Why The Left Needs To Embrace Tribalism

There is a narrative coursing through much of the mainstream moderate punditry today. They’ve seen the negative effects of tribalism in America today, and they have reacted in horror.

More often than not, these are the pundits of the “Never Trump” but critical of the left variety. The kind of people who, whether they identify as conservative or liberal, see tribalism itself as the evil that is eating at America.

Andrew Sullivan, Thomas B. Edsall, David Brooks, and many others have all made this argument in varying forms.

What it comes down to is a relatively simple argument: the right, with Trump’s help, has developed a version of tribalism so poisonous and devilish that it has led to the separation of parents from children, the semi-successful attempt to ban more than a billion people of a religion from entering our country, and much more. This tribalism is essentially that of white nationalism, where Christian whites are those prioritized by the government.

But to these pundits, the issue is not the right, it is tribalism itself. They look to the left, and see issues like “identity politics” becoming pervasive, and they can’t help but see some of the same patterns that course through the right. Often, they imagine a world where, if the left were in power, it would be just as, if not more, dangerous than the right.

As the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board put it, “The extremists were on the right in Charlottesville, but there have been examples on the left in Berkeley, Oakland and numerous college campuses.”

Watching this play out has led many to what seems like a simple conclusion: We must kill tribalism. Tribalism certainly seems responsible for some of humanity’s darkest impulses throughout our history. As E.O. Wilson, biologist and author of The Social Conquest Of Earth, explains, “In prehistory, group selection lifted the hominids to heights of solidarity, to genius, to enterprise. And to fear. Each tribe knew with justification that if it was not armed and ready, its very existence was imperiled. Throughout history, the escalation of a large part of technology has had combat as its central purpose. Today, public support is best fired up by appeal to the emotions of deadly combat, over which the amygdala is grandmaster.”

In other words, humanity’s very rise is rooted in its tribalism and its destructive tendency to stick with its own. It is this that allowed us to conquer the earth. But with the earth conquered, all we have left to conquer is ourselves.

All of this, however, is missing a key component, which E.O. Wilson hints at in his argument. While unfettered tribalism can lead to terrible consequences, tribalism also has a vital role to play in modern life. Tribalism may create enormous evil through its distancing of the other. But it also protects vulnerable minorities through its insularity.

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I’ve experienced the tribalism conundrum first hand. Over the last two years, I’ve watched in horror as my fellow Orthodox Jews have become consumed by an unprecedented level of self-absorption. This affliction has led us to support a government that promises us everything, as long as we look the other way when others suffer.

While some Muslims will never see their families again, we celebrate a lone commuted sentence of an Orthodox man accused of abusing his workers. While refugees die because we let them into our country at the slowest rate since 1980, we celebrate the announcement that the U.S. embassy will move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While children are separated from their parents, our most influential organization gave a plaque with the holy Torah’s words, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” to the very man who had implemented the family separation policy only a day earlier.

In many ways, this has been the defining sales pitch of the Trump Administration: “We will give you what you need, as long as you don’t worry about all the other groups who will suffer at our hands.” This is poisonous tribalism distilled to its essence.

To right-wing Orthodox Jews, who, like Evangelicals, fear that America has become an inhospitable and dangerous place for the religious and those with conservative values, such a deal with the devil may have been too good to pass up. To many, assimilation is a bigger danger than an authoritarian regime ever could be; as long as our pet causes are appeased, Israel is idolized, and Orthodox Jews serve in the administration, we happily parade around our insular world with blinders on.

It is this tribal fear that has led us to embrace, or at least tolerate, all of the inhumanity of the Trump regime. To many, Trump’s deal sounds not just enticing, but essential to their cultural survival.

And yet, Orthodox Jews are also the prime example of the positives of tribalism.

In Crown Heights, fundraisers for causes like helping hungry Jews are a regular occurrence. We also have what might in other parts of the country be equated to a socialized emergency health service, funded by the people in our community. On my way to the subway, I regularly pass a house whose owners give food to the poor (of any religion). We have an organization that gives money to families who cannot afford to pay for the extra cost of food for the holidays. And as mental illness and drug use finally begins to be acknowledged by community leaders, organizations have popped up to deal with these issues in ways that only a grassroots organization that understands its own people can.

