Democratiya 13 Summer 2008

Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008

Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008

Russell A. Berman From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism Dick Howard A Memoir of 1968 Gabriel Brahm The Odyssey of the Post-Left Cathy Lowy Tony Coady on Michael Walzer Mark Gardner and Dave Rich The Thought of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi Neil Robinson Russia: Lost in Transition Michael Weiss Alfred Kazin, Hidden Stranger Tom Kahn and Norman Podhoretz Archive: Debating Solidarność in 1981 Matthias Küntzel Interview / Jihad and Jew Hatred Also Haas, Gershman, Hirsh, Lieber, Siegel, Hoare & more |1|

Founder & Editor Alan Johnson Editorial Assistant Peter Stanley Advisory Editors: Gerard Alexander Michael Allen Paul Anderson Jane Ashworth Harry Barnes Paul Berman Jean Bethke Elshtain John Bew Brian Brivati Joshua Cohen Nick Cohen Marc Cooper Thomas Cushman Jonathan Derbyshire Robert Fine Eve Garrard Norman Geras Linda Grant Johann Hari David Hirsh Christopher Hitchens Marko Attila Hoare Quintin Hoare Micheline R. Ishay Faleh A. Jabar Oliver Kamm

Sunder Katwala Irfan Khawaja John Lloyd Denis MacShane MP Branka Magaš Kanan Makiya Chibli Mallat Brendan O’Leary Jon Pike Barry Rubin Khalid Salih Martin Shaw John Vail Bert Ward Francis Wheen Barry Winter Sami Zubaida Address Democratiya c/o Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, 310 Riverside Drive, suite 2008, New York, NY 10025. Email [email protected] Website www.democratiya.com Design www.smallfury.com

Democratiya was founded in 2005 as a free quarterly online journal of social democratic and antitotalitarian politics and culture. 16 issues were published before Democratiya merged with the American democratic left magazine Dissent in Autumn 2009. To access the Democratiya archive please visit the Dissent website.

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2005 Founding Statement Democratiya aims to contribute to a renewal of the politics of democratic radicalism by providing a forum for serious analysis and debate. We will strive to be non-sectarian and ecumenical, and our pages are open to a wide range of political views, a commitment to pluralism reflected in our advisory editorial board Democratiya believes that in a radically changed world parts of the left have backed themselves into an incoherent and negativist ‘anti-imperialist’ corner, losing touch with long-held democratic, egalitarian and humane values. In some quarters, the complexity of the post-cold-war world, and of US foreign policy as it has developed since 9/11, has been reduced to another ‘Great Contest’: ‘The Resistance’ (or ‘Multitude’) against ‘Imperialism’ (or ‘Empire’). This world-view has ushered back in some of the worst habits of mind that dominated parts of the left in the Stalinist period: manicheanism, reductionism, apologia, denial, cynicism. Grossly simplifying tendencies of thought, not least the disastrous belief that ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ are once again leading to the abandonment of democrats, workers, women and gays who get on the wrong side of ‘anti-imperialists’ (who are considered ‘progressive’ simply because they’re anti-American). We democrats will fare better if we are guided by a positive animating ethic and seek modes of realization through serious discussion and practical reform efforts. Democratiya will stand for the human rights of victims of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity. We will be, everywhere, pro-democracy, pro-labour rights, pro-women’s rights, pro-gay rights, pro-liberty, pro-reason and pro-social justice. Against anti-modernism, irrationalism, fear of freedom, loathing of the woman, and the cult of master-slave human relations we stand for the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Democracy, even for the ‘poorest he’. Liberte, egalite, fraternite. The rights of man. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those precious ideas were rendered the inheritance of all by the social democratic, feminist and egalitarian revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. No one left behind. No one. We are partisans and artisans of this fighting faith and we pit it against what Paul Berman has called ‘the paranoid and apocalyptic nature of the totalitarian mindset’. © Democratiya

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DEMOCRATIYA 13 Summer 2008 Contents Alan Johnson | Editor’s Page

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Russell A. Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism

14

Dick Howard | An International New Left?

31

Philip Spencer | Forget 68: Cohn-Bendit’s new book

46

Fred Siegel | 1968: Revolt against the Masses

50

Eric Chenoweth | The True Revolutionaries of 1968

53

Marko Attila Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia

55

Neil Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition

71

Carl Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia

84

Jason Fargo | Alain Badiou on Nicolas Sarkozy

94

Matthew Omolesky | The Europeanization of the World?

99

Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left

107

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Carrie-Ann Biondi | ‘Dirty Hands’ and Just War Theory

119

Cathy Lowy | Tony Coady on Michael Walzer

128

David Hirsh | Unjust, Unhelpful: against the Academic Boycott

135

Robert J. Lieber | America and Israel After Sixty Years

148

Mark Gardner / Dave Rich | The Thought of Qaradawi

156

Donna Robinson Divine | Colin Shindler on Modern Israel

164

Lyn Julius | Ruth Wisse on Jews and Power

167

Rayyan Al-Shawaf and David Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange

171

Michael Weiss | Arts / Alfred Kazin, Hidden Stranger

205

Lawrence J. Haas | Letter from Washington / Un-Serious Nation?

218

Eric Lee | Global Labour Notes / Unions and Democracy

226

Kahn and Podhoretz | Archive: Debating Solidarność in 1981

230

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Matthias Küntzel | Interview / Jihad and Jew Hatred

262

Letters Page | Rayyan Al-Shawaf and Barry Rubin on Hezbollah

286

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Editor’s Page Alan Johnson On the 40th anniversary of May 1968 we publish five assessments of the legacy of ‘the Sixties.’ Telos Editor Russell Berman argues that the modern university is currently threatened by a set of transformations and pressures inimical to liberal intellectual culture. While this slide into repression has multiple causes, prominent among them is one legacy of the Sixties. ‘Sixties radicalism – or at least part of it – was always already reactionary,’ says Berman. ‘The revolution was repressive from its start, congenitally flawed with a programmatic illiberalism and anti-intellectualism.’ His analysis takes him ‘From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus anti-Semitism,’ i.e. from the 1967 storm about ‘left-wing Fascism’ between Jürgen Habermas and SDS leader Rudi Dutschke to the 2002-3 controversy over campus anti-Semitism between Harvard president Lawrence Summers and the social theorist Judith Butler. Berman traces the baleful impact of an ‘ongoing revolt against theory, the excitement of perfunctory performance and the seductions of thoughtlessness.’ Dick Howard has long been one of the most creative and indefatigable of those who craft a radical democratic politics for the present by the critical appropriation of the resources of 1968. ‘Most of what I have written in the years since 1968 has been an attempt to understand what could have been – and why it was not,’ he writes here. Howard’s fascinating memoir is used to make a broader point about the unfulfilled promise of ‘a new type of Left, a radically different way of understanding the political, and a spirit of rebellion that could have been – and perhaps could still be – an essential element in a renewal of democratic politics.’ Howard’s argument is inspired by Edgar Morin, Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis, and it concludes that the events of May were ‘a brèche, a rupture with the continuity of history – including the continuity on which the various types of Marxism founded their political hopes.’ However, back then, an older vision of historical progress leading to happy tomorrows was just too tempting to be abandoned so easily. We should be much bolder today, suggests Howard. Eric Chenoweth directs our attention to the forgotten revolutionaries of 1968, the anti-Stalinists from the east. They may be largely absent from the colour supplements

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 and TV retrospectives, but on any serious assessment their embrace of human rights had a world-historic importance in a way that the verbal revolutionism of a Mark Rudd did not. Philip Spencer reviews a series of interviews with 68’er Daniel Cohn-Bendit and finds an ‘impassioned defence of some core values that rather too many who claim to be on the left today seem to have forgotten.’ A new book by Andre Glucksmann and his son Raphael is assessed as raising ‘some profound issues that anyone on the left ought to feel the need to engage with.’ And finally, urban historian Fred Siegel throws a small tightly packed explosive at those ‘68ers’ who were ‘not so much anti-elitist as the vanguard of the Wellsian alternative elite.’ The ‘new Aquarian dispensation’ these 68ers established, Siegel argues, has had devastating effects to this day, underpinning as it does a range of domestic social ills and a xenophilliac attitude to foreign policy. The complexities of contemporary European politics are the subject of four reviews. Marko Attila Hoare is critical of a batch of books on Bin Laden’s effort to embed his network in the Balkans. He argues that while we need scholarly analyses of the activities of Wahhabites and other radical Muslims in the Balkans, there is a worrying trend for writers to ‘make propaganda’ about wars that, ultimately, had ‘little to do with radical Islam.’ Neil Robinson reviews books by Dmitri V. Trenin and Lilia Shevtsova which offer contrasting assessments of the causes and the meaning of the depressing rollback of democracy in Russia, and of the degree to which either modernisation or a developmental state has really been established by Putin. Matthew Omolesky reviews John M. Headley’s The Europeanization of the World. Headley asks what future there can be for ‘that hitherto distinct civilisation, “the West” as it merges with other civilisations and cultures’ while splitting apart from a United States fast becoming ‘a leading rogue state.’ Headley finds a viable future in the deployment of European soft-power to ‘europeanise’ (i.e. spread human rights and international law) around the world. Omolesky questions Headley’s anti-American invective, his rather sun-lit view of Europe’s humanist past, and of Europe’s persuasive power over the world’s dictators. Indeed Omolesky claims that ‘to exalt political and legal universality, all the while ignoring sovereignty, the

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Johnson | Editor’s Page tactical instrumentalisation of international law in the service of raison d’état, and the fundamental lessons of state practice throughout history, is to be little more than an ingénue.’ Jason Farrago assesses De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? the best-selling philippic against French President Nicolas Sarkozy written by the communist Alain Badiou. Badiou combines cheap insults about Sarkozy’s height (‘Napoleon the very small’) with an ominous Maoist critique of ‘capitalo-parliamentarianism.’ Badiou is scandalised by the ‘democratic terror’ being waged in France by Sarkozy, a ‘rat-man,’ ‘collaborator’ and ‘Pétainist’ who is selling out France to the global corporations and the USA. Against this betrayal of the nation, Badiou offers ‘a new communism.’ Farrago points out that ‘raising the retirement age or allowing pharmacies to stay open on Sunday is of a different order than aiding the Axis Powers.’ He also suggests that the legitimate criticisms that should be made of Sarkozy and his program are not to be found in Badiou’s crude invective and even cruder ‘Marxism.’ The struggle of contemporary political philosophy to develop a theory of just war in the face of contemporary challenges such as genocide, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism is the subject of two reviews. Carrie Ann Biondi reviews Rethinking the Just War Tradition and reaches the conclusion that ‘JWT is perhaps best jettisoned.’ ‘It does not follow from this that war should not be conducted justly,’ she argues, ‘but that a new ethic of war is required that can meet the demands of justification, consistency, and, justice.’ Carl Gershman assesses the prospects for democratic progress in East Asia ‘the region of the world where the alternative systems of democracy and authoritarianism are most sharply counter-posed’. Cathy Lowy’s examines Tony Coady’s Morality and Political Violence, and she is unpersuaded by his critique of Michael Walzer’s arguments in Just and Unjust Wars. She disputes Coady’s historical interpretations (for example of the ‘supreme emergency’ faced by Churchill in 1940) and also raises questions regarding Israel’s ‘substantial presence in [Coady’s] book.’ While Israel plays a large role in establishing Coady’s critical distance from Walzer, the discussion of Israel remains oddly ‘commonsensical and obvious’ for an analytical philosopher.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Gabriel Brahm offers a wide-ranging and powerful critique of the collapse of a good part of the western left since 9/11. His thesis is important and original, and will be controversial. His argument: the malaise experienced by parts of the left after the collapse of Communism was defined by the demise of all systemic opposition to liberal democratic societies and the experiencing of this, as Fredric Jameson has confessed, as a moment of ‘existential disorientation.’ A distinct pattern of discourse thus emerged and become regnant on the left during the interregnum of 19912001. This post-cold war, postmodern, post-Marxist, postcolonial-theory ‘left’ was called, variously, a ‘Zombie Left’ (Bernard-Henri Levy), ‘The Left that Doesn’t Learn’ (Mitchell Cohen), and ‘The Unpatriotic Left’ (Richard Rorty). After 9/11 its disorientation, its new ‘post-ist’ discourse, and, above all, its existential need to find an ‘outside’ – any ‘outside’ – from which to maintain a systematic critique of, and an animus towards, liberal-democratic society ‘added up’ as Brahm puts it, until something utterly new emerged on the left: a reactionary ‘post-left.’ Democratiya marks the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s founding with five articles and reviews. David Hirsh, Editor of Engage Journal, has been one of the most important and articulate voices raised against contemporary anti-Semitism. In this article he does two things. First, he sets out the case against the campaign to exclude Israelis from the global academic community, finding it unjust and unhelpful. Second, believing that ‘the boycotters are motivated by a sense of anger and outrage at Israeli human rights abuses; a sense of anger and outrage that I share’ Hirsh carefully excavates the history of ‘a specific tradition of explicitly anti-Semitic anti-Zionism’ that, he argues, has opened many leftists up to the absurd belief that Israel is ‘a singular evil on the planet.’ Robert J Lieber explores the relationship between America and Israel. ‘Foreign observers,’ he notes, do not always comprehend the ‘deep-seated continuities on which it rests’ and so reach for far-fetched explanations or – in worst cases – embrace sinister conspiracy theories in order to account for this special bond.’ Lieber directs our attention to the uniqueness of Israel, the particular characteristics of the United States, and the manner in which these traditions and legacies interact to offer a new account of the relationship. Donna Robinson Divine praises Colin Shindler’s History of Modern Israel for its insistence that ‘sustaining Israel’s independence depends on preserving its people’s

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Johnson | Editor’s Page attachment to a set of humane values that are damaged each time security becomes an excuse to annex Palestinian land or mistreat Arabs.’ Lyn Julius argues that for those persuaded by John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy persuasive, Ruth Wisse’s Jews and Power is the perfect antidote. In contrast to Walt and Mearsheimer’s account of a shadowy Jewish cabal manipulating US foreign policy, Wisse’s book is a study of Jewish powerlessness. Ken Livingstone, the ex-mayor of London, famously embraced the radical Islamist cleric, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. Here was a moderate we could do business with ‘Red Ken’ told us. A new compilation of fourteen rulings by Qaradawi on Israel, Palestine, Jews and Zionism, Fatawa on Palestine, is reviewed by Dave Rich and Mark Gardner. They make clear how ludicrous has been that kind of wishful thinking. Alongside his support for suicide bombing, Qaradawi promises a battle ‘between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews i.e. all Muslims and all Jews,’ to hasten the end of days for mankind. One ruling is titled ‘Hadith: “The Judgment Day Will Not Occur Unless You Fight Jews.”’ Qaradawi’s ‘apocalyptic vision of division, war and final triumph’ should be a warning to those charged with building alliances against violent extremism. With this issue of Democratiya we introduce what we hope will be four regular sections: Arts, Prospects for Democracy, Letter from Washington and Global Labor Notes. Michael Weiss examines the legacy of the American literary critic, Alfred Kazin in a brilliant and sparkling review of Richard Cook’s new biography. From Washington Larry Haas begins a regular column with a stark warning: America is now an ‘Unserious Nation.’ Haas, who served as Al Gore’s Communication Director, warns that the US is suffering from ‘multiple levels of confusion about the enemy – radical Islam – and the best ways to defeat it’ and currently lacks the ‘bipartisan commitment to win the wars of today, to ensure that we have the economic vitality to support those of tomorrow, or to tackle the growing domestic infiltration by the forces of radical Islam.’ The political parties are ‘bitterly divided over national security, over economics, and, it seems, over everything else’ while

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 swathes of the American people are ‘profoundly un-serious about the challenges that lie ahead.’ Eric Lee is the founding editor of LabourStart, the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement. He will be writing a regular column for Democratiya on global labour issues, and begins with an argument he will flesh out in the months ahead: labour unions remain at the heart of democracy-promotion, the foundation, still, for a ‘great global coalition that struggles to create a better world.’ Orwell, Lee insists, was right: hope still lies with the Proles. The birth of the free trade union Solidarity, in Poland in September 1980, proved to be a precursor of the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe in 1989-91. Democratiya is very pleased to make available to readers a transcript of a debate held in New York City in March 1981 between Tom Kahn, the AFL-CIO International Director and Norman Podhoretz, the Editor of Commentary magazine. The two debated at a time when it seemed likely that either the Soviet Union would invade Poland to crush Solidarity and restore untrammelled one-party rule, or the Polish Communists would launch their own crack-down. (Sure enough, in December 1981, the Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and arrested the leadership of Solidarność.) Kahn and Podhoretz were not discussing whether to support Solidarity – both were fierce antitotalitarians. They were searching for the best policy, in particular the best economic policy, for democracies to adopt in order to support emerging democratic forces within totalitarian societies. As such their discussion speaks to us today. The Democratiya Interview is with Matthias Küntzel author of the awardwinning Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. Kuntzel discusses his own political formation and his journey to the writing of the book; his conception of Islamism as a modern movement which came into being as a reaction to modernity, and as a revolutionary movement with anti-Semitism as one of the central features of its ideology; and his excavation of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mufti of Jerusalem in infecting Islamist anti-modernism with the poison of the Nazi anti-Semitic mind-set. Kuntzel discusses the ideas of Sayyid Qut’b and of the Hamas theoreticians, and responds to some criticisms of his book. He also raises the alarm about the rise of a new eliminationist or genocidal anti-Semitism in the world; invites us to view much ‘anti-Zionism’ as a Trojan horse that brings modern anti-Semitic sentiments

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Johnson | Editor’s Page into societies which normally hate discrimination and racism. He implores us to take seriously ‘Ahmadinejad’s fantasy world and seek to grasp the immanent logic behind his attacks, even if this involves insights which may send a shiver down the spine.’ Finally, two exchanges. David Zarnett’s critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism in Democratiya 12 draws a passionate reply from Rayyan Al-Shawaf to which Zarnett writes an unapologetic rejoinder. Barry Rubin’s account of the Iranian-backed Islamist militia Hezbollah in Democratiya 12 is the subject of Al-Shawaf ’s second intervention. Rubin also offers a sharp rejoinder.

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From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism: Radicalism as Reaction Russell A. Berman There are many diverse and competing accounts of the 1960s and the legacies of that decade. None can lay claim to comprehensiveness, including the one discussed here: there are always other stories. However the narrative of the 1960s presented here has a particular significance, both for understanding what transpired decades ago and what we encounter today. It is a narrative about continuity, albeit with transformations. Like many Sixties stories, its venue is largely the university, although not exclusively so, but it also involves an international framework: it can hardly suffice to recall the student movements within universities and ignore the complex global context. Nor is it sufficient to appeal to the memory of sixties radicalism, while attributing its decline solely to external, putatively reactionary forces intent on repressing the progressive camp. On the contrary, in place of the nostalgic mythology of that erstwhile radicalism as indisputably emancipatory, any credible account has to describe how repression emerged within the movement itself. Sixties radicalism – or at least part of it – was always already reactionary. The revolution was repressive from its start, congenitally flawed with a programmatic illiberalism and anti-intellectualism and – remembering one of the most prominent epigrams of the era: ‘we have met the enemy and he is us.’ Anything less than that is at best romanticism, at worst a regression to old Left partisanship, blithely separating the world into camps of absolute difference, to the left the blessed bound to heaven, to the right the sinners consigned to hell by the divine power of an unforgivingly secular emancipation: which side are you on? A heroic metahistory of the Sixties presents the moment of revolt as a refusal of a deficient and antiquated world, a recognisable variant of the modernist narrative of the victory of youth over old age. Familiar as the story is, it can point in various directions. In one version, the explosions of the late Sixties represented culminations of forces that had been building up for much more than a decade, finally finding articulate expression; in an alternative version, the revolutionary event in effect capped and terminated a prior phase of liberalisation. In both versions, an early period, the Sixties that pursued a hopeful opening toward the future, enters a new phase, the Sixties which, embracing violence, underwent a repressive turn characterised by a regression to older ideological formations. At the very moment

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism that the New Left became most anarchist and voluntarist, just as it began to place its bets on terror (its own and that of its role models), it ironically returned to the most Old-Left political vocabulary, replete with the old-style Marxism-Leninism and the associated habits of thoughtlessness and brutality. Whatever genuinely emancipatory tendencies pervaded the earlier phase of the protest movement were suddenly extinguished in the formation of dogmatic splinter groups and criminal gangs dedicated to carrying out violent acts in the name of the greater goal of a violent revolution. This essay begins by revisiting the character of repression in the Sixties through some German material (although the issues are not exclusively German by any means); it then describes elements of repression and illiberalism in the twentieth-century university which, at odds with the genuine mission of the university for teaching and scholarship, also represent the precondition for contemporary campus anti-Semitism; finally, the argument concludes with a discussion of this resurgent anti-Semitism in the academic world through a close reading of Judith Butler’s comments on remarks by Lawrence Summers. Linking these steps, there is an underlying claim: the modern university, which flourished thanks to a liberalism of the mind, is currently threatened by a set of transformations and pressures inimical to that intellectual culture. The life of the mind may change into a graveyard of the spirit. This slide into repression has multiple causes, but it includes prominently the legacy of the Sixties and the worst habits of Communist culture, which the Sixties eventually embraced: political correctness, hypocritical dishonesty, and a rhetoric of bitter vilification, surrounded by a sea of apathy. The Frankfurt School and ‘Left Fascism’ A crucial turning point in the Sixties took place when, in the wake of violent demonstrations, Jürgen Habermas attacked the German student movement’s growing contempt for democratic structures as ‘left-wing fascism.’ Here is the context: On June 2, 1967, the student of German literature, Benno Ohnesorg, was shot and killed by police in Berlin during a protest against a visit by the Shah of Iran. A week later, a funeral caravan accompanied Ohensorg’s coffin to his home in Hanover (i.e., it drove from West Berlin, past check points in order to enter Communist East Germany and then again past check points in order to be allowed to leave East Germany to reach Hanover in West Germany) . A university conference followed immediately after the burial: ‘The University and Democracy: Conditions and Organization of Resistance.’ Key speakers included Habermas, the SDS leader Rudi Dutschke, and another student leader, Hans-Jürgen Krahl, an Adorno protégé and later opponent. Habermas described and endorsed the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 radical cultural and political content of the movement but remained cautious about the plausible range of action. In particular, he expressed concern about the movement’s tendency to combine an indifference toward consequences with an oblivious actionism, as if the decision to act at all were always more important than any consideration of consequences. In response to Habermas’ assault, Krahl and Dutschke objected vehemently, defending the necessity of action, unhindered by rational calculation of effect, the German variant of an American ‘by any means necessary.’ Thus Dutschke: ‘For Professor Habermas, Marx may well say that it is not sufficient for the idea to strive for reality; reality must also strive toward the idea. That was correct in the age of transitional capitalism. But today that no longer makes sense. The material preconditions for the possibility of making history are given. Everything now depends on the conscious human will, to finally become conscious of the history it has always made, to control, and to command it, which means, Professor Habermas, that your objectivity devoid of concept is crushing the subject of emancipation.’ [1] In other words, in another historical context, it may have been prudent to caution patience and to delay revolutionary actions until the conditions had ripened; but that was long ago and, so Dutschke’s assertion, all that stands in the way of the revolution today is a lack of will to reinvent ourselves as revolutionaries. Indeed he not only disagrees with Habermas’ moderation; he in effect accuses Habermas of standing in the way of revolutionary change. Dutschke’s voluntarism conflicts with Habermas’ pragmatism, as activism collides with theory. A maximalist aspiration for immediate revolution confronts a protective concern with the young institutions of democratic Germany; with the memory of Nazi Germany so recent and the example of an undemocratic dictatorship just across the Iron Curtain, the prospect of subverting the liberal democratic regime of West Germany was far from insignificant. At the Hanover conference, however, Dutschke ended up proposing nothing more radical than a sit-down strike – far short of the emphatic ambitions of his speech – but his defense of revolutionary illegality prompted Habermas to the notorious judgment. ‘In my opinion, he has presented a voluntarist ideology, which was called utopian socialism in 1848, and which in today’s context, I believe I have reasons to use this characterization, has to be called left fascism.’ [2] Fascism: because of its ideology of unconstrained voluntarism, a triumphalism of the will, with neither ethical nor institutional limitations; a contemptuous disregard for democratic institutions and processes; and an adventurist willingness to engage in violence, precisely in order to provoke crises inimical to liberal democracy.

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism The drama of university, theory, and politics grew more tense in Frankfurt, five days later, on June 12 at an SDS meeting, with Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in attendance, publicly announced as a discussion on Critical Theory and political practice. An open letter had attacked Horkheimer for the Frankfurt School’s lack of attention to political practice and his ‘support for American imperialism.’ Horkheimer had replied in writing, declaring his willingness to participate in a public debate with SDS, while underscoring his own concern about the movement’s support for Communist regimes. In direct discussion, the aging Horkheimer could not keep up with the questions that mixed philosophy with the impact of the Ohnesorg shooting and the politics of the Vietnam War. Adorno intervened, characterising the police shooting as a symptom of ‘social sadism,’ but also criticising the SDS illusion that the student movement’s actions could plausibly initiate a genuine revolution in West Germany. He compared the actions to ‘the movements of a caged animal looking for ways out’ and refused to approve an ‘emphatic concept of practice’ that remains ignorant of objective circumstances. Hence his judgment: ‘The Left tends to censor thought in order to justify its ends. Knowledge however includes a description of blockages. Theory is being censored for the sake of practice. Theory however has to be completely thorough, otherwise the practice will be false.’ [3] Complete theory would have included a recognition of the futility of a campaign genuinely oriented toward revolution as well as a corollary embrace of the genuine values of liberal democracy everywhere, but especially in a country in which the experience of the Nazi past was not old and which bordered on the empire of the twin totalitarianism to the east. (Note: the capacity of the Left to compartmentalise solidarity, to protest abuses in one place and to be blind to them in another, was well established by 1967, when the Ohnesorg cortege could pass through East Germany in silence, despite self-assured moralism about Iran and Vietnam. The acquiescence in August 1968 regarding Czechoslovakia was only consistent with this willingness to refuse solidarity with the victims of the Soviet empire. With few exceptions, ‘68ers’ in the West had nothing to say to 68ers of the Prague Spring, after the Warsaw Pact invasion, or to anyone else in the Eastern bloc. This apathy was not only German, and the situation in the United States was not very different. Aside from the journal Telos, which, founded in 1968, maintained active ties to East European dissidents, most of the New Left had nothing to say about repression under Communism, even though it otherwise claimed to be ‘antiauthoritarian’ and vigorously attacked repressive regimes allied with the West. That tradition has proven quite resilient: selective internationalism continues to characterise the Middle East debate today. International solidarity has come to mean nothing more than programmatic hypocrisy.)

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The student movement was increasingly driven by voluntarism – the will, not reason, sets the pace – as well as by an indifference to, if not an outright enthusiasm for, many illiberal regimes, and a performative imperative, regardless of ethical contents: the priority of practice over thought. The time however of the German events is precisely June 1967, the moment of the Six-Day War. Horkheimer participated prominently in a German commemoration of Anne Frank as well as an ecumenical humanitarian support group for Israel. However this was also the moment when the first left-wing anti-Israel demonstrations began to take place, free of any sense of obligation to make subtle distinctions between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism; as one leaflet would soon put it with admirable clarity, ‘The Jews, who have been driven away by fascism, have themselves become fascists, who in collaboration with American capital want to exterminate the Palestinian people.’ [4] The German text is clear: the enemy is the ‘Jews who have been driven away,’ i.e., this was not antiZionism directed against Israel, but anti-Semitism directed against Jews. The Jewish character of the enemy is all the more clear, since the cited document referenced the attempted bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Berlin which had been timed for the Kristallnacht commemoration on November 9, 1969. That choice of symbolism made it abundantly clear that at least part of the German Left understood itself as the direct heir to the fascism that Habermas had identified on other grounds. A particularly German series of events ensued: Left radical support for an attempted El Al hijacking in 1970 in Munich, the 1972 Black September attacks at the Olympics, the prominent German role in the 1976 hijacking to Entebbe of an Air France flight and the grotesque selection and separation of Jewish, not just Israeli passengers by German terrorists. Internationalism converged with antiSemitism: Dieter Kunzelmann, leader of the ‘Tupamaros-West Berlin,’ a prominent Left-wing group. the name of which signalled solidarity with violent revolution in Latin America, participated in weapons training in a Palestinian training camp in Jordan and eloquently greeted Daniel Cohn-Bendit of Parisian May fame, on a visit to Berlin, as ‘a little Jewish pig.’ [5] Several interconnected issues are at stake here: the student movement’s revolt against theory in the name of practice is also a revolt against the theoreticians themselves. This is part of the epochal subversion of professorial authority, within the specific German context, a faint echo of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which is also at the root of the bitter break between Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the New Left as it rushed into self-reification; moreover this represents the revolt of the German student movement explicitly against the Jewish intellectuals who had been their mentors. One needs to ask to what degree the prominence of the break

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism with the Frankfurt School (as opposed to relations to other old-generation social critics), a break which has echoed through ‘theory’ ever since, had a fundamentally antisemitic component. As Adorno wrote to Marcuse in 1969, ‘You only have to look into the manic frozen eyes of those who probably, basing themselves on us, turn their anger against us.’ [6] This oedipal paradigm of reaction – radical resentment at the teachers of radicalism – was refracted through the particular circumstances of the German past as well as the changing politics of the Middle East. One of the absurd contradictions of the era, an indication of the characteristic backwardness of the progressive movement, is that the post-1967 German anti-Zionism typically advertised its own leftist allegiances – as one slogan put it poetically, ‘Schlaegt die Zionisten tot, macht den Nahen Osten rot’ [‘Kill the Zionists dead, make the Near East red’] – precisely at the point in time when the Arab left was tumbling toward defeat and the Islamist reaction was gaining ground, leading eventually to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which would equally appeal to reactionary tendencies, as it turned on the Iranian left and attacked the domestic communist movement. [7] An ironic version of enlightenment progress might be this: at least those illusions are gone. Contemporary anti-Zionism in the West, tempered by a cultural relativism that has robbed it of universal values, does not seriously believe anymore that there is a progressive content to a solidarity with Hamas or Hezbollah beyond formulaic anti-imperialism. No one would argue today that anti-Zionism, as in ‘Kill the Zionists dead,’ would lead to a ‘red’ Middle East. Far from it. This change marks the deep divide from the Sixties, when the New Left, for a moment, began to believe in an Old-Left world revolution in the name of progress. Today the vision of a progressive Middle East – rule of law, equality for women and minorities, secular culture – finds scant support on the Left, which has largely abandoned these contents to the vilified neoconservatives. The repression of theory (in the name of practice) amounted to a sort of selfmutilation through the disregard for ethics and liberal institutions. Part of this derived from an immanent logic of self-destruction, but it also received a friendly assist from without. In the wake of 1989 and the opening of East German archives, it has begun to be clear how much the dogmatism of the West German left – including its anti-Semitism and its hostility to Critical Theory – was a function of manipulative Communist intrusion. The history of the era can surely not be reduced to espionage and conspiracies from the East (just as campus anti-Semitism cannot be explained solely with reference to Saudi funding). Nor, however, should we pretend that the long arm of orthodox Communism played no role

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 in the degeneration of progressive politics in the West, which was intentionally contaminated with the worst ideologemes of the Communist legacy from the East. The Structural Transformation of the University Yet neither the tradition of Communist anti-Semitism, nor the revolt against the Jewish intellectuals, nor Palestinian or Islamist activism, nor even the struggle with the theory-practice problem is a sufficient explanation. All these factors contributed, but there is more at stake. There is today a growing illiberalism in the academic world due to deep-seated structural changes in the university as institution and the culture of education. It is especially this gradual shift in educational paradigm which underpins the personality type which Habermas dubbed left-fascist and which, with some adjustments for the different national setting, is familiar within American universities as well, not to mention other countries. The prognosis is worrisome. The modern university, which can claim great accomplishments in teaching and in research, is currently subject to structural transformations that are eroding the robust liberalism that has been the precondition of free and creative scholarship. These transformations may generate alternate structures of repression and self-repression, signs of which are becoming evident, including a resurgent antiSemitism and the complacency of responses to it. While academic anti-Semitism is itself a matter of concern as the basis for potentially discriminatory practices, it is also an ominous indicator of the wider spread of repressive tendencies inimical to the vitality of the university. The paradigm of cultural modernity set up an expectation that the institutions of education, especially the research university, should be defined in terms of freedom and individuality: academic freedom, freedom of research, a Kantian freedom to use one’s own mind. Whatever the historical credibility of that description, whether empirical reality ever matched that norm, there are now alternative tendencies at work within academic life which push precisely away from those goals: the decline of the humanities and the liberal arts, most obviously, and more broadly a tendency toward narrow specialisation, which is hidden just beneath the surface of interdisciplinarity. Whatever its benefits, interdisciplinarity too frequently ends up encouraging post-modern forms of eccentricity, idiosyncratic combinations defined by lateral moves rather than by depth of disciplinary field. This post-disciplinary narrowness eliminates the need to measure and to test one’s beliefs against the objectivity of evidence, counter-argument or falsifiability. Yet if freedom has become the license to ignore objections, then we can begin to

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism understand why advocates of idiosyncratic and especially extremist positions are not likely to meet opposition from a university public, where a relativism unwilling to criticise others has come to prevail. Instead of agreeing to disagree, today we just agree to ignore. To the extent that campus anti-Semitism, as an expression of a classically repressive personality type, has taken root, it is due in part to a reluctance to challenge grotesque positions: tolerance has become apathy as the signal feature of universities defined in terms of career advancement rather than the conversation of ideas. Someone else’s prejudice, no matter how fanatic, is just another opinion, as legitimate as any other. The problem is compounded by the legalisation tendencies of a litigious society that leave university administrations structurally incapable of exercising good judgment; their goal is simply to stay out of court. Academic freedom, like freedom of speech, has become a license to attack freedom. To be sure, in our atomised culture of apathy and indifference hardly anyone notices, but the gradual erosion of the paradigm of the free university involves a loss of freedom in general. The liberal arts discourse, organised around a model of the creative and thoughtful personality, has become a privilege of a tiny fraction of students attending the top colleges and universities in the U.S. with little echo elsewhere in the world. The higher education that western universities export overseas – or for which foreign students come to the US – is technocratically foreshortened, only very rarely defined in humanistic terms. Yet this radical reduction of education to practical matters – technology and economics – is not only part of transnational cultural transfers to international students. Domestic undergraduates similarly clamour for pre-professional programs: scholarship, which for Weber, was once vocation, now plummets towards vocational training. The student movement’s revolt against theory in the name of activist practice has turned into the active practice of job internships, which is more interesting as a story of continuity in a fetishisation of practice since the Sixties than as a decline from a golden age of activism. Meanwhile the notion of free research has been undermined by extensive and growing dependence on external funding, be it a matter of government, industry or foundations. Each demands its own Faustian bargains that subvert the credibility of the autonomy of knowledge. To some extent, that dependence was always the case, but an accelerated shift has taken place, away from the autonomy of the researcher or the scholarly community and to a heteronomous definition of goals. Moreover, this process is repeated within the university in growing pressure for collaboration or the definition of research agenda at higher, even university-wide levels. At Stanford during the past two years, motions have been brought to the Senate of

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 the Academic Council – note: not by the administration but through processes of faculty self-governance – proposing restrictions on aspects of free scholarship. The results have been mixed, which is itself cause for alarm. The erosion of the instructional structures of the humanistic university has echoed through university discourse as well. Whatever structural forces contributed to this change, scholars have spent the past decades celebrating it by providing intellectual rationale: this is the content of the so-called death of the subject and the eager collaboration of the humanities in that execution. Even during the decades in which ‘theory’ reigned supreme, the status of the concept was as much under attack as was the individual subject and the objectivity of truth – possible, if dubious intellectual positions to be sure, but much less convincing when we take note of how they seemed to accompany magnetic attraction to power and a predisposition to offer apologetics for reactionaries: Foucault on Khomeini, Derrida on de Man. The cultural history of that era has to include as well the reception of Orientalism and the one-dimensional resentment it legitimated. Said’s work is complex and multifaceted, but in a study devoted largely to imperialism in the Middle East, the deafening silence on the Ottoman Empire, Turkish hegemony and the fate of the Armenians provided a model of one-sidedness and cold-hearted indifference from which many have been able to learn, in the spirit of the same selective internationalism mentioned earlier. The emancipatory moment of the Sixties entailed a dialectic of repression, which we could see played out in the particularity of the German context: it was not repression from without that ended the Sixties, but an internal and self-destructive repression, which however has had long-lasting consequences, especially for intellectual culture. The emerging illiberalism gave expression to underlying transformations which have only accelerated in contemporary academic life. Antisemitism runs through this process on multiple levels: as a constitutive component of historical fascism, as an element of orthodox Communist discourse which has been a key source for anti-imperialist politics, and through an instrumentalisation of Middle East politics for propagandistic purposes (whether pan-Arab socialist or reactionary Islamist). More generally, the lowering of the barrier against attacks on Jews in universities corresponds to the Frankfurt School diagnosis: hostility to the cultural figure taken to represent liberal individualism turns into the perfect politics for a new masochistic personality yearning for submission – demonstrative anti-Semitism offers emancipation from emancipation, the comfort of repression

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism available to everyone regardless of race or religion, including Jews. The antisemitic act provides the excitement to surpass limitations of civility which are otherwise experienced as merely conventional; it can offer the actor an illusion of freedom from constraints, through gestures directed precisely against freedom; and, with or without political pretexts, these gestures allow one to indulge in the pleasures of hatred. The psychological calculus of anti-Zionism has nothing to do with expressing genuine solidarity with one group and everything to do with denying solidarity with another: it is all about showing how tough one can be, with only superficial interest in the specific contents of Palestinian or Israeli lives. Lawrence Summers, Judith Butler and campus anti-Semitism That kind of analysis however does not obviate the need to specify the problem. In 2006 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights determined that ‘many college campuses throughout the United States continue to experience incidents of antiSemitism, a serious problem warranting further attention’ and that such behavior may constitute a hostile environment in the sense of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. [8] At stake is less institutionalised discrimination, i.e. old-style limitations on admissions and employment, but a range of practices, including verbal and physical assaults on Jews which may constitute hate crimes, vandalism against Jewish religious structures (for example, attacks on Sukkot, the harvestfestival structures at some California campuses), and a misunderstood application of principles of free speech that has led some student newspapers to publish paid advertisements with holocaust-denying content. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights also found that ‘Anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist propaganda has been disseminated on many campuses that include traditional anti-Semitic elements, including age-old anti-Jewish stereotypes and defamations.’ This is where the parsing becomes complex. Criticism of specific Israeli policies is not in and of itself antisemitic. Selective or propagandistic criticism may or may not be antisemitic but is probably by definition intellectually insufficient. All this hedging misses the point however that anti-Zionism alone does not disprove an accusation of anti-Semitism; indeed anti-Zionism can very well provide a pretext for or slide into anti-Semitism, particularly when anti-Zionist rhetoric explicitly utilizes classically antisemitic rhetoric. Statistical research has demonstrated a strong correlation between degree of anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism, at least in Europe. [9] On September 23, 2002, then President of Harvard, Lawrence Summers delivered an address at Memorial Church on Harvard Yard on ‘Antisemitism and the Academy.’

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Nearly a year later, Judith Butler, Professor of Rhetoric at Berkeley, published a response with the title ‘No, it’s not anti-Semitic’ in the London Review of Books of August 21, 2003. [10] A close look at the two documents finds some points of unexpected similarity, even agreement, but there is also evidence of considerable misreading by Butler, in ways that are instructive regarding the topic of campus anti-Semitism. Needless to say, the mere fact of this exchange between two such prominent intellectuals testifies to the standing and urgency of the question. Given that prominence, the sensitivity of the topic and the interlocking of the texts, there is even a temptation to pursue a close reading, line by line. Here however some select observations will have to suffice. Both Summers and Butler oppose anti-Semitism, and they both declare that they speak as Jews, although they do so in very different registers. Summers reports how he had heretofore regarded anti-Semitism as a thing of the past, certainly distant from his personal experience and how he ‘attributed all of this to progress – to an ascendancy of enlightenment and tolerance.’ However in his speech he claims that a turn has taken place, which had led him to become less ‘complacent.’ This turn involves a global context of attacks on synagogues in Europe, the rise of politicians like Jean-Marie Le Pen (not mentioned by name but by inference, in the wake of his surprisingly strong showing in the French presidential election of the previous spring), and the tenor of the Durban conference (the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism which had been the site of strident attacks on Israel). But in his remarks, Summers’ point is to move from that larger picture and focus specifically on the academy: ‘I want to bring this closer to home,’ and he then asserts that antisemitic views have migrated from ‘poorly educated right-wing populists’ to ‘progressive intellectual communities.’ He follows with the one dictum to which Butler takes particular offense: ‘Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.’ Butler’s rhetoric is, in contrast, impersonal. Only once does she refer to herself in the form of ‘What do we make of Jews such as myself, who…’ (p.7), but otherwise she maintains a distanced perspective of trying to parse the difference between effect and intent, and between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, rather than taking an explicit stance of her own. Summers describes his own earlier predisposition against raising the charge of anti-Semitism but, reversing this erstwhile reticence, he now claims the importance of doing so in the current context and (perhaps especially) because anti-Semitism has entered the privileged halls of the academy; Butler concedes the

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism importance ‘for every progressive person’ to challenge anti-Semitism, but takes pains to argue instead for a wider critical discussion of Israel. For her, the urgency of a critique of Israel outweighs the importance of any discussion of anti-Semitism. Her intention seems to be to constrain the discussion of anti-Semitism to as narrow a terrain as possible (by limiting it to ‘those who do discriminate against Jews – who do violence to synagogues in Europe, wave Nazi flags or support antisemitic organizations’ [6]), which would effectively preclude any nuanced discourse analyses or a consideration of the polite zones of the academy. In contrast, Summers’ vision is more ominous and more complex, involving the putative intrusion of ethnic or religious antipathy into the university. It is perplexing to find Butler so unwilling to consider the possibility that universities might be home to prejudice, which is hard to understand except as a considerable idealisation of the university and/or a wilful obliviousness to anti-Semitism – akin to Summers’ admitted former resistance to lend credence to allegations of anti-Semitism (‘I have always throughout my life been put off by those who heard the sound of breaking glass, in every insult or slight…’). Yet they respond to this resistance in opposite ways. Some of this resistance is a Jewish story: the self-censorship involved in a reluctance (Butler’s or Summers’) to talk about anti-Semitism, is part of a troubled relationship to politics. Part of this however relates to the topic of this essay, a current of illiberalism within the university involving a predisposition to conformism, a reluctance to differ from the norm, and an intellectual risk aversion. The rise of anti-Semitism and, especially, the resistance to addressing it are part of this picture. For all their indisputable differences on Middle East politics – and to make the content clear, this is about Butler’s support for divestment, the political call to compel universities to refrain from investing endowment funds in companies doing business in Israel, and Summers’ opposition to it – both share the assumption that members of university communities are (or worse: should be) progressive, which is a somewhat dated way to say ‘politically correct,’ since conservatives, so the assumption, have no place in the capaciousness of the academy. Moreover both assume with breath-taking naivete that progressive credentials exclude – or ought to exclude – the possibility of anti-Semitism. Butler limits anti-Semitism to the true fanatics, the Nazi flag-wavers, a corollary to Summers’ ignorant populists. Of course Summers’ key point is that such bad populism can in fact contaminate good progressivism, but he too shares Butler’s rosy assumption about progressive comrades: genuine progressives never harbor prejudices. This optimism is however the low-hanging fruit: how shall we count the ways that they are wrong? What is the political blindness that leads both Summers and Butler to this idealistic account?

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 From Marx on the Jewish Question to the notorious Doctor’s Plot, the progressive tradition, far from excluding anti-Semitism, has always cultivated its own homegrown brand. [11] Dieter Kunzelmann had venerable predecessors. We are far beyond the time when one could plea ignorance to the extent of the tradition of left-wing anti-Semitism, its historical depth and its contemporary manifestations. Despite these proximities between Summers and Butler, there is however plenty of distance between them too, and these differences are perhaps more important than the similarities. On point after point, Butler misreads Summers or grossly overstates his claims in order to turn them into easier targets. She asserts for example that Jews cannot ‘monopolize the position of victim,’ (2) which is no doubt true, but Summers nowhere claims that they do. She engages in similar mendacity when she insinuates that Summers opposes ‘letting criticism of Israel into the public sphere’ (4), even though he states that there is ‘much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy that can be and should be vigorously challenged.’ That statement ought to be clear enough for literate readers and even for Butler, but she nonetheless confesses that she does not ‘know whether he approves of all Israeli policies’ (5), as if she were blind to his just quoted statement that not only single issues but ‘much in Israel’s foreign and defense policy can be and should be vigorously challenged.’ Perhaps she was skimming; in any case, Summers’ statement is quoted here twice because Butler misses it repeatedly. In various permutations she imputes to Summers a prohibition on any criticism of Israel presumably because he does not endorse her specific criticism of Israel and, in particular, her preferred vehicle of protest, the divestment campaign. It is as if for Butler a concern with anti-Semitism anywhere, and, in particular, in the academy were, in her view, incompatible with any criticism of Israel. Yet that absurd presumption is undermined by Butler’s own prose: for she too, despite herself, has to come to grips with anti-Semitism in the academy and not – this would be the easy case – with Nazi flag-wavers or right-wing populists – but in the very core of her chosen political community, the academic anti-Zionist movement. Fervently claiming that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism, she ends up having to confront an anti-Zionist antisemite. The repressed returns to haunt her, when her argument builds to a critique of Mona Baker, the academic in Manchester, England, who dismissed Israeli scholars from the editorial board of her journal and who, so Butler reports, subsequently attacked ‘Jews’ and the ‘Jewish press,’ which Butler – to my mind correctly – identifies as anti-Semitism. It is not hard to decipher Butler’s intent; her rhetorical strategy involves inventing a fictional

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism symmetry between Summers and Baker, both of whom she sees linking Israel too closely to Jews, so a critique of one quickly becomes a critique of the other. On one level the logic of the argument works by providing a reassuringly moralistic lesson about two extremes meeting: except that her prose thereby falls prey to its own deconstruction, since to make this argument she has to cite evidence (Baker) that proves her opponent (Summers) correct. Butler’s essay is entitled, ‘No, it’s not antiSemitism.’ Unfortunately for its author, it proves in fact that, yes, it is. Summers’ speech addressed the rise of anti-Semitism internationally and then focused on the transformation of university discourse; Butler does not mention the former, the larger context, and basically denies the latter, with the exception of her attack on Baker. In a follow-up letter to the editor of the LRB, Baker dismissed Butler’s charges against her, but somewhat revealingly attributed Butler’s discomfort with her (Baker’s) more aggressive anti-Zionism to Butler’s imputed need ‘to resolve her own anxieties at being a Jew who is highly critical of Israeli policies […].’ [12] In other words, Baker levels the charge that Jews cannot be, or have difficulties being, reliable and trustworthy anti-Zionists. Noam Chomsky has faced similar accusations: his career argument against Israel as an agent of Washington now faces denunciations from more radical anti-Zionists as a white-washing camouflage for the reverse hypothesis, the hypothetical Israeli domination of Washington, which is nothing more than the colorful antisemitic fantasy of conspiratorial Jewish world control. [13] Yet that is exactly a claim that has migrated on the path that Summers accurately described: from the murky margins of right-wing extremists to the buttoned-down center of the academy with Mearsheimer and Walt on the ‘Israel lobby.’ Butler accused Summers of having a chilling effect on public debate, although he explicitly stated that ‘academic communities should be and always will be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed.’ While the normative ‘should be’ is probably indisputable, the predictive ‘always will be’ has already turned out to be wrong, given the fact that the Regents of the University of California retracted an invitation to Summers to speak to them at Davis, after a protest movement developed in the faculty. The ostensible issue concerned Summers’ statement on gender and science, but Butler’s high profile attack on him likely contributed to his vilification in the progressive community. In any case, the cancelled invitation certainly demonstrates that universities will not ‘always be places that allow any viewpoint to be expressed.’ Here however the point is not really Summers or Butler, nor divestment or antidivestment, but the increasingly constrictive character of academy life, played out

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 in a drama over the possibilities and limitations of Jewish speech from which both Summers and Butler emerge wounded. The concern here is not the rightness or wrongness of their positions on divestment or on Israel, to which they each have a right, of course. However, Butler’s misreading of Summers’ plea is, effectively if not intentionally, a repression of his progressive critique of anti-Semitism, the price for which she has to pay when she faces Baker’s rejoinder. It is the rhetorical legacy of the self-destructive Sixties: Butler’s repression of repression – her effort to censor Summers’ putative censoriousness – becomes an emancipation from emancipation: not only by (and I use the term cynically here) surpassing the critique of antiSemitism but in the very rhetorical core of her argument, the caricature and refusal of his distinction between intent and effect. Few principles are more crucial to liberal jurisprudence than the difference between subjective intention and objective result. Butler rejects this distinction. Whether or not this turn might be taken as a sign of her vestigial Hegelianism, it certainly implies a chilling effect, a retreat from subjectivity, far beyond anything she ascribes to Summers’ speech. The Summers-Butler controversy, in conclusion, tells us about anti-Semitism and the responses it elicits, but it also tells us about contemporary intellectual debate. The university today too often organizes stage-managed controversies composed of irreconcilably incompatible positions. Long gone are the pipedreams of consensus or even just conversation. Instead we can see extremist speakers visiting campus in seriatim, typically attracting only the true-believers and their oppositional Doppelgaenger. Yet these flashpoints, sparks of a reified intellectual life, are lonely points of cold incandescence in the darkness of an uninterested institution. Today’s campus anti-Semitism is not about a broadly politicised world; on the contrary, it is lodged in a context of apathetic pre-professionalism and mind-numbing specialisation, where ideology can flourish without anyone really caring and even fewer ever really thinking. New Left sectarianism has morphed into post-modern fragmentation. Fanaticism and indifference have become roommates, and while indifference remains unconvinced, fanaticism is always good for a laugh, offering momentary respite from the boredom of career preparation for life-sentences in the service sector. In that sense, then, perhaps we are living the future of the Sixties: not in the sense of the consistency of thinking, not elaborate theory or even ideology, but an ongoing revolt against theory, the excitement of perfunctory performance and the seductions of thoughtlessness. Yet there is an alternative to that morose diagnosis, a vitality that, despite it all, continues to thrive within the academy, if only we would embrace its traditions and its attendant virtues: bold thinking, imaginative learning, and the innovative research which depends on a culture of

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Berman | From ‘Left-Fascism’ to Campus Anti-Semitism freedom. Russell Berman is Editor of Telos, and Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford University as well as Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. A version of this article was presented at a conference on ‘The Future of the Sixties: Radicalism, Reform, Reaction,’ at the Humanities Center, University of California, Irvine, April, 2008. Notes

[1] Wolfgang Kraushaar, ed., Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung: Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail, 1946-95 (Hamburg: Rogner & Bernhard, 1998), p. 259. [2] Ibid. [3] Ibid., p. 261. [4] Manfred Gerstenfeld, ‘The Failed Bombing by Leftists of the Berlin Jewish Community Center on Kristallnacht 1969, ‘Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006). [Rev. Wolfgang Kraushaar, Die Bombe im Jüdischen Gemeindehaus (Hamburg: HIS Verlag, 2005)]. http:// www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID= 388&PID=1631&IID=1655 [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid. [7] Gerd Langguth, ‘Anti-Israel Extremism in West Germany,’ in Robert S. Wistrich, ed. The Left against Zion: Communism, Israel and the Middle East (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1979), p. 257. [8] Campus Antisemitism, http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/081506campusantibrief07.pdf p. 3 [9] The notorious events at San Francisco State University in 2002 provide a noteworthy example, when demonstrators opposing pro-Israel students surrounded them in a threatening manner, leading to police intervention. More importantly a Muslim Student Association (MSA) flyer announcing the anti-Zionist demonstration had been circulated previously including an image with the caption: ‘Palestinian Children Meat – Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites under American License.’ Of the several groups listed on the flyer, only the MSA eventually took responsibility and apologized to the university president. Whether the university responded effectively or not is not the concern here. The example demonstrates the porousness of the separation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, as well as a seepage between the two. However, it should be noted that while universities typically issue verbal condemnations of anti-Semitism, there has sometimes been evidence of university officials’ minimizing allegations or setting exaggeratedly high barriers for grievances: in that narrow-minded spirit, some have argued that the Title VI provisions do not apply because the law was not intended to protect Jews as a religious group but only racially defined groups. http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/response/summary.htm On the proximity of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism see Edward H. Kaplan and Charles A. Small, ‘Anti-Israel Sentiment Predicts Anti-Semitism in Europe, ‘Journal of Conflict Resolution 50:4 (August 2006), 548-61. [10] C  f. Lawrence Summers, ‘Antisemitism and the Academy,’ http://www.frontpagemag.com/ Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=A2735511-B011-4127-8148-CF02D18CCC80; Karen

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Anderson, ‘Harvard President Sees Rise in Antisemitism on Campus, ‘New York Times (Sept. 21, 2002) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE7DD1F30F932A1575A C0A9649C8B63 and Judith Butler, ‘No, it’s not anti-Semitic,’ London Review of Book, August 21, 2003 http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n16/butl02_.html. Page references included in the text. [11] Nor do we have to restrict ourselves to that explicitly Communist lineage: in a matter which can surely not be attributed to Zionism, consider how long it took Jaures to stop dragging his feet and rally the socialists to the Dreyfus cause, which is however, from the standpoint of Herzl, precisely a matter concerning Zionism. [12] Mona Baker, Letter to the Editor, London Review of Books, September 11, 2003 http://www. lrb.co.uk/v25/n17/letters.html#letter6 [13] Cf. Ghali Hassan, ‘Protecting Israel: Chomsky’s Way,’ Countercurrents.Org (April 5, 2006) http://www.countercurrents.org/hassan050406.htm

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An International New Left? Dick Howard Author’s Introduction to the English Translation This essay was written for a special issue of the French journal Esprit, where it appeared in May 2008. The editors wanted to avoid the typical default of French exceptionalism, which is certain that the true origin and significance of that remarkable year 1968 (and of any other events or years, for that matter) is to be found in France, and more precisely still, in Paris, no doubt within the confines of the Latin Quarter, and among the intellectuals and the revolutionary sects that variously find their favor. [1] Esprit has only rarely been guilty of that type of selfcentred naval gazing in the decades during which I have been associated with it. On the contrary, what is striking is the ability of the journal to attract younger critical participants (and readers) who constantly open new paths because they are open to new experiences; they didn’t come to the journal as converts to an established church. In a way, it was my experience that was the exception, at least in the stereotypical French context; that is why I was asked by the editors to write about it. I’ve not tried to write a theoretical essay but have relied on anecdote and some biographical events to try to make a broader point about the emergence of a new type of Left, a radically different way of understanding the political, and a spirit of rebellion that could have been – and perhaps could still be – an essential element in a renewal of democratic politics. In that sense, this essay does advance a thesis. It is one that was suggested in a book that appeared already in June of 1968, written by Edgar Morin, Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis (under the pseudonym of JeanMarc Coudray). The authors argued, in their separate contributions, that the ‘events’ of May were a brèche, a rupture with the continuity of history – including the continuity on which the various types of Marxism founded their political hopes. [2] But that vision of historical progress leading to happy tomorrows was too tempting to abandon so easily; the rupture did not lead to a new understanding of the political. In a sense, most of what I have written in the years since 1968 has been an attempt to understand what could have been – and why it was not. I’ve reread Cara O’Connor’s translation, and at her suggestion I’ve tried to clarify for the English and American reader some of the allusions that an author can permit

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 himself when writing for a French public – whose conviction of its own importance is not entirely unmerited. (DH, May 20, 2008.)

* I left the University of Texas to study in Paris during the summer of 1966 because I wanted to learn how to make a revolution – or at least to understand the Marxist theory that had been identified with this skill. This decision is not so strange if one recalls the kind of political education and culture of a young American, like myself, who had participated in the civil rights movement and demonstrated against the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s. Our protests against segregation had some successes, but our criticism of the Vietnam adventure seemed to fall on deaf ears. It seemed that we were caught in a trap by trying to use the language of liberalism against the liberal system and its anti-communist rhetoric – a practice that only seemed to reinforce the problems we were trying to solve. We had wanted to win ‘bourgeois rights’ when it now seemed that it was the socio-economic reality of capitalist-imperial America that was truly evil. What we needed instead was, it seemed, a vocabulary that would permit a radical transformation of the liberal system; not just racial integration but a new and superior form of equality that did not stop at the border. Why France? France, in the shared imagination of critical Americans, incarnated the true revolution. It was the place where 1789 had become 1793, when a ‘bourgeois’ demand for political rights became a radical demand for economic equality that was finally consecrated in the first step toward a global revolution in 1917. The French revolutionary tradition was the more striking when contrasted to the liberal one that had given birth to the United States. In spite of its grand rhetoric, the latter had not even put an end to slavery in 1776 and was only now recognizing the injustice and social divisions that had condemned a part of the population to a segregated existence that was separate and unequal. For us, the myth of revolutionary France was further reinforced by the support found there for 20th century anti-colonial movements, including that of Vietnam, where the U.S. had stupidly picked up a lost cause because of its reflexive anti-communist foreign policy. A reflection of the power of this symbolic myth that linked France and revolution: one of my first ‘touristic’ visits in Paris brought me to the Stalingrad metro station! Why? Because one of our basic criticisms of American liberalism was that it minimized the role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazism. That a Parisian metro station would be

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Howard | An International New Left? so-named signified that political culture in France was not blindly enrolled in an anti-communist crusade. France also represented for us the land of critical philosophy, principally that of Sartre (Althusser had only recently published For Marx and Reading Capital, and structuralism had not yet crossed the Atlantic [3]). Sartre was the anti-bourgeois par excellence. Although he was not really a political philosopher (despite his grand existential-Hegelian-Marxist Critique of Dialectical Reason [4]), his was a moral stance built on the denunciation of what he called ‘les salauds,’ who manipulated the freedom that is essential to the humanity of the individual (including their own). Sartre was the Voltaire of his time; and we young intellectuals in the U.S. demanded nothing better than, with Voltaire, to ‘écrasez l’infâme’ (although we wanted to find the material means to realize the task). In stark contrast, AngloAmerican analytic philosophy, which confined itself to analyzing ordinary language and abstract logic, led only to the confirmation of existing social relations. [5] Finally, Marx’s work was available and hotly discussed in the French language, while it was scarcely translated in the U.S. (where, for example, I had no choice but to buy my three volumes of Capital in the English edition published in Moscow, as only volume 1 was easily available in U.S. bookstores). Indeed, this was the time (after de-Stalinization) when ‘revisionists’ in Eastern Europe were discovering the writings of young Marx, and Western critics were using them as weapons against the dominant ideology of the communist parties. [6] The March 22 Movement Some time after my arrival in Paris, I had found myself a room in the dormitory at the recently opened Nanterre campus, where I set out to read Capital. My window overlooked the shantytown close to campus, from which arose a yellow smoke attesting to the misery of the inhabitants of its shacks, and which remained for me a terra incognita. Somewhat later, I married a French woman and began to search for contacts with the French left. An earlier attempt had met a stinging rebuff when I went to the annual autumn ‘Fête’ organized by the communist party journal, L’Humanité. I had no money for admission, and despite my insistence that as a ‘foreign comrade’ I should be allowed to take part in the festivities, I was not even let through the door. This confirmed my suspicion that the communists belonged to the establishment and gave me cause to turn instead to the ‘public’ meetings of the Trotskyites – which were not precisely public, considering everyone had to

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 sign in under a pseudonym. This practice, as was explained to me, was based on the Trotskyist theory that on the day the (always latent) revolution could no longer be prevented by the false claims of pseudo-orthodox communists, the working class would have to be directed by true leaders who fully grasped the theory necessary for the realization of its historic mission. In the meantime, it was necessary to maintain anonymity (since the official communist party would not hesitate to physically eliminate its competitors) and forge a cadre of pure, tough, and true militants. Since I had no desire to wait for the revolution, I continued my activities against the war in Vietnam. This drew me to the attention of an underground organization that had been created by former militants against the war in Algeria, who had maintained their radical goals, deciding now to work with American deserters. Although they taught me some of the techniques of underground work, my contribution to this organization was minimal. I was not convinced that radical change could come from clandestine action. I mention this experience here only because this was what led me to publish a short essay in Esprit in March 1968, entitled ‘Les intellectuals français et nous.’ The essay was my reaction to a press conference by a group of independent leftist intellectuals led by Sartre, which appeared to me only to bring empty verbal support to an anti-war movement that needed material and active help. But, someone might ask, was one article by an unknown author in Esprit really worth any more than a petition or a press conference by renowned intellectuals? Maybe in this case it was, since it brought me the friendship of Pierre Vidal-Naquet, who agreed to join in (clandestine) discussions with a group of American deserters. [7] During the months that followed, the militant activities of the student ‘enragés’ at Nanterre spread. I took part, although I found them sometimes confused and often dogmatic. I remember a rowdy meeting in Nanterre where invectives were hurled back and forth for a long time over a resolution to support either ‘the peasants and workers’ or ‘the workers and peasants’ struggling in I-don’t-know-which country. Whatever the fundamental political distinction might have been, its significance escaped me at the time. It had to do, I think, with the historical-materialist view that a peasant revolution could only form the antechamber of the real workers’ revolution – an issue that in turn affected one’s understanding of what had ‘really’ taken place in 1917. Despite this, I tuned out; I was not in France to learn how to manipulate dead categories for partisan ends! Then, one fine day, the second of April 1968, during a General Assembly of the students who were occupying the campus at Nanterre, I heard a language that was free from the dogmatism of the a

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Howard | An International New Left? priori revolutionaries and the fraudulent radicals who intended to become human vehicles for history’s dictates (guided, of course, by the unimpeachable theoretical insight of their leaders). They were still speaking French; but they were talking to one another, not looking for signs of the future course of World History. Finally I could understand the stakes of the claims and participate in the debates. I sensed in the anti-establishment ethos of the new French student movement the same spirit that had animated the civil rights movement, which was in the process of transforming America. We had occupied the campus at Nanterre, and after the morning’s General Assembly we broke up into working groups. I proposed a tactic I had experimented with in the U.S.: the creation of free universities, where we who wanted to learn for ourselves could escape the dominance of the ‘system.’ This declaration of autonomy would make possible an education for autonomy. Was this reformism? Maybe, but still I considered myself a ‘revolutionary,’ as did the students at Nanterre, and as it seems did history itself, which was accelerating. But was I? Was it? Where were we going? How the young intellectual who had come to France to find revolutionary thought got involved in the journal Esprit is another story [8]. The first time I met Jean-Marie Domenach, who was then the editor in chief, he explained to me the progressive political project of the Gaullist left, which he supported at the time. It was not my cup of tea, but I accepted his invitation to attend the weekly meetings of the ‘Journal à plusieurs voix,’ at which the events of the day were discussed, debated, and finally published as short commentaries in the monthly issues of Esprit. As the student movement became increasingly radical, the critique of the ‘enragés’ – both in the media and at Esprit – became livelier. I was on the side of those who felt that something important was happening. The ‘enragés’ were not simply anarchists; their militant actions revealed flaws within the ‘system’ itself. To support my arguments, I brought a tract that had been distributed at Nanterre by the March 22 movement, [9] entitled ‘Pourquoi les sociologues?’ challenging the function of the social scientists in modern capitalist societies who were being trained only to discipline the working class. The editors agreed to publish it in the May 1968 issue of the journal. The same issue also contained a short essay I had written under the shock of Martin Luther King’s assassination on the fourth of April, simply called, ‘Résister.’ I appropriated the words of the martyred civil rights leader, whose own thought had grown more radical: ‘From protest to resistance.’ It is true that I wrote Resistance with a capital R, and that my unclear dream of revolution continued to be more a wish than a concrete project. I was still searching for a method that could unmask liberalism – that could reveal the iron fist under the velvet glove by

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 confronting its unjust practices with the principles that it professed. Then came the closing of the University of Nanterre, and the tear gas used against the protesters at the Sorbonne. The tear gas attacks put a premature end to the course on Capital that I had been giving as part of a ‘free university’ that I had organized in a small room on the second floor of the bookstore, Shakespeare & Company. We had just come to the crucial account of the ‘theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall,’ the analysis in Volume three that was supposed to prove convincingly the internal self-contradiction of capitalism. There were still 350 pages remaining in Marx’s account, but we never met again to study them. I don’t know whether I recalled then the concluding chapter of Lenin’s State and Revolution, written during the period between the February outbreak of revolution and the Bolshevik seizure of power; Lenin’s text breaks off abruptly, leaving the chapter on the Russian revolutionary experience unwritten because, as he explains in the Postscript, ‘It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ‘experience of revolution’ than to write about it.’ What practical contributions could we Americans make to the accelerating events of May? Summer vacation from the universities (which in the U.S. begins in May) was bringing to Paris quite a number of young people who had no comprehension of the stakes of the student revolt that had become a worker’s rebellion. This development was all the more regrettable since the massive protests at Columbia University in April, as well as the tactics of the anti-war movement, had a great influence on the spirit of the French student rebels at Nanterre. With some friends I joined in the creation of an ‘American Action Committee,’ which stood alongside other such action committees that had seized rooms in Censier [10] and at the Sorbonne itself, where general meetings were regularly held. We were convinced that our movement would be international; its aims went beyond France, however necessary France’s reform might be. Faithful to the ‘revolutionary’ spirit that we were immersed in, the American Action Committee tried to make contact with other participants in the great upheaval. One of the members of our committee, of Serbian origin, went to the factories to try to organize the immigrant workers, but the majority felt more useful working in the student movement. Nevertheless, we wanted to make a connection with the world of the workers, and this led to a meeting with young workers at Renault, organized with Daniel Mothé, [11] whom I knew from meetings of the ‘Journal à plusieurs voix’ at Esprit. But we knew we had no chance of becoming trade unionists;

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Howard | An International New Left? our influence would come with the debate about university reform that was the establishment’s attempt to co-opt the ‘enragés.’ Reformists were recommending that France adopt the American system and we thought we could offer insight into the drawbacks of this idea. We sent members of the committee to different debates and meetings, but time ran out. Finally, near the end of May, the government paralysis ended symbolically; the blocking of petrol supplies by the strikers that had paralyzed the country (and made it possible to walk peacefully down the middle of the Boulevard Saint Michel, debating with one’s neighbours rather than bustling headlong toward a private goal) ended: that weekend the traffic leaving Paris was unprecedented, the militant élan began to dissipate, the leisure society triumphed over the incipient democratic ‘brèche.’ A hope remained, however; at least with us would-be Marxist intellectuals for whom history seems always to offer lessons of hope: could Pierre Mendès-France, the great hope of moral socialism, become our ‘Kerensky?’ Alexander Kerensky’s temporary rise to power in February 1917 had given the Bolsheviks time to teach the working class the true stakes of the revolution; was it not possible that Mendès-France could play a similar role as a temporary Prime Minister? I don’t know how many people believed this idea of a repetition of history, but there were a good number who shared the illusion – among them were some circles of the PSU, notably Serge Mallet, the theorist of a ‘new working class.’ [12] The partial failure of the meeting at the Charléty stadium on May 27 – a crucial last-ditch effort that brought together a wide spectrum of students, workers and activists – essentially signified the end of the French movement. My revolution now became international, faute de mieux. Facing up to Socialism The sad end to the hopes of that lovely month of May did not put an end to my own. On the contrary, the spirit of resistance that characterized my time in France had expanded beyond the hexagone. I found it anew in London in June, where I went to pick up my younger brother, who was rewarded for finishing high school with a trip to Europe. Two completely contradictory experiences awaited me there. At a diner with some members of the editorial committee of the New Left Review I met Perry Anderson. He had just returned from Albania, where he was one of the first Western intellectuals invited to the country of the die-hard Maoist, Enver Hoxha. My stories of middle-class French students who took themselves for revolutionaries must have seemed insignificant when compared with the elevated activities of a true

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 ‘cultural revolution.’ [13] The next day I visited the Hornsey College of Art and Technology, which had been occupied that week by its students. Their demands had a strong corporatist ring, but their determined resistance to any compromises transformed its implications. What had begun as a demand for specific benefits became a movement of resistance to the system; they didn’t read French, but could just as well have written their own Nanterre students’ pamphlet asking ‘Pourquoi les sociologues?’ Had I taken my wishes for reality? Was Hornsey truly the spread to England of the spirit of resistance that had shaken France? However that may be, on my return from London I wrote a short essay for Esprit (which appeared in the August/September issue), optimistically entitled ‘Un début en Angleterre.’ Replete with hope, I left with my wife and brother to follow the path of the revolution, from Switzerland to Italy, then from Prague to Berlin and Frankfurt, before returning to the U.S. where the month of August delivered a double blow. The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia put an end to the ‘Prague Spring,’ and the Democratic Party convention nominated vice-president Hubert Humphrey, while young protesters became violent when they realized that the delegates to the convention did not take them seriously. The streets of Chicago were the scene of police riots that were pretending to contain anti-war protesters. The Democratic Party was in tatters and the war in Vietnam would continue for six long years marked by still more pointless losses of life. [14] Some aspects of this journey through Europe, prior to my return to the politically wracked U.S., are worth relating in order to understand the scope of the attitude of resistance, and its vexed relationship to Marxist – or even to revolutionary – thought. Throughout, we were in touch with militants who opened their homes to us and explained to us the subtleties of local politics and their own ways of resisting the hold of the ‘system.’ In no way were we delegates of any organization; it was simply a matter of sharing experiences and broadening horizons. The dogmatism of the sects was no longer alive that summer; language had been freed, and thought as well. We had no way of knowing that this candour, which would later be criticized as naïveté would disappear in the coming militant years. In the end, minds were not completely open. Marxism remained, as Sartre had stated in The Critique of Dialectical Reason, ‘the unsurpassable horizon of our times.’ I was intent upon visiting Zurich, where Lenin had spent the war before the armoured boxcar brought him back to St. Petersberg’s Finland Station. We were put up in the Pinkus Buchhandlung, a dignified second-hand bookshop, in which comrades

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Howard | An International New Left? from many countries, who had found refuge in Switzerland, donated or sold the books and pamphlets they had collected during their time as militants. Imagine what a find this was for a young American who wanted to come into contact with revolutionary thought! Also interesting were the protests around Kaufhaus, the big department store in the center of town, which activists wanted to turn into a youth center. I don’t know what came of these protests, but in any case the brief linkage between the old Marxist culture of the bookshop and the youth was not long lasting. I confess, I don’t remember much about our time in Italy, other than the summer heat and the abundance of small radical newspapers where friends worked. It seems to me that the hold of the communist party remained quite strong, which makes sense in a way, because in Italy the works of Gramsci were still respected. In any case, the hegemony of Italian communism on the left was mixed with a strong dose of anti-fascism, whose implications were all the more obvious when we all sang Bandiera Rosa rather than Internationale. Was this the opening that led to the ouvrierisme of the Red Brigades in the years that followed? It is the memories of my friends from Prague that are really the most important to me. What was crucial was not the so-called ‘Prague Spring’ itself, which for many was a sign that communism could be reformed. Rather, the constant radicalization of this process that had begun with the seizure of power by the reformists within the party was a sign that democratic freedoms, which were identified with the rights of resistance, could not be replaced by the outward signs of material equality. The lesson that I took from this was that communism simply could not be reformed – and not only because Moscow would soon invoke the ‘Brezhnev doctrine’ to prevent liberalization. My wife and I had already been to Prague during the summer of 1967, after I had taken part in an international gathering on Lake Balaton, in Hungary, of young leaders of the Eastern and Western bloc countries organized by the Quakers. With some others, I had proposed a resolution condemning the American war in Vietnam. The only person who refused to sign it was one of the Czechs. She refused, not because she was in favor of the war, but because she was fed up with signing petitions. Though the other Czech managed to persuade her, her resistance to the ritual demands of political correctness foreshadowed a future when the emergence of an autonomous civil society would destabilize the Soviet Empire. [15] After the Balaton meeting, we stayed briefly in a Budapest that still bore traces of the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Soviet invasion of 1956, and then moved on to Prague, where we reconnected with Jan Kavan, one of the leaders of the student movement. It happens that Kavan’s mother was English, so we were able to communicate easily, but this bit of good luck was hardly necessary. What struck me above all was the fact that despite a miscellany of languages in which we tried to communicate, we resistors shared a mindset that resulted in long discussions – either around pitchers of beer or during long evening walks in the castle-garden that overlooks the city. What was there to discuss? In 1967, I was still reading Capital; they preferred Dostoevsky; but as with the changed tone of the Nanterre radicals, there was a shared spirit that made communication possible and rewarding. I was not willing to abandon my search for the revolution; but when we met a year later, in 1968, I had become what one might call a premature member of the ‘anti-totalitarian’ left. [16] I was ready for the encounter with Claude Lefort and Cornelius Castoriadis, arranged by Pierre VidalNaquet, which would permit me, a little while later, to reconcile my experience in ‘68 with my theoretical research. But that is another story. [17] The trip was not over; it was necessary to pass through Germany before returning to France. I again experienced the contradiction I had struggled with since my departure for France: Marxism or militancy, revolution or resistance? In the U.S., the new left was identified with an organization called Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In Germany, our friends also participated in an ‘SDS,’ but the acronym stood for Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund. With us, democracy was primary; with them, socialism had priority. The distinction had significant implications. What was opaque to me was the West German dissidents’ relationship to their ‘socialist’ cousins in the GDR. Of all the militants of the new left that we met that summer, the West Germans were the most erudite and the most deeply immersed in the writings of Marx – possibly because his language was their own, permitting them to glory in the intricacies of his thought closed to those who knew it only through the simplification of translations. Did their theoretical erudition blind them to the political realities? I don’t know, but for some reason they asked us to hide in our car tracts against the Vietnam War, that we would transmit to their friends in Frankfurt. Why hide them? Didn’t the GDR also oppose the war? Whatever the political reality may have been, it wasn’t the pamphlets that ended up alarming the East German border-guards; it was a copy of History and Class Consciousness by the critical Marxist Georg Lukàcs, which I had naively left in view. Suddenly the border guards had opened the trunk, pulled up the backseat, and

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Howard | An International New Left? rifled through all the suitcases. We who had just left Prague were not surprised; like communism, orthodox Marxism takes criticism badly. Nor did this surprise the Frankfurt friends, who were adept practitioners of the critical theory identified with their university. But the lesson was ultimately forgotten, here as elsewhere; the new left abandoned its novelty in search of a revolution that was always on the horizon.

