Salone Patriotism/Nationalism in the Age of Nihilism
By Fayia Sellu, PV Special Correspondent US
“Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, idle lips are his mouthpiece.” -Proverbs 16: 27
“Wickedness loves company- and leads others into sin.” 16:29 Living Bible
“And it is not soul to believe, except by the leave of God, and he lays abomination on those with no understanding.” Quran 10: 100
The mind, imagination, holds the keys to salvation as it does the betterment of our species; just as it holds the sledgehammer of its damnation and destruction. The Nation State phenomenon as we know it has always been bedeviled and the foundation for most of the wars and conflicts in modern times. Whether it is to affirm or negate whatever geographical area that has a flag, a national anthem, coat of arms and borders or that entity’s quest for conquest, colonization, dominance or survival, nationalism has a checkered history. I would not even attempt that “history,” except to note that the two world wars in the last century were fought, in part, because of fractures inherent in Nation-state’s constitution, which Europe never quite mastered. Yet it was in Berlin that Europeans who had not mastered nation-making sat and decided to chop up a whole continent into nations, exporting the phenomenon and setting the foundation for most conflicts in Africa, like that in its most populous nation Nigeria (an echo to the Biafra war in the 60s) or the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda or recent cross-border activity with the Democratic Republic of Congo…and on and on.
Notice I have not defined nationalism and can only state that its instrumental sibling patriotism helps us to think about the idea of belonging to and loving a nation, a state. The fact is that hardly anyone cares about your ethnicity outside Sierra Leone; your passport identifies you as a subject of the national project. If you are me living for over a decade in the diaspora, you realize you are an ambassador and advocate of Sierra Leone and Africa for that matter, perpetually. Hopefully, Nationalism is better illustrated than defined. When a soldier is sent to war in the name/honor of his country, s/he is showing patriotism/nationalism, a cause so important, he can lay down his life for it. Unquestionable! Importantly, the only time ethno-regional, political color and stripe, class or diaspora versus home based and all possible barriers are broken and Sierra Leoneans unite would be to support our national team at the African Cup of Nations So also, we can sacrifice and do anything to maintain and defend our values and morals. Whether inherited or enacted by or forced upon us, there are concepts like “Justice” “Truth” “Education” “Democracy” that we tend to think are sacred, good or great for all mankind, without question.
Enter Nihilism. Scholars, philosophers especially, have tried to apprehend this slippery characterization in which when we think about our morals and values enough or too much, they tend to lose some of the value we had bequeathed them hitherto. In two or three generations people were like, “Learning is not better than silver and gold” and ask any poor defendant at the Law Court Building (forget the statue adorning its frontage) if “The Law is Blind.” or “Justice is Served” in Salone today. Nihilism is far more complex than that though. Scholar, Nolan Gertz, who writes a lot on the subject calls it “a threat” in our contemporary world in a piece in Aeon. Gertz draws from philosophers Hannah Arenndt and Federich Nietzshce and other scholars to triangulate Nihilism’s wide range of attitudes and derivative forms, from epistemology (theory of knowledge) through our morals and values to our politics. For our purposes we’ll stick with Nietzshce who suggests that it is the way our thoughts devalue our values. Nietzsche divided Nihilists into active and passive. The active nihilists “reject the values given by others in order to erect values of their own.” The passive nihilists become that because they “continue to believe in traditional values, despite having doubts about the true value of those values.” In the era of Post-truth, global migration pandemic and billions getting their information via Social Media, the elements that formed the center on which the foundation for the Nation was built (Traditional Media which projects agenda-set stereotypes of culture even if diverse as part of some whole) can no longer hold.
