A spectre is daunting left nationalism [Arena, n.68 Dec-January 2004.]
For some time, there has been an ongoing debate in Arena around border policing, and specifically around the efficacy of a ‘no border’ politics as one of the responses to it. In the most lengthy and recent piece, Rob Sparrow [66] purports to summarise ‘the open borders’ position as a prelude to delivering an argument against it, all without one citation or historical accuracy. The expression “no borders, no nations, no deportations” (cited by Trembath and Grenfell elsewhere in Arena [65]) comes from the Hybrid Media Lounge held at Documenta X in Germany in 1997, which was organised around the theme of “cross the border.” This event provided the impetus for the subsequent formation of the noborder network, referring to groups and individuals that campaign against the heightening of border controls and the emergence of a fortified Europe-Australia-US. It is most closely associated with noborder.org, which functions as its communications point, and ‘border camps’ such as Woomera2002 and Strasbourg. The call to “open the borders” first appeared in 1999, in articles written by the organisers of the Hybrid Media Lounge and associated noborder groups. It appeared locally in 2000, in the context of escalating protests inside the internment camps and the idiom of ‘no borders’ and ‘open the borders - close the camps’ began widely circulating as part of a shared dialect in ‘autonomist’ networks in Melbourne at that time.
As Sengupta has noted elsewhere, “The political cultures and traditions that the No Border Network embodies are as diverse as the 'multitudes' that inhabit it, but they visibly include anarchists, radical feminist, libertarian communists, greens, immigrant organizations, civil liberties groups, tactical media initiative like some Indymedia groups as well as un-affiliated, even a-political, individual dissidents. The network does not describe itself as a movement, it has no central committee or caucus, and is marked by a very alive tradition of internal debate, disagreement and a refusal to abide by any demands for what in left circles worldwide, is known as ‘Unity in Struggle’, and which, in reality is the subordination of all opinions to the demands of the central party line.” Given this history is readily accessible, it seems therefore unusual for Sparrow to claim that “the call for open borders derives from a proud tradition of international socialism.” It is obvious—to anyone not captivated by the fissure between Stalin’s ‘socialism in one country’ and Trotsky’s internationalism—that inter-nationalism is still nationalism, indeed is a globally ambitious version of it.
Trembath and Grenfell note “a preference for particular forms of direct action” among the noborder networks, but don’t explain further. It is quite simple: ‘no borders’ implies an organisational irreverence toward the nation-state and the political practices that are beholden to it, as Sengupta notes. If by “international socialism” Sparrow does mean to imply some Trotskyite groups, this is plainly incorrect as an historical account, but it may explain why he goes on to depict noborders as a barely-concealed (though ineffective) recruiting attempt. As ‘no borders’ achieved some prominence (particularly after Woomera2002), some of those groups did adopt a mediocre caricature of it, believing that they had to in order to compete with a perceived threat from ‘autonomists’. No One Is Illegal—not to be confused with Kein Mensch Ist Illegal in Germany—initially emerged in 2001 as a deliberate attempt to fuse autonomous and trotskyite groupings and perspectives but, by Baxter2002, the combination was rejected as strategically unecessary and philosophically untenable.
Therefore, it is not clear is why Sparrow argues that noborders expresses a desire for the generalisation of citizenship in the form of global citizenship and state, unless he is referring to NOII’s fleeting declaration of such in 2001. He is right to say that global citizenship is part of the “conservative and totalising aspects of the Enlightenment tradition” but quite wrong to attribute the aspiration to noborder proponents as a whole, and misleading to suggest that he happens upon a critique of global citizenship in the course of an argument against noborder politics. Without citations, there is no way of knowing who Sparrow is debating: his version of political history conveniently reduce noborder politics it to its most superficial and self-contradictory manifestations—that is, the assumption of a noborder dialect without disrupting a practical adherence to the nation-state and the party-form. This unshaken adherence is echoed in Sparrow’s own arguments regarding strategic effectiveness. For him, political strategies are ultimately addressed to a national figure and should be assessed according to their capacity for composing a national-populist constituency (ie., “the majority of Australians”). It should be clear that within a noborder politics, the assumption of national interest is viewed as a problem, not an ontological given.
Yet, the most telling aspect of this debate is not the abundance of profound misinterpretations, but what an altercation with ‘no borders’ in such a spectral form accomplishes. It relieves left nationalism of its own burdens by reducing them to an effect of a dispute between political factions seeking to win over a national majority or national representation. Any associations of ‘good nationalism’ (i.e., left nationalism) with ‘bad nationalism’ (such as chauvinism and racism) are treated as an unfair accusation made by political opponents or an embarrassing consequence of the Liberal-National Government. In effect, it allows left nationalists to hold onto their national sovereignty—and, as it turns out, the camps which make this possible—while thinking that this might convincingly distinguish their version of nationalism from its obviously vexing but presumable deviations. Trembath’s and Grenfell’s position becomes clear when they state that “resistance can serve to humanise the process of mandatory detention” (emphasis added). Similarly, Sparrow opposes mandatory detention, the demonisation of boat arrivals and wants to expand the definition of ‘refugee’. But they nowhere say the camps should be closed. Given the closure of the camps is a resounding aim within the noborder networks, its concealment from the terrain of debate is remarkable.