* I will end this story with a Franco-American anecdote. In the fall of 1968 I was back in Texas, writing my dissertation (on the movement of the young Marx from philosophy to political economy!). I was introduced to a French writer, Pierre Gascar, who was a visiting professor for the semester. He proposed that I organize a discussion to be broadcast on the public radio station France Culture. I called on Greg Calvert, an old former president of SDS, who spoke good French. As I recall it, the debate centered on a phrase often heard in France during May ‘68: ‘You make the revolution for yourself.’ [18] Hearing the slogan now, one would be hard-pressed not to detect the egoistic and hedonistic roots of neoliberal society; however, the story that I’ve recounted here suggests another interpretation, which I had not wholly grasped at the time, but which Calvert understood quite well. The time for a ‘revolution’ founded on a philosophy of history was over. No longer would individual freedom be a mere means to the realization of a pre-ordained future; the idea of the proletariat as a ‘universal’ class and of the colonized as its third-world stand-in was finished. This was the start of a new phase of resisting all heteronomy, of searching for autonomy, and of creating democracy. The emergence of ‘second-wave’ feminism, born at least in part from reflections on the implications of May ‘68 – was but one example marking the shift. One could no longer say to women, or to homosexuals, or to ethnic, religious, and ‘racial’ minorities, that their immediate interests must be sacrificed for the sake of ‘the’ revolution – and that the revolution would ultimately put an end to all these merely personal and otherwise egoistic miseries. In the years that followed, one could have the impression that revolutionary enthusiasm had itself thrown the revolutionary spirit of May into the famous dustbin of history. It seemed to many to be what Lenin had denounced in 1920: ‘an infantile disorder.’ [19] But as Marx liked to say, the old mole just keeps digging. Maybe I remain too much of an optimist, but I can’t help but think that

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 the candidacy of Barack Obama signifies the return of another Left, different from our own, and different also from the social-democratic dream represented by the New Deal. [20] This new Left (if that’s what it becomes) intends to be a postracial movement that refuses orthodox identity politics. It is awakening in young people (and others) a taste for the political, and it is reviving the demands for real democracy that animated the integrationist civil rights movement and the old American SDS. Would I have recognized this if I had not gone to study in France? – before events and experiences showed me that the revolutionary spirit I looked for in France can appear anywhere – and disappear so quickly that it does not even have time to recognize itself for what it truly is: the spirit of democracy.

Dick Howard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Notes

[1] The best illustration of this approach remains the fascinating two volume study, Génération, by Hervé Hamon and Patrick Rotman (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1988). [2] C.f., Edgar Morin, Claude Lefort and Jean-Marc Coudray, Mai 1968: la Brèche (premieres reflexions sur les evenements) (Paris : Fayard, 1968). [3] Louis Althusser’s Pour Marx (1962) was published in English in 1967; Lire le Capital (1968) made it into English in 1970. [4] The Critique of Dialectical Reason was not published in English until 1976 (by New Left Books). [5] C.f., John McCumber’s demystification of this stance in: Time in the Ditch: American Philosophy and the McCarthy Era (Northwestern UP, 2001). McCumber points out that circa 1948 there was a great interest in political thought in American philosophy departments; within a few years, coincident with the rise of McCarthyism, it had given way to the ‘analysts.’ [6] The communists at first gave as good as they got. It is in this context that Althusser’s stress on the distinction between the truly scientific ‘mature Marx’ and the ‘young Marx,’ who formulated a critique of alienated labor and a denunciation of the reification of everyday life, gets its political weight. It is worth noting that Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts were only translated into English in the 1960s. [7] Pierre Vidal-Naquet (1930-2006), was one of the leading French authorities on Greek history, and had been one of the intellectual leaders of the protests against the Algerian War. He went on to take principled critical stances against threats to freedom whether they came from the left or the right. In addition to his historical work, particularly his path-breaking study of the origins of Greek democracy in Clisthenes the Athenian, c.f., his two-volume Mémoires (1998). In English, see the engaged essays collected in The Jews: History, Memory, and the Present (New York: Columbia UP, 1995). [8] C.f., my discussion of the earlier years of Esprit in Dick Howard, Defining the Political (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989, pp. 135-49). [9] The ‘March 22 movement’ was the name of the movement at Nanterre, taken from the first

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Howard | An International New Left? occupation of the administration on that date; this was the movement led by Cohn-Bendit. [10] An annex of the Sorbonne. [11] Mothé was a former Trotskyiste who joined the group Socialisme ou Barbarie led by Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort. He had published at the time two important books: Journal d’un ouvrier (1958) and Militant chez Renault (1965). He left the factory after an injury and became a research sociologist, publishing numerous works on self-management under his own name ( Jacques Gautrat) and as Daniel Mothé. His reflections on May 1968 are published in the same issue of Esprit in which my essay appeared under the title: ‘L’usine, l’amphi et l’association de quartier: fermeture de trios espaces militants en mai 1968.’ [12] C.f., Serge Mallet’s Essays on the New Working Class. Ed. Dick Howard & Dean Savage (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1975). I didn’t know at the time that this possibility was also discussed among the Gaullists, although for them Mendes-France was to be a center-right alternative. C.f. Le Monde’s republication and comment on its front pages during the May events, in this case May 21, 2001. Recounting the debates among the different options for the government, ‘it is at this moment that the name of Pierre Mendès-France began to be considered as a possible alterative that would be acceptable to the moderates. The former Prime Minister, who then met with trade unionists including [teacher’s union president] Alain Geismar, interpreted the events as a regime crisis, declaring ‘There is only one service that the government can offer to the country: to resign.’ The fact that both the right and left wings of the established system would imagine the same solution is another reason to try to interpret 1968 as an historical brèche. [13] However, one of the editors wanted to take a look at the manuscript where I described in detail the birth of the March 22 movement, which he promised to return to me the following day. But he didn’t show up that day, and the carbon-copy of my text, which I had transmitted by an anonymous source (because the postal service was on strike) to the American magazine, VietReport), was also lost. [14] This was to be the origin of the current system of primary elections. Protests had already forced LBJ out of the running. The nomination of Hubert Humphrey signified that the party delegates only represented themselves, as a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Beaten in November by the Republican party of Richard Nixon, the democrats created a commission to reform the nominating process, headed by Senator George McGovern. The complicated structure invented for the occasion was put into play in 1972; and not incidentally, it was McGovern who carried off the prize bet before being roundly defeated in November by Richard Nixon. [15] We could not yet have known the first political writings of Václav Havel, who would bring out the implications of these protests for the creation of a democratic civil society. I should also mention that our two Czech friends were going to play an important role in the Czech struggle for democracy. Helena Klimova, due to her deep involvement in the Charter 77 movement, and Jan Kavan, acting from his forced exile in England. [16] The influence of this experience of 1967 on my point of view on the March 22 movement, and my appreciation of the contribution of Cohn-Bendit, manifested itself in a little essay that I published on May 17, 1968, in the American journal Commonweal, titled ‘Czech-Mating Stalinism.’ As I wrote about certain things that were not public knowledge, I published under a pseudonym to protect my friends. [17] C.f., The Marxian Legacy, whose first edition was published in 1977; an enlarged second edition appeared in 1988. [18] I never found out if our debate was actually broadcast on France Culture, being then as now more concerned with actual political questions than with the past. [19] C.f., Lenin’s 1920 pamphlet, ‘Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder.’

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 [20] I am speaking more specifically of the candidacy, rather than the candidate, whose charisma opposes itself to the voice of experience represented by Hillary Clinton. In this light, I should stress that the other lesson one could draw from the fleeting experience of 1968 is that it does not help to be contemptuous of reforms, and that it can be dangerous to gamble on a resistance that can descend into nihilism.

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a journal of politics and ideas

Forget 68

by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Editions de l’aube, 2008, 127 pp.

Philip Spencer Also under review: Mai 68 Explique a Nicolas Sarkozy, by André and Raphaël Glucksmann, Paris: Editions DeNoel, 2008, pp 234. The 40th anniversary of May 68 has brought forth a proliferation of publications of variable quality, not to mention accuracy. Amongst the various books, articles, poster and photo albums, two stand out as genuine efforts by participants to reflect seriously on its legacy, from what appear at first to be quite different current political positions. The first (written jointly with his son Raphael) is by Andre Glucksmann, whose decision to vote in the recent presidential election for Sarkozy aroused the ire of many on the left. Its title suggests an effort at some kind of selfdefence but actually it is a work which raises some profound issues that anyone on the left ought to feel the need to engage with. The other is a series of interviews with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, provocatively entitled ‘Forget 68,’ though anyone reading it will not want to do so in a hurry, for he makes a quite impassioned defence of some core values that rather too many who claim to be on the left today seem to have forgotten. But despite their obvious differences, there is much in common between these two sets of reflections. Both Glucksmann and Cohn-Bendit share a continuing enthusiasm for a famous slogan of May, chanted by millions on one of the great mass demonstrations that ‘we are all German Jews.’ (I ought to reveal at this point that I was myself a very young participant in these events which changed my life along with millions of others). It was a slogan brandished in open defiance of the repulsive attempt by both General de Gaulle and the French Communist Party to use nationalism and racist anti-Semitism to mobilise popular opinion against the student and rank and file workers’ movement. It was an attempt which backfired spectacularly, as it revealed the deep complicity and the essentially symbiotic relationship between these two ostensibly opposed forces. But it was more than that. It expressed a core value of the movement – its radical, anti-racist internationalism and universalism, a commitment to solidarity with anyone who was in revolt against illegitimate authority, West or East, North and South. The movement of May was both against the Vietnam War and against Communist Party dictatorship

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Spencer | Forget 68: Cohn-Bendit’s new book and terror in Eastern Europe; it was a revolt against both Western capitalism and Stalinism. What they also agree on, however, was that this was a revolt not a revolution. It did not aim at a seizure of power on the old Bolshevik model, with the attendant danger (repeatedly realised) of a new elite monopolising power and exercising state violence against enemies real and imagined at increasingly terrifying levels. In fact, as Cohn-Bendit makes clear, there was a deliberate decision not to go down this road but rather to create a space within which ordinary people could debate with each other and think for themselves, in which alternative forms of social, economic and political organisation could be imagined and tried out. This was the profound meaning behind the decision by the students to occupy the Sorbonne and the Latin Quarter, and which then inspired the mass, spontaneous occupation of factories and workplaces. (The demonstrations were spontaneous from the beginning. The first big one began with about 50 people inside the Sorbonne. I left it myself quite early thinking it would peter out fairly soon, leaving my flat-mate there. He only re-appeared at 3.00 in the morning and told me that hundreds of other students had joined in because they saw the police attacking the students. None of them had been organised to do so. When they were arrested in turn, their friends joined in and the ranks of the demonstrators swelled exponentially, to the considerable surprise of the organisers, who found themselves joined in prison by people they had had not seen at all when the original demo was broken up!) This radical, democratic spontaneity was the source of the movement’s strength. It enabled problems to be posed at all levels of French society, in education, in the workplace, in the home, between men and women, even if there was not yet agreement on how they could be solved. Of course it is true that the movement was rolled back, that elections were held in which De Gaulle was returned to triumphantly to power. There was a reaction, not only politically but socially and economically, although the feminist movement, inspired in many ways by May, did make irreversible changes in French society. For the revolt, to misquote Marx, continued its work like a young mole. France was never the same again. De Gaulle himself was evicted from office within a year even if it took another decade before the Right was forced to relinquish its hold on power. But by then the Communist Party’s stranglehold on the left was definitively broken. It is at this point, Glucksmann argues, that core elements of the legacy of May began tragically to be abandoned, as the Left, having flirted briefly with idiotic

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 terror in its Maoist form (though revealingly never as much as its counterparts elsewhere) capitulated to reactionary political and ideological forces in its own ranks. Politically it acquiesced in the election of Francois Mitterrand, a shady and dubious figure from the past and not originally on the left at all (very far from it actually) but who rehabilitated the French Communist party in some ways, albeit as a junior partner in an electoral alliance. Once elected president, it was Mitterrand who was to commit French troops to training and abetting the genocidal Hutu Power racists in Rwanda. Ideologically, after the collapse of communism in 1989 (which we had all prematurely envisaged back in May), many on the left sought to forget too quickly the horrors of Stalinism and ended up throwing themselves into what readers of this journal will readily recognise as the anti-imperialism of fools. But these two developments are connected. For how, as Raphael Glucksmann so bitterly asks, could those of us involved in May, who championed a revolt that would change the world, not respond to the catastrophe of Rwanda? What kind of radical change in the order of things have we envisaged, if it does not involve mobilising to halt or prevent genocide? What kind of imagination has the left restricted itself to, if it can only see evils out of one half-closed eye, and ignore far greater evils elsewhere, the mass murder of Tutsis, Kurds, and Chechens, just as it drew a premature veil over the long nightmare of Stalinist terror. None of these immense murders, as Glucksmann points out, were committed by western capitalist states. For the bitter truth is that all these genocides were committed by states which claimed to be anti-imperialist. The refusal to see that equal or greater dangers could come from this camp, to have the courage to look reality in the face, is perhaps the greatest betrayal of all of the spirit of May. These are problems that the legacy of May requires us to think about and not to brush under the carpet. To their immense credit, some from the generation of 68, like Cohn-Bendit himself or Bernard Kouchner or Joschka Fischer in Germany have sought to think hard about them, even if their answers have sometimes differed. In doing so, they have remained loyal to a fundamental set of values that were at the heart of the May events, a cosmopolitan form of solidarity and a commitment to think for oneself, not to be blinded by conventional ‘wisdoms’ of right or left. These values have been too often forgotten by too much of the left today (for how else could a Stalinist like George Galloway have become the darling of British antiimperialists?). It is the great virtue of these two books that they remind us again of that particular legacy of May 68.

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Spencer | Forget 68: Cohn-Bendit’s new book

Philip Spencer is Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University.

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1968 and the ongoing revolt against the masses Fred Siegel The events of 1968 came forty years after the publication of H.G. Wells’ The Open Conspiracy: Blueprint for a World Revolution, which would be reissued three years later with the new title What are We to Do with Our Lives. Wells’ tract was written on the Nietzschean assumption that a ‘declaration of war on the masses by the higher men is needed.’ Both as novelist and prophet, Wells was an enormous influence on the development of modern American liberalism. Showing the way for the radicals of the 1960s, Wells, referring to blue collar workers, dismissed ‘the facile assumption that the people at a disadvantage will be stirred to anything more than chaotic and destructive expressions of resentment.’ But, he argued, ‘lose that illusion (and) we clear the way for the recognition of an élite of intelligent, creative-minded people, they are the ones who can remake the world.’ Give the ‘best and the brightest’ their head, said Malcolm Muggeridge, mockingly expanding on Wells, and ‘golden youths,’ would ‘live delectable amorous lives’ of a heaven on earth. Let the people known today as ‘the creative class’ or the ‘brights’ rule, argued Wells, and man ‘will not be left with his soul tangled, haunted by monstrous and irrational fears and a prey to malicious impulse. From his birth he will breathe sweetness and generosity and use his mind and hands cleanly and exactly. He will feel better, will be better, think better, see, taste, and hear better than men do now. His undersoul will no longer be a mutinous cavern of ill-treated suppressions and of impulses repressed without understanding.’ Could any of the gurus of the 60s from Herbert Marcuse to Theodore Roszak have said it any better? The 68ers – who like Wells despised the small suburban houses and all the petty people without ‘proud dreams’ and ‘proud lusts,’ ‘all those damn little clerks,’ who lived in them – were the heirs to his vision. For the forty years since 1968, the 68ers have carried the idealised image of that time, their own ‘Open Conspiracy’ against the masses and their conventions with them. For many, the image is as vivid as ever. Their only glimpse of utopia, it stands in their mind like a sand castle that has never

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Siegel | 1968: Revolt against the Masses been eroded by the tides, or like the varsity letter jacket of a high school athlete preserved spotlessly over the years. 68ers (and I am one of them) will rightly and proudly tell you that they broke down (or if they are modest and accurate helped break down) the barriers holding AfricanAmericans, women and gays back from a better life. But this is only partly true, since in the course of using oppressed groups as their catspaws, they helped raise new barriers to African-American advancement. The 68ers were, their rhetoric notwithstanding, not so much anti-elitist as the vanguard of the Wellsian alternative elite. They both genuinely felt for the suffering of blacks and used them for their own advancement. In The Open Conspiracy, Wells appealed to the authority of science as the alternative to the authority of tradition. But the discipline and rigour associated with science, even if only as a rational ideal, was subverted in the sixties as a threat to the sovereignty of personal experience. Instead, the black hipster was idealised as the avatar of heightened experience. The collateral damage was consequential. Blacks who finally had the doors of opportunity opened to them found that the very values necessary for success – thrift, self-control and personal responsibility – had been dispensed with, along with older illegitimate claims to white authority over blacks. In the world of segregation blacks, notes Shelby Steele, had personal responsibility without opportunity; under the new Aquarian dispensation, it was reversed and so, to a considerable degree, was black progress. The growth of welfare dependency, the collapse of the schools, the rolling riot of day to day violence produced, as segregation had not, the creation of a massive urban underclass. The intersection of Aquarians and African-American has produced and enduring tragedy. Forty years later, the black underclass has become a self-sustaining phenomenon. By and large, the riot-torn sections of the big cities hit by sustained violence have either never recovered, or have only begun to recover in recent years. The same cannot be said of the schools in general and inner city schools in particular. The last thing minority kids needed was to be told of the virtues of spontaneity. The 68ers faith in theatrical confrontations as a source of authenticity, and the associated notion of learning as a form of enhanced awareness, took hold with devastating effects to this day. For upper middle class kids the deficit could be partly made up at home, but it left those most dependent on public institutions at an increased disadvantage.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 There was a similar moral deficit when it came to foreign policy. The xenophilliac 68ers, could by and large, never grasp that there were two competing truths about Vietnam. Yes, we, the Americans shouldn’t have been there. But yes, the Communists were brutal thugs. When after the war had ended and a million and half people went into the sea to escape the regime of the North Vietnamese Stalinists, the famously voluble moralising associated with the 68ers was replaced by sustained silence. Today, aided by the Bush administration’s extraordinary meld of simple mindedness and incompetence, the 68ers are similarly unable to come to grips with Jihadism. Too self-absorbed to be self-reflective, they both denounce the neo-conservatives for assuming that everyone wants freedom and democracy, yet insist that we can negotiate without conditions with terrorist regimes on the grounds that we share a great deal in common. Forty years later the hostilities of the 60s endure. When Barack Obama, the candidate of the by now sixty year old 68ers spoke of the ‘bitter people’ of small town Pennsylvania, he was in his own way replicating the hostility Wells displayed toward the ‘little people.’ It is those hostilities which in Hazlitt’s words are the ‘very spring of thought and action down to the present.’

Fred Siegel is a professor at The Cooper Union for Science & Art in New York.

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The True Revolutionaries of 1968 Eric Chenoweth In my view, the true significance of 1968 lies not in the student radicalism usually associated with this year, but in the events of Prague, Warsaw, and Moscow where dissidence and political opposition within the Soviet communist empire was reborn. By the time of the brutal suppression of the Prague Spring by the Warsaw Pact in August 1968, it had become clear to most everyone who risked opposing communist regimes that they could not be reformed from within but would have to be overthrown. Already in March of that year, students in Warsaw and other cities in Poland came together to demand university reforms as a metaphor for democracy – well before the Paris events. While their protests were met with arrests and imprisonment, that generation would became the heart of the Polish dissident movement and, together with their older mentors, keep alive the spirit of opposition during the harsh period of the 1970s. In 1976, the ‘1968 generation’ launched the Workers Defense Committee, which aided the movement for free trade unions among workers and thus realized a true coalition of workers and intellectuals. That coalition resulted in the birth of Solidarity. Which had more historical impact: Warsaw 1968 or Paris 1968? 1968 also forged a new generation of dissidents in the Soviet Union who committed themselves to non-violent opposition to the regime, despite its unlikely potential for success. On August 26, 1968, five days after the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, seven human rights campaigners went to Red Square facing the Kremlin with protest banners. Contrast two scenes. In May, in Paris, tens of thousands of students rioted and their actions were hailed in left-wing journals. Their actions were later hailed in left-wing journals. In Moscow, three months later, seven human rights activists, asserted their right to protest in a totalitarian regime, peacefully unveiled banners against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and were quickly arrested and sentenced to prison and Siberia. This act was generally ignored in the Western left journals (with some notable exceptions). The Red Square protest symbolised the birth of a new dynamic human rights movement that had been gestating for several years and that later spread throughout

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 the Soviet Union. Its leaders and activists, most importantly Andrei Sakharov, would be at the heart of the 1991 Revolution and rebirth of nations. Which had more impact, Columbia University or Red Square? 1968 was a turning point because people embraced a new idea. Not the Marxist, Sartrian or Marcusian dialectics inspiring students in France, Britain, and America, but the moral imperative of human rights. People in the Soviet bloc protested in public for their dignity and rights and this was the most revolutionary thinking of 1968. Forty years after 1968, we are still romancing about trivia. Forgotten are the authors and defenders of freedom of 1968, people like Sakharov, Bonner, Litvinov, Boguraz, Landsbergis, Kelem, Chornovil, Djemilev, Elchibey, Milosz, Modzelewski, Kuron, Karpinski, Kolakowski, Havel, Škvorecký, as well as the Western defenders of freedom like Berlin, Koestler, Meany, Orwell, Randolph, Rustin, and Hook. Perhaps, on its 50th anniversary, these true revolutionaries will define the meaning of ‘1968.’

Eric Chenoweth has co-directed the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe since 1985 and was editor-in-chief of its journal, Uncaptive Minds, from 1988 to 1997.

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Unholy Terror: Bosnia, al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad by John R. Schindler, Zenith Press, 2008, 368 pp.

Marko Attila Hoare Also under review: Christopher Deliso, The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West, Praeger Security International, 2007; Shaul Shay, Islamic Terror and the Balkans, Transaction Publishers, 2007. The role of al-Qaeda and the foreign mujahedin in the wars in the former Yugoslavia of the 1990s remains controversial, but the controversy is not over whether the phenomenon was a positive one or not. Reading some of the coverage of the subject, one might be forgiven for thinking that the wars fought in Bosnia and Kosova were merely individual fronts in something much bigger: the global struggle between the warriors and opponents of radical Islam. Yet as is so often the case, it is the smaller, local struggle that is more bitter and protracted than the global one, and that inspires the greater loyalty and commitment. The recently published books by John R. Schindler and Christopher Deliso, Unholy Terror: Bosnia, al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad and The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West respectively, are really books about the Balkans more than about radical Islam; and it is the rights and wrongs of the Balkan conflicts, more than the threat posed by radical Islam, that motivate the authors. Schindler and Deliso share a hostility to Islam and to the politics of Western liberal interventionism which goes far beyond any mere concern with the alleged Islamist threat in the Balkans. Deliso’s thesis of a ‘coming Balkan caliphate’ embraces Bosnia, Albania, Kosova, Macedonia and Turkey. Deliso’s animosity in particular is directed against the Albanians, and he faithfully upholds anti-Albanian stereotypes popular among the Balkan Christian peoples. He writes of ‘the opportunism they [the Kosovo Albanians] have shown in siding at various times with the Turks, the AustroHungarian Empire, Mussolini, Hitler, and, most recently, NATO’ (p. 51), thereby repeating the myth popular among Serbian nationalists, of the Albanians as stooges of repeated foreign invaders, though the Kosova Albanians’ record in this regard is absolutely no worse than that of other Balkan peoples. He attributes the emigration of Serbs from Kosova in the decades before 1999 to the fact that they were fleeing

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 ‘from a culturally and socially incompatible land dominated by clan-based Muslim Albanians’ (p. 37). He complains of the high birthrate of the Balkan Muslims, writing ‘it seems that Muslims, already outright majorities in some countries and political “kingmaker” minorities in others, are still expanding and will thus continue to enjoy all of the political, social, and economic benefits that this position entails.’ And while Deliso recognises that the Balkan Muslim birthrate may eventually fall, he fears that ‘these processes take considerable time and may take effect only after it is “too late” for the Christian populations to avoid returning to their Ottoman status – that is, second class citizens in their own countries.’ (p. 113). Deliso also complains about mosques being too noisy, on account of the call to prayer from the minaret: ‘Although it is not terribly politically correct, the term “sonic cleansing” is an apt one to describe the process by which aggressively visible and audible Islam gradually grinds away at non-Muslims, who gradually move out of what become, essentially, ghettoes by choice.’ (p. 86) Deliso makes many sweeping statements about the dangers allegedly posed by the Balkan Muslim peoples, which are then refuted by his own account. Hence, he writes that ‘the most fundamentally surreal dimension of the West’s Balkan misadventures must be that specific policies have directly benefited Islamic fundamentalism, as attested by the Western support for Muslim-dominated secessionist movements and paramilitaries with demonstrable ties to terrorists and mafia groups in Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia.’ Indeed, it is self-determination and democracy that are themselves apparently to blame for the alleged Balkan Islamist threat: ‘Ironically, the creation of liberal democracies in docile, pro-Western nation-states also enables the rival development of radical Islam within them.’ (p. 143) However, throughout his book, Deliso mentions that the fundamentalist version of Islam, as put forward by the Wahhabites, was rejected by ordinary Muslims in Bosnia, Kosova, Albania and Macedonia and by their political leaders, and was out of keeping with their native tradition (e.g. pp. 54-5, 58, 84-5). In one passage, he describes bearded Islamists in the Kosovar town of Pec attacking Albanians holding a candlelit vigil to mourn the American victims of 9/11 (p. 60). Deliso’s account of the aggressive way in which the Wahhabite movement is attempting to penetrate the Balkans, and the lack of receptivity on the part of native Muslims to it, is not uninteresting or uninformative. This is an important subject, and it is a pity that it is drowned in a sea of unsubstantiated propaganda directed against the Balkan Muslims and against Western policy, propaganda which his account of Wahhabite activities actually undermines. For why should self-determination for

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia Muslim peoples, or their high birth-rates, be a problem if they anyway popularly reject radical Islam? Deliso manages to overcome such contradictions and construct his bogey of a ‘coming Balkan caliphate’ through multiple conflation. He conflates nationalism with religious chauvinism; moderate Balkan Muslim national leaders with the radicals operating in their midst; Sunni al-Qaeda with Shiite Iran; al-Qaeda with the regimes of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates; quiet Saudi Wahhabite proselytising with al-Qaeda terrorism – all these diverse, conflicting elements are thrown together to make a single indeterminate green Islamic stew. Thus, we get passages such as this one, concerning the involvement of the Islamic world in the ‘Bosnian jihad’ of the 1990s: According to a former Sudanese intelligence agent, Osama bin Laden’s operations in Sudan during the early 1990s involved an ‘advisory council’ made up of some 43 separate Islamic groups, contraband arms depots, and several terrorist camps. Since the Saudi government preferred to keep its hands clean, supplying mostly money and logistical supplies, Iran would play the key role in importing the fighters and military equipment through the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the national intelligence service, SAVAMA... Weapons shipments from Iran via Sudan, overseen by intelligence officials of both countries and utilizing al-Qaeda-linked charities like the TWRA, also picked up in 1993 and 1994. (pp. 8-9) Out of this stew, Deliso draws multiple non-sequiturs, such as this one: ...Alija Izetbegovic’s single dream was the creation of an Islamic state in Europe. This vision was honored in December 2001, when he was awarded one million dirham ($272,480) prize for his services to Islam by the Crown Prince of Dubai. Only two months earlier, however, the terrorist attacks on America had revealed how complicit he and his government had been in allowing al-Qaeda to expand in Europe, through the Bosnian jihad.’ (p. 5). Or this one: ...the Clinton administration was planning for a second war to save yet another allegedly endangered Balkan Muslim population, this time the Albanians of Kosovo, and thus could not openly admit that it had already

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 made a huge mistake in Bosnia – despite a reality of increasingly spectacular Islamic terrorist attacks against American interests globally, like the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the East Africa embassy bombings of August 1998. (pp. 10-11). As the reader will note, the various assertions of motive and causality in these two passages are neither substantiated with evidence nor support each other, while the assertion that al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia, East Africa and New York were the result of the ‘Bosnian jihad’ is completely out of the blue. Deliso conflates the mainstream Bosnian Army struggle against Serb and Croat forces with the activities of al-Qaeda and the foreign mujahedin to create a single ‘Bosnian jihad,’ ignoring the fact that existing works on the Bosnian Army and the mujahedin, by authors such as Evan Kohlmann, Esad Hecimovic and myself have comprehensively demolished the case for such a conflation. Yet Deliso admits that it was the police of Izetbegovic’s supposedly ‘Islamist’ state that arrested a terrorist cell on 19 October 2005 that had allegedly been planning to blow up the British Embassy in Sarajevo (p. 14). He interviews a military intelligence analyst who tells him that, apart from the US embassy, ‘nearly all diplomatic facilities in Sarajevo lack even the most rudimentary protection against attack... all the others remain vulnerable to truck bombs or determined individuals wearing suicide vests’ (p. 23), making the failure of the Islamists to carry out a single successful terrorist attack against a Western target in the supposed Bosnian centre of world jihad all the more remarkable. Even Deliso’s questionable ‘expert’ witnesses admit that Islamist terrorist training camps ‘mostly don’t exist’ in Bosnia (p. 161). The facts simply do not fit Deliso’s thesis. In scraping the bottom of the barrel to find some that do, he complains that ‘Bosnian President Sulejman Tihić assured a gathering of dignitaries in Qatar that his country considered the American occupation of Iraq illegal,’ something that Deliso attributed to the ‘Islamic factor’ in Bosnian politics (p. 22). But an ‘Islamic factor’ was scarcely a prerequisite to considering the Iraq invasion to be illegal. Deliso draws upon some highly dubious sources in support of his thesis about the importance of Bosnia in the development of the global jihad. One such is ‘terrorism expert’ Darko Trifunović of Belgrade University, whom Deliso quotes about ten times in support of his argument. The ‘terrorism expert’ Trifunović makes statements such as ‘what the West seems to have forgotten is that long before the [2001] terrorist attacks against America, the Bosnian Serbs were fighting against

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia jihad, a literal jihad ordered and funded by Osama bin Laden, in their own country. Former mujahedin have told me that bin Laden personally ordered them to fight Christians in the Balkans – and later, to expand in Europe, especially Italy and Spain. The West is now paying the price for supporting the mujahedin against the Serbs.’ (p. 143) A comment of this kind might raise suspicions as to its author’s objectivity in even the most naive observer – even one who did not already know that Trifunović had been expelled from participation in the 11th European Police Congress after the organisers learned that he was a Srebrenica denier who reduced the figure for the Srebrenica massacre to less than one hundred, and who, in an email correspondence with two Bosnian Muslims posing as a Serb, said of the Srebrenica Muslims that ‘I wish Mladić had killed them all.’ Another of Deliso’s sources is a certain Nebojsa Malic, whom Deliso describes as a ‘native Bosnian political analyst.’ Deliso quotes Malic as saying: ‘Izetbegovic’s vision of Bosnia was not a multi-ethnic democracy, but a multi-caste hierarchy of the kind that existed under the Ottoman Empire, the memories of which were still fresh at his birth in 1925.’ (p. 25) Deliso does not mention that this particular ‘native Bosnian political analyst’ was a signatory of the petition of the ‘International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević’ which describes Milošević as a ‘Serbian patriot’ whose ‘crime was to set an example to the world by resisting NATO aggression.’ Malic supported the neo-Nazi Tomislav Nikolić in this year’s Serbian presidential election; after Nikolić’s defeat, he complained that the Serbs had just proven that they ‘don’t have the guts’ to fight over Kosova. While quoting the most raving Serb bigots as though they were objective experts, Deliso has consulted few genuine scholarly works on the Balkans, and his references to Balkan history contain some real howlers. Thus, he writes: ‘Both Croatia and Muslim Bosnia had served as fascist puppet states for the Nazis, during the Second World War’ (p. 7) – there was, of course, no Bosnian fascist puppet state during World War II. Deliso describes Yugoslavia as a country that had ‘sided with the United States in two world wars’ (p. 41) – unlikely, given that Yugoslavia did not exist until after World War I, whereas in World War II, Yugoslavia signed an alliance with Nazi Germany but was then invaded and occupied by it – all while the US was still neutral. Deliso’s account of recent events in the Balkans is no more accurate. He describes Izetbegovic’s close ally Hasan Čengić as ‘a veteran of the World War II SS Handzar Division who reincarnated the unit while serving as Bosnia’s deputy defense

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 minister in the early 1990s.’ (p. 8) It is unlikely that Čengić was a veteran of the SS Handzar Division or of World War II – given that he was born in 1957. Nor does Deliso provide any evidence at all to support his assertion that Čengić ‘reincarnated’ the SS Handzar Division in the 1990s. As I have written elsewhere, claims that a ‘Handzar Division,’ named after the SS unit from World War II, was ‘reincarnated’ by Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s appear to rest on a single piece of ‘evidence’: an article by British journalist Robert Fox, published in Britain’s Daily Telegraph on 29 December 1993. Fox’s article is based solely on second-hand information and contains factual inaccuracies. Fox himself did not actually meet anyone who belonged to the alleged ‘Handzar Division,’ but merely reported its existence on the basis of what unnamed UN officials on the ground told him. But even this weak source, which Deliso cites, does not implicate Čengić in the Handzar Division’s alleged ‘reincarnation.’ Deliso’s book is not merely a piece of bad scholarship – although it is undoubtedly that. He engages in the sort of atrocity denial and conspiracy theorising that characterises supporters of the former regime of Slobodan Milošević. Thus, in writing of the Serbian massacre of Albanian civilians at the village of Račak in January 1999, Deliso writes: ‘An alleged Serbian “massacre” at the Kosovo village of Račak, later proved by a UN forensics team to have been a place of legitimate battle, provided the necessary justification for Clinton to start the bombing.’ (p. 43) The nonsense statement ‘proved by a UN forensics team to have been a place of legitimate battle’ is a case of Deliso fluffing his denialist lines. Schindler’s subject matter is narrower than Deliso’s, being confined essentially to Bosnia. It is less a study of the role of al-Qaeda and the mujahedin in Bosnia and more a diatribe against the Bosnian Muslims and the Bosnian cause. Despite the author’s claim to having had a youthful flirtation with Islam (p. 13), he is clearly hostile to the religion and views the Bosnian war on this basis: ‘Bosnia’s Muslims were really Muslims, and some of them adhered to a faith that was deeply hostile to Western concepts of freedom, democracy, and human rights.’ (p. 19) Furthermore, ‘Muhammad himself endorsed, and practiced, the violent spreading of the faith and considered it the obligation of every Muslim’; consequently, ‘As devout traditionalist Muslims, Izetbegovic and the SDA [Party of Democratic Action] leadership adhered to the ideology of jihad that stands at the center of their faith.’ Schindler considers the term ‘fundamentalist’ meaningless when applied to Islam, because ‘[a]ll truly believing Muslims are, from a Western viewpoint, “fundamentalists”’

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia (pp. 116-17). This hostility to Muslims and Islam appears to be the guiding motive behind Schindler’s book. In this book, al-Qaeda and the mujahedin play only supporting roles. After the introduction, the first third of the book makes no mention of them; it instead constitutes a polemic against the former regime of Bosnia’s Alija Izetbegovic and against the supporters of Bosnia in the West. Indeed, Schindler follows the well trodden revisionist road that was long ago laid down by supporters of the regime of Slobodan Milošević and of the Great Serbian cause – of which the British magazine Living Marxism was perhaps the most notorious – of a Western media conspiracy to demonise the Serb side in the war and fabricate Western atrocities. Schindler puts the term ‘concentration camps’ in quote marks when referring to the Serb camps of Omarska, Manjača and Trnopolje, claiming that all media reports of such camps were ‘poorly sourced and based on second- and third-hand information, much of which was flat wrong’ (pp. 83-4); and he accuses the Bosnians of staging massacres of their own civilians in order to incriminate the Serbs (pp. 92, 186). Schindler revises the death-toll of the Srebrenica massacre downward to ‘as many as two thousand Muslim men, mostly soldiers’ (p. 231) – although, in one of several internal contradictions in this book, he earlier put the figure at about seven thousand (p. 227). He argues that ‘[w]hile this was unquestionably a war crime, it is difficult to term it genocide’ (p. 231) – though it was not so difficult for the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, both of which formally described the Srebrenica massacre as ‘genocide.’ Instead, Schindler portrays the Srebrenica massacre as Serb revenge for earlier Muslim attacks on Serb civilians, and employs a gross racial stereotype in the process: ‘To Mladić’s troops, who like all Bosnians believed in blood feuds and payback, this was simple revenge.’ (p. 231). Schindler describes the siege of Sarajevo as a ‘siege manqué’ (p. 189) and as a ‘fauxsiege,’ where ‘conditions were much more normal than the Western media was willing to portray’ (p. 203), despite the Serb besiegers’ killing of thousands of people in Sarajevo during the war. Perhaps most tellingly of all, he claims (erroneously): ‘Ethnic cleansing, though unpleasant, was no more than the counterinsurgency doctrine learned by three generations of JNA [Yugoslav People’s Army] officers, who were trained in hunting down “fifth columnists” and “terrorists” by expelling sympathisers as well as fighters.’ (p. 82) He then endorses a CIA report, according to which: ‘The Bosnian Serb Army undertook these ethnic cleansing operations

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 because it believed the Muslim population posed an armed threat or could act as a “Fifth Column” during the war with the Bosnian Government.’ (p. 82). If the above citations suggest whose side Schindler is on, they do not properly convey the sheer extent of the deception in which he engages. He writes: ‘Milošević wanted Bosnia and Hercegovina to remain in Yugoslavia, but failing that he would settle for a partition that would leave the ethnically Serbian parts under Belgrade’ (p. 63). Anyone who has looked at a map of the areas of Bosnia occupied by Serb forces in the early weeks of the Bosnian war, while they were still under the control of Belgrade and Milošević, knows that this is untrue; they occupied huge areas in eastern and northern Bosnia in which the Muslims and/or Croats were in the majority. Schindler writes that ‘the [Yugoslav] army in the months leading to war in most cases tried to place itself between Serbs and Muslims and defuse tensions’ (p. 66), suggesting he has not read, or has simply ignored, the books by authors such as Norman Cigar, James Gow, Smail Cekic, myself and others that detail the unity of purpose between the JNA and the Bosnian Serb nationalists in the preparations for war. Schindler writes that ‘Belgrade sought to arm the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia, fearing that Yugoslavia was headed for dissolution’ (p. 68) – ignoring the fact that Belgrade was itself engineering Yugoslavia’s dissolution, as revealed in sources such as the published diary of Milošević’s close collaborator Borisav Jović, former president of Yugoslavia and of the Socialist Party of Serbia. Schindler then writes: ‘The JNA General Staff was not brought into the plan’ of arming the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia (p. 68) – again, he has either not read, or has ignored, the memoirs of Veljko Kadijević, the most senior figure in the JNA during the war in Croatia, who describes in detail the JNA’s role in arming Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia. Schindler continues, ‘Belgrade saw this concept [of arming the Serbs] as defensive, a plan to protect Serbs outside Serbia – and, in extremis, to prevent another genocide against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia’ (p. 68) – leading one to ask why Belgrade showed so little interest in protecting the substantial Serb populations of cities such as Zagreb and Split, while devoting so much energy to conquering territories such as eastern Slavonia, where Serbs were a small minority. Schindler portrays the ‘Muslim’ (i.e. Bosnian) side as being the one that was initiating preparations for war, while the JNA was merely responding (p. 72). In order to make a case for this blatant falsehood and the arguments that flow from it, Schindler simply avoids mentioning almost all the acts of aggression carried out

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia by the JNA in the first weeks of the war: the conquest of Zvornik, Foça, Višegrad, Kupres, Doboj, Derventa, Brčko and other towns; and the shelling of Mostar and Sarajevo. He consequently portrays the Bosnian military’s action as coming out of the blue, enabling him to portray it as the aggressor – not very convincing to anyone who knows the history of the war, but enough to deceive an uninformed reader. Having failed to mention all these coordinated Serbian acts of conquest, he then describes ‘two unprovoked Muslim attacks on the JNA that fatally poisoned relations between the army and the SDA’: the Bosnian attack on the JNA in Sarajevo on 3 May and in Tuzla on 15 May. Well, yes, the attacks were ‘unprovoked’ if you do not consider a military assault on your country, the conquest of many of your towns and massive atrocities against your civilian population to count as a ‘provocation.’ Schindler claims the attack on the JNA in Sarajevo ‘caused lasting bitterness among the Serbs,’ and describes the attack on the JNA in Tuzla as a ‘killing spree’ and a ‘massacre’ (pp. 80-1). Yet the JNA was a military target, and attacking a military target was, presumably, a reasonable thing to do in war. By contrast, Schindler does not mention the Serb and JNA massacres of Muslim civilians that had been taking place all over Bosnia, or whether they might have ‘caused lasting bitterness’ among the Muslims. Similarly, Schindler mentions attacks on Serb civilians carried out by Naser Orić, the Bosnian Army commander in Srebrenica, between May and December 1992, claiming that it was ‘[s]mall wonder that the Bosnian Serbs thirsted for revenge against the Muslims of Srebrenica’ (p. 228). But he does not mention the Serb attacks on Muslim civilians all across East Bosnia that preceded Orić’s actions. While whitewashing the role of the Milošević regime and Yugoslav army in engineering the war, Schindler suppresses or misrepresents evidence in order to make his case: that Izetbegovic and his fellow SDA politicians were radical Islamists. He therefore makes claims against the Bosnian leadership that anyone with a cursory knowledge of the subject knows to be untrue. This involves attempting to portray Izetbegovic and his SDA as being unwilling to share power with the Bosnian Serbs. He claims that following the fall of the Communist regime in Bosnia in 1990 and the emergence of free political parties, the Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic offered Izetbegovic and his party a coalition, but that the ‘Muslims expressed no interest’ (p. 63). In fact, Izetbegovic and the SDA did indeed form a coalition with the Karadzic’s Serb nationalists, and with the Croat nationalists, that resulted in posts in the Bosnian government, presidency and administration being equally divided between the three groups of nationalists, with key posts going to the Serbs – including the command of the Bosnian Territorial

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Defence. Schindler then misrepresents the plan negotiated between Karadzic and the dissident Muslim politician Adil Zulfikarpašić in August 1991 as a ‘powersharing plan’ (p. 71), omitting to mention that Serbs and Muslims already shared power in Bosnia, and that the plan was in fact aimed at keeping Bosnia within Milošević’s Serbian-dominated rump Yugoslavia. Schindler, indeed, argues that Izetbegovic and his party wished to deny the Bosnian Serbs full citizenship – but produces no evidence to back up his claim, other than an unsupported assertion by the Belgrade historian Aleksa Djilas (p. 64). Schindler relies on extremely dubious source material to make his case against Izetbegovic and the SDA. One eyewitness whom Schindler quotes approvingly several times is Fikret Abdic (pp. 198, 203, 217). Abdic is certainly very liberal in his denunciation of Izetbegovic, but Schindler fails to mention that Abdic is a convicted war-criminal who staged an armed rebellion against his own democratically elected government, and fought against it on the side of Serb forces invading from outside Bosnia, from Serb-occupied Croatia. Another eyewitness in support of Schindler’s case against Izetbegovic is Aleksandar Vasiljević, head of Yugoslav military intelligence (p. 72-3) – Schindler takes everything he says about Izetbegovic at face value. A third is the former US State Department official George Kenney (p. 86), who resigned in protest at US inaction over Bosnia, but then changed sides, becoming one of the most vocal enemies of the Izetbegovic regime. Schindler does not mention the extent of Kenney’s conversion, or the fact that Kenney wrote to Milošević, while the latter was in prison in The Hague, to assure him that he considered him innocent of all charges against him, and that he considered his trial to be a ‘show trial.’ So dubious, indeed, is Schindler’s source material, that it is difficult to believe that he is using it innocently, or that he is attempting to convince anybody but the most naive of the merits of his case. He claims that Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdžić declared an ‘Islamic holy war’ on Bosnian TV in July 1995 (p. 200) – his source for this is the Belgrade news agency SRNA. He claims that the Bosnian Army murdered the Bosnian Croat commander Vlado Šantić (p. 214) – his source for this is the Bosnian Croat newspaper Dnevni list, which is linked the nationalist Croat Democratic Union. He tells of mujahedin snuff videos, in which Bosnian Army commander Sakib Mahmuljin allegedly boasts of having sent a gift of twentyeight severed Christian heads to Izetbegovic and twenty-eight more to Iran, and of Serb prisoners being made by the mujahedin to kiss the severed heads of other Serbs that were nailed to trees (pp. 166-67) – but Schindler has not actually seen any of

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia these videos; his only source is one Croatian and one Serbian newspaper article. Schindler even endorses the view of the intelligence services of Franjo Tudjman’s Croatia concerning the alleged Islamic threat, arguing that ‘the unheeded warnings from the Croatian intelligence services about the unwisdom of entering an alliance with radical Islam and the likes of al-Qaeda had been prescient.’ (p. 215). Schindler describes Osama bin Laden as having been one of Izetbegovic’s ‘friends’ (p. 239), though he has no evidence for this. He cites several sources in support of his claim that bin Laden was in Bosnia during the war; the one he describes as ‘most credible’ being the German journalist Renate Flottau, who claims to have met bin Laden in the foyer of Izetbegovic’s office in the early 1990s (p. 123). Izetbegovic’s staff told Flottau that bin Laden was ‘here every day and we don’t know how to make him go away’ (p. 124). As I mentioned in my own book on the Bosnian Army, Izetbegovic himself never ruled out the possibility that he may have met bin Laden, but stated that he had no recollection of having done so; he pointed out that he met thousands of foreign Muslim visitors during the war. Izetbegovic was, of course, visited by many people during the war who were certainly not his ‘friends,’ and many who were not Muslims, but Schindler jumps from providing evidence that bin Laden may have visited Izetbegovic to claiming that bin Laden was Izetbegovic’s ‘friend.’ Other evidence that he produces on this score is similar in character: e.g. the claim of one of Izetbegovic’s domestic opponents, the Social Democrat Sejfudin Tokić, who ‘attested that photos exist of Izetbegovic and bin Laden together’ (p. 125) – photos which, needless to say, Schindler has not seen. Most of Schindler’s case against Izetbegovic and the SDA is based upon this sort of unsubstantiated rumour. Like Deliso, Schindler claims that Bosnian Muslim radicals during the war established a military unit named the ‘Handzar Division,’ named after the Nazi SS division of the same name that had existed during World War II. And like Deliso, he bases this claim on the solitary, tendentious newspaper article by Robert Fox. One of the more amusing of Schindler’s blunders concerns the scientific calculation of the figure for Bosnian war-dead carried out by Mirsad Tokaca’s Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo, which placed it at about one hundred thousand. Schindler seems to endorse this figure wholeheartedly, seeing it as proof that earlier estimates of Bosnian war-dead had been ‘grossly exaggerated,’ and complaining that Tokaca’s result ‘got minimal attention in Bosnia or abroad’ (p. 317). The reason this is amusing is that Tokaca’s figures disprove several of the figures for Serb dead at the hands of Bosnian forces that Schindler himself cites. Thus, Schindler claims that

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 ‘more than 3,000 Bosnian Serbs, some soldiers but at least 1,300 unarmed civilians, had been killed by Muslim forces based in Srebrenica’ (p. 228). Yet according to Tokaca’s calculation, only 849 Serb civilians were killed in the whole of Podrinje – the region that includes Srebrenica, and where Oric’s alleged crimes occurred – in the whole of the war. Likewise, with regard to the Serb victims of the Sarajevo Muslim warlord Mušan Topalović-Caco, Schindler claims: ‘By the war’s end, it was clear that at least two thousand Sarajevo Serbs had fallen victim to Caco’s gang, though the civic association representing the city’s Serbs claimed the true figure was closer to five thousand’ (p. 105). Yet according to Tokaca’s figures, only 1,091 Serb civilians were killed in the whole of the Sarajevo region during the war, and this includes those killed by the Serb siege. Schindler claims that ‘at least 1,500 Croatian civilians were killed in the fighting’ between Muslims and Croats (p. 99), yet according to Tokaca’s figures, in the two regions of Bosnia encompassed by the Muslim-Croat conflict, Central Bosnia and Neretva, only 786 Croat civilians were killed during the entire war, including those killed by Serb forces. So when Schindler writes that Tokaca’s figures ‘got minimal attention in Bosnia or abroad,’ he is probably referring to himself. Schindler claims that the SDA had ‘helped establish the beginnings of an Islamist statelet in Europe’ (p. 253), but scrapes the bottom of the barrel to find evidence for this. He admits that ‘Izetbegovic and the party leadership, for all their waxing Koranic to improve public morality, were careful to never speak openly about their plan for implementing a fully Islamic society.’ (p. 196) But if Schindler is unable to find evidence for Izetbegovic’s alleged Islamist plans in what he said, neither is he able to find it in what he and his party did. He mentions an SDA election poster of 2000, entitled ‘Beautiful like Sarajevo girls,’ showing three female faces – ‘two in Western makeup, one in hijab,’ and notes: ‘This was the SDA’s new Bosnia, forged in a terrible war, and it had many wondering which worldview – Western and secular or Islamist and radical – the party really stood for.’ (p. 274). Yet an election poster that shows two Western-style women coexisting with a woman in hijab cannot by any stretch of the imagination be taken as evidence of a radical Islamic world-view. Likewise, concerning the unproven allegation that Izetbegovic collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, Schindler writes: ‘Even out of office, the SDA founder continued to deny allegations that he had been a Nazi collaborator as a young man and had served in the Bosnian Muslim 13th Handzar Division of the Waffen-SS. Though no evidence emerged to tie him directly to the Nazis, it was nevertheless significant, observed a Sarajevo pundit, that Izetbegovic continued to

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia feel the need to publicly deny rumours that had existed for many years.’ (p. 276) – an argument so feeble that it defies comment. Schindler admits that Bosnia engaged in a ‘modest participation in the American-led war on Islamist terrorism’ but complains that this provoked ‘open resentment among Bosnian Muslims,’ and that ‘local newspapers regularly carried attacks on America and its leader “the state terrorist Bush.”’ (p. 293). Damning evidence indeed – most of Christian Europe was probably ‘Islamist’ by this standard. Most instances of supposed ‘Islamist terrorism’ in the post-Dayton period that Schindler cites in his book turn out simply to be cases of former mujahedin attacking Croat or Serb civilians, above all refugees trying to return to their former homes (pp. 263-64), much as Serbs and Croats likewise attacked returning refugees from other communities – though Schindler does not mention the latter. Schindler explains away the absence of genuine Islamist terrorism in Bosnia by claiming that ‘most mujahidin were wary of targeting US or Western interests in Bosnia – anywhere else was fair game – because they appreciated that NATO gave them a de facto safe haven after Dayton.’ (p. 266). So Bosnia was free of Islamist terrorism because the type of Islamist terrorists based there did not like to attack Western targets. It therefore perhaps did not matter so much that, according to Schindler, ‘the Muslim police underperformed when it came to tracking down wanted holy warriors.’ (p. 262). Yet Schindler, like Deliso, mentions the Bosnian police arresting on 19 October 2005 an armed terrorist cell that was planning to attack the British Embassy (p. 318) – somehow the police of the ‘Islamist statelet’ had managed to overcome their reluctance to act against Islamists and staved off an attack against a Western target. There are so many factual errors and internal contradictions in Schindler’s book that it is impossible to list them all, so what follows are just some examples. Schindler claims that ‘reliable analysis concludes that between five thousand and six thousand Islamic fighters came to Bosnia during the war’ (p. 162) – having previously written that ‘there were probably four thousand foreign Islamists who fought for Sarajevo during the civil war’ (p. 119). He claims that the Bosnian Serbs ‘made up most of the agricultural population in Bosnia, and therefore controlled a disproportionate share of the land to be cleared of non-Serbs,’ which is simply rubbish – more agricultural land in Bosnia was owned by Muslims than by Serbs before 1992. Schindler claims that ‘Ustasha’ means ‘uprising’ (p. 33), when in fact it means ‘insurgent.’ He claims that Džafer Kulenović was made vice-president of the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ in November 1941 (p. 33); in fact, he was made

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 deputy prime-minister. Schindler claims that during World War II ‘the Serbs of Bosnia and Croatia were also the only Yugoslav nation exposed to actual genocide’ (p. 60) – he is either unaware, or chooses to ignore, the work by two leading Yugoslav historians of the World War II genocide, the Serb Vladimir Dedijer and the Croat Antun Miletic, entitled Genocide of the Muslims,1941-1945: Collected documents and testimony (Svjetlost, Sarajevo, 1990), which provides evidence of the wartime Serb Chetnik genocide of the Muslims. Schindler claims that ‘alone among Bosnia’s peoples they [the Muslims] had made no real contribution to Allied victory, and their collaboration with the Nazis had been unsurpassed’ – another fabrication, since nearly a quarter of all Bosnian Partisans had been Muslims; their readiness to join the Partisans compared favourably with that of the Bosnian Croats; their contribution to the anti-Nazi struggle was, for a nationality of their size, a significant one; and their readiness to speak out against Nazi crimes in 1941, and protect the victims of genocide, was virtually unparalleled in Nazi-occupied Europe. Schindler claims that the senior Bosnian Muslim Communist Osman Karabegović was expelled from the League of Communists of Yugoslavia in 1972 for Muslim ‘exclusivism’ and ‘nationalism’ (p. 43); this is the opposite of the truth – Karabegović was expelled because he was too much of a Yugoslav centralist; he would later become one of the most prominent Bosnian Muslims to support Milošević. The text ‘Virtuous Muslim State,’ published in Tuzla in 1993, was not the ‘SDA’s manifesto,’ as Schindler claims (p. 95), but merely a proposal put forward by a senior SDA member from Tuzla. Schindler writes of the Bosnian Serb JNA officer Jovan Divjak, that he ‘sided with Izetbegovic and the SDA when war broke out. It was a decision he would regret.’ (p. 102). This is again untrue: Divjak never supported the SDA; he supported his country – Bosnia – in the war, and would never regret having done so. Nor is it true that the anti-nationalist Bosnian Serb journalist Gojko Beric had been ‘an ardent supporter of the SDA’ during the war (p. 310). When all the rumours, unsubstantiated allegations and outright falsehoods are taken away, Schindler’s case against Izetbegovic and the SDA evaporates. We are left with a picture of a secular Bosnia-Hercegovina under an SDA regime that was undoubtedly highly corrupt and frequently brutal to its political opponents, but that supported the US-led ‘War on Terror,’ arrested Islamist terrorist suspects and was essentially free of genuine Islamist terrorist outrages on its soil – certainly more free than the US, Britain, Spain or Turkey. The most that can be said for Schindler’s portrayal of Bosnia as a centre of global jihad is that, yes, some of the

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Hoare | Three Books on al-Qaeda in Bosnia foreign mujahedin who fought in Bosnia would subsequently go on to engage in acts of terrorism and jihad elsewhere, some with the dubious benefit derived from possession of Bosnian passports – scarcely a free pass throughout the Western world, as anyone in the West who has Bosnian friends knows. In other words, none of the evidence presented here suggests that the global Islamist jihad would look significantly different today had the Bosnian war never taken place. One other malevolent error of which both Deliso and Schindler are guilty is their portrayal of the Clinton Administration as being hawkishly pro-Muslim and antiSerb. You would not know, from reading either of these books, that Clinton had enforced the arms embargo against Bosnia for the best part of the war; that he had come under massive fire from Congress for his unwillingness either to break the arms embargo or to carry out air-strikes against Serb forces; that he had forced the Bosnian Army to halt its victorious advance against Serb forces in the autumn of 1995, leaving half of Bosnia in Serb-rebel hands; that the Clinton-imposed Dayton Accords engineered the recognition of the ‘Republika Srpska’ incorporating nearly half of Bosnia, with a much smaller share of territory going to the Muslims; and that after Dayton, the Clinton Administration avoided arresting the Serb war criminals Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. Authors incapable of properly analysing Islamism are equally incapable of analysing US foreign policy. After reading two such inaccurate, unscholarly, poorly researched and politically motivated works of propaganda, it actually comes as a relief to read a book that is merely very bad. Shaul Shay, unlike Deliso and Schindler, has no Balkan agenda or axe to grind; he is a former Israeli intelligence officer, and he genuinely comes at the Balkans from the perspective of someone primarily interested in radical Islam and the Islamic countries, rather than vice versa. His book contains some rather endearingly naive sentences, such as ‘Yugoslavia is [sic] a mountainous country in the northern Balkans’ (p. 19) and ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina is a mountainous country in the Balkan [sic] that is divided into two historical geographic regions – the Bosnia region in the north and the Herzegovina region in the south’ (p. 39); he elsewhere describes Bosnia as having ‘a Muslim majority and a Serb minority’ (p. 24). Shay’s run-of-the-mill-first-year-undergraduate-quality potted history of the Balkans repeats some of the historical and other factual errors made by Deliso and Schindler, in particular at the expense of the Bosnian Muslims, and there are numerous misspellings of names (Alija becomes ‘Ilia,’ Čengić become ‘Kengic,’ Vojvodina becomes ‘Wivodena’), and so on. Having gone into the errors of Deliso

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 and Schindler in detail, I’m not going to bore the reader further by listing Shay’s; his are by far the most innocent of the three. In fact, he appears to be the sort of person that books of the Deliso-Schindler variety might be written to target. If one simply ignores everything Shay’s book has to say about Balkan politics, then one can glean a few nuggets of information from it concerning the politics of radical Islam globally and of the Muslim states of the Middle East. But this is not enough to recommend this book when there are much better treatments of these topics available. Radical Islam is a genuine problem facing Europe, and although it is actually less of a danger in the Balkans outside of Turkey than it is in Western Europe, this does not mean it is not a problem facing the Balkans as well. We need objective, scholarly analyses of the activities of Wahhabites and other radical Muslims in the Balkans if we are to understand and confront the problem. Unfortunately, this will not happen so long as writers simply use the issue to make propaganda to fight Balkan wars that, ultimately, have little to do with radical Islam.

Marko Attila Hoare is an Advisory Editor of Democratiya. Formerly a Research Fellow in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, he is now a Senior Research Fellow at Kingston University, London. His latest book is The History of Bosnia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (Saqi).

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Russia – Lost in Transition. The Yeltsin and Putin Legacies

by Lilia Shevtsova, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007, 388 pp.

