increasingly highlight effects on self to the extent that our radius of caring shrinks. We start to powerfully emphasize what’s in our country but to barely register what’s on the other side of the world. We may increasingly care about what’s happening in our house but not care what’s happening on the other side of our country or even across our town. We may increasingly care about people who look like us, but not care about people who look different. We may start to care about people who see things our way locally but not care about people who see things other ways.

You may reply that we can act locally but avoid the narrowing ills that to be localist can engender. Yes, okay, I agree that we can do that, but how? After all, the ills of localism do often arise.

This is not unlike an activist becoming so attentive to class concerns, or to race concerns, or to gender concerns, or to authority concerns, or to ecological concerns, that they lose track of the other key priorities. A dwindling scope isn’t something we seek. Myopia isn’t a worthy goal. But myopia happens. And to avoid it we know that collectively we can’t let fear that what we incline most strongly toward will get ignored cause us to increasingly ignore the rest. I fear class or race or gender etc., will be minimized or ignored so I advocate emphasizing it and it alone. I don’t intentionally pursue myopia but I may arrive there. And it is the same for local and international. We worry that what is over there will get ignored, or we worry that what is near will get ignored. We start to emphasize one at the expense of the other. But both/and is a better approach than either/or.

Consider No Kings, a U.S. project. It certainly needs to address U.S. circumstances, constituencies, mindsets, motives, implications, tactics, and strategy. What factors propel or block participation by different constituencies? What new tactics might advance resistance? Having been born in the USA, No Kings nonetheless needs to simultaneously address international events as they affect and are affected by the U.S. and in their own rights as well. My impression is many are trying to do just that. But some others are not.

To take one more example, imagine a publishing operation. It wants to advance resistance to fascism but it also wants to increase the likelihood that our resistance efforts won’t settle for restoring pre-Trump racial, gender, class, political, international, and ecological conditions. Our publishing project instead wants to propel struggle to win fundamentally new defining relations and another worthy and possible world. Like a movement, it should avoid the ills of excess localism but also the ills of excess internationalism.

All this may seem utterly obvious and if so, that’s good. It should. But it turns out that in practice we often open ourselves to seeing these sorts of dynamics regarding possible problems with one orientation but not with both orientations. When that happens to avoid the ills we do see, we can drift into perpetrating the ills we don’t see. It’s better to see it all. It’s better to avoid all the potential ills.

And while we are at it, it is better to support No Kings, celebrate its growth, and work to expand and diversify it, than it is to ignore or deny its growth and moan about its needing to do more and reject it.

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