Cross-Community Solidarity Beyond Nationalism

Introduction

Cross-community solidarity is easy to praise and difficult to practice. The slogans write themselves. The group photo looks radiant. But when nationalism hardens identities and colonial histories inflame memory, solidarity becomes a test of character rather than a branding exercise.

Movements confronting Palestine, Israel, Zionism, anti-Semitism and imperial geopolitics inherit a century of failed experiments. Radicals once insisted they were internationalists while tolerating anti-Jewish tropes. Others celebrated agricultural communes while ignoring the colonial structures surrounding them. Some reduced everything to class and missed the psychic force of nationalism. Others fixated on national liberation and forgot that every state can become a cage.

If you want to avoid repeating these errors, you must begin with a sober truth: every movement carries within it the seeds of exclusion. The line between principled critique of a state and the recycling of ancient hatreds can erode faster than you think. The line between solidarity with the oppressed and romanticization of one community over another can dissolve under pressure.

The task is not to find a perfect ideological formula. The task is to design a living practice that refuses essentialism, confronts colonial structures, names anti-Semitism explicitly and builds shared power across difference. Solidarity must become an experiment in sovereignty rather than a competition of victimhood.

The thesis is simple and demanding: movements can confront intertwined nationalism, colonialism and anti-Semitism only by redesigning their internal culture, diversifying their strategic lenses and grounding dialogue in shared material struggle rather than abstract moral posturing.

Nationalism as a Seduction and a Snare

Nationalism is not just an ideology. It is an emotional technology. It offers wounded people a story about who they are and why they suffer. It promises dignity through belonging. It draws bright lines around the self and calls them sacred.

For activists, nationalism poses a paradox. On one hand, anti-colonial resistance has often relied on national identity to mobilize the oppressed. On the other, nationalism can easily slide into exclusion, scapegoating and the dream of a purified state.

When Liberation Mirrors Domination

History offers sobering examples. Anti-colonial movements have toppled empires only to reproduce hierarchy within new borders. Revolutionary rhetoric about freedom has hardened into bureaucratic control. The oppressed become administrators of a new order that marginalizes someone else.

The problem is not that people love their culture or defend their survival. The problem emerges when liberation is framed as the triumph of one nation rather than the dismantling of domination itself. Once the state becomes the ultimate prize, everything else bends around it.

Some early libertarian critics warned that creating an ethnically defined state in a contested land would not dissolve the social question. They predicted that one community could become a majority with power while another would be reduced to a minority with grievances. They feared that a refuge could turn into a fortress.

You do not have to agree with every historical argument to recognize the strategic insight: if your movement imagines freedom as the victory of one collective identity over another, you are already planting the seeds of future conflict.

The Emotional Gravity of Identity

Inside your organizing spaces, nationalism often appears in softer forms. Members fear that if they open dialogue too far, their community’s suffering will be minimized. They worry that acknowledging another group’s trauma will dilute their own. They cling to identity because it feels like the last defense against erasure.

This fear is real. But if left unexamined, it can transform into dogma. Solidarity becomes conditional. Dialogue becomes a battlefield of narratives rather than a shared search for truth.

To confront nationalism without dismissing lived history, you must separate three layers: cultural identity, political sovereignty and state power. Loving a language, a memory or a ritual is not the same as endorsing a state project built on exclusion. Critiquing a government is not the same as negating a people.

Make these distinctions explicit in your group. Repeat them until they become reflex. The more precise your language, the less room there is for sliding into essentialism.

Nationalism thrives on vagueness. Solidarity requires precision.

Colonialism and the Structural Lens

If nationalism is emotional technology, colonialism is structural engineering. It reshapes land, labor and law. It redraws maps and redistributes resources. It manufactures inequality and then calls it natural.

Too many movements analyze conflict as a clash of identities rather than a system of power. They debate who belongs without asking who controls the ports, the borders, the wages and the weapons.