Neil Robinson Also under review: Getting Russia Right, by Dmitri V. Trenin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007, pp.128. In his great novel Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol imagined Russia as a troika, a carriage pulled by three-abreast horses, speeding through the countryside. Gogol admitted no knowledge of where Russia was going – ‘Russia, where are you flying to? Answer! She gives no answer’ – but Russia’s path was unique and the country was destined for greatness. The very vehicle that he compares Russia to, the troika, is a something that could ‘only have been born among a high-spirited people in a land that does not like doing things by halves,’ and as Russia flies by ‘other nations and states draw aside and make way for her.’ [1] Stirring stuff, but apart from the part about Russia being ‘a land that does not like doing things by halves,’ wrong. Gogol’s Russia was still in the age of the troika as others were building railroads and instead of getting out of its way other states, and their industrial might, stood firmly in Russia’s path. From being a great power at the start of the nineteenth century Russia declined as it lost in war, failed to modernise effectively in its wake and then lost more wars as a result. To modernise and to win wars Russia had to stop being Russia and become something else: the Soviet Union. In the end even that did not work. Russia has had to become Russia again and needs to pursue modernisation once more – which this time means developing a diversified economy that is capable of competing globally and that supports a range of economic interests – to restore national pride and well-being. So, more than a century and a half after Gogol, we once again we have to work out what this process of change means and whether, as Russia regains a sense of itself as an international power, we will get out of its way, stop it or find some way of accommodating its desire for greatness. The two volumes under review deal with these questions in very different ways. Both were written with the end of Putin’s presidency (if not the end of his rule) in mind and to influence the rethinking of Russian politics and foreign relations to which this event might lead. The books are written by two of Russia’s most astute political commentators, and both are written with brio. Both authors work for the Carnegie

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Endowment (which publishes their books) and are politically liberal. But despite the similarities between them and their authors, the books and their conclusions are very different. Lilia Shevtsova’s book, Russia – Lost in Transition, is the latest in a series of books in which she has dissected Russian political development in fine detail, blending insights from political science with an accessible writing style which conveys the drama of events very well. [2] Trenin’s Getting Russia right is also the latest in a series of books [3], but where Shevtsova deals in fine detail Trenin paints his picture of Russia with a broader brush stroke, both historically, as he surveys Russia’s longer term relations with the West, and conceptually, as he views Russia’s development from a global perspective. Neither likes the political order built by Putin, but where Shevtsova sees Russia’s present and future development as beset by problems and with great potential for future trouble and backsliding, Trenin is more confident of Russia’s future as a capitalist economy that will be drawn towards the ‘West’ if not to the USA. These two different conclusions reflect the state of the art in most debates about the future of Russia. Shevtsova’s position is that of the disenchanted Russian (and Western) liberal, disappointed by the failures of the Yeltsin era and the humiliation of pro-democratic forces and post-Soviet hopes in those years through compromise and betrayal, and convinced that developments under Putin do not represent positive progress. Trenin is no less disappointed with Russia’s recent history, although he makes less of it in his much shorter book, but seeks hope in the longer term picture and sees that some good might come out of the relative stabilisation of Russia under Putin. Whilst not fully signed up to the Putin liberal loyalist position, which sees Russia as needing a period of authoritarian modernisation before democracy can emerge, he shares with it the belief that processes of economic change can eventually correct tendencies toward autocracy and serve as the basis for future liberalisation. Trenin focuses on the relationship of Russia to the West and the failure, so he argues, to properly ground post-Cold War global governance in an appreciation of the changes being wrought by globalisation. He argues that Russia has not been integrated into the ‘West’ in the past despite being a part of a ‘global Europe’ (p. 34). Trenin’s ‘global Europe’ is a broad civilisational grouping that includes the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and Israel, defined by its common JudeaoChristian/Greco-Roman heritage. The ‘West,’ for Trenin, is a by-product of Europe, not a civilisational form but a ‘set of institutions, norms, and ideas that originated

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition within European civilization … [including] private property; personal freedoms; the rule of law; constitutional and limited government; democratic participation; government accountability; and, most recently, human rights’ (p. 35). The ‘march of the West,’ Trenin argues, is linked to the growth of capitalism. Russia missed out on being a part of this march because of its historical development, and could not, therefore, be integrated into ‘Western’ structures. Russia, and later the Soviet Union, was thus left to assert its right to a say in global politics as an outsider, ‘a stand alone power,’ as Trenin calls it (p. 75), rather than as a partner. Russia could not integrate with the ‘West’ on its own or the ‘West’s’ terms. Instead, and especially during the Soviet era, it represented a threat to the ‘West’ that had to be countered and which helped to prompt the development of institutional structures to safeguard the ‘West’ (as liberal capitalist democracy) in Europe. Russia’s historical connections to Europe but isolation from the ‘West’ have created its leaders’ worldview. Russia cannot co-operate with the ‘West’ but must be realist and seek its own advantage and path. Western rhetoric about democracy and rights is empty to Russia’s leaders, who see that respect for these institutions will not bring acceptance into the ‘West’ and may well weaken Russia’s status as a standalone great power. For Russia, democracy and human rights promotion are double standards in European and US foreign policy, ignored when it suits Europe and the US’s interests, applied when they put Russia and its interests at a disadvantage. This does not make Russia anti-’Western’ automatically, Trenin argues, but it does tend to make Russia anti-American and gives rise to problems in its relationship with Europe, especially since European enlargement and the access to European decision-making of what Moscow perceives as anti-Russian leaders in some of the new EU states. This worldview has been reinforced by the unhappy experience of Russia since 1991. For Trenin – and for Shevtsova – the Yeltsin years were a disaster. Western support for Yeltsin discredited democracy rather than bolstered it. At the same time that Russia was instructed to build a democracy it was kept apart from the West in international relations. The model that the USA and Europe worked with, Trenin argues, was one of ‘association rather than integration’ (p. 89). Russia was invited to attend various international bodies, to observe, participate in some discussions rather than others, etc., rather than included as a partner. The result was that both sides felt let down. Russia did not gain access to power to compensate for its economic, social and geopolitical losses in the 1990s. The ‘West’ did not see Russia

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 developing to the point where its traditional scepticism about it could be put aside. The cooling of relations under Putin seems inevitable with hindsight: once Russia regained the means to act more independently it would so do and would do so in a manner not pleasing to the Cold War’s victors. Russia’s relations with the rest of the world clearly, therefore, require a rethink. For Trenin, this is necessary not only to overcome the past but also to deal with pressing problems of global governance. The end of the Cold War threw the structures developed to protect the ‘West’ into confusion. Although some institutions survived and continued to expand – like NATO and the EU – they soon reached their useful limits, and they could not deal with all of the possible problems thrown up by the end of the Cold War, or with new problems such as environmental threats, new security threats, etc. Efforts to exploit the end of the Cold War and create a new alliance of democracies as the basis for a new world order, based on some sort of liberal peace (the idea that democracies do not fight one another) and more effective multilateralism, were similarly unsuccessful. Exporting democracy, Trenin points out, has proven a risky business with uncertain outcomes as democracy has failed to take root because it does not have socio-economic support, or has not delivered better international governance because it has not touched core problem areas. Putting politics in command – the drive to democracy and to expand political and security institutions at the forefront of post-Cold War global governance – has thus failed. According to Trenin what is needed instead is a reappraisal by the ‘West’ of the dynamics of international politics. Globalisation, Trenin argues, is creating a ‘new West’ in Russia, China, India and other emerging market economies. The driving force behind the emergence of the ‘new West’ is economic. The states of the ‘new West’ are not perfect market economies and only share a part of the institutional make-up of the West, the economic part and not all of that, but the forces of international economic integration are embedding Western institutions in a wider range of states. Russia’s particular experience means that this new Westernisation is perhaps more extensive than in some other states. As Trenin points out at the start of his book Russia has made quite a lot of progress in some areas of ‘Westernisation’ as a process of building a particular set of institutions: in comparison to its recent Soviet past, Russia has made great strides in certain freedoms even after the Putin rollback. Whilst not ignoring Russia’s political development – the Council of Europe, for example, should still hold Russia responsible for the commitments that it has made in the area of human rights – the ‘West’ should engage with Russia

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition as an economic power, deepen its integration into the global economy and help to consolidate market institutions. Economic engagement with the rest of the world will allow pro-’Western,’ i.e. pro-market, interests to give shape to Russia’s illdefined national interest. This is in Russia’s interest too. There is, Trenin argues, ‘no unique Russian way in the world. To be successful Russia needs to become modern, i.e., Western’ (p. 96). The end result will be a Russia that is more a part of the ‘West.’ This will not necessarily mean that it is pro-American – Russia will be a kind of frozen France – but it will mean a ‘much more predictable and productive future’ (p. 112). Democracy will not emerge quickly in Russia as a result of this, but a growing Russian middle class will limit the Kremlin’s freedom of manoeuvre, and the growth of pro-market interests will lead to more demand for the rule of law. Over a long time these may eventually create a better soil from which democracy can grow. Trenin’s solution to getting Russia right is essentially one of economic realism: we should treat Russia like China, soft-pedalling on democracy to bring about greater economic interdependence and hope that this reins in an authoritarian government. As has been mentioned, this argument fits with the Putin liberal loyalist position. It is hard to find a substantive difference between Trenin’s arguments and those put forward by Igor Yurgens, the head of a new Kremlin-backed think-tank, the Institute for Contemporary Development, who has recently argued that Russia needs more time to ‘become more modern and align itself with the civilised world’ and that modernisation will eventually create a middle class, which, just ‘as they want a choice when they shop in Moscow boutiques … will want a choice in politics.’ [4] The Trenin/liberal loyalist argument places its hopes in the belief that Russia cannot be great (an aspiration for all Putinists, liberal or not) without being a part of the global economy and that being a part of the global economy will lead to a more modern society and hence democracy. This assumes that globalisation will work like modernisation is supposed to have done historically, creating social development and thus pressure for, and resources to support, democracy. What is the likelihood of this vision coming true? It would certainly be convenient if modernisation did create democracy in Russia. But neither modernisation nor democratisation resulting from modernisation is a certainty. Modernisation has not always worked as its proponents are wont to imagine: it is an act of faith rather than a statement of fact to assert that globalisation will be ‘modernising,’ i.e. that it will produce an economic society that supports democracy and is based on some form of market economy. There may be a general relationship between

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 economic development, being ‘modern’ (that is having a urbanised society that has moderate levels of social inequality, a large middle class and a diversified economy), and democratic consolidation, but the latter is not automatically a product of modernisation as economic change. Indeed, modernisation and the strains that it can place on society can be a source of political collapse, as in Iran in the 1970s, or of authoritarianism, as has frequently been the case in Latin America. It does not matter whether the sources of modernisation are some domestic impulse or a globalising pressure. Modernisation is not as important as the form that it takes and the ways that political authorities deal with the problems that it creates. Assuming otherwise is both bad history and bad analysis. Modernisation that involves marketisation has frequently led to authoritarianism. This is because states find that they cannot manage the market economy due to its complexities, or have to manage the inequalities created by the market for some political reason (such as creating a state-supporting elite). Whatever the cause, the result is that they resort to authoritarian management of the economy and this economic authoritarianism is accompanied by political illiberalism. [5] If we are to assert that there is going to be a movement from modernisation (inspired by globalisation or not) to democracy in Russia we have to argue out why Russia is going to be one of the ‘good’ cases of modernisation and not one of the ‘bad.’ Trenin, and many of the liberals who have put their faith in Putin first as President and now as Prime Minister, do not make this argument. Instead they point out that Russia is freer than it was in Soviet times, both politically and economically, and hope that the coincidence of this relative freedom with globalisation will create further change. But what does freedom in comparison to the Soviet past really mean or signify? Whilst it is a welcome improvement for the people of Russia, it means little else except that Russia is not the USSR and cannot, in classical political science terms, be described as totalitarian. The relative freedoms gained since Soviet times do not prevent Russia from having an authoritarian regime, however; such regimes can live with a measure of pluralism as long as that pluralism is limited and ‘not responsible,’ i.e., pluralism does not decide policy or political outcomes. [6] Limited and not responsible pluralism sums Russia’s situation up pretty well. So why the faith in globalisation-modernisation? One reason is perhaps psychological: it is pretty depressing to cut away what for many is the last branch of hope for democratisation, the belief that something out there in the world economy will discipline non-democratic leaders and create the basis of democracy. Another reason is perhaps that analysts like Trenin hope that globalisation as

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition modernisation and democratisation will be ‘internalised’ by Russia’s leaders. [7] If political elites in other states have come to the conclusion that there is no alternative but to follow the ‘logics’ of globalisation perhaps Russia’s elite can be persuaded similarly? Persuading the Kremlin thus may not lead to democratic change soon, but it may blunt the edge of authoritarianism. A kinder, gentler authoritarianism might result if Russia’s political elite believe that somewhere down the line there will be a democratic reckoning because Russia can’t buck the global market. There is, however, little sign that such internalisation is happening. Worse, there is little sign that Russia will actually be able to modernise and plenty of contrary evidence to show that what modernisation has occurred is politically fairly meaningless and may not lead toward democracy. Much of this evidence is presented in Shevtsova’s book, which is at once more complex but easier to summarise than Trenin’s. The complexity of Shevtsova’s argument is in the detail that she provides. Like her earlier books, Russia – Lost in Transition is in part an analytical work and in part a descriptive contemporary history. There is no need to go through all the twists and turns of the story with Shevtsova – although anyone wanting to understand contemporary Russia would be well advised to do so – to understand her argument. For Shevtsova, as for Trenin, Russia should modernise and real modernisation involves, ultimately, democratic reform to become like most of the world’s most modern states. However, Shevtsova is very doubtful that this modernisation will happen. The chief reason for this is that Putin has put in place a regime that is rhetorically pro-development and pro-modernisation but that actually lacks the ability and perhaps the will to bring development about. Putin has power, but this causes him and Russia more problems than it resolves. The coincidence of economic growth with authoritarianism has convinced people, elites and many ordinary citizens alike, that they do not need democracy. This is a dangerous assumption. The all-powerful president cannot see what needs to be done to insure future development because he is dependent on his entourage and hence politically isolated. The centralisation of power in the state and curtailment of opposition makes all opposition anti-systemic and means that change can only be successfully brought about through the forceful removal of the ruling elite. Such a forceful removal of the current alliance of ruling elite forces is unlikely to happen soon because of the apathy of the population and their disenfranchisement. However at the same time the weakening of political accountability and the centralisation of power mean that there are no checks on corruption. Elites enrich themselves through corruption – and have done so to a massive extent over the Putin years [8] – but little is done to control this corruption

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 because root and branch reform of public administration runs the risk of destabilising the whole edifice of power since it would require some decentralisation of power. The most likely scenario facing Russia is thus stagnation. The roots of this current predicament lay with Yeltsin who helped destroy the framework of the Soviet state without changing the nature of power in Russia, which remained highly personalised, with society still subject to political authority so that democratic institutions like elections are not effective. Yeltsin’s Russia, Shevtsova argues, ‘demonstrated the ability to repudiate and restore tradition simultaneously’ (p. 5). Yeltsin reacted to events, rather than leading Russia, and he offered no new vision for the future. Shevtsova echoes the conclusion about Yeltsin proffered by one of his former press secretaries in the 1990s: he had ‘no ideology other than power.’ [9] The result of this ideology of power was political and economic drift. Competing centres of power circled Yeltsin’s ‘hyperpresidency,’ as Shevtsova calls the concentration of power that Yeltsin created in the presidential branch, but did not develop a reform agenda that could work. [10] Eventually these competing centres of power backed Putin as Yeltsin’s successor to the hyperpresidency because he was ‘the right man, in the right place, at the right time’ (p. 38): Putin did not appear too charismatic, was close to the Yeltsin ruling circle but could be presented as clean, had a security background and could rally security forces to support the outgoing regime, and he was loyal. Putin played his part insofar as he allowed Yeltsin to retire in peace. However he was also able to build up his own personal power using the powers of the presidency and the personal popularity that came with his tough stance over the Chechen war, his seeming ability to secure election as president without being beholden to the Yeltsin ‘family,’ his support in the security forces and from St Petersburg politicians, and the upturn in the Russian economy that followed the 1998 crash. This, Shevtsova argues, completed the personalisation of power that was Yeltsin’s chief legacy. Politically the rest is history: one by one the competing power centres of the Yeltsin years have been emasculated (regional leaders, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, parliament, the media, and some economic ‘oligarchs’) if not destroyed (the rest of the ‘oligarchs’ and the liberal opposition). Putin played his political hand well, and Shevtsova diligently records how he built up his power and took advantage of events such as the massacre at Beslan to further weaken parliament, parties and regional elites, and fears of a ‘colour’ revolution such as Ukraine’s to bind Russia’s elites to him further. But what has Putin built? The concentration of power on the ‘hyperpresidency’ became an end in itself. Apart

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition from concentrating power – and presiding over worsened relations with the West – it is difficult to see what Putin has achieved. This might seem an odd thing to say given that the Russian economy has grown by about 7 percent a year under Putin and about 70 percent overall since 2000. But although there has been plenty of talk about development from the Kremlin, growth in the Russian economy has been in spite of the Putin regime rather than because of it, and it may not be sustainable. Growth started before Putin’s political revolution and thus helped complete the political realignment that followed Putin’s election in 2000 rather than the other way around. It might even be the case that political developments helped to stimulate economic growth after 2000 for the wrong reasons. Fearing that they would be next, oligarchowned oil and metals companies reacted to the moves against fellow ‘oligarchs’ by expanding production massively. The export value of oil, gas and metals nearly doubled in dollar terms between 1998 and 2002. This was partly due to increased prices (although the price of oil dipped a little in this period) and partly due to increased export volumes. Volume growth in oil production was particularly marked in 2000, the year in which Putin first expanded his power, when oil exports were 171.5 percent of what they had been in 1999; this level of output was more or less maintained in 2001 and then expanded again in 2002. Six major private oil firms accounted for nearly all of these additional exports since state-owned firms barely expanded production. This expansion of oil exports accounted for about a quarter of Russia’s growth in 2001-04. A large proportion of post-1998 growth was thus not planned or balanced but the result of a scramble by oligarch oil firms to cash in before property rights were lost. [11] Since 2004 growth has been based on high oil prices and a boom in services and construction; non-tradables, raising the prospect of Dutch disease, where rents from natural resources stimulate the growth in non-tradable sectors of the economy but undercut the competitiveness of the rest of the economy through currency appreciation. [12] The Russian state has paid off its debts and accumulated a huge amount of foreign currency reserves (partly to stave off Dutch disease by keeping the rouble competitive) but it has not managed to modernise its industrial economy and hence diversify its export trade, as Putin himself acknowledged in his last major speech on economic development as President. [13] As a result there are doubts about Russia’s long-term economic health and ability to deal with major and pressing economic problems, not least of which is a looming investment crisis in its

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 energy industries. This crisis may already be affecting the health of the economy by causing a dip in oil production. [14] Russia’s economic position thus remains precarious. It might trade more with the West, as Trenin argues, but its exports are mainly hydrocarbons and metals rather than high value goods. Russia has not developed a more competitive economy under Putin and may actually be falling further behind its main rivals. [15] Major changes in global energy prices will have a significant effect on Russia, especially as the break-even price for oil for the Russian state budget is set to go from $27 to over $60 in the next few years and as production of oil by Russia may decline. Modernisation has not, therefore, been an outcome of the Putin presidency. In some of her earlier work Shevtsova leaned towards the possibility that Putin might create a developmental state. She borrowed the notion of ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism,’ a term developed by Guillermo O’Donnell to describe a particular form of Latin American developmental state, to describe Putin’s regime. Bureaucratic authoritarian states are created by the structural pressures that afflict economically dependent countries. They seek to manage the tensions between domestic and internationalised economic sectors within a country. This seemed to fit features of the Putin regime, its weakening of democracy, its use of the bureaucracy as a support base, and its calls for modernisation. [16] In Russia – Lost in Transition the idea of bureaucratic authoritarianism gets a brief mention (p. 40), but as with her other classifications of Russia and its policy – ‘ruling bureaucratic corporation’ (p. 55), ‘bureaucratic capitalism’ (p. 118), ‘nuclear petropower’ (p. 132) etc – the term is merely descriptive: Russia is authoritarian and its authoritarian power is a bureaucracy, the term ‘bureaucratic authoritarianism’ means no more than that. There is no Russian developmental state seeking to reconcile the domestic and internationalised sectors of the Russian economy, in other words; just the organisation of power in cliques, cabals, bureaucratic institutions etc., that are self-interested and geared to personal enrichment rather than societal development. There is not likely to be such a developmental state either, especially whilst the price of oil is high, Shevtsova argues; but eventually something will have to give. The need for a stronger Russian state, one that can provide public goods, social management, and security, is great and will remain so: Russia has a looming pensions crisis, has military and security problems along its southern border, needs to spatially reorganise its economy and deal with massive regional inequalities, has a declining social infrastructure and faces demographic crisis, still has not put centre-periphery relations on a solid legal footing, and has

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition a crime problem and high rates of alcoholism and adult morbidity, etc. The list of problems Russia faces is seemingly endless and all require some public policy response. At the moment the state is growing as more bureaucrats are recruited and more money is spent on armaments, but this state growth is parasitic rather than progressive. Putin has built a political regime, not a state machine that has capacity and can adapt over time within a legal framework to resolve new problems as they arise. When new problems do arrive the strain will be borne directly by the regime. Where does this all leave us? There is still no good answer about where Russia is going except to say that there is probably more of the same on the cards, at least in the short to medium term. There is no knight in shining armour out there in the global economy, nor is there one in the Kremlin. Personal politics may break the mould: Putin and Dmitri Medvedev may fall out and a split between President and Prime Minister might create some scope for change. All we can really confidently say is that the process of change is not over. Vladimir Putin will, in the end, prove to be just another transitional figure. The troika is going to carry on speeding through the countryside, and Putin’s belief that Russia is unique and destined for greatness is as likely to be tested and found wanting as Gogol’s was a century and a half ago.

Neil Robinson teaches politics at the University of Limerick, Ireland. He is the author and editor of several books on Russia, and international politics, including Institutions and political change in Russia (Macmillan, 2000), Russia: a state of uncertainty (Routledge, 2002), Reforging the weakest link: global political economy and post-Soviet change in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, (Ashgate, 2004, editor), and State-building: Theory and practice (Routledge, 2007, co-edited with Aidan Hehir). email [email protected] References

Belton, Catherine 2008, ‘Russia paying price of oil strategy,’ Financial Times, 20 April: 9. Chaudry, Kiren Aziz 1993, ‘The common history of late developers,’ Politics and Society, 21, 3: 24574. Colton, Timothy J. 2008, Yeltsin: A Political Life, New York: Basic Books. Cooper, Julian 2006, ‘Can Russia compete in the global economy?’ Eurasian Geography and Economics, 47, 4: 407-26. Gaddy, Clifford and Barry Ickes 2005, ‘Resource rents and the Russian economy,’ Eurasian Geography and Economics, 45, 8: 559-83. Gogol, Nikolai 1961 [1842], Dead Souls, translated by David Magarshack, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Hanson, Philip 2007, ‘The Russian economic puzzle: going forwards, backwards or sideways?’ International Affairs, 83, 5: 869-89. Kostikov, Vyacheslav 1997, Roman s prezidentom. Zapiski press-sekretarya [Novel (or Affair) with a president. Notes of a press secretary], Moscow: Vargius. Linz, Juan, J. 1970, ‘An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain,’ in Mass Politics: Studies in Political Sociology, edited by Erik Allardt and Stein Rokkan, New York: Free Press. Nemtsov, Boris and Vladimir Milov 2008, Putin: itogi. Nezavisimii ekspertnii doklad [Putin: the results. An independent expert report], retrieved 6 March, 2008 from www.grani.ru/ Politics/m.133236.html#9 Putin, Vladimir 2008, ‘Speech at Expanded Meeting of the State Council on Russia’s Development Strategy through to 2020,’ retrieved 8 February, 2008, from http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/ speeches/2008/02/08/1137_type82912type82913_159643.shtml. Robinson, Neil 2000, ‘The economy and the prospects for anti-democratic development in Russia,’ Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 8: 1391-1415. Robinson, Neil 2007, ‘So what changed? The 1998 economic crisis in Russia and Russia’s economic and political development,’ Demokratizatsiya. A journal of post-Soviet democratization, 15, 2: 245-59. Shevtsova, Lilia 1999, Yeltsin’s Russia. Myths and reality, Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Shevtsova, Lilia 2003, Putin’s Russia, Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Shevtsova, Lilia 2005, Putin’s Russia, Revised and expanded edition, Washington DC, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Soederberg, Susanne, Georg Menz and Philip G. Cerny (eds) 2005, Internalizing Globalization: The Rise of Neoliberalism and the Decline of National Varieties of Capitalism, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Trenin, Dmitri 2002, The End of Eurasia: Russia on the Border Between Geopolitics and Globalization, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Wagstyl, Stefan 2008, ‘Putin will take his time handing over real power,’ The Financial Times, 28 April: 6.

[1] Gogol 1961 [1842], pp. 258-9.

Notes

[2] Shevtsova 1999, 2003, 2005. [3] Most notably Trenin 2002. [4] Cited in Wagstyl 2008, p. 6. [5] For a classic argument on how market reform can lead to economic and political authoritarianism see Chaudry 1993. For an application of Chaudry’s arguments to Russia see Robinson 2000. [6] The idea of authoritarianism being able to contain a ‘limited, not responsible’ political pluralism can be found in Juan Linz’s classic definition of authoritarianism. Linz 1970, p. 255. [7] On ‘internalizing globalization’ see Soederberg, Menz and Cerny 2005. [8] Perhaps the best summary of this is can be found in Nemtsov and Milov’s (2008) report on

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Robinson | Russia: Lost in Transition the ‘results’ of the Putin presidency. Nemtsov was a successful regional governor in the 1990s and then a deputy prime minister at the end of the Yeltsin era, Milov was a deputy minister for energy in the early Putin years. [9] Kostikov, 1997, p. 347. [10] Shevtsova is right about the outcome of the Yeltsin years, although it is a little difficult to see what else Yeltsin might have done and arguably he did the best with the resources that he had available. For a kinder, but still critical, appreciation of Yeltsin see the new biography by Timothy Colton, 2008. [11] Gaddy and Ickes 2005. [12] Hanson 2007. [13] Putin 2008. For details see Robinson 2007. [14] Belton 2008. [15] Cooper 2006. [16] Shevtsova 2005, p. 324.

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The Democratic Prospect in East Asia Carl Gershman It is hard to think of a region of the globe so packed with both threats and opportunities as East Asia. Of course, the Middle East is as strategically significant as it is combustible. But none of that region’s states have yet shown signs of the economic and political dynamism that we’ve seen in East Asia over the last 20 years. Strategically vital to the world economy, the region is home to some of the most vibrant new democracies as well as harsh tyrannies. South Korea and Taiwan, along with the Philippines in Southeast Asia, were in the vanguard when the Third Wave of democratization reached the region in the late 1980s. Significantly, their transitions occurred or began before the collapse of Soviet communism and in a regional context that was far from friendly to democratization. The new democracies of post-communist central and eastern Europe not only enjoyed at least some democratic traditions and experiences dating back to before communism, but benefited as well from the nearby gravitational pull – and financial subsidies – of the wealthy Western democracies making up the European Union. By contrast, East Asia’s nascent democracies have emerged in the shadow of the world’s most powerful authoritarian state, namely China, though admittedly with the intense involvement of the United States as a security guarantor and of Japan as an engine of economic growth. With the simultaneous growth of democracy in East Asia and the rise of China, along with the continued division of the Korean peninsula, East Asia is today the region of the world where the alternative systems of democracy and authoritarianism are most sharply counter-posed. It was not so long ago that serious attention was paid to the notion put forward by Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew that democracy is a Western system that cannot take hold in a region shaped by ‘Asian values,’ which presumably emphasize authority over liberty and order over pluralism and democratic processes. One doesn’t hear much about this viewpoint anymore since it is out of touch with both the political realities of East Asia and with public attitudes as revealed in recent opinion surveys. Steady democratic gains in both South and Northeast Asia – in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia and, most recently, in Malaysia – hardly bespeak a region that is inherently authoritarian. And public opinion surveys throughout the region, and in South Asia as well, show that roughly six in ten people believe that democracy is the best system of government.

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Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia Even larger majorities reject the authoritarian alternatives of military, one-party, and strong-man rule, and the public in East Asia is not more likely than citizens of the West to demand respect for authority. At the same time, they want to see democracy perform in terms of delivering health, education and other services and improving the quality of life and the effectiveness of governance. In this respect, East Asians are not very different from the citizens of Latin America and Central Europe, who are also unhappy when democracy does not deliver up to expectations. The challenge in East Asia is especially acute since the democracies in this region face rivals in tiny Singapore and a resurgent China that consciously offer an alternative authoritarian model of economic development. Obviously, though, the backward dictatorships of Burma and North Korea offer no such challenge. While I don’t believe there is much chance of a democratic rollback in East Asia, the performance of the new democracies has been uneven. Taiwan and South Korea are cases in point. Taiwan is now one of Asia’s most robust democracies, having passed the Huntington test of a 2nd genuine alternation of power with the recent return to power of the KMT led by new president Ma Ying-jeou. But Taiwan’s political culture remains deeply polarized and partisan, reflecting not just the ethnic divide between native Taiwanese and mainlanders, but a political divide between two camps with sharply different visions of Taiwan’s future – the green camp looking toward eventual independence and the blue camp preferring more cooperation with the mainland and open to possible unification under proper conditions. This division has led to bitter political conflict and often governmental paralysis, which makes the recent election an expression of Taiwan’s remarkable resilience as a democracy. An independent judiciary and a vigorous civil society have contributed powerfully to this resilience. Like Taiwan, South Korea itself is deeply divided, with differences over how to deal with North Korea sharpening divisions in the same way the debate over relations with the mainland has done in Taiwan. And yet despite these divisions, again like Taiwan, the elections last December produced a transfer of power from one party to the other without violence and with an air of democratic normality, thus demonstrating once again the resilience and stability of democracy. Of course President Lee will be challenged to deliver on his promises to revive the economy, and his high approval ratings have already begun to decline because some of his ministerial appointees have had to step down in reaction to controversies over

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 their real estate dealings. His visit to the United States this week should give new momentum to the US-Korean relationship, both at the economic level where a new free trade agreement could soon be ratified, and at the security level where close US-Korean cooperation is a precondition for the success of the six-party talks. But the trade agreement and the six-party talks face serious obstacles, and President Lee will do well to bear in mind the cautionary lesson of his predecessor’s experience, whose presidency was badly weakened by protracted confrontations with his parliamentary opposition. Such political divisions will not disappear, of course, but Korea’s two decades of democracy have been on the whole a remarkable success, and there is nothing to suggest that this will not continue. In two other East Asian countries, the Philippines and Thailand, there is more cause for concern. The Philippines provides few grounds for optimism save that its democratic institutions, while compromised, have withstood decades of communist and Islamist insurgency, military coups, endemic corruption, and the constraints of a political system in which traditional elite families continue to monopolize political power, despite the vibrant associational impulses of civil society. The toxic blend of political violence, political clans and corruption – ‘guns, goons and gold’ – combined with President Arroyo’s deference to her generals and corrupt political allies, has prompted an alarming decline in public confidence in democratic institutions. The situation is only marginally better in Thailand. The September 2006 coup, it must be said, had the support not only of the military but of the monarchy and the Bangkok middle classes, who worried about Thaksin’s attempts to compromise judicial independence, delegitimize opposition, and nurture division between urban democratic critics and his rural base of support. All of these moves undermined Thai democracy even if they were exploited by the military as an excuse for the coup. It’s a good thing that the military has withdrawn from power and that there is now the restoration of a democratically-elected government. But the victory of the PPP and the return of Thaksin and his allies promise another round of battles between him and the Thai establishment and the possible return of all the problems that preceded the coup, including the violence in the south, the extra-judicial killings in the war on drugs, and close relations with military in Burma, as shown by Samak’s recent visit to Rangoon. The cruel dictatorship that continues to grind Burma under its boot heel is, in its own corrupt way, as poisonous a factor in Southeast Asia as the Kim Jong-il regime

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Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia is in Northeast Asia. Burma does not have a nuclear program, to be sure, but it a source of tremendous instability as a base for the smuggling of drugs and other illicit items, the spread of HIV-AIDS, human trafficking for the sex trade, and the displacement of millions of people with the relentless assault on the national minorities. There is still great bitterness left over from the crushing last September of the popular protest movement and the jailing and persecution of the Buddhist monks who led it. The situation remains unstable, with the economy doing poorly and military desertions on the rise, and the May 10 referendum on the regime’s new constitution could set off another round of protests. With Thailand mired in its internal crisis, leadership in dealing with the cancer of Burma might conceivably come from Indonesia, whose democratic transition over the last decade is both the most important advance for democracy globally during that period and also the most overlooked. Though Indonesia faces enormous challenges in strengthening the rule of law, fighting endemic corruption, and uplifting the 40 percent of the population that continues to live on less than $2 a day, we should not underestimate the great progress that has been made in the consolidation of Indonesia’s new democracy. I have in mind the success of the democratic government in improving the delivery of services, reforming the police and the judiciary and reducing crime, radically decentralizing government while avoiding the Balkanization that many feared would occur under democratic rule, improving security while ensuring that the armed forces stay out of politics, signing the historic Aceh Peace Agreement in the aftermath of the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami, and achieving sustained economic growth to the point that Jim Castle and Craig Charney, writing in The Washington Post, have spoken of the emergence of a ‘democratic Indonesian tiger.’ No less significant is the continuing strength of moderate, mainstream Islam and Muslim democratic parties, and the weakness of Islamist radicalism, electorally and in the society at large. On a recent visit to Jakarta, I met some of the highly impressive leaders and activists of the country’s mass Islamic movements – the Nahdlatul Ulama and the Muhammadiyah. Leaders like former president Abdurrahman Wahid have successfully resisted the influence of radical Salafist elements and are positively projecting a model of democratic and civil Islam that, in time, could assume genuinely global significance. As I have suggested, Indonesia will hopefully also become a more assertive force within ASEAN in defending human rights and democracy within Burma. The positive impact of the democratic progress in Indonesia could soon be reinforced by changes underway in nearby Malaysia, where the March 8 elections

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 have produced the most significant democratic political change since independence. The victory of the three-party opposition alliance led by Anwar Ibrahim in five of Malaysia’s 13 states (Penang, Kedah, Perak, Selangor, and Kelantan), and the capture of enough seats in the national parliament to deny the government a two-thirds majority, represented the biggest loss for the governing National Front since 1957. The government had tried to play on Malay fears of minority Chinese and Indian influence, but the big and most hopeful news from the election is that many Malays joined with Chinese and Indian citizens in giving an enormous boost to Anwar’s People’s Justice Party (PKR), which offers a new model in Malaysia of inter-ethnic cooperation. If the opposition can govern well in the five states, it could challenge the government for national power in the near future. For now, the government of Abdullah Badawi remains stunned and ineffective, with The Economist speaking of him as ‘shuffling deckchairs on a personal Titanic.’ If there is a real democratic transition in Malaysia, it will have important repercussions within ASEAN, with implications for Burma, in Asia generally, where Anwar is a deeply respected figure, and in the wider Muslim world, where his voice resonates. The picture I have so far presented of East Asia is mixed, and generalizing extensively about such an enormous area and so many different countries is dauntingly hard. But surely the future of the region will be decisively influenced by what happens in China, which is undergoing transformative changes, the outcome of which is not at all clear. China’s undeniably impressive economic performance is now giving rise to a growing political profile on the global stage, which takes the form of more active diplomacy, and a greater assertion of soft power through its network of Confucius Institutes to promote Chinese language and culture, and enhanced development assistance to neighbouring autocracies like Laos, Cambodia, and Burma, as well as to sub-Saharan African states, or at least to those with valuable raw materials and energy supplies. Some feel that a stronger China will have more leverage in mediating conflicts in the Asia-Pacific, and will therefore be a net plus for regional security and stability. Beijing has certainly taken part in the international effort to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, though its refoulement of North Korean refugees violates its obligations under the refugee convention. And of course its failure to adhere to international standards of transparency, disclosure and human rights in the run-up to the Olympics is drawing increased international criticism. Indeed, the communist authorities have stepped-up their harassment of independent NGOs

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Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia and dissidents like on-line activist Hu Jia and dissident writer Lu Gengsong in what has been called ‘a coordinated cleansing campaign.’ Recent events in Tibet, the protests surrounding the Beijing Summer Olympics, and the forthcoming constitutional referendum in Burma – with China being perceived by the world as ‘the prop that always holds up a loathed regime,’ to quote The Economist – serve to remind us that, Beijing has yet to demonstrate that it can consistently fulfil the role of being a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the global system. The venom with which Chinese officials have reacted to the Dalai Lama’s calls for moderation and dialogue – describing His Holiness as a ‘monster with a human face and an animal’s heart’ – suggests that Maoist intolerance dies hard. And the April 1 demonstrations in Xinjiang by several hundred ethnic Uyghurs protesting the death in custody of a prominent local philanthropist are a timely reminder that China remains a one-party state hostile to basic democratic values such as freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the rule of law, and human rights, even though these values are enshrined in the Chinese constitution. For all its economic dynamism, China’s communist regime is beset by fundamental challenges, if not contradictions, which should lead us to question whether it is sustainable. Like all authoritarian regimes, it is ultimately fragile, lacking the institutional flexibility and ‘release valves’ required to accommodate change, especially when economic crisis hits. Consultations with Chinese analysts and activists suggest several reasons why serious political reform will become a compelling imperative over the next five to ten years: Corruption is endemic and pervasive, manifested in widespread land seizures and property confiscations, undermining both business performance and the legitimacy of party rule, particularly in the rural hinterland dominated by alliances of corrupt business interests and local party apparatchiks. Such corruption has led to a dramatic increase in the number of protests driven by social inequalities, environmental degradation, endemic corruption, and acute crises in health care, education and social security. In the absence of constitutional channels for expressing grievances and resolving conflict, this volatility can only increase.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The Communist Party’s legitimacy is fragile, relying on a blend of Maoist nostalgia, economic competence, and nationalism that is being challenged by an albeit nascent generation of emerging leaders – in business, media, civil society and within party circles – many of whom have been educated in the West, take a technocratic rather than an ideological approach to most issues, and feel frustrated with the Communist Party’s stultifying political monopoly. The party’s legitimacy crisis is evident in internal party divisions and debates which have seen younger and lower-level officials become more vocal in their demands for democratic change, and more and more senior officials exposing their lack of faith in the regime’s future by sending their personal wealth abroad. The party recognizes that with increasing social agitation and the emergence of an increasingly affluent middle class, demands for a more open society will increase. This middle class is starting to show signs of restiveness, as evidenced by the recent ‘collective walking’ protests in Shanghai against plans to extend the right-of-way for a maglev (magnetic-levitation) railway line. In her new book, The China Price, Alexandra Harney observes that as its economy continues to develop, not merely in scale but in variety and sophistication, China will inevitably begin to erode its own main competitive advantage as a manufacturer dependent on cheap labor. Rising costs for wages and materials, increasing litigation, demands for unionization, tightening labor markets, and higher safety standards will all eat into ‘China, Incorporated’s profit margins. In so far as the Party’s legitimacy is in large part based on its management of China’s economic boom, an economic crisis or severe downturn could precipitate demands for systemic change, much as the 1997-98 East Asian financial crisis prompted Indonesia’s democratic turn. The political monopoly of an ideologically bankrupt and manifestly corrupt ruling-party elite is incompatible with the diversity of opinion and demand for government accountability that is being driven by a dynamic economy and a population with rapidly rising levels of schooling, literacy, and exposure to outside ideas via such technologies as the Internet. One has only to contemplate the impact on a once-closed society of having more than a quarter of a million cell-phones and 140 million Internet users, among whom are 34 million bloggers. To cite just one consequence of the changes taking place, China’s unofficial on-line media drove five of the ten biggest news stories covered by the official Chinese media during the last year, all of them involving citizens defying arbitrary power, insisting on their right

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Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia to know the truth, protesting grave injustices, and demanding that government be held accountable for its policies and actions. In his new book The Spirit of Democracy, my colleague Larry Diamond has suggested four scenarios for China that don’t exhaust the possibilities, but which may help to give an idea of some of the likelier alternative outlines of future events. Two are transitional, one leading to a Singapore-like soft authoritarianism with managed single-party rule, the other – more on the model of South Korea and Taiwan – where economic development generates a growing middle class and increased social complexity and pluralism, trends that force the party to concede its political monopoly. Each of the other two scenarios involve what the Spanish democrats of the postFranco period called a ruptura, a complete break with the old system, which will fall to either a new form of authoritarianism or to democracy. Diamond is aware of the danger of the former, quoting Minxin Pei’s analysis of illiberal adaptation, where the current dictatorship ceases to be developmental and mutates into a ‘decentralized predatory state,’ diminishing prospects for political liberalization. But he clearly feels that the democratic alternative is a more likely outcome for China, which has a growing middle class and a larger and more networked civil society than existed in 1989 during the Tiananmen events, the proliferation of Internet users and NGOs, a more robust community of liberal intellectual leaders than is generally appreciated, and a hunger for religious fulfilment, with Christianity and other organized religions filling the moral vacuum left by the ideological collapse of communism. The historical experience of Germany and Japan between the 1860s and the 1940s shows that economic modernization need not entail political liberalization, at least not without the prospect of dangerous and globally catastrophic detours. So there are no grounds for complacency. Moreover, China’s uncertain future is hardly the only source of regional instability. East Asia is one of the world’s few regions with a number of unresolved conflicts and ominously latent crises – from North Korea’s nuclear aspirations to Taiwan’s status and Japan-China tensions – but without an overarching multilateral security and cooperation architecture through which they can be addressed or resolved. The United States has a profound interest in how the divisions in the region are managed and contained and how the contest over values is resolved. The outcome, according to Michael Green, the former senior Asian Affairs director at the National

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Security Council, will ‘determine whether the future regional architecture in Asia is inclusive and based on universal values, or instead excludes the United States and undermines its interests.’ There is good reason to be sceptical about the chances for building a new and inclusive regional architecture. Former Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s vision of an ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity’ is now a distant memory, overtaken by the current political jockeying between Prime Minister Fukuda and opposition leader Ozawa. And China’s record on its other flanks, as an architect of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, suggests that its vision for Asia is not necessarily inclusive, given that the SCO explicitly rejects global norms of human rights, political liberties, and good governance. Still, evidence suggests that a significant number of Asia’s leaders have come to see democracy as integral to their respective nations’ stability, success, and sense of identity. There is a compelling case for taking advantage of the region’s growing economic integration, its shared anxiety over latent or incipient security threats, and the glimmers of interest that some of its elites are beginning to show in the idea that promoting human rights and promoting security can work together, in order to start a process that would forge a regional architecture and promote a vision of East Asia based on cooperation mutual guarantees of security, and universal norms. Ironically, the North Korean dictatorship, in a case of history ‘writing straight with crooked lines,’ could even prove to be – by dint of its very worrisomeness, whether it endures or it collapses – the unwilling catalyst for the precipitation of such a beneficial new compound. The six-party talks have certainly run into severe difficulties, but they have brought together the United States and China, along with South Korea, Japan, and Russia, around a common project of denuclearizing North Korea militarily and ending its complete isolation and recklessness, which all agree are a threat to regional peace. The agreement of February 13, 2007, has yet to be implemented, but it contains the seeds of a new regional architecture. Of the five working groups established under the agreement, only one deals with the North Korea nuclear issue. Three deal with regional economic and energy cooperation and the normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea and between Japan and North Korea. The fifth, chaired by an immensely able Russian diplomat, establishes a Northeast Asia Peace and Security Mechanism that is already being called by its acronym NEAPSEM. It is out of this working group that a comprehensive multilateral

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Gershman |The Democratic Prospect in East Asia framework for cooperation in Northeast Asia might develop, one that would integrate security, economic, humanitarian and human rights issues, as was done in Europe three decades ago through the Helsinki process. The elements of a new architecture have thus been assembled, but the building cannot commence until the nuclear stalemate with North Korea is resolved. It is, to be sure, a risky undertaking to base the success of such an ambitious initiative on the cooperation of such an unlikely partner as North Korea. But given what is at stake for all sides, it is not out of the question that this calculated gamble might in the end pay off. We should all hope that it does.

Carl Gershman is the President of the National Endowment for Democracy. A version of these remarks were given to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA, April 14, 2008.

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De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? (What Is Sarkozy the Name Of ?) by Alain Badiou, Nouvelles Editions Lignes, 2008, 155 pp.

Jason Farago It's now been a year since Nicolas Sarkozy, by a wide margin, swept into France's presidential palace with promises of sweeping reforms of everything from the country's finances to its national character. You will remember the trajectory. After a skittering rise that saw him in and out of power, he took control of the UMP, Jacques Chirac's electoral machine. In the 2005 post-EU-referendum cabinet reshuffle he unexpectedly ended up back in his old job at the interior ministry, where his nightly television interventions during that year's awful suburban riots made him a national star. When the 2006 student protests over the Contrat première embauche delegitimated his only remaining rival, the prime minister Dominique de Villepin, Sarkozy won his party's nomination and eventually the presidency by making the election a referendum about himself. Everyone's disappointed. The world of high capital is aghast at the lack of action while the left remains up in arms at the few reforms pushed through (particularly of higher education, which has seen students in the streets again). The voters who put Sarkozy in office have turned on him, for his rumbustious love life as much as his policies or lack thereof, and the UMP went down to an ignominious defeat at local elections in March. [1] An II of the Sarkozy revolution began as the president posted the lowest approval ratings in the history of the Fifth Republic. Yet although the president's star has fallen, he remains a godsend to news outlets, magazines of the glossy as well as high-minded varieties, and especially book publishers. So many titles on Sarkozy have flooded the market that, in the bookstore near my apartment in Montmartre, they occupy a table unto themselves. The more serious strain of these books ranges from rigorous sociology (La république du mépris) to rhetorical analysis (Comment Nicolas Sarkozy écrit l'histoire de France) to theoretical takes on the media (Le starkozysme). They sit alongside breathless volumes on the personal lives of the president and his family – my store had three titles on ex-first lady Cécilia alone – and comic takes on the reign of Nicolas Premier. And inevitably there are the books by second-tier politicians who still indulge the bad French habit of writing treatises on the ills of society that few will ever read. Pierre Moscovici, a pretender to the leadership of

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Farago | Alain Badiou on Nicolas Sarkozy the Socialist Party, has just put out a doorstop of a screed against the president called Le liquidateur, and judging by figures online I'm not the only one to have left the book at the store. Of all the Sarkozy books, the one with the most surprising success came not from a politician or a comedian, but from a hardcore Maoist professor at the Ecole normale supérieure. Alain Badiou, whose considerable fame in the English-speaking world derives from his work as a philosopher, has also published a series of short books – pamphlets, really – on contemporary politics. The first three are simply called Circonstances, but sensing the political winds he or his publisher gave the fourth in this series its own title: De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? (What Is Sarkozy the Name Of ?). That a book exhorting communist revolution via violent means or otherwise rose to the higher strata of France's best-seller lists earlier this year is, if somewhat surprising, a perfect indication that the appetite for material on the hyperpresident is strongest among his political opponents. But Badiou's treatise is a troublesome, even dangerous book, and its public success necessitates scrutiny. Much of De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom? is devoted to a formulation of the principles on which citizens should found a new communism (with a lowercase C) and resist the etiolating rigors of the State (with a capital É). The central chapters of the book are devoted to a somewhat irregular list of such precepts; for example, 'Love must be reinvented … but also quite simply defended' (p. 64). If Sarkozy is very much a bad guy, he is nevertheless not the enemy in and of himself. He is merely a spokesman or a symbol for something larger. Throughout the text – indeed from the title on – Badiou understands the new president not as a person, nor as an event à la Georges-Didi Huberman, but as a symptom, one both peculiarly French and depressingly universal. This symptomization of Sarkozy is tactical, and of a piece with Badiou's larger battle against 'capitalo-parliamentarianism.' Sarkozy stands for something beyond himself and bigger than himself, and if a battle is to be fought then militants must not mistake the effect for the cause. But although his argument reduces Sarkozy's role, that does not stop the philosopher from ripping the president with dozens of insults throughout a text of uncommon contemptuousness. References to Sarkozy's height are frequent: 'Napoleon the very small,' 'little Sarkozy,' the 'little father of the people.' Badiou bashes him as looking like 'a middle manager at a bank in a second-rate town' (p. 38). Sarkozy is 'visibly uneducated,' a 'twitching accountant,' and on and on. (Ségolène Royal, that 'deadbeat,' merits little better: 'a clouded bourgeoise whose thoughts, if she has any, are rather secret' [p. 8].)

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 And in a rhetorical move that has won Badiou substantial media coverage, he refers to the president, over and over again, as the 'Rat Man.' This outrageous sobriquet is, on one level, supposed to recall Freud's case of the Rattenmann, an obsessive neurotic who feared that rodents would eat through the skin of his loved ones. It is also a reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin: fans of Sarkozy are referred to as 'rats,' with the Rat Man as their leader. But more than either of these, Badiou's slur sounds like a lab experiment gone wrong or a Hollywood villain: half man, half rat, all evil. 'Rat Man' is the name of the president; 'Sarkozy' refers to something else. So what is Sarkozy the name of, then? For Badiou, 'Sarkozy' names a certain societal disorientation, a turning away from social progress in the face of fear. Fear constitutes the zero-level of all political discourse; fear is the mechanism by which politicians and other masters of the dominant order retain their stranglehold on the populace, and elections are nothing more than the operation – 'democratic terror' (p. 15) – by which this fear is legitimized. The author, needless to say, does not vote. Badiou gives examples of fear's centrality to politics reaching as far back as 1815 and the Bourbon Restoration, but he concentrates on one: Pétainism. The philosopher's equation of Sarkozy with Pétain, which the philosopher does not hesitate to extrapolate over a whole chapter, is in many ways more offensive than the cheap insults he flings at the president. Sarkozy's rhetoric is little better, for Badiou, then that of his Vichy predecessor. His pronouncements on French culture, we learn, are not without parallels to Pétain's attacks on Jews. And Sarkozy's promised reforms are not just an attempt to enslave the French further to 'the demands of global capitalism's potentates' (p. 106); worse still, they are cloaked: the gambit for a subservience in the guise of liberation. Is the man in the Prada suit from Neuilly-sur-Seine enjoining the French to get to work (and here we get another insult: Sarkozy sounds like 'a bourgeoise from the 19th century addressing her maid' [p. 106]) acting any differently from the collaborationist general? Today, Badiou writes, France is faced with 'a typically Pétainist disorientation: servility before the powers of the day…is called by the Chief 'national revolution!' (p. 106) A critic more patient than I might attempt a point-by-point exegesis of how raising the retirement age or allowing pharmacies to stay open on Sunday is of a different order than aiding the Axis Powers. Let me say only this: it's unfortunate that Badiou rails so outrageously, because there are legitimate criticisms to make of Sarkozy and his program. He even makes some. But this invective is morally perilous and, more basically, strategically naïve. There may or may not be two legitimate sides to the arguments of whether France should reintegrate its military with NATO, cut down

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Farago | Alain Badiou on Nicolas Sarkozy the civil service, or change the train schedule. But for an opponent of Sarkozy to suggest that his mooted policies are tantamount to collaborationism does little more than reinforce the majority's claim that all its 'reforms,' from the most necessary to the most illegitimate, should be pushed through, since the objectors have already proved themselves to be hysterical. And this is the paradox lying at the heart of De quoi Sarkozy est-il le nom?: the author claims that Sarkozy is only a symptom or a name of something, but the fervour with which he attacks the man himself is out of scale with the minor position he occupies in Badiou's analysis. That is, I am afraid, a symptom itself: a symptom of Sarkomania, an epidemic that swept the nation last year and from which the French, as the sales of the book make clear, have still not recovered. Almost nobody is immune. (I admit that I flipped through the recent issue of Paris Match featuring Nicolas and Carla embracing in the gilded office of the Elysée.) And this personalization and spectacularization of politics, a phenomenon that accounts both for the book and its sales, goes wholly undiscussed by Badiou. 'Serious' writers are still a bit scared of 'la politique pipole,' to use the Franglais for the growing importance of images and celebrity in the political sphere. But if Sarkozy is the name of anything, he signifies the increasingly complex manner in which imagebased politics (la politique) and political action (le politique) inform and articulate one another. Sarkozy is our greatest example of how images do not constitute merely an overlay of the 'real world' of politics, but are politics itself. He made his name by understanding this interaction and has lost much of his traction as a president by losing his mastery of it. And this phenomenon is one which a Maoist philosopher at France's most prestigious university is ill-equipped to understand. Badiou outlines his own definition of politics (la politique) early on: 'organized collective action, conforming to certain principles, and seeking to develop in the Real the consequences of a new possibility suppressed by the dominant state of affairs' (p. 12). This definition is so old-fashioned as to be laughable and bespeaks a complete failure to understand how politics and the political, la politique and le politique, have transformed each other. Badiou's book, like the president in his elevated wingtips, comes up short.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008

Jason Farago was trained as an art historian at Yale and the Courtauld Institute. Born in New York, he now lives in London and Paris, where he works as a journalist and art critic. Notes

[1] For background on the March municipal elections, see my 'Sarkozy's mythos takes a hit,' http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/17/sarkozysmythostakesahit

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The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy by John M. Headley, Princeton University Press, 2008, 308 pp.

Matthew Omolesky In an effort to provide a suitably thick patina of legitimacy for an institution whose beginnings date no further back than the time of Arthur Salter and Jean Monnet, the European Union has often made recourse to what can be called the ‘usable past.’ The language of the preamble to the European Union Constitution, to be incorporated in the Treaty of Lisbon, refers to ‘the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law.’ As part of the current ‘Year of Intercultural Dialogue,’ the Slovene Presidency last month organised a conference in Ljubljana entitled ‘Europe, World and Humanity in the 21st Century,’ which focused in part on the question ‘What message can the Europe of today send to the world about understanding global issues, given its own humanistic tradition?’ For those seeking to better comprehend this much-emphasised humanistic tradition, its inheritance, and its impact on universalistic human rights values, a useful starting point from a narrative historical perspective is John Headley’s The Europeanization of the World: On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy. Yet in attempting to trace the origin and evolution of contemporary human rights law, Headley all too often, though unintentionally quite instructively, runs afoul of the Enlightenment jurist Emmerich de Vattel’s warning that treatments of the law of nations are as a rule ‘vague, superficial, and often even mistaken.’ [1] For those grown accustomed to the pronounced bifurcation in popular public discourse as it relates to European affairs, Headley’s framework, which alternates between optimism and pessimism, is actually quite refreshing. Whereas Europhiles like Jeremy Rifkin, T.R. Reid, and Mark Leonard figure European mandarins to be the chief proctors of the ‘global test,’ destined to ‘run the Twenty-First Century’ [2] with an admixture of soft power and enlightened self-interest, while others, prominent amongst which are Mark Steyn, Bruce Bawer, Walter Laqueur, and Bruce Thornton, view European nations as the canaries in the collective coalmine of Western decadence and demographic decline, Headley avoids both extremes. For him, Europe (and even the West as a whole) is a kind of Mithraic bull, nobly bequeathing its universalistic values while in the midst of its own decline.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The raison d’être of Headley’s book is frankly stated at the outset: ‘As dusk begins to settle on the abruptly curtailed “American century”, the time seems long overdue for an assessment of that hitherto distinct civilisation, the West, which is in the process of merging now with other civilisations and cultures’ (p. 1). (Evidently the much-lamented American hyperpuissance was quite short-lived!) In any event, by concentrating on two areas of Western political and legal thought – the ‘program of natural, human rights’ and the ‘faculty for self-criticism’ (p. 2), Headley hopes to show the value of the European intellectual tradition, for without these two ‘distinctively Western political principles,’ the ‘enthusiasm for diversity alone can descend into nasty tribalism’ (p. 6). Headley’s rejection of relativism and subjectivism is certainly welcome; nevertheless from a historical perspective his essentially teleological treatment of the development of human rights norms during the ‘initial, brittle engagement of European civilisation with the globe and its peoples’ (p. 4) – the period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment – is not entirely convincing. After beginning his account with Renaissance Europe’s cartographic encounter with the newly-discovered terra nullius, [3] Headley moves swiftly to the crux of his book: the development of the idea of a common humanity, the essential groundwork for future human rights regimes. Originating in the Roman jus gentium (law of peoples), incubated by Christianity, coming to fruition in the Renaissance, and going to seed in Western thought during the Enlightenment, this notion of universality is, for Headley, the defining product of European thought. In the process, Something distinctively new, a new confidence, a new civility long maturing, a new civilization capable of contending with the most ancient and established had in the meantime come into being; its leadership, from Leibniz to Metternich, from Gibbon to Burke, recognized it as a single country, Europe; a single civilization, European (p. 94). Headley is entirely correct that this was a period during which public intellectuals like Montesquieu announced that ‘tout est extremement lié (everything is extremely intertwined), [4]’ Voltaire could speak of Europe as a kind of ‘great republic’ [5] that was often described as ‘ein bewunderswurtiges Ganze (a marvelous whole).’ [6] Yet, from the practical standpoint of the evolution of human rights, it is quite immaterial that Edward Gibbon felt at home in Lausanne. Jurists have long derived international legal custom from two sources, opinio juris sive necessitatis (the belief that there exists a legal obligation) and state practice. The point is that words alone are not enough; they must be implemented.

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Omolesky | The Europeanization of the World? Yet time and time again one is struck by how divorced from reality and concrete state practice The Europeanization of the World can be. As noted previously, Headley’s historical narrative is teleological, in theory tracking the gradual ripening of European notions of universality from the Renaissance onwards. Yet, as the historian Garrett Mattingly noted in his magisterial Renaissance Diplomacy (1955), a rather different political evolution occurred during this period: The enthusiasm of the humanists for Greece and Rome, their attempt to restore a direct connection with antiquity by a backward leap across the ‘dark centuries,’ meant, in the end, a rejection of the greater part of the usable European past. [7] There followed, according to Mattingly, a ‘rise of national feeling which was beginning to divide European society,’ while the imitation of classical patriotism was already supplying one element: the worship of a special fatherland which the humanists drew from their favorite reading was replacing the sense of belonging to an ecumenical community. As the Bible became the common property of the people of Europe, it was open to any group of them, national or religious, to imagine themselves, like the ancient Jews, divinely authorized to any lengths of guile or violence in the pursuit of their peculiar ends. [8] It should be easy enough to distinguish Headley’s founding myth from Mattingly’s steely reality. For all Headley’s highlighting of inchoate but burgeoning principles of human rights and universality, the chief international political and legal development of this age, sovereignty (best expressed in the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648), receives almost no mention – the word ‘sovereignty’ itself occurs but twice in the text and never with any significance attached. The reader is treated to a thoughtful analysis of the accretion of natural legal principles, but these passages are more or less divorced from contemporary concerns. Universality was never so straightforwardly maintained. It was the Romans who, despite their formulation of a jus gentium, were perfectly willing to divide the world into categories like pars melior humani generis (the better part of humankind) and hostis humani generi (enemies of humankind). Classical concepts of a common humanity were no obstacle to any number of enormities, including for instance those of the Emperor Domitian, who after slaughtering the combatants and

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 non-combatants of an African polity in 85-86 AD bragged to the Roman Senate that he had ‘forbidden the Nasamones to exist.’ [9] And it was Grotius, that champion of state sovereignty, who in the context of the rise of imperialism insisted that Kings, and those who are invested with a Power equal to that of Kings, have a Right to exact Punishments, not only for injuries committed against themselves, or their Subjects, but likewise, for those who do not particularly concern them, but which are, in any Persons whatsoever, grievous Violations of the Law of Nature or Nations…War may justly be undertaken against those who are inhuman to their Parents, against those who kill Strangers that come to dwell amongst them [i.e. settlers], against those who eat human flesh, and against those who practice Piracy. [10] Headley’s version of Grotius, one suspects, would be appalled by the actual Grotius, whose seemingly universalistic notions of the law of nations were in no small part designed to further Dutch sovereignty and its colonial expansion. It is important to remember that this was an era in which, as Montesquieu put it, ‘the object of war is victory; that of victory, conquest, and that of conquest, preservation,’ [11] and, as the historian Pieter Van Geyl pointed out, the moment ‘when the movement away from universality [could] be observed most strikingly.’ [12] It is little wonder that the Europe of Candide’s warring ‘Bulgars’ and ‘Abars’ was often described as an ‘armed camp.’ Headley, a distinguished historian, is of course aware of all this, but his intellectual history, which ignores political realities, only reinforces the idea that modern notions of universally applicable natural, human rights are typically illusory and aspirational, and thus all too often (to borrow Disraeli’s phrase) the ‘baseless fabric of a vision.’ A more accurate view of the evolution of universalism and human rights during this period might have taken into account observers like Baron Bielfeld, who noted that ‘[i]n matters of politics one must not be deceived by speculative ideas which the common people form of justice, equity, moderation, candor, and other virtues of nations and their leaders. In the end everything is reduced to force,’ or Rousseau, who regretted that ‘this pretended brotherhood of the nations of Europe seems nothing but a term of derision to express ironically their mutual animosity.’ [13] In actuality, the unabashedly imperialistic Grotian principles and the growing adherence to ‘special fatherlands’ were arguably the respective foundations for the key events of Europe’s 19th and 20th centuries, colonialism and world war. Meanwhile,

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Omolesky | The Europeanization of the World? Westphalian sovereignty remains the most important legacy of the period under Headley’s consideration, and the most significant stumbling block for the potential enforcement of universal human rights. None of these notions receive any real mention in The Europeanization of the World, as they are obstacles in that chimerical early modern march towards ‘a common humanity.’ By concentrating on the development of Continental human rights norms (however aspirational), Headley inadvertently underscores the extent to which modern human rights law is based on Continental thought. As Mary Ann Glendon has described elsewhere, modern instruments like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been far more influenced by the modern dignitarian rights tradition of continental Europe and Latin America than by the more individualistic documents of Anglo-American lineage. The fact is that the rights dialect that prevails in the Anglo-American orbit would have found little resonance in Asia or Africa. It implicitly confers its highest priority on individual freedom and typically formulates rights without explicit mention of their limits or their relation to other rights or responsibilities. The predominant image of the rights bearer, heavily influenced by Hobbes, Locke, and John Stuart Mill, is that of a selfdetermining, self-sufficient individual. Dignitarian rights instruments, with their emphasis on the family and their greater attention to duties, are more compatible with Asian and African traditions. [14] This would explain why those greatest (concrete) guarantors of civil rights and liberties – habeas corpus, posse comitatus, common law property rights, the US Bill of Rights, the twin pillars of the British constitution, etcetera – are hardly mentioned by Headley with respect to the origin of human rights, in favor of the vague and often unrealised notions of a common humanity which have had such a profound impact on modern human rights theory (if not always on human rights practice). Headley’s discussion of the rise of the ‘faculty for self-criticism’ in the West, the result of which was that dissent ‘had come of age’ and became ‘integral to the effective political process and no longer required exile, incarceration, and extermination’ (p. 170), is rather more straightforward. Yet this requires a shift on Headley’s part, as traditionally Anglo-Saxon principles of freedom of expression are more suitable for this analysis. Yet European and international human rights institutions, which stem ideologically from the dignitarian rights tradition mentioned above, have shown

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 themselves to be far less sympathetic to broad notions of freedom of expression and speech. When dealing with, for example, headscarf laws (Sahin v. Turkey, 2005), or alleged religious blasphemy (Otto-Preminger-Institut v. Austria, 1994, or Wingrove v. United Kingdom, 1996), the European Court of Human Rights has consistently developed the doctrine of ‘margin of appreciation,’ wherein the state was found to be best-placed to determine the limits of freedom of expression. Likewise the Human Rights Committee has validated prosecution for Holocaust denial in cases like Faurisson v. France (1996). The point here is certainly not to comment on the appropriateness of these rulings, which are grounded in rational policy objectives. Rather, it must be acknowledged that Headley’s rather fine discussions of Voltairean dissent and Madisonian faction have precious little bearing on contemporary European and international human rights institutions and frameworks. Developments like the recent resolution at the UN Human Rights Council (passed thirty-two to zero) that called for the body’s free speech expert to police negative comments on Islam in the interests of ‘mak[ing] freedom of expression responsible’ [15] could not be farther from the ideals espoused in The Europeanization of the World. Indeed, one is, in spite of the title of the book, led to the conclusion that these notions (at least with respect to dissent) are not necessarily ‘European,’ and in any case have hardly taken over the world. Headley concludes his book with a damp squib of an ‘Aftermath,’ which is in effect an intellectual salutation over the last two centuries, and thus over imperialism, world wars, ethnic strife, and race murder, and everything else that would undermine the concept of an increasing acceptance of European-developed universality, on its way towards the War on Terror. (The author does note in passing the ‘spasms of civilisational suicide’ (p. 206) in the 20th century, albeit with the redemption of an ensuing Universal Declaration of Human Rights.) At which point, sadly, The Europeanization of the World devolves into anti-American invective. For Headley, the United States ‘has become in effect a leading rogue state’ (p. 210). ‘As in the Germany of 1933, so in the United States in 2001, and again in 2004, the effects of fear and confusion have caused citizens to value leadership and commitment, no matter to what, in place of any considered weighing of alternatives in the interest of justice’ (pp. 210-11). The US even has in Guantánamo Bay ‘our own gulag archipelago with its searing violation of legal procedures’ (p. 211). It would seem that Headley is attempting to put his own discussion of the West’s ‘faculty for self-criticism’ into practice, but these exhausted bromides are entirely out of place in what up to this point had at least been a serious work of scholarship.

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Omolesky | The Europeanization of the World? Pulling it back together for one final push, Headley reasons that as ‘America’s moral, economic, and political leadership disintegrates throughout the world and China’s hitherto traditional hegemony of the Middle Kingdom enjoys a renewal’ (p. 217), the West must adapt. (The precise meaning of the ‘renewal’ of the ‘traditional hegemony of the Middle Kingdom,’ it should be noted, still remains unclear to the reviewer.) Thus Headley, it would seem, envisions a future dominated by ‘the Rest,’ while the West exerts soft power and contributes to a new world order primarily by helping to strengthen human rights regimes. Clearly then, ‘the Europeanization of the world’ is a work in progress. Headley’s conclusion certainly acknowledges this. His metaphor, that the ‘spur forged in earlier centuries by elements of European thought and experience must await the direction of a better-endowed rider and a more coherent public’ (p. 218) is a representative mixture of pessimism, aspiration, condescension, and historical inexactitude. Ultimately, while it would be perverse to deny the existence of natural, human rights, to exalt political and legal universality, all the while ignoring sovereignty, the tactical instrumentalisation of international law in the service of raison d’état, and the fundamental lessons of state practice throughout history, is to be little more than an ingénue. Indeed, for all The Europeanization of the World’s discussion of the crystallisation of European principles of natural law, there is one crucial natural legal principle which has been left out, and inexcusably so. As David Hume so eloquently postulated, The Safety of the People is the supreme Law: All other particular Laws are subordinate to it, and dependent on it: And if, in the common Course of Things, they be followed and regarded; ’tis only because the public Safety and Interest commonly demand so equal and impartial an Administration. [16] The same is true in international law as in municipal law. It is a harsh lesson that, pace Headley, was well understood by our Western forebears, and will continue to be applied just as it has been from time immemorial. In addition to universalistic humanistic notions, Hume’s dictum is likewise, for better or for worse, a necessary part of the usable past.

