Europe
and the United States share recently a problem, they are increasingly
building walls in the South of their frontiers in order to keep
undesired emigration under control. As a European, I cannot say much
about the fences between the US and Mexico. But, living in Spain, I
have the first European physical wall at only 400 km distance from my
home. The building of more walls is discussed, since in the conflict
in Syria is driving large numbers of people towards Europe.
If
we can believe revisionism, this conflict would not exist without the
State monopoly of power, its interest in perpetual warfare and the
purposeful manipulation of people's opinion about getting into war.
Walking around in European streets you might here that we face a
possible “invasion of Muslims”.
Hans-Hermann
Hoppe convincingly argued that it is a people's right to make such
fences and to decide whom to let in and home to keep out of the
country.
The
speculation about a complete eradication of conflicts, is not at
stake now, since the conflict is already here. The question if we are
allowed to lock us up, as a legal consideration is neither of
interest in this article. With sufficient interest laws and
interstate agreements can be revised. The question is, if it is
ethical to deter fugitives coming to Europe. Ethical principles are
universal. This is the key of Hoppe's argumentation ethics. But, the
application of such principles depends solely on the discursive
partners. In principle, we may make walls, why not. But should we?
From Franklian logotherapy it can be learned that three forms of
human dilemmas exist; suffering, guilt and death. The avoidance of a
confrontation with those dilemmas leads to neurosis. Listening to
arguments against Syrian immigration, fear of suffering is the
neurotic reply of the average European. They fear to be outnumbered,
invaded, to be ideologically occupied by Islamic philosophy and life
style, or the are afraid to lose the few remaining job to those
immigrants. Based on statistical data we might find could examples in
favor and against such arguments.
The argument of isolationism seems
flawed, since actually Syrians are not really “foreigners” in the
proper sense, in our current interrelated and globalized world. As
such, only four years ago, I met in our local rural hospital, a
Syrian doctor who went home to Syria visiting his wife and children
twice a month. Many Syrians of second and third generation live all
over Europe and shape our culture together. Actually, Syrian way of
life before the war was closer to the Spanish lifestyle than to the
Turkish or Arabic one. Many of those Syrians have not only voted and
worked in Europe, they also exchanged their ideas, business projects
and academic works with friends and family in Syria.
I hope these few
sketches make clear, why I believe that isolationism is an illusion.
It might have been true for some rednecks who, after expelling or
mingling with America's First Nations, have worried only about their
local issues. If that is natural habit or a form of reactionary
avoidance of ethical controversies shall be left open. It is
certainly not true for non-European immigrants, who existed in the
US, since its beginning. Think only about the rich body of
American-Chinese writers against Mao's atrocities, who, among many
others, shaped the public opinion on regimes of terror.
So, what
converts one into an American or European and where is the limit that
defines someone as a foreigner? This is not a question about the
righteousness of excluding people, but about the process that
constitutes a people as such, a nation, a community, the insiders,
and how such a society or community is reproduced. This links much
more the question who we want to be, what Europe shall be, in the
future, rather than if this or that action is right or wrong. I fully
support Hoppe's idea that we always might exclude others and that it
is sometimes desirable. Once the war in Syria is going on. It seems
meaningless, if the one or the other State make money with it. If
States don't do, other organizations will. Rather, we should ask each
other individually, who the Syrians are for us and what they mean to
us. If they mean nothing to us, we should simply through them out –
all of them. Hitler came to such a conclusion about Jews. But if we
believe that they mean something to us, we aquire automatically a
responsibility.
This doesn't mean, that we have to pick them all up.
It might also mean that we have to care for what is going on in
Syria. But, this would involve us even deeper. It meant to make their
conflict ours. It might be true that non-intervention might have
prevented that war. An idea that I do not share in general, but seems
quite plausible in this case. Yet, it is irrelevant at the current
time, since we cannot conclude that non-intervention in an ongoing
war, would favour peace. Actually, it is impossible, because we are
already involved. To get out of that war we have to go through the
conflict all its way. Which means, that we have to struggle together
with the different, and so distinguishedly divergent parties on Syrian
ground, for a new meaning of a vision of our common future.