It is not difficult to ascertain that national sovereignty requires the camps in order to function effectively as sovereignty. “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception,” as Schmitt insisted. The internment of undocumented migrants is extra-judicial; it is not subject to the rule of law. The terms ‘detention centre’ and ‘migration facility’ are historically palatable euphemisms for the concentration camp. Without those camps, the refugee determination process would not function to determine who is a real refugee, by any definition. Moreover, the various anti-noborder authors know that detainees have no option but to invoke the provisions of the Refugee Convention and the category of ‘refugee’ to gain some fleeting kind of freedom. But they do not explain why anyone outside the camps is automatically constrained to do likewise; rather Trembath and Grenfell insist on duplicating the structure of the refugee determination process as a virtue. The authority and power (or lack of it) that the refugee determination process summons is not the same on either side of the wire, irrespective of whether the definition of ‘refugee’ is expanded or not. It is important to think through the implications of this difference. For undocumented boat arrivals, proving that one is a genuine refugee constitutes a very slim hope for release from the camps; for those on the outside, conceding the terms of the refugee determination process amounts to making an explicit declaration of national sovereignty—a practical paraphrasing of Howard’s “We will decide who comes here and under what circumstances they come.” There might well be more charitable numerical outcomes in some reformed version of the refugee determination process available, but the political posture is the same: freedom is bestowed as benevolence upon people defined as not worthy of human rights—of being regarded as human—because they are not citizens.
As for the attempts (by Sparrow and, less recently, Paul James) to represent objections to ‘no borders’ as a noble defence of a supposedly incontestable Tibet, authentic Japanese rice farming and indigenous sovereignty, others have written more interesting things on sovereignty than I. In a particularly concise account of the history of national sovereignty and its application, d’Errico writes: "‘the expansion/imposition of the European state system during decolonialization’ of Africa and the so-called Third-World brought into question ‘the very idea of sovereignty.’ Decolonized peoples did not fit into the structure of the sovereign state. The result was (and is) extreme social dysfunction, as new states and their patrons tried to coerce peoples and fragments of peoples into sovereign allegiance. ‘[E]conomic development, an explicit goal of a sovereign state,’ brought on repeated episodes of violence with ‘highly politicized elites grasping for non-African models of governance that ultimately failed to fit African traditions and cultures.’ …the failure of post-colonial states to be a vehicle for indigenous self-determination is not a momentary problem of adjustment to ‘liberation.’ …The classical attributes of ‘sovereignty’ already foreshadow the problem of applying this concept to American Indians and other non-state peoples: absolute, unlimited power held permanently in a single person or source, inalienable, indivisible, and original (not derivative or dependent). These are characteristics of power associated with divine right monarchy and the Papacy of the Christian Church. They are the core concepts of state power that arose around monarchs and church. They were the brainchild of western political theorists of the 16th and 17th centuries (especially Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes), as a solution to the problem of violent religious struggle. They are not the characteristics of power in non-state societies.”
Simply because nationalism has been geographically and politically dominant since WWII does not mean it is eternal or natural. It explains why claims for power and independence from the exercise of power have habitually taken the form of a claim for national statehood or some version of it (much like claiming refugee status is compelled by the framework of international Conventions), but that does not amount to an argument for the ontological supremacy of the nation-state or national sovereignty. An emancipatory politics is not obliged to uphold the template of the nation-state—indeed, those who argue that it must are obliged to show that it has delivered emancipation or, at least, is capable of doing far more than leveraging the positions of local elites within the world market through imposing a national unity where none existed previously. In the absence of this, deploying indigenous sovereignty as an argument for migration controls functions as a performance intended to re-invest affirmations of national sovereignty with a benevolent gloss: defending the border against indigenous peoples from another part of the globe is not really defending ‘our’ sovereignty; rather ‘we’ are preserving the integrity of the Australian border in readiness to hand the continent over to indigenous peoples here, any time now. Might it not be more credible for those who have thus far enjoyed an uncomplicated identification with the assumed sovereignty of the British Crown to relinquish that posture of sovereign right?
Moreover, I am not sure what the purpose is of asserting, as does Sparrow, that cultural differences should be “institutionally recognised,” unless this amounts to a claim that cultural differences should be or are reflected in the delineation of nation-states. Surely he is aware that no nation-state is composed of the one culture and that the aspiration for an ethnically or culturally homogenous nation is, and has been, a prelude to suppression if not outright terror. Noborders may well appear as a form of cosmopolitanism to Sparrow but the equation of ‘culture’ with ‘nation-state’ seems to me like a demand for a global partitioning between pure cultures. Nor am I sure that it is possible to make similar claims about communities—namely that discrete communities presuppose migration controls and the nation-state. Communities are multiple and overlapping within every nation-state; which is also to say that ‘community’ and ‘nation’ are not interchangeable concepts except for those for whom ‘the national community’ and ‘my community’ either exists now or exists as a political goal. So, while there may well be some version of border policing which defines who belongs or not to particular communities, and while it will always be important to question the claims of identity politics—including the instances where class is regarded as an identity politics—they don’t establish concentration camps, passports and wield the military as a means to fortify the distinction.
More specifically, given that it is precisely the disintegration of really-existing ‘third world nationalism’—which d’Errico mentions some of the circumstances of above—that has given rise to current waves of undocumented migration in historically unprecedented numbers and the development of Fortress Europe-US-Australia, it is not exactly ‘the no borders position’ which irritates left nationalists I think. Surely, everyone knows that ‘no borders’ informs a tiny part of the Left here. The undeniable exhaustion of the apparently progressive aspects of left nationalism means that its geopolitical horizon and ontological attachments are called into question—not by a handful of writers in Melbourne but by actual events and concrete, rather than sociological, movements.
Angela Mitropoulos