Matthew Omolesky is presently a researcher-in-residence at the Inštitut za Civilizacijo in Kulturo in Ljubljana, Slovenija, as well as a juris doctor candidate and research assistant at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law. He has written for the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy, Europe 2020, the Düsseldorfer Institut für Außenund Sicherheitspolitik’s Transatlantic Relations section, and The New Times (Rwanda). References

Hampson, Norman 1968, The Enlightenment, London: Penguin Books. Hazard, Paul 1965, European Thought in the Eighteenth Century, London: Penguin Books. Hume, David 1777, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, London: A. Millar. Mattingly, Garrett 1955, Renaissance Diplomacy, Baltimore: Penguin Books. Ruddy, Francis 1975, International Law in the Enlightenment: The Background of Emmerich de Vattel’s Le Droit des Gens, Dobbs Ferry, NY: Oceana Publications. Steiner, Henry, Philip Alston, and Ryan Goodman 2008, International Human Rights in Context: Law Politics, Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tuck, Richard 1999, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order From Grotius to Kant, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Geyl, Pieter 1967, Encounters in History, London: Meridian.

Notes

[1 Emmerich de Vattel, Le Droit des Gens (1758), cited in Ruddy 1975, p. 23. [2 See e.g. Mark Leonard 2006, Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, New York: Public Affairs. [3 Readers particularly interested in this period would perhaps profit more from David Abulafia, 2008 The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus, New Haven: Yale University Press. [4] Hampson 1968, p. 108. [5] Hazard 1965, p. 463. [6] Ibid. [7] Mattingly 1955, p. 247. [8] Ibid., p. 251. [9] Cassius Dio’s Roman History, Book LXVII, pp. 4-6. [10] Cited in Tuck 1999, pp. 102-3. [11] Cited in Ruddy 1975, p. 45. [12] Van Geyl 1967, p. 371. [13] Cited in Ruddy 1975, pp. 38-9. [14] Cited in Steiner et al. 2008, p. 139. [15] Pakistan’s Ambassador Masood Khan, quoted in Associated Press, ‘Arabs Battle West Over Free Speech at the UN’ (April 1, 2008). [16] Hume 1777, p. 53.

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The Post-Left: An Archaeology and a Genealogy Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr. Distrust those cosmopolitans who search out remote duties in their books and neglect those that lie nearest. Such philosophers will love the Tartars to avoid loving their neighbor. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau The victims most interesting to us are always those who allow us to condemn our neighbors. And our neighbors do the same. – René Girard Prelude or Postmortem? A synchronic (structural) and diachronic (historical) analysis of today’s antiWestern left is sorely needed. [1] This essay is a first attempt. I will highlight the malaise experienced by parts of the left – the ‘proto-post-left’ so to speak – in the 1980s and 1990s. This period was defined by the demise of systemic opposition to liberalism and was experienced, as Fredric Jameson has confessed, as a time of ‘existential disorientation.’ In this period a pattern of discourse congealed that would help create a ‘post-left’ paradigm in the wake of 9/11. [2] During the interregnum of 1991-2001 – the period between the end of the cold war and the beginning of the war on terror – a post-cold war, postmodern, postMarxist, postcolonial-theory ‘left’ emerged. It has been called, variously, a ‘Zombie Left’ (Bernard-Henri Levy), ‘The Left that Doesn’t Learn’ (Mitchell Cohen), and ‘The Unpatriotic Left’ (Richard Rorty). In this essay I explain why, after 9/11, it became a ‘post-left’ – linked more with tyranny and reaction than emancipation and progress – and I explore its character and influence. One hopes that what follows is its postmortem, but it is too early to say. Perhaps one day the ‘post-left’ will be seen as the last, desperate gasp of the ‘sixties.’ [3] For the moment, it deserves our urgent attention. Part I: Archaeology of the Post-Left: The Case for Discursive Regime Change Post-left thought is an exercise in ressentiment unhinged from politics in the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Aristotelian sense of politike, or the ‘art of the common life.’ These are its key elements. 1. Inverted Exceptionalism. Take the old ‘exceptionalist’ idea and flip it. America is unique among nations – just not uniquely good, that’s all. The horrid US, with its crude consumer culture, unparalleled racism, and war-mongering politicians, is to blame for everything. 2. Post-Zionism. Ditto the above for Israel. One is the tool of the other in the USIsrael relationship, though it’s not clear which is which. For Walt and Mearsheimer, Israel manipulates the US. For Chomsky, it’s the reverse. In any event, Israel’s right to exist is put in question (at best). 3. Third Worldism. The wretched of the earth (‘multitudes,’ whatever) are not just unlucky but morally superior to the earth’s beneficiaries. Empowered by powerlessness to take the place of the proletariat in conventional Marxist doxology, the Third World Other can do no wrong. It’s all ‘resistance’ whatever it is, up to and including terrorism. In this salvation myth, any two-bit despot – from Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hasan Nasrallah, even Osama bin Laden – can be seen to represent a salutary rebuke to American Capital and The West. So the millenarian imagination persists, after ‘the end of history.’ 4. Cultural Revolution. It’s Manichean also. Because of #1 and #2, a complete transformation of consciousness is needed to wipe away all the micro-corruptions of US-led capitalism, and replace these with more salutary (revolutionary) habits of mind (to be discovered thanks in part to #3). Eventually, everything ‘bourgeois,’ ‘white’ and ‘male’ will have to go. For now it can all be ‘deconstructed.’ Stir in to this ‘methodology’ heavy doses of Sixties-style antinomianism and Seventies-style New Ageism, and you have a heady cocktail: the mind slips its moorings. 5. Totalitarian Ideology. Ah, but moorings are so very reassuring when one finds oneself adrift! In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt outlined the closed-world world-view of the totalizing mind and its self-serving auto-validating procedures. She was talking then about Stalinism and Nazism, but it works for the post-left too (if that sounds like a harsh comparison, see #6 below). [4] For inside the cramped and airless theoretical space of the post-left one finds that (a) every question receives an exhaustive total explanation, situating the smallest detail of an argument within a vast theodicy with no outside and little room for ambiguity

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Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left or surprise. Nothing escapes and no light gets in, while (b) such explanations are independent of and resistant to experience. The post-left’s is an entirely ‘a priori’ structure of thought. And this inclusive, arbitrary narrative without a referent is also (c) ultra-consistent. Why not, when you’re making it up as you go along? Not only does everything fit that gets in, and nothing gets in that doesn’t fit, but the results are always the same: the same demons, the same victims. And finally (d) we find the ascription of collective guilt to ‘enemies.’ The condemned in the post-left scheme of things will be judged not according to what they do or say or think but what they are. The post-left, in short, offers its followers a tidy picture of a messy world, suitable for lazy and credulous minds. 6. Islamism. With #1-5, the nascent post-left prepared the way for the embrace of radical Islamism after 9/11 as a form of ‘resistance,’ indigenous to the Third World (#3), aimed at a guilty US (#1) and Israel (#2), striking a blow for ‘difference’ (#4), that simply had to be good in some way (#5). And it was this final element, I suggest, that catalyzed the other ingredients to produce the post-left proper. Part II: Genealogy of the Post-Left: Microtrends & Macro-History The first stage of the emergence of the post-left concerns its response to two existential challenges to a left-wing identity in the 1990s. These challenges are captured in the titles of two books: the end of history and the clash of civilizations. ‘In watching the flow of events over the past decade or so,’ a young researcher, Francis Fukuyama observed presciently from his desk at the RAND Corporation in Washington, D.C., nearly two decades ago, ‘it is hard to avoid the feeling that something very fundamental has happened in world history ... The triumph of the West, of the western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.’ [5] While those noticing an undeniable lack of humility on the surface of such notions dismissed his words as more cold war chest-beating from the United States, soon everyone with eyes to see recognized that the author’s timing at least could not have been better, as the forty-year standoff between superpowers came to an end. Having anticipated the fall of the Berlin Wall by several months, and predicting the ultimate collapse of Soviet Communism more than a year in advance, the calm, rational, soft-spoken and personally rather self-effacing writer became instantly famous.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Entitled portentously ‘The End of History?’ Fukuyama’s essay’s unabashedly comprehensive vision – couched in lucid prose that anyone could understand, flouting a then-fashionable postmodernist obscurantism – was gauged perfectly to capture not only the scrutinizing gaze of political philosophers and social scientists, but the mood of the times as well, and with that the attention of a broader literate public. It was also guaranteed to raise the ire of Western Marxist academics – who for once stood dumb before overwhelming empirical evidence, as the raw data of events seemed to confirm the hypotheses of bourgeois social science. Communism, and Marxism with it, was finished as anything more than a useful tool of literary criticism and ‘cultural studies.’ For when all the objections to Fukuyama’s discomfiting notion had had their say, liberalism – free-market economics with representative institutions of government and constitutionally guaranteed individual rights – was the only game left in town that anyone really wanted to play. And like the aging Gary Cooper in High Noon, it was the United States that had faced the Bad Guy and gotten the girl in the end, while others dithered. [6] Roll credits. Or so it seemed – for what turned out to be but a brief, shining moment – until little more than a decade later, when the events of September 11, 2001 recast the pacific-seeming ‘end of history’ as a violent ‘clash of civilizations.’ In the popular imagination at least, no less than in the pages of Samuel Huntington’s influential book of that title, History was on again. And popular impressions were not to be discounted. For in the wake of such highly symbolic and consequential events, it was impossible to separate ‘popular imagination’ from what was ‘really’ happening: how the populace understood itself, and thought about events, was largely what was at stake. Truth be told, the mid-1990s had been no picnic, with ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda. Yet what 1989/90 was to Fukuyama, 9/11 was to Huntington – tangible proof that the author was onto something. Out of the jaws of victory – near-consensus on the superiority of human rights, political freedom, and individual liberty – the post-left sought to snatch defeat. 9/11 was our fault and Islamism was now ‘the resistance.’ The emergent post-left would thus come to be defined by its willingness to apologise for suicide massmurderers, misogynist theocrats, and anti-Semites. When this new ingredient was added to last century’s ‘leftovers’ – postmodernist cultural relativism, postMarxism, postcolonial theory – the result was something qualitatively ‘other’ to all canons of traditional leftwing progressivism. All the departures (‘post’-this and ‘post’-that) had added up. A post-left was born.

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Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left What about previous betrayals of principle on the left, you ask? For sure, Stalin and Mao were hardly pikers in their day, yet this was different. The totalitarians of yore at least kept their agendas for murder somewhat hidden. One could debate the gap between ‘means and ends’ and be ‘surprised’ by ‘revelations.’ Islamists, by contrast, announce their hideous agenda openly; the ends are worse than the means; and the means are a foul new kind of suicide mass-murder terrorism. No. That is not a left by any definition. The roots of this new fleur du mal go deep back into the 20th century, no doubt. But the catalyst of cataclysm was Islamism, and its ability to fill the gap opened up by the demise of all other opposition to liberalism. For those who could imagine nothing worse for people than to be subjected to ‘US imperialism’ – not the Taliban, nor the Muslim Brotherhood or its offshoot organization, Hamas, nor the Mullahs of Iran, and certainly not Saddam’s Baath Party – anti-Americanism was next to godliness. At least the end of history wasn’t closing quite so fast upon us. And if there was a ‘clash’ of civilizations, then, well, it was our civilization – indeed, our very notion of what it is to be civilized – that was at fault. On parts of the academic left, both Fukuyama and Huntington had always been equally (and nearly universally) reviled. For many, not benign liberalism (much less reason or freedom, as expressions of human nature) but rapacious and greedy capitalism was in the ascendant. So if Fukuyama was correct that Western liberalism was in some sense ‘universal’ in the age of globalization, well, all the more reason to assert one’s particularity and resist the hegemony of a new Empire. Huntington’s demur, that Western civilization was actually ‘unique not universal,’ and as such was worthy of preservation against the encroachments of a host of emboldened rivals, was equally offensive to the sensibilities of this proto-postleft. [7] 9/11, and a series of attacks soon after, were not viewed as a struggle over incommensurable ‘civilisational’ values, in which the West could conceivably be credited as upholding its values at least – including women’s rights, gay rights, freedom of expression, separation of church and state, and so on – but rather the advent of a new nodal point of ‘resistance.’ In short, whether inherently unique or potentially universal (this turned out to be unimportant), the predations of a feared and hated Western ‘other’ were not to be tolerated. For what was at stake after 1989 was identity. How to find a way of remaining flamboyantly oppositional to a system that, according to radical theorists from

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Fredric Jameson to Antonio Negri, now had ‘no outside?’ 9/11 offered an answer. You want outside? You got it: the murder of three thousand in attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, the gruesome replay on a smaller scale on 7/7 in London a few years later (in which 52 died and 700 were wounded), the Madrid bombings of 2004 (191 massacred and over 2,000 wounded), the assassination of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by Mohammed Bouyeri in Amsterdam that same year, the violence as well as controversy that erupted over the Danish Cartoons in 2005 (resulting in over 100 deaths around the world), the election of Hamas in Palestine in 2006 (and the thuggish brutality of its internecine struggles with Fatah), Hezbollah’s role in igniting the Lebanon war with Israel later that same year (which began with the killing of Israeli soldiers inside of Israel and the kidnapping of several more, and which eventually claimed the lives of a thousand people, mostly Lebanese civilians, while displacing hundreds of thousands on both sides), the Sudanese Teddy Bear incident of 2007 (in which only sensitivities were finally hurt), and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These events were interpreted by the post-left neither as reactionary strikes against a universalizing modernity-cum-liberalism corrosive of traditional identities, nor as skirmishes between fundamentally opposed value-systems, in which only one stood plausibly for freedom and equality. They were, more simply, ‘the resistance’ to ‘Empire.’ Radical Islamism’s disturbance of the post-cold-war status quo was the answer to the existential challenge implicit in Fukuyama and Huntingdon’s notorious propositions. A hitherto disoriented opposition now knew what they were against: liberalism, as a philosophy (a set of ideas embodied in institutions of government and economy), and the Euro-American West as a tradition (a broader set of habits and practices, grounding identity in history, language, culture and emotion, as much as reason and politics). Deconstructing the metaphysics of liberalism is an old pastime, of course, and hating the United States was not exactly new. What was new, shockingly new, was the support for, or failure to oppose, radical Islamism. For some at least, this appeared to arise naturally, almost automatically, from a cultivated disdain for liberal politics and economics (Fukuyama’s telos) and well-rehearsed revulsion at Western culture in general, and mainstream American culture in particular (Huntington’s side in the clash). This sensibility, it would turn out, would overlap with that of Islamist philosophers like Sayyid Qutb of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose influence stood directly behind al-Qaeda. [8].

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Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left Wishful Thinking on Parade: From Berlin to Kabul After the end of the cold war, books and articles had continued to be published with the phrase ‘late capitalism’ in the title, without anybody laughing. It was not clear what ‘late’ was meant to imply, other than an attitude of resentment couched in allusions to an entirely unspecified future. If this was ‘late,’ just wait until later! Well, ‘later’ came in a form no one had anticipated. It was a case of back to the future as ‘Third Worldism’ – substituting the wretched of the earth for the proletariat, as the morally superior vanguard of the utopian future – was adjusted to the new realities of suicide-mass murder. The post-left would emerge as a fount of what Paul Berman called ‘rationalist naïveté’ and ‘wishful thinking’: pathological mass movements simply must have their good reasons, and the more desperate ‘their’ acts, the more guilty ‘we’ must be. [9] What a stunning reversal this was! Just a decade earlier, as political freedom was reborn in places like Poland and Czechoslovakia, the popularity of Western consumer goods and the perceived legitimacy of limited government by the consent of the governed, in an open civil society, were credited with bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. [10] Back then progress – not reaction – was progressive. Sure, Jean-Francois Lyotard had earlier announced the ‘death of grand narratives,’ in what now looked like a clever pre-emptive strike, preparing his readers to give up on the notion of universal history as ‘totalizing.’ True, Michel Foucault had already carefully instructed us that power was everywhere; ubiquitous, inescapable, and decentered, with no privileged source and ‘no outside.’ But given the sheer magnitude and palpable significance of events at the close of the century, the professors faced a dilemma – how to remain ‘oppositional’ in a world-system without tangible opposition; how to stay ‘marginal’ in a network of economic and cultural exchange so capacious that it seemed, even to radicals, to be losing its center [11]. Studying this dilemma, and how it was resolved by the troubled intellectuals who felt its force, is not a trivial matter. For the manner of that resolution meant that as the United States led the world in responding to the new threats, it would have to go relatively unarmed into a new war of ideas – even though it had some very, very good ones. It meant that a significant chunk of what little remained of the truly progressive left in the new millennium preferred safe irrelevancy to risky engagement, while others invited ignominy by grounding their excuses for terrorism in increasingly ornate forms of Berman’s ‘wishful thinking.’ It meant that

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 too few would fight the war of ideas on behalf of liberalism at all, in this new phase of its long confrontation with totalitarianism. My thesis, in short, is that the radical ego was threatened by the ‘end of history’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’ theses. Equilibrium was restored when the shockwaves felt after 9/11 were framed as a new form of systemic opposition to global capital. Here was something that went far beyond either a series of uninspiring brushfires on the edges of Fukuyama’s creeping ‘universal homogeneous state’ (the possibility of which the radicals would not abide), or some larger but no more uplifting conflagrations along the borders of Huntington’s precious but frightfully menaced ‘Western civilization’ (the virtues of which they could not believe in). Fredric Jameson had many times referred to the intelligentsia as being ‘disoriented’ throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in search of a fresh ‘cognitive map.’ Well, it was disoriented no longer. To its great relief it had discovered a new ‘map,’ a readyto-hand totalizing explanation to navigate by. [12] But the cost was enormous. Islamism & the Post-Left Neither the terrorist tactics (after all, definitions of ‘terrorism’ could be deconstructed, couldn’t they?) nor the religious-fundamentalist aims of groups like al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas deterred the post-left from discerning a laudable ‘resistance.’ Indeed, hatred of Bush and opposition to the horrifying war in Iraq were so strong, that even a much more moderate figure, Richard Rorty – hardly a post-leftist – joined the chorus by declaring that he was more afraid of people like the U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft, than he was of Bin Laden. But whereas Rorty’s classically leftist anxiety for the future of his country was tempered by unabashed patriotism, support for liberalism, and clear rejection of terrorism and fundamentalism, this was not so for the major currents of the post-left by 2007. ‘The ends will one day justify the means,’ said the old left. But in the case of radical Islamism the ostensible ‘ends’ were not only unobtainable but intrinsically undesirable to any ‘left’ sensibility – sharia, a new caliphate, and what not. When the old left eulogized the old ‘liberation’ movements there was much romanticizing of authoritarian figures like Che Guevara. But it is qualitatively different to romanticize Hezbollah and Hamas. The post-left denounces indigenous voices of reason from the Middle East, such as Azar Nafisi and Irshad Manji, as traitors to, of all things, feminism and lesbianism.

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Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left While Nafisi was excoriated for telling the neocons what they wanted to hear, Manji would be pilloried for, of all things, ‘exploiting’ her gay identity – on behalf of the sort of society that protects the right to be gay! [13] An ingrained cultural relativism, a durable anti-Americanism, an old anti-Zionism mixed with a so-called ‘new’ anti-Semitism, the cult of the victim known as ‘identity politics,’ a ‘multiculturalism’ that is hostile to Euro-American culture, and a simplistic rejection of globalization – these had all taken a heavy toll. A radical ‘oppositional’ identity had been kept intact and the promise of transcendence retained, but only at the price of a secession from participation in the broader community defined by its acceptance of the most basic norms, such as the prohibition on murder and the right of women to equal rights. For this was a left that could see al-Qaeda’s point. Rationalist Naïveté at Work: Get the Message? As Berkeley professor of Anthropology, Saba Mahmood, put it recently, ‘Even Osama bin Laden was clear in his message at the time of the World Trade Center attacks.’ The ‘clear message’ from Osama, which one would have to be deaf not to hear in the rumble of collapsing office buildings, was that ‘he wanted U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia, a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and an end to Euro-American domination of Muslim resources and lands.’ Paul Berman could not have asked for a better example of the ‘rationalist naïveté’ he’d discerned, from the start, in reactions to 9/11. Plenty of Bin Laden’s statements, including his 1998 fatwa against all ‘Jews and Crusaders,’ declared bloodthirsty revenge to be sufficient goal in itself. As the terrorism expert, Louise Richardson, explains: When asked…whether he would call off his jihad against the United States if the United States were to withdraw from Arabia, bin Laden replied that he would not stop until the United States stopped all aggressive actions against Muslims everywhere. Later in the same interview, he referred to bringing an end not just to occupation but to ‘Western and American influence on our countries.’ On other occasions, bin Laden has articulated an even more ambitious agenda, the restoration of the caliphate. This would require the elimination of current political boundaries throughout the Middle East and beyond, and return, in essence, to the Middle Ages. Bin Laden, for all his carefully choreographed statements and all the colorful descriptions of the iniquities of the West, has completely failed to articulate a positive political alternative.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Richardson concludes that ‘Like other revolutionaries before him, therefore, he appears to be more enamoured of the revolution itself than of the new world it would herald.’ [14] The same type of thing can be said of the post-left. Judith Butler, professor of Rhetoric at Berkeley, and leading figure of the postleft, endorsed Hezbollah and Hamas as ‘part of the global left.’ [15] The leader of Hezbollah, Hasan Nasrallah, has said that ‘if [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.’ Granted, in a more compassionate mood, he says merely that, ‘Our goal is to liberate [Palestine]. The Jews who survive this war of liberation can go back to Germany or wherever they came from.’ Hezbollah’s charter reads, ‘Our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease-fire and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.’ [16] In either case – outright exterminationist genocide or mere ethnic cleansing on an unparalleled scale – this is who and what Butler now embraces as part of ‘the global left.’ And so it came to pass that after September 11, 2001 an alliance of sorts began to emerge between the post-left and elements of a totalitarian, clerical-fascist right, in opposition to the U.S., Israel, and the Rotary Club. (According to the Hamas Charter, ‘With their money, [the Jews] created secret organizations that spread around the world in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests. Such organizations are: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, B’nai Brith and the like. All of them are destructive espionage organizations.’) The disorienting period which Francis Fukuyama had called the ‘end of history’ was itself now brought to an end after a mercifully brief ten years. Now if the ‘clash of civilizations’ was on, only one side – the wretched of the earth – was allowed to see it that way, or to fight legitimately for its interests and way of life. So the wretched of Berkeley, Columbia, and Durham North Carolina had decreed. Conclusion: ‘Other than Freedom’ When the Islamists and the post-left rejected the inevitability of liberal democratic capitalism both sects found themselves at odds with their surroundings. Luckily, both were in possession of elaborate explanations, tailor-made for converting impotence into a sign of virtue and self-loathing into a badge of honor. They had both had the foresight to seal themselves off within layers of difficult text-based traditions that cocooned adherents inside a sort of ‘virtual reality’ of theory. Therein,

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Brahm Jr. | The Odyssey of the Post-Left believers became heroes pitted against a pervasive evil on behalf of an embattled good, traces of which were detectable in acts of ‘resistance.’ For both sects, the weakest of weaknesses – pure innocence – opposed the strongest of strengths – the globalizing West, led by America, but symbolized even more gallingly by Israel. For the ‘post-left’ the culprits of the human drama are no longer the familiar scourges of poverty, famine, illegitimate hierarchy, unaccountable authority and remediable ignorance, but the inherently sinful ‘power and privilege’ of the U.S. and Europe. Not an illiberal Islamic Resurgence, but the liberal West is to blame for terrorism. The post-left has shored up a threatened identity with an all-purpose negation. Where there is the smoke of burning buildings there is ‘grievance,’ and where there is grievance there is the ‘right’ to target civilians. As Rousseau and Rene Girard (quoted at the outset) remind us, and as Samuel Huntington also points out (albeit more prosaically), ‘People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.’ In choosing to be against the United States, Israel, and the Euro-American/Western culture of liberalism, in favor of ideological multiculturalism, the claims of identity politics, and excuses for jihad, the post-left has become a haven for desires ‘other than freedom.’ [17]

Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr. is Assistant Professor of English, Northern Michigan University; and Visiting Professor of American Studies, University of CaliforniaSanta Cruz. [email protected] Notes

The author wishes to thank Tammi Benjamin, Andy Markovits, Forrest Robinson, and Bruce Thompson for their helpful responses to an earlier draft of this essay, a version of which was presented at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association (Chicago, 2007). [1]See Alan Johnson, ‘Wright and the Post-left,’ http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/alan_ johnson/index.html, and Andrei Markovits and Gabriel Brahm, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Post-Left,’ in Democratiya 12. [2] Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke UP, 1991). Wendy Brown echoes this self-ascribed ‘disorientation’ in ‘Feminist Hesitations, Postmodern Exposures,’ in Gabriel Brahm and Mark Driscoll (eds.), Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Hypertechnologies (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), 115. The emphasis which the proto-post-left itself places on its own felt ‘disorientation’ is telling. The events of 9/11 will come as a relief, for some. [3] For the intellectual underpinnings of the post-left in French poststructuralism, see French

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Philosophy of the Sixties, Luc Ferry and Alain Renault (Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1990). [4] See Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism: Part Three of the Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: HBJ, 1951), especially chapter 4, ‘Ideology and Terror,’ pp. 158-177. [5] Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’ (1). The essay appeared originally in The National Interest (Summer 1989). For convenience, citations are given here to an online reprint, easily available at http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm#source. Subsequent references to this edition appear cited in the text. [6] Lech Walesa cites the film as an inspiration to the Polish Solidarity movement, which used its iconography on a poster (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Noon). [7] Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 20-1. [8] See Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York: Norton, 2004). [9] See the chapter, ‘Wishful Thinking’ in Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York: Norton, 2004), p. 152. See also Martin Amis, The Second Plane (New York: Knopf, 2008). [10] See for example, Timothy Garton Ash, The Magic Lantern (New York: Vintage, 1990), and Paul Berman, A Tale of Two Utopias (New York: Norton, 1996). [11] See for example Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2001). [12] Fredric Jameson, ‘Cognitive Mapping,’ in Lawrence Grossberg and Cary Nelson eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1988). [13] Saba Mahmood, ‘Feminism, Democracy, and Empire: Women and the War on Terror,’ in Joan Scott (ed.), Women’s Studies on the Edge (Durham: Duke, 2008), 154. Subsequent references to this edition appear cited in the text. [14] Louise Richardson, What Terrorists Want (New York: Random House, 2006), pp. 84-5. [15] http://kishkushim.blogspot.com/2006/09/berkeley-professor-hizbullah-and-hamas.html. [16] Quoted in Richardson, p. 84. [17] ‘I have tried to problematise the liberal valorisation of the value of autonomy and the concomitant ideal of freedom…. [W]hat desires, other than freedom, do people live by? What do we mean by freedom, from what, and toward what end?’ (Saba Mahmood, interviewed by Nermeen Shaikh, The Present As History: Critical Perspectives on Global Power, New York: Columbia UP, pp. 150-1).

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Rethinking the Just War Tradition

Michael W. Brough, John W. Lango, and Harry van der Linden (Eds.), State University of New York Press, 2007, 265 pp.

Carrie-Ann Biondi The editors of Rethinking the Just War Tradition invite readers in their role as citizens to take individual responsibility for demanding that warfare conducted in their name be just (pp. ix and 11). They do well in calling for an exploration of the success of Just War Theory, since, as John Stuart Mill famously points out, ‘in political and philosophical theories as well as in persons, success discloses faults and infirmities which failure might have concealed from observation.’ [1] With Walzer’s highly popular Just and Unjust Wars in its fourth edition (as of 2006), Just War Theory ( JWT) may have triumphed in the realm of academia, the classrooms of the U.S. Naval Academy, and the halls of the United Nations. But does it succeed in the face of contemporary challenges such as genocide, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism, or does it need to be re-thought or even rejected? Rethinking the Just War Tradition takes up this question in a number of ways and from various disciplinary perspectives. It is divided into three parts, with four essays per part. The essays in Part One (entitled ‘Theory’) step back from, and examine, JWT to see whether its categories of jus ad bellum (the justice of going to war), jus in bello (justice in conducting war), and jus post bellum (justice in the conclusion of war and in the creation of peace settlements) are sufficiently subtle to handle modern challenges such as environmental degradation and the shift from a balance of powers to the rise of a superpower. The essays in Part Two (entitled ‘Noncombatants and Combatants’) explore the jus in bello distinction between combatants and noncombatants, both to assess whether the distinction needs further development in order to handle the rise of child soldiers and asymmetrical warfare and to evaluate its logical relationship to jus ad bellum principles. The essays in Part Three (entitled ‘Intervention and Law’) focus primarily on whether (and, if so, how) assassination, preventive war, and humanitarian intervention can be allowed under the ad bellum principle of just cause for going to war. Before exploring the value of this volume’s essays, it will be helpful to understand the context in which they are written. The editors helpfully include an Appendix that serves three functions, the first two of which are most important here for

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 context-setting purposes. [2] First, they briefly describe JWT as a view that has arisen as an alternative to Realism (the ‘non-moral’ view that ‘anything goes’ in war for the sake of ‘national interest’) and Pacifism (the view that the resort to war is always morally wrong). In contrast to Realism and Pacifism, JWT holds that war can be morally permissible and that it can be conducted in a moral fashion. Second, the editors outline the main jus ad bellum principles (just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, last resort, reasonable chance of success, and proportionality) and jus in bello principles (discrimination between combatants and noncombatants and proportionality of means to the end pursued). [3] In order for war to be moral on JWT, all of these principles must be satisfied, with the ability to satisfy jus in bello principles being built into the just ad bellum principles. Thus, a paradigm case of just cause for going to war – self-defense against an aggressor state – must be accompanied by having exhausted all other means short of war for resolving the initial aggression, be initiated by a legitimately authorized agent, have a reasonable degree of certainty that the good to be achieved will outweigh the bad to be undergone, and intentionally target only combatants and nonhuman threats. For purposes of jus post bellum, though, jus ad bellum is held to be logically separable from jus in bello, with soldiers being held responsible only for jus in bello considerations regardless of the justice or injustice of the cause for which their states sent them to war (which is referred to as the ‘moral equality of combatants’ thesis). It is against this generally understood context of JWT, then, that the volume’s contributors were asked to ‘rethink the just war tradition.’ An examination of the twelve contributions to Rethinking the Just War Tradition reveals a few things: (1) many theorists do not think that JWT needs to be re-thought, but merely freshly applied to new circumstances; (2) few theorists share an understanding of JWT, so they are not all applying the same theory when they ‘apply’ JWT; and (3) it is high time to consider whether the basic premises of JWT bear scrutiny. Given the title of this collection, one might have expected a much greater amount of rethinking and criticism of JWT than actually occurs. Eight of the twelve essays clearly accept the basic tenets of JWT and then apply them to relatively new phenomena (e.g., terrorism and weapons of mass destruction) or areas of concern (e.g., the environment). [4] Of the remaining four essays, two of them claim to rethink JWT, but in fact only consider additional factors that complicate the application of its principles. [5] While the preceding ten essays raise some good points and apply JWT in nuanced ways, it is a bit disappointing to see so much of JWT taken for granted. This is perhaps to be expected when JWT is the entrenched

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Biondi | ‘Dirty Hands’ and Just War Theory view in academia, in the U.N., and among non-governmental organisations (NGOs). It is the remaining two essays that genuinely rethink JWT. Interestingly, John Lango claims only to revise JWT in his ‘Generalizing and Temporalizing Just War Principles: Illustrated by the Principle of Just Cause,’ but despite using much JWT language he ends up actually rejecting so many elements of JWT that it is difficult to call what remains JWT. In ‘Just War Theory and Killing the Innocent,’ Frederik Kaufman offers what amounts to the most radical piece in the collection. He not only explicitly critiques contemporary JWT (especially as defended by Walzer), but also draws out the implications of JWT’s principles concerning intention in such a way as to indicate how and why JWT is beyond rethinking or revising. Despite what appears to be a great deal of endorsement of JWT in this volume, there is under the surface less consensus than meets the eye. JWT emerges – as the title of the volume indicates – from a specific moral tradition. However, ‘the just war tradition’ encompasses many complex principles, has undergone change over the centuries, and has manifested both religious and secular variants blending deontological and consequentialist approaches to morality. Indeed, this is so evident that Brough, one of JWT’s supporters, refers to ‘the body of just war thought’ as ‘a moral goulash’ (p. 162). Before being able to assess whether someone has suitably applied JWT to a new circumstance or area of concern, then, one needs to ask (á la MacIntyre), ‘Whose justice? Which just war theory?’ [6] I will first describe a couple of cases where the phenomenon of discrepant JWTs appears in this volume and then explain the difficulty to which this gives rise. Spatt and Hoag, for example, both raise concerns over how the United Nations operates in relation to humanitarian intervention. Spatt finds problematic the ‘narrowness of Security Council representation’ (p. 219), while Hoag finds problematic the inadequacy of international law ‘on using military force to defend human rights’ as reflected in the U.N. Charter (p. 226). However, they part company over the issue of the moral permissibility of humanitarian intervention, with Spatt allowing it only with the unanimous consent of all U.N. member states (which is practically tantamount to not allowing it) and Hoag allowing it to occur unilaterally. They each take their respective positions for reasons that are supposed to comport with JWT principles. On the one hand, Spatt takes ‘right authority’ to be the most salient JWT consideration, since the justness of the cause and the purity of intention can go nowhere without proper authorisation that people

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 can trust to reflect and direct their wills (pp. 205-6). This right authority is taken to be a Kantian or Rawlsian universal state sovereignty that exists only when an ‘ethical commonwealth’ or ‘fellowship’ of nations emerges from an ‘overlapping consensus’ (pp. 217-18). Any act of humanitarian intervention that falls short of ‘an expression of the will of the entire community of nations’ (p. 220) would disrespectfully ‘threaten to infantilize rather than to restore one’s sense of equality with one’s saviors’ (p. 219) On the other hand, Hoag finds that the U.N.’s legalist paradigm unjustly hobbles the ability of states to act on a ‘moral pull to intervene in response to supreme humanitarian emergencies of the sort endured in Rwanda’ (p. 227). Hoag draws on the Thomist and Grotian strand of JWT in order to ‘resurrect’ the ‘just cause’ principle of ‘interposing to protect the defenceless’ (p. 233), and advocates ‘international violent civil disobedience’ (on the model of domestic civil disobedience) in order to serve a higher moral law and to encourage international law to close the gap between the legal and the moral (pp. 230-31). Hoag then takes great pains to demonstrate how such unilateral violations of international law meet not only the just cause principle, but also the last resort, proportionality, right intention, and right authority principles of JWT (pp. 234-7). Another example of discrepant JWTs occurs with Lango and Brough. Lango uses a great deal of JWT language and claims merely to revise (and thus strengthen) JWT by ‘generalizing’ and ‘temporalizing’ the principles so as to take into account the fact that both goals and circumstances change during the course of a war (p. 75). He takes ‘just cause’ to be the most fundamental JWT principle and understands ‘cause’ as a goal rather than as a state of affairs or an event, which leads to the possibility that the cause can change over time, thus rendering it necessary to re-evaluate the justice of the cause at each stage of a conflict as well as the means used to attain that cause (p. 83). Lango argues that the result of this reasoning is to undermine the jus ad bellum/jus in bello distinction, because there will only be one proportionality principle (rather than two) that is governed by the jus ad bellum principle of just cause. This, in turn, challenges the ‘moral equality of combatants’ thesis, since any combatant’s actions must be proportional to the justice of his cause (pp. 89-90). Indeed, Lango goes on to claim that ‘combatants who embrace unjust goals are especially morally blameworthy; but even combatants who are oblivious to those unjust goals – and given that a reasonable person should have known about them – also are morally blameworthy’ (p. 90). War can thus only be fought justly if the ‘moral equality of combatants’ thesis is rejected.

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Biondi | ‘Dirty Hands’ and Just War Theory Brough, by contrast, vehemently upholds the logical independence of jus ad bellum and jus in bello in order to retain the ‘moral equality of combatants’ thesis. He endorses the Walzerian line of argument that since ‘most soldiers lack both the ability to understand the moral issues involved in going to war and the faculties to discern between truth and government-propagated lie, we usually cannot hold a soldier blameworthy for his participation in an unjust war’ (p. 151). If combatants are convinced that their side is just and the opposing side is unjust (as Brough and Walzer seem to think all combatants on all sides will come to believe), the argument goes that there will be no check on the ‘wartime inclination . . . to dehumanize one’s wartime opponent’ (p. 151). Such tendencies will lead to overt racism, atrocities at massacre-level proportions, and finally feelings of self-loathing and dishonour at vanquishing an enemy not really worthy of the fight (pp. 153-9). The My Lai massacre of the Vietnam War lurks in the background of this discussion. [7] War can thus only be fought justly if the ‘moral equality of combatants’ thesis is upheld. Without even trying to determine who has the better argument in either of these two sets of examples, an underlying problem should now glaringly be clear: JWT can be used by its supporters to reach opposite conclusions. It simply will not do to claim, as Brian Orend does elsewhere, that the JWT ‘tradition simply lacks consensus on this developing point [of ‘moral equality of combatants].’ [8] This is because there seems no way to reach consensus. What could possibly determine how to reach a consensus if the theory is itself ‘a moral goulash?’ One could wave aside such JWT in-fighting and claim that there is something central that all of the JWT variations share in common despite their significant differences, and it is this that is endorsed by JWT supporters and that the contributors to this volume were asked to rethink. If pressed to point to such a central element of JWT, it might arguably be the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE), which distinguishes ‘between people it is permissible to target for killing and those who are not legitimate targets’ and which Frederik Kaufman calls ‘the cornerstone of morally acceptable warfare’ (p. 100). The DDE is in origin a Catholic doctrine that seeks to balance considerations of intention and consequences in moral deliberation: ‘Provided military action is directed against legitimate targets only, undertaken with due care for the innocent lives put at risk, and the military value of the targets is somehow proportional to the lives at risk, then the action is permissible, even though we foresee that innocent people will be killed’ (p. 100).

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Kaufman genuinely takes up the difficult task of re-thinking the DDE in relation to the impulse that draws people to it, namely, the right to life. Many JWT proponents – Walzer chief among them – want to have it both ways: an absolute respect for the right to life and the permissibility to take life for the sake of life in ‘supreme emergencies.’ For example, Walzer repeatedly alludes to the ‘inevitable’ moral quandary created by the necessity of killing in war when war is criminal: ‘The rules of engagement have not been replaced [despite the designation of aggression as criminal] but expanded and elaborated, so that we now have both a ban on war and a code of military conduct. The dualism of our moral perceptions is established in the law’ and ‘We want to have it both ways: moral decency in battle and victory in war; constitutionalism in hell and ourselves outside.’ [9] This chronically conflicted perspective has led to the creation of a concept known as ‘dirty hands,’ which refers to the existence of moral dilemmas whereby no matter what one does, one is doing something bad. In such dilemmas, one is supposed to pick the ‘lesser of two evils,’ but that means picking an evil nonetheless and having to live with the guilt that creates. Walzer has this to say about ‘dirty hands’: One of my examples was the ‘ticking bomb’ case, where a captured terrorist knows, but refuses to reveal, the location of a bomb that is timed to go off soon in a school building. I argued that a political leader in such a case might be bound to order the torture of the prisoner, but that we should regard this as a moral paradox, where the right thing to do was also wrong. . . . But extreme cases make bad law. Yes, I would do whatever was necessary to extract information in the ticking bomb case – that is, I would make the same argument after 9/11 that I made 30 years before. But I don’t want to generalise from cases like that; I don’t want to rewrite the rule against torture to incorporate this exception. Rules are rules, and exceptions are exceptions. I want political leaders to accept the rule, to understand its reasons, even to internalise it. I also want them to be smart enough to know when to break it. And finally, because they believe in the rule, I want them to feel guilty about breaking it – which is the only guarantee they can offer us that they won’t break it too often. [10] It is precisely this line of JWT argumentation that Kaufman seeks to thwart, and he does so by means of a promising route. (I believe that he takes a wrong turn that does not lead him to exactly the right destination, but he’s at least heading in the right general direction.)

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Biondi | ‘Dirty Hands’ and Just War Theory The tactic that Kaufman employs to avoid the false dichotomy of mass sacrifice and total war, while also avoiding the false dilemma of ‘dirty hands,’ is to draw on Judith Jarvis Thomson’s distinction between ‘violating a right’ and ‘infringing a right.’ He explains that ‘[o]ne infringes a right when one negates what the right protects; one violates a right by wrongfully infringing it’ (p. 101). Violations of rights are thus always wrong (tautologically, in virtue of their wrongness), but infringements can be morally permissible, which requires that the concept of ‘rights’ be re-thought. It is this daunting task, too great for one article to accomplish, that Kaufman begins to undertake. He states that ‘war starkly reveals how rights . . . are flexible and context dependent rather than immutable moral bulwarks that guard our vital interests’ (p. 102). We need to figure out, then, much more precisely what it means to have a right to life, and to do so in a way that adheres consistently to a moral theory. If, as those many JWT proponents who pay homage to the exigencies of ‘supreme emergency’ believe, it is the case that it is morally justifiable to target innocent civilians in those cases, then doing so is not merely morally excusable, but rather ‘it would be required, if we are to act morally’ (p. 106). Kaufman concludes that ‘once we allow for infringements of a right that do not violate it, the paradox [of ‘dirty hands’] disappears. . . . If killing the innocent in a supreme emergency is morally justified, then their deaths do not violate their right to life, and so do not count as murders’ (p. 107). Our hands are then washed clean, and the blood is on the hands of those who initiate aggression. Kaufman’s argument leads to a place Lango beckoned us as well, namely, the sphere of just cause, only this time we will need to navigate our way by means of a rights theory free of the moral paradox that haunts JWT. Let us take up again the question from the beginning. Does JWT succeed, need to be re-thought, or need to be rejected? JWT succeeds, if the benchmark of success is to insist that warfare needs to be just and practitioners pay heed to this need. However, JWT’s ambitions for success are much more substantive than this rather minimal requirement that barely keeps Realism and Pacifism at bay; here I would have to say that JWT ultimately is unsuccessful on account of its protean nature. It is not really clear that JWT can be re-thought, given that there is not a JWT but rather a number of JWTs in ‘the tradition.’ The one attempt in this volume to rethink what seems to be central to all JWT variants leads one to the conclusion that JWT is perhaps best jettisoned. It does not follow from this that war should not be conducted justly, but that a new ethic of war is required that can meet the demands of justification, consistency, and, justice. [11]

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008

Carrie-Ann Biondi is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Marymount Manhattan College, New York, NY. She is co-editor with Fred D. Miller, Jr., of A History of the Philosophy of Law from the Ancient Greeks to the Scholastics, and has published on issues in ancient and contemporary political philosophy in Public Affairs Quarterly, Social Philosophy & Policy, and Polis. References

MacIntyre, Alasdair 1988, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press. Mill, John Stuart 2003, On Liberty, in John Troyer ed., The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Orend, Brian 2005, ‘War,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed online at: http://plato. stanford.edu/entries/war/. Orend, Brian 2007, ‘The Rules of War,’ Ethics & International Affairs, 21, 4: 471-6. Walzer, Michael 2003, ‘The United States in the World – Just Wars and Just Societies: An Interview with Michael Walzer,’ Imprints: A Journal of Analytical Socialism, 7, 1, accessed online at: http:// eis.bris.ac.uk/~plcdib/imprints/michaelwalzerinterview.html. Walzer, Michael 2006 (4th ed.), Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, New York: Basic Books.

[1] Mill 2003, p. 153.

Notes

[2] The third function is that the editors provide a brief annotated bibliography of further readings. [3] For jus post bellum principles, see Orend 2005. These principles, according to Orend, include proportionality, publicity, rights vindication, discrimination, punishment, compensation, and rehabilitation. [4] These eight essays include Mark Woods, ‘The Nature of War and Peace: Just War Thinking, Environmental Ethics, and Environmental Justice’; Eric Patterson, ‘Jus post bellum and International Conflict: Order, Justice, and Reconciliation’; Pauline Kaurin, ‘When Less Is Not More: Expanding the Combatant/Noncombatant Distinction’; Reuben Brigety and Rachel Stohl, ‘Just War Theory and Child Soldiers’; Michael Brough, ‘Dehumanization of the Enemy and the Moral Equality of Soldiers’; Whitley Kaufman, ‘Rethinking the Ban on Assassination: Just War Principles in the Age of Terror’; Hartley Spatt, ‘Faith, Force, or Fellowship: The Future of Right Authority’; and Robert Hoag, ‘Violent Civil Disobedience: Defending Human Rights, Rethinking Just War.’ [5] These two include Harry van der Linden, ‘Just War Theory and U.S. Military Hegemony,’ and Jordy Rocheleau, ‘Preventive War and Lawful Constraints on the Use of Force: An Argument against International Vigilantism.’ [6] MacIntyre 1988. [7] See also Walzer 2006, pp. 309-15. [8] Orend 2007, p. 476.

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Biondi | ‘Dirty Hands’ and Just War Theory [9] Walzer 2006, p. 47. [10] Walzer 2003. [11] I am grateful to Irfan Khawaja for valuable feedback on an earlier version of this essay.

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Morality and Political Violence

by C.A.J. Coady, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 317 pp.

Cathy Lowy C.A.J. (Tony) Coady is an Australian philosopher with a deservedly distinguished local and international reputation. His book is the outcome of a long period of attention to the topics discussed under the general heading of the book’s title. The fourteen chapters of the book have their origins in fifteen articles or book chapters written for academic philosophers in the analytical tradition over a period of more than ten years. Rather than publish a series of essays on related topics the author has chosen to rewrite the essays so as to make clear the connections between them. The enterprise is many facetted as Tony Coady provides a range of useful distinctions in discussing matters such as terrorism, combatants and non-combatants, and the correct understandings of ‘aggression’ and ‘proportionality.’ In this review I concentrate on a thread which continues through the book, namely, Tony Coady’s critique of Michael Walzer. Coady suggests that he has attempted to provide a more readable account of the matters of his concern than is required for the work of a professional philosopher writing for other professional philosophers. That together with the fact that the book has been published in the first instance as a paperback, suggests that it is intended not just for the non-professional interested reader, but also for the undergraduate market in philosophy and possibly also in politics and related disciplines. It is with that thought in mind that this review is framed. Tony Coady on Michael Walzer’s idea of supreme emergency Much of the book is a critique of Michael Walzer’s arguments especially, if not exclusively, as they are made in Just and Unjust Wars and it is this engagement with Walzer that I will focus on in this review. References to Walzer abound in the book, mainly in disagreement. They are most solidly compacted in the final chapter of the book, which Tony Coady calls ‘stringency’ and which relates to Walzer’s notion of ‘supreme emergency,’ (Churchill’s term in 1939 for Britain’s plight). This emphasis allows Coady to bring together a number of objections made earlier in the book, as well as to introduce new ones particularly with respect to specific historical instances discussed by

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Lowy | Tony Coady on Michael Walzer Walzer. For Walzer supreme emergency involves the presence of imminent danger to an established polity such as a state. The presence of such a danger allows the rule of war that noncombatants not be harmed to be reluctantly overridden. For Walzer the paradigm case for this eventuality in historical terms is the decision by Churchill’s war cabinet to bomb German cities in order to minimise the Nazi threat to Europe and especially Britain. (It is important to note here that the bombing referred to was that aimed at cities such as Berlin in the relatively early stages of the war, rather than the notorious bombing of Dresden late in the European campaign, which Walzer does not consider to be justified.) In Walzer’s view, ‘Nazism lies at the outer limits of exigency, at a point where we are likely to find ourselves united in fear and abhorrence. That is what I am going to assume, at any rate, on behalf of all those people who believed at the time and still believe a third of a century later that Nazism was an ultimate threat to everything decent in our lives, an ideology and a practice so murderous, so degrading even to those who might survive, that the consequences of its final victory were literally beyond calculation, immeasurably awful.’ [1] Coady challenges Walzer both on the theoretical and the historical aspects of the argument. He argues that polities with a sense of community such as states, and indeed, perhaps especially states, can claim no immunities from the rules of war by virtue of their status as communal holders of value. In addition, the whole idea is ‘too elastic’ in that it allows subjective views of what counts as ‘supreme emergency’ to do the extremely significant job required. It is not sufficient of itself to justify the harming of noncombatants. As illustrated by Walzer’s paradigm case it does not, for Coady, have any more credence; the paradigm case is imported by Walzer ex post facto. Walzer’s justification for the strategic bombing of Germany in 1940, he argues, imports into the description of the extreme and current nature of the emergency, matters that are available to us now, but not to the British war cabinet then. At the time, Coady suggests, what was known was that Hitler was ‘anti-Semitic’ and that the regime persecuted Jews and political opponents. While of course deploring the actual events of the extermination program, what Coady considers of especial importance here is that no program of genocide was yet clear to Hitler’s opponents in Britain. ‘He was perceived as a very dangerous wrongdoer, rather than a genocidal maniac’ (p. 288). (My emphasis). For Coady nothing less than the threat of genocide, or perhaps, the actuality of genocide, will do to raise the possibility of justified harm to noncombatants. The distinction between the actuality of genocide and the threat of genocide is important because the threat of

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 genocide was certainly clear and present in what is breezily described by Coady as Hitler’s ‘anti-Semitism.’ The following facts of the situation are matters of wide acceptance: By 1940 not only were the writings of Hitler and leading members of the German ruling party on the importance of the final solution to the Jewish problem and the central plank of the Nazi Party namely, that of Aryan purity available, but also a number of actions and strictly speaking laws, were pointing in that direction. The Nuremberg laws had been enacted by the mid 1930s and Jewish families lost their citizenship rights, in many cases their means of existence and their children the opportunity to attend school or university. The discussion of the consequent emigration was a matter for at least one international European conference. In 1937 Hitler devoted a large part of a very public speech at a Nazi Party rally to the elimination of Jews from German society. By 1938 the issue of the Jewish population was part of war preparation and the elimination of German Jewry was discussed openly as part of the elimination of potential fifth columns. Following the assassination of the minor German diplomatic official, Ernst vom Rath, by a young displaced Jewish boy acting alone in November 1938 in Paris, Hitler ordered a widespread, well organized physical action against German Jewry. Especially synagogues, but shops and Jewish businesses and homes were targeted for burning, destruction and looting. Some civilians joined in with the brown shirts and storm troopers. Civil authorities such as emergency providers and police sometimes joined in as well. The events of the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’ were widely reported in the international press. As Richard J. Evans points out in the second volume of his magisterial study of the Third Reich, ‘For many foreign observers, indeed, the events of 9-10 November 1938 came as a turning point in their estimation of the Nazi regime.’ [2] The point of this short historical excursion is not so much to suggest that it gives a complete indication of the actual reasons for the adoption by the British war cabinet of supreme emergency measure of the bombing of German cities in 1940. Of course it does not. Rather, it is to indicate that there can be no foundation for Tony Coady’s assertion that Walzer’s use of the war against the Nazi regime as the paradigm for supreme emergency is ex post facto, in that the true nature of the Nazi regime was not yet available to Churchill. It is also a response to the ambiguity in Coady’s requirement that even to be prima facie justifiable, the supreme emergency measure must be a response to the threat of genocide or the actuality of genocide. If it is the threat of genocide, then the signs were there for Churchill loud and clear in 1940.

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Lowy | Tony Coady on Michael Walzer Tony Coady on Israel, ‘ a special case in Walzer’s moral world’ Neither Israel nor indeed Palestine is listed in the index. Yet Israel has a substantial presence in the book. The following is a less than exhaustive list of the places where it comes up explicitly. In the first chapter Coady ponders why the twentieth century interest in just war theory followed a period in the nineteenth when, ‘there was little sympathy for the tradition outside Roman Catholic circles’ (p. 10). He suggests a number of reasons including the national liberation struggles, the Vietnam War, the possibly special nature of the Second World War and the nuclear stalemate during the Cold War. He ends with the thought that, ‘ ... at least for some, the case of Israel, a state whose people have an intimate connection with the victims of Nazi violence but whose politics commit them to persistent dramatic and often contentious violence in defence and pursuit of what they and their numerous external sympathisers see as their rights constitutes a reason for a renewed interest in just war theory’ (p. 10). (My emphasis) In a second mention of Israel, Tony Coady is discussing the idea of a just cause. ‘Israel’s war against the Palestinians, in its latest phase can cite the dreadful acts of suicide bombers as its ‘just cause,’ but they can hardly be considered in isolation from the unjust Israeli ‘settlements’ on Palestinian land, along with other acts of Israeli belligerence that have served in part to provoke them’ (p. 90). What is striking in both these examples, is that in discussing the case of Israel, Coady takes as given in commonsense discourse, the meaning of ‘persistent, dramatic and often contentious violence’ in the first example and of ‘Israeli acts of belligerence’ in the second. Thus even in a book devoted to analysis, no further analysis is required. I am also a little exercised, in an analytical vein, by the force of the word ‘but’ after the comment made about the Israeli connection to Nazi violence, by which he no doubt means the Shoah. In the third example of discussion of Israel, Walzer is directly named. The context is Walzer’s distinction between prevention, which is not a legitimate tool of war, and pre-emption which might be, in the case where one side strikes the first blow in anticipation of an imminent attack. Tony Coady finds the distinction useful but also suggests that it is undermined by Walzer’s motives in introducing it. Thus for Coady, ‘the clarity of Walzer’s discussion is blurred by his desire to show that the Israeli anticipatory attack on Egypt, was legitimate’ (p. 100). In the same passage Coady cites with endorsement Noam Chomsky’s view that in postulating the distinction Walzer was exhibiting the ‘special place of Israel in Walzer’s moral world’ (p. 101).

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The fourth example is also directly concerned with Walzer’s views of Israel. Here, Coady refers to a more recent discussion of the Bush administration’s plan for invading Iraq, where Walzer uses the preventive/pre-emptive distinction to critique such an invasion, arguing that it would be at best preventive and not pre-emptive. Yet, ‘Here, again, it appears that the record of Israel is at least influential in his thinking, since he cites with approval the Israeli preventive strike against Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981’ (p. 101). There is no question that Walzer has special interest in Israel, (might the same be said of Coady?), of which he makes no secret and which he does not present as established commonsense. He is on record as both a supporter of Israel’s existence and a critic of its governments’ policies on various matters at various moments. Perhaps the clearest brief and open statement of Walzer’s views is to be found in an interview included in an anthology of Walzer’s articles edited by David Miller. Here, Walzer gives his view of the Palestine-Israel conflict in a clear and succinct way to the effect that there are four wars being fought simultaneously. In two wars each side has right on its side and in two each side is in the wrong. Specifically, ‘These are the four wars: there is a Palestinian war to destroy and replace the state of Israel, which is unjust, and a Palestinian war to establish a state alongside Israel, which is just. And there is an Israeli war to defend the state, which is just, and an Israeli war for Greater Israel, which is unjust.’ [3] In the fourth example, the discussion centers on ‘rogue states.’ Coady dislikes the use of the notion but none the less adopts a definition (from David Luban), which suggests that what characterizes such states is militarism, an ideology which favours violence to back it up and a build up in capacity in order to pose a threat. Coady sees these as characteristics primarily applicable to the U.S. but also remarks that, ‘There will of course be numerous other countries beyond the ‘axis of evil that might plausibly fill the category, including China and Israel; some regimes are worse than others on some of the indicated criteria, and there is much room for debate’ (p104). Here Coady does suggest debate, but not about the fitness of Israel to come under the definition, just about which bit of the definition it might meet. Perhaps the most problematic use for Coady of Israel as a commonsensical and obvious example is in Chapter 7 ‘The Problem of Collateral Damage.’ This chapter opens with two quotations. One of the quotations is from the Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh and the other is from the editors of the Jerusalem Post. It seems that the use of the term ‘collateral damage’ is all that the two quotations have

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Lowy | Tony Coady on Michael Walzer in common. At the very least, the Jerusalem Post speaks of a real rather than an imagined enemy in the persons of the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of which movements had at the time an explicit policy of exterminating the Jewish population of Israel with whatever means were available to them. The editorial of 11 September 2003, the second anniversary of the 9/11 bombings, was written at a time when Israel itself was suffering large losses of innocent life from a spate of suicide bombings. It calls for the killing of the leaders of the two movements, but adds that ‘collateral damage’ should be as little as possible but, ‘should not stop us.’ Timothy McVeigh, on the other hand, is discussing an imaginary enemy represented by the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and uses the term ‘collateral damage’ in the course of expressing his dismay about not having known quite how many children would be killed. Tony Coady claims later in the careful analytical discussion of harm to innocents as a consequence of an act of war that, It [harm to innocents] can be obscured because, if the legitimate goal is important enough, the innocent casualties can be too lightly discounted by the idea of proportionality. This comes out very clearly in the tone of the quotation at the head of this chapter from the Jerusalem Post. There is the breezy reference to collateral damage, but this is immediately followed by the assertion that such damage must never stand in the way of the killing of the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This looks like trying to have your cake and eat it. It suggests that the talk of minimising collateral damage is simply a ritual gesture toward morality or world opinion. There is no suggestion that the intentional killing may have to be abandoned altogether if the minimising is not sufficient. There is no sense that alternative ways of killing the enemy that might create no incidental damage should be sought (p. 143). This passage reads strangely in a careful analytical context. How can Tony Coady know that the authors of the editorial do not have the more complex intentions with which he refuses to credit them? At the very least, how can he know, and on what basis does he assert, that the editors are making a ritual gesture? Again, the author’s view of what counts as commonsense where Israel is concerned is at play here.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The real world case and analysis As I have already suggested, Tony Coady’s emphasis is on being open to the subtleties of the particular case. He seems not to take his own counsel when it comes to the case of Israel. Rather, a particular partisan view is presented as a matter of commonsense. More generally, in analytical philosophy commonsense is prioritised in a way in which it is not in other traditions. Representing a partisan view of a real world situation, in this case Israel, as commonsensical, intuitively clear, and not requiring further argument, does especial injustice to that real world case.

Cathy Lowy works for a consultancy company in Melbourne. She is also an Honorary Senior Fellow of the School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology at the University of Melbourne. References

Coady, C.A.J. 2008, Morality and Political Violence, New York: Cambridge University Press. Evans, Richard J. 2005, The Third Reich in Power, New York: The Penguin Press. Walzer, Michael 1977, Just and Unjust Wars, New York: Basic Books. Walzer Michael 2007, Thinking Politically; essays in political theory; selected, edited, and with an introduction by David Miller, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

[1] Walzer 1977 p. 253.

Notes

[2] Richard J. Evans 2005 p. 592. [3] Walzer 2007 p. 300.

