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The Narcissism of the Small Difference

In ethno-national conflicts, it really is the little things that tick people off.

differences in people who are otherwise

By Christopher Hitchens
alike that form the basis of feelings of
hostility between them."
Updated Monday, June 28, 2010, at 1:49
PM ET
The partition of India and Pakistan, for
example, which gives us one of the
Reviewing the sudden spasm of violence
longest-standing and most toxic
between the Uzbek minority and the
confrontations extant, involved most of
Kyrgyz majority in Kyrgyzstan recently,
all the partition of the Punjab. Visit
many commentators were at a loss to
Punjab and see if you can detect the
explain why the two peoples should so
remotest difference in people on either
abruptly have turned upon one another.
side of the border. Language, literature,
Explanations range from official
ethnic heritage, physical appearance—
pandering to Kyrgyz nationalism, to
virtually indistinguishable. Here it is
sheer police and army brutality, to
mainly religion that symbolizes the
provocations from Taliban-style militias
narcissism and makes the most of the
hoping to create another Afghanistan,
least discrepancy.
but none go very far in analyzing why
intercommunal relations became so
I used to work in Northern Ireland, where
vicious so fast. As if to make the
religion is by no means a minor business
question still more opaque, several
either, and at first couldn't tell by
reports stressed the essential similarity—
looking whether someone was Catholic or
ethnic, linguistic, cultural—between the
Kyrgyz and Uzbek populations.
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But that in itself could well be the

explanation. In numerous cases of a
pparently ethno-nationalist conflict,
the deepest hatreds are manifested
between people who—to most outward
appearances—exhibit very few significant
distinctions. It is one of the great
contradictions of civilization and one of
the great sources of its discontents, and
Sigmund Freud even found a term for it:
"the narcissism of the small difference."
As he wrote, "It is precisely the minor

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The Narcissism of the Small Difference

upon Serb or Croat or Bosnian, as the
Protestant. After a while, I thought I
case might be. Very often, the expressed
could guess with a fair degree of
hatred took the form of extremely
accuracy, but most of the inhabitants of
provincial and local rivalries, inflamed by
Belfast seemed able to do it by some kind
jealousies over supposed small
of instinct. There is a small underlay of
advantages possessed by the other. Of
ethnic difference there, with the original
course, here again there are latent
Gaels being a little darker and smaller
nationalist and confessional differences
than the blonder Scots who were
to act as a force multiplier once the nasty
imported as settlers, but to the outsider
business gets started, but the main thing
it is impalpable. It's just that it's the
to strike the outsider would be the
dominant question locally.
question of "How can they tell?" In
Rwanda and Burundi, even if it is true, as
Likewise in Cyprus, it is extremely hard
some colonial anthropologists used to
to tell a Greek from a Turk. The two
claim, that Hutu and Tutsi vary in height
peoples have been on the same island for
and also in the delimitation of their
so long that they even suffer from a
hairlines, it still doesn't seem enough of
common sickle-cell blood disease called
a difference upon which to base a
thalassemia. I once interviewed a doctor
genocide.
who specialized in the malady, and he
solemnly told me that, from a blood
In Sri Lanka, where again it takes a long
sample, it was not possible to tell if the
time to notice that Tamils are prone to be
donor was Greek or Turkish. I had to stop
slightly smaller and slightly darker than
myself from asking him if he had
the Sinhala majority, it is somehow the
hitherto thought that different
nationalities were made out of different Advertisement
genetic material. There have been almost
no recorded cases of intermarriage
between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, and
the island remains sternly partitioned.

In his book The Warrior's Honor, Michael

Ignatieff spent some time trying to
elucidate what it was that made soldiers
in the Balkan Wars—physically
indistinguishable from one another—so
eager to inflict cruelty and contempt

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The Narcissism of the Small Difference

ingredients of tragedy—and of irony. One
most important information that either
of the great advantages possessed by
population possesses. And it doesn't take
Homo sapiens is the amazing lack of
long for one population to start saying
variation between its different
that the other one has too many children,
"branches." Since we left Africa, we have
takes too much leisure, is too casual
diverged as a species hardly at all. If we
about hygiene. Every time he heard a
were dogs, we would all be the same
Shiites or Sunni Iraqi saying that religion
breed. We do not suffer from the
didn't really count, said my friend
enormous differences that separate other
Patrick Cockburn in his book on Baghdad,
primates, let alone other mammals. As if
he noticed that every single one of them
to spite this huge natural gift, and to
knew the exact faith allegiance of
disfigure what could be our
everybody else in the room. And if you
overwhelming solidarity, we manage to
want to see an expression of sheer racial
find excuses for chauvinism and racism
disdain, try giving to an Iranian Shiites
on the most minor of occasions and then
the impression that you think he and his
to make the most of them. This is why
Iraqi co-religionists are brothers under
condemnation of bigotry and
the skin.
superstition is not just a moral question
but a matter of survival.
The next example of this phenomenon
will be among the most serious as well as
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the least dramatic. One of the most
the Slate Foreign Desk on Twitter.
unobtrusive differences in the world—the
line that separates French from Flemish-
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for
speaking Belgians—is about to be
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forcefully reasserted in a bid to split
Belgium in two. If this secession occurs,
then the headquarters country of NATO
and the European Union will rather
narcissistically cease to exist, undone by
one of the smallest distinctions of all.

So pity the Uzbeks and Kyrgyz as they

peer suspiciously at one another during a s
udden time of scarcity and insecurity.
Their mutual miseries may be just
beginning. And all this contains the true

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The Narcissism of the Small Difference

and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the

Hoover Institution.

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