It is this that shows just what an incredibly positive power tribalism can be. There is a reason that tribalism is theorized to be the reason early humans developed empathy and altruism: tribalism may be the root of much of our evil, but it is also the root of much of our goodness.

But there is more. These Jewish tribal structures did not get created in a vacuum: they are rooted in a history where Jews were quite literally cut off from the populations around them, they had to learn to fend for themselves. Their tribalism saved them, protected them, and allowed them to preserve their identities.

In a world that is largely far more accepting to Jews, this tribal quality has had a different, but just as important benefit: it has allowed orthodox Jews to able to avoid the huge rates of assimilation that are currently disrupting the non-orthodox Jewish world.

The same is true for Jewish history as a whole. Our history that is literally built around nations and religions trying to absorb or destroy us, and it has been our demand to value our tribe over their demands that has kept not just our people, but our way of life, alive.

And it’s this other aspect of tribalism that the left stands to learn from. Because the truth is, vulnerable minorities _need_ tribalism. They need its protections.

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It’s tribalism’s protective quality that hasn’t yet been given enough attention. For the truth is, racial minorities, Muslims, immigrants and others are in extreme danger in this country — not just because of the inhumane policies being enacted, but because of the very real tribal warfare Trump has declared.

Without left-wing tribal “identity politics” and a prioritization of the needs of these minorities, those tribes would be in more danger than they are now. They _need_ tribalism for the very same reason that Trump claims white Christians need tribalism: without it, they are vulnerable.

For example, organizations like the ADL and the NAACP are quite literally created as tribal organizations meant to protect their vulnerable members whose power can only stand up to the dominant power around them through whatever means are at their disposal. Read the ADL’s founding charter, and you can read the tribalism inherent in it: “The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience and, if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people.”

This is simply a cultured approach to tribalism, one that uses the construct of an advanced nation to defend its tribe. No different than any other form of tribalism.

It is in all these examples that we can see a very clear message. Calls to end tribalism altogether always only serve to help one group of people: those already in power. And it puts the vulnerable at extreme risk. And lest you think this is theoretical, for centuries, it was the “tribalism” of Jews that was used to justify antisemitism. As acclaimed American Jewish historian Naomi W. Cohen noted in a paper describing how antisemitism in America in the late 19th century had proliferated, many Americans essentially presented Jews were presented with two options: “Traditional Judaism or social acceptance — when in fact they wanted to combine elements of both. Jews knew too that some critics who attacked Jewish separatism (or ‘tribalism’) went on to suggest that clannishness inhibited the Jew from showing proper civic loyalty.”

These views were largely based off the views of the famous British antisemite of the time, Goldwyn Smith, who called Jews a “jealously separate race” and argued that the solution to their obstinance was Christianity. In his essay entitled “Can Jews be Patriots?” he claimed, “Christianity offers without tribalism… everything that is universal and permanent” in Jewish belief.

These ideas proliferated in most of the Western world at the time, from the United States to Russia to France, and, ultimately, to Germany, where it is no doubt they helped plant the seeds for what was coming.

We can see now why so many feel comfortable calling for an end to tribalism as a whole: they are blind to their own tribe’s power. More often than not, these “moderates” are really just those who benefit from the fact that America has for generations been built as a nation that most benefits the tribe of white Christians (despite the ideal of a higher calling, where all people could one day call it home). What they are asking for is not really an end to tribalism: they are asking for minorities and others to assimilate to the point where they are no longer deemed a threat by those who have benefitted from America’s structure up to this point, and who are waging a tribal war at Trump’s behest.

In other words, they are going through much of what Jews have gone through in the diaspora since the moment their second temple was destroyed and they were scattered into the world. Either lay down our identity and our unique way of life or get persecuted, expelled, and/or killed. This may be a recipe for a peaceful society (because it expels or kills anything that stands out), but it is not a tenable solution to anyone who wants to do anything but lay down their identity at the hands of white supremacy.

And so tribes that listen to the clarion call to end tribalism will really just be spelling their own doom. They don’t need to end tribalism: they need to use tribalism.

There are replete examples of the power of tribalism in the modern political structure of the United States. Again, orthodox Jewry, and specifically Hasidic Jewry, is a perfect example of how this power can be utilized. By voting in a unified and consistent tribal way in Brooklyn, for example, groups such as the Satmar Hasidim have been able to have an outsize influence on the local issues that matter deeply to them, like their educational system and other issues.