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Unjust, unhelpful: arguments against the academic boycott of Israel David Hirsh I am reluctant to write this article because it should not be necessary. No antiracist and no scholar should need the case to be explicitly set out against a campaign to exclude Israelis from the cultural and economic life of humanity; especially from the global academic community. There is no campaign to exclude anybody else; only Israelis. That a reputable scholarly journal feels it has to commission an article giving reasons why such an exclusion is a bad idea should tell us something worrying about the depth and scope of contemporary anti-Semitism. There are a number of reasons to oppose a boycott of Israeli academia and I will, in spite of my reluctance, set them out as clearly as I can in this article. But for me, the central reason, and in fact the reason behind the other reasons, concerns antiSemitism. The actual intentions of people who support this boycott are positive and antiracist; they want to help Palestinians. But were it to be instituted the boycott would be in effect if not intent an antisemitic measure; it would normalise an exclusive focus on Jews as fit targets for exclusion and punishment. To be quite clear, I am saying that it would be better if this debate was not happening; it is not a legitimate debate. I am well aware that I will be accused of being part of a powerful ‘Israel lobby’ which dishonestly ‘plays the anti-Semitism card’ in order to de-legitimize criticism of Israeli human rights abuses. I want antiSemitism to remain unthinkable and so I am becoming accustomed to the charge of violating freedom of thought. But people are more and more seeing through the lazy claim that those who raise the issue of contemporary anti-Semitism do so for instrumental reasons. [1] In truth the libel that Jews aim to benefit instrumentally from anti-Semitism is an old one, classically articulated in the ninth of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Why should I overcome my reluctance to debate the pros and cons of excluding Israelis? If there were a proposal to exclude women from universities on the basis that their natural aptitude to science was inferior to that of men, then academic journals would not take it seriously by hosting a debate on the proposal. If I were asked to rebut such a proposal, I would refuse, on the basis that there is no debate

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 to be had; it is indisputable fact that women are as intellectually competent as men. A debate on the issue of women’s equality, I would argue, would normalize the argument that women are unequal and would therefore be positively damaging. Another example of a debate which we should avoid having is whether or not the Holocaust happened. Holocaust deniers are keen to debate with historians so that they can present their racist discourse as one side of a legitimate debate. Historians refuse to debate with Holocaust deniers for that reason and because there is no debate to be had. The debate in itself functions as a legitimation of racist views. However, imagine a situation where serious people did believe that women were essentially inferior or where serious people believed that the Holocaust was a myth generated by a Zionist lobby. In that case, we would be forced to take part in these debates, to present the evidence against the bigots, and to show that they were wrong. The harm done by legitimizing the debate would be outweighed by the good of winning the debate. So, we are in a situation where serious people are seduced by a proposal to exclude Israelis from university campuses. I will first explain how I think the boycott campaign, and the politics of demonization which lie behind it, relate to antiSemitism. I will then set out other arguments against boycotting Israeli scholars. One final precursor is a short discussion concerning what is meant by a boycott of Israeli academia. It will be said that I have already misrepresented the boycott campaign by characterizing it as an attempt to exclude Israelis from our campuses and our conferences, from our journals and our libraries. The boycott campaign says that it proposes a victimless boycott of institutions. In truth the rhetoric of the boycotters on this question has changed and evolved as it has encountered opposition to each articulation. In 2002 Mona Baker fired two Israelis from the editorial boards of her academic journals. Gideon Toury and Miriam Shlesinger are both well respected as scholars and also as opponents of Israeli human rights abuses, but nevertheless they were ‘boycotted.’ In 2003, the proposal to the Association of University Teachers (AUT) was that members should ‘sever any academic links they may have with official Israeli institutions, including universities.’ The same year Andrew Wilkie rejected an Israeli who applied to do a PhD with him at Oxford on the pretext that he had served in the Israeli forces. In 2005 the boycott campaign called for the AUT to boycott particular Israeli universities. In 2006 the other British academic union, NATFHE, called for a boycott of Israeli scholars who failed to ‘publicly dissociate themselves’ from ‘Israel’s apartheid policies.’ In

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott 2007 the new merged academic union, the UCU, reverted from the proposal for a McCarthyite political test back to the ‘institutional’ formulation. Three anecdotes just from my own experience: a colleague asked me if it was legitimate that another colleague had invited an Israeli scholar to speak at our college; a colleague asked me if his reputation would be harmed if he visited the West Bank even in the company of anti-occupation Israeli scholars; a colleague refused to discuss his academic work with a scholar who works at an Israeli university until he had answered questions about his own attitude to the ‘apartheid state’ in which he lived. These examples all demonstrate the ways in which a boycott of Israeli institutions really amounts to the political interrogation, stigmatization and exclusion of Israeli academics. Universities are not buildings or administrations, they are academics and students; academic research gets done by human beings; papers are written by people; research is carried out by researchers. Some have argued that an Israeli scholar would be disallowed from submitting a paper to a journal if she refused formally to disavow her institution. In this way the political test would morph into an institutional test but would remain substantially similar. No, say the boycotters, we don’t want to exclude all Israelis, but only people who work at Israeli institutions. To rely on this distinction would be to insist that the only way for an Israeli academic to be legitimate would be to live outside Israel. We are discussing an exclusion of Israelis. A significant proportion of the world’s Jewish academics work in Israel. Many more, disproportionately, have links to Israeli institutions. Jews are more likely to be involved in Jewish, Israeli or Middle East studies and would therefore be isolated from important centres of their discipline. Jews in other fields are more likely to have links with Israeli colleagues. Jews are more likely to manufacture institutional links with Israel in order to demonstrate their opposition to a boycott. It is normal practice for institutions to carry out impact assessment of policy changes with respect to equal opportunities. Any impact assessment of a boycott of Israel would find that in a whole number of distinct ways, it would disadvantage Jews much more than others. In this sense then, already we can see that an academic boycott of Israel would be institutionally antisemitic. The boycotters may argue that it is nevertheless right – Jews should suffer disproportionately for Jewish crimes. But then they should defend rather than deny the antisemitic effect of their proposal. While the boycott would not exclude every Israeli or every Jew, it certainly would exclude Israelis and Jews. The idea of institutional racism, of a racism which is not

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 intended but which is nevertheless a predictable result of particular policies or practices, is hardly new to antiracists. My argument about anti-Semitism is not an ad hominem argument. I do not say that people who support a boycott of Israel are really motivated by an underlying hatred of Jews – either secret or unconscious. I do not say that exaggerated hostility to Israel is a result of an ahistorical, cultural or permanent anti-Semitism. In my view the relationship is actually the other way round. The exaggerated hostility to Israel comes first, the normalization of antisemitic ways of thinking follows, and concrete exclusions of Israelis and Jews follow next; this leads in turn to more hostility to Israel and to more normalization of hostility to Jews. I do not believe that it is common within the boycott campaign for people to be motivated by a conscious hatred of Jews. Mine is not an argument concerning malicious intent. I think the boycotters are motivated by a sense of anger and outrage at Israeli human rights abuses; a sense of anger and outrage that I share. Yet anti-Semitism can nevertheless be a result of good intentions and of righteous anger. The boycott campaign portrays Israel as a unique fulcrum of global imperialism and as a uniquely racist state which is uniquely worthy of boycott. So where does the belief in Israel as a singular evil on the planet come from, if it does not come from an antisemitic antipathy to a Jewish collective project? Perhaps some people think that it is just true, that Israel is the most serious human rights abuser on the planet and that its academics should be held responsible. But in fact Israeli human rights abuses are far from unique. Many states occupy contested territory; many are responsible for much greater human rights abuses than is Israel. So how do we explain the sharp focus on Israeli human rights abuses and its frequent combination with a silence about the abundance of much greater human rights abuses elsewhere? The Stalinist and post-Stalinist left inherits from a specific tradition of explicitly antisemitic anti-Zionism which was invented by the official ideologues of the Soviet Union. This ‘anti-imperialist’ antisemitic rhetoric was directed at Jews, most famously during the preparation for Doctors Plot show-trial in 1953. On 13 January 1953, Pravda ran a story under the headline: ‘Vicious Spies and Killers under the Mask of Academic Physicians.’ Pravda wrote that ‘Unmasking the gang of poisonerdoctors struck a blow against the international Jewish Zionist organization. Now all can see what sort of philanthropists and “friends of peace” hid beneath the sign-board of “Joint.”’ [2] The Communist Party in Poland organized a campaign against Jews in March 1968 by which they were coerced publicly to articulate

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott their opposition to ‘Zionism.’ Many refused and were pushed out of Polish public and academic life; this was done in the name of the Palestinians, in the name of Communism, in the name of the left, and of anti-imperialism, barely twenty years after the Holocaust (Pankowski 2008). The anti-Stalinist left, particularly those sections which identified as Trotskyist, encountered huge difficulties when faced with a post Second World War world in which Trotsky’s revolutionary perspective had been defeated. Neither of the two possibilities which Trotsky foresaw had happened; the Soviet Union did not collapse, nor did the workers make a ‘political revolution’ against the ‘bureaucracy.’ In fact, the ‘degenerated workers’ state’ came out of the war strengthened, and it replicated itself across a significant proportion of the world. Capitalism showed itself, also against expectations, to be hugely dynamic. The world seemed to find a third option that was neither socialism nor barbarism. Some on the Trotskyist left remained for decades in a state of frenzy, convinced that this was the moment of the final crisis of capitalism and of state ‘socialism.’ Others eventually over-embraced the new situation and became convinced that the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China were, after all, in spite of their evident failings, in some sense an advance on capitalism. By this route, many on the Trotskyist left managed to downplay their opposition to the Communist rulers in favour of defending the ‘workers’ states’ against ‘imperialism.’ In this way Marxist politics, for some, was radically transformed. What started as a programme for the transformation of society became a programme of siding with ‘progressive’ states. Whereas classical internationalism was a programme of common struggle against capitalism, it now became a programme of taking sides against America in geopolitical power struggles. Later other options emerged: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. For some it didn’t matter that the leaders of the good ‘progressive’ nations wore military uniforms, had secret police forces and ruled tyrannically, so long as there was some actually existing state to which they could attach their feelings of patriotism. This phenomenon degenerated further for those who substituted ‘victim nations’ for ‘good nations.’ Nations thought to have socialist or progressive regimes were, some noticed, always opposed by imperialism, so some on the left began to support any regime which employed anti-imperialist rhetoric. In this way, some left-wing political currents turned themselves into apologists for Saddam Hussein, Slobodan

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Milošević, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il and for the ‘resistance movement’ in Iraq. Some people on the left in the 1950s had great hopes in Israel as a good nation and also sympathy for Israel as a victim nation. They began to wave its flag. It is sometimes these same people who have now swung round in disgust when it turns out that Israel is not a utopian beacon for mankind. Sections of the left are turning on Israel with a rage, a single-mindedness, and an enthusiasm explainable more readily by feelings of betrayal than by looking at the actual nature of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The willingness amongst sections of the left to find that Israel is a unique evil on the planet is not a result of anti-Semitism but is a symptom of the poverty and degeneration of much left-wing thinking in general. ‘Anti-imperialism’ during the Cold War often degenerated into a self-satisfied anti-Americanism which was increasingly expressed with a disdainful contempt not only for American democracy but also for American culture and for American people. American and bourgeois hypocrisy was often felt as being more repellent than Soviet crimes against humanity. Third world dictatorship was often felt to be much worse if it was backed by the US than if it was backed by Soviet imperialism. There was little appetite for outrage at Soviet hypocrisy. Marx offered an analysis of exploitation which did not rely on a picture of the rich and the powerful conspiring greedily against the exploited. That was his genius. He offered a structural account of exploitation which was much more compelling than conspiracy theory. Some people on the left who forget Marx are left only with the conspiracy of bad people exploiting the oppressed. And from conspiracy theory it is one short tempting step to antisemitic conspiracy theory. When Jews are involved in conflicts there is a danger that the ways people think about those conflicts get mystified in the language of anti-Semitism. There are real abuses of human rights committed by Israel; there is real racism in Israel; there is an illegitimate occupation; there is Jewish power. But the boycott campaign is not a reasonable response to the actual situation; it is a response to a mystified narrative of the actual situation. The human rights abuses are mystified as being genocidal like that of Nazism; institutional racism is mystified as being worse than apartheid; the occupation is mystified as being unique; Jewish power becomes an ‘Israel lobby’ capable of perverting the policy of the only superpower on the planet

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott against its own interest. Left-wing portrayals of Israel as a unique evil on the planet are the result not of an underlying secret or unconscious anti-Semitism but of the particular post-war history of important currents of socialist thought (See Seymour 2007 & 2008). An academic boycott, as we have seen, would impact disproportionately against Jews and so would be institutionally antisemitic. It is based on and encourages a world-view which puts Israel and Zionism at the centre of all that is threatening to the oppressed and to the left. Antisemitism has always put the Jews at the centre of the world. In truth, Jews and Israel are not central to anything. As well as being institutionally antisemitic in effect, the rhetoric of the boycott campaign treats Israel as a demonic entity rather than as a state and so opens the door to antisemitic thinking. ‘Zionism’ becomes an epithet of evil, an insult which denotes something whose destruction is necessary for things to get better in the world. Zionism is pictured as a totalitarian movement rather than as a complex and variegated nationalist movement which emerged from the pogroms of Russia, the gas ovens of Nazi Germany and the expulsions from the great cities of the Middle East. Finally, in case there is still somebody reading this who is not yet convinced, I will outline the specific arguments against excluding Israelis from British campuses, laboratories, classrooms and publishers. First a point of order. The boycott campaign positions itself as a passive response to a Palestinian call, in analogy with responses around the world to the ANC call to boycott apartheid South Africa. In truth, the current boycott campaign was initiated in April 2002 by Hilary and Steven Rose who called for a moratorium of European research collaboration with Israel. In 2005 Sue Blackwell claimed in The Guardian that her campaign would succeed because, unlike in 2003, she now had a ‘clear call from Palestinians.’ The academic boycott is not called for by any body which represents Palestine; not by the Palestinian Government nor by the leaders of Hamas nor by the PLO. It is called for by some trade unionists and by some civil society organizations. Some people in Palestine argue for an anti-normalization strategy, part of which is a call for an academic boycott, while others in Palestine argue for closer relations with Israelis which may lead towards a peace agreement. We, on the outside, should listen to the debates in Palestine respectfully but we should also use our own political judgment as to how we may intervene.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 (a) Academic Freedom The standard liberal argument against a boycott of Israeli academia is based on the principle that such a boycott would violate the norms of academic freedom. Michael Yudkin (2007) articulates it thus: The principle of the Universality of Science and Learning – that academics do not discriminate against colleagues on the basis of factors that are irrelevant to their academic work (such as race, religion, nationality etc.) – is well established and almost universally respected. To boycott academics by reason of their country of residence breaches this principle and harms the interests of the academics concerned. Judith Butler (2006) argues that a liberal abstract notion of academic freedom is not sufficient to make sense of the boycott debate. While Palestinians may enjoy an abstract right to academic freedom, the material conditions necessary for the enjoyment of those rights do not exist under occupation. Steven Rose [3] has argued that Israelis are hypocritical to ‘squeal’ about their own academic freedom while the occupation continues to deny freedom to Palestinians. It is possible to respond to this by arbitrarily and artificially removing the academic freedom of Israelis, as punishment, in order to balance the situation, or in an effort to exert pressure on Israel to respect Palestinian freedom. Or it is possible to respond by campaigning against the occupation and against the material denials of academic freedom which come with it. Butler does not argue that abstract academic freedom may be ‘trumped’ by other more important rights, but the opposite; she argues that the principle of abstract freedom must be strengthened, deepened and made material by creating the conditions for its implementation. The boycott campaign sees academic freedom in Israel as something which may be sacrificed for the greater good of ending the occupation. I would argue the opposite, following Butler: the concept of academic freedom is important in itself but it does not go far enough; a material conception of academic freedom is necessary which can go beyond the critique of the boycott to a fight for freedom in the West Bank. Academic freedom is not a principle which we should reject because sometimes it fails to deliver what it promises; rather, we should fight to hold it to its promise. Academic freedom is not something to be sacrificed in the struggle for more freedom; academic freedom is part of the struggle for freedom.

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott (b) Damage to the union or the university which is to do the boycotting Howard Jacobson argues that the boycott, as a refusal to listen, would be a particular violation of the norms of scholarly life: No longer to listen is no longer to engage in the dialogue of thought. Which disqualifies you as a scholar and a teacher, for what sort of example to his pupils is a teacher who covers truth’s ears and buries it under stone. A university that will not listen does far more intellectual damage to itself than to the university it has stopped listening to. ( Jacobson 2007) The harm of the academic boycott begins at home with the destruction of the academic project and the idea of the university. It is also within the home institution that anti-Semitism strikes first. The boycott ‘debate’ launches the boycotters into a fight against the overwhelming majority of Jews who experience their campaign as an antisemitic attack. The boycotters portray themselves as standing in the tradition of the South African struggle against apartheid. But there are other boycott traditions too which endure with clarity in Jewish collective memory. This would not be the first time that Jews would be excluded from European universities: Jews were excluded from all universities until the 19th Century; Jews were excluded again from universities after Hitler came to power; the Arab boycott of Jewish businesses began in the same year as Hitler’s final defeat. One of the most fatuous claims of the boycott campaign is that their exclusion would help Israelis to see that Israel should behave better; in truth their exclusion would be experienced by Israelis as anti-Semitism and it would push left-wing Israelis towards the political centre and the national consensus. True, many boycotters are Jews, but not many Jews are boycotters. No matter how often and how loudly Jewish boycotters speak ‘as Jews,’ no matter how hard they struggle to neutralize anti-Semitism as an issue in the ‘debate,’ no matter how desperately they insist that the Jewish community is split on the issue, they do not succeed; the Jewish community is not really split and anti-Semitism is an issue in the ‘debate.’ So the appearance of the campaign to exclude Israelis from our campuses brings with it a toxic atmosphere. People who oppose the boycott are attacked as pro-imperialist, pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid, uncaring of Palestinian suffering, supporters of the occupation and users of the charge of anti-Semitism as a dishonest smoke screen. And most of the people thus accused are Jews. With the campaign to exclude Israelis comes a campaign to libel Jewish academics and Jewish union members; Jewish students too

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The boycott campaign did enormous damage to the academic unions in Britain. Unity is paramount for the union to fight for the pay and conditions of its members and for the education system more widely. The pro-boycott ‘left’ chose to divide the union between those who know how to recognize the smell of anti-Semitism and those who can’t recognize it or who refuse to sniff the air. The boycott campaign libels Israeli universities and so institutions which back the boycott put themselves at risk of a damaging libel suit. The boycott is an antisemitic policy which violates the antiracist constitutions of unions and universities and so puts them at risk of legal challenge. Many UCU members resigned from the union over its support for the boycott. Some did so publicly while many others have simply stopped paying their dues, forgotten to renew their membership, or decided not to join in the first place. In these ways, Jews and antiracists (people who oppose anti-Semitism) were excluded from the UCU. (c) Damage to Palestine Palestine is in crisis. The occupation is intensifying; the wall is being completed; the checkpoints are as numerous and humiliating as ever; the Israeli settlements are growing and multiplying; and life, particularly in Gaza under Hamas, isolated from the world, is increasingly grim. Why, given these circumstances in Palestine, is the international solidarity movement so small and weak? I believe that people who have sympathy with the plight of the Palestinians are put off Palestine solidarity by the smell of anti-Semitism that swirls around it. Within the trade unions, the boycott ‘debate’ is not between those who support Israel and those who support Palestine but is almost entirely a debate amongst people who hope for a just peace, who oppose the occupation and who hope for freedom for Palestinians. The campaign arbitrarily splits them in half over the irrelevant and divisive question of how Israeli academics should be punished. A whole layer of people who think of themselves as friends of Palestine are treated by the boycott campaign as enemies of Palestinians. In this way, the boycott campaign splits and disables Palestine solidarity work in Britain. In this way, the boycott campaign damages Palestine.

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott (d) Inconsistency A question which is often the first one to occur to somebody when they learn that there is a campaign to boycott Israel, is ‘Why Israel?’ There is genocide going on in Darfur and it has killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused the death of hundreds of thousands more of the millions who have been displaced. There is a dictatorship ruling Zimbabwe which fails to feed its population and which has organized hundreds of thousands of house demolitions in the last few years. China has been running a bloody and repressive occupation of Tibet for decades, has moved millions of its own settlers into Tibet and has deported hundreds of thousands of Tibetans to the Laogai camps, the Chinese version of the Gulag. Russia is running an occupation of Chechnya which has resulted in the deaths of countless thousands of Chechens, particularly during its re-conquest of Grozny, the capital city, in the mid-1990s. There are very many states in the world where there are ethnic or gendered exclusions from citizenship, or systems of two-class citizenship, or systems whereby many of the people who do the work are defined as non-citizens or guest-workers. There are very many states in the world which came into being following ethnic struggles over territory and the forced movement of populations. There are many states in the world which are still fighting over pieces of territory with their neighbours. There are many states in the world where there is no freedom of the press, freedom of speech, no functioning legal system. There are many places where trade unions and political parties are illegal and repressed. There are many places where there is no democracy. So why, in British trade unions and on British campuses, are there campaigns only to punish Israel? There are many answers to this question, but none of them is satisfactory. It is true that any individual has every right to be concerned about whatever particular cause happens to engage them, but a trade union should be concerned with human rights abuses in general, not with only with human rights abuses that are committed by Jews. (e) Universities as particular targets of the boycott campaign There are two strands to the argument about why academics in particular should be boycotted. One is that the academic boycott is one part of a general boycott of Israel. The other is that Israeli academic institutions are themselves particularly guilty of facilitating, legitimating and organizing human rights abuses. The boycott campaign continues to recycle a number of libels and half-truths about Israeli academia. These are effective with an audience that knows little about Israel and less about Israeli universities. Both Haifa University and the Hebrew University have about 20 percent Arab students as well as significant numbers of Arab faculty

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 members. This is a rate of inclusion of minorities which would shame many elite British institutions. The truth is that the universities are amongst the most antiracist spaces in Israel; spaces where ideas for peace and against racism are forged, taught and practised. The Oslo peace process, destroyed by Israeli and Arab extremists, was forged by links between Israeli and Palestinian academics. Certainly there are institutional and other connections between Israeli universities and the armed forces and the armaments industries; this is standard throughout the world. In many states, universities are state controlled institutions. In Israel, as in most democratic states, they are formally, and to a large extent actually, independent institutions. One precedent that the boycott campaign seems to set is that academics (and musicians and artists and sportspeople) should be held responsible, and should be punished by exclusion, for the human rights abuses committed by their state. This kind of collective responsibility is not the usual attitude taken by left and liberal critics of state human rights abuses. A boycott of Israeli academics would harm the Palestine solidarity effort, it would harm the Israeli peace movement and it would harm the peace process. It would mis-educate young people who were concerned about the Middle East to believe that it was a simple problem of good against evil. It would harm the boycotting universities and unions and it would harm the boycotted universities. It would act as a catalyst for antisemitic ways of thinking and it would constitute in itself an anti-Semitic exclusion. The only good the boycott campaign does is to make some comfortable and self-righteous people, far away from the violence, feel that they are ‘doing something’ to help.

David Hirsh is a lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London and an Editor of Engage Journal. This is a longer version of an article that first appeared in Babylon, Scandinavia’s leading journal on the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. References

Butler, Judith, (2006) ‘Israel/Palestine and the paradoxes of academic freedom,’ Faculty For IsraeliPalestinian Peace UK, http://www.ffipp-uk.org/foto_papers/butler_FOTO_revised.pdf, downloaded 20 July 2007. Hirsh, David (2007) Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: Cosmopolitan Reflections, Working Paper #1, Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, New Haven CT, Print ISSN

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Hirsh | Against the Boycott 1940-610X; Online ISSN 1940-6118 (165 pages), http://www.yale.edu/yiisa/workingpaper/ hirsh/index.htm Hirsh, David (2008) ‘The Livingstone Formulation’ Z-word.com, February 2008, http://www.zword.com/on-zionism/antisemitism-and-anti-zionism/anti-zionism-and-antisemitism%253Adecoding-the-relationship.html?page=2, downloaded 11 February 2008. Jacobson, Howard, (2007), ‘Those who boycott Israeli universities are doing intellectual violence – to themselves,’ The Independent, 14 July 2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/ columnists_a_l/howard_jacobson/article2768274.ece, downloaded 20 July 2007. Pankowski, Rafal, (2008) ‘When “Zionist” meant “Jew”: revisiting the 1968 events in Poland,’ Z-word.com, February 2008, http://www.z-word.com/z-word-essays/when-%25E2%2580%2 598zionist%25E2%2580%2599-meant-%25E2%2580%2598jew%25E2%2580%2599%253Arevisiting-the-1968-events-in-poland.html, downloaded 11 February 2008. Seymour, David, (2007) Law, Antisemitism and the Holocaust, London: Routledge-Cavendish. Seymour, David, (2008) ‘The sovereignty of myth and the myth of sovereignty’ (MS). Yudkin, Michael, (2007) ‘Is an academic boycott of Israel justified?’ Engage Journal, Special Issue, April 2007, http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/index.php?journal_id=15&article_ id=61, downloaded 20 July 2007.

Notes

[1] See Hirsh 2008 for more on this easy disavowal of anti-Semitism. [2] Pravda Tuesday, 13 January 1953, Page 1. Translation copyright © 2000 by P.R. Wolfe and BINIE staff, http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/vrach-ubijca-e.html. [3] Rose was speaking in a debate at Goldsmiths College on 27 September 2006.

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America and Israel After Sixty Years Robert J. Lieber Sixty years after the founding of Israel, America and the Jewish state maintain a close and unique relationship. Americans, for the most part, tend to accept this as something natural and long-standing. Foreign observers, however, do not always comprehend the nature of this connection, its durability, and the deep-seated continuities on which it rests. [1] Some are merely puzzled or curious, others may reach for far-fetched explanations or – in worst cases – embrace sinister conspiracy theories in order to account for this special bond. To understand the basis of the relationship it is necessary to appreciate the uniqueness of Israel, the particular characteristics of the United States, and the manner in which these traditions and legacies interact. The creation of Israel in 1948, reborn after some 2000 years, represented an extraordinary accomplishment for a people who had somehow sustained religious and communal identity through the ages and who had managed to survive and overcome centuries of dispersion, oppression and powerlessness as well as the ultimate horrors of the Holocaust. Their achievement constituted not only a remarkable historical and human saga, but one that harked back to the origins of the Old and New Testament and engaged the imagination and sympathy of many non-Jews. For their part, the American founders saw themselves as creating a country free of the heavy burdens of the European past and that would be ‘a light unto the nations’ or, in the words of the Massachusetts Puritan leader, John Winthrop, in 1630, a ‘city upon a hill.’ Both expressions were drawn from Hebrew Bible references to Jerusalem and reflected aspirations for America to become a ‘New Jerusalem.’ Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in the 1830s, described how American society differed from its European counterparts and the way in which a ‘nonconformist’ Protestant religious tradition reinforced the country’s sense of mission and identity. In the past century as well as more recent times, this sense of exceptionalism with its legacy of religiosity, liberalism and special purpose, can be found in the language of many presidents: Woodrow Wilson’s democratic idealism, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s four freedoms, Harry S. Truman’s words in introducing the doctrine that would bear his name, John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, and remarkably

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Lieber | America and Israel After Sixty Years similar expressions of purpose and belief in the speeches of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. These religious and historical inheritances are not the exclusive basis for the U.S.Israeli connection, but in subtle ways they bind the two countries. The unique national origins of both Israel and the United States contribute to a relationship between the two countries that is both special and different from the kinds of international interactions commonly discussed among certain scholars, diplomats and foreign policymakers. As a result those observers who insist on narrowly conceived definitions of national interest may wrongly assume that a relationship different from what their own deductive logic demands must be due to faulty strategy, lack of understanding, or even some nefarious cause. In reality, however, the intimate Israeli-U.S. bond results from a complex combination of past and present history, national interest, public opinion, shared values, and religious beliefs. I. Origins of the Special Relationship Israel was by no means a creation of the United States, and at the time of its founding leading American diplomats tended to be unsympathetic. President Harry S. Truman ultimately overcame the objections of the State and Defense Departments and of Secretary of State George C. Marshall, and made the historic decision to recognize Israel. The U.S. decision was announced moments after Israel’s own declaration of its independence on May 14, 1948, and was followed immediately by Soviet recognition. Truman himself was well read and had a keen historical sense. Reflecting on his role, he later remarked, ‘I am Cyrus,’ invoking the name of the Persian King who had liberated Jews from their Babylonian exile some 2500 years earlier. In its early years Israel received only limited American support and the relationship between the two countries developed quite slowly. Despite Truman’s historic decision, the U.S. did not initially lift an arms embargo, and Israel’s request for an urgently needed loan was stalled for eight months by bureaucratic delays. In 1952 the U.S. did provide its first real economic aid, amounting to $86 million. However the Eisenhower administration, which took office in 1953, was quite cool toward the Jewish state, pushing for a peace plan that Israel saw as jeopardizing its security and then engaging in forceful arm-twisting to secure Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula after the 1956 war with Egypt.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 During its first two decades, to the extent that Israel enjoyed a special relationship with another country, it was less with the United States than with France. Leaders in Paris and Jerusalem regarded Egyptian President Nasser and his promotion of Arab nationalism as a serious threat. They collaborated with Britain in the October 1956 Suez crisis and war, and France provided the original technology for Israel’s nascent nuclear program. Though President Charles De Gaulle broke with Israel and tilted toward the Arab states at the time of the June 1967 Six Day War, Israel was armed mostly with French weapons when it achieved its stunning victory. American policy shifted only gradually toward a more favourable approach, beginning with the July 1958 Middle East crisis. After the pro-Western monarchy of Iraq was overthrown, Israel allowed use of its airspace and provided other support for American and British efforts to stabilize the situation in Jordan and Lebanon. For the administration of President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Israel became a significant regional asset in the face of increasing Arab nationalism and Soviet pressure. [2] The relationship grew closer in 1962 with the Kennedy administration’s decision to sell Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel in order to counter-balance Soviet arms flowing to Egypt and Syria. This collaboration notably intensified after the 1967 War and even more so after the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. The provision of arms and foreign aid increased markedly during these years and enjoyed broad public and congressional support. Moreover, during the Cold War decades of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, Israel proved to be a significant source of foreign intelligence and of captured Soviet weapons, tactics, and military technology. II. Peace Process: Achievements and Limits The Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, signed at the White House in March 1979, exemplified just how important the American role in the Middle East and the bond with Israel had become. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who had come to office after Nasser’s death in 1970, broke with his Russian patron after the October 1973 War and established close ties with the United States. From 1977 onward, Washington played a crucial role in helping to bridge Egyptian and Israeli differences. President Jimmy Carter presided over key negotiations resulting in the Camp David Accords in September 1978, and with the support of Congress his administration provided large amounts of economic and military aid to Israel and Egypt as a means of insuring implementation of the Peace Treaty. For Israel, this meant assurances that its security would not be jeopardized and that the costs

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Lieber | America and Israel After Sixty Years of relocating bases from the Sinai Peninsula could be offset. For Egypt, there was major economic aid plus re-equipping of its armed forces with American weapons. Paradoxically, the close relationship between America and Israel meant that only the United States could serve as the indispensable intermediary in the region. This was not only because of its position as the leading external power in the Middle East, but also because of its credibility and importance to Israel. No other country or international organization was in a position to undertake such a role. Russia, Britain and France as the former colonial powers, the European Union, and the UN could at times play contributory roles, but none possessed these key capacities. With the end of the Cold War, the relative strategic importance of Israel for the United States appeared to lessen, but the close ties between the two countries remained undiminished. The ongoing centrality of the American role continued to be evident in every significant crisis and negotiation. For example, the elder Bush administration’s 1990-91 response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, culminating in Operation Desert Storm, led to the historic Arab-Israeli Madrid Conference of October 1991. Less than two years later, in September 1993, President Bill Clinton presided over the signing of the Oslo Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on the White House lawn. During the following year, the Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty of October 1994 was based on an agreement reached in Washington three months earlier, and the treaty itself was signed not only by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein, but also by President Clinton. Disengagement agreements between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s involved a key U.S. role, as did intense (though ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to broker peace between Israel and Syria and between Israeli and the Palestinians in 1999-2000. President George W. Bush’s June 2002 speech offered explicit support for the creation of a Palestinian state, while requiring that the Palestinians first abandon terrorism and select a new leadership not compromised by corruption, repression and autocracy. And both the subsequent ‘Roadmap’ for peace developed in coordination with the EU, Russia, the UN (the Quartet), as well as the Annapolis Conference of November 2007 aimed at relaunching the peace effort and seeking to advance a framework for final status negotiations, took place under largely American aegis. III. Domestic Dimensions For the United States, the bond with Israel is a product of multiple factors. American exceptionalism provides an important dimension of sentiment and

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 belief. The Judeo-Christian heritage takes on added importance here, as seen in the enormous support for Israel by tens of millions of evangelical Protestants. Indeed, they far outnumber the 2 percent of the American population who are Jewish. History is vital too. The indelible memory of the Holocaust and the development of ties over sixty years provide another source of support and affinity, as does the fact that Israel is a democracy and an ally of the United States. Support for Israel in the U.S. Congress remains deep and bipartisan, and has shown no evidence of diminishing. Both Jewish and non-Jewish political groups have played an active role in the political process (though in the case of the ‘Israel Lobby’ this has been much exaggerated), and where they are effective it is because they advocate policies that are consistent with national beliefs and largely supported by public and elite opinion. Throughout the 1990s, despite the end of the Cold War, support for Israel among elites and the wider public remained consistent. [3] Recent American opinion continues to be strongly sympathetic, and the ups and downs of the peace process, war and terrorism, the rise and fall of Labor and Likud governments, and changes in the Arab world have had relatively little effect. Asked to list the countries with which they feel most sympathetic, Americans rank Israel behind only Canada, the UK, Germany and Japan, and ahead of France and India. [4] Between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans continue to regard Israel as a important ally. In addition, the public typically supports Israel over the Palestinians by margins of four to one or even more, for example during the August 2006 war in Lebanon, by 52 percent versus 11 percent, [5] and in a March 2008 poll by a record 71 percent versus 8 percent. [6] And despite increasing criticism on the political left, substantial majorities of Democrats as well as Republicans continue to report positive views. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, almost all the candidates have adopted strongly pro-Israel positions. The only exceptions were on the outer flanks of each party: Dennis Kucinich, a left wing Democrat, and Ron Paul, a right-wing libertarian Republican. Both favoured foreign policies of retreat and disengagement, and neither emerged as a serious contender. Meanwhile, the leading contenders, John McCain, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton, advocated strong and unequivocal support for Israel.

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Lieber | America and Israel After Sixty Years IV. Implications The fact that peace efforts during the past decade have been largely unsuccessful illustrates both the necessity of the American role but also its limits. Over the years, virtually every significant agreement between Israel and its Arab adversaries has involved the United States in some essential capacity, as intermediary, supporter, guarantor or source of legitimacy. Yet any durable peace requires that the parties themselves be prepared and willing to end the conflict. Despite often repeated urging from Europe and the Middle East, what the United States cannot do is impose peace, and when it has put forward proposals that do not gain Israel’s consent, the result has been stalemate. Cases include, for example, the 1969 Rogers Plan, a 1977 Carter administration idea for multilateral talks in Geneva (rejected by Egypt as well as Israel), a 1982 Reagan Plan, and a 1989 proposal by Secretary of State James Baker. To be sure, both sides to the conflict need to be held to their commitments, and the United States, along with others, is in a position to support the transparency and reciprocity that are essential for any lasting agreement. Yet the tragedy of recent years, and especially since the 1993 Oslo Agreement, is that the Palestinians have been unwilling to abandon the conflict, halt virulent incitement, and drop their maximalist and unattainable demands. By contrast, the majority of Israelis have come to terms with the idea that peace will require relinquishing most of the West Bank with only limited border adjustments, accommodation for Palestinians in Jerusalem, and acceptance of a Palestinian state. In essence, Israeli opinion is dynamic, not static. When presented with a credible and unambiguous partner for peace (Anwar Sadat, King Hussein), Israel’s public and its political system have been willing and able to respond decisively. However, in the face of security threats, suicide terrorism, and the absence of a partner able and willing to negotiate and deliver a genuine peace, Israelis will not make significant concessions. As a case in point, consider the consequences of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 and from Gaza in October 2005. In the former case, this resulted in Hezbollah’s turning the area into a heavily armed enclave with thousands of Iranian and Syrian supplied rockets targeted against Israel. Ultimately, Hezbollah’s actions there triggered the July-August 2006 war. In the case of Gaza, the firing of short range Qassem and more recently longer range Grad rockets into Israel has continued virtually without interruption since Israel removed 7000 settlers and relinquished the territory to Palestinian control. The Hamas takeover of Gaza in June 2007 put the area under the domination of

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 a movement committed to the most fanatical anti-Jewish and anti-Israel policies. For the majority of Israelis, these cases discredit the concept of land-for-peace and are likely to do so until a Palestinian leadership emerges that has the capacity to speak authoritatively for its entire community, to monopolize means of legitimate violence among its people (the political test long ago described by Max Weber), and to be unambiguous in its willingness to end the conflict. V. Foreign Perceptions Outside the United States, the character of the US-Israeli bond often is poorly understood. But even those who do appreciate the depth and breadth of this relationship can misconstrue its policy consequences. America’s role as well as its influence with Israel is unique. Yet the achievement of a much-desired peace is not a matter of the United States pressuring Israel or imposing a settlement. Not only is there little domestic support for such a policy, but even if there were, it would neither provide a viable solution nor be accepted by the Israelis themselves. Thus foreign leaders could have greater and more positive effect by using their political and economic leverage to encourage the necessary changes among the Palestinians as well as to make clear that outsiders cannot impose a peace. The surrounding Arab states, themselves affected by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, also need to provide much more decisive diplomatic, political, and economic support for peace than they have been willing to offer in the past. Two additional points are worth emphasizing. First, there is no way to accommodate the demands of radical Islamists and extremist Palestinian and Arab groups. No amount of concessions will meet their ultimate objective, which remains the destruction of Israel. Wishful thinking has been common in the recent past, and even under Yasir Arafat’s corrupt and duplicitous leadership, western audiences were all too often willing to take his protestations at face value while ignoring his actions and his contradictory words to Arab audiences. The second point is that even the disappearance of Israel would not greatly lessen the problem of Middle East regional instability. As Josef Joffe has observed, even in a ‘World without Israel,’ Sunni-Shia conflicts, state to state rivalries, bitter differences between modernists and reactionaries, despotism, radical Islamism, and political oppression would guarantee the continuation or intensification of conflict. [7] One can add to this list the disruptive regional role of Iran and the ongoing violence within Iraq. To be sure, a viable peace involving Israel, the Palestinians and Syria is greatly to be

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Lieber | America and Israel After Sixty Years desired, but it will not be achieved through misunderstanding the American role or the ultimate nature of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

Robert J. Lieber is Professor of Government and International Affairs at Georgetown University. His most recent book is The American Era: Power and Strategy for the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2007.) This essay first appeared in German in the May issue of Internationale Politik (Berlin), entitled, ‘Der amerikanische Freund.’ Notes

[1] For an earlier treatment of this relationship, see Robert J. Lieber, ‘U.S.-Israeli Relations Since 1948,’ in Robert O. Freedman (ed.), Israel’s First Fifty years (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.) [2] See in particular the insightful account of this episode by Abraham Ben-Zvi, Decade of Transition: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and the Origins of the American-Israel Alliance (NY: Columbia University Press, 1998.) [3] See, e.g., John F. Riley (ed.), American Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy, (Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, 1995), pp. 20 and 26. [4] Gallup polling data cited in Yitzhak Benhorin, ‘Poll: More Americans are pro-Israeli,’ Ynetnews. com, March 6, 2008. [5] Jonah Newman, ‘Survey: Americans See Israel as Ally,’ JerusalemPost.com, November 18, 2007. [6] Poll by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, commissioned by The Israel Project, March 31, 2008, http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2. aspx?c=hsJPK0PIJpH&b=689705&ct=5155819. See also Robert Mabry, ‘A Six-Day War: Its Aftermath in American Public Opinion,’ Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, May 30, 2007. [7] Josef Joffe, ‘A World Without Israel,’ Foreign Policy ( Jan/Feb 2005): 36-42.

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Fatawa on Palestine

by Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Al-Falah Foundation, 2007, 92 pp.

Mark Gardner and Dave Rich The arguments over Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi are well-trodden ground. Since his visit to London in 2004, his views on suicide bombing, women and gays – in soundbite form at least – have been committed to memory by those who oppose the alliance between parts of the left and radical Islamism. Ken Livingstone’s physical and political embrace of Qaradawi, and his wider strategy of courting Islamist groups from amongst London’s Muslim population, did him much damage in the eyes of many Londoners, particularly on the political left, and may well have played a role in his removal as London’s mayor. Despite the fact that Qaradawi is currently excluded from entering the United Kingdom, he still has the potential to influence attitudes via his writings, his website and other media. If only for this reason, it is important to fully understand the broader vision behind Qaradawi’s views. A new book, published for the first time in English and distributed in Britain for British Muslim readers, allows us to do just this with Qaradawi’s views on Israel, Palestine, Jews and Zionism. It is a book that promises a battle ‘between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews i.e. all Muslims and all Jews’ (p. 77), which will hasten the end of days for mankind. This is no political analysis of the Israel/Palestine conflict, or even a faith-based lament for the Palestinian people; it is a passionate apocalyptic vision of division, war and final triumph. Originally published in Arabic as Fatawa Min Ajl Falastin (Wahba Library, Cairo 2003 [1]), and now translated into English, it is a compilation of fourteen rulings by Qaradawi on various aspects of the conflict, including ‘Peace with Israel,’ ‘The Legitimacy of Martyrdom Operations in Occupied Palestine,’ ‘Ruling on Accepting Compensation for the Land of Palestine,’ ‘Hadith: “The Judgment Day Will Not Occur Unless You Fight Jews”’ and ‘Discussing the Verses on Banu Israel and Their Mischief.’ Some of the rulings are answers by Qaradawi to members of the public who have asked for his opinion on a particular question. Al-Falah Foundation has published many books by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood and this is intended to be a faithful and sympathetic translation. In the preface, the General Director of Al-Falah, Sheikh Muhammad ‘Abdu, summarises the central message of the book:

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Gardner & Rich | The Thought of Qaradawi In this book, the eminent contemporary scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi gives clear answers to the reasons and removes the ambiguities to whoever seeks the truth and justice concerning the Palestinian issue. These answers acquaint Muslims with the dimensions of the issue with the Zionists who usurped this pearl of ours. The battle between them and us is not a battle of borders but a battle of existence. It is the battle that will end and the Muslims that will be victorious. This victory will raise the Adhan [call to prayer] on the voiceless minaret and will return monotheism to the voiceless pulpit. (p. V) Qaradawi makes it clear at the beginning of the book that Israel should be removed entirely from what he sees as Muslim land. He discusses his hypothetical reaction to any future peace accord that would leave Israel in control of its pre-1967 territory in the opening chapter: [T]he so-called peace accords involved recognizing the Jews’ right to the usurped lands which means that Haifa, Jaffa, Acre, al-Ladd, Ramallah, Beir Sheba and even Jerusalem will be considered as Israeli lands. Such cities that have been part of the Muslim world for more than thirteen hundred years will become part of the Zionist Jewish state. Hence, we will never be able to claim them back and, after being taken by force, such places will be legitimately given to the enemy. Bearing this in mind, we can realize that what happened was not a peace accord being signed; rather, it is an utter recognition of Israel having rights and sovereignty in our Arab Muslim lands. Therefore, we sign a witnessed agreement to lose such lands forever. (pp. 3-4) Nor, significantly, does Qaradawi feel that the Palestinians have the authority to make such a peace agreement with Israel: I have always stressed that Palestine is a Muslim land belonging to all generations of the Muslim nation. Therefore, if any of these generations fail to defend and protect this land, it is for the following generations to stand up for this task. If Palestinians neglect their duty of defending this land, the whole Muslim nation is required to take this responsibility and defend the land either by force or word. (p. 5) Hamas, as the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, has for many years

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 looked to Qaradawi as a religious authority and relied upon his rulings. The idea that any peace deal made by the Palestinian leadership with Israel should be treated as null and void by successive generations of Palestinians, appears to be echoed in the refusal of the current Hamas government to recognise past agreements made with Israel by its predecessors. There are common principles and ideological positions that run through the policies of Hamas, the writings of Qaradawi and the wider vision of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi underlines the need for Muslims all over the world to involve themselves in the Israel/Palestine conflict when he goes on to discuss the question of Jerusalem: The Palestinians do not have the competence to decide on the fate of Jerusalem without resorting to the Muslims all over the world. This, consequently, makes it obligatory upon every Muslim wherever he is to defend Jerusalem, and al-Aqsa Mosque. This is an obligation upon all Muslims to participate in defending Jerusalem with their souls, money, and all that they possess, otherwise a punishment from Allah shall descend on the whole nation ... (p. 24) Qaradawi compares this call for action with what he sees as the collective Jewish participation in the oppression of the Palestinians: The conquerors [of Palestine] are those with the greatest enmity toward the believers, and they are supported by the strongest state on earth – the USA, and by the world Jewish community. (p. 38) If every Jew in the world thinks himself a soldier, and supports Israel as much as he can, surely every Muslim should be a soldier using his very soul and wealth to liberate al-Aqsa. The least the Muslim can do is to boycott the enemies’ goods. (p. 42) The negative impact that overseas conflicts can have on community cohesion in Britain has been well documented. Sharp rises in physical, verbal and written antisemitic attacks on British Jews were reported during, for example, the war in Lebanon in 2006; after the assassination of Sheikh Yassin of Hamas in March 2004; in the run up to the war in Iraq in March 2003; and after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in October 2000. This dynamic has a damaging impact on the lives of ordinary British Jews and is something that any moderate religious leader ought to

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Gardner & Rich | The Thought of Qaradawi deplore. Yet Qaradawi’s message, that ordinary Jews and Muslims all over the world are participants in the conflict, can only encourage suspicion and hostility between communities. This seems deliberate: Qaradawi warns that Muslims should not be friends with ‘Jews, in general, and Israelis, in particular’ (p. 51), because of the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine, and recognises that friendly relations would diminish the appetite for fighting: Receiving enemies in our own countries and visiting them in the occupied lands would remove such a psychological barrier that keeps us away from them, and would bridge the gap that keeps the desire for Jihad against them kindled in the hearts of the Ummah. (p. 47) Qaradawi’s classification of ‘every Jew in the world’ (p. 42) as an enemy may refer to contemporary events for its justification, but it has a deep theological purpose. A chapter of the book is devoted to a discussion of the hadith [a record of a saying or deed of Muhammad] that reads: ‘The last day will not come unless you fight Jews. A Jew will hide himself behind stones and trees and stones and trees will say, “O servant of Allah – or O Muslim – there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”’ This hadith is used by many radical Islamist groups to incite conflict between Muslims and Jews. It is quoted in article seven of the Hamas Covenant and its use in the literature of Hizb ut-Tahrir was one of the reasons why that organisation was banned by the National Union of Students. Qaradawi refers to the hadith as ‘one of the miracles of our Prophet’ (p. 76) and then goes on to describe how this battle between Muslims and Jews is one of the preconditions that needs to be fulfilled before the Day of Judgement can come. He carefully explains, though, that the current fighting between Israel and the Palestinians is a start, but is not sufficient to fulfil the requirements of the hadith: [W]e believe that the battle between us and the Jews is coming … Such a battle is not driven by nationalistic causes or patriotic belonging; it is rather driven by religious incentives. This battle is not going to happen between Arabs and Zionists, or between Jews and Palestinians, or between Jews or anybody else. It is between Muslims and Jews as is clearly stated in the hadith. This battle will occur between the collective body of Muslims and the collective body of Jews i.e. all Muslims and all Jews. (p. 77)

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008

However, although Jews ‘[take] power from the teachings of the Torah and the rulings of the Talmud’ (p. 77), Qaradawi bemoans Muslims for having ‘kept Islam outside the battlefield.’ (p. 78) The victory promised in the hadith cannot come about, he explains, until Muslims truly dispense with ‘their own desires and inclinations’ (p. 78) and instead fight ‘under the banner of Islam’ (p. 78). This apocalyptic prophecy is the context for Qaradawi’s fervour for jihad against Israel, his unshakeable belief in victory and his calls for all Muslims to join the effort. This is far from a local conflict over land, or even a religious struggle between Muslims and Jews; it is a messianic precursor that will foreshadow ultimate triumph on earth. Indeed, Qaradawi sees signs that victory is on its way: The questioner might have thought that gaining victory over the Jews will be delayed till before the Day of Judgement, but there is no clear evidence to say this. We hope – Insha’ Allah – that it shall happen soon. In fact, the introduction of such a victory has occurred and been embodied in the Islamic movement and the revolution of mosques against the oppressor and the occupier. It has also arisen in the activities of those children who carry stones in their hands to defend their lands, in the calls that are spreading everywhere telling Muslims that they have to return to Islam and apply it in every aspect of life. All this brings us nearer to victory and surely victory is near. (p. 79) Other Islamists share Qaradawi’s messianic interpretation of current events. The Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK) advertised a recent meeting in Manchester with the call: If the leadership is entrusted to those unfit for it, expect the Hour. By Allah the signs of the end of times are all around us, a hundred million Zionists desire with all their hearts to plunge this world into the final battle, and all around the Muslims are betrayed and bewitched. Muslim Leaders in the Mosque concern themselves with the minor points of fiqh [Islamic jurisprudence] while all around the Ummah cries in pain and fitna [division] and those with hatred in their hearts plan and plot. [2] Qaradawi personifies the combination of theological anti-Judaism, modern European anti-Semitism and conflict-driven Judeophobia that make up

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Gardner & Rich | The Thought of Qaradawi contemporary Islamist attitudes to Jews. Thus Jews are ‘devourers of Riba (usury) and ill-gotten money … [T]he true examples of miserliness and stinginess’ (p. 53); ‘They have killed Prophet Zakariyya and Prophet Yahya and wove conspiracies against Jesus Christ’ (p. 81). Israel is ‘dreaming of a state that extends from the River Nile to the Euphrates and from the Cedar trees (i.e. southern Lebanon) to the Palm trees (i.e. the Arabian Peninsula).’ (p. 51). As for Israelis themselves: Mixing with those people (i.e. Israelis) without placing any conditions or bonds has a lot of hazards and dangers since it threatens Arab and Muslim societies and spreads vice and moral corruption and deviation amongst Muslims. Such people have been weaned on vice and perversion and so many diseases including AIDS have become widespread amongst them. They plan for achieving such a goal of exporting these ailments to the Muslim society while Muslims are totally unaware. Therefore, blocking the door leading to such temptation is considered a religious obligation and necessity. (p. 47) Israelis, Zionists and Jews are conflated and the terms freely mixed throughout the book. One chapter answers the question, ‘Is it permissible to buy items from Israeli sources, even though this money may be used to help the Jewish “war machine”?’ Qaradawi replies by ruling that ‘Every Muslim that buys “Israeli” or American goods, when there is an alternative from other countries is committing a prohibited act’ (p. 40), but then later writes that ‘[T]he consumer buying Jewish or American goods is committing a major sin’ (p. 43). Fatawa on Palestine includes Qaradawi’s standard line on Palestinian suicide bombing, which is now well known. Suicide bombings are, in Qaradawi’s words, ‘[O]ne of the greatest types of Jihad … valid heroic martyrdom operations and very different from suicide.’ (p. 6) The suicide bomber ‘[H]as sold his soul to Allah and placed his heart on gaining martyrdom and purchasing Paradise.’ (p. 7) Women suicide bombers ‘[A]re doing a remarkable deed that is blessed by Almighty Allah and considered an act of Jihad for the sake of Allah.’ (p. 21) Qaradawi condemned the suicide bombings in London on 7/7, but it does not appear that this was based on a principled objection to the methods or goals of the global jihadist movement. Qaradawi was one of the first and most consistent supporters of Hamas suicide bombings, when most other high-profile Sunni clerics refused to give the practice their consent. This alone should give pause for thought to those people who cite his condemnation of 9/11 and 7/7 as evidence of his moderation. His promotion of the theology and culture of martyrdom and his eschatological yearnings can only

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 feed the ideology of global jihad. Condemnation of suicide bombings that target civilians should not be contingent on who the victims and perpetrators are, nor on whether the terrorism takes place in one country or another. Qaradawi’s way around this is to redefine what a civilian is, by claiming that Israeli society ‘is a military society in its totality.’ (p. 7) This is not an argument that should be given any serious consideration, and serves only to dehumanise his enemy. The chapter on compensating Palestinian refugees hints at a supremacism that goes beyond his attitude to Jews. In a ruling that discusses all Muslim land, not just Palestinian, and addresses Muslims as individuals, rather than just Muslim countries or collective bodies, Qaradawi writes: [A] Muslim may sell land that is owned by him to whom he wants at the price that he wants, if he is selling it to a citizen like himself. He may also concede it for a material or moral return, or for no return by granting it or giving it as charity or something of the sort, if he is conceding it to a citizen like himself. For in this case, while the land would be changing hands, it would remain generally within the circle of public property of the Ummah of Islam, i.e. within the house of Islam, and the deed to it would not be shifting to another nation and out of the house of Islam. As to selling the land or conceding it for any compensation, however high it might be, to another nation, be it represented by a state or the nationals of that state, it would be wrong. The Muslim in this case would be giving the one compensating him the right to move the deed of the Muslim land to another nation. Such an action would be particularly wrong when the nation in question is the enemy… The sin is compounded if it is committed in a collective way, for it would be like a people selling their homeland in auction, and homelands are not for sale, even if the price is all the gold on earth. The situation is even more serious when the homeland in question is the land of sanctums and the place where the Messages were sent down to the Prophets, the land that Allah has blessed for mankind. (pp. 28-9) As this ruling suggests, Qaradawi’s attitudes towards all other faith groups are dependent on how their beliefs and their behaviour sit within his own theological

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Gardner & Rich | The Thought of Qaradawi interpretations. Part of Qaradawi’s political strategy is to build his influence within European Muslim communities by developing a religious framework to guide the lives of Muslim minorities in the West. His visit to London in 2004 was to hold a meeting of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, of which he is President. His focus on Europe is one reason why, in 2004, he turned down the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood when it was offered to him. It is possible to understand why some in the West see him as a potential ally against extremism. He supports democratic elections, for instance, and advises western banks on Islamic finance. This reflects the Muslim Brotherhood’s historic openness to Western ideas and Qaradawi’s personal pragmatism. On too many issues, though, his views appear inimical to modern European values. Those who are trying to build alliances against violent extremism need to choose their partners carefully, and in an informed way. British and European society should be inclusive, cohesive and diverse; it has no place for the conflict, bigotry and division of Fatawa on Palestine.

Mark Gardner and Dave Rich are, respectively, Director and Deputy Director of Communications at CST, which provides security and defence services to the UK Jewish community and advises government and police on anti-Semitism and terrorism. References

Community Security Trust, Antisemitic Incidents Reports 2006 & 2007.

[1] Approximate year of publication.

Notes

[2] http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/4588/, viewed on 2/5/08

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A History of Modern Israel

by Colin Shindler, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 350 pp.

Donna Robinson Divine Israel typically marks its independence day by calculating the price its citizens pay for Jewish sovereignty. Israelis not only remember the soldiers killed in wars and the people whose lives were cut short by acts of terror, they also count them. But the numbers that produce this holiday’s decorum also implicitly include the six million victims of Nazi slaughter whose systematic murder, commemorated the week before, gives Independence Day its explanatory power as sanctifying life over death and as a fresh start for Jews. Israelis might continue to mourn their casualties, but they are no longer expected to have to bear witness to victims. Instead Israel’s citizens are intended to see and experience the commemorations as a single narrative: the redemptive vision of the one as the answer to the other. Comparing these two primal events, so deeply lodged in Jewish memory and consecrated within one week, cannot, however, keep the mind from substituting geographic for chronological juxtapositions and from evaluating not simply the past against the present but rather the contemporary Jewish condition within and without Israel. For Jews in Europe, in the Americas, and in Israel may share the same calendar of holy days; their children may listen to the same music and watch the same videos or movies, but only in the Jewish state must eighteen year olds begin a life-threatening military service. Elsewhere, for the most part, Jewish teens sit comfortably and safely in college classrooms. This military burden hangs with a special weight over a country where economic, scientific, and technical achievements would normally set new standards for the kind of human progress a nation-state can nurture. But why has Israel’s movement away from its point of origin not lightened the nation’s burdens? Why have six decades so taken their toll on Israel’s image that it is difficult to summon up the spiritual charge of the moment when the Jewish state was founded? After all, what Israel has done with its six decades is remarkable – it can project a profile of extraordinary success with absolute authenticity. But despite all its accomplishments, the country possesses a consciousness of failure that comes primarily from the ongoing conflict with Palestinians and the inescapable questioning of whether the carnage caused by this conflict was inevitable.

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Divine | Colin Shindler on Modern Israel In a magnificent study that retells the country’s national story, Shindler focuses on how the developing Jewish state has been unable to fulfil its purpose primarily because of its ongoing dispute with the Palestinians. This is a powerful and original book that puts readers in touch with the visionary power of the past and with the struggle to make Zionist dreams real without turning them into instruments of political manipulation. Shindler opens up the past and raises serious questions about whether the country’s multiple conflicts within and without could have been avoided. He recognises that Zionist ambitions induced what Palestinians most feared: their displacement. Aware that force, alone, cannot resolve the Palestinian problem – particularly since Palestinians are only a generation away from becoming a demographic majority between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River – Shindler also understands that military actions have often benefited Israel and defended the lives of its citizens. Here is his sobering account of what he calls ‘Ben-Gurion’s almost matter-of-fact statement on the establishment of a Hebrew republic after almost two millennia… [because of ] a wider preoccupation by Israelis with basic survival.’ [Page 39] The mood was grim for good reason. The previous day, the isolated four settlements in the Gush Etzion bloc – Massuot Yitzhak, Ein Zurim, Revadim and Kfar Etzion – were ordered to surrender by the Haganah. The defenders of Kfar Etzion, ninety-seven men and twenty-seven women were then killed by local Arab irregular forces on 13 May and their homes looted. It made no difference that the Transjordanian Arab legion responsible for the safety of the prisoners was nominally under British command. Sir John Glubb – Glubb Pasha – the commander of the Arab Legion later claimed that ‘not a single Jew was killed at Kfar Etzion.’ (pp. 39-40) Shindler is acutely sensitive to the fact that the logic of violence breeds more violence and harms both perpetrators and victims. He knows that sustaining Israel’s independence depends on preserving its people’s attachment to a set of humane values that are damaged each time security becomes an excuse to annex Palestinian land or mistreat Arabs. Shindler is not cavalier about the nation’s vulnerabilities stemming from a geography that puts it in the crossfire of high-stakes regional, religious and global rivalries, but neither is he willing to ignore how often such threats are conscripted to sanctify military actions.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Shindler organises his study around the various Zionist ideologies that captivated so many of Israel’s leaders and mobilised so many of the country’s citizens to acts of great courage and altruism. But ideologies have multiple meanings and consequences, and can foster harm as well as care. For example, the commitment to the romantic ideas of uniting Jews and Arabs on the basis of class led some like Ahdut ha-Avodah’s Yitzhak Tabenkin to urge that Israel retain the West Bank territories conquered in the June 1967 War. Notwithstanding this urge toward a transcendent socialist Zionism, Tabenkin’s stance, in the short run, seemed less like a call for humanistic solidarity than simply another cynical denial of Palestinian national rights. Shindler follows the trajectory of the wars that seemed decisively won by Israel at the hour of the ceasefire but that later resulted in new kinds of threats to the country. The failed Oslo peace process generated feelings of insecurity in Israel that no military or technological achievements can now remove. Shindler points out that the Middle East conflict can often be moved to the margins by a range of other troubling issues – education, job security, health care, benefits, social security, how much to honor the Sabbath and keep the country holy – giving rise to the social tensions and clashing interests of the country’s public life and politics. Israeli governments always face multiple crises, and the economic problems besetting the country are more difficult to address because of the heavy military expenditures that seem necessary to a government charged with protecting a population living under the shadow of war and destruction. It seems appropriate to end an account of Israel’s sixty year history with the observation that the nation is now caught between two political eras – one, a series of missed opportunities in the past, and the other, the challenge of imagining the restoration of hope for peace in a region saturated with violence. For despite the claims and counterclaims of political ideologies and the country’s leaders and experts – and despite the many proposals put forward for resolving Israel’s conflict with its enemies – there is probably no single set of policies or actions that will dissolve all animosities and grievances. Thus, Israel’s hopes for peace must necessarily be combined with a strategy for living with ambiguity so that the country is not sapped of either its stamina or its humanistic commitments.

Donna Robinson Divine is the Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Professor of Government, Smith College.

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Jews and Power

by Ruth R Wisse, Nextbook/Schocken, 2007, 231 pp.

Lyn Julius For those who find John Walt and Stephen Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy persuasive, Ruth Wisse’s Jews and Power is the perfect antidote. In contrast to Walt and Mearsheimer’s account of a shadowy Jewish cabal manipulating US foreign policy, Wisse’s book is a study of Jewish powerlessness. Some maintained that Jewish power ended, and Jewish politics were suspended, with the loss of sovereignty 2,000 years ago when the Romans conquered Judea. Others thought it a liberation: once freed from the burdens of state, the Jews could develop the ideals of messianic redemption. Ruth Wisse argues convincingly that the Jews did practise politics in exile – but as a strategy of accommodation. The Biblical book of Esther, whose story Jews read every year at the festival of Purim, amounts to what Wisse calls ‘a primer for Jewish foreign policy.’ The beautiful Jewess Esther, married to the King of Persia, together with her uncle Mordecai saves the Jews from annihilation at the hands of the evil Haman. The lessons are clear: be steadfastly loyal to your ruler in return for his protection, and use what limited political leverage you have to better your chances of survival. In the diaspora the Jews followed the principle of dina de malchuta dina –Aramaic for ‘the law of the land is the ( Jewish) law.’ The Jews made themselves indispensable as merchants, bankers, money-lenders, minters, craftsmen, and midwives. Their intellectual energy arose from political weakness. Their absolute dependency on the ruler rendered them all the more trustworthy. The stadlan, or court Jew, could easily cross the line to moser, or informer. So much for the antisemitic charge of ‘dual loyalty’: if conflicted between loyalty to the king or to their co-religionists, they would sooner betray the latter. It is a pity that Wisse does not give more than a passing mention to dhimmitude, the institutionalised inferior status of non-Muslims under Islam, denoting also a mentality of subservience, obsequiousness, denial, and even identification with one’s tormentors.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Every so often the ruler could not or would not protect the Jews and, like Armenian and Chinese minorities, they were vulnerable to what Wisse calls ‘middlemen’ riots. What made their defencelessness bearable was the Jews’ sense of their own 5,000-year-old invincibility, bolstered by faith in God, the supreme ruler. Western European emancipation gave the Jews citizens’ rights and greater physical security. It also brought influence: Sir Moses Montefiore and Adolphe Cremieux were able to intervene on behalf of their Eastern co-religionists who had been accused of murdering a monk and his servant for ritual purposes in the 1840 Damascus affair. However, as Wisse shrewdly points out, emancipation also laid the Jews wide open to demagogic anti-Semitism. The replacement of the ruler by an elected assembly actually reduced the power of the Jews. Jewish powerlessness reached its tragic nadir when the Allies showed they were not prepared to bomb the Nazi death camps to save Jewish lives. History is written by the victors, so Jewish turncoats like Flavius Josephus put a Roman spin on his account of the Jewish wars. It was an ex-Jewish convert, Pablo Christiani, who debated the rabbi Nahmanides in a medieval disputation, even though he knew it could put his former brethren in danger. In the West today, some Jewish intellectuals, especially on the far left – eager to dissociate themselves from the state of Israel, which they view as an anachronism or an extension of European colonialism – give credibility to anti-Zionism. At first Jews did not take easily to the idea of using force – a key component of power. As the 19th century Zionist movement to restore a national homeland gathered pace, Ruth Wisse contends that ‘noticeably absent from Jewish planning was the military force that every nation assumes it needs to retain, or regain its land.’ In his book Altneuland, Theodor Herzl, the so-called father of Zionism, ‘replicates the adaptive policies of the Diaspora.’ Of all the prerequisites of a modern state – land, central political authority and means of self-defence – Herzl focused only on land. A character in a play by Israel Zangwill ends up shooting himself when his attempts to unite Jews in self-defensive action end in discord and factionalism. It seemed almost that the Jew was congenitally ‘too sophisticated for so primitive and savage a function.’ Nevertheless, half a million Jews donned the uniforms of the European powers to fight in the Great War, often against each other. The regiments of Palestinian Jews who fought for Britain reaped no political dividend.

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Julius | Ruth Wisse on Jews and Power The restoration of Jewish sovereignty after 2000 years should have normalised Israel’s status in the family of nations. Instead, the Jewish strategy of accommodation collided head-on with ‘the Arab political tradition of conquest and expansion.’ Thus the Jews swallowed their reservations and accepted the 1947 UN Partition Plan, while the Arab League unleashed five armies on the fledgling Jewish state as soon as Israel was declared. Once-powerless Jews are now accused of being too strong. The Palestinians present themselves as surrogate Jews, defining themselves in opposition to them, appropriating Jewish symbols, history and identity. Every milestone in the Palestinian calendar is a defeat or disaster inflicted on them by the Jews. Wisse wryly observes that ‘they are so focused on what belongs to the Jews that they cannot focus on what is theirs to enjoy.’ But the lopsided Arab war against Israel, the author reminds us, pits five million Jews against 270 million Arabs – with infinitely more land and resources – abetted by one billion Muslims. Clearly, Jewish sovereignty is not the same as power. Arab and Muslim political clout at the UN has made up for repeated military defeats at the hands of the tiny Jewish state. As Abba Eban once put it – ‘Israel is the only country to win a war and sue for peace.’ The creation of Israel has reproduced in the Middle East a ‘political imbalance almost identical to the one Jews had in the diaspora.’ While dictatorships parade their military might, Israel makes foreign dignitaries tour the Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem – as if to say, ‘all we want is to be spared this fate.’ In the 1990s wishful thinking led to Israel signing what Wisse views as the ‘suicidal’ Oslo accords. As Wisse puts it, ‘No other people had armed its enemy with the expectation of gaining security.’ The Jews are self-consciously preoccupied with their moral performance – what Wisse describes as ‘moral solipsism.’ Golda Meir greeted president Sadat of Egypt on his historic peace-seeking mission to Jerusalem with, ‘We can forgive you for killing our sons, but we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.’ But Sadat came not out of regret that he had killed too many Israelis but because he had not killed enough to defeat them. The French intellectual Jean-François Revel once observed that democracy contained the seeds of its own destruction when faced with an enemy without

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 moral scruples and self-criticism. In Israel, obsessive self-examination stops short of draft-dodging, but to its enemies is an admission of weakness. Ultimately, no amount of Jewish self-flagellation and self-blame for Israel’s permanent state of war with the Arabs will make a difference. Just as anti-Semitism is the anti-Semite’s problem, so the 100-years war of the Arabs against the Jews reflects the overriding need for a political target in the absence of unity and democracy. Wisse concludes on the comforting note that Israel, the Jew among nations, has been forced to innovate and develop a military and scientific edge valuable to its allies – just as the particular skills of stateless Jews once made them indispensable to their host societies. Besides, Israel is in the front line in the fight against terror. But here Wisse’s American optimism is out of synch with the prevailing European view. European elites are far from ready to acknowledge Israel’s role on the front line in the war on Islamist terror, and rather too many consider Israel as the main cause of it. Nevertheless, Jews and Power is compelling. ‘I have been writing this book all my life,’ Ruth Wisse declares, and it shows. Almost every sentence in this short, readable, clear and concise work is studded with nuggets of insight and neat paradoxes, interspersed with the vignettes one expects from a professor of literature. Walt and Mearsheimer, take note.

