2004 in Contrast and Contradiction
Press Action
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/cummings01042005/
By Jordy Cummings
2004 was a year in which just about everyone had to make intellectual compromises with evil.
Like 1939 and the Hitler/Stalin pact, we have seen many Third World countries conned into acting in America’s service, and the genuine notion that Lula may have been overthrown if he didn’t send his army to Haiti, Qadaffi had to accept responsibility for something in which he didn’t commit, Syria did the serious interrogations and torture, under threat of regime change and the Palestinian struggle was reduced to facile electioneering, as counterproductive as killing civilians—and Israeli arrests of progressive nonviolent candidates like Mustafa Barghouti.
2004 came to a close with the progressive Democrat Jim McDermott being “investigated” for some such misdeed while Tom DeLay rewrites the rules. 2004 came with Jean Chretien’s wing of the Liberal party being “regime changed” in Canada, and the NDP promising so much during the campaign, only to saunter back to their co-op, leaving even conservatives Joe Clark and David Orchard to be stronger opposition forces in Canada. 2004 saw many on the left lauding the French for not joining the American war, while they blustered through the Ivory Coast and Haiti, reminding me of a photo of Bush and Chirac where they look like two heads growing out of the same (Bush’s) body.
2004 saw many on the American left—not Democrats, but people making sincere wagers and hopes (see the debate at Counterpunch between Lindorff and Bates) on the Democratic Party, while others spent as much time criticizing this activity as opposed to building trans-electoral alternatives. 2004 saw more Republicans than Democrats acting as effective opposition, especially in the area of civil liberties, in which right wing corporate law firms worked with the “commie” Centre for Constitutional Rights, and continues to do so. 2004 also saw many people not taking their soft opposition to the Iraq war to its logical conclusion—the only writer I have seen making a full-scale suggestion on what is to be done is Naomi Klein, who suggests not only bringing the troops home, but America footing the bill.
2004 culturally was an interesting year. Mainstream cinema, as usual, told more truths to Americans than television. Jonathan Demme’s remake or improvement of the “Manchurian Candidate” was far more Costa Gravas than John Frankenheimer, and realistically portrayed capitalism and the corruption of the Democratic Party, even its liberal wing, represented by Jon Voight’s character—far more so than Michael Moore’s work. Likewise, Frank Oz’s underrated remake of “The Stepford Wives” was the closest examination, in the form of satire—of bourgeois norms since the highlight of the careers of Arthur Miller or Sydney Lumet. Jean Luc Goddard, whose name makes his films known even with their increased esoteric aspects, made his best, most political film since the early 80’s “Notre Musique” but one has to really dig to find it playing anywhere outside of big city art houses. The Canadian director Norman Jewison who has made many liberal Hollywood films including “Hurricane” made perhaps his best film, “The Statement,” with another brilliant radical and brave performance from Michael Caine, a Hitchockian update on the theme Goddard used in his antiwar masterpiece “Les Carbineirs (the Riflemen.")
Of course in the case of the latter, it was almost completely buried outside of Canada, given that it dealt with the S and M-oriented Catholic group Opus Dei and renegade Catholics who think the pope is a liberal Jewish Freemason, such as Mel Gibson and Antonio Scalia. So 2004 can also be remembered as a year in which someone like Bill O’Reilly can talk about “Secular Jews controlling Hollywood,” his guest Bill Donohue of the Catholic League retorting that “it is not as if Polynesians killed Christ,” in reference to the Satanic Joos, adding that secular Jews who control Hollywood are also very into anal sex, not unlike, one assumes many of the child molesting priests that Donohue protects. In turn, O’Reilly can claim, in the face of accusations of AntiSemitism that he raises a lot of money for Israel, like Gordon Liddy who admits admiring Hitler but also Sharon, so both of them are off the hook, even in the eyes of a fearful, manipulated Jewish community—with some exceptions of course, but not Daniel Pipes who, following a well known lawsuit-threatening fascist who was once reduced to tears by Chris Mathews, is now openly calling for concentration camps for Muslims. Progressive Jews can look at the bright side and realize that it is becoming increasingly hard for the far-right to attract Jewish allegiance when these blatant racists make such points, but often it works in reverse. When O’Reilly and Liddy claim to raise funds for Israel, people forget that the villain in the “Left Behind” novels is Jewish, and that Jerry Falwell believes the “antichrist is alive and Jewish.”
