Christopher Hitchens spoke at the University of Chicago on Tuesday. I've been thinking about his talk ever since. Hitchens seems not to be a very nice person. He was boorish during the question period, derisive to the anti-war folks and especially to the poor Socialist Workers students, who had, in fact, some good questions to ask. I found his behavior repellent. Still, much of what he said during his talk was arresting, and, I think, has to be taken seriously. Let me lay out his position (more carefully than he laid it out), and see what you think.
Hitchens' main point was that the Taliban should be seen as a fascist organization with transnational designs that is truly dangerous and needed to be stopped. Neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations had any real interest in confronting the Taliban--any more than the United States or Britain had any real interest in reigning in Mussolini or Hitler, since, in both cases the movements were resolutely anti-communist. But, says Hitchens, "Osama bin Laden saved us." His grandstanding attack on the U.S. provoked a war, much as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor forced the U.S. hand. In both cases, without really wanting to, the U.S. has been compelled to wage war against fascism. Hitchens' conclusion: "Bush's war is our war." ("Our" meaning the Left's.)
The argument that the Taliban is fascist: (This argument applies not just to the Taliban, but to various other versions of virulent Islamic fundamentalism.)
1) Its horrendously retrograde treatment of women. Nazism, too, preyed on masculine gender insecurity by invoking a hyper-masculine ideology, emphasizing purity, cruelty, military valor, etc.
2) Its peculiar nature as a modern mass movement energized by an atavistic ideology. The Nazi ideology of racial purity--though hardly foreign to Western culture--was retrograde by then current Western standards, just as the Islamic fundamentalist ideology--while hardly foreign to Western culture--is retrograde by our current standards. In both cases, the movements appeal to prejudices that flourish under conditions of extreme social and economic insecurity, and hence gain a mass following.
3) It has been funded by the wealthy as a mass movement capable of destroying the progressive Left elements. Hitchens argues that Saudi Arabia (which, incidentally, is refusing to cooperate with the investigation of the Sept 11 hijackers, most of whom were Saudis) has poured money into radical fundamentalist organizations and schools around the world--including Palestinian organizations, where it has done poisonous damage. The U.S. has been ambivalent. The first great outpouring of Islamic fundamentalism was the Iranian Revolution, which hated the U.S. On the other hand, the fundamentalists destroyed the Left, aided the Reagan Administration's war against the Sandinistas, and--a different branch--waged a holy war against the Russians in Afganistan.
4) Like Nazism, Islamic fundamentalism sometimes bites the hand the feeds it. It takes on a life of its own. Hitler led Germany to destruction, against the wishes of his wealthy backers. Bin Laden now hates the Saudi government.
5) Like Nazism, Islamic fundamentalism has an expansionary ideology, but no coherent economic policy for dealing with real problems of the people over which it rules. Hitchens claims that the Taliban was seriously involved in an effort to infiltrate the Pakistan military and eventually take control of that country too--which, incidentally, has nuclear weapons. Islamic fundamentalism sees itself spreading eastward through Indonesia and the southern Philippines, southward into north Africa, including northern Nigeria and of course westward into other regions of the Middle East. Like European fascism, its ideology is transnational, and appeals to those suffering the insecurities of modernity, particularly young men of the middle classes. (It has not gone unobserved that the Sept 11 terrorists were not poor.)
6) Like European fascism, Islamic fundamentalism promises law and order, and delivers. However, although initially welcomed by large segments of the population, its repressive apparatus generates increasing discontent. Hence, the struggle in Iran to roll back the power of the mullahs. Hence the sense of liberation that so many seem to feel in Afganistan, now that the Taliban has fled. (It may well be that the Afganis hated the Taliban more than the U.S. bombs. Certainly many Italians welcomed the allied "invaders.")
This, in essence, is Hitchens' argument. He didn't make all the comparisons I've made, but he could have. I have to say, I find the analogy compelling. (Hitchens, by the way, finds the right-wing Zionism so dominant in Israel right now to be fascist also, or at least morally on par with Islamic fundamentalism in its desire for a theocratic state.)
What follows? Here's where things get more complicated. Hitchens' position, at least as articulated on Tuesday, doesn't go much beyond "support the war and rejoice in its success." What he didn't comment on, but which seems to me equally important, are the U.S. aims.
Its clear that whatever they are, combating Islamic fascism is not one of them. We are not, after all, declaring war on Saudi Arabia or making non-negotiable demands.
In my view, the principle aim of the U.S. state right now is to find an enemy to replace "the international Communist conspiracy" so as to justify our role as global hegemon--and the massive military budget needed to sustain that role. Policing the world for human rights violations--the prior candidate--wasn't doing so well. Neither was "international terrorism" either--until September 11. Now the latter is back in business, with a vengeance. Policy makers are looking again at Iraq and at North Korea and even (unbelievably) at Cuba. The easy victory over the Taliban may be a good thing--a very good thing--insofar as it breaks the momentum and mystique of Islamic fundamentalism, but the other side of that coin is the encouragement it gives to our policy-makers to pursue their quite different agenda. (I wish the world weren't so complicated, so "dialectical.")