Lyn Julius is a journalist and co-founder of Harif, an association of Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

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The Legacy of Edward Said: An Exchange between Rayyan Al-Shawaf and David Zarnett Rayyan Al-Shawaf replies to David Zarnett Democratiya 12 featured an article serving as a double-review of Ibn Warraq's Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism and Daniel Martin Varisco's Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. The review was written by David Zarnett, whose unrelentingly positive treatment of Ibn Warraq's book leaves much to be desired. Equally disturbing, however, is Zarnett's use of the review as a springboard to hurl a litany of false accusations against Edward Said, and to engage in a weird and highly misinformed discussion of Zionism and the Palestinians – amongst other misadventures. As a result, before I address Ibn Warraq's problematic book, I have found it necessary to tackle Zarnett's misrepresentation of Edward Said's position on a number of issues, as well as his misconceptions regarding important political events and personalities. In fact, this section (Part I) of my article is a good deal longer than that dealing with Ibn Warraq's book, and is divided into several sub-sections. Part II deals with a few of the many deficiencies from which Ibn Warraq's book suffers. PART I: Zarnett's Article General Observations Zarnett can be extraordinarily naïve. For example, drawing on Ibn Warraq's discussion of the British navy's mobilisation against slavery in the early 19th century, he innocently asserts that 'the final abolition of the slave trade was brought about by the military manoeuvres of the British Imperial Navy.' Officially, yes, but history tells another story. Marika Sherwood's recent After Abolition: Britain and the Slave Trade Since 1807 demonstrates that despite its issuing of the Slave Trade Act in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, Britain continued to be involved in slavery until the 20th century. Simplistic characterisations of complex phenomena are another problem. Zarnett believes that the Iranian revolution was 'heavily influenced by a political ideology rooted in a particular interpretation of Islam,' something he accuses Edward Said of ignoring. In fact, it is exceedingly tricky to speak of a distinct ideology behind the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Iranian revolution. What is absolutely certain, however, is that the revolution was not caused by a mass desire on the part of Iranians to implement Khomeini's version of Islam, but by a confluence of interests temporarily uniting ideologically disparate groups –from the wealthy Bazaari merchants to Shiite clerics, underground leftist political parties, pro-Khomeini Islamic activists, and nationalists – all of which opposed the Shah's dictatorial rule. Significantly, many members of the Shiite clergy who joined the revolution were not aligned with Khomeini. These clerics would later oppose his radical reinterpretation of Shiite Islam; together with clerics who initially backed Khomeini but later fell out of favour, they would suffer the terrifying consequences of dissent. Nikki Keddie is arguably the world's foremost living Iran scholar and the author of several critically acclaimed works on Iran, including the classic Roots of Revolution: An Interpretative History of Modern Iran, later revised and expanded as Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution. Writing in 1982, Keddie explained that for a long time after the ideologically disparate revolutionaries came to power in February 1979, the direction of the new Iran remained unclear: The period since the revolutionary victory of February 11, 1979 has sometimes been divided both by Iranians and Westerners into three 'revolutions.' The first, from victory till the taking of the American hostages on November 4, 1979, was characterized by a coalition government dominated by secular, or relatively secular, liberals, while at the same time an originally secret Revolutionary Council dominated by clericals, and Khomeini himself, often made the real decisions. This could be called 'dual government' or a period like that of Kerensky's government before the Bolshevik revolution. The second was a period of increased radicalization culminating in the dismissal of the first elected president, Bani Sadr, in June 1981, after he and the strong left Islamic movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq, turned against a government more and more monopolized by the clerical radicals of the Islamic Republic Party and by Khomeini. The third revolution encompassed this final break with religious liberals and leftists, and has continued until now. [1] A recently published book by one of America's finest Middle East journalists provides an excellent overview of the Iranian revolutionaries' internecine struggle. The Washington Post's Robin Wright (whose books on Iran include The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran and In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade) provides a succinct description of the Iranian revolutionaries'

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange factional infighting in Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East. She sketches how it took until October 1981 for Khomeini and his followers to bring the entire governing apparatus of Iran under their control. [2] Zarnett's profound ignorance of the Iranian revolution and Iran itself is on fuller display elsewhere. [3] Edward Said and the Deficiencies of his Political Analysis Echoing Daniel Martin Varisco, Zarnett holds that Said should have paid more attention to Orientals themselves in Orientalism. This is a common refrain and not entirely without merit, even though the express purpose of Said's book is to explore Westerners' perceptions of the Orient and Orientals, not the latter's perceptions of themselves, the West or Westerners. Incomprehensibly, however, Zarnett proceeds to claim that Said ignored Orientals in his other writings, specifically when adopting political positions on contemporary phenomena. On this point, Zarnett makes several specific accusations. He begins with the following claim: 'In his analysis of the Iranian Revolution, Said systematically failed to consider the ideas and political programme of the Ayatollah Khomeini.' This statement is true, though it should not be taken to mean that Said refrained from criticising Khomeini, his ideology or any number of his individual decisions. Equally important, however, was Said's attempt to draw attention to a subject discussed above: the inner turbulence of the revolution. For a long time, it was uncertain what the new Iran would look like – a theocracy was far from inevitable. Nikki Keddie has written: 'The more modern groups came to think they could trust Khomeini to set up a modern liberal government, especially as this was the image of Khomeini that he put forth in 1978-79 under the influence of his young non-clerical Paris advisers.' [4] Indeed, Khomeini himself stated: 'Our intention is not that religious leaders should themselves administer the state.' [5] Soon enough, there occurred a protracted and violent struggle – between Islamists loyal to Khomeini, liberals, communists and 'Islamic Marxists' of the Mojahedin-e Khalq variety, amongst others – from which the ruthless Khomeini and his followers emerged triumphant. Said lamented: 'Very little of this struggle was reported in the United States while it was taking place.' [6] The fact that the Islamists eventually

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 triumphed meant that the earlier one-dimensional media coverage did not need to be rectified, and many journalists and pundits could adopt a self-congratulatory tone about their decision, from the outset, to focus on the Islamic component of the revolution. Zarnett then addresses the subject of Kuwait and the Gulf War: 'During the Gulf War, [Said] made little mention of the plight of the Kuwaitis who were suffering under a brutal occupation as a result of Ba'athist imperialism.' Though Zarnett is fully entitled to believe that Said should have written more about Kuwait's suffering under Iraqi occupation, he is incorrect in asserting that Said made 'little mention' of this issue. Said condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait repeatedly and unreservedly. Said's earliest article on Iraq's occupation of Kuwait appears to have been written immediately following the invasion and was published in the Christian Science Monitor on 13 August 1990, eleven days after Iraqi forces entered Kuwait. The article begins, 'Saddam Hussein is an appalling dictator whose rule in Iraq has turned the place into a graveyard for democracy.' [7] A little later on, Said addresses Kuwait's suffering directly. 'The disappearance of a society due to invasion and annexation is grave and tragic. The scale of human sorrow that will attend Kuwait's demise is horrific: Lives will be permanently disrupted or lost, families separated, work and livelihoods ended.' [8] Similar comments were made in subsequent articles written during and after the first Gulf War. In mid-2000, ten years after penning the article quoted above, Said wrote the following: 'Iraq is still paying Kuwait for the few months of its occupation in 1990 and 1991, and that restitution is as it should be.' [9] How did Said himself respond to critics who claimed that he ignored or even supported Baathist Iraq's crimes? When such accusations were made because he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Said wrote: To my Kuwaiti critics, do I need to remind them that I publicly opposed Ba'ath Iraq during the only visit I made to Kuwait, in 1985, when in an open conversation with the then minister of education Hassan el-Ibrahim I accused him and his regime of aiding and abetting Arab fascism in their financial support of Saddam Hussein? I was told then that Kuwait was proud

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange to have committed literally billions of dollars to Saddam's war against 'the Persians,' as they were then contemptuously called, and that it was a more important struggle than someone like me could comprehend. I remember clearly warning those Kuwaiti acolytes of Saddam Hussein about him and his ill will against Kuwait, but all to no avail. [10] Zarnett becomes more categorical in his next assertion: '[Said] also failed to speak out for the human rights of the Iraqi Kurds who were victims of the most brutal Iraqi state aggression.' This is quite simply untrue. Said openly condemned '[Saddam's] persecution of the Shias and Kurds.' [11] Here is a more extensive quote, taken from an article written in 1991: The behavior of the Iraqi regime has been disgraceful: repressive at home, mischievously adventurous and violent abroad. Most recently in its illegal occupation and annexation of Kuwait, it brought destruction upon its people, first through American bombing and mass devastation, then through a merciless persecution of its own population, especially the Kurds, persecuted, betrayed, and in danger yet again of being abandoned. [12] Note that in the above quote, Said not only refers to the Iraqi Baath regime's persecution of the Kurds (and its invasion of Kuwait), but blames the regime itself for the American bombing of Iraq. Finally, Zarnett makes his most outrageous allegation: 'Said felt compelled to only speak of human rights abuses committed by America and Israel.' This statement is blatantly false – if not merely because of the above examples in which Said condemns the Iraqi Baath regime. Incredibly, however, Zarnett seems to forget that he has just finished bashing Orientalism, which delves into abuses committed by European powers against colonised peoples, with very little discussion of the US and Israel. Said wrote about abuses committed by a range of countries, groups and individuals. He often mentioned human rights abuses by undemocratic Arab states, [13] and referred in passing to phenomena such as apartheid South Africa; [14] Turkey's persecution of Armenians in 1915 [15] and Kurds today, [16] as well as its 1974

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 invasion of Cyprus; [17] the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan; [18] Bosnians suffering ethnic cleansing; [19] and Russia's violent suppression of successive rebellions in Chechnya – singling out Boris Yeltsin for blame in this last case. [20] It is also important to note that Said, who never played down the horrors or significance of the Holocaust, consistently condemned Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. [21] None of this is to deny that Said was overly suspicious of the United States, and that he stubbornly refused to entertain the possibility that American political influence and military might could be, and sometimes is, used to benefit oppressed peoples. There is also no question that Edward Said's Weltanschauung was Palestinocentric, and that when he wrote about victims he wrote mostly about Palestinians. Yet even here the US and Israel were hardly the only victimisers. Reading The Question of Palestine and The Politics of Dispossession, for example, reveals that whether it was Jordan's Black September crackdown in 1971, the massacres committed by the Christian Phalangists during the Lebanese civil war, official discrimination practised by the Lebanese state or Kuwait's post-liberation vengefulness, Said pulled no punches when Palestinians were wronged by fellow Arabs. Of equal significance was Said's criticism of the Palestinian Authority – the Fatahdominated outgrowth of the Palestine Liberation Organisation that came to administer the autonomous regions within Gaza and the West Bank following the Oslo agreement – and its president, Yasir Arafat (see, for example, almost every essay in Peace and its Discontents). Tony Judt addresses this issue in his foreword to From Oslo to Iraq and the road map, a book filled with such criticism: Said was above all concerned with addressing and excoriating his fellow Arabs. It is the ruling Arab regimes, especially that of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, who come in for the strongest criticism here: for their cupidity, their corruption, their malevolence and incredulity. This may seem almost unfair – it is, after all, the United States that has effective power, and Israel that was and is wreaking havoc among Edward Said's fellow Palestinian – but Said seems to have felt it important to tell the truth to and about his own people, rather than risk indulging 'the fawning elasticity with regard to one's own side that has disfigured the history of intellectuals since time immemorial' (December 2000). [22]

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange Said was so critical of the Palestinian Authority's lack of democracy and its human rights abuses (including arbitrary arrests and torture), as well as Arafat's autocracy, corruption, stupidity and lack of leadership skills – 'Arafat's model of rule is based entirely on coercion and personal gain' [23] – that the Palestinian leader banned Said's books from circulation in areas controlled by the PA. In short, only by ignoring thousands upon thousands of words can one conclude that in his writings Said blamed only the US and Israel for human rights abuses. It is true that in many of the articles from which the above quotes are culled Said criticises the US and Israel heavily, but to ignore his criticisms of others is fundamentally dishonest. The Origins of Edward Said's Political Views Zarnett is not satisfied with making the above baseless accusations. He goes much further, claiming that 'Said's political positions on the real Orient stem directly from his arguments made in Orientalism.' Indeed, according to Zarnett, 'Orientalism is the soil in which Said's political positions are rooted.' [24] It is difficult to pinpoint the source of Edward's Said's political views. There is no reason to doubt Said's own account – as it appears, for example, in the introduction to The Politics of Dispossession or in chapter 11 of Peace and its Discontents – that he became politicised by the Six-Day war of 1967 and the Palestinian reawakening brought about by Arab defeat. (Indeed, a cursory glance at Said's oeuvre indicates that his political writings all came after 1967.) It was a decade after his first foray into political analysis that Said produced Orientalism (1978). Years of opposing Israel's oppression of the Palestinians and the United States' wholesale support of such oppression would lead him controversially to locate Israeli and American policies within a larger historical tradition of Western attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims. The admittedly problematic enterprise that is Orientalism, then, should properly be viewed as having its origins in the author's sense of Palestinian victimisation and his political beliefs regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To claim, as Zarnett does, that Said's political positions on Israel and Palestine (amongst other issues pertaining to the 'real Orient') stemmed from his views on Orientalist scholarship is to get it backwards.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 One wonders, also, what Zarnett would make of the fact that Said's political positions evolved with time. Long a supporter of a two-state solution for the IsraeliPalestinian conflict (a position formally endorsed by the PLO in 1988), Said came to change his mind in the last decade of his life and – largely because of entrenched and growing illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank – began advocating a binational state. This is most evident in the essays collected in From Oslo to Iraq, and receives mention in the foreword by Tony Judt. The most sinister aspect of Zarnett's sophistry is the implication that Said's arguments regarding Israel/Palestine can be summarily dismissed. If Ibn Warraq is correct that Edward Said was a 'fraud' [25] whose Orientalism is a piece of 'inherent dishonesty, charlatanry and imposture,' [26] and if Zarnett can convince us that Said's arguments against Zionism and for a free and independent Palestine derive from the spurious reasoning employed in Orientalism, we might feel tempted to consign to oblivion arguably the most eloquent and persuasive defence of the Palestinian cause. Unfortunately, Zarnett's logic is faulty in the extreme. Though the evidence points to the 1967 war and its effects – not to conclusions reached in Orientalism – as having played the primary role in stimulating Said's political consciousness and guiding his subsequent approach to the Palestinian cause, the point ultimately is moot; Said's political arguments should be considered on their own merits, regardless of their origin. Realising this helps one to understand that it is entirely possible to hold different views of Said's different writings. If one agrees with Said's arguments regarding the Palestinian question, one need not necessarily second the conclusions reached in Orientalism, even if one believes that the latter was in some sense an outgrowth of Said's approach to Israel/Palestine. And if a reader agrees with Orientalism's theses, it does not become incumbent upon him/her to support Said's views on Palestine, even if such views are improbably thought to have originated with Orientalism. Zarnett cannot understand this elementary truth, and resents the fact that in Varisco's book '[i]t is implied that Said's political positions speak for themselves and thereby require no justification.' Indeed, Zarnett seems oblivious to the fact that such an implication conforms rather well to universal norms regarding academic debate. The justifications – or lack thereof – for Said's political positions on Israel/Palestine are to be found in the very arguments he employs when tackling such matters, meaning that any attempted refutation should begin and end with a

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange dissection of these arguments. The question of origin is purely of biographical interest, for it is the cogency of the argument that should carry the day. Zionism and the Palestinians Zarnett's attempt to discredit Said's political views is set in motion at least in part by a bizarre tangent, itself worth examining. Zarnett manages to bring Mahmoud alZahhar of Hamas into a difference of opinion between Varisco and Said regarding the proper way to characterise the below statement by the late Golda Meir, former prime minister of Israel: There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist. Zarnett is unhappy that Varisco, who dismisses Said's charge that Meir's above statement is 'deeply Orientalist,' should instead describe it as '[d]eeply Zionist' and 'offensive to all but staunch partisans.' Zarnett proceeds to explain that: [I]n opposing Said's essentialism on Orientalism, Varisco seems to adopt an essentialist understanding of Zionism. Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a staunch Zionist partisan among others, recognised in his 1923 essay The Iron Wall that there were two nations in Palestine. Conversely, The Economist recently published an article quoting Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahhar (hardly a Zionist) who echoed (without attribution) the words of Meir: 'We [Palestinians] were never an independent state in history… We were part of an Arab state and an Islamic state.' Had Zarnett looked a little more closely at al-Zahhar's statement, he would have noticed that it is neither the 'converse' of Jabotinsky's recognition that there were two nations in Palestine, nor quite an 'echo' of Meir's claim that there never existed a Palestinian people. The significance of Jabotinsky's two-part essay 'The Iron Wall' was that it recognised that the Palestinians – despite their perceived backwardness – constituted a nation,

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 rather than some undifferentiated mass. [27] This was considered progressive for its day and set the stage for Jabotinsky's important claim that there were two nations in Palestine. Mahmoud al-Zahhar does not address this issue in his statement, let alone provide its converse by claiming that there is only one nation in historical Palestine. Golda Meir denied that the Palestinians constituted a people (or nation) and pointed out the historical fact that they had never possessed a state of their own. In independently observing that the Palestinians never possessed a state of their own, Mahmoud al-Zahhar is not echoing the copyrighted words of Meir – with all that this would entail by way of attribution – but simply making a factual statement. Nowhere, however, does al-Zahhar second Meir's strictly ideological contention that the Palestinians do not constitute a people/nation. [28] Returning to Zarnett's intention with the above argument, which is to demonstrate Zionism's diversity, one comes across a serious problem. Zarnett accuses Varisco of 'essentialising' Zionism and proceeds to cite Ze'ev Jabotinsky's perception of the Palestinians as being very different from Golda Meir's. This is technically true, but in practice it meant nothing. Perhaps Zarnett is ignorant of everything Jabotinsky wrote from 1923, when the 'The Iron Wall' was first published, until his death in 1940. In 'The Iron Wall,' to which Zarnett refers, Jabotinsky acknowledged the presence of two nations in Palestine and even went so far as to express opposition to the idea of expelling the Palestinians. Over the next 17 years, he changed his mind about expulsion: In a letter to one of his Revisionist colleagues in the United States dated November 1939, [ Jabotinsky] wrote: 'There is no choice: the Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. If it was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs,' adding that Iraq and Saudi Arabia could absorb them. Jabotinsky also alluded in a number of articles to the Greco-Turkish 'transfer,' describing it as a brutal, coercive action imposed by the victorious Turks but which proved ultimately beneficial to the Greeks. [29] Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether Jabotinsky was childishly naïve or cruelly cynical. Consider this statement: 'The world has become accustomed to the idea of mass migrations and has almost become fond of them.' More shocking is

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange what follows: 'Hitler – as odious as he is to us – has given this idea a good name in the world.' [30] Jabotinsky's views are even scarier when one realises that the envisaged Jewish state from which he wanted to remove the Palestinians was not simply British mandate Palestine, but Transjordan as well. Indeed, the demand to incorporate Transjordan (now Jordan) into a Jewish state largely free of Arabs was at the very core of Revisionist Zionism, of which Jabotinsky was the founding father. [31] Had Jabotinsky lived until 1948, he would have seen his wish to transfer his Arab neighbours largely fulfilled – at least from British mandate Palestine. At any rate, what is important here is that for all their ideological differences, when it came to the expulsion of the Palestinians Golda Meir and Ze'ev Jabotinsky were two sides of the same coin. Meir maintained that the Palestinians did not constitute a nation; for this reason, they didn't count, and she had no problem with their expulsion. Jabotinsky maintained that the Palestinians were in fact a nation; nevertheless, he wanted to expel them. Given their shared political position on the issue of expulsion, is it conceivable that their ideological divergence should make any difference to a Palestinian expellee? Not only is Zarnett off-base in attributing undue significance to the ideological divergence between Meir and Jabotinsky on the subject of Palestinian nationhood, but ultimately their shared political position is symptomatic of the manner in which Zionists of various ideological stripes coalesced around expulsion of the Palestinians. Historians such as Nur Masalha have shown that support for expulsion of the Palestinians among pre-1948 Zionists cut across all ideological divisions. [32] This is even apparent today in contemporary Zionists' evaluations of the expulsion. For example, Israeli historian Benny Morris documented the Palestinians' flight in 1947-49, attributing it to Zionist attacks, Palestinian fears of such attacks, direct expulsion at the hands of Zionist forces, and Arab calls for the Palestinians to evacuate. [33] In retrospect, Morris regrets that the Zionists/early Israelis did not expel more Palestinians: 'If [Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion] had carried out a full expulsion – rather than a partial one – he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations … The non-completion of the transfer was a mistake.' [34] Zeev Sternhell is an Israeli historian, liberal-left Zionist and Holocaust survivor whose views on a number of Palestinian-related issues, including the 2000 intifada,

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 differ greatly from those of Morris. Yet when it comes to the expulsion of the Palestinians, he is not quite so different; a shocked Edward Said wrote of how, during a conference in Paris, Sternhell 'insisted…that although it was morally wrong to expel Palestinians, it was necessary to do so.' [35] PART II: Ibn Warraq Ibn Warraq's Defending the West Zarnett improbably manages all of the above in an article ostensibly dedicated to covering Ibn Warraq's Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism and Daniel Martin Varisco's Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid. There is, of course, plenty of discussion by Zarnett of these two books, and it is Ibn Warraq's Defending the West that is the focus of this section of my article. [36] In one sense, Defending the West is a work of synthesis that brings together the scholarship of several historians whose findings disprove Said's assertions. Yet this focused endeavour is framed by Ibn Warraq's much more ambitious ideological argument in defence of 'the West.' As such, Defending the West is markedly different from another recent book on the subject of Orientalism. Though somewhat meandering, Robert Irwin's For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies shows how and why Said was often wrong, but does not construct civilisational meta-narratives in the process. An earlier book, A.L. Macfie's Orientalism (not to be confused with his Orientalism: A Reader) provides a good overview of the debate between supporters and opponents of Said's theses. As it happens, I reviewed Defending the West for the San Antonio Express-News; my review ran on 23 November 2007, shortly after the book's publication. Unfortunately, spatial constraints necessitated drastic cuts – the book-review sections of newspapers across the world are shrinking steadily – but the general points of my argument were retained. Although I am providing a link to my short review, [37] this article will itself include (brief ) quotes from the review's beginning and end in order to give readers an idea of my overall views before I explore them in greater detail. First, however, I want to draw attention to two problematic aspects of Zarnett's review of Ibn Warraq's book. Zarnett's propensity for linguistic infelicities notwithstanding, his choice of words at times seems to bespeak a frighteningly crude and simplistic historical outlook. This is even more troubling given his criticism of precisely such a trait. Addressing Orientalism, Zarnett writes of 'the binary-thinking that Said rhetorically opposed

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange but intellectually promoted' and later '[t]he simplicity of Said's binary mode of thought.' Later still, he claims that Varisco falls short of his book's goal 'to attack binary modes of thought' of the kind represented by Said. Yet for a truly binary mode of thought, one need look no further than Zarnett's own outlook, as manifested in his preceding sentence: 'In fact, past Orientalism housed both progressive trends worthy of praise and regressive trends worthy of condemnation.' Elsewhere, Zarnett uses the term 'nuanced' to describe historical evaluations grounded in a regressive/ progressive binary. [38] The second issue is far more important. Zarnett offers no criticism whatsoever of Ibn Warraq's book (his criticisms of Varisco all tellingly pertain to the latter's points of agreement with Said), despite Defending the West's many deficiencies. Zarnett even attempts to pre-empt censure of Ibn Warraq by alerting us to what misguided or even malicious critics will inevitably say about his book: 'Warraq's views will be roundly dismissed as "neo-conservative" and as an apologia for imperialism.' Having noted his obliviousness to lacunae marring Defending the West, there is nothing more for me to say about Zarnett. About Ibn Warraq, however, there is plenty, and the following will show that there are a good many problems with his book that Zarnett could have chosen to cite. To make this section of my article more manageable, I have decided to limit my discussion to the sloppiness of Ibn Warraq's scholarship, a problem that taints his largely successful case against Said's Orientalism. Though I describe Ibn Warraq's larger argument in defence of 'the West' and point out its flaws, I do not delve into this subject. There are also several important issues I do not discuss at all, including Ibn Warraq's take on Said's explication – mostly in Culture and Imperialism – of Austen and Kipling. I also do not address minor issues, such as Ibn Warraq's objectionable style. [39] In my review for the Express-News, I briefly encapsulate the problem with Ibn Warraq's larger argument: [40] Too often, Warraq's otherwise welcome praise of various Western scholars' and institutions' quest for knowledge becomes a shrill hosanna to 'the West' – conceived of as a distinct and timeless entity – as well as 'European man (who), by nature, strives to know.' Indeed, viewing the West as a unified and cohesive whole animated by 'rationalism, universalism, and self-criticism,' which Warraq calls 'the tutelary

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 guiding lights of, or the three golden threads running through, Western civilization,' is this book's major weakness. Even when Europe was riven by ideological battles over scientific inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge itself, the author sees only reason and progress. [41] I conclude the review with an acknowledgment of Defending the West's central achievement, while pointing to the fact that a) this achievement is attenuated somewhat by several deficiencies and b) the book's larger argument fails outright. Despite several drawbacks, 'Defending the West' remains in its immediate focus a good and necessary corrective to Edward Said's 'Orientalism.' Yet in its broader attempt to conflate reason and 'the West' – instead of specific and often embattled Western philosophical currents – this book inevitably founders. [42] Before attending to the purpose of this section of my article, let me expand a little on the above point. By inflating the importance of personal bias and colonial affiliation, Edward Said enabled the lazy to dismiss scholars without even glancing at their work; a spicy ad hominem attack would suffice. Ibn Warraq shows clearly that Said's generalisations about Orientalists are wild and fanciful, yet proceeds to make his own. For Said, Orientalists are a cabal, for Ibn Warraq, a gathering of saints; for both, Orientalists typify a distinctly Western conception of knowledge, and often even the West itself. [43] Much of the debate since 1978 has been whether Orientalists aggrandised the scope and import of their findings in a pseudo-scholarly attempt to portray the Orient as monolithic. How ironic, then, that both Edward Said and Ibn Warraq should – by examining certain Orientalists and their works – draw radically different but similarly overarching and simplistic conclusions about the Occident. To return to the aforementioned 'drawbacks' of Ibn Warraq's largely successful rebuttal of Said: I shall address several specific weaknesses (but often also specific strengths) of Ibn Warraq's refutation of Said's Orientalism. The discussion of Said in the below refers to Orientalism, while that of Ibn Warraq to Defending the West. All page numbers in the body of the text are from Defending the West. Ibn Warraq is absolutely right about the inexcusability of Orientalism's scant discussion of German Orientalists, and justly takes Said to task for largely ignoring scholars – German and other – who do not fit into his conception of Orientalism

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange as having gone hand-in-hand with imperialism. [44] Yet it is Ibn Warraq's section on India that is arguably the book's strongest suit. Though he does not reveal that Hindu-Muslim rivalry has traditionally played a role in Indian views of British rule (it was the anti-Hindu Muslim Mughals whom the British dislodged), he shows the palpable appreciation several Indian historians feel toward the cultural and scientific contributions made by specific British colonists/Orientalists to their country. Also on the topic of his native India, Ibn Warraq offers this brilliant observation – which might just as easily have been made of the current American enterprise in Iraq: 'Those historians or polemicists like Said who dwell on the iniquities of individuals – their venality, their greed, their arrogance, or even their racism – are missing the point. It is to the institutions inaugurated, installed, and made to function impersonally that we should pay attention.' (p. 230) Speaking of India, Ibn Warraq singles out elected parliamentary government, the rule of law and the Indian Civil Service as the most important institutions introduced by the British. Commendably, Ibn Warraq urges readers to judge scholarship on its own merits, irrespective of extraneous considerations. 'It is worth pointing out that often the motives, desires, and prejudices of a scholar have no bearing upon the scientific worth of a scholar's contribution.' (p. 39) Yet instead of expounding on this critical point, itself underlain by a resolute faith in objective knowledge – the existence of which Said often seemed to reject – Ibn Warraq frequently denies that Orientalists harboured ulterior motives to begin with, or claims that any prejudice on their part was pro-Oriental. [45] This simplistic and ultimately inaccurate appraisal obscures the need to confront the more important issue of whether the findings of scholars with a known anti-Islam bias should be dismissed, and whether Orientalists with ties to a colonial administration should be considered scholars at all. Though Ibn Warraq rightly believes that a scholar need not like Islam in order to know it, and that an Orientalist in the employ of a colonial administration did not necessarily slant his work to suit an overall imperial endeavour, this crucial point merits more than a few remarks. The point takes on additional importance when Ibn Warraq criticises Western universities today for accepting donations from Arab sources, as though it were a given that professors subsequently put a pro-Arab or pro-Muslim spin on their lectures. Yet even as he rails against the epidemic of Western universities being 'corrupted by Saudi and other Arab money,' (p. 69) he provides no examples of such corruption, and cites only one instance in which anything untoward happened; in 1986,

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Newcastle University professor Denis MacEoin (Daniel Easterman) [46] lost his post, abolished when Saudi sponsors unhappy with the way he taught Islam withdrew their funding for the programme they had established. In certain instances, Ibn Warraq may have misunderstood Said's arguments. For example, in chapter five he painstakingly demonstrates the importance of work done by Western archaeologists in the Orient. Yet Said did not deny that Orientalists played a seminal role in excavating the Near East and India's past. Rather, he (improbably) claimed that this was part of an elaborate endeavour by Orientalists to prove that, whereas Europe's glory was contemporary, the Orient's greatness lay in antiquity; consequently, it behoved Westerners to enlighten benighted Orientals by unearthing their glorious past for them. Said's failing was that he never confronted the thorny issue of why so many Orientals themselves expressed no interest in their own history, something for which he is justly chided by Ibn Warraq. Although Ibn Warraq does well to provide an overview of Edward Said's Arab critics, he is wrong to claim that Arabs and Muslims inhabit 'cultures…immune to self-criticism.' (p. 246) A glance at any major Arabic-language newspaper – especially the editorials and opinion pages during a given week – will reveal articles decrying dictatorship, terrorism and Islamic extremism. [47] A section of Defending the West's seventh chapter is concerned with Islamic antiSemitism. Aside from being necessary, much of this section is informative, including the portion concerned with doctrinal anti-Semitism (as found in the Quran and Hadith) as well as that listing examples of religiously inspired anti-Semitic violence on the part of Muslims at various stages in history. While early Islamic history includes instances of such violence, Ibn Warraq fails to disclose an important fact concerning at least one aspect of his discussion. The earliest account of the massacre of male members of the Jewish Banu Qurayza tribe and the enslavement of women and children was written a century after the alleged atrocity, and has long been deemed unreliable. The 8th century Ibn Ishaq, who wrote a biography of Muhammad in which he refers to the Banu Qurayza, was considered a liar by contemporaries as well as later scholars. [48] Ibn Warraq does a good job of parsing Said's pretentious and often jargon-filled writing for incoherent statements, and justly lambastes Said for misreading R.W. Southern and Raymond Schwab, two historians whose findings Said misconstrued

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange as critical of Orientalist scholarship. He also ridicules Said's defamatory charge that, due to Orientalist misinformation, 'every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.' (p. 32) Yet Ibn Warraq indulges in some calumny of his own, alleging that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is 'a forgery taken seriously by all Muslims.' (p. 251) Ludicrously, Ibn Warraq charges that the adamantly secular Said intended to legitimise Islamic fundamentalism. Though he quotes historian R. Stephen Humphreys, who considers it 'ironic' (p. 49) that Orientalism emboldened Islamists, Ibn Warraq believes this to have been Said's very purpose, the only irony being that Said himself was not Muslim. Disturbingly, Ibn Warraq's and others' fanciful verbalisations of Said's 'true' views are not properly demarcated from statements made by Said himself, creating the potential for reader misunderstanding. Consider the following statement, which occurs during a discussion of rampant conspiracy-mongering in the Arab world: Edward Said fed into this mentality and reinforced a culture of self-pity: '[I] f only the wicked West and those Zionists would leave us alone, we would be great again as in the time of our forefathers as when one Muslim could fell ten infidels with one blow of the sword.' Needless to say, self-criticism under these circumstances takes great courage and is rather rare in the Middle East. (pp. 80-1) Inexcusably, Ibn Warraq fails to indicate that he isn't quoting Said here; the quote beginning '[I]f only the wicked West' and ending 'with one blow of the sword' is Ibn Warraq's own verbalisation of Arab and Muslim self-pity, which he fancifully argues was shared and reinforced by Edward Said, despite the fact that Said never wrote about Muslims felling infidels. Every indication is that this is a direct quote from Said, with the first letter of the first word having been meticulously encased in brackets as though it had to be changed from lower-case to upper-case so as to better conform to the new context. Here is a disturbingly similar example – down to the very words employed. Again, there is no indication that the hysterical cry around which quotation marks have been placed is Ibn Warraq's tendentious paraphrasing of Edward Said's argument, not a quote from the book:

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 [Orientalism] taught an entire generation of Arabs the art of self-pity – 'were it not for the wicked imperialists, racists and Zionists, we would be great once more' – encouraged the Islamic fundamentalist generation of the 1980s, bludgeoned into silence any criticism of Islam, and even stopped dead the research of eminent Islamologists who felt their findings might offend Muslim sensibilities and who dared not risk being labelled 'Orientalist.' (p. 18) Elsewhere, Ibn Warraq begins a paragraph thus: The most pernicious legacy of Said's Orientalism is its implicit support for religious fundamentalism, and on its insistence that 'all the ills [of the Arab world] emanate from Orientalism and have nothing to do with the socioeconomic, political and ideological makeup of the Arab lands or with the cultural historical backwardness which stands behind it.' (p. 53) Again, it is not Edward Said insisting that 'all the ills [of the Arab world] emanate from Orientalism' but another writer imputing these views to Said. This is not at all clear, though endnotes help us determine the source. In this case, Ibn Warraq is quoting Emmanuel Sivan's translation of Nadim al-Bitar's characterisation of Edward Said's Orientalism. Twice-borrowed mischaracterisations do not generally make for good scholarship, but that doesn't seem to stop Ibn Warraq. Finally, here is a cavil that – while very minor compared to the above issues – helps further illustrate Ibn Warraq's general sloppiness. In one instance wherein Ibn Warraq accuses Said of ignoring Orientalists who were sympathetic to Islam and Muslims, he cites W.S. Blunt, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Marmaduke Pickthall and E.G. Browne as examples of 'quite deliberate omissions' (p. 37) on the part of Said. In fact, except for Montagu, all of the above figures were cited – albeit in passing – by Said. Ibn Warraq's mistake here should be multiplied by two; even as he wrongly blames Said for omitting E.G. Browne (amongst others), he notes that Bernard Lewis criticises Said for referring to Browne (amongst others) only in passing. (p. 50) Addendum In my review, I observe the following regarding Defending the West: 'It's also a bit odd that the author, who often rebukes Western liberals for being overly deferential

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange to Islam, should laud those Orientalists who viewed Islam sympathetically.' [49] Indeed, he even holds aloft the inconsistent Ernest Renan as an example, though it was with Renan's assertion 'Muslims are the first victims of Islam' that Ibn Warraq opens his book Why I am not a Muslim. [50] Although Ibn Warraq's shifting and selective approach to history does not mean that his historical and literary observations are incorrect, it does shed light on his insincere method of argumentation. In this addendum, footnotes have been provided for all quotes from Ibn Warraq's Why I am not a Muslim, while quotes from his Defending the West continue to be placed in parentheses. Included in the first chapter of Ibn Warraq's Why I am not a Muslim is a discussion of European writers from centuries past who held a positive view of Islam; a version of this section was later included in Part I of Defending the West. In adapting the section, however, Ibn Warraq changed both its tenor and purpose. In Why I am not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq sets out to demonstrate that several 17th and 18th century European writers who praised Islam's supposed tolerance did so in order to emphasise the intolerance of the Catholic Church or Christianity in general. [51] In Defending the West, Ibn Warraq retains this explanation for the Islamophilia of Pierre Jurieu, Pierre Bayle, Henri de Boulainvilliers, Voltaire and Gibbon. However, he omits one very important charge that he originally made against such writers; they were roundly ignorant of Islam. Ibn Warraq had different priorities when writing the two books. In the relevant section of Why I am not a Muslim, his purpose is to discredit the pro-Islam writings of Europeans, and to show that the Muslim tolerance in which they believed is a 'myth.' In Defending the West, however, Ibn Warraq's purpose is to use the very writers he ridiculed as proof that Edward Said's charges of Orientalist bias are unfounded. As a result, Ibn Warraq removes his criticism of their ignorance and naivety. 'Pierre Bayle was much influenced by Jurieu and continued the myth of Islamic tolerance that persists to this day' [52] becomes 'Pierre Bayle was much influenced by Jurieu and continued to sing the praise of Islamic tolerance.' (p. 35) Apparently, Islamic tolerance is no longer a myth, or maybe the issue simply isn't important. Whereas in Why I am not a Muslim Ibn Warraq repeatedly characterises Jurieu and Bayle's positive treatment of Islam as inaccurate, in Defending the West he does not characterise it at all. The following statements from Why I am not a Muslim are nowhere to be found in Defending the West:

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 For Jurieu and Bayle in the seventeenth century, Turk was synonymous with Muslim; thus, Turkish tolerance turned into Muslim tolerance in general. The two writers showed no knowledge whatsoever of Muslim atrocities … [I]t was quite fraudulent of Jurieu and Bayle to talk of Muslim tolerance in general on the basis of their scanty knowledge of Islamic history, because the religious situation varied enormously from century to century, in country to country, from ruler to ruler. [53] In both books, Ibn Warraq discusses Count Henri de Boulainvilliers, who wrote a biography of Muhammad that was published in 1730; in both books, he describes the biography as 'apologetic.' [54] (p. 35) Crucially, however, in Why I am not a Muslim Ibn Warraq goes to great lengths to demonstrate that this apologetic biography is essentially of no value: 'Boulainvilliers had no knowledge of Arabic and had to rely on secondary sources; thus his work is by no means a work of serious scholarship. On the contrary it contains many errors and "much embroidery."' [55] Naturally, this characterisation has not been reproduced in Defending the West – wherein de Boulainvilliers is paraded alongside others as an example of how several European writers viewed Islam positively – nor has criticism of de Boulainvilliers' work by noted scholars of Islam Arthur Jeffrey and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje. The same approach applies to Voltaire. In Why I am not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq writes that 'the superficial rationality of Islam' would appeal to a deist like Voltaire, and continues: 'To this was added other false beliefs such as Islam's absolute tolerance of other religions, in contrast to Christian intolerance.' [56] While the former quote is not included in Defending the West, the latter becomes: 'To this was added other beliefs, such as the absolute tolerance of other religions, in contrast to Christian intolerance.' (p. 36) No longer is there any mention of the falsity of the belief that Islam is tolerant of other religions. Also, by removing the reference to Islam, Ibn Warraq has inadvertently changed the meaning of the rest of the sentence. After all, 'Islam's absolute tolerance of other religions' is quite different from 'the absolute tolerance of other religions.' Ibn Warraq's discussion of Gibbon in Why I am not a Muslim is very important, as he attributes to the 18th century British historian a tremendous influence on European views of Islam for centuries to come. According to Ibn Warraq, 'Gibbon was much influenced by Boulainvilliers in particular, but also by the eighteenthcentury Weltanschauung with its myths and preoccupations.' [57] Ibn Warraq

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange proceeds to quote Bernard Lewis's criticisms of Gibbon's entire approach to Islam, and then makes his own observations: Gibbon's deistic view of Islam as a rational, priest-free religion, with Muhammad as a wise and tolerant lawgiver, enormously influenced the way all Europeans perceived their sister religion for years to come. Indeed, it established myths that are still accepted totally uncritically by scholars and laymen alike. [58] The above – as well as Lewis's criticisms – was conspicuously removed from the version of this discussion that appears in Defending the West. Also absent from Defending the West is the following observation Ibn Warraq makes in Why I am not a Muslim: 'Both Voltaire and Gibbon subscribed to the myth of Muslim tolerance, which to them meant Turkish tolerance.' [59] To sum up, virtually all descriptions and characterisations have been removed, so that Defending the West simply lists various European authors who viewed Islam positively, and who praised it in order to highlight Christian wrongs and Christianity's perceived shortcomings. While Ibn Warraq repeatedly castigates such authors in Why I am not a Muslim for their acceptance of 'myths' such as Muslim tolerance, none of this is to be found in Defending the West. The issue is significant because the scholarly merit of a corpus of pro-Islam writings hangs in the balance. After all, what use should we have for positive treatments of Islam if they are grounded in factual error? For Ibn Warraq, the answer is clear; he can use them against Edward Said.

Rayyan Al-Shawaf is a writer and freelance reviewer based in Beirut, Lebanon References

This select bibliography includes only those books and articles from which I quote directly. Where applicable, I have included additional information concerning original publication dates as well as UK editions. Other relevant books and articles are cited in passing throughout the text of the article as well as the endnotes. Al-Shawaf, Rayyan, 'Book review: 'Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism,'' San Antonio Express-News, 23 November 2007. Ibn Warraq 2003 [1995], Why I am not a Muslim, New York: Prometheus Books. Ibn Warraq 2007, Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism, New York: Prometheus Books.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Keddie, Nikki R. and Eric Hooglund (eds) 1986, The Iranian Revolution & The Islamic Republic, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. (Originally published by Middle East Institute in 1982.) Keddie, Nikki, 'Better than the past: What recent history has taught Iranians, The Iranian, 25 April 2003. http://www.iranian.com/Opinion/2003/April/Lesson/ (Retrieved 11 May 2008). Masalha, Nur 1992, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948, Washington, D.C.: Institute for Palestinian Studies. Said, Edward W. 1994, The Politics of Dispossession, New York: Pantheon Books. Said, Edward W. 1996, Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, New York: Vintage Books. Said, Edward W. 1997, Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World, New York: Vintage. (Originally published by Pantheon Books in 1981. Available in the UK through Vintage.) Said, Edward W. 2001, The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After, New York: Vintage Books. (Originally published by Pantheon Books in 2000. Available in the UK through Granta.) Said, Edward W. 2004, From Oslo to Iraq and the road map, New York: Pantheon Books. Segev, Tom 2000, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, Translated from the Hebrew by Haim Watzman, New York: Henry Holt/Metropolitan Books. (Available in the UK through Abacus.) Shavit, Ari, 'Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris,' Logos Winter 2004. http:// www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm (Retrieved 11 May 2008). (Originally published in Haaretz, 9 January 2004.) Wright, Robin 2008, Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East, New York: Penguin Press. [1] Keddie and Hooglund 1986, p. 11.

Notes

[2] Wright 2008, pp. 287-91. [3] See Zarnett's 'Edward Said and the Iranian Revolution,' Democratiya 9 (Summer 2007). Zarnett's article considers it a given that the Iranian revolution (not just a component thereof ) was inherently Khomeiniist from the outset, and that a blinkered Edward Said refused to see this. [4] Keddie 2003. (This is an online posting of Keddie's paper 'Better than the past.' The paper was presented at UCLA in 2003 and summarises some of the points of her then-upcoming Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution.) [5] Wright 2008, pp. 287-8. This is not to say that Khomeini was entirely consistent in his statements – which may have been a deliberate strategy. He also doubtless benefitted from the confusion surrounding the newfangled term 'Islamic Republic,' which he introduced. No such thing had ever existed, while Iranians were long accustomed to their country being associated in some manner or other with Shiite Islam. Although some Iran observers (including Robin Wright) believe that Khomeini did not initially seek to establish a theocracy, those of his statements to the effect that he did not want clerical rule may well have been a form of taqiyya, or dissimulation, which has a long history in Islamic – especially Shiite – tradition. Aided by the fact that few outside his circle of followers had read his work or heard his lectures about the ideal form of Islamic governance, Khomeini could have when necessary obscured a) his unwillingness to be a merely symbolic figurehead uniting an array of ideologically disparate factions and b) his true intention to install clerical rule, with himself at the country's helm.

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange [6] Said 1997, p. 100. (Emphasis Said's). [7] Said 1994, p. 278. What makes matters worse is that Zarnett is aware of this statement; he quotes it in his article 'Edward Said and Kosovo,' Democratiya 11 (Winter 2007). [8] Said 1994, p. 278. [9] Said 2001, p. 353. [10] Said 2004, p. 256. [11] Said 2001, p. 210. [12] Said 1994, p. 157. [13] See, for example, Said 2001, p. 161. [14] Said 2001, pp. 63-9 and Said 1994, pp. 169-70. [15] Said 2001, p. 271. [16] Said 2001, p. 212. [17] Said 1994, p. 279. [18] Said 1994, p. 279. [19] Said 2001, p. 212. [20] Said 2001, p. 45. [21] See, for example, Said 2001, p. 191, in which he writes: 'Terror bombing is terrible, and cannot be condoned.' For an example of a condemnation of a specific terrorist attack, see Said 2001, p. 45. [22] Said 2004, p. xi. [23] Said 2001, p. 53. [24] In passing, Zarnett cites three examples of what he deems to be obvious instances of Said viewing contemporary political problems through the prism of arguments made in Orientalism. As I demonstrate above in a separate context, two such examples – Said's allegedly faulty analysis of the Iranian revolution and his alleged insensitivity to the suffering of Iraqi Kurds – are mischaracterisations and therefore fall flat in this or any other context. Zarnett's third example is Said's 'perception of the U.S.-led Oslo Peace Process as a reincarnation of European "peace treaties" to African chiefs.' Zarnett does not bother to demonstrate how or why the analogy is false; instead, one is left with the impression that Said irrationally equated Israel's approach to the Palestinians with European colonial exploits in (19th century) Africa, one of the subjects discussed in Orientalism. In fact, Said made a number of different analogies to emphasise his point that the Palestinians were getting a bad deal with the Oslo Agreement. For example, in 'The Morning After,' which appears as the second chapter of Peace and its Discontents, he terms the Oslo Accords 'a Palestinian Versailles' (page 7). On several occasions, Said pointedly compared the projected Palestinian autonomous areas to the Bantustans established by South Africa (see, for example, the concluding chapter in Peace and its Discontents). The Bantustan phenomenon – along with the history of apartheid South Africa – is very different from the 'classic' European colonialism practised in Africa, and as such is not discussed in Orientalism. After all, whereas Orientalism is concerned largely with events which occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Bantustans were established by independent South Africa in the second half of the 20th century.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Even in the discussion from which Zarnett's example seems to have been taken – chapter 14 of The End of the Peace Process – in which Said sarcastically compares Arafat to an African 'chief ' bought off by French or British colonists, a number of analogies are made. Said cites the relevance of the American Indian model as well as the Bantustan model for pacifying natives – both of which have little or nothing to do with Orientalism – in addition to 19th century British and French colonial tactics in Africa. In other words, Said did not view Israel's treatment of the Palestinians solely through the prism of the anti-colonial arguments – specifically concerning white rule in 19th century Africa – that he set forth in Orientalism. [25] Ibn Warraq 2008, p. 247. [26] Ibn Warraq 2008, p. 295. [27] Both parts of Jabotinsky's essay can be found online here: http://www.mideastweb.org/ ironwall.htm (Retrieved 15 May 2008). [28] Though it is well to note Zarnett's mischaracterisation of al-Zahhar's statement, what is more important is the absolute irrelevance of all the above statements, despite Zarnett's indication to the contrary. For example, that the region of Palestine was long a part of an Arab or Islamic state does not necessarily mean that there should not be an independent Palestine today, or that Israel should not exist. Meanwhile, attempting to demonstrate that Palestinians (or Jews, for that matter) are a nation is a strictly ideological endeavour and as such falls outside the realm of proof. No scientific or universally accepted barometer exists for measuring whether or not a group of people constitutes a nation; as a result, nationalist ideologues are free to make up their own rules. Yet at the end of the day, whether or not Palestinians or Jews are deemed a nation by the powers that be or by anyone else should not in any way impinge upon their rights. If Mahmoud al-Zahhar were to claim that the Palestinians are not a nation unto themselves, but rather part of a larger Arab or Muslim nation, that would not justify their expulsion at the hands of the Israelis in 1948. Human rights don't work that way. [29] Masalha 1992, p. 29. [30] Segev 2000, pp. 406-7. [31] T  ransjordan was included in the original British mandate for Palestine, but later accorded a separate status. Revisionist Zionists, however, continued to view Transjordan as part of a projected Jewish state. [32] S ee Masalha's Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of Transfer in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948., quoted above. (As always, there are exceptions, as with the tiny Brit Shalom group, many of whose members improbably considered themselves Zionist. Yet Brit Shalom's espousal of an Arab-Jewish binational state actually stood at variance with the objectives of most Zionists, who wanted an avowedly Jewish state with a clear Jewish majority. Naturally, this made expulsion of the Palestinians inevitable. For more on Brit Shalom, see Segev 2000, pp. 408-10.) [33] M  orris's famous scholarly treatment of the subject is The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. The revised and updated version includes much additional information and is entitled The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. [34] M  orris quoted in Shavit 2004. [35] S aid 2001, p. 275. (Sternhell's book on Israel is entitled The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism, Socialism and the Making of the Jewish State.)

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange [36] The Arabic 'Ibn' is the equivalent of the Scottish 'Mac'; it means 'son of.' For this reason, it is incorrect to detach 'Warraq' from 'Ibn'; when I refer to the author in this article, it is always as 'Ibn Warraq.' The author's pseudonymous name means 'Son of a Stationer.' Unfortunately, in my review of Defending the West for the San Antonio Express-News, 'Ibn' and 'Warraq' were detached at some point in the editing process. [37] See bibliography. [38] The reference is to Ibn Warraq's supposed defence of an approach to imperialism that judges its effects as either regressive or progressive. [39] For example, there is the vicious personal nature of several of Ibn Warraq's attacks on Said. Also, Ibn Warraq has the temerity to include as an appendix to the book his rejoinder to a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal, without including the letter itself ! (Ibn Warraq published an article in the Wall Street Journal that was very critical of Edward Said. The paper ran a response to the article from one of its readers, followed by Ibn Warraq's rejoinder.) [40] The following four quotes are culled from the book's title, page 38, page 57 and page 57, respectively. In the second quote, the explanatory addition 'who' has been encased in parentheses instead of brackets in line with the house style of the San Antonio Express-News. [41] Al-Shawaf 2007. [42] Al-Shawaf 2007. [43] Consider Ibn Warraq 2008, p. 223 – one of many examples in this regard. After quoting British archaeologist Austen Layard, who recounts his experiences in Iraq, Ibn Warraq begins talk of 'the West and its attitude toward knowledge.' [44] Said attempted to justify his approach by (wrongly) claiming that British and French scholars pioneered the study of the Orient in a process inextricably linked to British and French colonial designs, and that German Orientalists simply elaborated upon their predecessors' work. [45] See, for example, pages 37 and 46-9, but especially 174-97 and 238-44, which are concerned with Orientalists complicit in colonialism – specifically in India. (Pages 43-5, on the other hand, show how Orientalism and imperialism were often entirely unrelated.) [46] Denis MacEoin sometimes writes under the pseudonym Daniel Easterman; this was the case with his book New Jerusalems, which recounts his experiences at Newcastle University. [47] Ibn Warraq has little direct knowledge of Arabic literary affairs, of which his information is second-hand. For example, because he is unfamiliar with the Arabic-language writings of Said's Arab critics, he must rely on Emmanuel Sivan's brief overview of the subject. When writing about reform-minded intellectuals – dead or living – in the Arab world (pp. 81-3), he relies on Barry Rubin, who in turn is obliged to rely on translations for all statements made in Arabic. [48] See, for example, W.N. Arafat's 'New Light on the Story of Banu Qurayza and the Jews of Medina,' in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, (1976), pp. 100107, available online at http://www.haqq.com.au/~salam/misc/qurayza.html (Retrieved 11 May 2008) and http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study_res/islam/qurayzah/arafat. html (Retrieved 11 May 2008) [49] Al-Shawaf 2007. [50] See Ibn Warraq 2003, back of first (non-numbered) page. [51] Ibn Warraq also discusses 19th and 20th century scholars such as Hamilton Gibb and Montgomery Watt, distinguishing them from their forebears by claiming that a) they were far more knowledgeable of Islam and b) their intention in praising Islam was to deflect the threat posed by secularism and secular ideas to all religions.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 [52] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 18. [53] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 18. [54] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 19. [55] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 19. (The 'much embroidery' quote used by Ibn Warraq is Holt's in Historians of the Middle East, edited by Bernard Lewis and P.M. Holt.) [56] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 20. [57] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 20. [58] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 21. [59] Ibn Warraq 2003, p. 21.

A Rejoinder to Rayyan Al-Shawaf David Zarnett Although Rayyan Al-Shawaf puts a great deal of gusto into his response to my review of Ibn Warraq's and Daniel Martin Varisco's books on Edward Said, it is difficult to agree with many of his points even after they have been stripped of his often intemperate language. It is important to openly debate the strengths and weaknesses of Said's work and of works about Said, but Al-Shawaf 's contribution to the debate suffers as he so often either loses sight of issues raised or misrepresents them, resulting in his arguing with a straw man. I would like to correct some of his errors. Palestine, Zionism and Iran In an opening remark, Al-Shawaf claims that I engage in a 'weird and highly misinformed' debate about Zionism and the Palestinians. The issue he is responding to is a brief criticism I make of Varisco's description of Golda Meir's sentiment, that the Palestinians did not constitute a people, as 'deeply Zionist.' Such a conclusion, I believe, is inconsistent with Varisco's relentless criticism of the essentialist method of analysis adopted by Edward Said. Arguing against Varisco's belief, I pointed out that Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a significant Zionist figure, accepted the existence of a Palestinian nation. Further, I noted that even anti-Zionists, like Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahhar, had made statements negating the historical existence of a unique Palestinian nation. Al-Shawaf spends a considerable amount of time attempting to 'debunk' my argument only to then concede the validity of my criticism of Varisco. He then

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange transforms the issue into one I did not raise – the issue of transfer or expulsion of Palestinians. He writes that 'Meir maintained that the Palestinians did not constitute a nation; for this reason, they didn't count, and she had no problem with their expulsion. Jabotinsky maintained that the Palestinians were in fact a nation; nevertheless, he wanted to expel them.' Since my point had nothing to do with 'transfer' in Zionist thought and everything to do with the idea of a Palestinian people in Zionist thought, my point remains correct. Al-Shawaf 's digressions about 'transfer,' which is, to say the least, a much more difficult and complex issue than his statements suggest, are well beyond the scope of my book review or this response. Other unjustified charges appear in Al-Shawaf 's writing. Consider this example: '[Zarnett's] choice of words at times seems to bespeak a frighteningly crude and simplistic historical outlook.' What exactly did I say to evoke such a response? It is my statement that 'past Orientalism housed both progressive trends worthy of praise and regressive trends worthy of condemnation.' If such a statement evokes accusations of 'frightening crudity,' what adjective would properly be used to describe Said whose basic premise denied any nuance or complexity in Orientalist literature? Al-Shawaf goes on to write of my 'profound ignorance' regarding the ideological influences of the Iranian Revolution. What justifies Al-Shawaf 's hurling of such invective? According to Al-Shawaf my crime was to consider the Iranian Revolution as 'heavily influenced' by 'a political ideology rooted in a particular interpretation of Islam.' The central problem here is that in his rush to disagree, Al-Shawaf misconstrues 'heavily influenced' to mean 'was the only influence.' In spite of the presence of other influences it is simply contrary to historical fact to maintain that Khomeini's version of Islam did not heavily influence the Iranian Revolution both in its inception and culmination. Al-Shawaf 's quote from Nikki Keddie proves this point. Keddie refers to three stages, a first to November 1979 when 'clericals and Khomeini himself, often made the real decisions,' a second to June 1981 which involved a 'government more and more monopolized by clerical radicals of the Islamic Republic Party and by Khomeini,' and a third which has continued until now and represents 'a final break with religious liberals and leftists.' Which period would Al-Shawaf say was not 'heavily influenced' by Khomeinism? Said's position on the Iranian Revolution negated, or considerably downplayed, the influence of Islam, and ignored the ideology and political programme of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Al-Shawaf concedes this point, which of course was

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 my central one. But Al-Shawaf attempts to save Said's treatment of the Iranian Revolution from this defect by arguing that the important aspect of Said's writings on the revolution was his attempt to illustrate the diversity of opinion and ideology at work in revolutionary circles. This is an exaggeration of a minor aspect of Said's position since he rarely wrote about the ideological 'turbulence' within the revolutionary movement. Instead, he argued against the branding of the revolution as one inspired by a political interpretation of Islam and for this reason he ignored Khomeini. In an article that appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review in 1980, Said criticized the media for not considering the other important major figures of the revolution, such as Ali Shariati. Said asked: 'why did no reporter seem to avail himself of crucial material contained in the Summer 1979 issue of Race and Class – for example, the material on Ali Shariati, an Iranian friend of Algerian revolutionary Frantz Fanon, who with Khomeini was the major influence on the revolution?' But Said failed to do what he criticized others for not doing, as nowhere in his four articles on the revolution is there a discussion of the ideas of Khomeini, despite his clear admission, contrary to Al-Shawaf, that Khomeini was a major influence. Al-Shawaf, in footnote three, explains Said's evasion on the grounds that at the time Said was writing the revolution was not inherently 'Khomeinist' and it was therefore somehow acceptable, or at least understandable, for him to ignore his importance. But this is hardly acceptable for someone presenting himself as having insights of value into Middle Eastern events. Al-Shawaf does not acknowledge that at the same time as Said was ignoring Khomeini other observers, such as William Quandt and Michael Walzer, were acknowledging the importance of, and analyzing the ideas of the Ayatollah. It is the work of these observers, and not of Said, that provided the more prescient analysis of the influences on the revolution. Iraq, Kuwait and the Kurds Al-Shawaf then takes issue with my argument about Said's failure to speak out for Iraqi Kurds and that he made 'little mention of the plight of the Kuwaitis who were suffering under a brutal occupation as a result of Ba'athist imperialism.' Much like his misunderstanding of 'heavily influenced,' he operates from the belief that 'little mention' is the equivalent of 'no mention,' and that any mention is equivalent of adequate mention.

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange I do not wish to repeat my entire analysis of Said's position on these matters and the Gulf War. For those interested, they can read my article 'Edward Said and Kosovo' which appeared in the Winter 2007 edition of Democratiya. Al-Shawaf presents a few examples of Said speaking out against Saddam Hussein and for the rights of the Kuwaitis and Kurds, but he fails to see the key points that undermines his defense of Said's record on these issues. The first example comes from an article that appeared in August 1990 in the Christian Science Monitor. In footnote number seven, Al-Shawaf writes 'what makes matters worse is that Zarnett is aware of this statement' since I cite it in 'Edward Said and Kosovo.' This would only make matters worse (for me) if I was advancing the argument that Said made 'no mention' of Iraqi human rights abuses. Since Al-Shawaf is aware of my article he should also be aware of the question that I used to guide my discussion of Said's position on these issues: 'to assess [Said's] anti-war position and Said's interest in what he referred to as American imperialism and Iraqi fascism, a relevant question to ask is not if Said opposed Saddam Hussein and his fascist Ba'ath party but rather to what extent.' Furthermore, in defense of Said's record on the Kurds, Al-Shawaf quotes from an article Said published in November 1991 in The Open Magazine Pamphlet Series (republished in The Politics of Dispossession). But if we look closely at that article, we see that Said does not mention what made Ba'athist treatment of the Kurds unique and especially troubling – that in 1988 they launched a campaign of chemical weapon attacks that, according to Human Rights Watch estimates, resulted in the death of at least 50,000 Iraqi Kurds and described as genocide. [1] In his article Said did not describe Iraqi treatment of the Kurds using this key word – genocide – despite the evidence available at the time which I refer to in 'Edward Said and Kosovo.' What Said did manage to do was praise Saddam's efforts in building a secular society and developing Iraq's education, health, housing and oil industry infrastructure. It was only in September 1992 that Said spoke of genocide against the Kurds, and even then his condemnation was by no means unconditional. As I noted in 'Edward Said and Kosovo,' Said's belated acknowledgement of this Iraqi crime was expressed only when he chose to do so and in a way to say something damning (accurately or inaccurately) about American foreign policy. When assessing Said's writings on the Gulf War it is necessary to consider the entire body of his work (because Said wrote, and said, many things). Thus we can measure the relative significance of certain statements. It is also necessary to consider when

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Said made these certain statements. From this approach, what becomes clear is that despite the occasions when he did speak out against Iraqi human rights abuses, these verbal humanitarian interventions amounted to a minor component of his analysis when measured against the volume of his statements against military interventions that many saw as aimed to stop or limit these human rights abuses. Further, when we consider the timing of Said's writing, we see that some of the examples Al-Shawaf points to come a full decade after the Gulf War, when they represent little more than after-the-fact moral grandstanding. The point is that Said did not consistently speak out against Iraqi crimes when it mattered the most – when those crimes were either taking place or when he was crafting his position against a war to stop them. Here is a short excerpt from 'Edward Said and Kosovo' explaining this point: Much like his belated acknowledgment of Iraqi actions against the Kurds – an acknowledgment that if made earlier would have significantly weakened his anti-war position – it was months after the Gulf War was over that Said began to describe Saddam in terms not seen in his war-time writings. In a lecture given in September 1991, Iraq's justification for the invasion of Kuwait was described as 'spurious'; the invasion was 'an outrageous breach of international law' and was 'intolerable and unacceptable.' The actions of the Ba'athist regime were 'disgraceful.' They were 'repressive at home, mischievously adventurous and violent abroad.' In an interview in early 1992, he spoke of Saddam as a 'murderer,' a 'tyrant,' a 'fascist,' and a 'pig.' This language, however, did not bring with it a more considered and substantial critique of Saddam's regime. Moreover, it did not bring with it any reconsideration by Said of his opposition to the Gulf War – a war launched to reverse what Said was now saying was an intolerable and unacceptable act. Only when one considers the extent, context and timing of Said's statements do the important questions, which Al-Shawaf misses, arise: Why was Said more vocal about the crimes of Iraq after the Gulf War? Why was it only in September 1992 when Said decided to finally utter the words 'Ba'ath genocide against the Kurds' when this atrocity occurred in 1988? Was Said's own anti-war position premised on ignoring certain truths? Did his commitment to oppose American foreign policy involve a failure to make substantive mention of other factors that would significantly complicate his anti-war stance? Were the same tactics used by Said when he opposed NATO's military intervention in Kosovo? My analysis of these questions is hardly undermined by Al-Shawaf ignoring them.

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange Orientalism and Politics The relationship between the validity of Said's views in Orientalism and his political postures is the last issue I wish to address. Al-Shawaf and I disagree on the nature of this relationship. Al-Shawaf places the origins of Said's political views in his politicization after 1967. I argue that they stem from the findings expressed in Orientalism for it is this book that identifies Said's research methodology, analytical interests and worldview, and was written before Said's important political writings. Al-Shawaf disagrees as he writes that '[y]ears of opposing Israel's oppression of the Palestinians and United States' wholesale support of such oppression would lead him controversially to locate Israeli and American policies within a larger historical tradition of Western attitudes toward Arabs and Muslims.' Al-Shawaf 's approach is to insulate Said's political views from the defects of Orientalism. I do not think this can be done. What irks Al-Shawaf is the following criticism I made of Varisco: Early in his book, Varisco writes that 'I happen to agree with most of Said's political positions on the real Orient.'] The reader is neither told what these positions are nor the reasons why Varisco agrees with them. It is implied that Said's political positions speak for themselves and thereby require no justification. In making this statement it seems lost on Varisco that Said's political positions on the real Orient stem directly from his arguments made in Orientalism. How else are we to try to explain Said's perception of the Iranian Revolution as everything but heavily influenced by a political ideology rooted in a particular interpretation of Islam, or his reluctance to accept the validity of Western claims of genocide committed by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds, or the perception of the U.S.-led Oslo Peace Process as a reincarnation of European 'peace treaties' to African chiefs, without referring back to Orientalism? Orientalism is the soil in which Said's political positions are rooted. Varisco's wholehearted embrace of Said's political positions, without any word of qualification or explanation, is at odds with the devastating critique he provides of Orientalism. The particular point I make against Varisco, and now against Al-Shawaf, stems from two premises. The first is the belief that if an author's major piece of work (here Orientalism) is found to be tendentious, the result of sloppy research, and inadequate in analytical rigour, then it is perfectly legitimate to at least question the ability of that writer to provide worthwhile political analysis. Therefore, I believed

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 that Varisco should have explained to his reader why he thinks Said is right about the modern Orient especially since Varisco thought Sad was wrong about so much in Orientalism. I believe that the flaws of Orientalism should caution us against accepting Said's political positions without reservation or before due critical assessment. The second premise is that Orientalism does indeed help to explain how Said arrived at the political conclusions he did. I agree with Al-Shawaf that we must not discredit Said's political analysis based on the flaws of Orientalism alone, but to think that I advance such a view is a misreading of my work. Each of Said's ventures into the world of political commentary should be studied on their own merits and this is what I have tried to do when analyzing his positions on Iran, Iraq and Kosovo. At the same time, one cannot help but notice similarities that exist between Orientalism and Said's political views. The flaws and tendentiousness that can be found in Orientalism repeat themselves in a number of Said's political opinions. A few examples illustrate this point. Said's failure to pay appropriate attention to the ideas expressed by Khomeini when considering the Iranian Revolution mirrors an approach he adopted in Orientalism. As Varisco notes, in Orientalism '[t]he impact of indigenous Arab, Persian, and Turkish newspapers and journals in writing back against cultural as well as political imperialism does not even warrant a sentence in Said's polemic.' Similarly, Khomeini's writings barely 'warrant a sentence' in his analysis of the Iranian Revolution. Said, analytically, was more interested in attacking the way the West analyzed Middle Eastern events than understanding these events themselves. This analytical method is exactly what Orientalism is built on: a study of perceptions without the requisite grounding in the history, society and politics of the region. It is this point to which the late Malcolm Kerr alluded in his 1980 review of Orientalism when he asked: 'Does Said realize how insistently Islamic doctrine in its many variants has traditionally proclaimed the applicability of religious standards to all aspect of human life, and the inseparability of man's secular and spiritual destinies? What does he suppose the Ayatollah Khomeini and Muslim Brotherhood were all about?' [2] In other words, Said failed to comprehend the very subject he criticized others for supposedly not understanding. Along similar lines, Robert Irwin noted that 'it was typical of [Said's] style of thought that he seemed to find western coverage of the [Saudi] beheading [of a princess] more reprehensible than the beheading itself.' [3]

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Al-Shawaf and Zarnett | Edward Said: An Exchange Said's criticism of U.S. foreign policy towards the Arab world also drew heavily on Orientalism where Said argued that the U.S. dominated the Middle East in the same way the British and French once did. In addition, in Orientalism Said posited that the driving force behind foreign policy is domestic political culture. In his political commentary, Said followed a similar path, asserting that the U.S. had a political culture of imperialism. In 1993 Said stated: 'the United States was founded as an empire, a dominion state of sovereignty that would expand in population and territory and increase in power.' [4] Of course, as an attempt to understand international relations, Said's emphasis on a monolithic domestic political culture leaves much to be desired, because it leads Said to ignore the strong isolationist tendencies that also exist in American political culture. The denying of this complexity is entirely consistent with the essentialist and simplistic understanding of Western political thought that Said advances in Orientalism. Moreover, his argument, which insists that from its birth America was pre-determined to become a super-power ignores drastic changes in the international system that both allowed, and to a certain extent forced, America to take a more prominent role in global affairs; events such as the Russian Revolution, the First World War, the Great Depression, the rise of Hitler, the Second World, and the collapse of the British Empire. A meaningful debate on the validity of Said's political views requires an analysis of those views and of Said's major work, Orientalism, which in large measure served as Said's pedigree to express his politics. In earlier editions of Democratiya, I have attempted to express what I believe to be the deficiencies and limitations of Said's political analysis on three significant political events and to review two recent books that point out the numerous and serious problems that plague Said's Orientalism. For all that Al-Shawaf has to say of a critical nature, it is important to recall that he does admit that Ibn Warraq's book is a 'largely successful case against Said's Orientalism.' Al-Shawaf is reluctant to turn this conclusion into serious doubt about Said's political positions, and he fails to make a compelling case for not doing so.

David Zarnett will begin studying for a DPhil in International Relations this coming academic year at the University of Oxford.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Notes

[1] 'Genocide in Iraq – The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds,' Human Rights Watch, 1 July 1993. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/08/14/iraq13979.htm [Accessed 22 May, 2008]. [2] Malcolm Kerr, 'Orientalism, Review,' International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 12, No. 4, (1980), p. 545. [3] Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies (London: Allen Lane, 2006), p. 306. [4] Edward Said, 'Culture and Imperialism,' speech given at York University, Toronto. 10 February, 1993. http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/barsaid.htm [accessed 23 January, 2007].

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Alfred Kazin: A Biography

by Richard Cook, Yale University Press, 2008, 464 pp.

