Pass the turkey, but hold the “tribalism”

Liberals rail against so-called “tribalism,” but us-vs-them is as American as apple pie

Illustration by Kalen Goodluck generated by Adobe Express.

Gobble gobble,

As the American public serves themselves leftover helpings of turkey and mashed potatoes today, holding their breath for the second coming of a Donald J. Trump presidency—with memories of an attempted coup, toppling of Roe v. Wade, and nationalist fervor celebrating governmental corruption and Trump’s fascist tendencies—liberals continue to blame the so-called “tribalism” of Trump’s base for declining democratic values and institutions. Yet true tribalism is hardly the self-destructive us-vs-them, anti-democratic harbinger western thought has assigned tribal politics.

Tribes and Tribalism are vastly varied, plural, and multicultural in the United States and worldwide. Anything but monolithic, tribes often have their own languages, cultural and religious traditions, relationship to specific lands, environment, and neighboring tribes. It’s mythologized fantasies like the Thanksgiving holiday and notions of savage “tribalism” that erase history and promote us-vs-them ideals that are as American as apple pie. European and American settler colonialism each brought societal upheaval to untold numbers of Indigenous peoples through violent genocidal wars to displace, dispossess, and wipe out any trace of tribes from shore to shore across the American continent. This was societal upheaval on an apocalyptic, biblical scale, all to achieve a democratic government.

Amidst a global rise of far-right authoritarianism, a bevy of western observers, pundits, journalists, and academics decry the us-versus-them politics of “tribalism”they contend marks radical anti-democratic movements and culture. This western mis-characterization of far-right authoritarianism should matter as these movements, parties, and regimes gain power, those on the front lines defending liberal democracy will wage war against a boogeyman of their own design: “tribalism” itself.

In western thought, “tribalism” holds a negative, inaccurate, and inappropriate meaning. According to mainstream media, sociologists, politicians, and other defenders of democracy, tribalism is a corrupting force with closed belief systems, virulent group consciousness, devotion to the in-group’s leader, and hatred for those outside the group. In contrast with Western Civilization, tribalism is the polar opposite of European and American democratic institutions where civility of debate, voting, and resulting elected officials carry out the will of the people.

Tribalism is a devolution of western ideals and even pathologically diseased sense of loyalty to a real or imagined group identity. It’s a term trumpeted in western sociology, psychology, political theory, and anthropology, and the mainstream media. Western canonical French and English political philosophers like John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Hobbes both heavily influenced how the west thinks about how societies are organized and evolve, particularly with their own brands of the “social contract” theory and how Indigenous peoples illustrate a noble yet violent “state of nature” in primitive human societal development. Ultimately, its dehumanizing language, no?

20 recent examples on the web:

Cancel culture—our own brand of modern tribalism—often shames and isolates those whose opinions differ from ours.

—Margie Warrell, Forbes, 21 Nov. 2024

Most of them are abandoned or rejected by their peer groups, thanks to tribalism or simple self-preservation.

—David Fear, Rolling Stone, 20 Nov. 2024

If, instead, the election is close, existing trends will likely bring out the worst in America—our puritanical righteousness and tribalism.

—Chris Jackson, Fortune, 4 Nov. 2024

While community is a positive force, tribalism is its polar negative opposite.

—Dan Berger, Forbes, 1 Nov. 2024

This mindset is ripe for shaping by political tribalism, which amplifies closed belief systems, inuring them from outside remediation.

—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 14 Sep. 2023

The rise of tribalism has been most pronounced in the GOP.

—Francis Fukuyama, Foreign Affairs, 18 Jan. 2021

And then there’s the power of tribalism to keep the GOP voters from switching to the Dems.

—Andrew Sullivan, Daily Intelligencer, 8 Dec. 2017

Biden decried the lies and tribalism that feed such rage.

—Robin Givhan, Washington Post, 17 May 2022

This kind of tribalism is both a cause and a consequence of trouble.

—Chris Stirewalt, Fox News, 23 Apr. 2018

Both these influences — the tribalism and the fear of cancel culture — can be seen in the Trump-vs.-Squad Simpsons clip.

—Peter Spiliakos, National Review, 28 Aug. 2019

Try to think of where the other person is coming from, instead of tribalism.

—Izzy Grinspan, Harper's BAZAAR, 17 Nov. 2022

The danger at the moment is that the capital could be sliding into a kind of tribalism.

—Gerald F. Seib, WSJ, 3 Apr. 2017

Stand in the name of violence and repression and tribalism?