More people have migrated in these first two decades of this century than was recorded in all of the last. Turns out globalization is a bitch! Just like the COVID 19 went pandemic, mass culture is consumed globally, viral videos transgress borders flagrantly for those who want to still hold on to the illusion of “purity” of culture, morals and values. The Nation or State is the most powerful entity or institution in the (post) modern times. It supersedes the individual, family, clan, ethnicity, tribe or religion. It provides the most binding social contract for its subjects/citizens, for most by the fact of birthplace and others by residence. The social contract is such that the nation and its constituents have obligations, rights and expectations that ensure the security, freedom, function, progress and welfare of the collective, ideally. There are differentials in the way the individual, family, clan, tribe or other groups within the state live, are treated, benefit, are positioned in its hierarchy by the reason of their conditions, place of birth, class, opportunities etc. The People constitute the State but cede their power to act in the realm of governance and its constellation of institutions by electing representatives to perform the function, together with appointees. Most of the conflicts in our modern times emanate from the exercise, consolidation or preservation of the (Inter) State power in relation with the individual or groups asserting rights, freedoms and access to resources
For our own sake and current piece, let us focus on the State we know- the supposedly benevolent, authoritarian, sometimes autocratic, which terrorizes and is terrorized by dissidents, which has the power to regulate, manage and control its subjects- and how global migration has queered nationalism and the way subjects relate to the Nation in what I theorize as the Age of Nihilism. Many nations in the Global South are failed, failing or dysfunctional at best. Citizens are (in)voluntarily separated from the State due to war or natural disaster, suffer displacement, are made refugees or seek greener pastures not available at home in the West, elsewhere. On the ‘greener pastures’ part, lack of probity in governance, socio-economic possibilities leading to ‘social death’ especially among the young, the type that fuelled the Temple Run (the dangerous passage of West African youths via Libya to Europe in boats not unlike the ones that took them into slavery centuries back, only now they paid for the opportunity to go do menial jobs) phenomenon as the post-Ebola austerity ravaged their livelihoods. Nationalism/patriotism are now in crises as the citizenry is dispersed into the diaspora and borders cannot keep them in. They live in other jurisdictions but still lay claim and are variably invested in emotion and substance (foreign remittance) to the Homeland. Some even seek a (non)political role in its destiny. Even those within its borders, like those outside, consume information - Education, culture and entertainment- on a mass scale, globally, no matter their situated locality in the West or Far East, elsewhere, whether via Hollywood, Bolly…or Nollywood, Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, Whatsapp, YouTube or wherever. Market-based cultural forces and artifacts like Hiphop, Afro Beat and the galaxy of forms transact in language that is made vernacular, every time they watch a foreign movie, TV show, share that viral video, listen to music or study any concept or skill or consume anything imported. Diasporas take their culture- tastes and habits- also with them, everywhere.
In the messy, borderless, third sphere frontier of cyberspace, the expression and participation of nationalism/patriotism has changed dramatically and the question of jurisdiction and the enforcing of control and authority, both negative and positive, by the state has been grossly corroded. Where does Salone fall in all this you are asking? I have been seeking ways to explain the inexplicable (outside the obvious fact of “rogue politicians” manipulating them) malaise of youths disturbing the peace in protesting the hardship or some injustice that WILL lead to clash with law enforcement and deaths, from Tombo, to Makeni to the August 8-10 protests. The recent report on the demonstrations presented by Committee Chair Dr. Emanuel Saffa Abdulai notes that among the youth between the ages of 15 and 35 (2.5 million out of our 8 million citizens) 60% are unemployed. The Bio-led administration has professed Human Capital Development as its core objective. The Free Quality School Education according to the government has increased schools by 13% and over a million more kids are enrolled at the basic education level. 22% of the national budget is invested in Education. Great! Looking long term. There are still 1.5 million living, breathing and thinking young people who are unemployed (some graduates) or unemployable, (lacking no technical or vocational training) and that’s a lot! A lot of Human Capital to lay waste, a waste that was not created in Bio’s five years, yet very costly to the peace and stability of the country, currently.
Back to Nihilism. I am trying to understand why youth would in quest or struggle for better life and good governance rather disrupt governance (law and order) and throw away that very life they want to make better in recurring fatal battles with law enforcement. Or why in a bid to protect life and property (youth destroy public assets while fighting for better services) law enforcement has to waste some lives and vice versa. The representation and face of government authority, law and order- the Police- are also unprecedentedly wasted! DESPERATION. The question as to whether life becomes pointless was one matter Nietzshce wrestles with, while suggesting the two types of Nihilists stated earlier. I am using three bits of information from Social Media in an attempt to unpack the sagging load of foregrounding herein: 1) A clip from AYV on Sunday TV broadcast. 2) A clip of some teenagers as they do a muslim prayer parody. 3) A scanned copy of the People’s Power in Politics (PPP’s) response to the committee report for the investigation of the August 8-10 protests.