The Imperial Architecture of Conflict

In many historical conflicts, external powers played decisive roles. Empires managed migration, armed one side or the other and used divide and rule as a governing method. Employment policies, land laws and wage differentials hardened divisions between communities.

When you focus solely on intercommunal hatred, you miss the architecture that made that hatred profitable.

A structural analysis asks uncomfortable questions:

• Who benefits materially from division?
• How do subsidies, labor policies and legal frameworks create segmented economies?
• Which external actors amplify local conflict to secure strategic routes, markets or military footholds?

Without this lens, you risk moralizing what is fundamentally political economy.

The Limits of Class Reductionism

Yet structuralism carries its own trap. Some radicals once insisted that class solidarity would automatically override national difference. They dismissed ethnic tension as false consciousness. They believed that if workers simply recognized their shared exploitation, unity would follow.

It did not.

Class is powerful but not omnipotent. People do not experience exploitation in a vacuum. They experience it through culture, memory and fear. When wage gaps align with communal identity, resentment takes on a national hue.

If you reduce everything to class, you erase the specificity of anti-Semitism, anti-Arab racism or other forms of ethnic hostility. If you reduce everything to nationalism, you ignore the economic machinery sustaining inequality.

The strategic move is fusion. Pair structural analysis with cultural literacy. Expose how systems generate division while acknowledging that division also has psychological depth.

Movements that win do not choose between identity and economy. They redesign both.

Naming Anti-Semitism Without Evasion

No cross-community solidarity is credible if it tiptoes around anti-Semitism. The temptation on parts of the left has been to treat anti-Jewish prejudice as a distraction from anti-colonial struggle. This is not only morally flawed. It is strategically suicidal.

Anti-Semitism is not an accidental bias. It is a centuries-old conspiracy framework that recycles itself in new political contexts. It morphs from religious accusation to racial pseudoscience to geopolitical paranoia. It can infiltrate radical spaces disguised as anti-capitalism or anti-imperialism.

The Difference Between Critique and Tropes

You must train your members to distinguish sharply between:

• Critique of a state’s policies and demonization of a people.
• Analysis of lobbying structures and conspiracy fantasies about global control.
• Structural critique of capitalism and coded language about secret elites.

This requires education, not just rules. Host study sessions on the history of anti-Semitic myths. Examine how they have appeared in left and right movements. Make it clear that repeating such tropes, even unintentionally, undermines your moral authority.

When someone crosses a line, respond swiftly but proportionally. Public shaming may generate short term catharsis but long term fragmentation. Instead, use restorative processes rooted in political education and accountability.

A movement that cannot confront its own prejudice will be consumed by it.

Solidarity Is Not Silence

There is another risk. In an effort to avoid anti-Semitism, some activists become silent about state violence or colonial dynamics. They fear that any critique will be misread. This paralysis benefits the status quo.

The solution is not silence but clarity. State your principles in advance. Affirm unequivocally that Jewish communities deserve safety and dignity everywhere. Affirm equally that Palestinians or any colonized people deserve self-determination and freedom from domination.

Then articulate your critique at the level of systems and policies, not essentialized identities.

Clarity disarms bad faith accusations. Ambiguity feeds them.

Designing Dialogue That Transforms

Dialogue is fashionable. Transformation is rare. Many groups convene panels, share stories and leave unchanged.

If you want dialogue to generate solidarity rather than performance, redesign the ritual.

From Testimony to Co-Creation

Begin by inviting affected communities not merely to speak but to shape the agenda. Co-design the questions. Rotate facilitation. Make power visible.

Establish shared principles at the outset:

• No essentializing language about entire peoples.
• Distinction between state critique and ethnic hostility.
• Commitment to listen for understanding rather than rebuttal.

Then add a structural layer. After testimony, move into joint analysis. Ask participants to map how policies, economic incentives and external powers shape the conflict. Shift from personal narrative to collective strategy.

Dialogue without strategy can become therapeutic but politically inert. Strategy without dialogue becomes technocratic and brittle. You need both.