Americans simply no longer care, and are thus, in many ways “willing executioners” in regard to the Argentina style disappearances of thousands of Muslims, Arabs and South Asians. To compare this to the Nazis is to misunderstand the uniqueness of each act of evil and each experience of suffering. In many ways, it has the potential—given far less Americans are involved, in terms of percentage of population, in even passive resistance, than were Germans. As noted, Daniel Pipes can go out and write an article calling for “Detention,” something that was not spoken about openly in Nazi Germany. What scares this writer is the extent of the hatred among Americans and the correlation between these views, the war, and Jews in general, would cause similar calls to be made in the face of AIPAC’s spy scandal. To be sure, AIPAC should be brought to justice, and America should force Israel to make peace, but it seems likely that America could go further and make scapegoats of Jews, who will join our Abrahamic brethren in Gitmo. It would be easy to whip up a frenzy against anyone right now. Wen Ho Lee’s story, pre-911, is instructive, as is the famous Israeli spy Pollard, who was sold out by his handlers. As Tony Judt points out, unlike the perception of Pro-Palestinian Europe being Judeophobic, it is actually the United States in which Judeophobic attitudes are commonly expressed and believed far more than Europe. So it’s really much easier to blame Jews generally, and Israel specifically, for American policy than to look at how and why Jews are manipulated and Zionism used, from the onset of its existence. Those who believe the reverse espouse a determinist position, the worst being those who actually believe “US policy is made in Tel Aviv” not “Israeli and US policy is made in Langley and DC as well as Tel Aviv.”
Racist attitudes against African Americans are now completely mainstream and acceptable again, so long as terms that start with “n” are not used. Two elections, so it seems, have been stolen on the basis of African Americans who vote for the Democratic Party. Alan Keyes was one of the few to realize when he complained that he was being “Set up as Steppin Fetchit” in his race against Barick Obama, that neither party cares about African American interests. The taboo against expressing racism actually works in favor of collaborators like Rice herself who presided over “human resources” at Texaco while it was drilling in Nigeria and killing Africans. Rice also had the chutzpah to make a “civil rights” reference in regards to the War in Iraq, going quite against her late father’s antiwar views. Colin Powell affects the appearance of the moderate working on the inside, and indeed may be the only American official to believe in the humanity of Palestinians, but he, like even “golly gosh” Rumsfeld were being used. Likewise the whole spectre of “neocons,” an interesting story if one believes that ideologists inform policy, not the other way around. There is no doubt that Paul Wolfowitz is a distasteful figure, as is Perle, Frum, others, but like Powell and Rice, even Zalmay Khalilzad, they serve a purpose to have Jews and Blacks and even Muslims being scapegoats for failed policies. I think Rumsfeld is a sick ####, as the saying goes, and I hope he keeps his job considering his opposition to the draft.
As George W. Bush has said, “people say I’m bad for business...I’m good for the publishing industry.” Indeed this year, the market became bloated with anti-war and anti-Bush titles from all ends of the political spectrum. Most of them, so it seems, repeated much of the same naiveté and or determinist policies. Orwell said “to hate Imperialism, one must be of it,” and in my mind, the three most interesting anti-Empire works of the y ear, while only one of the three being politically “left” were by those who have some knowledge of the inside of Empire. These were Michael Schneur’s “Imperal Hubris,” Senator Byrd’s “Losing America” and Stan Goff’s “Full Spectrum Disorder.” A common theme among the right wing spy, the liberal senator and the radical ex-military man was the notion of Americans themselves, not just the government, no longer caring what is done in their names. Byrd’s book, though somewhat dotty, is essential and will probably be read in hundreds of years. Other excellent books released this past year in regards to empire range from specific looks at oil and imperialism, the best being “Blood for Oil” by Michael Klare, and ground reports from Iraq, such as from Christian Parenti’s.
