>Another point - I think that much of the support for the
>"Palestinian cause" in this country is a knee-jerk reaction to
>support the perceived "underdog" against the perceived "evil empire"
>without real understanding of the situation. We had the same
>phenomenon with the Dalai Lama and China - in both cases the notion
>of evil empire coincides with popular prejudices (anticommunism,
>antisemitism, anti-government sentiments).
Wrong again. I can't stand the Dalai Lama or the cult around him. He's a reactionary theocrat.
Early in this list's life, James Heartfield wrote a fine post on Tibet. Here it is again.
Doug
----
>Date: Fri, 3 Jul 1998 02:59:57 +0100
>To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>From: Jim heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Re: Tibet
>
>
>
>In message <l03130300b1c149853a69@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
><dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>>I was at a party the other night populated mainly by amiable meatheads, and
>>one of them started in on Clinton's comments that the Chinese and Tibetans
>>should talk with each other, negotiations that would be premised on Tibetan
>>recognition of Chinese authority over Tibet. "Tibet is not part of China!
>>Free Tibet!!," he exhorted, in a departure for a conversation that was
>>mainly about sports and bad movies. I was surprised to hear this fellow
>>getting so exercised about any political issue, which made me wonder once
>>again - what is it about Tibet and the Dalai Lama? Why are it and he such
>>obsessions among otherwise nonpolitical types? And is he really the abused
>>innocent that Richard Gere and Patti Smith would have us believe? Can
>>anyone elighten me?
>
>I see this embrace of Tibetan liberation as less to do with the Tibetans
>than with the Chinese, as in less *for* Tibet than *anti* Chinese.
>
>There is a particular tradition amongst English imperialists of a
>tactical sympathy for the underdog's underdog. So for example, TE
>Lawrence romanticised the bedouin, out of a hostility to the Turks; The
>mystic Laurens Van Der Post (mentor of Prince Charles) wrote movingly of
>the Kalahari bushmen - a roundabout way of castigating the African
>governments whose modernisation programmes were threatening their way of
>life. The marsh Arabs of Iraq have also been the object of this kind of
>patronising romanticisation, with the pointed conclusion that the
>current regime should relinquish political authority over the Shatt al
>Arab waterways to their Western 'defenders'.
>
>The object of this romanticisation must preferably be a pastoral people,
>whose way of life is so simple and unadorned, that the western patron
>can invest it with a mystical authenticity. The romance is developed as
>a precise counterpoint to the fallen state of the urbanised masses of
>Africa or the Far East. The fantastic projection of an 'inner truth'
>into the lives these 'simple folk' arises out of a sublimated distaste
>for the masses of the third world. The rural idyll is elevated in the
>imagination, precisely because the urban masses appear hostile and
>threatening to the Western romatic.
>
>The current Hollywood treatment of the degenerate autocracy in Tibet
>arises not out of any specific feeling for the Tibetans. Their real
>culture does not feature in the Cinema version, but rather is
>substituted by a fantasy version, and a fantasy whose well-springs are
>to be found in the West rather than the East.
>
>The surprise amongst many Western admirers of the Dalai Lama when he let
>slip his hostility to homosexuality spoke volumes. To the Lama's
>admirers in the West it seems odd that a religion that is so unmacho and
>sensitive should frown of homosexuality. But the interpretation of
>Buddhism as 'unmacho' or 'sensitive' has nothing to do with Buddhism
>itself, and everything to do with Western expectations of Eastern
>mystics.
>
>Surprise, surprise: A religion that is rooted in the most backward
>social conditions of Tibet, where the surplus product is entirely
>redirected towards the unproductive consumption of a monastic leisure
>class, gives rise to backward views about homosexuality, the family and
>women. What else would happen where there is no tendency towards social
>development, where prejudice is the bedrock of the social order, and
>where production is based upon the home?
>
>The tendency to romanticise the most backward and barbaric social
>conditions in the East arises out of a contemporary mood in the West:
>the mood that rejects modernisation as a mistake, and celebrates instead
>the 'uncorrupted' values of primitive societies. The small Tibetan
>theocracy is a romantic counterpoint to the Far East that the Western
>racist most profoundly fears: the Far East that is developing into a
>competitor, and creating a mass working class, that provokes fears of
>the oriental horde in the minds of western elites.
>
>My good freind Aiden Campbell has written eloquently on the celebration
>of the Primitive in his book on Modern Primitives and Ethical Ethnicity,
>which was published by Cassell, inthe UK, last year.
>
>
>--
>Jim heartfield