Lecture #7 - Ethnic Democracy

Periclean Democracy

• Ancient Greek model that modern democracy is based on

• Limited to adult, free men

“The People'“

• Three, contingent definitions:

  • 1. Everyone in the country

  • 2. Ordinary “folk” and not the elite (Washington, Wall Street, the top 1%)

  • 3. An ethnically defined group, often called a nation (ethnos) — English French, Chinese, Japanese, Jews?, Hindus?

    • Exist whether or not they have their own state (another meaning of notion in English)

    • Ethnic nations exist before they have their own state, if they ever do

National Self-Determination

• The Self Determination of Peoples is a right granted by the UN Charter — peoples are understood as ethnic groups

• The state as the expression of ethnic self-determination vs. as a territorial democracy is a central issue

Ethnic Democracy

A label used by critics against democracies seen as serving only the dominant ethnicity and not all the people who live on the state’s territory.

The Question of Minorities and Partition

• Jews in Europe and Muslims in India were “minorities” in their respective states — not of the ethnicity that the state was dedicated to

• Partition was held out as a “solution” in both cases

• British India and British-controlled Palestine were both partitioned in 1947

• Israel founded in 1948 as a Jewish state, forces defeated an invading Arab coalition and expanded Jewish-controlled territory

Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

• Inspired by Hitler and Mussolini

• Founded the RSS militant organization

• Framed Hinduism as an “Aryan” identity

• Promoted Hindutva nationalist ideology, anti-Muslim sentiment and violence

Narendra Modi

• Promotes Indian soft power (e.g. International Day of Yoga)

• Prime Minister since 2014

• Muslims and opposition have been violently attacked

• Engages with the Indian diaspora

• Friends with Trump and Netanyahu

Green Line

The territorial distinction between ethnic democracy (within the borders of “Israel”) and occupation of Palestinian territories.

Arabs in Israel

Palestinians constitute more than 20% of the population of “Israel”. They can vote and run for office, but are widely discriminated against. State funding for education, health and police is disproportionately allocated to Jewish Israelis.

The Oslo Accords

• Promised Palestinian self-government

• Signed by Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in Oslo, hosted by US president Bill Clinton

• Never fully implemented, renounced by most Israeli leaders today, including those in the “centre” of the political spectrum

  • 1995 ‘far right’ position now constitutes the political center in Israel

• Rabin assassinated by Jewish extremists in 1995

Juliana Ochs - Fear in Israel

• Ethnography done during the Second Intifada

• Fear was the affect that motivated the exodus of Jews from Europe, forms the root of Zionism

• Israel is meant to be a place where Jews can live without fear, but isn’t

• Fear serves as a mask for unspoken guilt over occupation — proof of “national resilience” and patriotism

Boomerang Effect

• Postulated by Hannah Arendt, Aime Cesaire

• In colonialism, the practice of governing democratically at home and tyrannically in the colonies has returned onto Europe in the form of fascist and communist autocracy

Omar Bartov

Thinker who claims:

• Occupation corrupts — two generations of military rule over West Bank Palestinians, settlers voting for the Knesset

• Roots in 1948 — a Jewish majority through expulsion, Palestinian citizens under military rule until 1966, their land taken

• Netanyahu’s 2022 coalition: a kleptocracy against the Supreme Court, on the path of Hungary, Turkey, Russia

• Israeli Right: Messianic racists with “many of the attributes of fascism”