Irresponsible Radicalisation: Diasporas, Globalisation and Long-Distance Nationalism in the Digital Age

Abstract

The growing scholarship on ethnic diasporas has prompted various off-shoots. Two significant directions are the relationship of diasporas with globalisation and their role in the expansion and radicalisation of ethnic conflict. The corporate enthusiasm of the 1990s for globalisation has been followed by sombre reflections on its destructive impact upon a vast array of areas, including inter-ethnic relations worldwide. This article explores one crucial aspect of this wave of disruption—the rapid expansion of radical forms of long-distance nationalism, often leading to a stress on maximalist goals and an abdication of responsibility. It conceptually distinguishes between stateless diasporas and diasporas that conceive themselves as tied to, and represented by, an existing ‘nation-state’. Examples include ethnic lobbies from the former Yugoslavia, greater Han xenophobia among overseas Chinese, and Hindutva technocratic chauvinism among Hindu-Americans. Finally, the article identifies the onset of ‘online mobbing’ or ‘cyber bullying’ as a new and ominous trend in Internet radicalism.

Keywords:

• Diaspora
• Globalisation
• Long-Distance Nationalism
• Internet
• Radicalisation
• Cyber Bullying

Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks to Nidhi Trehan and John K. Walton for their help at different stages of the project, as well as to the JEMS editors and anonymous referees for their useful comments.

Notes

1. Data from The World in Action, http://www.avaaz.org/eb/about.php. The site has been under severe cyber-attack by a suspected combination of authoritarian governments like China, and US corporate giants (https://secure.avaaz.org/en/massive_attack_on_avaaz_a/?fp, last accessed 15 March 2012.

2. In his rather optimistic note on President Obama's entrance into the White House, his advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski (2008: 1) argued: ‘For the first time in history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. Global activism is generating a surge in the quest for cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world scarred by memories of colonial or imperial domination’. For an even more enthusiastic analysis, see Brzezinski (2009).

3. Arguably, there are exceptions to this binary distinction, as in the case of the Gypsies/Roma who, however, rarely engage in radical politics, particularly not radical nationalism (Sigona and Trehan 2009).

4. This could psychologically be evaluated with the methodology which Reips and Buffardi are proposing in this issue.

5. The first email using the ‘@’ sign was apparently sent in 1971 (see Ray Tomlinson, The First Network Email, http://openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html, un-dated, last accessed 15 May 2012. Personal note: I first used email in 1988 while connecting a computer situated in the University of London with one situated in La Jolla, California.

6. Besides social networking, Skype could count, in 2009, 30–40 million daily users operating at any given moment from over 500 million personal accounts.

7. In this special issue, Reips and Buffardi derive Facebook users’ narcissism from their Facebook profiles. By using an adapted methodology, a new study could possibly be derived to confirm the ‘narcissism of small differences’ hypothesis.

8. However, when face-to-face is difficult or impossible, ICTs can enable many diasporic individuals to reinstall personal relationships with and within families (see Bacigalupe and Cámara, this issue).

9. In an effort to capitalise on US patriotism in the aftermath of 9/11, Serbian nationalist websites circulated news of Bin Laden's ‘Balkan connections’ and a supposed al Qaeda secret network in Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia (Bock-Luna 2007).

10. According to the 2000 US Census Bureau, this amounted to a mere 113,661 individuals (0.04 per cent of the US population), in comparison to the 1,300,000 Albanians living in Turkey, according to the 2007 Turkish census.

11. See ‘Censored in China: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems go along with government bans’, (2006) US News and World Report, 140(7): 29, last accessed 11 April 2010 (no longer available online); ‘Google China attack episode: is Microsoft to blame?’, Infosecurity, 7(1): 6, http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/6491/google-china-attack-episode-is-microsoft-to-blame/, last accessed 15 May 2012 (Note: many of the original URLs relating to China's Internet policies and US Internet giants may have been changed or removed).

12. On the Chinese government's priorities for ‘harmonisation’, see ‘China: censorship keywords, policies and blacklists for leading search engine Baidu, 2006–2009’, Wikileaks, Release date: 2 May 2009, URL:http://wikileaks.org/wiki/China:_censorship_keywords%2C_policies_and_blacklists_for_leading_search_engine_Baidu%2C_2006-2009 (Note: last accessed through Wikileaks’ mirror site, 15 May 2012; all original Wikileaks URLs and documents had been suppressed by December 2010 and their continuous availability on the Internet is in doubt due to the US/corporate financial blockade; read the important statement claiming, among other things, that ‘Mass interception of entire populations is not only a reality, it is a secret new industry spanning 25 countries’ since at least 11 September 2001: http://wikileaks.org/); ‘Baidu's Internal Monitoring and Censorship Document Leaked (1) (Updated)’, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/04/baidus-internal-monitoring-and-censorship-document-leaked/, last accessed: 16 September 2010/15 May 2012 (not yet removed at the time of publication).

13. See also ‘Is Wikipedia China Really Wikipedia?’, CBS News (Public Eye), 30 November 2006, URL: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500486_162-2218394-500486.html.

14. See the Uyghur American Association's main webpage at http://www.uyghuramerican.org/.

15. Sikh Formations, http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rsfo.

16. See, for instance, Sergey Brin (interviewed by Ian Katz), ‘Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google's Sergey Brin’, The Guardian, Sunday 15 April 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/15/web-freedom-threat-google-brin, accessed 20 April 2012; Ian Katz, ‘Google's Sergey Brin: state filtering of dissent threatens web freedom’, The Guardian, Wednesday 18 April 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/18/google-sergey-brin-web-freedom , accessed 20 April 2012;

17. The issue of the causal linkage between online statements and offline actions is addressed in this issue by Kathrin Kissau (2012).