The Materialism of National Pride: the Case of the Coin and the Body

Geert Wilders, leader of the Netherlands' right-wing, Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom)

This is sort of longish, but here it goes...

On the BBC World Service broadcast this morning a correspondent interviewed some folks from Holland on their views of the Euro-zone crisis and what they thought of the option, now promoted by Geert Wilders and the PVV, of returning to the Guilder. The Dutch interviewed liked the idea and supported the PVV for their anti-Euro stance. The PVV is already relatively popular, it's the third-largest party in Holland and wields some not so insignificant influence on the policies of the ruling coalition government because of a "support-pact" made after the last elections. However political insiders and cynics like Matt Steinglass of the Financial Times have stressed that Wilders' new platform on the Euro is nothing more than political opportunism for a party that until the crisis began, focused singularly on the immigration "crisis" and the menacing threat of creeping Sharia law and so-called Islamo-fascism in Europe (www.FT.com, 11/13/2011). Yet Gilders himself made a tantalizing and perhaps compelling connection between his party's two favorite bogey-men when interviewed by the BBC. I paraphrase: "We have hundreds of thousands of immigrants in our country who are given housing and money and we get nothing out of it and on top of that we have a foreign coin."

Christopher Howgego writes in Ancient History from Coins (London, 1995), "it is wrong to deny that there is a connection between coinage and autonomy." Coins make political statements about national identity and prestige. "they assert the identity of the polis, kingdom or state which produced them... It might be a matter of pride for the badge of the city to be current, and the act of coining itself might be an affirmation of the status or autonomy of a polis..." I write this during Chanukkah and I'm reminded of a passage from I Maccabees that expresses exactly this type of civic pride and assertion of national identity. Antiochus the VII grants Simon the Hasmonean the right to mint Judea's own coins: "και επετρεψα σοι ποιησαι κoμμα ιδιον νoμισμα (your own stamped coin) τη χωρα σου."

Halfway across the globe, the struggle over national pride and identity is playing out around and over a Pakistani woman's body. Never mind that Veena Malik appeared on India's equivalent of Big Brother, which she ably defended in a head-to-head verbal brawl with a cleric on Pakistan's Frontline, she then had the gall to pose "nude" for India's FHM magazine with the initials, 'ISI' prominently emblazoned on her arm.

Malik bears the inscription of the (in)famous Pakistani intelligence agency on the cover of an Indian magazine, the literal sign of Pakistan's secretive arm augmented by the fact that she, a Pakistani for crying out loud, has no clothes on! Oh, she says she was duped by the mag and never intended to pose nude... more to come.