In many ways, though, this all serves a sort of “info-pornographic” function, similar to a man who knows he is schizophrenic but still can’t stop hearing voices. In fact, it can and should be speculated that having a scary government, even to one’s own people, is exactly the aim of the Bush crowd. Everyone can know everything in the “state of exception,” so long as they don’t realize that they themselves are propping up this system that scares them. Witness the cynicism of switching a hack like Ashcroft to a genuine fascist intellectual like Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General, and Chuck Schumer claims he is a “less polarizing figure,” simply because, perhaps, he is not an easy joke-butt, singing barbershop quartet tunes. The way history is moving right now, America may face a situation in 2008, one can easily predict, in which the Democrat calls for increased imperialism, but restoration of liberties, and the Republicans call for decreased imperialism along with privatizing the pentagon, as well as increased repression. Heads or tails, you lose. The only hope now is to convince the bulk of those committed to the Democrats to abandon that party, disempower it.
Other battles that need attending are against the easy answers of some American liberals and “realists” that openly hope for, as Chomsky so wittily put it, “a powerful China leading a group of peace loving countries.” One can and should hope for a multipolar world, but one realizes the depth of desperation when self-respecting liberals, let alone radicals, call a country who may not be as belligerent (except in Taiwan) overseas, but is as repressive as possible at home, making Bush and Sharon look like free-thinkers, with zero labor standards and the only thing from Marxism left being some kind of privileged vanguard—being the world’s great hope. The hope will come from the Southern Hemisphere, if anywhere, but meanwhile, as opposed to hoping for Chinese success, one should look for a way to discredit both heads of the capitalist beast, China and the United States, by exploiting information about those Americans and Chinese capitalists who have sold both countries out. One forgets, after all, that the students in Tiananmen Square were singing “the Internationale,” and/or that the early wave of the “anti-globalization” movement was quite tough on Chinese labor standards.
The focus has been for the bulk of these past few years, with the increased war and degradation committed by America, on nation states. One should refocus this next year on the interrelated patterns that surface exo-terically as “inter-imperial rivalry” and eso-terically as “secret deals.” If one focuses too much or too little on any one state or one “national bourgeoisie” one misses the point entirely. National struggles will continue from country to country, but global governance and international parallel institutions, including with perhaps some sense of legal authority, should be a serious concentration for progressives in 2005. Alliances can thus be built with strange bedfellows (work with Spain to increase criminal charges against the Kissinger mob, work with Russia to delegitimize the new Cold War, work with Chechens against Russian Imperialism, even work with Americans to delegitimize the state of Israel.) The old notion of patriotism in its left variant (to never solidarize with any single country’s policy) should be turned on its head and instead, be used to create a “State of Exception,” in which America is using its power to extricate itself from Israel/Palestine, the EU is using its power to influence democratic agreements between these countries, and China is using its power as a naval check on America, as well as India using its power to be the 22nd century USA.
And so it goes, with a few tsunamis on the way. The only hope we have is global stalemate and short-circuiting. The Saudis won’t let Chavez become more influential in OPEC, yet Chavez’s prestige will keep him in power against the Saudi/Kuwaiti/American will. Israel won’t listen to the United States and the “quartet” but this will only serve to delegitimize Israel. The United States will continue to undertake torture until stories of American soldiers being tortured come out. Terrorist groups will continue to attempt to attack Europe and the United States. Iran has its nukes pointed at Europe. France has nukes in the South Pacific, pointed in an ominous direction. The American Empire is dead as sure as it is perceived to be alive, and the global anarchy that is rising does not seem to have any singular force able to navigate such stormy waters.
Jordy Cummings, editor of Pure Polemics, lives in Toronto and can be reached at yorgos33ca@yahoo.ca.