ANTI-GLOBOS AS RACISTS AND NATIONALISTS

An Australian reader says that “Leftist” anti-globalizers and Australia’s most prominent anti-immigration politician (the “rightist” Pauline Hanson) both really want the same thing. They both want to retain a “national” identity and individuality:

I have been thinking about this doublethink amongst the anti-globos of late. I have a pain in the neck friend who is always on the latest lefty bandwagon. He hates Pauline Hanson and is afraid Australians are all becoming "xenophobic" but then is against "globalisation".

My argument is that if there is a problem with economic globalisation at all, (I am not convinced it is bad) it must apply to cosmopolitanism as well, something he and his ilk are always praising as a great social advance on the old Australian "anglo-celtic" culture. Thanks to cosmo, Sydney and Melbourne are now just like Vancouver, San Francisco and London. If it weren't for the climate differences you'd hardly know which one you were in. They all have the same big fast food chains, and Thai and Indian curry houses on every other corner. All these cities are "cosmopolitan" and the same at the same time. "Cultural Diversity" at the local level is paradoxically leading to homogenity at the international level. Sameness.

Luckily for us, Star Bucks has been slow to spread here... mainly because the Italians taught the Australians what constitutes good coffee, a lesson the North Americanos never really learned. Yet when my pro-cosmo anti-globo friend travels he prefers to visit places that are "out of the ordinary", culturally different, have their own culture and traditions.. the non-cosmo cultures. But isn't that the very thing he is preventing Australia from keeping and developing by opposing "Hansonism"? I enjoy the diversity of restaurants etc as much as the next guy but if we lose what makes Australia different and become just another cosmopolitan ant pile, with all the social cohesion of an international airport transit lounge.. we can't blame it all on McDonalds and The Simpsons.

Note that the famous French Leftist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1983) also justified ethnocentrism as a means of preserving cultural diversity.

Reference:
Levi-Strauss, C. (1983) Le Regard Eloigne Paris: Plon.

****************************