But this power is not limited to Hasidic Jews. It is mirrored in the way black Americans have been able to use their unified voices to push the Democratic party to (however badly) prioritize their voices. It can be seen in the way the #MeToo movement has largely succeeded because of a new tribalism by women, devoted entirely to creating a tribal solidarity that protects those who have come out about sexual abuse and harassment, while effectively ending the careers of men who were once protected by the tribalism of white male supremacy. This has led to the very beginnings of workplaces finally becoming slightly more open to the lived experiences of women and victims of abuse.

And, perhaps most potently, we can see tribalism’s power in the latest primary season, where a diverse combined tribe of once-suppressed minority voices have been able to push for the victorious elections of representatives who will finally prioritize their needs, and not just claim prioritizing their needs.

None of this is really all that different than the tribes of old, who, as E.O. Wilson claimed in the quote above, “knew with justification that if it was not armed and ready, its very existence was imperiled.” Today, we may not need to arm ourselves literally, but being “armed” with our voices, our votes, and our unity, we can fight for the same tribal power that once allowed the less powerful tribes to change the dynamics of the world around them.

The last example, of minorities coming together to vote for progressive, racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse voices joining forces is perhaps one of the most important strategies in this new day and age. It is often referred to today by the very same tribal dynamics of prehistorical tribes and modern nation-states: alliances. It has also become something of a flawed philosophy of many on the left called “intersectionality,” where vulnerable tribes have come to realize that there is one larger tribe largely coming together to oppress them, and thus by helping each other they also help themselves.

This is a healthy tribalism of the kind we tend to hear less about today, since most tribalism we discuss is actually better-termed “poisonous tribalism” wherein a tribe priortizes itself above all others, including its own members. It is this poisonous (and cruel) tribalism that is the hallmark of nationalist demagogues like Trump and their followers.

But creating an expanded vision where tribes don’t just fight with a unified vision, but also expand that vision to include others, we can start to glimpse the future of tribalism, one that is not just about strategic success but about a moral vision where we can finally combine the universal message of those who falsely think tribalism is our problem, and the particularist message of tribalism.

There is a second part to the founding charter for the ADL. It reads, in full, “The immediate object of the League is to stop, by appeals to reason and conscience, and if necessary, by appeals to law, the defamation of the Jewish people. Its ultimate purpose is to secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike and to put an end forever to unjust and unfair discrimination against and ridicule of any sect or body of citizens.”

In this call to arms, we can see the kind of tribalism liberals need to create. Beyond a vision that focuses just on protecting our own, we can create a tribalism that, beginning with alliances between the vulnerable, focuses on creating a world where no tribe must be oppressed to aid the rise of another. This would be a world where each tribe has a voice, and where the empowerment of one tribe does not threaten the empowerment of the others.

(This is not a new idea: it is a concept most commonly referred to as pluralism.)

It is through pluralistic tribalism, then, that we can achieve the dreams of those who imagine a post-tribal world. That is because pluralistic tribalism mitigates the very issues and vulnerabilities we have seen arise in this age of poisonous tribalism. It does not encourage the destruction of other tribes, but the empowerment of all tribes. It will not accept bribes that come at the cost of others because it is by definition allied with those others. And it does not envision a world where one tribe holds dominion over all (or in the anti-tribalist worldview, non-tribalism holds dominion over all, just another form of tribalism), but a world where tribes live in peaceful coexistence with each other.

And, perhaps most importantly, it envisions this future even with the tribes who are currently threatening others. In other words, in an ideal world, this tribalism also includes Trump voters, even the ones who voted out of racial animus: because they, ultimately, are in a tribe. No one gets left behind in this vision, even if, in the present day, we must fight with tribal intensity.

For now, if vulnerable tribes came together, both to strategically enhance their strength, but also to aim for the ideals as shared by organizations like the ADL and leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., that envision a world where tribes function also as agents of the moral growth of a larger society in which all tribes are united in their disunity, they will have the power to finally overcome the white supremacy that has essentially become the goal of Trumpism.

It is this that is the answer to the anti-tribalists, and to those who have looked on in horror at the way their tribes or others have turned their loyalty into poison. We will not create a moral future by asking people to assimilate into a whole, but by encouraging and empowering their differentiation while requesting their alliance in the most important fight in America in a generation.