—Anchorage Daily News, 20 Dec. 2017

And so there is this kind of tribalism, as one expert described it to me that goes on during election seasons.

—Taylor Wilson, USA TODAY, 30 Aug. 2023

Instead, focus on what the two sets of remarks say about Trump’s view of tribalism and loyalty.

—Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2019

And the fact that the president couldn’t stay away and a lot of his followers couldn’t stay away tells you intensity of tribalism.

—Lisa Gutierrez, kansascity, 29 May 2018

For his part, the president has discussed the A$AP Rocky case not in terms of justice, but in terms of tribalism and nationalism.

—Spencer Kornhaber, The Atlantic, 27 July 2019

Media and leaders play up tribal connections Leaders and media know how to exploit our tribalism to circle the wagons.

—Arash Javanbakht, The Conversation, 9 Aug. 2024

Listen to him arouse the fury and tribalism in American society.

—David Remnick, The New Yorker, 24 July 2023

How do tribalism and caste systems undermine societies?

—Mark Athitakis, Los Angeles Times, 28 Jan. 2023

This is no accident and it has deep roots that span over two millennia in Western philosophy. In his book “Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization,” federal Indian law professor Robert Williams, Jr. argues the notion of the savage is essential to understanding western identity today, from its philosophical and social roots in Greek and Roman civilizations, the Italian enlightenment and French Renaissance, to the settler colonial founding of American democracy and subsequent international institutions like the United Nations. Western culture, society, and institutions have always defined themselves apart from the “savage,” “barbarian,” primitive native, and “lowest stage of humanity’s development” within a “state of nature.”

The savage, as argued by Williams, has familiar elements you will recognize:

“The savage is a distant, alien, uncivilized being, unaware of either the benefits or burdens of modernity. Lacking in sophisticated institutions of government and religion, ignorant of property laws, without complex social bonds or familial ties, living in a state of untamed nature, fierce and ennobled at the same time, the savage has always represented an anxious, negating presence in the world, standing perpetually opposed to Western Civilization.”

As Williams further illustrates, “without the idea of the savage to understand what it is, what it was, and what it could be, Western civilization, as we know it, would never have been able to invent itself.”

For decades, U.S. foreign policy has fully embodied the us-versus-them stance, in its endless wars, neoliberal capitalist pillaging of Third Wold resources, and now support for Israel’s ongoing 14-month genocidal war against Palestinians, a settler colonial rampage originating from European migration and now billions in aid and bombs from the United States.

The western perception of this national and global rise of far-right “tribalism” displays not only a contempt for anti-democratic movements, but a hate for Indigenous communities, whose politics and movements are authentically, wholly and unapologetically tribal, yet are defined through themselves, their own history, culture, traditions, languages, and relationships—not based in us-vs-them championed by American democratic culture.

On Trump’s side, you have the explicit battle for “Western Civilization,” a kind of “last stand” for the future of white children. After all, the far right’s obsession with white birth rates, immigration, fascist climate anxieties all depend on a fight to stop a descent into tribalism. And on the other hand, liberals fear that democracy hangs in the balance from the existential threat of Trump’s far-right “tribalism,” an un-civilizing force that will dismantle and destroy the sacred American institutions that protect civil liberties like abortion, same-sex marriage, trans rights, votings rights, etc. Both parties use tribalism and Indigenous peoples as the savage horde threatening Western Civilization from the within and from foreign lands.

As America approaches its new elected presidential administration, the politics of fear from both parties will tempt the public to use us-vs-them politics, to demonize each other through dehumanizing imaginary Indigenous peoples, tribes, and their societies. We need a new kind of politics from the west that doesn’t define itself through calling the Other barbaric.

Maybe instead of participating in this dehumanization, our elected officials and us, the public, should all take a moment this western Thanksgiving and Christmas season to read the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) that was a hard won victory by Indigenous peoples on a global scale to get their collective and individual rights recognized by international law and associated institutions. First and foremost, the UNDRIP document (available in several languages) affirms that “indigenous peoples are equal to all other peoples, while recognizing the right of all peoples to be different” and contribute to “the common heritage of mankind.” It goes on, “indigenous peoples have suffered historical injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests.”

And, if you feel inspired, here are some some further reading on Indigenous history in the U.S. and western settler colonialism and the history of the “savage”:

1. “Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization” by Robert A. Williams, Jr.

2. “Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

3. “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History” by Ned Blackhawk

4. “Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860” by Richard Slotkin