Michael Weiss In 1959, Alfred Kazin wrote ‘The Alone Generation,’ an incisive and brilliant essay about the failures of modern literature. The critic who would later describe himself as a ‘cultural conservative’ and, semi-seriously, a ‘literary reactionary’ uttered this cri de coeur: I am tired of reading for compassion instead of pleasure. In novel after novel, I am presented with people who are so soft, so wheedling, so importunate, that the actions in which they are involved are too indecisive to be interesting or to develop those implications which are the life-blood of narrative. The age of ‘psychological man,’ of the herd of aloners, has finally proved the truth of Tocqueville’s observation that in modern times the average man is absorbed in a very puny object, himself, to the point of satiety. Not many people write like this anymore, with daring subjectivity. Rare today is the freelance reviewer who sees compassion as an insufficient measure of aptitude in fiction. Kazin avoided the Marxian gloss or the close reading of the New Critics, preferring instead a full-blooded, fist-pounding approach to telling good books from bad. He was demanding, irritable and shrewd; and for almost half a century, he was well sought after for his opinions. In fact, it would be hard to mistake the author of the above passage for a man of any other generation or milieu. ‘Herd of aloners’ sounds suspiciously like Harold Rosenberg’s famous epithet for the detractors and unwitting apologists of mass culture – the ‘herd of independent minds’ – which Rosenberg applied as cuttingly to the highbrow Partisan Review crowd as he did to the purveyors of passive entertainment, for whom the common denominator could never be low enough. Also, ‘psychological man’ had been around a while before Jack Kerouac and Herbert Gold laid their unsure pens to paper, so we glimpse at once the longing of a recovering radical for the literature of size and social engagement; the literature of the 1930’s, in other words. Finally, alone – it is a word that stalks like a golem through his entire oeuvre, from his first, career-making work, On Native Grounds, to his mature series of sensitive and meditative memoirs. If Kazin deploys it here to

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 underscore the undesirable aspects of the novel – solipsism, or the puny object of the self, is denigrated because it ignores an engagement with the way we live now – then we should applaud him for self-criticism, too. Alienation was a sentiment he mistrusted most in literature because he mistrusted it most in himself. A major achievement of Richard Cook’s fine biography is the reconciliation of two contradictions in Kazin’s life. How did one of the most temperamentally and spiritually isolated writers of his time become such an astute chronicler of it? And how did a man who hated tidy schools of thought, artistic or ideological, maintain an abiding belief in the liberating social possibilities of literature? The answer to both lay in Kazin’s Jewishness, a lodestone to which his intellectual pursuits and personal torments kept returning. Gallons of ink have been spilled trying to capture the peculiar blend of anxiety, optimism and self-doubt that defined the New York Intellectuals, those sons of Eastern European immigrants who discovered Marx and Shelley in their outer borough tenement kitchens in the thirties, waited for a revolution that never came, then went on to become grand old men of the cultural landscape – or at least a tenblock radius of the Upper West Side. ‘Most were literary men with no experience in any political movement,’ reminisced Irving Howe, a near contemporary with whom Kazin was inevitably compared, much to his chagrin. ‘[T]hey had come to radical politics through the pressures of conscience and a flair for the dramatic; and even in later years, when they abandoned any direct political involvement, they would in some sense remain ‘political.’ They would respond with eagerness to historical changes, even if these promised renewed favor for the very ideas they had largely discarded.’ Most significantly, they would try to escape their humble working-class origins, whether by way of City College, agitational street theatre, or a gentlemanly assimilation into the Gentile mainstream – usually all three in due course. But see how well Kazin stakes a claim for himself and this whole milieu of comers in A Walker in the City, his first and best volume of autobiography, dealing with his perpetual flight from his hometown of ‘darkest’ Brownsville: We had all of us lived together so long that we would not have known how to separate even if we had wanted to. The most terrible word was aleyn, alone. I always had the same picture of a man desolately walking down a dark street, newspapers and cigarette butts contemptuously flying in his face as he tasted in the dusty grit the full measure of his strangeness. Aleyn! Aleyn! Did

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin immigrant Jews, then, marry only out of loneliness? Was even Socialism just a happier way of keeping us together? Unbounded optimism enabled the brightest of this bunch to break free of the confines of their New World ghetto, not to say their neighbourhood faction, and earn admittance into that reified idea of beyond. They started out and they made it. Without ‘New York,’ Kazin affirmed in ‘The Jew as Modern Writer,’ a 1966 essay for Commentary, ‘there would have been no immigrant epic, no America.’ Fans of Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March will, allowing for the substitute of Chicago for New York, recognize the familiar cadences, as they probably will the perspicuity of this judgment: ‘My quarrel with [Henderson the Rain King] has to do with my feeling, suggested to me even in so good a work of its kind as Seize the Day, that these Jacobs give up to life a little too eloquently, that they do not struggle enough with the angel before crying out in reverence and submission, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”’ Kazin’s own experiences in this early line of endeavour were both typical and unique: He had a ‘raging life-force’ of an Orthodox mother who sewed homemade dresses during the Depression and kept the austere nuclear family intact; a silent and largely absentee father who read The Forward in Yiddish and bonded with his precocious son only in occasional discussion of Red politics. That covers the typical. But Kazin stood apart from the Trotskyist demimonde as well. Like Howe, Nathan Glazer, Irving Kristol, and Kazin’s future brother-in-law Daniel Bell, Alfred attended City College but refused to participate in the high-calorie debates of the celebrated Alcove 1, which made ironical sport of chivvying its leaden Stalinist counterparts in Alcove 2 and was subsequently fingered as the incubator of neoconservatism. As Kazin later wrote in his journal, he found the environment ‘odorously male’ and the ‘radical ambience… fanatical, arrogant, quite violent at times, and by no means to my liking.’ But Kazin was hardly a political innocent: ‘Communism has method, substance and form,’ he recorded in 1934. ‘It lacks the sentimentalism of social-democracy, that particularly opprobrious impediment which disguises the ineffectuality of endless reformism by poetry of the deep-water variety.’ This posturing toughness – possibly delayed compensation for a boyhood stammer which had made him diffident all throughout adolescence – culminated in flashes of socialist heresy: ‘More and more, Stalin is becoming the symbol of dash, the organization, the Allies long for and need – is he Jeb Stuart or Bedford Forrest – the enemy respected?... Yes, I admired the old bastard as never before.’ So that

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 encompasses the unique, I’d say. It also points to another vice Kazin shared with his peers, namely the selective memory. Sidney Hook, who had a real dalliance with the Party, accused Kazin of depicting himself as an ‘incorruptible radical’ in his second memoir Starting Out in the Thirties – the critic could not substantiate his claim that he publicly opposed the Moscow trials or reprehended Malcolm Cowley’s defense of Stalin in The New Republic, the first magazine to publish the twentysomething’s astute essays. Old grudges die hard, and what first appears a petty antagonism will be renewed and picked at in years to come as cause for an ended friendship here, a literary feud there. The reliable friends for Kazin were Richard Rovere, Richard Hofstadter and Bertram Wolfe – all of whom operated at a safe remove from the parlous City College cliques, living in close proximity to one another in Brooklyn Heights, a brighter promontory overlooking the metropolitan Mecca. After obtaining a Masters degree in history at Columbia, Kazin was egged on by Carl Van Doren to write On Native Grounds, a panoramic study of American prose since the fin de siecle. Underwritten by a Guggenheim grant (one of several he would finagle out of the endowment over the years), his original thesis was consistent with so-called ‘progressive history’ or what on another shore would be dismissed as ‘Whiggishness.’ Charles Beard and Vernon Parrington were Kazin’s interpretive models, and it was the people versus the plutocrats in this grand narrative. The whole enterprise was a dialectical struggle between the American tendencies for absorption and alienation. ‘What interested me,’ he wrote, more or less limning his own psyche, ‘was our alienation on native grounds – the interwoven story of our need to take up our life on our own grounds, and the irony of our possession.’ That a Jew could give such shape and colour to a half century of American letters was as bold an undertaking as it seemed, also one highly redolent of Edmund Wilson. The leading critic in the country was Kazin’s hero par excellence, and how thrilled the junior writer must have been to see his first piece for The New Republic appear in the same issue as the maiden instalment of Wilson’s To the Finland Station, his own epic literary history of socialism. There would be setbacks and reversals in Kazin’s bold design: ‘exquisites’ interrupting the march of the realists Veblen, London and Dreiser; the seismic atrocity of the First World War, which threatened to derail an otherwise steady evolution of our ‘militant democracy.’ But the ‘superciliousness’ of Mencken and the disillusionment of the Lost Generation were brief interludes. Hope sprung resurgent in the so-called ‘Literature of Crisis,’ the age of ‘commitment,’ which saw the proletarian scab novel emerge as proof that writers appreciated the urgency and

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin ‘responsibility’ with which to address collapsing society. Dos Passos was Kazin’s gold standard, and U.S.A. ‘one of the saddest books ever written by an American.’ The pens of Richard Wright, James T. Farrell, and Kazin’s future confidante, the now-forgotten Josephine Herbst, were celebrated and chastised in alternating paragraphs. In the course of finishing the book – Kazin’s Kapital was laid down in Reading Room 315 at the New York Public Library – the author found himself plagued by doubt and waning interest. By 1942, when his galleys were ready, he believed that leftist literature had become irrelevant amidst a reviving economy and an incipient bourgeois nationalism. The worker was now being drowned out by cheers of ‘America! America!’ Cook is especially good on this point: ‘The Literature of Crisis is perhaps best understood as a record of personal crisis, a crisis of faith at a time when, [Kazin] later told Malcolm Cowley, “I was losing my faith in the only religion I ever had.”’ Lionel Trilling called On Native Grounds a ‘good book and a saddening book.’ The melancholy would be a well-worn trope. When intellectuals can do nothing else, they start a magazine. When they’re at the top of their game, they work for Henry Luce. Following the overnight success of his debut volume, Kazin took a job at Fortune. The conservative press baron with the ‘ferociously oversized eyebrows that looked as if they had been planted and watered to intimidate subordinates’ (some of Kazin’s best writing took the form of physical description; T.S. Eliot resembled a ‘sensitive question mark;’ Edmund Wilson had the ‘red face of an overfed fox-hunting squire’) had a honourable reputation for employing cerebral radicals and ex-radicals like Dwight Macdonald, Howe, and Whittaker Chambers. But Kazin’s tenure with the media empire was abortive. Shortly after Luce asked him to provide a ‘space for think pieces from intellectual stars… that could be fashioned into a coherent and positive ‘philosophy’ for the country’ (how many features desks are saddled with that type of assignment anymore?) he wisely decided that full-time hackwork had its distractions and drawbacks. Though he would remain a freelance to his dying breath, Kazin’s cynicism for this deadline-bound rough trade would endure; he later issued his own lowly confession of a book reviewer, which certainly hit home with this one: ‘The literary profession – what a misnomer, what a horror. This very profession (of faith) to which I entrust my life…is also a mad scramble for social prestige and a job.’ So, following Fortune, perhaps in both senses of the term, and acting under the aegis of yet another scholarship, Kazin hopped it to Europe, ‘still the greatest thing in North America,’ as his friend Delmore Schwartz declared.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Part of the reason for Kazin’s escape, which led to a fascinating series of postwar cultural correspondence from the ravaged continent, owed to his difficulties with girls, another congenital defect. Unfortunately, the man who would accuse Norman Mailer of being the ‘Talmudist of fucking, the only writer in years who has managed to be so serious about sex as to make it grim’ was himself prone to making look-away observations about the subject, which read like Rothian self-parodies. A certain boyish pride competes with masculine stupidity in Kazin’s treatment of his sexcapades. He couldn’t understand why one wife (there were to be three in total, and many more mistresses) found it so objectionable that he proposed to write a book called The Love of Women, recounting and glorifying all the ones he had bedded. Here he is in New York Jew, his third and final memoir, describing intercourse with Mary Lou Peterson, a flamboyant hanger-on of the trans-Atlantic smart set with whom he took up in late forties: I was looking at the candlelight behind her head as I thrust my way ahead in her, and I have never felt anything so keen as the vibration that joined me to her, to the candlelight, to the golden helmet in the Rembrandt portrait that shown upon an open picture book on the floor… All that I had carried in silence and secrecy so long, all that I had held against the world – all this burst apart as her body, fully stirred, moving in one sinuous line, heaved up at me when she whispered my name. But was it good for her? Cook loses himself trying to glean literary meaning from mere crotch-mindedness: ‘While the rhythm and diction of this passage strangely echo Melville’s climactic account of Captain Ahab’s passion against the whale,’ he begins, inspiring little confidence, ‘it is not hate that Kazin is celebrating here, but a discovered pleasure and sense of release that he had never known before.’ This is one way of putting it. Legendary are the peacock hauteur and blithe misogyny which characterized such professors of desire, as Diana Trilling and Mary McCarthy have sourly attested in their own against-the-grain reflections. But we should remember that those who toyed with Reich’s orgone box had also felt themselves narrow escapees of Hitler’s ovens; the struggle between Eros and Thanatos was as pronounced for the New York Jews as the one between intellectual independence and institutionalization, or ‘selling out.’ After all, if Chagall’s rebbes ‘sprouted wings over the thatched roofs of Vietbsk and sang the joys of the flesh,’ did not the latter-day orphans of Diaspora have an even stronger need to thrive and procreate? Accompanying this Freudian

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin impulse was a modernist nostalgia, a rediscovery of Judaism on American terms, with an emphasis on the new nature of Jewish power and patriotism. Kazin was sui generis in many respects: He had little sympathy for Zionism (although he cried when reading articles about the founding of Israel), and mistrusted the militarism of Israeli society when he visited. Upon being hectored by Yigael Yadin, hero of the War of Independence and now IDF commander, that Jews were not safe outside of the holy land, Kazin laughed: ‘I hadn’t realized American Jews were so much in danger, and the dear old U.S. of A. so much on the rocks.’ He lamented the absence – both literal and metaphorical – of Kafka in Jerusalem, which can only be read as a cosmopolitan’s longing for the creative yields of destruction. (The first American reviewer of Night thought Elie Wiesel was a windbag; Primo Levi was his preferred chronicler of the Shoah.) It’s ironic, though, that Kazin chided Edmund Wilson, who was as philo-Semitic as gentlemen gentiles came, and Saul Bellow for their late-stage pessimism; he shared this trait fundamentally, too, whether he realized it or not. In the 1950’s, not only did Kazin buck the complacent, conservative trends anatomized in Howe’s essay ‘Our Age of Conformity,’ but he even alienated that author by not taking up the cause of liberal anti-Stalinism vigorously enough. Kazin’s travels through post-war Italy had convinced him that Communism’s dire effects on the intellectual and spiritual lifeblood of a nation could be meditated by that nation’s cultural traditions: He returned to the U.S. depressed at what he thought was an unnecessary consolidation of ‘sides’ in the incipient cold war, and the absence of anything like Croceism here. This was both a sentimental and naïve plaint because our cultural tradition is one of rejecting the easy co-existence of ideological extremes, which cannot be diluted, in a great melting pot, by shared folk heritage. Nor did it help his case that, while hosting an academic seminar in Salzburg, attended by Party students and ex-Fascists from around the continent, he had led everyone in an extracurricular rendition of ‘The Internationale,’ a sentimental episode the seminar co-host and shameless fellow traveller F.O. Matthiessen subsequently recounted in From the Heart of Europe. (Howe denounced them both in a review of the book for PR as maestros conducting a ‘gang of future cultural commissars,’ an assault which caused Kazin no small amount of grief.) Though a frequent contributor to Commentary, Kazin preferred Politics, Dwight Macdonald’s short-lived but vibrant one-man journal that attempted to carve out a ‘third way’ between Communism and capitalism. Cook is less sure of himself in

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 anatomising the angry and loud disputes that took hold among former comrades in this period – he can sound as innocent as his subject sometimes. This can’t really be forgiven, since he has benefit of hindsight; ‘alleged traitor Alger Hiss’ is exactly one word too long. There is also this problem: In March 1949, Sidney Hook, leading a select army of prominent antiStalinists, organized a conference and rally to counter (and subvert) the famous Waldorf Conference to promote peace and understanding between America and the Soviet Union. Kazin was not asked to join. Hook later attributed Kazin’s notable absence to the fact that he was not enough of a ‘big shot.’ Kazin said Hook didn’t consider him anti-Communist enough. The Waldorf Conference was as much to ‘promote peace and understanding between America and the Soviet Union’ as the Moscow Trials were to ferret out gravediggers of the revolution. It was a pro-Soviet propaganda-fest made up of 3,000 delegates, from imported apparatchiks from Russia and Poland, to quivering and hounded luminaries like Shostakovich, to home-grown dupes like Matthiessen. Howe reported on the Conference for PR and recalls in his memoir A Margin of Hope: ‘The CP kept discreetly in the background, knowing that an open defense of Soviet policy – this was soon after the takeover in Czechoslovakia – would be unpalatable even to long-tried fellow travellers.’ Gatecrashers also included Macdonald and McCarthy; their protest was one of two final instances in which the New York intellectuals acted, in Howe’s words, as a ‘coherent group.’ Opposition to Ezra Pound’s receipt of the Bollingen Award for his Pisan Cantos was the other, and here Kazin was included in the debate, which broadened into one over the long history of anti-Semitism in Weltliteratur. He agreed with Leslie Fielder’s pronouncement in Commentary that, after the Holocaust, Jews would have to make an inventory of the violent Jew-hatred in works of genius they had spent their youths gushing over. The ‘nasty ones,’ wrote Kazin, ‘the modern ones – a Dostoevsky, a Henry James, a Henry Adams, an Andre Gide, a Santayana, a Cummings, a Celine, an Eliot, a Pound. How we love them, though they love us not.’ He would later revise his opinion of Pound in the 1980’s, arguing that the poet’s fascism and bigotry were actually integral to his talent. This volteface can be explained by the fact that he had become as much a part of literature as a surveyor of it, and had grown to see himself as resembling those non-Jewish Jews before him simultaneously cut off from and at one with the spirit of the age. Look at how much self-identification and self-confidence are on display here:

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin These revolutionaries, writers, scientists, painters were the ‘new men,’ the first mass secularists in the long religious history of the Jews, yet the zeal with which they engaged themselves to the ‘historic’ task of desacralizing the European tradition often came from the profound history embedded in Judaism itself… These ‘new men’ had a vision of history that, as their critics were to tell them, was fanatically all of one piece, obstinately ‘Jewish’ and ‘intellectual’ – a vision in which some subtle purposiveness to history always managed to reassert itself in the face of repeated horrors. But what their critics could not recognize was that this obstinate quest for ‘meaning’ was less a matter of conscious thought than a personal necessity, a require for survival, the historic circumstance that reasserted itself in case after case among Jews, many of whom had good reason to believe that their lives were a triumph over ever possible negation, and who, with the modesty of people for whom life itself is understandably the greatest good, found it easy to rejoice in the political and philosophic reasoning that assured them civic respect, civic peace, and the life of the mind.’ A decade or so before composing these lines, Kazin had come to the more melancholy conclusion, upon reading Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform, that ‘I have joined the great middle-class world of daily self-satisfaction. What has happened to the story of America…? All those fat Jews – Jason Epstein and my own Richard H, all the Beichmans and Cultural Freedom overseers – all this represents the death not merely of ‘alienation’ but of the vital, fiercely hungry intelligence… We wanted to get out of Brownsville, the steerage, and we got into the “American” business.’ None did so more than Lionel Trilling, the ghostly Banquo who flits through nearly every chapter of this life story and whom Kazin viciously mocked in a notorious portrait in New York Jew. Trilling’s crime was that he was self-hating variety. Even worse, he was a self-critical liberal at a time when the HUAC and McCarthy were regarded as the Control Commission and Vyshinsky of the Stars and Stripes. But there was other beef between the two critics. Kazin thought Trilling had blocked his appointment to the Columbia English Department because the latter didn’t want ‘another Jew’ on the staff. Maybe. We’ll never know if Cook does not, but it does seem supremely unfair of his subject to have sniped, in 1968, the middle of his own journey, that a celebrated essayist of Isaac Babel ‘cannot stand my temperament – he cannot stand the ghetto Jew in me – he cannot stand my vitality.’ This reeks of envy and status anxiety, two understandable but annoying traits sharpened by Kazin’s detachment from his natural cohort. If Norman Podhoretz made a name

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 for himself in denouncing ‘ex-friends,’ Kazin insisted he never liked them in the first place. Oh, what a lot of parties… those vile bodies: The minute you enter the house, see the drinks laid out, the first conversational gambit given, you know it all in advance… a competitive, soused-up intellectual is a mockery of the arts and the religious man’s vision – he comes in always walking in shoes that are too large for him, he talks by habit, he lives in a routine. You never know with these people whether you are talking criticism or gossip. I’m sick to death of all this talk, self-perpetuating, competitive talk. Hannah Arendt, who maintained her own exclusive salon with her husband Heinrich Bluecher, was a thundering exception, likely because of her European indifference to American social ambition, and because she collected promising male protégés with something like a sexual fervour. She chose Kazin to help ‘English’ the text for The Origins of Totalitarianism, and he, to his credit, became one of her stalwart defenders during the brouhaha over Eichmann in Jerusalem. (It took Arendt’s snubbing of Kazin’s second wife, the novelist Ann Birstein, to end this largely epistolary relationship.) It would be gratifying to think that Arendt toughened Kazin’s mind for politics. His outlook actually grew keener in the 1960’s, owing to two separate but equal ruptures: the one he had with the ‘liberal consensus,’ and the one he had with his son Michael, his ‘Kaddish,’ as Daniel Bell phrased it. Kazin was inextricably ‘on the left’ all his life, and on the great questions of his middle years, he was more or less representative: he wearied of the status quo under Eisenhower, whom he accused of ‘sell[ing]-out to McCarthy;’ he advocated early on for civil rights; he opposed the Vietnam War; and he loathed totalitarian Communism enough not to commit the sin of comparing the United States to the Soviet Union. Cook writes: ‘To follow Kazin through the politics of the late sixties is to get a glimpse of the chagrin, the shame, the bewilderment, and the anger, but also the reflective and self-critical openness of a liberal trying to be honest with himself about a historical, moral (and parental) predicament he self-admittedly did not understand.’ Having been a divorced and absentee father, he made every effort to try to understand. In the course of writing this review, I chanced to meet Michael Kazin at one of the many the post-mortem lectures on the sixties and their enduring discontents he’s delivered over the decades. I mean no offense by saying he’s now the

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin picture of scholarly liberalism he once rejected in high Oedipal fashion. Kazin fils shrugged when I suggested that his violent disagreements with pere over Cuba, the New Left and the counterculture actually contributed to the old man’s continuing political relevance. The paladins of 1930’s socialism, he thought, had been ‘impaled on their own bitterness;’ theirs was a generational conflict straight out of Turgenev. Thus where Howe hectored from his senior perch at Dissent, Kazin screamed at the dinner table about the nihilism of campus takeovers and pseudo-revolutionary cant, then agonized in his journals about whether or not he was being too hard on the kids after all. Drawing from his own experiences, he likely suspected that they’d be someday hoisted on their own soixante petard, so to speak, as indeed they were. But even before the clash of Fathers and Sons, Alfred was no pushover to being won over. He accused Hubert Humphrey to his face of suffering ‘from the Hemingway syndrome: you can never be tough enough, and you have to prove your masculinity.’ And he never, to his everlasting credit, succumbed to the Kennedy fever-dream, despite numerous entreaties made by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., now regarded as the best court stenographer of ‘Camelot.’ After the Bay of Pigs fiasco he was full of ‘doubt and wonder’ about the young executive who inspired so many to embarrassing displays of utopian homily on behalf of ‘President Jack.’ When Kennedy learned that Kazin was working on a trenchant piece about the new administration and its dubious, cultivated relationship with courtier-intellectuals, he instructed Schlesinger to invite him to the White House to see if he might not like to join the fold. The evening resulted in an only slightly emended exposé titled, ‘Kennedy and the Other Intellectuals,’ easily one of the best pieces of political journalism Kazin ever wrote, and one of the best things ever written about Kennedy. As Philip Larkin once put it to Kingsley Amis, ‘The papers call them the brains trust. I don’t trust their brains.’ How well that dictum applies in 2008 as much as it did in 1961: [W]hen I ask myself, as I increasingly must, what it is in Kennedy’s ambition to be an ‘intellectual’ statesman that steels him for his awesome responsibility, what in his convictions can carry him over the sea of troubles awaiting all of us, I have to answer that I do not know. At this juncture, Kennedy’s shrewd awareness of what intellectuals can do, even his undoubted inner respect for certain writers, scholars and thinkers, is irrelevant to the tragic issues and contributes nothing to their solution. To be an ‘intellectual’ is the latest style in American success, the mark of our manipulatable society.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Notwithstanding Kazin’s assumption that Profiles in Courage was ‘indubitably written by the author himself,’ the essay hit its mark, causing Kennedy to bitch to Schlesinger, ‘We wined him and dined him and talked about Hemingway and Dreiser with him, and I later told Jackie what a good time she missed, and then he went away and wrote that piece!’ Whether he knew it or not, Kazin in this respect enjoyed the esteemed company he sought all his life: Edmund Wilson was one of the only other belletrists to laugh off Kennedy’s attempts to co-opt him. Of course, as we saw with Trilling, Kazin could be nasty, stinting and hypocritical, as when he assailed Bellow, then under Allan Bloom’s tutorship, for the race hostility evident in Mr. Sammler’s Planet. He made the philistine case that Bellow’s protagonist spoke verbatim for his author. Kazin also forgot that he himself was not immune from grumpy white man syndrome: he had complained about his academic posting in Puerto Rico, where Bellow was also residing at the time in a higher state of enjoyment, that the natives suffered from ‘their famous docility… the apathy of tropical countries… and Step’n Fetchit sloth.’ Nor was he much of a feminist either. Kazin belonged to New York’s Century Club, an all-male ‘association’ on West 43rd Street, and wrote hilariously of Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying: ‘There hasn’t been so much public exploitation of a woman’s parts, a woman’s fantasies, a woman’s ‘chemistry,’ a woman’s idlest daydreams since cosmetic ads were invented.’ A 1984 journal entry has him sighing: ‘If liberal America is dead or dying, the culprit is liberal America – the feminist separatists, the black separatists,’ all mired in identity politics which any classically trained Marxist could diagnose as just a lot of competing little nationalisms. Kazin was a cultural conservative, yet the dialectic between belonging and alienation, between fitting in and staying out, could be hazardous to his sense of fair play. For instance, Kazin knew he had invited ideological opprobrium by penning a much passed-around piece in the New York Review of Books about his unlikely presence at the Committee for the Free World conference in New York in 1983. He gave the Epsteins their cold war satire on a triumphalist neo-confab. But the reporter should not have felt so out of place. There was a blizzard in the city that February, and it kept Kazin from attending Hilton Kramer’s keynote address on the tragedy of the American writer’s estrangement from his own society – minor shades of the alone generation, if argued from the opposite political direction. ‘Saving My Soul at the Plaza’ was straight out of the PR playbook of ironical dressing down, written in a mock-sentimental tone of ‘What has happened to all my old friends?’ Odd though

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Weiss | On Alfred Kazin it was to see a self-confessed ‘political coward’ don his sparring gloves, it showed he wasn’t averse to staying in the game by picking fights into his late sixties. In a strange way, his combativeness a decade before his death marked the final reconciliation with tradition – the immigrant ambition tempered by the late failure of radical hopes – as well as a definitive break with it. Most of the New York Jews had long made peace with the establishment because that is what getting older meant and, let’s be honest, they never were going to settle for low-level apparatchik duty when the revolution came – they all wanted to be Trotsky. It took Reagan to make this a reality. Kazin, ill at ease with the parochialism of academia (he had no patience for ‘theory’), and angry about declining educational standards in America, evolved into own species of nostalgic curmudgeon. He was still a liberal because he thought the responsibility of politics was similar to that of criticism, to traffic in a ‘histoire morale, that sums up the spirit of the age in which we live and then asks us to transcend it, that enables us to see things in the grand perspective…asks us – not only in the light of man’s history but of his whole striving – to create a future in keeping with man’s imagination.’ That might sound self-aggrandizing and silly to modern ears, but for the New York intellectual Robert Alter once called ‘a kind of hidden stranger,’ it was a reliable catechism.

Michael Weiss is the New York Editor of Pajamas Media. His work appears frequently in Slate, The Weekly Standard, and The New Criterion. His essay on Edmund Wilson appeared in Democratiya 12.

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Letter from Washington / A Shallow State of War: Reflections From An Un-Serious Nation Lawrence J. Haas In mid-April, Rep. Sue Myrick, a soft-spoken Republican from Charlotte, North Carolina, sought to shake her nation from its slumbers, announcing a 10-point ‘Wake Up America’ agenda ‘to alert, and educate, Americans to terrorist threats here at home posed by radical Islamic extremists.’ Save a few conservative newspapers and blogs, barely anyone noticed. Welcome to America, 2008, a land of ignorance and frivolity, engaged abroad in wars of weapons and ideas but, at home, distracted by a slumping economy, an angry presidential race, and a silly pop culture. With some 200,000 of our men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq, we don’t agree on who or what we’re fighting or what’s at stake. So, not surprisingly, we don’t recognize the requirements of victory, both in those theatres and in the larger struggle. You know the adage: ‘The first step to solving a problem is recognizing you have one.’ We’re not even at the recognition stage. Rather, we’re suffering from multiple levels of confusion about the enemy – radical Islam – and the best ways to defeat it. We have no bipartisan commitment to win the wars of today, to ensure that we have the economic vitality to support those of tomorrow, or to tackle the growing domestic infiltration by the forces of radical Islam. Bitterly divided over national security, over economics, and, it seems, over everything else, we are profoundly unserious about the challenges that lie ahead. Where’s the next George Kennan? We have not witnessed a comparable situation since the 1930s, when broad segments of America preached isolation from, or appeasement toward, the mounting dangers. After Pearl Harbor, we made the sacrifices necessary to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Then, after World War II, we organized foreign policy around the frightening new challenge of Soviet Communism, pursuing ‘containment’ on a bipartisan basis for four decades. After the U.S.S.R. disintegrated, we spent the 1990s confident that competition between ideologies was a thing of the past, that

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Haas | Un-Serious Nation? by converting more nations to free-market capitalism, we could ensure the advance of democracy to more places around the globe. We were jolted from our complacency by 9/11, by what Robert Kagan calls the ‘return of history,’ by a world once more divided by competing ideologies. But, seven years later, we still don’t know what to make of radical Islam, what it represents, and where to rank it on our list of foreign policy worries. Our elites are split between those who (rightfully, in my view) see radical Islam – a.k.a. militant Islam, political Islam, or radical ‘Islamism’ – as the next great ‘ism’ to confront, after fascism, nazism, and communism, and those who see a rising China, a resurgent Russia, global warming, or pandemic disease as our greatest challenge. We have no galvanizing explanation for radical Islam like George Kennan’s July 1947 ‘X’ article in Foreign Affairs that explained Soviet communism, no theory like ‘containment’ that Kennan articulated for it, no national security document around which to focus our activities like the NSC-68 of 1950. We lack a shared understanding of what makes radical Islam the overriding national security challenge of our time – the ideology that honours death over life and encourages the murder of infidels of any kind; the global radicalizing of Muslims through mosques, madrassas, textbooks, and the Internet; the organized effort to topple moderate Islamic regimes while creating beachheads of domestic infiltration in Europe and the United States; the frightening possibility that state sponsors of radicalism and terror will obtain nuclear weaponry; and, most maddeningly, the oil-based economy through which the Western world finances the very war that radical Islam is waging against it. President Bush has propounded a ‘national security strategy’ that focuses on terrorism and the ideologies that drive it, advocates pre-emption to defuse the threat of terror-sponsoring states, and promotes the spread of freedom as a longterm antidote to radicalism and terror. Not long after he articulated it, however, Bush’s strategy was less the nation’s than his own, less a doctrine to rally around than one to score political points over. Indeed, it was this lack of consensus, this absence of a modern-day George Kennan, that prompted a bipartisan group of former top national security officials, business leaders, and scholars – meeting as the Princeton Project on National Security – to work for three years ‘to develop a sustainable and effective national security strategy for the United States of America.’ Their doctrine, which they released in late 2006,

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 focuses not on one central threat but seven of them, from the Middle East, terror networks, and nuclear proliferation, to China and East Asia, global pandemics, energy, and the need for a ‘protective infrastructure’ for the United States and the world. That these experts sought to write ‘a collective “X article”’ tells you all you need to know about our national security disarray. Even when we focus on radical Islam, we are woefully ignorant about it. Unlike communism, which we broadly understood was shaped by Marx and applied by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and others, we don’t know from whence radical Islam came. With few exceptions among elites and the public, we don’t recognize that terrorist attacks on the United States and the West over the last 30 years are the latest phase of a 1,400-year struggle by radical Islam to defeat the forces of modernity and return society to the time of Mohammed. We don’t know the interconnected ideologies and roles of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Wahhabis, and the Khomeinists in reviving this struggle in the 20th Century. Blissfully ignorant of the beliefs, the outlook, the goals, and the methods of our adversaries, we are profoundly un-serious about the dangers that they represent. We are un-serious about the military commitment, the resources, and the measures required to defeat radical Islam both abroad and at home. Democrat, Republican, and independent – we are all un-serious. But our political affiliation determines just what it is we are un-serious about. To put it another way, Democrats are unserious about some aspects of the challenge ahead while Republicans are un-serious about others. Democratic un-seriousness Democrats are increasingly un-serious about how to promote and sustain U.S. leadership around the world. They are, for instance, re-thinking the benefits of free trade, bottling up bilateral agreements even with countries like Colombia, a key hemispheric ally that is promoting free markets and the rule of law while fighting terrorist groups backed by Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s anti-American strongman. They also are refusing to give our intelligence services the necessary electronic surveillance tools to monitor terrorists in today’s world of global communications. But it is on military matters where Democrats are most un-serious. To be fair, Democrats seem to think we must win in Afghanistan – ‘the right war’ – where we retaliated against the perpetrators of September 11th by uprooting al-

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Haas | Un-Serious Nation? Qaeda. On Iraq, however, they are focused on ending the war, not winning it. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, ‘[Iraq is] not a war to be won but a problem to be solved.’ From there, Democrats say, we must bring the troops home under set timetables to force political reconciliation among Sunni, Shia, and Kurds, even though our premature departure could open the floodgates to chaos and genocide. That we are fighting strains of the same disease – radical Islam – in Afghanistan and Iraq, that victory in each is crucial for the larger struggle, that defeat or retreat in either would be devastating to our cause, does not seem to trouble them. That al-Qaeda has made Iraq the most important front in its war against the West and said so repeatedly (Ayman al-Zawahiri on April 18: ‘Iraq today is now the most important arena in which our Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the Crusader-Zionist campaign’) matters not to Democrats who view Iraq as less a war than a political opportunity (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last year: ‘We are going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war’). Nor does it matter that Iran is testing our staying power in Iraq by arming its militias there, that al-Qaeda and Iran would benefit greatly by our leaving before achieving our goal (a stable Iraq that’s a U.S. ally in the war on terror), that our allies in the region strongly oppose such a withdrawal, and that our friends and enemies the world over are watching whether we’ve got the staying power to confront radical Islam for as long as it takes. Soon after the 2003 U.S. invasion, as quick victory turned to messy aftermath, Democrats adopted a narrative of defeat, proclaiming the Bush-led venture a repeat of the quagmire of Vietnam. They urged a change in strategy. Bush finally faced reality, ordered up that change, put General David Petraeus in charge, and sent a ‘surge’ of troops to turn things around. But, when the strategy worked, sending violence plummeting and putting al-Qaeda on the run, Democrats refused to recognize any change at all. Sticking with their narrative, they continued to call for a change in strategy even as one was clearly under way. When individual Democrats began to acknowledge progress, they were shunned by their colleagues and pressured to change their story. When progress proved undeniable, Democrats shifted the narrative to argue that progress was meaningless if political reconciliation in Baghdad remained elusive. As Michael O’Hanlon, a defense expert at the left-leaning Brookings Institution, has written, ‘Rarely in U.S. history has a political party diagnosed a major failure in the country’s approach to a critical issue of the day, led a national referendum on the failing policy, forced a change in that policy that led to major substantive benefits for the nation – and

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 then categorically refused to take any credit whatsoever for doing so.’ Democrats do not recognize success because they debate Iraq through the rearview mirror. Those who voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq – like Hillary Clinton – say they just wanted to give him more leverage for diplomacy. Those who voted no or who – like Barack Obama – spoke against the war while not yet serving in Congress, brag about their foresight or, in this year’s political vernacular, their ‘judgment.’ What almost no Democrat does is make the case for victory. Though some Republicans grew tired of Iraq, most stuck with Bush and the surge and have happily noted the progress under Petraeus. That has set the political parties ever-more starkly against one another – on one side, the party of victory; on the other, the party of retreat. But the challenge of radical Islam will extend far beyond one theatre of battle, in fact far beyond military matters. Any comprehensive approach to the challenge must rest on an economic strategy that ensures American vitality. And it is on economics that we see that un-seriousness is no one-party phenomenon. Republican un-seriousness Ever since humans began forming nations and nations began taking up arms, the outcome of war has been determined at least as much by economic strength as military doctrine. The Japanese sought a quick knock-out at Pearl Harbor because they knew America’s economic might would guarantee its victory in a long war. The Soviet Union collapsed because its dysfunctional economic system could no longer support the arms race. Today, the United States remains the world’s most powerful nation because it’s the world’s wealthiest. Were we to lose our economic pre-eminence, we would sacrifice our military pre-eminence. With a strong economy, we can build the planes and tanks, supply the guns and ammunition, and feed and transport the troops without starving our people. During the Battle of the Bulge, a German general knew his side would lose when he saw American soldiers eating chocolate cake. As Walter Russell Mead writes in God and Gold, ‘With Germany desperate for every ounce of fuel, every bit of food, the Americans had enough food and enough shipping capacity to send birthday cakes across the ocean to ordinary soldiers.’

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Haas | Un-Serious Nation? At first blush, all still seems fine. The economy rolls on, notwithstanding an occasional downturn. But even the strongest economy cannot serve a free lunch. Even the strongest economy forces choices. Today, America faces a fiscal tsunami that will force choices and, if we decline to make them, threaten economic ruin. This year, the first ‘baby boomers’ will start to retire and become eligible for federal pension benefits under Social Security and federal health benefits under Medicare and Medicaid. That will cause two problems. First, those programs are already absorbing growing shares of the federal budget – especially as health care costs rise far faster than inflation – and their shares will expand rapidly in the coming years. That will leave less room for everything else, including defense. Second, those programs will transform our relatively modest budget deficits of today into truly frightening deficits in the coming years – longterm, built-in deficits of unprecedented size. That will weaken our economy over time by shrinking the pool of capital available for investment, keeping interest rates higher than otherwise, and making us ever-more vulnerable to the predilections of foreign central banks and others who buy our federal securities. That’s where Republican un-seriousness comes in. If the first rule of doctoring is to ‘do no harm,’ today’s Republicans are guilty of fiscal malpractice. As budget surpluses of the late 1990s, produced under a Democratic President, morphed into growing deficits due to the 2001 recession, Bush’s defense build-up and war costs, and his 2001 tax cuts, the President and Congress enacted even more tax cuts – individual tax cuts in 2003, business tax cuts in 2002 and 2004, a hodge-podge of additional tax cuts since then, and a vow to make the huge tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which are due to expire by 2010, all permanent. That is, as the deficit grew and the fiscal tsunami approached, they kept cutting taxes. At stake, in the effort to make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, is trillions of dollars in additional costs. But Republicans do not worry. Their policy is tax cuts uber alles. They cut taxes when the economy is strong to reward big and small businesses, entrepreneurs and workers. They cut taxes when the economy is weak to give it a boost. And they justify it all with a radical theory of mathematics: from Bush to their congressional leaders to more and more of their rank-and-file members, they insist that – notwithstanding… well… common sense – the lower the tax rates, the more revenue will flow to the federal Treasury. Free lunch-ism is now the reigning economic orthodoxy of the Republican Party.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Tax-cutting is such a Republican article of faith that presidential candidate John McCain – who calls radical Islam the ‘transcendent issue’ of our time, who opposed the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as obscene in war-time (due to their cost and their disproportionate flow of benefits to the wealthy) and who understands sacrifice from his five years as a POW in Vietnam – now makes tax cut permanence the central plank in his economic platform. Even McCain, who has challenged party orthodoxy on a host of other issues over the years, came to recognize he could not win the Republican presidential nomination unless he fell in line on taxes. In Washington, Republicans would tell you that they have a way to square the fiscal circle – cut spending. Don’t believe ‘em. In 2003, hoping to build their support among the elderly, Bush and a Republican Congress added drug coverage to Medicare without offsetting the costs, making Medicare’s financial burden even less sustainable. As they cut taxes repeatedly this decade, they made little effort to find compensating savings on the spending side. Notwithstanding their rhetoric, Republicans are as addicted to government spending as Democrats. Bipartisan un-seriousness There you have it – Democratic un-seriousness on the military, Republican unseriousness on the budget and economy. We should not be surprised, then, by our bipartisan un-seriousness on a host of related matters, each of which deserves a separate article. ‘The Capitalists,’ Lenin said, ‘will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.’ Rather than selling rope, we’re buying more and more oil from the very nations that fund terrorism, build mosques and madrassas that radicalize Muslims, and hire lobbyists to represent them before Congress. What’s lacking is a national commitment to create an alternative to the oil economy, one rooted in methanol or other sources, so Americans can stop funding both sides of our war with radical Islam and can start confronting the oil-rich states on the other side. Also lacking is a national effort to expose the radical Islam that’s infecting key sectors of our society – our universities, where oil-sponsored endowed chairs and programs put radical Islam in the mainstream of higher education; in our prisons, where radical Islamic chaplains poison the minds of prisoners who will one day be free; and in our common culture, where trade groups such as the Council of American-Islamic Relations serve as apologists for terrorism and radical ideology.

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Haas | Un-Serious Nation? From war to the economy, energy to domestic infiltration, these are all… well… serious issues. All they lack is a nation to give them the seriousness they deserve.

Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice President Al Gore, is vice president of the Committee on the Present Danger.

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Global Labour Notes / There’s a battle outside ragin’: Unions take centre stage in the fight for democracy Eric Lee For those of us who support the growth of democracy in the world, it almost goes without saying that we support workers’ rights and trade unions. But sometimes that support is only perfunctory. After all, when we think about dictatorships in the world today and the struggle for democracy, we usually think of political and spiritual leaders, writers, intellectuals and others before we think of the workers. Aung San Suu Kyi and the Dalai Lama have become household names. For some of the larger and better known human rights organisations, workers’ rights have long been seen as a bit of a footnote – though there is some evidence that this is now changing. While most of us will be vaguely familiar with key international human rights documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), most human rights campaigners will have difficulty naming the eight core conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) which lay out what are universally recognised workers’ rights – such as the right to form and join a trade union and to bargain collectively. Everyone remembers the central role played by independent trade unions in bringing down Communist rule in Poland and triggering the collapse of the entire Soviet empire in the process. But my guess is that few are aware of the key role being played by trade unions today – unions which find themselves on the front lines of what amounts to a fight to the death with dictatorships. Those dictatorships are often far more severe in their repression than the Polish Stalinists ever were. Take for example, Zimbabwe. As I write these words, most democrats and human rights supporters will be aware that Robert Mugabe’s brutal dictatorial rule has faced its most serious challenge at the hands of a man who formerly led the country’s trade union movement – Morgan Tsvangirai. But how many know that unions today came under severe pressure in the aftermath of the 2008 elections? In

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Lee | Unions and Democracy early May the top leadership of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions as well as leading teacher unionists were jailed by the regime and denied bail. Unions in Zimbabwe cannot fail to remind us of the role played by Solidarnosc in Poland – right down to the union leader (Walesa then, Tsvangirai now) personifying the need for change. The role of unions in the battle for freedom in Zimbabwe was made even more dramatic by the remarkable action of South African dockers. Following the recent elections in Zimbabwe, members of the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union refused to off-load weapons from a Chinese ship, weapons which were bound for Zimbabwe. The union members did this in the face of their own timid government, which to its shame has failed to act decisively in support of the people of Zimbabwe. In Iran, most people see a battle between ‘reformers’ and hardline fundamentalists, or perhaps are aware that Iranian women and dissident intellectuals are in a constant battle for rights. Few, however, will know of the central role played by Iranian unions – unofficial, independent unions not controlled by the regime. There have been strikes and demonstrations around the country, often mobilising thousands, but the most extraordinary story has been the fight of the Tehran bus workers for union recognition and improved pay and conditions. When those workers brought Iran’s capital to a halt with what amounted to a general strike a couple of years ago, the regime reacted with savage repression. The union leader, Mansour Osanloo, has been repeatedly jailed and has become a symbol, perhaps the symbol, of the struggle for a new society in Iran. Iraqi unions play a central role in the efforts to create a democratic and secular society in their country and have paid a heavy price for their efforts. There are many decent people in Iraq risking their lives every day, but unions may be unique in their ability to reach across ethnic sectarian divisions and unite Iraqis in the fight for a better future. They are certainly doing what no political party in that country has been able to do. The same story is repeated everywhere dictators rule: unions, and sometimes unions alone, stand on the front lines against vicious repression. In China and Vietnam, extraordinary large-scale strikes have rocked the foundations of the Stalinist regimes. Unions in Burma, Eritrea and Belarus have been targeted repeatedly by

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 the dictators in an effort to crush independent thought and action. As George Orwell might have noted, the hope – if there is any hope – still lies with the proles. This is not how the far Left sees it, however. When I’ve launched an online campaign that focussed attention on violations of workers’ rights in places like Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Burma, Iran and Belarus, I am often sent emails by comrades eager to point out that in supporting workers in those countries, I’m somehow supporting George Bush and the neo-conservatives. The knee-jerk anti-Americanism here is so powerful that sometimes people find themselves defending regimes they know almost nothing about (Eritrea? Belarus?) simply because they heard that America might not be fond of this or that particular dictator. My enemy’s enemy must be my friend – and the workers be damned. On the other hand, if you can find a regime which is backed by Washington and in which trade unionists are denied their rights or even killed, you can get the entire left on your side. What this means in practice is that when right-wing death squads kill trade unionists in Colombia, it gets considerably more attention and support from the left (and unions) than when Ba’athist or al-Qaeda death squads kill trade unionists in Iraq. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of trade unionists do not share the view of the totalitarian left. Global campaigns in support of embattled trade unionists are bigger than ever before. Earlier this year, the International Transport Workers Federation staged a huge global day of action in support of Osanloo and jailed Iranian union leaders. Their affiliates on every continent, in dozens of countries, and in Muslim countries as well, took to the streets to demand freedom for their Iranian brothers and sisters. A delegation of trade unionists from Indonesia travelled to Iran and attempted to meet with their jailed comrades. Amnesty International is taking an increasing interest in workers’ rights, adopting a number of jailed trade unionists as prisoners of conscience. Recently when Amnesty launched an urgent action in support of one of the jailed Iranian unionists, it turned

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Lee | Unions and Democracy out to be their biggest, quickest mobilisation ever. Clearly there is a lot of public support, certainly within the unions, for international solidarity. All this is going to prove to be particularly difficult for what remains of the totalitarian Left. Defending Mugabe or the Iranian mullahs is getting less and less popular. The heroism of trade unionists who risk their lives (and in many cases, give their lives) in the battle against these dictatorships inspires thousands. There’s an opportunity here to build a great global coalition, anchored in the trade union movement, allied with traditional human rights groups and pro-democracy campaigners, that struggles to create a better world. In that world, the promises made in Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – including ‘everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions’ – could become a reality.

Eric Lee is the founding editor of LabourStart [http://www.labourstart.org], the news and campaigning website of the international trade union movement. He writes in a personal capacity

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How to support Solidarność: A Debate Tom Kahn and Norman Podhoretz Editor’s Note: The birth in Poland of the free trade union Solidarity in September 1980 proved to be a precursor of the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe in 1989-91. Democratiya is very pleased to make available to readers the transcript of a debate held in New York City in March 1981, a time when it seemed likely that either the Soviet Union would invade Poland to crush Solidarity and restore untrammelled one-party rule, or the Polish Communists would launch their own crack-down. (Sure enough, in December 1981, the Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and arrested the leadership of Solidarność.). The debate was sponsored by the Committee for the Free World and the League for Industrial Democracy and hosted by the Polish Institute for Arts and Sciences, New York City. The participants were not discussing whether to support Solidarity – all were fierce antitotalitarians. They were searching for the best policy, in particular the best economic policy, for democracies to adopt in order to support the emergence of democratic forces within totalitarian societies. As such their discussion speaks to us today. The Editors would like to thank Eric Chenoweth, Co-Director of the Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe, for providing the transcript.

* Midge Decter: I want to welcome you all here. I am the executive director of the Committee for the Free World. Arch Puddington of the League for Industrial Democracy is also here. We invited you here because we thought it would be a matter of some urgency for us at this point to discuss among ourselves – and by that I mean a group of people who have the same hopes, the same outlook, and the same sense of what is going on in the world – a matter about which there is in fact a disagreement among us. As everybody knows, the very best arguments are conducted between those who fundamentally agree. In fact, they are the only valuable arguments because you do not have situations in which people are scoring debaters’ points against each other but are actually trying to come to illumination and some, perhaps, consensus or mutual influence. I will turn the meeting over now to Carl Gershman, whom I think needs no introduction to this audience, and he will explain the rules of the debate and

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us moderate for the evening. But before doing that, I want to introduce you to some people in the audience. First, we have a founding member of the KOR here, Piotr Naimski; he is spending a year at NYU Medical Center. The other person I want to introduce is our host for this evening and to whom we are grateful for offering the hospitality of this room, Mr. Boleslaw Wierzbianski. Boleslaw Wierzbianski: I would like to welcome you here and hope you will feel at home. You are in a center of Polish-American and Polish culture, which has existed for more than forty years. We are trying to make contacts between American and Polish institutions. But mostly we are an intellectual center of Polish Americans in New York and in the United States. The subject of this discussion is close to us and I hope it will be lively. I am pleased you are here. Carl Gershman (Moderator): Before I introduce the speakers, let me say that we can concentrate on the meeting without being too distracted by the events of the day, since the President is not gravely wounded and has passed through the operation very well. The surgeon said he could be making decisions by tomorrow and probably be home within two weeks. [An assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan had occurred earlier in the day. Ed.] The subject of the discussion tonight is whether or not the United States, and by extension the democratic West, should provide economic assistance to Poland at this moment of crisis. But the discussion involves a larger question having to do with the future of communism in the world today and how best to affect the struggle against communism and in fact to seek its undoing, its unravelling, which has not really happened to any country so far that has gone communist. It is the reason why the struggle in Poland is the most significant struggle taking place anywhere in the world today and hence the implications are of momentous importance. Of course, we are watching the events there on a daily basis and it is conceivable that the fine points could conceivably be made moot if the worst – which we don’t want to happen – happens in Poland. But the issues raised in this discussion and the two people who will be discussing them in an informal way – with a good deal of interchange both between themselves and among ourselves in the audience – have done as much thinking about this fundamental question of Poland and the future of communism as anyone in the United States. The first speaker, known to everyone here, is Tom Kahn, assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO [the American Federation of Labour – Congress of Industrial Organisations] and also

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 heading up the Polish Workers Aid Fund. It gives me great pleasure to introduce Tom Kahn. Tom Kahn: Don’t be intimidated by all these pieces of paper; they are mainly desultory notes. I made the mistake of leaving about half of my notes and writing to this afternoon and found myself very much distracted by the events, and I hope that I am not too muddled in my talk. I am glad that this has been described as a discussion and not a debate, for two reasons. First, whenever I debate a good friend, I inevitably lose. To succeed in debate requires a level of venom that I cannot summon forth against a friend, and certainly not against a man who has done more than any other writer to clarify the danger confronting the United States and the democratic cause. Because I am in basic agreement with Norman’s analysis about the danger and because we share so many enemies in common, it is unthinkable that this dialogue be thought a debate. Second, it seems to me foolish to harden lines of disagreement over an issue which practically speaking may soon be rendered moot or radically redefined by external forces beyond our hearing or by internal forces indifferent to our voices. I assume that a Soviet invasion of Poland would unite all of us in opposition to aid to Poland and in favor of the most stringent economic and other sanctions against the Soviet bloc. When I say that a Soviet invasion beyond our control would unite us in opposition, the ‘us’ means me and Norman and, I assume, most of the people in this room. But it would not unite everybody on a proposition that to us seems self-evident. For example, there is no reason to assume that the bankers would see things our way. A recent Los Angeles Times survey of leading bankers concluded, and I quote, ‘The major threat to their loans, bankers say, does not come from a military takeover but from the economic chaos that is plaguing Poland.’ The Times quotes Leeland Prusher of the Bank of America as saying, ‘Disorder is an unhealthy situation. And if that is the present state of Poland, then anything that would restore order would be a positive step.’ The impression is inerasable that this leader of the nation’s largest bank and no doubt speaking for many of his colleagues here and in Europe would prefer a Soviet invasion and the order it would restore to the continuing uncertainty and confusion generated by the Polish workers’ struggle for a free and independent union movement.

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us Because I have never been wholly convinced that what is good for bankers is good for workers, or for democracy, Mr. Prusher’s statement is enough in itself to separate me from all those who secretly wish for a Soviet invasion, including [those who wish it] on the grounds that such an invasion would put an end to the present tension, quite probably stiffen the Europeans, revive the Atlantic Alliance, and do away with detente once and for all. I should like to believe that more would be exacted from the Soviets in consequence of any invasion, but I am not certain of that result and none of us can be. I need not detail before this group the economic stake that the West Germans have developed in East-West trade, one of the sadder products of detente. The only certain result of Soviet force in Poland would be the decapitation of Solidarity and the return of its dismembered parts, if any remained, to the party hacks and police agents formally disguised as trade union officials and accepted by almost everybody but the AFL-CIO. There may be those who are willing to witness the sacrifice of the most important workers’ movement to have appeared in half a century in the interests of making a larger point about the character of the enemy, a point which ought not to need remaking, but the AFL-CIO, for reasons flowing from its very existence, cannot be among them. To do all in our power to nourish and extend the life of Solidarity is the overriding compelling mission of the AFL-CIO in the present Polish situation. It is an obligation from which we could not shrink without doing damage to the raison d’etre of the American labor movement itself. Discharging this obligation entails risks, of course, but it is up to Solidarity, the ones on the front line, who know better than we the opportunities and dangers before them, to define the aid they need. It was not for us to tell the workers of Poland what was good for them, how they should go about doing what no other workers in history had done. Solidarity made its needs known, with courage, with clarity, and publicly. As you know, the AFLCIO responded by establishing a fund for the purchase of equipment requested by Solidarity and we have raised about a quarter of a million dollars for that fund. This effort has elicited from the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Bulgaria the most massive and vicious propaganda assault on the AFL-CIO that we have seen in many, many years. The ominous tone of the most recent attacks leaves no doubt that if the Soviet Union invades, it shall cite the aid of the AFL-CIO as evidence of outside anti-Socialist intervention aimed at overthrowing the Polish state. I might add that much of this propaganda quotes extensively from American leftists, like those around Counter-Spy magazine, who attacked the AFL-CIO role in El Salvador and charged the AFL-CIO with being in cahoots with the ubiquitous

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 CIA. Consciously or not, much of the leftist attack on our role in El Salvador serves the Soviets’ purpose of discrediting our aid of Solidarity and of laying the basis of charging Lech Walesa, like Anatoly Sharansky, with CIA connections. But lest you think that the AFL-CIO leadership, under vicious and dangerous attack from the left, has won sympathy or succor from the right, I refer you to the current issue of National Review, where Arnold Beichman has an insulting article on Lane Kirkland because he finds the AFL-CIO’s anti-communism incomplete. Despite all these problems which the AFL-CIO has faced, it may well be that our task in Poland is clearer and simpler than that of the U.S. government or other private institutions. Our job is to strengthen Solidarity. We can only do that by responding to Solidarity’s stated needs. The U.S. government obviously will be responding to other factors as well. And even those whose main concern is the survival of the Church may view matters differently. After all, the Church could survive by retreating into passivity. If Solidarity did that, it would cease to be Solidarity and become more like the fake institution it replaced. All this is by way of introducing the AFL-CIO’s position on economic aid to Poland. In formulating this position, our first concern was to consult our friends in Solidarity to find out what they thought from their vantage point about what position the AFL-CIO should take. We did consult with them in a lengthy discussion and their views are reflected in the statement unanimously adopted by the AFL-CIO Executive Council at its February meeting. I would like to read to you the relevant paragraphs of that statement: The Polish economy is on the verge of bankruptcy, the result of mismanagement of the Polish government and the inefficiencies inherent in the Soviet-imposed economic system. Yet, Poland’s economic troubles are cited to counter Solidarity’s demands for a forty-hour week, better wages, and lower prices. Because we share the aspirations of Polish workers for a better life and for an economic climate more conducive to Solidarity’s success, the AFL-CIO is prepared to support an extension of Western credits to Poland, but only under conditions that safeguard the rights and interests of the workers. Poland’s debts to the West already amount to more than $20 billion, the largest of the East bloc countries’ debt. To ensure repayment, the international banking community has in the past pressured the Polish government into policies

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us of austerity, which have been borne by the workers by higher prices and longer work weeks. The extension of credits or rescheduling of Poland’s debt could intensify the exploitation of Polish workers and threaten their hard won gains. The AFL-CIO will support additional aid to Poland only if it is conditioned on the adherence of the Polish government to the 21 points of the Gdansk Agreement. Only then could we be assured that the Polish workers will be in a position to defend their gains and to struggle for a fair share of the benefits of Western aid. Earlier in the statement, we noted that the Polish government has not so far lived up to the Gdansk Agreement. We pointed out that: Media censorship has not been eliminated. Solidarity has been denied the means of publishing a weekly magazine. Provincial chapters of Solidarity have been harassed by authorities. The government has refused to publish trade union legislation. Members of KOR are being persecuted. The government has dragged its feet in implementing the agreement on free Saturdays and a 40-hour work week. Should the Polish government continue its violations of the Gdansk Agreement, this fact, no less than an outright Soviet invasion, would produce a complete convergence of policy between Norman and me. At the moment, the odds in favor of such a convergence are very large indeed. Nonetheless, I believe that the posture adopted by the AFL-CIO makes more tactical sense and helps to illuminate a longterm strategy which I think Norman and I share but which for many years now has been out of favor with official policy planners. That is to say, we do not accept the legitimacy of the communist party’s rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and elsewhere; we do not accept the permanence of the communist system and the corollary need to accommodate its interests for generations to come as the only alternative to nuclear war. Rather, we look to the transformation of the Soviet system, however long it takes; to its dismantling by non-nuclear means. The precise process by which such a coming apart would occur can be seen only dimly. We are all aware that the Soviet Union confronts enormous economic, demographic, energy, and institutional problems – the contradictions of communism, if you please – and that many of us have urged Western policies which would prudently intensify those contradictions rather than ease the difficulties they pose for the Soviet leadership.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 The AFL-CIO is historically opposed not only to the transfer of Western technology to the Soviets, but to any economic arrangement which would enable the Soviet leadership to escape the choice between guns and butter that bedevils Western democracies. We have adopted this policy despite arguments that its effects would be more harmful to Soviet consumers than to Soviet generals. Why would we be willing to alter this historic policy in the case of Poland? The answer is that what has occurred in Poland is historically unique. What has occurred in Poland – and not occurred in any other part of the Eastern bloc – is a working class rebellion, well organized, which has institutionalized itself as an independent power center. That has happened nowhere else in the Soviet bloc. And thus, what in the Soviet Union and other communist countries we see as a potential challenge to the communist system has actually become manifest in Poland. That is an historic development. Another factor is that Western financial involvement in Poland is an important part of the background to the economic conditions that gave rise to the August strikes. That is not true any place else in the Eastern bloc. If you trust Fortune magazine, they actually claim that it was the demand of Western bankers that the Polish government eliminate meat subsidies that gave rise to the strikes last August. Under those circumstances, the West has a clearer right to impose conditions on future credits to Poland than it might have to intervene in other countries in other periods. The alternative to credits with conditions of the kind I’ve indicated, or with purely financial conditions that encourage government austerity while leaving Solidarity helpless, is a sterile policy in which we do not attempt to extend the life of Solidarity and to prolong the contradiction in communism which has opened up in Poland. I want to sum up with a case in these terms. It is quite clear to everyone that the Polish economy and Polish society have been grossly mismanaged in the last decade and a half. A price will have to be paid for that mismanagement. An economic price will have to be paid and a political price will have to be paid. If one accepts the general perspective that I outlined earlier about adopting policies that look to the transformation of the Soviet system, then I believe we ought to look for an arrangement in which the West agrees to pay a good part of the economic price if the Soviet Union pays the political price. That is, if the West is to bail out Poland, is to reschedule the debt, it ought to exact from the Soviet Union its agreement to leave Solidarity alone and to accept the possibility, dangerous as it is, of some liberalization around its periphery in order to protect the Soviet heartland. That,

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us it seems to me, is a compromise that could be struck in this situation that is not unreasonable. As I see it, we have three alternatives. One is credits with no political conditions, only the conditions that may be imposed by the banking community in its own interests. Or, we have no credits at all, no aid to Poland, period. That I think leads to a sterile policy in which we give up whatever leverage we would have to change that system from within. And the third possibility is credits with the kinds of political conditions that I have outlined, conditions that would give Solidarity at least a fighting chance so that workers would not be helpless in the face of the new austerities that Western credits are likely to generate. Moderator: I think it is worth making the point when we are together tonight to say something about the AFL-CIO and the role it has played over the years in questions related to workers in the communist world. If we think back over the fights that the AFL-CIO has had in debates with the European trade unions, it was precisely over the question of the AFL-CIO’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the so-called trade unions in the communist world that led to its withdrawal from the ICFTU in 1969. There has been a series of ongoing debates, and if the emergence of Solidarity shows anything, it shows that this policy has been correct and that the so-called unions in the communist world are no different than the labor fronts under fascism, and the AFL-CIO deserves great credit for having stood by this policy even under the most difficult circumstances during the height of detente. Our next speaker is certainly one of the most distinguished intellectuals in America and is the editor of what can easily be described as the most influential journal in the country. Some might even say that it has become the intellectual headquarters of the new administration in Washington, a point that evidently from what I am told has been discovered by the Secretary General of the United Nations. He’s the author of a number of books and has been particularly prolific of late with Breaking Ranks and The Present Danger. He has a mammoth article that will appear in the April issue of Commentary called ‘The Future Danger,’ which really deals in a very large sense with the basic question we are dealing with tonight, which is the whole question of communism and our attitude toward it. It might be said that Norman’s prolific productivity in the recent period may in some sense be related to the fact that having lost so many writers to the new administration he has to do all the writing himself.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Norman Podhoretz: Ask not what you can do for your country. I’ve done a lot for my country, it’s true, I have given up half my major contributors to the new administration. But so far this administration has done very much for me in turn. Tom said in his opening remarks that he always loses debates with good friends. I know exactly what he means. But he’s found a technique, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps cunningly, for winning them. That is, you say extraordinarily generous things about your friend when you begin, thereby disarming him from the outset. I felt like throwing in the towel right there. The only thing that has kept my resolve to pursue this discussion fairly stiff was the reflection, as I listened to Tom’s characteristically lucid and coherent analysis, that I find myself not so much disagreeing with the AFL-CIO in its particular activities in this situation, as I have no quarrel whatever with the raising of funds by the AFL-CIO to send to Solidarity itself as it has done, but in listening to Tom justify the AFL-CIO’s position on the larger question of economic credits from the West to Poland, I find myself in the position of defending the historic position of the AFL-CIO against the current position of the AFL-CIO. I think the historic position was right and the current position is wrong. It’s been my experience that one is rarely thanked for going before any congregation, whether secular or religious, which has departed from the tenets of the old-time religion and urging upon it a return to the original principles of the faith. I once had the experience of talking to the Council of Foreign Relations about five years ago, which all of you must know is the very cathedral in which the doctrine of containment was promulgated and out of which vast apostasies from that doctrine were then expressed, and preaching the doctrine of containment to the Council. The reception I got there was exactly what you might expect under the circumstances. I would not wish to go before the AFL-CIO itself to do something similar. Perhaps it is safer to do it before this audience. Let me start with a few large elementary observations, banalities really, to set the framework in which I look at this situation. My perspective is exactly as the AFL-CIO’s is and has been, an anti-communist one. We are reaching a point in our political culture where it becomes almost respectable to call yourself an anticommunist. I don’t think we’ve passed over the threshold but we’re getting there. Certainly, a year or two ago you would have been foolhardy to call yourself an anticommunist almost anywhere in this country, except perhaps in the AFL-CIO’s

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us headquarters. From that perspective and in the interests of that perspective, I tend to look at this situation. The first thing that I think has to be said and understood and assimilated is that we were not directly involved in the events in Poland. Despite the fact that the banks did impose certain economic conditions in return for credits, which had something to do with the outbreak of the original demonstrations, I think it is nevertheless fair to say that, in contrast to the situation in Hungary in 1956 (or at any rate to the myth of the situation in Hungary in 1956 since there is disagreement about that, I know), the United States did not play an active role in instigating or encouraging a rebellion in that satellite country. However large our responsibility may or may not have been in the Hungarian events of 1956, there is no question that we did give the impression to a lot of Hungarians that we were in favor of such a move and that if they rose up against their communist masters we would help them in some unspecified way. I think a lot of them thought we would help militarily. And whether or not that expectation was justified and whether or not we were responsible, the fact is that we had some measure of implication in those events. As far as I can see, in Poland we had none. On the contrary, most of the noises that have come from this country and more so from Europe have been exactly in the opposite direction. Most of the noises have been to the effect of warning Solidarity and the Polish intellectuals to be easy, be moderate, for God’s sake don’t provoke the Russians, for God’s sake be careful, there’ll be an invasion – and we’ve sounded for all the world like a bunch of nervous Jewish parents with a frisky four-yearold trying to restrain him from hurting himself by taking too many chances in the world out there. There has been something unappetizing, aesthetically and morally ignoble, in the general tone of the response of this country and, to the extent I have been able to gauge it from afar, of many of the Western Europeans. What we are dealing with here is indeed a unique historical event as Tom said. This is a wholly indigenous rebellion against the fundamental principle, as I interpret it, of a communist regime within the Soviet empire and in the largest and most important colony of that empire. And as Tom said – again I agree –this has vast implications for the future. It is very difficult to think of anything that has happened or could happen that has larger implications, political and I would daresay moral, than the events in Poland – the unpredicted, surprising, rising up of the workers of a communist country demanding not only improved material conditions but also a movement towards the democratization of that regime. As we all know, this is not what happened for example in Czechoslovakia in 1968, which

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 was basically a movement of intellectuals or leaders of the party. Here, you have a unique collaboration between the masses, the workers, and the intellectuals where the leading role is evidently being played by the workers. So, it is an enormous event. Where we all are in the dark, and where we begin to disagree, is on what it means both for the present and for the future. One possible interpretation is that we are witnessing the beginning of the emergence of what once upon a time was called communism with a human face. That given the right mix of prudence, pressure, tactical flexibility, Soviet inhibition brought about by other factors, this movement represented by Solidarity will take root, and through peaceful means, perhaps with a good deal of strife but without serious military repression either by Polish authorities or by Soviet troops, will begin to grow and will by itself peacefully transform the nature of the regime in Poland and inevitably therefore the nature of communist regimes throughout the Soviet empire, because obviously it would be impossible to quarantine any such development within Poland itself. Even if such a development occurred in a less important country than Poland, it would probably be impossible to quarantine it. It would be infectious, contagious – it is hard to think of words to use that don’t have a derogatory connotation, but it would be catching in a good sense, it would be benignly infectious. But occurring in Poland, the most important of all those countries, it would set an irresistible example. And we are expected to believe, according to this theory, that such a development will be tolerated by the communist authorities in Poland and by the communist authorities in the Soviet Union. I simply don’t believe that and I find myself surprised, to put it mildly, that the AFL-CIO seems to believe it. If it were anybody but the AFL-CIO, I would assume that naiveté were at work. The last thing in the world any informed person could accuse the AFL-CIO or anybody associated with it in the upper regions, anyway, is of naiveté on the issue of communism. I frankly think what we have here is a case of wishful thinking or possibly thinking created by the sense of solidarity with Solidarity, solidarity of the workers of a labor movement in this country with a labor movement there. But in any case, without trying to explain or psychologise the position, it just seems to me on the face of it very difficult to accept, difficult on the basis of the historic experience of the Soviet empire and of communist regimes generally, even communist regimes not associated with the Soviet Union – because, as we know, as Jean-Francois Revel once said, de-Justification or de-Sovietisation does not mean democratization and some communist regimes not under the thumb of Soviet power have been much more repressive than the Soviet Union itself. No communist regime that we know

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us of in the 60 odd years since communism made its accursed appearance on the Earth has been willing or would be able to tolerate such a thing as a free and independent labor movement or workers’ organization. When we are asked to strike a deal, extend credits in exchange for concessions, pay the economic price in exchange for the political price as Tom very neatly put it, I think we’re being offered a fantasy. I can well imagine that at some point the communist authorities in Poland and the Soviets would agree to certain political concessions in exchange for economic aid – 27 billion dollars is now the total package, I think. Let me just digress for a minute to say that a Soviet invasion might occur any minute and render this entire discussion academic – although I believe it might well start up again six months after such an invasion – not only that might render the whole thing academic, this entire discussion might remain academic because it is conducted only among Americans, since a good deal of that money is controlled by Western Europeans, particularly Germans, and I don’t have a lot of hope for a firm policy coming from those quarters, that is, the kind of policy that I myself would like to see followed. And I’m very conscious that I may be wasting my breath and your time on any such advocacy; but there might be some useful analytic value to advocating even a position that doesn’t have any realistic hope of being followed. If I’m right in saying that no communist system can tolerate what Solidarity represents, and that even if concessions were to be made, we could expect that they would gradually be withdrawn or eroded, in which case the trouble would start again, and we would be back exactly where we started with the same discussion facing us: What happens now? Will there be a Soviet invasion? What can we do about it? What should we do about it? Nothing or should we help? Should we buy them more time? The alternative possibility is one that seems to me unbelievable, namely that significant political concessions would be made and that they would be honoured, which would seem to me to be the beginning of the end of communism as we have known it historically. I find it hard to believe that communism will give up so easily without a greater struggle. Now if I’m right, if there is no such possibility of a political price in exchange for economic aid, even aid on the kind of terms that Tom outlined, and that themselves seem highly unrealistic from the economic point of view – I find it hard to imagine that the kinds of terms that he would like to see attached would be the ones that the bankers would be willing to agree to or ones that would have any effect at all on the Polish economy if they were accepted

