The Imperialism of Cultural Relativism

There's a tendency in contemporary progressive discourse to imagine itself as a defender of cultures around the world. While this political tradition may have brought greater attention to the importance of respecting other cultures, the issue of cultural appropriation and so on, I believe that its self-idolization as a kind of champion of non-Western cultures is not just misguided, but self-contradictory.

I do not think of myself as belonging to the political sphere of the West, though this may be controversial as Greece is kind of at the borderlands of the Western world and its position is often ambiguous. Definitely, however, I do not belong to the Anglo-American political sphere, which I believe may make my perspective useful.

In this largely Anglo-American liberal understanding of reality, there appears to be a fundamental distinction between the West and the non West. Western culture is understood as self-imposing, oppressive and largely ignorant of the non-West. On the other hand, the rest of the world (which is usually just haphazardly grouped as the non-West by these people, whether admittedly ot not) is more in tune with nature, their unique culture and customs etc.

This worldview is fundamentalist in that it seems to place essential value to non-Western cultures, but not to the West. All the conservative, patriotic, or traditionalist tendencies of, e.g, the Middle East, or Africa are treated as unique cultural expressions that need to be understood and tolerated, whereas similar tendencies in the West are seen as evils that need to be crushed.

The left has always had an issue of supporting foreign nationalists when convenient (for example the Greek communist party and its historical obsession with the Bulgarian-speaking minority of northern Greece, and by extension Slavic Macedonian nationalist organizations). Modern progressive thought takes this worldview to new extremes: how many times do you see blatant criminal behavior excused as being part of a misunderstood culture? Likewise, how often do you see participation in Western traditions, folklore and cultural gender roles described as prejudiced, when similar cultural expressions from the non-West are celebrated?

The first problem with this is the appropriation of different Western cultures. The followers of this ideology, merely because they were raised in a specific strand of the West, believe they are entitled to speak for the whole West. There is a particular juxtaposition that arises, in which the rest of the world is regarded as varied and diverse, but the West as monolithic. The effects of this is Americans lecturing different European ethnicities on their own cultures, while making assumptions and generalizations on behalf of Europeans.

In the same way the West is generalized, the rest of the world is lumped in the category of "non-West". The very existence of this category implicitly sets Western culture apart as unique and defines other cultures as relative to the West.

The second, and largely more insidious and ironic problem with this mindset, is its imperialist presupposition.

Demanding higher expectations of the West than of the rest of the world sets a very disturbing precedence, that of Western superiority. Holding the West to a higher standard of progressivism, tolerance and political correctness risks treating Western people as morally and intellectually superior. In fact, all this worldview manages to accomplish is the infantilization of participants of non-Western culture as incapable to be moral agents.

If Western people are expected to transcend their inherited cultural prejudices, but non-Western people are expected to remain authentic to theirs, then we are assigning different capacities of self-transcendence to different people.

What causes this? Well, merely being resentful of your culture does not make you understanding of other cultures. Even when motivated by sympathy, this partenalistic exemption is itself a form of cultural imperialism, and, if one is to remain consistent with other progressive beliefs, systemic racism affecting multiple parties. I believe that people forget that we can assign moral value without making statements of superiority, and, likewise, we can morally condemn a practice without concluding the inferiority of its practitioners.

A question I consider more timely is: why is this double standard accepted? Why are we not pushing back against it more actively? How long until the socities affected by this political wave admit to themselves that this is bias against one's own nation and cultural heritage, and bar people who hold these beliefs from participating in political discourse when they clearly do not have their own nation's best interests at heart?