Professor Jimmy Kandeh was a guest on AYV on Sunday and he summed up his contribution at the end of the show, saying, there is no real choice offered in the current elections cycle. Professor emeritus from University of Richmond in the US, retired and helping at the University of Sierra Leone, Jimmy Kandeh is the epitome of torn and striving parts of a diaspora personality who spent most of his adult life in the US, but is just as Sierra Leonean as anyone else, even as he may have a US passport, culture and ways of being that may be anathema to what obtains in Sierra Leone. Nationalism has some accommodations to make for Jimmy, and he may be passive for Nietzsche, because he would not advise anything else to replace our democracy or the effed-up system at Fourah Bay College, where he teaches, though he may not have much faith in both.Who is to say he is not giving back to his country and making a difference? Then there is that clip of the three boys praying for the country, it seems. Rather they were like pissing on the muslim ritual in the most holy period of Ramadan. The kid ahead leads the prayer and the two behind him respond. The kids obviously are making parody of a prayer in the most sacrilegious fashion that brings politics and the Bio-Samura option smack into religion (which is normally a No-No is Salone tradition) and they are threatening a whole state with a character (a Temple Runner who ‘made it’ and is seeking refuge in The Netherlands), whose baroque-invective-laced diatribes on Social Media seems to have a terrorizing effect on the powerful. But for a stroke of luck, grace, you name it, that character going by the moniker Adebayor would have been a protester or ‘careless talker’ that would be ‘invited’ to help the police investigation, behind bars for treasonous incitement, or worse dead.
First, most of these kids and youths that get caught up in these skirmishes and who lose their lives, were born or grew up in the peace time, likely, during the regime of Ernest Bai Koroma. They may have known Ebola, Mudslide, but they are not hardened or chastened by their witnessing or testimony of the war years. While their counterparts in the US or those with means have video games or (Temple Run was a popular mobile game that fields lethal obstacles, dangerous bridges and waters to escape the Evil Demon Monkey in hot pursuit; ironies never come better!) TV shows, or other games and activities to engage an agile and impressionable mind and body (even in the US, Congress is exasperated dealing with little success with the harmful impact of Social Media behemoths on the young), they have viral videos and audios of invectives and incitements telling them to protest hardship which is real and present from a “mentor” who flagrantly parades his lack of an education or accomplishments other than the freedom to parrot invectives at authorities who can neither stop him, nor prevent them from listening to it. Who does not remember their rebellious teen or youth period when the abominable or taboo was so enticing and exciting? The People’s Power in Politics (PPP) press release naturally flows from that. It is one thing fronting for the agenda of disgruntled opposition politicians, but persons who leverage the access to cyberspace (without any accountability, rules or limits) and idle and restless youths’ minds are seeking to change a country they don’t live in. A country where, however flawed, we have a system of electing governments every five years. These may be Nietzsche’s active nihilists- they want to replace the current system to a system where protests can unseat governments. The press release was issued from an address in Columbus, Ohio. Seriously? I am not in any position to say who loves or belongs to Sierra Leone more, or the limits one can go to influence the politics of the Homeland with their remittance money. However, it is clear that the current sensibility or lack thereof of the New Media frontier is inclined toward postmodern irony, that has the most currency when it is anti establishmentarian, parodies, undermines or devalues traditional authority or all things sacred. Nihilism is here to stay! I am a man of the diaspora myself, but I get confused living in a world where supposed Sierra Leoneans who live where they can call 911 (or its variations) to protect their lives and property, organize a protest touting regime change and chaos, potentially lethal, on the authority of that other discursive notion, “International Community,” saying it was okay. If I have anything I am certain about, it is that Nationalism/patriotism, sovereignty are never going to be what we knew them for, for real! It is a Brave New World, indeed! But before I get ahead of myself and envisage a post-Nation-state world being heralded, I am reminded of the curse of duopoly and our Alusine-Alhassan deadlock and teach my optimism modesty- not so fast! An Africa with a common trade area, no borders or visas and common currency would be a good sign, no?
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