Gitlin's 'Yes' Echoed Among Leftists

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sun Oct 17 06:27:27 PDT 1999


Hi Steve:
>I'm surprised to find Said's name on this list, since he ended up writing
>some fine anti-NATO pieces during the bombing of Yugoslavian, Albanian,
>and Chinese civilians a few months back. Any explanation?

I don't remember if Said published any explanation for taking the stand he took at that point (maybe Doug or Jim Heartfield or someone else remembers). Though I admire Said's work in many respects (both his scholarship & activism), I think that his culturalist framework of political analysis -- Orientalism -- didn't serve him well in this case, in that it may have inclined him to believe (contrary to facts) that 'a poor nation of Muslims has been unfairly denied military aid from outside due to their (real or imagined) religion' or something like that. I recall liberal hawks played up this line: 'a fear of the specter of political Islam within Europe made the West ignore the plight of Bosnian Muslims,' laying the ground for support for increased interventions, leading to the bombings and beyond, by first of all manufacturing the non-existent guilt of 'appeasement.'

Yoshie



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