The Dutch

[Louis VI the Fat]

A political project requires no collective identity, no common religion, no shared history.

Look at the United States

Would you be terribly dissapointed if I said that I have an entirely different idea about any lack of collective identity in the US? Freedom of religion and freedom from history are the identity of the US. Well those and several other ingredients.

The US is not more succesful at absorbing immigrants because it has a less developed idea of collective identity, but because it has a stronger sense of national identity than European countries.

Why should we restrict a country's future by adhering to all these humbug assumptions. Why fret about a supposed national identity and a 'common heritage' that is considered to be in our genes or in our memes or whatever and that tells us who 'belongs' and who does not 'belong' to the nation? Meh.

Ah, but now you reveal yourself to be an adherent of multi-culturalism. Or, of nationalophobia. The urge to deny any organic, historical or cultural identity out of a stated political goal of creating a new, and 'better' post-national and multi-etnic identity.

It doesn't work and has gotten Western Europe into enormous trouble over the past few decades. This recent leftist top-down project is entirely different from America's ancient, bottom-up, national identity, even when both do bear a superficial resemblance.

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I don't remember any numbers on how many jews the Vichy regime deported; but Petain persecuted them eagerly without much encouragement from the Germans. Thousands of jews fled there under the assumption that they'd be safe there, it being a non-occupied zone afterall. I hold little love for Jacques Chirac, but he at least had the moral fortitude to admit that many French actively and voluntarily participated in these horrorible crimes- something wich Mitterand had catagorically denied a few years earlier.

Well, naturally I have a thing or two to say about national myths in other European countries as well. I limited myself to the Netherlands since that was the subject of this thread. But now that you've brought it up:

Yes, Petain did indeed persecute Jews. And by the end of the war, 25% of French Jewry had been murdered while three quarters had found a safe haven in France during the war. In the Netherlands, there was no Petain, no Vichy, and no virtual civil war, yet 75% of Jews were murdered. I presented a single-sided version of Dutch WWII behaviour, but based on actual and correct numbers.
Whatever the French fascists threw at the Jews, they were far safer even under fascist Petain than in the 'dutifully compliant' Netherlands, where, according to national myth, unlike elsewhere in Europe, there was little to no anti-Semitism, just 'unfortunate circumstances'.

I appreciate Chirac for finally admitting in 1995 what French public opinion had gradually come to accept: that 'Vichy' was entirely of French making, and that 'circumstances' are no excuse. I would love for the Netherlands to also finally come to terms with it's dark past. Unfortunately, fear for financial claims has so far prevented any Dutch government from following the example of most of the other European countries. A few half-baked statements about unfortunate post-war treatment of returning Jews seems to be the grand total of official Dutch acceptance of its own responsibility.

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The funny thing is, that both points above are deeply connected. 'Adrian's' urge to build a post-national, multi-etnic identity is the direct result of the aftermath of the moral compromisation during WWII and the stubborn denial of that until the 1960's.

Since 1968 - which was at heart a generational conflict - a new generation has tried to prove that they were not their parents or grandparents. They set out to prove that they, unlike their parents, would shelter Jews. That they did not share the pityful, petit, and provincial mental world of their parents. Nationalism became suspect. Any national identity the sign of proto-fascism. The 'Dark skinned immigrant' is a substitute Jew. And the more pityful and helpless he is, the better. In the multi-cultural mind, there must be a helpless 'other' - incapable of any independent action, and a brutal and oppressive 'host country' - the source of all misfortune of this 'other'. See, for example, HoreTore's ambulance thread.

Milticultural post-nationalism does not in the least bit accept 'the other' as equal or even independent. It can only accept them as hapless and helpless. It does not create a strong post-national identity, it can only make collective identity suspect. By both mechanisms, the function of a strong collectivity that can easily absorb strong newcomers is prevented.