I don't know what to say next. I welcome comments and critiques (insulting or otherwise).
--David Schweickart
Loyola University Chicago
November 30, 2001
----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Amato" <peterama at RCN.COM> To: <SPSM-LIST at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 3:16 PM Subject: Re: "Is Bush's War Our War?"
David's thoughts on Hitchens are complex and thought-provoking. There is obviously a lot to talk about here and these are not simple issues. I don't pretend to have a response that answers to all the issues, but I will say that I do not think that any war of the United States government should ever be considered by the left as "our war," or as an opportunity "to rejoice." Part of the reason for this is that as leftists I believe we should regard all wars as regrettable mistakes which almost always entrench the forces of the status quo, and its dehumanizing militaristic way of responding to what are after all very deeply rooted, nonmilitary, human problems. The exception to this, of course, would be a war whose purpose was to uproot such forces rather than entrenching them, and to resolve the very real and deeply rooted problems that lie at their point of origin, and the origins of most wars.
Regarding the issue here as solely about whose side we are on reflects a false dichotomy that if the left is not "rejoicing" at the sound of US bombs it is somehow supporting whichever dictators in the world have recently fallen afoul of US policy. But these are not our only choices, and I think accepting this false dichotomy is anathema to leftism, which I consider here simply as an attitude of consistent, persistent, open-minded opposition to the over-all system of brutality and dehumanization that is maintained by various types of dictatorial regimes around the world. If we are opposed to the game of brutality and dehumanization then we cannot rejoice at any of its players' victories, especially if the 'victor' is the player most concerned with keeping the game going. This doesn't mean supporting dictators or fascists unless one swallows the reductive propagandistic logic of governments from time immemorial.
Concluding that we should 'support' and "rejoice" at this war, I think, reflects the mistaken assumption that, after all, it is somehow important to the existing US war effort against the dehumanizing brutality of the Taliban regime (or the Hussein regime, or any other brutal regime that has come up against US policy in recent memory) that it receive kudos from the left. But it isn't. There is no reason to believe that maintaining a clear and careful stance according to which we say what we mean and mean what we say would in any shape way or form give aid or comfort to some of the enemies of humanity as opposed to others. Again, the government wants you to believe this but it is false. We need to have the courage to resist being railroaded into support of US policy by a flag-wave and a false dichotomy.
The Taliban are (were?) certainly fascistic and they are clearly to be opposed. We should be pleased each time a fascistic regime in the world is replaced by something even moderately better, but this seems rather obvious, and is in fact beside the point. If bieng a leftist amounts only to this, then it doesn't mean very much. But I think most of us would agree that it should mean more. And this may be more obvious if we keep the real question in focus. That question I think is should we as leftists be drawing attention--and allowing our own attention to be drawn-- to the obvious fact that the Taliban are butchers who should be deposed or, rather, should we be aggressively trying to account for, and indeed fighting against, the fact that the Taliban (and indeed their rather murderous successors!!) are the only choices available for the Afghani people as a result of Cold War and global geo-political machinations which so long as they remain unchallenged constitute the enduring causes of inevitable wars. To inquire into how this is so, and how it has come about, and to oppose the forces that have conspired to produce the desperation that gives rise to such horrors as we have seen in recent months is what leftists should probably be doing. Not figuring out how many pom-pons to wave in anguished support for a war that will not have winners.
Re: the class forces and ideological matrix of the Iraqi and Serbian regimes under Milosevic see> Ex-Trotskyist Samir al-Khalil, "Republic of Fear, " 2nd ed. U.C. Press, 1999 or so. "Iraq: Revolution or Reaction, " from the leftist UK Third World publisher, Zed Press, early 90's.
On Serbia see this thread on the libertarian socialist/council communist aut-op-sy list, "Re: General Strike In Serbia." http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net> To: <aut-op-sy at lists.village.virginia.edu> Cc: <prfw at yahoogroups.com> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 5:10 PM Subject: AUT: Re: Re: General Strike in Serbia
----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Pugliese" <debsian at pacbell.net> To: "Society for the Philosophical Study of Marxism Listserve" <SPSM-LIST at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 5:43 PM Subject: Re: "Is Bush's War Our War?"
Heh, Mac you never give up do 'ya! ;-) The upper ranks of the SPS and esp. the JUL were full of what Polish workers in 1968 and 1970 (see an article in New Left Review at the time by a member of the Mandelite USFI, if I recall correctly), called the Red Bourgeoisie. Massive corruption.