Vulnerability as Strategic Asset

Many activists fear vulnerability. They worry that admitting error will weaken their authority. In reality, defensiveness corrodes trust faster than any external attack.

Make public reflection a norm. After major actions or controversies, hold open debriefs. Document mistakes and lessons. Share them transparently.

When members express fear of losing identity, do not dismiss them. Name the fear. Explore it. Ask how identity can be honored without becoming a weapon.

Trust is not built in a single convening. It is accumulated through repeated acts of humility.

Movements decay when they pretend to be pure. They evolve when they admit they are learning.

Building Shared Struggle Beyond Symbolism

Solidarity that remains at the level of discourse will eventually fracture. You must anchor dialogue in shared material campaigns.

Identify issues that cut across communities: militarization of policing, surveillance, discriminatory zoning, labor exploitation, restrictions on protest. Build joint committees with equal representation. Rotate spokespeople from different backgrounds.

When you craft messaging, test it rigorously. Does it critique systems rather than peoples? Does it avoid historical caricatures? Does it articulate a vision beyond opposition?

Consider the chemistry of action. Surprise still matters. Predictable marches can signal moral clarity but rarely shift power. Pair bursts of disruptive creativity with long term institution building. A campaign that peaks and vanishes leaves little residue. A campaign that builds alternative structures accumulates sovereignty.

Count your progress not only in attendance but in shared capacity. Have cross-community teams learned to make decisions together? Have they resolved conflicts without splintering? Have they launched initiatives neither group would have attempted alone?

That is solidarity measured in sovereignty, not sentiment.

Putting Theory Into Practice

Here are concrete steps to operationalize cross-community solidarity that confronts nationalism, colonialism and anti-Semitism without reproducing exclusion:

• Draft a shared political covenant. Co-write a concise document that affirms opposition to colonial domination, rejects all forms of racism including anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism, and distinguishes state critique from ethnic hostility. Revisit it annually.

• Institutionalize political education. Host recurring study sessions on the history of anti-Semitism, colonialism and nationalist movements. Include texts from multiple perspectives. Pair each session with facilitated discussion linking history to current strategy.

• Create a rapid response accountability team. When harmful rhetoric surfaces, this team engages quickly with restorative dialogue, education and, if necessary, clear consequences. Transparency builds trust.

• Launch one joint material campaign per year. Choose an issue that affects multiple communities. Share leadership roles. Rotate media representation. Evaluate not only outcomes but the quality of collaboration.

• Practice public self-critique. After major actions, publish reflections that include mistakes and lessons learned. Model humility as strength rather than weakness.

• Track sovereignty gained. Measure success by new capacities built: joint committees formed, policies influenced, alternative institutions created. Move beyond counting heads at rallies.

These steps are not glamorous. They are infrastructure for trust.

Conclusion

Cross-community solidarity in the shadow of nationalism and colonialism is not a feel good exercise. It is a disciplined practice of refusing easy narratives. It demands that you hold multiple truths at once: that anti-Semitism is real and deadly; that colonial domination produces enduring injustice; that nationalism can both mobilize and corrupt; that class matters but does not erase identity.

The radicals of the past offered warnings alongside inspiration. Some denounced bigotry with courage. Others stumbled into reductionism. Their legacy is not a script to follow but a laboratory of lessons.

If you want your movement to endure, redesign its culture. Name prejudice explicitly. Fuse structural analysis with emotional intelligence. Anchor dialogue in shared struggle. Treat vulnerability as a strategic resource. Count sovereignty gained, not purity achieved.

Solidarity is not the absence of conflict. It is the capacity to metabolize conflict without fracturing.

The question now is not whether you support dialogue or oppose colonialism. The question is sharper: are you willing to risk discomfort, to confront prejudice within your own ranks and to build power with those whose histories challenge your own? If not, solidarity will remain a slogan. If yes, it can become a new form of shared sovereignty waiting to be born.