 The case for cosmopolitan globalism usurping localism, by Rebecca Weiss.
The linked piece is by Rebecca Weiss, who describes herself as a "Jewish Catholic."
From Christian Century:
When localism becomes nationalism
At the farmers market, I found something I didn't expect--White supremacists.
by Rebecca Bratten Weiss
August 9, 2021
[...] I have become increasingly aware of how threads of White supremacy and ethno-nationalism run through the local movement and through localism in general. After years of vocal advocacy for localism, I now see the ideology's potential dangers as well.
[...] Once a fringe ethos popular among counterculturists, localism has migrated into the mainstream of contemporary society. [...]
The ultimate symbol of this reorientation toward the local is the farmers market. [...]
Farmers markets across the nation and even abroad have, in recent years, begun to attract White supremacist groups. Kelly Weill reported in the Daily Beast that "the far right's love of the markets plays into a larger fascist talking point that idealizes pastoral life and demonizes 'degenerate' urban living. The contrast attempts to cast white supremacy as a purer alternative." Weill's story was inspired by a 2019 incident in the progressive college town of Bloomington, Indiana, in which a local farmers market ousted farmer Sarah Dye, known as "Volkmom" in the White supremacist group Identity Evropa. Other farmers began to sell pins that read "Don't buy veggies from Nazis."
Yes, the "America first" ideology is widespread in our rural communities, where a preference for natural food and holistic medicine doesn't always signal progressive politics but rather a distrust of urban liberals, coastal elites, and shadowy globalist influences. But a similar mechanism has functioned in anti-globalist movements abroad, connecting love of the local with fear of foreign influence and opposition to the influx of ethnically diverse immigrant groups.
Consider the Brexit phenomenon in the United Kingdom. While the movement to leave the European Union was driven by many complex factors, including a distrust of neoliberal capitalism, Brexit likely never would have happened were it not for a spirit of hostility to and fear of the outsider--specifically, the UK's diverse immigrant population. So it is troubling to note that, according to a survey by industry publication Farmers Weekly, a majority of farmers voted to leave the EU in spite of forecasts that Brexit would harm farmers and farming. It is hard to think of the British agrarian countryside as anything other than benign, but the painful truth is that these communities are overwhelmingly White. That's all you need to know to know they're evil!Localism argues for the purity of our food and land. In far-right nationalist and fascist ideologies, purity also implies purity of race, purity of blood, and a dread of the ethnic outsider as a contaminant, unclean. Emphasis is on the "traditional," racially pure family in which everyone abides by rigid gender roles. The "blood and soil" rhetoric of the Nazi regime advanced these prejudices. Love of land, generally understood as a positive virtue, becomes a gateway to prejudice.
Distinctions between insiders and outsiders become crucial to group identity, with all that is depraved and corrupt relegated to the dangerous world outside the closed circle.
[...] In our enthusiasm to reorient our politics and economics toward the local, we need to be aware of how localism can go wrong. This means learning to recognize strains of thinking that, intentionally or not, can lead to nationalist prejudices. Variants on localism that normalize prejudice or insist on a closed community, rather than intersecting communities with open gates and doors, are dangerous. Words like globalist are often deployed as a dog whistle for "Jewish"--as a covert antisemitic slur. Localism as a defense of Western values, or as a preservation of White, Western civilization as some kind of fundamentally superior society, is shorthand for White supremacy. Weiss said one way to fight back against the evils of white supremacy and nationalist localism is "to center non-White leaders in the local food movement."
Weiss finished her piece by saying that if you disagree with her you're not a Christian.
Pope Francis affirmed this in Laudato si'. The encyclical refers to the earth as "our common home" and calls for a "global ecological conversion." Christians who eschew globalism as a modernist invention and prefer to enclose themselves within narrow purlieus are not only embracing a flawed conception of sustainability, they are also rejecting the traditional teachings of their faith. Mrs. Weiss here gets to decide who is or isn't a Christian and who is or isn't a "white supremacist!"
What a blessing!
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