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As Elon Musk shows us, adopting a new national identity is easy if you conform

Ismail Lagardien
By Ismail Lagardien
13 Nov 2024
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As long as relocation, emigration, immigration and migration in general is voluntary, it cannot and should not be stopped. It would be marvellous if there were no passports, and no constraints on moving about the globe.

There’s a photograph of the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, in jubilant pose, arms reaching to the skies, his face beaming with triumphalism beside Donald Trump. This particular picture was made in the days before the US election. On another occasion, on 1 September this year, Musk sent out a tweet: “Long Live America and our Constitution!”

As almost everyone knows, Musk was born in South Africa. We can criticise or celebrate him for almost anything we like. My criticism of Musk has to do with the way that the tech world has started to corrode democracy, and how people with a lot of money have started fiddling with our genetic makeup in search of superior beings and creation of a dominant class. I have written about these things in this space previously. There is no need to go over these things again.

Musk lives in a liberal capitalist democracy, and he is wealthy, powerful and influential enough to say and do as he pleases, as long as he does not disturb the complacent hegemonic order, or disrupt what is a putative oligarchy of billionaires who benefited from Trump’s victory.

One thing that has stood out is the way that Musk, like so many immigrants to the US, and elsewhere, seem to adapt and conform readily and easily once they have been accepted into their new society. All they have to do, at least in the US, is “be more American than Americans” or simply swear allegiance, become fluent in the local language, and in some cases serve in the military of their adopted country.

Musk’s transformation into an “American patriot” and everything that goes with that is an insightful lesson on the ease of adaption and conformity, and is unsurprising for at least two reasons. One is historical and another philosophical. Both are captured in this passage by Theodor Adorno:

“People who conform, who generally feel comfortable with the given environment and its power relations, always adapt more easily in the new country. Here a nationalist, there a nationalist. Anyone who, as a matter of principle, is never completely in agreement with the state of things and not predisposed to playing along also remains oppositional in the new country.”

Immigrants, visitors, itinerants and travellers have played important roles in their adoptive countries, that is when they are not part of colonising adventures, or “economic empires” of multinational corporations promoting what has been described as civilising missions, and an imperialism enacted “not through laws but through everyday acts of desiring and consuming” (See historical geographer, Mona Domosh’s book, American commodities in an age of empire.)

In other countries you are kept on a tight leash as a “migrant worker”, and may never be quite accepted. Some people are precious about their racial, ethnic and religious identity.

Migration and outbreeding are good for humanity


This brings us to a necessary detour. As people move around the world we spread genes and promote diversity. If the places where we were born are where we should remain for the rest of our lives, our world might be a sad and sick place. It should be obvious to most of us that after homo sapiens left Africa more or less 70,000 years ago, that humans have bartered, exchanged, traded, fought and had babies outside their own group. This accounts for the diversity we have in the world today.

Yet, there are people among us who hold on to notions of exceptionalism, of racial or ethnic purity, and who believe that signs of admixture are somehow a perversion and an evil, and who would tell us that people of one group should in-breed with only their own kind. There are traditions, and even scriptural texts that forbid exogamy, forgetting that in-breeding can be dangerous and that outbreeding brings richness in many ways.

It is one thing for people of different racial or ethnic groups to convert to and accept a new religion – surely religious beliefs do not alter genetic makeup or admixture – but when scriptures demand that racial, tribal or ethnic groups should in-breed, or when secular marriage is “sinful”, the outcome can be deleterious.

In medieval Europe, Christians were banned from marrying Jews. In parts of the Arab world, notably in the United Arab Emirates, it is almost impossible to marry a local person if you are an outsider. In many places Jews still believe that marrying outside the community is an insult to Jewishness.

The Bible warns, for instance, that (Deut. 7:3) “neither shalt thou make marriages with them [non-Jews]: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son”, and according to the Torah (Av. Zar. 36b; Yad, Issurei Bi’ah 12:1–2; Sh. Ar., EH 16:1) marriage with a non-Jew is forbidden as a negative precept. (See Jewish Virtual Library reference) I am sure there are people who would produce citations to the contrary; we all work with limited information, ya!

There is also an academic study, rather offensive and thankfully discredited, which suggested that Jewish intellectual excellence would benefit from further interbreeding “to enrich” their genes. I would prefer to not spread the findings of this study, but can’t get myself to censor so, see this paper, which in my estimation is too close to the pseudoscience of the Nazis.

Intertribal or interethnic marriage is widespread, close to 20% across much of Africa. In parts of Ireland, “severe mental sub-normalities” have been detected in towns and regions of relatively high inbreeding.

None of this detracts from the fact that we are better off for moving around “constantly expanding… over the entire surface of the globe. [Nestling] everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere”. Here Marx was talking about capitalism, so, apologies to him.

Nationalism and belonging


One of the great things about South Africa is that there are so many of us whose family heritages come from “somewhere else”. The funny thing, to the extent that it is funny and insightful, is that my family origins may be traced to the Nusantara (it’s in the births and deaths, and marriages records of two centuries back), but I have green eyes and a fair skin, likely because of genetic mix and admixture.

Does all that mean I come from the land of green-eyed, light-skinned people, and should “go back to where I came from” – as I have been told. Or, do I belong somewhere in the thousands of islands of the Nusantara where, as it may be, green-eyed, light-skinned people colonised, settled and spread their genes among local people several hundred years ago.

For what it’s worth; I am just a coloured, happy to be coloured, and come from Eldorado Park. Home, for me, is the place where, Naguib Mahfouz said, I don’t want to run away from…

Musk, like any of us, belongs where he feels most comfortable. He is not the only immigrant from Africa or Asia who has made a home in the US and who has adapted easily, as Adorno said, in their new country, and who is now a fervent nationalist and patriot. Who remembers that the former Springbok, Tiaan Strauss, went on to play for his new national team, the Australians. Here’s a funny fun fact: Musk, Strauss and I share a birthday (with the late Chris Hani) on 28 June.

Anyway, some of South Africa’s finer writers, artists, filmmakers and business people have left the country, and have made a home in the US, Europe and Australia.

In the US their children will probably have to sing the pledge of allegiance to the flag and the country – never mind what that flag may represent to people in parts of Asia and Latin America.

South Africans may, also, be careful about celebrating 27 April, the country’s Freedom Day, as Somali-Americans found out when they celebrated the independence day of the country they left behind. It’s all very messy. Conform or be a traitor, and ungrateful that the US had “embraced” you, as Somali-Americans were told.

Many South Africans left the country after their vertically segmented privileges (which they or their children kept in place with the security apparatus of the apartheid state) were threatened, and then went on to serve in the military of their adopted country – without any sense of compunction. Nothing stops them.

People move around the world for many reasons, and draw various sources of capital: symbolic, social, economic, etc. As long as relocation, emigration, immigration and migration in general is voluntary, it cannot and should not be stopped. It would be marvellous if there were no passports, and no constraints on moving about the globe.

Maybe someday everyone in the world will be able to live where they choose. It’s possible, but remains improbable for as long as privilege and power remain. DM

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