Peeling back the layers of nationality

In what seems like the blink of an eye, a widely-held ideal of a united world in which residents of the planet Earth mixed and merged has been brought to a screeching halt and we are now all painfully aware that who we are and where we come from are still important because some people don’t like what we represent and are suspicious of our intentions.

Although those fears and suspicions are justified in only a minority of cases, the general attitude of working together for a better future can no longer be taken for granted, and what is blithely known as the “right wing” has stood up and put its foot down. This tobacco-chewing, narrow-minded international redneck wants us off his god-damn land before he uses the shotgun his pappy inherited from his grandpappy.

And he’ll sit down with his innocent grandchildren and tell them why he’s so nasty to people he doesn’t know: because you can’t be too careful and you have to look after yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.

As is so often the case, the attitude has filtered down from the most influential to the smaller communities on the basis that “if they can do it, so can we”. All it took was an aggressive, straight talking president of the USA to give credibility to like-minded individuals everywhere, and so migration bumps into protectionism and blind nationalism. Much of Europe finds itself reconsidering its options, with its generosity and humanitarianism suddenly interpreted as weakness and gullibility.

In France, whose national motto is liberty, equality, fraternity, the far right leader Marine Le Pen has softened her National Front party’s image somewhat and is now seeking to exploit the cracks that have appeared on her country’s political scene and march to power while her opponents are lacking focus. Even though she may not be quite so extreme as her father, whom she expelled from the party he once ran, she is cut from the same cloth. If she was elected, you wouldn’t find her at any border handing out blankets and soup to immigrants.

In the Netherlands, the Trumphaired figure of Geert Wilders has brought to our attention his Party for Freedom, the freedom of which seems to be freedom from Islam, and while that flies in the face of modern liberalism, who is to say it’s not a wise thing to keep apart religions that cause such animosity? Even in countries where the political face is still relatively stable and perhaps bland, the talk in the cafes and bars and around family dinner tables is of protecting their way of life, and gradually — or perhaps with alarming speed — political movements will push for the maintenance of what they know and love, what they feel safe with.

Since there has been so much emigration and immigration, in many cases this is shutting the door after the horse has bolted, because societies, unlike computers, cannot be restored to a carefully chosen happy point in the past. And anyway, where is that point? If the US wants to kick out those who it feels don’t belong there, it will be peeled back, layer by layer, starting perhaps with Muslims and Mexicans but moving on to Indians, the Vietnamese and on to the once-unpopular Irish and the Italians who brought with them mafia families.

Then it will be Christopher Columbus and his European diseases, and someone is bound to come up with a damning indictment of the British pilgrims who brought their hymns and bonnets over and found themselves in conflict with the Amerindians.

But does it stop there? As in the Caribbean, if you take it back to what we refer to as indigenous peoples, there were tribes that were here before others, and the newcomers didn’t establish themselves through diplomacy and immigration departments. They stormed ashore in canoes and fought for what they wanted.

If the same approach was taken in the UK, sooner or later it would come down to the Anglo-Saxons, which means on the one hand the Angles and on the other the Saxons, who didn’t immediately rush into each other’s arms. And they were of Germanic origin, anyway.

Peeling back the layers in Trinidad and Tobago, the African contingent might feel they had some sort of right, having been kidnapped from their ancestral homes and brought to these shores against their will, but the fact remains that on the basis of last-in first-out they would eventually get their marching orders.

And woe betide anyone whose DNA betrayed some link with the Baltic states of northern Europe, because that would indicate Courland, part of what is now Latvia and once, somewhat surprisingly, invaders of islands far from their own chilly shores. If we all get back to where we once belonged, all that would be left is Adam, all alone in the Garden of E d e n .

A n d even he had better have his birth c e r t i f - i c a t e ready for inspection.