[lbo-talk] Diaspora Identity Politics and Multicultural Imperialism

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 5/15/06, ravi <gadfly at exitleft.org> wrote:
> At around 11/5/06 12:52 pm, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> > On 5/11/06, uvj at vsnl.com <uvj at vsnl.com> wrote:
> >
> >> All divine religions share and respect one word, and that is
> >> monotheism, or belief in a single God and no other in the world."
> >>
> >> I suppose Judaism, Christinity and Islam alone are _'divine'_
> >> religions!:)
> >
> > Monotheists have no monopoly over discrimination against religious and
> > other minorities.  To take just one example, whatever Baha'is face in
> > Iran, it's not comparable to the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat and the
> > state complicity in it and attempt to cover it up:
> > <http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/04/30/india3885.htm>.
> >
> > Whatever real grievances Iran's ethnic, religious, sexual, and other
> > minority communities have will be magnified thousands of times, and
> > where real grievances are not enough, imagined ones will be invented
> > to augment them.  That's where identity politics -- especially
> > diaspora identity politics -- becomes the most useful to imperialists.
> > <...>
> >
> > Ahmadinejad can't prevent that from happening -- and no one can -- but
> > he ought to make efforts not to give any ammunition to imperialists
> > and, where possible, try to do counter-hegemonic diaspora identity
> > politics.
> >
>
> Hegemonic diaspora identity politics? Whatever that means, that's what
> you get from UVJ's comment?

No.  Only the first paragraph of mine that you quote above is a
response to Ulhas.  The rest are additions to what I've said in the
Sudan threads, the Iran threads, etc.


> And come on! Pointing to Gujarat is hand-waving of not just an
> irrelevant but a dangerous kind, since UVJ did not suggest that Hinduism
> does not discriminate against other minorities.

Ulhas sends a lot of business press clippings to both LBO and PEN-l.
Two things you seldom -- never? -- see in his postings are anything
critical of the US and Indian governments.

-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>