One day you'll get the balance right between the more than justified crotique of the IMF and WB and read up on the devastation brought to the former Yugoslavia by Milosevicite war and repression, aided and abetted by the far rightists, V. Seslj, who Milosevic called his favorite "opposition" politician. Try any of these books, "The Break Up of Yugoslavia, " by Branka Magas, Verso Books. "The Politics of Serbia in the 90's, " Robert Thomas, Columbia Univ. Press. "The Road To War In Serbia, " edited by Nebojsa Popov, CEU Press, 2000, translated from Serbo-Croatian edition of 1996. "Kosovo: War and Revenge, " by Tim Judah, Yale Univ. Press. Milosevic and Markovic: A Lust for Power Slavoljub Djukic,Alex Dubinsky (Translator) / Hardcover / McGill-Queens University Press / July 2001 Serpent in the Bosom: The Rise and Fall of the Slobodan Milosevic Lenard J. Cohen / Hardcover / Westview Press / November 2000 Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic (4th Edition) Not Yet Released. Sabrina P. Ramet / Paperback / Westview Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia Not Yet Released. L. Sell / Hardcover / Duke University Press / February 2002 Our Price: $27.96 http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg04114.html Michael Pugliese Click the URL's esp. for the great aufheben piece> ethnicizing NATOsevic by Alain Kessi, I think. Michael Pugliese
>funny how one can easily disconnect nationalism from economy.
jc helary
http://www.ainfos.ca/99/may/ainfos00083.html
(en) The BALKAN WAR and leftist apologetics for the Milosovic regime
>From Harald Beyer-Arnesen <haraldba at online.no>
Date Tue, 11 May 1999 15:05:43 -0400
http://www.idea.org.uk/cfront/texts/other/kosovo-subjectivities-en.html
(Kosov@ - Contradictions and Subjectivities
(Ethnicizing Social Conflicts - The Example of Yugoslavia - With an Updated
Annex). Available online at
<http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/Internationalismus/jugoslawien/materialie
n_06/>, updated annex at
<http://www.humanrights.de/antikrieg/texte/antii_d.htm>.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Ethnicizing+and+Natosevic+&btnG=Google+Search
http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/apr99/msg02975.html http://www.webcom.com/wildcat/Yugoslavia.html http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/guest/radical/ESBOSNIA.HTM Bosnia and the poison of nationalism http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/Aut_html/Auf1edit.htm http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/Aufheben/yugo.html Class Decomposition In The New World Order:
Yugoslavia Unravelled
(1) Introduction
Whilst there have been numerous wars around the globe over the last forty-eight years, Europe has seen only the mundane brutality of everyday capitalist social relations. But once again the spectre of war haunts the proletarians of the continent. The former republics of Yugoslavia have lurched into a bitter cycle of war, and the images of the suffering provide a terrifying reminder of the capacity of the working class to carve itself up along national lines. Are we heading for a major European war? Will the events of the past couple of years in Yugoslavia be repeated throughout Eastern Europe? An analysis of the conflict is clearly imperative.
Such an analysis is made more difficult however both by our separation from the events, leading to a lack of information from 'below', and by the endless stream of depressing details on the conflict in the media making any attempt to keep abreast of events into a desensitising test of endurance. So this article will be limited to an attempt to simplify the conflict by grasping the material roots of the nationalist tensions.
The first problem lies with deciding where to start. A possible starting point would be the formation of the first (monarchist) Yugoslavia after WW1, as the internal migration of Serbs under the Serb-dominated regime (to be followed by a similar migratory flow after WW2) helped produce the ethnic mish-mash with which we are now familiar. Another possibility is WW2 and the genocide perpetrated by the Ustashe which helps explain the fear of persecution so characteristic of current Serbian nationalist ideology.
Neither of these starting points seem to provide the best means of unravelling the conflict however, as the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia did hold together for well over forty years despite its ethnic diversity and the experiences of WW2. Instead, the focus of the analysis has to be the 1974 Constitution, which appears to be a pivotal moment in the shaping of Socialist Yugoslavia; so, to begin with, we have to examine the factors which gave rise to it.
(2) Class Recomposition. <snip>
----- Original Message ----- From: "Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby at tao.ca> To: <aut-op-sy at lists.village.virginia.edu> Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 3:56 PM Subject: AUT: Re: General Strike in Serbia
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran at hotmail.com>
> To: <aut-op-sy at lists.village.virginia.edu>
> Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 10:01 PM
> Subject: AUT: General Strike in Serbia
>
>
> > Wednesday, 17 October, 2001, 15:01 GMT 16:01 UK
> >
> > Serbs protest against labour law
> >
> > Several thousand people across Serbia have taken
> > part in demonstrations against a draft labour law that
> > would freeze pay in state-owned companies.
> > In the capital, Belgrade, up to 5,000 people attended a
> > rally at the main government building.
> *snip*
>
> you mean they are protesting the austerity brought about by the overthrow
of the
> Socialist Party of Serbia? Hmmm...
>
> Macdonald
>
>
>
> --- from list aut-op-sy at lists.village.virginia.edu ---
----- Original Message ----- From: "George Snedeker" <snedeker at CONCENTRIC.NET> To: <SPSM-LIST at LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU> Sent: Friday, November 30, 2001 2:17 PM Subject: Re: "Is Bush's War Our War?"
> I have trouble with arguments which make strong claims based on historical
> analogies. analogies are a kind of short hand. we might say for example
that
> the United States is like the Roman Empire! we might also say that this or
> that leader is like Hitler. U.S. politicians are fond of this kind of
> imaging of the Other. just think of our actions in Panama, Iraq or Serbia?
> were all of these struggles against Fascism? I also think that we need to
be
> very careful about eurocentric worldviews. isn't Hitchins trying to
protect
> Civilization from the Barbarians at the gates? is this just one more
> historical analogy?