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 and put into practice – but in any case, if no such possibility exists, if concessions would not be honoured and we would be back to where we started in the first place, only slightly dishonoured in my view in having collaborated with the communist authorities to buy off or stabilize a rebellion within their heartland, then we face the alternative of allowing the Polish workers, that is Solidarity, and the Polish people to determine the course and extent of their own revolt. This means, negatively, doing nothing. That means not extending credits, not co-operating with the authorities, following the traditional AFL-CIO line of not helping the communist regimes to avoid the choice of guns or butter, and in this case not helping the Soviet Union avoid the choice of repression, whether by military or merely internal police means, as against political concessions wrested from them from within. This involves not extending credits at all, and to cease and desist from exhorting Solidarity, in the self-Finlandised way that so many American editorialists and columnists have adopted, to caution and moderation. It would mean in effect refusing to follow what was once called the Sonnenfeld doctrine. Hal Sonnenfeld denies that he ever said what the Sonnenfeld doctrine was alleged to have been, but whether or not he really said it, there is such an idea in the world. And that idea is of course that we in the West have a common interest with the Soviet Union in the stabilization of the East European empire, because the breakup of that empire, even if we had nothing to do with it, would be too dangerous to tolerate and would suck other people in, including ourselves, and would almost certainly lead to war. Therefore it is in our interest to collaborate with the Soviet Union and with the communist authorities generally in either suppressing or, let’s use a more euphemistic term, in stabilizing any troubles within the Eastern European Empire. I do not believe that the Sonnenfeld doctrine ought to guide our policy. And I don’t believe it should for several reasons, the most important of which is that it represents a pre-emptive admission or act of defeat on the part of the West. It assumes, for reasons that escape me, that of all the empires in history only the Soviet empire must be regarded as eternal. The Roman Empire is gone, the British Empire is gone, all the great European empires are gone, but somehow the Soviet empire has to be the last great empire on earth that has to be regarded as eternal. Somehow, and it’s an odd paradox, many of the same people who say this – not in so many words but who strongly imply it by the other things they say – are the very people

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us who are constantly telling us that the age of imperialism is over and who are always attacking the neo-imperial behavior of the West, especially of the United States. This seems to me both ludicrous and dishonourable. The Soviet empire is not eternal. As a matter of fact we may be standing at the threshold of the breakup of the Soviet empire. There are many signs of cracks and fissures within the empire. At the moment, the most significant is the great upheaval in Poland. But there is also the continual resistance in Afghanistan, there are the economic and political problems within the Soviet Union proper, the demographic problems, the change in the composition and the ethnic balance of that society, the fact that it remains dependent on Western help, in such realms as agriculture and high technology. Thirty-five years ago, George F. Kennan, in outlining the principles of what would come to be called the policy of containment, said that if we held the line against further Soviet expansionism, we could within 10 or 15 years – people forget that he actually specified that limit – we could expect either the mellowing or the breakup of the Soviet power. Well, 15 years after the Mr. X article was written was 1962, which was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the beginning of serious American involvement in Vietnam. So, what actually happened was the beginning of the decline of American power rather than the breakup of Soviet power. Nevertheless, I think Kennan may have been right. His timing was off, but I think he may have been right. He saw – inverting the idea of the internal contradictions of capitalism, turning the tables – the internal contradictions of communism and the Soviet empire already, as he put it, taking root and beginning to sprout. Well he was premature, but I think some of the buds of those roots that he already saw in evidence in 1947 have begun to show themselves. And I think that by re-establishing the kind of policy that we followed so successfully for a number of years, in any case of trying to hold the line against further Soviet expansion – which would also mean refusing to collaborate in the stabilization of the empire that already exists – especially when we can do so at minimum risk of direct confrontation with the Soviet Union, we might indeed be able to make a modest contribution, not to the mellowing – because I do not believe as I said earlier that mellowing is a serious possibility – but precisely to the breakup of the Soviet empire. If such an opportunity is presenting itself and if the courage and imagination of the Polish people – legendary for their courage in history – is making such a possibility dramatically salient and vivid, who are we to be so ignoble as both to deny it and in some sense to subvert it or co-operate with

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 its enemies to subvert it? Because I think that is the unintended consequence of the benign policy of trying to use whatever economic or political leverage we may have to extract political concessions. I think we do have a chance to help Solidarity and what it represents. I think we could help it if it were possible to do so – since again, as I say, the West German bankers may make this entire discussion academic –but if we do have an opportunity to do so and to the extent that we do, I think we can help Solidarity to most effectively help the world, to help our children and our grandchildren, by refusing to use whatever power we have to dampen down the possibility which has now made itself so beautifully and wonderfully manifest, in which so many of us – not, I hasten to say the AFL-CIO or Tom Kahn – have been too base and ignoble to recognize and appreciate. Moderator: Midge Decter instructed me to be flexible in running this meeting and I will inflexibly follow her instructions. I was about to open the floor to questions, but Tom felt he wanted to say a few words to sharpen the issue, so I’ll give the floor to him for a few moments, and then if Norman feels he wants to reply, we shall let him, and then throw it open to questions. Tom Kahn: I really don’t want to sharpen the issue. I want to change it. I assume later on we’ll get a rebuttal or something that’ll take up some of the points that Norman has raised. I wanted to tell you a story and Norman reminded me of it during his remarks. I think some of you know that I went to Rome at the time the Solidarity delegation was in Rome. I met with a distinguished representative of that delegation and we discussed the question of credits and many other questions, and in the course of the discussion he said to me, we are very worried about the election of Ronald Reagan as president, and I thought to myself, oh my, what kind of a leftwinger am I dealing with here. I said, ‘What disturbs you?’ And he said to me, ‘We are worried about the revival of the Kissinger-Sonnenfeld doctrine.’ (Laughter) I was absolutely astounded that he would even know the name of Sonnenfeld. And I must tell you this whole conversation was taking place from Polish to Italian to English through a translator and I said to him, ‘Do you mean by the Sonnenfeld doctrine the notion that Eastern Europe belongs to the Soviet Union, that that relationship is a stabilizing factor in world affairs, and that the United States should do nothing to undermine it?’ And, cunning fellow that he was, he broke into English, ‘You understand me exactly.’ That’s my first story. Secondly, on the point about the exhortations to Solidarity to be more cautious, you couldn’t be more right. There was a disgusting resolution

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate on Friday introduced by Senator Percy, not surprisingly. The language was modified a little bit by Pat Moynihan, I believe, and maybe one or two others. But the essence of the resolution, after a mild warning to the Russians not to intervene in Poland, was to commend the Polish workers in Poland for their great restraint. As if we have any business doing that. Moderator: Why don’t we just take some questions then, or some brief statements if you so wish. There can be statements which can easily be transformed into questions by saying upon the completion of your statement, ‘What do you think of that?’ So why don’t you begin. Jan Novak: I was a member of the Dubcek team and took part in the movement of socialism with a human face. At the very beginning, there were two streams. One stream within this movement put emphasis on socialism, they were the old Stalinists – Dubcek was one of the old Stalinists. The other was the emphasis on the human face, which was a growing majority not only of the intellectuals but also of the population at large. And it was at that time obvious that these two can’t go together, there is no Marxism with human face. So here I would very much endorse what Norman said. I would also agree with him that any help given to the Poles is not economic help given to the Poles. This 26 or 27 billion of dollars is a tremendous amount for a small country like Poland. If it were used for the Polish economy, they would have at least sausages, but they don’t even have sausages today because it went to the Warsaw Pact. It wasn’t used to strengthen the Polish economy and whatever we would give, it would give just to strengthen Moscow. Further, we must know that it is not just the mismanagement of the Polish economy that could be replaced with a better management, it’s a system that has been imposed upon the Poles by the Soviets that is inherently inefficient and whatever help you give, it will remain the most inefficient economy and you can’t save it. Further, we must take into consideration that something like 20 percent of the Polish Gross National Product is being used for the army, for the war effort. Poland doesn’t need an army. It’s not in any danger. Only once was the army used since the Warsaw Pact was created, when it occupied Czechoslovakia. There was no other use for the Polish army but still they have to pay 20 percent of their GNP. As long as these facts do exist, there is no help you could give to the Poles. It could only be help that you would give to the Soviet government. And all this help is given to a country or to an empire which is about to destroy our entire civilization. So this

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 must be one point of departure that I would agree with Norman, and Tom won’t be surprised that I don’t agree with him because we discussed this two days ago. Perhaps, where I slightly disagree with Norman, it’s just a question of emphasis. You see the Soviet Union is a communist and imperialist country. Where should we put the emphasis? Should we put the emphasis on the communist system? Or should we put emphasis on the imperial system? I think we should put great emphasis on the imperial system. The Soviets once made a pact with Hitler. The Soviets made a pact with another German called Kissinger, and there could be pacts with other non- or anti-socialist allies, and they still have conflicts with communist countries like China, and are in conflict with the many communists in Eastern Europe who, for one reason or other, despite all the disappointment, still believe in Marxism or communism but don’t accept Soviet imperialism. What I think is so important, and what puts the whole Polish movement on a far higher level than the movement in Czechoslovakia under Dubcek, is that it is first of all a nationalist movement and that it is very closely tied to a religious movement, and both the religious and nationalist oppression had a long history in Czarist Russia, in Czarist imperialism, and now in Russian imperialism. If you look at the Soviet Union as an imperialist country, then we must be clear about the fact that by being imperialist they are oppressing other nationalities. Not only some 100 million people in Eastern Europe but also another hundred million people or more – 51 percent of the population of the Soviet Union proper – they are all oppressed as nationalities, even the communists. Now, how can we help? Norman saw the possibility that it will disintegrate. How can we contribute to the disintegration? The great danger of the West is that it gave up the principle of self-determination that has been accepted in the Atlantic Charter and even signed by Stalin, and accepted the very imperial concept of ‘spheres of interest.’ If the United States would emphasize and could prove that the Soviets are an imperialist country, we could appeal to the right of self-determination of all nations to mobilize forces which are very obvious, which we see in Poland but which exist all over the Soviet Union with the exception of Russia. So if we would emphasize for instance that the Soviets are an imperialist country and about to invade or Finlandise Europe – Western Europe – then we would be entitled to say to the Western allies of America, either you do realize that the Soviets are your enemy, and go along with us and fight your enemy, at least in economic ways and economic means – not to give any credits or any economic help – or if you want to

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us support the Soviets who endanger your freedom, who occupy part of your territory, as our German friends did, then do it. But we can’t guarantee freedom; you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have at the same time our protection and make business with the East. I don’t know France but I do know Germany. In Germany there are enough forces that would immediately change the power relationship, but they won’t change it as long as we are thinking and speaking in terms of detente or, like Mr. Percy speaks still, of stick and carrot. And once we have carrots, there will competition who will offer the bigger carrot, and the Germans may win this competition. So what I think is of crucial importance is to call a spade a spade, to call the Soviet Union an imperialist country. And even if Poland or for that matter Ukraine or whatever country is not any longer a member of the Soviet empire, even if it remains communist, there is no danger of war, there is no danger of further Soviet expansionism. And we should also see the Polish events as a very important issue in the fatal problem of peace or war. We have to support the resistance of all oppressed nations. That is the duty of America as the leader of the free world, and the free world is lost without this help of America. We must put into the centrepiece of our foreign policy the issue of the self-determination of nations, that’s the weakest link in the Soviet chain, and I think that is the most progressive policy. If we put emphasis only on communism, we may do something which I have seen from the other end, in the period of the Cold War, when the communists – pro-Soviet and anti-Soviet – were seen in one and the same bag. We must see all the differences, all the conflicts. In Poland there are communists, but against the Soviet Union. And that is the most important point. Let’s concentrate on Soviet imperialism, and then America could be again the leader of the free world and I’m sure that quite a number of countries will join America’s leadership. Anne Green (Committee for the Free World): I have a question for Norman. The most important question is how to keep the government in Poland negotiating with an independent institution, because the moment you negotiate with it it’s not totalitarianism anymore. Poland is not a communist country today. It hasn’t been since it recognized Solidarity. The longer that can be kept going – I suspect that you’re right, that the Russians will not allow them to go on forever – the deeper the seeds that are sown outside Poland. Communist Soviet countries sitting down with a mass disciplined popular movement negotiating, well, that’s not communism, and the longer it lasts the more hold it can take on people’s imaginations outside

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Poland. The question is how to keep that process going. The longer is goes on the better for Polish workers and the imagination of the people. Norman Podhoretz: Well, I think that people announced the death of communism in Poland a bit prematurely. It is true that something unprecedented is going on but, so far, the Party has not surrendered its authority, which is at issue as I understand it. I don’t want to get into an argument about whether it has agreed to it or it hasn’t, I think it hasn’t, but even if you’re right, I myself find it impossible to believe that communism is going to be such a pussycat and surrender so easily. It seems to me the minute this movement actually does cross over the line of destroying or truly undermining the authority of the party that either the Party will crack down – and I stress, this doesn’t mean a Soviet invasion, it could be done by internal security forces, it could be done by the Poles themselves, which would make it an internal matter. In any case, the minute that happens, they actually have to crack down, or in effect commit political suicide. I don’t care how long this process goes on, the issue will always have to be faced at some point. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this seems incredible on the face of it that the communist systems, given their historic record, given the doctrine, given the very principle that legitimizes the rule of the communist party, given the domination of the Soviet Union – given all of that, it seems to me impossible to believe that they would permit this kind of easy victory over them or allow themselves to be defeated this easily, and I think they will have to use force. And it seems incredible to believe that a few million or billion dollars from the West is going to buy communism, which, to put it crudely, is what it seems they offer. That’s not your question. But the spread of the imagination . . . I don’t think you need to spread the imagination of freedom. I think the imagination of freedom exists in Eastern Europe. What you need is the concrete example that it is possible to do something. Well, it remains to be seen whether it’s possible to do something. The Polish story is only beginning, it’s not over. And I’m simply predicting that no matter what we do, unless Solidarity stops at a certain point, which it may or may not do, there will be a forcible repression. Because the alternative is political suicide. Unidentified: I disagree with both speakers on the grounds that they both are overly theoretical – logical and persuasive as they might be. The fact of the matter is that there is an enormous debt which is owed by the Polish authorities to the West and the likelihood is overwhelming or at least very very strong, that the West, that is the Western Europeans, the Americans, and the banks are not going

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us to permit a default. The consequences of a default would be very severe indeed for communism and the world financial system. [A default] is very unlikely to occur. Therefore, some aid in some form is going to be provided. The real question we need to be discussing tonight is on what terms. And I think the aid we are referring to is economic aid, we’re not talking about military aid, and not some sort of vague political aid. We’re talking about economics. And the normal way in which that question is put is: should it be conditional or unconditional? And the sort of hardliners, hard-thinkers, the Reaganites, seem to believe there should be very stringent conditions placed upon the Polish authorities, that such aid would only be given if the economic system of Poland is reformed. I find that a convincing, logical, and persuasive position, but I’m afraid even that may be a little too theoretical for me because we have in Poland today not only a political crisis but also an economic crisis. It’s well known that the economy is going down-hill and is deteriorating. In order perhaps to prevent that from precipitating some kind of violence, probably the West should provide aid unconditionally. So I invite your comment on my statement. Norman Podhoretz: My comment, as I said earlier, is that I agree, I think it’s unlikely that the position I favor will be followed. I also think it’s tragic that this is so unlikely, because whatever we do – and I’m not sure who ‘we’ is here, I’m not sure who is speaking for whom in this situation – as I said earlier, to the extent that we do have power, we should use it in a certain way. Whether we have that power or not is a serious question. I doubt that we have very much, but to the extent that we do, and for the sake of understanding what’s at issue, I think we should not use it in a way that consolidates the communist rule over Poland. Now that may be impossible, in which case we have been put into a really diabolical dilemma, in that we are being forced by linkage, if you like, in this case the financial links, to bail out both the economic crisis and the political crisis, which means that we are willy-nilly a party to something like the Sonnenfeld doctrine, which seems to me monstrous. If we are not free to at least choose not to do that, then we have become the collaborators in the spread of totalitarianism. That’s my comment. Tom Kahn: I agree that Norman’s position is probably not going to prevail. That’s why I offer him to fall back on my position. It’s also not likely to prevail, but if it should it would be better than what is likely to prevail if we are both ineffective in persuading those over whom we have no control that we are right.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Piotr Naimski (Member of KOR, Committee in Defense of Workers): Excuse me for my English, I came from Poland two weeks ago. First, I want to add a few words to your question. I think that Poland is still a communist country. But we have to remember what [Polish Communist Party Secretary] Kania said in August, August 18, in Gdansk. He said that it’s a counterrevolution, but we should fight with it without violence. I hope that it is a revolution in Poland, and I hope that it will go by, as we named it, revolution by evolution, also without violence. I hope it would be possible. And another thing. In Poland, we have little or nothing to choose. That’s my view, not Solidarity’s, not KOR’s, but I think we have the only way. This is the way ahead. We have to go on. As a nation, not as a communist country but as a nation, we have about 30 billion dollars in debt; this debt is our debt, not the communist government of Poland’s, and I think that we should pay it. But we will be able to pay it only when the country is under our control. And I agree with these people who say that it is a mistake to give money to communist authorities in Poland. I think that Poland has to ask for aid, but it must be under the control of Solidarity, because Solidarity is our chance. It isn’t only a workers’ movement. One can say that Solidarity is a state in a state. Of course, it is also a trade union, but there are many areas in social life which are governed now by Solidarity – Solidarity as an organized people, an organized nation, not just a trade union. There exists up to now only one viable project, the project for Poland. So generally, Poland should ask Western countries for 10 years’ moratorium for debts. And ask for new credits for economical reforms, or something like that, but under the control of Solidarity, too. It’s a project of Professor Stefan Kurowski. (an economist advising Solidarity – Eds.) And I think it’s a kind of an answer to your speech. Jeff Ballinger (union organizer): I would like to thank both of you for drawing out the question so well. I would only like to say that we missed one very important point, the newspapers also missed it, except for the Washington Post on Saturday, which reported that President Reagan has now singled out the Polish authorities as well as the Soviet Union for their actions in the future as regards Solidarity, and I think we should really applaud this step, because Solzhenitsyn has been pleading with the Western leaders for years to get involved in the internal affairs of other countries, and I think this is implicitly, and he’s demonstrated the desire on his part to scrutinize the affairs of Polish government.

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us Moderator: Why don’t we take about 2 more questions and then have a summation of both speakers. Bernard Traub: I have the uneasy feeling that we have been concentrating on a secondary and avoiding the central question. I think we agree on the question that’s been debated, whether we should give credit, because it all depends on the conditions. If Solidarity continues to remain independent and to request aid under appropriate conditions, I think everybody would be in favor of it. If the Polish authorities requested aid in order to repress Solidarity I don’t think anyone here would be in favor of it. What concerns me is the unspoken issue. I think Mr. Podhoretz is correct that an independent trade union is totally incompatible with Leninism, with the communist system. And we have to confront the possibility which is not inevitable but certainly likely, that the Russians will move, that at a certain point the conflict will take place. And Polish authorities I don’t think would be able to cope with this situation, because it’s just beyond them – the Russians would be drawn in. And now the question is: what is the West prepared to do? You have to think about that. It’s useful to think about that because it helps clarify our notions about policy in the immediate. But what is the West prepared to do? I’d like to hear our two speakers on this. What is the West prepared to do? What alternatives are available to the West? What could possibly be done in 1981 that could not be done or was not done in 1956? Is it simply going to be neutrality, moral outrage? Recognition of the rebellion? Military? There must be a range of policies that we’d better start thinking about now even with respect to the second question. And someone before mentioned that they did not know the situation in France, it’s interesting that Mitterrand, the socialist candidate, has taken a much harder line on these issues than Giscard: the recognition of the Afghan rebels, denouncing the Russians for their Polish policy, There might be a constituency out there that’s ready for some kind of leadership, but we’d better decide now what the nature of that leadership is going to be or be taken by surprise when the event occurs. Moderator: We have three hands up. Irene. Irena Lasota (Committee in Support of Solidarity): I just want to make a point. I do agree with Tom’s proposal and for one more reason. On the one hand we have the Western countries, the Western European countries, saying to the Soviets that, more or less whatever you do, whether you invade or you don’t invade, detente is going to continue. And you have the American stance, which is whatever you do or don’t do, we are not going to have detente anyhow. I think that this is in a

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 way blocking the situation. The proposition of credits with conditions seems to be appealing at least from the point of view of giving a choice, of giving the carrot. And it’s not really a carrot, because I think there is one thing lacking in Tom’s presentation, since if he had read out at least part of the 21 points of the Gdansk Agreement, then part of the discussion would be much different because these are not 21 points dealing with minor issues, but dealing with the most major issues that I think Mr. Podhoretz would like to see as a way of undermining of the regime by having a revolution. Those points among others include, at least implicitly, the sharing and the distribution of the economy. Eric Chenoweth: It seems to me that Anne Green is right, that the clear victory of the Polish workers is that it has challenged the totalitarian control of the communist party and it has so effectively challenged it that totalitarianism as such really doesn’t exist in Poland right now. It could be brought in very quickly by the Soviet Union again, but right now it doesn’t exist, since the communist party doesn’t have total control over the industrial workforce, on which totalitarianism depends. Mr. Podhoretz’s argument assumes that the Polish experiment is doomed to failure and that the Soviet Union will invade, but the obvious fact is that Solidarity is so strong, its position is so strong, that the Soviet Union fears so far to invade Poland to crush it. And it seems to me that our hopes should rest on the hope that the Soviet Union won’t invade, that Solidarity can continue, that the Polish experiment continues to evolve. If we assume that the Soviet Union is going to invade, and that by sacrificing Poland we’re enhancing the contradictions within the Soviet Union itself, then you’ve given up one of the essential struggles against totalitarianism, so the question seems to me should be how to prolong Solidarity’s existence. Al Glotzer (former aide to Leon Trotsky and Max Shachtman): This is a very difficult discussion. It’s a very hard choice here of what to do in certain circumstances. When the Polish events broke out, I tended to have the view that Podhoretz has presented, that the Russians could not possibly permit the movement in Poland to develop without an invasion and a complete suppression of Solidarity. Yet it hasn’t occurred as the weeks and months have gone by. The reason that led me to believe this not only theoretically but also practically is that Solidarity was the first massive challenge to the nature of the Leninist state. It challenged the one party regime, which is something the party could not tolerate. My own political experience led me to believe that the Russians could not let this go on. Yet it goes on. And every

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us week we expect the Russian invasion and it doesn’t come. It doesn’t mean it won’t come. I still find it hard to believe that they haven’t sent the troops in. It raises the question: what forced the Solidarity movement into existence in the first place and what prevents the Russians from doing what they absolutely want to do – since there is no doubt in my mind that the Soviet Party leadership in the Kremlin wants to go into Poland and completely destroy the whole movement? It’s not really Afghanistan, in which the Russians are deeply involved, but that in both Poland and the Soviet Union the economic conditions are so severe that it produced the Solidarity movement in Poland and makes the Russians hesitate. Sixty years after the Revolution, the country is in a deep economic crisis; its agriculture is in a permanent crisis. The only sense of strength, the only power, is its vast military force on which its whole economy is concentrated. I would think therefore that the Solidarity movement must have a tremendous impact on the whole Eastern bloc. I find it hard to believe that it hasn’t had some effect. I don’t believe it necessarily has to win the struggle. I view it as the beginning of the upsurge in the Eastern bloc, as the sowing of seeds that will bring similar revolts in the communist bloc. So, what do you do in respect to such a movement from the outside looking in to the communist bloc? You can’t decide now. You have to leave your options open, whether to give them economic aid or not to give them economic aid. You have to judge it tactically as to what is most important for keeping this movement alive as long as possible and to prevent the intervention of the Soviet army. Moderator: The first person to summarize – this actually violates the rules of debate, but since this is not a debate, I’ll simply call on Tom Kahn. Tom Kahn: I will try to answer some of the questions that were directed to me in the context of responding to some of the things that Norman said. Two sentences in Norman’s remarks stuck in my mind, because they seemed to be if not entirely contradictory then in a state of tension. One was that the Soviets will not tolerate this sort of thing, the other that there are signs of breakup in the Soviet empire. Now, those two things may not be in entirely logical contradiction, but there is a tension in at least the feeling that they convey. On the one hand the Soviets can exercise all their options to crush the movement in Poland; on the other hand they

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 cannot easily withstand the breakup of their empire. I think that somewhere in that contradiction may lie a glimmer of the answer to our problem. Now, Norman is right, of course, that we did not – in spite the claim of Fortune magazine – instigate the events in Poland. They were spontaneous. The question then is, what is the character of that spontaneous rebellion in Poland and what differentiates it from all the previous uprisings and rebellions which have occurred in the communist world, both those we know of and those we are probably doomed never to know about? And here I want to repeat some of the things that Al Glotzer said. It seems to me that the distinctive character of the Polish development is that here is a working class movement that has challenged the monopoly power of the Communist Party. And what are the implications of that fact? We keep saying over and over that’s the character of it, but do we really understand the implications or do we circumscribe the implications by references to other events and other ideas that we have which grew out of other events? For example, the quotation from our friend Revel, de-Sovietisation does not mean democratization. That is true. That has been true. That was true in the case of Yugoslavia. That was true in the case of China. That was true in the case of Czechoslovakia. That was true in the case of Hungary. It was true where de-Sovietisation did take place and where efforts at deSovietisation took place but did not succeed. In no case did democratization result. It seems to me, however, that there is a fundamental difference between what is going on in Poland now and what has gone on in all these places. In the case of Yugoslavia and China, you had top down rebellions against Soviet domination. You had national revolutions if you will, in fact not revolutions, but rebellions, against the domination of the Soviet Union in the world communist movement. There was no popular uprising among the Chinese people that I know of, that said, ‘Let us become independent of Stalin and instead go our own road.’ I don’t recall any such popular rebellion in Yugoslavia that said, ‘Let us de-Sovietise ourselves.’ And in Czechoslovakia and Hungary, the break with the Soviet Union, the attempted break with the Soviet Union, was also to a large extent from the top down. That is to say, a national communist party sought to separate itself in one respect or another from the Soviet Communist Party. The entire revolt in Czechoslovakia was led by the communist party which wanted to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact, wanted socialism with a human face, what have you. In Hungary, there was of course popular participation with what happened when the Soviet tanks rolled in, but I would suggest, I could be wrong on this, others of you who have a better memory may remember, the Hungarian revolt almost had the character of a mob

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us action in the streets. In fact, the Communist Party in the United States was able to convince tons of people on the left, a far larger number than are sympathetic to the Soviet Union now in the case of Poland, that the Hungarian uprising was in fact fascist and counter-revolutionary, undertaken by a mob, an unstructured mob. In Poland you have something entirely different, you do not have a mob that takes to the streets but workers who take to the factories, conduct sit-ins, and actually produce a movement, an institution, an organizational force, which has not existed in any of the other countries that we have talked about and which has no precedent that I know of in the history of the communist world since 1917. Now the question is whether the attempts by national communist parties to break with the Soviets provide a test for the present, that is countries where there was no sustained working class organization. In Poland there is a split now occurring in the communist party, but that split was caused by Solidarity. It was not a case of Solidarity being created by a split in the communist party. This seems to me to offer an entirely new model. Now, will the Soviets tolerate it? Well, not if they can help it. Al is quite right; they want very much to go in and clean up the whole situation. But the Soviets do not exercise their options in a vacuum any more than we do. I happen to think that there are contradictions in capitalism. There is no necessity to resolve overnight those contradictions. Some of them drag on for generations and generations. And they may never be resolved. Why do we assume that the Soviet Union has the power, no matter what the possible consequences, to resolve by force or violence overnight, a major contradiction which has arisen in the communist system? Are they ready to assume the Polish debt and the economic problems of Poland? Maybe. If they invade, how do they get the workers to go back to work? That problem did not exist in Czechoslovakia, it did not exist in Hungary, it didn’t exist in China, it didn’t exist in Yugoslavia. Here you have an organized working class movement with a membership that’s three times that of the Party. And which represents a good chunk of the Party. And it’s one thing to invade a country, it’s another thing to get people to go to work, unless you want to turn the country into one vast labor camp, which is not as easy as it sounds. Those are two possible deterrents. And the third is if it is possible for the Western world to put together a package of negative pressures to make the Soviets decide that it will cost them more to exercise that option of resolving this contradiction of communism than it would to let the thing drag out a little bit longer, and to try other tactics, like political subversion of Solidarity, dividing the union, buying off people, and creating all kinds of other political trouble.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Now that gets to the question that was raised by the gentleman in the back – what is the West prepared to do? I am convinced that we could put together, if we had the will, a package that is so unattractive to them, a package of consequences should they invade Poland, that they might think it is not a wise thing to do. And that package could range from the complete cutting off of all trade credits to the whole Eastern bloc, to political pressures, and to military action, about which I do not mean military action in Poland. There are other places in the world where military action could be usefully employed. One could take a new look at Cuba, one could look at Afghanistan again, one could look at Angola again. There are various parts of the world where the Russians could be faced with some problems that they would rather not have at this point. Now will the West do this? Does this will exist in this country, does it exist in Europe? I don’t know. But I want to try to get away from the mechanical application of certain theories, including theories which I believed for a long time. It’s true, we all know it as a matter of catechism, that independent trade unionism is incompatible with Leninism and vice versa. But that’s a theory and an idea, and theories sometimes get modified as a result of historical developments. And what is going on now in Poland could conceivably lead to some brand new social formations of a kind that we have never seen before in the world. It reminds me of the old debate about whether the Soviet Union was socialist or not, and many people said, well it has to be socialist because it’s obviously not capitalist, and we can only have either capitalism or socialism unless we’re going back to feudalism. Of course, what we ended up with was a brand new type of society unlike anything predicted by anybody’s theories. All the great thinkers never predicted it. We might conceivably see the creation of a brand new social formation. Not completely to the liking of the people in this room, not totally Western in its democratic values, but something uniquely Polish, that might happen. I don’t think it is useful to talk about socialism with a human face or socialism without a human face. Or whether it’s possible to have a human face put on socialism or on communism. That, with all due respect to whoever brought it up, is the language of manifesto writers [break in tape]. . . .[What we have here that is different is that] it is a movement. What has appeared in Poland does not exist in the Soviet Union. Bukovsky never had [a movement]. Solzhenitsyn never had one. Klebanov doesn’t have one. Borisov doesn’t have one. But in Poland an actual movement has developed. And I believe that movements can sometimes develop a dynamic of their own, leading to places unforeseen by all of our theories.

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us Movements can redefine social and economic relationships in ways that cannot be predicted. When a movement arises as opposed to a new set of ideas or a manifesto, there can be a brand new chemistry leading to things that we can’t today imagine. I am not saying I know for sure that this is going to happen. I am not even saying that the odds are it’s going to happen. I just think that we should leave our minds open to the possibility that there could be a result in Poland that confounds everybody’s expectations. The rebellion in Poland is not inchoate – it has a voice, it has a structure, it can define its own interests and its own demands. It has done so. And at least at the AFL-CIO we are going to accept their definition of their needs, of their limits, and of their demands. That is where we come down on the side of credits. I want to facilitate the breakup of the Soviet empire and that may mean use of carrots and sticks. Now that’s not to be confused with the Brzezinski notion of swinging from cooperative modes into competitive modes, all designed to maintain pretty much the status quo or to limit Soviet encroachments on the status quo. I am for the use of carrots and sticks in ways that are aimed at the dissolution of the Soviet empire, if not right away then down the road. The credits could be a useful carrot. I am not an expert on international finance – I’m not an expert on my own personal finances. And I’m not exactly sure what the mechanics are. I know there are people working on this. Some people at the World Without War Council who have contacts with bankers of all people are trying to put together a package that would include the AFL-CIO’s insistence on the Polish government’s adherence to the 21 Points, plus some other complicated things about rescheduling and moratoriums and all that kind of stuff that I don’t understand. But I don’t for the life of me understand why it should impossible for the financial community to say: We shall reschedule your debts in the following way provided that you live up to the 21 Points because that would bring stability to your country – and we’re interested in stability as investors – and if you proceed to violate those points and demonstrate instability, your debt schedule goes back to where it was before we negotiated this deal. There may be some deep structural obstacles to this common sense approach, but I can’t for the life of me discern what they would be. Norman Podhoretz: [break in tape. . .] I think the answer is very simple. The Soviet Union would obviously rather not do this job if the cup can be passed from its lips. And they are giving the Polish authorities every chance to settle the matter internally. There are precedents for this policy – one of them as a matter of fact

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 is Afghanistan. They only invaded Afghanistan after their own people, their own puppets, proved unable to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. I think something similar happened before the invasion in Czechoslovakia. So it is within the historic pattern of Soviet relations to their colonies that they will give the local authorities the chance to take care of the problem of challenge to authority or a border before Soviet troops themselves have to move. That is an extreme measure which the Soviet Union understandably prefers not to take if it can get away with not taking it. Now there’s a funny confusion in this discussion which relates exactly to the question of the Soviet invasion, what exactly can we do to prevent one and what we should do if there is one. We all believe, I think, that the breakup of the Soviet empire would be desirable, but Tom very passionately and eloquently speaks of the unpredictable consequences of a movement in history and the possibility of a new kind of social formation coming into being. I think he’s right. Where I disagree with him is in his – again, to me incredible – suggestion that all this is likely to happen without bloodshed, without force, without armed struggle. There is no precedent in history, it seems to me, for such a belief, there’s no warrant for such a belief. This is where the contradiction you think exists between my two statements can be if not resolved at least understood. I said that the Soviet Union cannot tolerate what Solidarity represents. I also said that we might be witnessing the beginning of the breakup of the Soviet empire. Now, the hidden term in that analysis is precisely the possibility of a Soviet invasion. I think there will be a Soviet invasion if the Soviet Union feels that the Polish Communist Party is unable to restore or maintain what it calls order. I don’t think there’s any question that there will be an invasion if that judgment should be reached. Whatever the case, there is no necessary deadline here, and in fact it’s in the interest of the Soviet Union to give them a chance, because they know, as we do or should, that the difference between Poland in 1981, Hungary ‘56, and Czechoslovakia ‘68 is precisely that because there is a movement you have an unpredictable situation. And it is by no means clear what the consequences of a Soviet invasion would be. I don’t predict that the Ukrainians will rise up and stage a rebellion of their own, but it doesn’t seem to me inconceivable today, as it would have been in ‘56 or ‘68. The Soviet Union doesn’t know what will happen if it sends troops into Poland. It doesn’t know what will happen in Poland and it doesn’t know what will happen in its own rear. Neither do we. And out of such a horrible military conflict or force, we might indeed see the break up of the Soviet empire. I don’t know, but seems to

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us me to be a possibility one has to imagine. I don’t take responsibility for it one way or the other. I don’t think any of us can do very much to influence that particular development one way or the other, and we delude ourselves if we think can. The question of whether this movement is doomed to failure has been raised, and I think again I have not suggested that this movement is doomed to failure. On the contrary, I have suggested that it may be the beginning of the end for the Soviet empire, but realistically speaking I find it impossible to believe that such a thing could happen without, well, without war of some kind, without resort to force. What do we do if there is a Soviet invasion? Well, here Tom and I agree entirely, although the package he suggests is posed as a threat or a deterrent to a Soviet invasion. I myself would certainly resort to it in response to a Soviet invasion. In fact, I would like to resort to it even if there isn’t a Soviet invasion. I would like to see us do to the Soviet Union what the Soviet Union has done to us in the past. When the Soviet Union was much weaker than the United States militarily, it made a great deal of trouble for the United States in Vietnam, in Latin America, in Cuba. They did all kinds of things that were able to damage us very seriously from a position of military inferiority. Now that the situation is of military parity and probably net Soviet superiority, I think we ought to return the favor. We indeed ought to be arming the Afghan freedom fighters, we indeed ought to be helping Savimbi in Angola, we indeed ought to be taking another look at Nicaragua, and I see the policy I am recommending in relation to Poland as part of precisely such a strategy. It is a strategy that from our point of view involves minimal risk of direct confrontation with the Soviet Union. There is nothing in such a strategy that puts us in a position of a head to head confrontation in a Cuban missile crisis kind of thing. Sending arms to the Afghans doesn’t involve us in a direct military confrontation, neither does helping Savimbi, neither does withholding credits from the Polish authorities. Neither does taking a strong stand on El Salvador, which I myself support very enthusiastically and would go even further than the Reagan administration has gone. So that not merely as a deterrent and not merely in response to a Soviet invasion but as a matter of sound policy I would recommend precisely such a package. Let me end on a gloomy note. [laughter] Well, after spreading all this light and cheer it is only proper I end on a gloomy note. I said before that I think the consequences of a Soviet invasion are unpredictable for the Soviet Union, but I think we have to recognize that they are highly unpredictable for the West as well. Undoubtedly, there would be an enormous uproar and resolutions would be

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 passed and pious expressions of outrage would be nauseatingly elicited from the tongues of people who have no right to express them. But I can well imagine that a Soviet invasion of Poland, far from galvanizing resistance to the Soviet Union, particularly in Europe, might simply fragment certain people and certain countries half to death. And that must play a part in the calculations of the Soviet Union. That is to say, it might be from their point of view a good idea and not a bad idea. I could well imagine the Germans collapsing entirely rather than coming to their senses, at least what I would regard as their senses. I could imagine a reversal of the rather astonishing and totally unpredictable anti-Soviet sentiment in France. I could imagine that turning around again in the face of a really brutal Soviet move against Poland. I can see neutralists and Finlandising forces activated and energized after the first wave of pious expressions of outrage. Frankly, I don’t think that would happen in the United States, however. I rather suspect that the sleeping giant who has been bestirring himself in this country might indeed finally awaken in response to a Soviet invasion of Poland, and we might find ourselves in a new crisis with our NATO allies who would not only not support the kinds of measures that we, almost all of us here would agree on, but might rather violently oppose them. That’s the prospect. For all I know we ourselves might be frightened by the brutal Soviet suppression in Poland, but I don’t think so. I think there are healthier forces at work in this country these days and I don’t think this country is quite ready to lie down and die. So what we can hope for it, seems to me, is that whatever happens, whether the Soviets invade – well, let me tell you, let me be frank. It’s been pretty difficult to be in a position of seeming to advocate something like the invasion of a country and I do not wish to be understood as trying to say that. I’m merely saying as a matter of prediction – I am predicting absolutely that force will be used against Solidarity and I don’t think it will come necessarily from Soviet troops. It might come internally. I do not believe that Solidarity will be committed to establish a democratic regime in Poland without a fight. If there is a fight, I suppose Solidarity might win it, that’s another possibility. We just don’t know. I don’t think we do ourselves any service by cultivating illusions of winning this Titanic historic struggle on the cheap with a few bucks from the bankers. I’ll answer your question about the bankers. I can’t balance my chequebook either, but I understand international banking. The bankers do not agree with either the AFL-CIO or the Gdansk Agreements about how to establish an economy on a firm and solvent footing. You may think they should, and others may think that it’s

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Kahn & Podhoretz | On Solidarność and Us a very nice thing for stability. But they don’t buy that stuff. They do not believe that this is a good way to create a productive economy. That is not their economic theory and it is not their social theory. And there is no point in convincing yourself that you are going to convert them to the economics of Leon Keyserling. Not nowadays for sure. I don’t see that as a realistic possibility at all. And I don’t see that we do ourselves any service by cultivating such illusions. It’s possible that our power in this situation is so limited as to be negligible and that mostly what we are is impotent bystanders and observers from the sidelines. And if that is the case, which I think it is largely in the situation, the least we can do is report truthfully to ourselves what it is we’re watching and what is likely to happen as a result. Moderator: Well on that silver note, I’d like to thank both the LID and the Committee for the Free World for convening this discussion tonight and express the thanks of everyone here to Tom Kahn and Norman Podhoretz for doing such a good job in clarifying these questions.

Tom Kahn (1938-1992) was assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO from 197286 and, from 1986-92, director of its International Affairs Department. Prior to joining the AFL-CIO he was director of the League for Industrial Democracy and an assistant to Bayard Rustin. In 1971-72, he was chief speechwriter for Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson.

Norman Podhoretz is editor-at-large of Commentary Magazine and was its editorin-chief for almost three decades. He is author of numerous books (most recently World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism) and is considered one of the fathers of the neoconservative movement.

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Jihad and Jew-Hatred: An Interview with Matthias Küntzel Matthias Küntzel is a political scientist based in Hamburg, Germany. From 1984 to 1988 he was a senior advisor to the Federal Parliamentary Fraction of Germany’s Green Party and is the author of Bonn and the Bomb: German Politics and the Nuclear Option (Pluto 1995). Since 2004, he has been a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His latest book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 (Telos Press, 2007), traces the impact of European fascism on the Arab and Islamic world. It was awarded the London Book Festival’s annual grand prize for ‘books worthy of greater attention from the international publishing community’ and First Prize Gold Medal in the Religion category in the prestigious Independent Publisher Book Awards. His writings in English are available online. The interview took place in Hamburg on May 7, 2008. Alan Johnson: Can I begin by asking you what have been the most important personal and intellectual influences that led you to write Jihad and Jew-Hatred? Matthias Küntzel: Born in 1955, I was politicised in the aftermath of the ‘68er’era. One of the events that particularly affected me was the Palestinian terrorist attack on the Munich Olympics in 1972. It forced me to look for an explanation – how could this kind of massacre happen? As a young idealist, I wanted to believe in the good in people, which meant there could be only one possible answer: such terrorism was indeed appalling, but it had social roots, in this case in the Middle East conflict. So, as a young leftist, I took much the same attitude to Arafat and the PLO as the left I now oppose does to Hamas and Hezbollah, in the naïve belief that mass movements are intrinsically progressive, so that terrorism can only be a response to oppression. Back then I and my friends refused to take on board the reality of Auschwitz and National Socialism at either the personal or intellectual levels. The first event which began to slightly change my perception was the Bitburg affair of 1984. The US president Ronald Reagan and the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl led a ceremony in honour of German soldiers at Bitburg cemetery, including at the gravestones of SS soldiers. I was at that time a senior advisor to the German Green Party’s parliamentary fraction in Bonn and was shocked by the

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel antisemitic comments in major German papers against those Jewish organizations which vehemently criticised the event. The reaction of the German left was also revealing. On the very same day as Jews came from all over Europe to demonstrate at Bitburg against this insult, the West German left preferred to participate in an anti-American demonstration at Bonn. In the aftermath of this experience a Jewish intellectual in America, Moishe Postone, wrote an angry ‘Letter to the West German Left.’ Postone had studied in Frankfurt and had many friends there. He told us that ‘there are actually only two choices: an ultimate reconciliation with the German past, or a consistent break with it’ and that ‘the German Left that considers itself opposed to the existing order, in a sense replicates that order by being incapable of dealing with the past.’ This letter, which I translated and published for the first time at the start of the 1990s, convinced me and had a strong influence on me. Postone was, of course, right. We were completely incapable of providing an even halfway adequate response to the continuing impact of the crimes against the Jews. Here’s an example from my own life: as a left-wing German you do not normally meet Jewish people. But when I was in New York City in 1983 I started to chat to a young woman on a bus. I said ‘I’m from Germany.’ She said ‘I am Jewish.’ This sentence must have struck me like a blow. The only thing I could find to say after a rather long silence was to ask her why Israel dealt so harshly with the Palestinians. It was years before I realised what must have been taking place within me at that instant. When she said ‘I am Jewish’ I felt I had to defend myself. And in defending myself, my subconscious was that of an antisemite, connecting this young American woman with a kind of Jewish conspiracy, as if she was responsible for everything Israel was doing. Everything happened in my mind without reflection of course, it was spontaneous. Jewish people to whom I told this little story always agreed that this happens to them quite often, especially with German left-wingers. The second event was the unification of Germany. This compelled us to rethink our whole political approach. Until that time we had tried to strengthen the left-wing of every social movement. But now we faced a kind of nationalist and sometimes even racist mass movement that we could not influence ‘from the left,’ but only reject. When Germany won the European Football Championships in the same year as unification, in 1990, well, it was not a lovely night for foreign people in

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Hamburg. This kind of spontaneous and overloaded nationalism was something frightening. On the one hand, this experience sparked a renewed interest in critical theory and accelerated the abandonment of collectivist ideologies, while on the other it stimulated a more intensive engagement with the German past. While the mainstream German left continued to fight mainly the United States and ‘the West’ we tried to say ‘well, let’s look at German history first and worry about the elements of continuity.’ This was the beginning of a movement that would later be called ‘the anti-German Left.’ This term was provocative enough to spark a necessary debate. But otherwise this term is misleading. After all, the anti-Semites in Poland and the Czech Republic call themselves ‘anti-German.’ The emergence of this current, however, is the reason that today there is a more developed debate about antiSemitism within the German left than within the left of other countries in Europe. A third important watershed for me and my friends was Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, in 1996. This book, we felt, provided a big chance, after unification, to really deal with the history of the Holocaust and do what the West German left had never done, with all its talk of ‘well, it was about capitalism and the ruling class,’ and ‘the masses were not so bad.’ We dealt critically with Goldhagen but we considered his book at the same time to be a kind of treasure trove: You could open it and find a lot of most important discoveries. For example, his discussion of the German conception of ‘work,’ which is quite different to the British conception of work as laid down in Richard Biernacki’s The Fabrication of Labour of 1995. Thus, with Goldhagen’s help, we began to understand the antisemitic meanings of the term ‘German work’ versus ‘Jewish’ non-work. But the German left ignored Goldhagen’s book or, even worse, denounced it. My friends and I asked why this was and so we wrote a book of our own, Goldhagen and the German Left. Here we offer two main explanations for this failure of the left. First, there is the personal and psychological connection of Germans to the Nazi perpetrators and bystanders – to our own ancestors, to our fathers and grandfathers and to our mothers and Grandmas – which I already mentioned. Second, German emigrants during the Forties tended to say ‘well, the German people are OK and only Hitler and his clique is bad.’ During those years, only a tiny minority of exiled

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel communists and socialists – such as the ‘Fight for Freedom’ group in the UK – spoke out and told the truth: that German masses had also been infected by Nazi ideology. These German emigrants’ estimation was correct. They nevertheless found themselves thrown out of the trade unions and the Social Democrat and Communist parties and denounced as ‘Vansittardists.’ After 1945 this tendency was forgotten. Instead, those delusionists who pretended that the German masses were always progressive went on to form the left in Germany after 1945. This 1996 book of ours was the first big break with the German left. Then 9/11 happened. The little group which had produced Goldhagen and the German Left met that very day, by accident. At this meeting it was clear to us that this attack had an antisemitic connotation. There was the symbolism of New York as a so-called centre of Jewry and of modernity and the wave of suicide attacks in Israel during that summer. On 9/12 I began my research for the book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11.

Part 1: Islamism and Nazism: discussing Jihad and Jew-Hatred Alan Johnson: Let’s talk about that book. What is its central thesis? Matthias Küntzel: The basic argument is that Islamism is a modern movement which came into being as a reaction to the spread of modernity within parts of the Muslim world and a revolutionary movement with anti-Semitism as one of the central features of its ideology. During the Thirties and Forties, Islamist antimodernism was poisoned by the Nazi antisemitic mind-set. Today it provides a kind of fascist alternative to capitalism. It is therefore a tragedy that so many on the left who are supposed to be anti-fascist show sympathy for or even approval of this kind of Islamist movement. Alan Johnson: You have written that ‘the separation from and hatred of the Jews began of course with Mohammad’s activities in Medina and is a constitutive element of Islam.’ But in your view modern Islamist anti-Semitism is radically different from what you see as the anti-Judaism of the foundational texts of Islam – the Koran and Hadith. I was struck by one phrase of yours, which I’d like you to unpack for the reader: ‘Mediaeval Jew-hatred considered everything Jewish to be evil. Modern anti-Semitism, on the other hand, deems all “evil” to be Jewish.’ What do you mean?

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Matthias Küntzel: In his book of 1971 The Event of the Qur’an: Islam in its Scripture, Kenneth Cragg observed that the early Muslim archetypes of the Jews were ‘the most abiding and massive example of an identity discovered out of an antipathy.’ Hence Islam’s most important self-formulation emerged by virtue of the Jews’ very resistance to Muhammad’s revelation. That is why the Koran contains so many anti-Jewish diatribes. There are also a few pro-Jewish verses there. The early Meccan verses are pro-Jewish. The later Medinan verses are aggressively against Jews. The picture of the Jew in Islam, however, is different to the picture of a Jew in Christianity. The founding myth of Christianity is that the Jews were so powerful that they were able to kill God’s only son. In Islam the Prophet kills the Jews rather than the Jews killing the Prophet. So in Islam Jews were denounced and downgraded and ridiculed. This was the main feature of Koranic anti-Judaism. Modern anti-Semitism, by contrast, tried to give a simple explanation of the contradictions in the world. It identifies capitalism, modernism and democracy – all understood as degenerate, anti-human and sacrilegious – with Jewish influence. This is the very topic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – an identification of Jewish influence with modernity. Equality, women’s rights, the party system and disputes between parties – all of this degeneracy is associated with the Jews, and interpreted as a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. In the one case you downgrade Jews: every Jew is evil. You subject them to dhimmitude and act as their masters. In the other case, if you believe that Jews are the root cause of all the wars and contradictions of modernity, then all evil is Jewish. And if all evil is Jewish then the Jews must be killed to save the world. It is in my opinion vitally important to see this difference. Alan Johnson: You point out that in Egypt in 1925 ‘the Jews were an accepted and protected part of public life’ with members of parliament, employed at the Royal Palace and with important positions in economics and politics.’ Yet ‘within a quarter of a century that was all gone.’ You explain this profound caesura in the Jewish experience in the Middle East by looking at the period 1925-45, when an intimate relationship developed between European totalitarian ideologies and movements, specifically Nazism, and a rising modern Islamism in the Middle East, in Egypt in particular, in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood. What was the Muslim Brotherhood, why did it emerge, and what did it stand for?

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel Matthias Küntzel: The Muslim Brotherhood was created in 1928 and became the very first revolutionary movement of Islam rooted in the cities. It rejected the quietism of the Wahhabites, who didn’t want to see any Europeans, let alone confront them. The Muslim Brotherhood shared some ideological features with the Wahhabites. Both were ‘Salafists’ wishing to ‘return’ to the ways of Muhammad and the companions. But the differences are important. The Muslim Brotherhood wanted to change the world by interpreting Jihad in a way which had been almost absent from Islamic education before their foundation: to fight a holy struggle against the West immediately. You can’t disconnect the appearance of the Muslim Brotherhood from Fascism and National Socialism, which emerged at the same time. All these movements were in some way or other connected to the crises in the aftermath of the First World War, and to the general dissatisfaction with modern times. Each of these movements opposed modernity in its own way of course, but each deployed modern means of propaganda allied to a secret apparatus and terror. I nevertheless avoid the term ‘Islamofascism’ because it is not exact enough. It might have some use as an agitational slogan, but if I want to be precise I have to say their characteristics are not identical. Fascism and National Socialism were based on European developments, and were reactions to, indeed rejections of, the French Revolution. In contrast only a very thin cover of modernity existed in Egypt. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood was based on ancient interpretations of life – consider the subjugation of women in Islamism. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology is a modern declaration of war mixed with the archaic hallmarks of a desert religion. You won’t find this type of archaic subjugation of women in European totalitarianism. And, at the same time, Islamism is not influenced by social Darwinism as Nazism was. The Islamists hate Darwin! They say Darwin was a Jew who tried to overcome the holy scriptures. That is why they are not biological racists like the Nazis. They feel no need to eradicate every drop of ‘Jewish blood.’ In the book I try to differentiate between National Socialism and Islamism and between the racist type of anti-Semitism of the Nazis which sought the death of every Jewish baby, and the Jew-Hatred of the Muslim Brotherhood. Alan Johnson: How important is anti-sensualism and fear of the woman to Islamism? You have written:

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 At the forefront of the Brotherhood’s efforts lay the struggle against all the sensual and ‘materialistic’ temptations of the capitalist and communist world. At the tender age of 13, the pubescent al-Banna had founded a ‘Society for the Prevention of the Forbidden’ [8] and this is in essence what the Brothers were and are – a community of male zealots, whose primary concern is to prevent all the sensual and sexual sins forbidden according to their interpretation of the Koran. Their signature was most clearly apparent when they periodically reduced their local night clubs, brothels and cinemas – constantly identified with Jewish influence – to ashes. These are not just historical questions. When UK terrorists were secretly recorded by MI5 discussing the bombing of the biggest nightclub in central London in 2004, the agents heard Jawad Akbar say that ‘no one can even turn round and say, “Oh, they were innocent”’ because the dead, in his view, would be just ‘slags dancing around.’ What’s going on with Islamism and desire and the body, and is this a central or a peripheral question, in your view? Matthias Küntzel: I think it’s a central aspect. It’s very hard to analyse Islamism without resorting to sexual psychology. I talk in my book about the inability of the Muslim Brotherhood to accept ‘the Other’ or ‘Otherness.’ And this refusal always begins with the relationship between men and women. If you do not properly subjugate your wife and women you can’t be an Islamist, because in that case you would be accepting the other as an equal. And this is seen as being against the Koran and the holy scriptures. The Charter of Hamas is most interesting when it comes to the role of women. They say women are important because they are needed to raise Jihad warriors. This is supposed to be their main function. And they add that the West wants to influence Muslim women by printing journals with nasty pictures and whispering wrong ideas. So every Muslim woman who likes modernity is framed as a traitor. The Islamists’ perception of the woman – their refusal to deal with otherness as something equal – is at the very core of Islamism and anti-Semitism. When male Hamas members murdered a young couple who two days before their marriage had dared to walk hand in hand on the shore of the Gaza Strip, they took the women’s dead body and beat it frenziedly. This was the only way they could touch a woman’s body – with sticks and with aggression. We are talking about a kind of inner prison, and it has a great impact. Islamist males first have to suppress

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel their own needs and desires. There is a connection between killing your own desires internally and then extending this murderous activity externally against the ‘sin’ or ‘sinner’ that constantly inflames your desire. Bridges between early Islamism and late Nazism Alan Johnson: In your book you show that from the 1930s to the mid 1940s there was a growth of ‘personal contacts and ideological affinities between early Islamism and late Nazism.’ Let’s talk about two people who acted as bridges between an older, doctrinal or Koranic anti-Judaism and a modern political and Islamist antiSemitism, influenced by Nazism: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, and Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. First, who was Haj Amin al-Husseini and what was his central achievement? Matthias Küntzel: The main achievement of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was to combine the Jew-hatred of ancient Islam with modern antiSemitism into a new and persuasive rhetoric. I discovered a speech he gave in 1937 with the title, ‘Jewry and Islam.’ Here, he intermingled modern anti-Semitism the stories of very early Islam, going back and forth from the 7th and the 20th centuries, and connecting both kinds of Jew-hatred. This was something new. When Churchill visited Jerusalem in March 1921, just before the British Mandate, he was given a petition by the then Palestinian leadership which was very antisemitic. But it was a purely European anti-Semitism – about the alleged Jewish responsibility for the First World War, about how later Jews incited the Russian Revolution and so on. It was ridiculous and no Muslim of that time would have been able to understand any of this, because it was really a précis of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion! This was not the way to mobilise the Arab masses. It was the Mufti who realised this. He was always a special case in this regard. High ranking Muslims at this time rarely wanted to mobilise masses, but Haj Amin al-Husseini did. Indeed it was a mass mobilisation that in 1921 led to his appointment as Mufti, against other Jerusalem notables. Here was a modern feature – the mobilisation of masses to rescue your position. To this end he invented a form of Islamic anti-Semitism which was able to reach the illiterate masses by recruiting their religious feelings and by repeating the antiJewish verses from the Koran and Hadith again and again. Thus, we find for the first time in about 100 years the famous Hadith about the stones and the trees that

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 want to kill Jews – a Hadith which constitutes today a part of the Hamas Charter – mentioned in the Mufti’s speech of 1937. The Mufti was the most important founder of modern Islamic anti-Semitism and this achievement – with all its after-effects – is more important than his role during the Nazi time. Amin el-Husseini is often reduced to this time. But I think that what he did before and after this period of time was much more important. Before, he created the new antisemitic rhetoric, the rhetoric the Islamists would spread. Between 1946 and 1948, he played a key role in mobilising the Arab world against Israel. Sometimes individuals can change a lot, and the Mufti was by far the best-known representative of the Muslim world at that time, among other things because of his broadcasting of pro-Nazi and antisemitic sermons into the Middle East during the war over the Berlin short wave transmitter. He pursued his passion after May 8, 1945 and stirred up a specifically antisemitic hatred against the Jews in Palestine and Israel. Alan Johnson: Yet this was the very period when the Nazi camps were discovered, and so Jewish powerlessness was plain to see. Matthias Küntzel: This was obvious to anyone not infected by the antisemitic virus. To understand what happened in the Middle East between 1946 and 1948, we have to enter as deeply into the Muslim Brotherhood’s antisemitic mental universe as Daniel Goldhagen did into that of the German perpetrators of the Holocaust. Specialist works, such as Jeffrey Herf ’s great book of 2006, The Jewish Enemy, show that the Nazis, the Mufti and the Muslim Brotherhood were convinced, really convinced, that the American and British governments were controlled by Jews. For them, the Jews ‘stood behind World War II, where they collected immense benefits from trading with war materials,’ as the charter of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine (i.e. Hamas) tells us. The Holocaust, in that perception, was a countermeasure that was not radical enough. Having won the war, the ‘Jews’ then ‘inspired the establishment of the United Nations … in order to rule the world by their intermediary’ (Hamas Charter, Article 22) and partitioned Palestine. Muslim Brotherhood leader Hassan al-Banna believed that the partition proposal was a Jewish conspiracy. If you think the Jews are the root of all evil everything looks very very different. Alan Johnson: The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna. You have compared the role of the Brotherhood in the history

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel of Islamism to that of the Bolshevik party in communism: ‘It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas or the group around Sidique Khan.’ But what exactly is your claim about the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis? In what ways did the Nazis influence the Muslim Brotherhood? Matthias Küntzel: National Socialism was neither the founder nor the puppet master of the Muslim Brotherhood but supported the burgeoning Islamist movement financially and ideologically. The Brotherhood was always a real religious movement. Its founder, Hassan al-Banna, never acknowledged Hitler to be a world leader, simply because Hitler was not a Muslim. He always felt himself superior. He was a proud religious leader while the Mufti was hardly religious at all. When he lived for four years in Berlin we don’t have evidence that he prayed even once in a Mosque. Alan Johnson: The next key figure in this process of melding an older textual antiJudaism and a modern political radical anti-Semitism was Sayyid Qutb. What was his significance? Matthias Küntzel: Sayyid Qutb personified the radicalisation of Islamism. Qutb wanted to kill every Muslim ruler who differed from his interpretation of the Koran. Qutb invented the concept of jahiliyya which means that the whole world is now at the same stage as it was before Muhammad. Qutb wrote the antisemitic tract ‘Our Struggle Against the Jews’ in which he considers every modernised Muslim to be an agent of the Jews. There is much more straightforward racism in Qutb’s form of thought. His writing became most influential via the Saudis. His brother Muhammad Qutb went to Saudi Arabia and spread his brother’s writings from Jiddah all over the world. The Saudi ruler supported Qutb’s ideas against Egypt’s alleged deviation. Alan Johnson: Let me ask you about Hamas. We are encouraged by many to ‘engage’ with Hamas. How does your book help us understand Hamas? Is Hamas a rational actor with negotiable demands? Should we take its murderously antisemitic Charter seriously? Do they believe their own Charter? Matthias Küntzel: Hamas are extremely rational and extremely irrational at the same time. Their means and methods of dealing with the West are quite rational. They use ‘instrumental reason’ as Max Horkheimer would have put it. They know

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 how to spread their ideas. But their ideas, their mind-set, are driven by religious feelings and the perception of a religious holy war. They are the most radical enemies of the western way of living which they equate with Jewish influence. They would never accept modernity in the way we do – founded on the dignity and independence of the individual human being. Islamists not only say but believe that only Allah can rule, make laws and possess truth. History shows that the strong belief in this kind of ideology is a powerful force that might effect devastating consequences. Alan Johnson: Might we compare that kind of belief to what Goldhagen calls the ‘hallucinatory thinking’ that Nazism rested on, and to which the Nazis allied the instrumental reason of bureaucracy? Matthias Küntzel: Well, I think every religious ideology is hallucinatory in its way. Neither the perception of a crucified Jesus ascending to heaven nor the idea of God who created the world within six days is something real. The key question is whether religious people give their founding texts a metaphorical or a literally meaning. There are fundamentalists in all religions. And all fundamentalisms exhibit hallucinatory thinking. But Islamism is the only fundamentalism which is connected to the concept of Holy War and thus constitutes a threat to mankind. They do not only declare but conduct a real war against their own people and against everyone who wants to enjoy the achievements of modernity.

Part 2: Responding to the critics of Jihad and Jew-Hatred Alan Johnson: One of the most severe critics of Jihad and Jew-Hatred has been Andrew Bostom, editor of The Legacy of Jihad and author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History (forthcoming). Bostom argues that ‘[Kuntzel’s] conceptions of both jihad and Islamic Jew hatred are mere simulacra of these phenomena.’ Let’s take each in turn. Bostom’s first criticism: getting ‘Jihad’ wrong Let me put his case and you can respond. Bostom claims your book radically underplays the roots of the institution of violent jihad in classical Islam. He writes, ‘Simply put, Küntzel decided to ignore all these seamless doctrinal and historical connections between ancient Islam and modern totalitarianism, especially Nazism.’ Jeffrey Goldberg, in the New York Times, also complained that you oversimplified.

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel ‘One doesn’t have to be soft on Germany to believe it was organic Muslim ideas as well as Nazi ideas that led to the spread of anti-Semitism in the Middle East.’ For Bostom, Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood (and associated 20th century ideologues such as Sayyid Qutb) did not invent jihad war, jihad war was not a sui generis phenomenon, and jihad war was not catalysed by Nazism. Because you do think all this, in his view, you divorce the Muslim Brotherhood from ‘the sacralised Islamic institution of jihad war, with its clearly demonstrable doctrine and history spanning a nearly 14 century continuum.’ To support his argument Bostom cites Ibn Khaldun’s (d. 1406) summary of half a millennium of Muslim jurisprudence on the question of jihad: In the Muslim community, the holy war is a religious duty, because of the universalism of the [Muslim] mission and [the obligation to] convert everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force... The other religious groups did not have a universal mission, and the holy war was not a religious duty for them, save only for purposes of defence... Islam is under an obligation to gain power over other nations. According to Bostom ‘Islam’s foundational texts sanctioned such acts of jihad martyrdom, and held them in the highest esteem.’ Indeed, ‘[u]nequivocal, celebratory invocations for acts of martyrdom during jihad are found in the Koran, and even more explicitly, in the canonical hadith.’ For Bostom, Hassan al-Banna and Qutb ‘merely reiterate what classical Islamic jurists had formulated, and Islamic dynasties (major and minor alike) had practiced continually for over a millennium’ How do you respond to this criticism from Bostom? Matthias Küntzel: Many questions! First of all: Jeffrey Goldberg’s remark is in accordance with my book: It was not in the first place the creation of Zionism or Israel but the mixture of ‘organic Muslim ideas’ with ‘Nazi ideas that lead to the spread of anti-Semitism in the Middle East.’ In addition, I never claimed or created the impression that the Muslim Brothers did invent jihad war and that jihad war was catalysed by Nazism. Also, my book does not divorce the Brotherhood from the sacralised institution of early Islam but lays emphasis on the fact that, as a Salafist movement, the Brotherhood leads on from these Islamic origins. Finally, I did not decide to ‘ignore all these seamless doctrinal and historical connections between

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 ancient Islam and … Nazism.’ Up to now, Bostom is the first and only historian who claims that such ‘seamless connections’ exist and I’ll be interested to see what evidence he has for them. Bostom bases his argument solely on Islamic doctrine without paying sufficient heed to the social reality of Islamic societies, i.e. how these societies tried to live with this doctrine. He starts off from a ‘14 century continuum’ and asserts that the Muslim Brotherhood’s fundamentalism is the normal state of affairs, its aim being to ‘merely reiterate’ what Islamic dynasties ‘had practiced continually for over a millennium.’ In doing so, he totally ignores the hundred years of rapprochement between modernity and Islam that lasted from the 1830s to the 1930s. In Turkey, however, or Indonesia or Iran, or even Egypt broad masses simply neglected Islamic doctrine and lived with their religion in the way Christians live with theirs – it is a part of their life, maybe very important, but they were (and mostly are) not fundamentalists. We must differentiate between different perceptions of the doctrines. If you don’t, if you see the whole Islamic world in a monolithic way, you are not able to grasp the historical moment when this kind of Salafism got its roots in modern times as a reaction to the modernisation of society. And if we are not accurate in our analysis we can’t overcome our enemy. Analysis – in its literal translation from the Greek – means the dissolution of a complex problem into its individual parts, not the lumping together of things which are different. Bostom, however, does not want to make a distinction between Islamism and Islam. Alan Johnson: So Bostom’s analytical error, in your view, can have big political consequences? There is a political pay-off in getting the story right because it directs us to work effectively against the influence of the Islamists and avoid inadvertently strengthening them? Matthias Küntzel: We just have to know against whom we are fighting. Muslims, especially female Muslims are the first victims of Islamism which is a movement that can’t be beaten by the non-Muslim world alone. In my most recent book, in German, I have an appendix with only Muslim voices against Islamic antiSemitism. I want to strengthen those parts of the Muslim world which struggle against Islamism, risking their lives in the process. So we have to know about the origins and shape of the danger that confronts them and us, and it’s not the whole of Islam. It is Islamism.

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel The sources of contemporary Islamic anti-Semitism Alan Johnson: Bostom’s second main criticism of your book concerns the sources of contemporary anti-Semitism. While you stress the innovations of the mid-20th century Islamist movements under Nazi influences, Bostom stresses the ancient theology and the historical practice of anti-Semitism. Again, he cites many passages from the Koran and Hadith. Regarding dhimmitude – the diminished status of Christians and Jews in Muslim lands in the period before the collapse of the caliphate after World War One – Bostom alleges that you present that social institution as a form of benevolent paternal generosity towards Christians and Jews. Bostom cites the findings of the book his mentor, Bat Ye’or, that claims to show that dhimmitude was ‘a system of oppression, sanctioned by contempt and justified by the principle of inequality between Muslims and dhimmis.’ How do you respond to that criticism? Matthias Küntzel: According to my book, dhimmis suffered ‘severe humiliation’ and were forced to behave with ‘appropriate humility.’ More important, however, is the fact that my study concentrates on 20th century developments in the Middle East. It analyses ‘the reason, why, between 1925 and 1945, a shift in direction was effected in Egypt from a rather neutral or pro-Jewish mood to a rabidly anti-Jewish one, a shift which changed the whole Arab world and affects it to this day.’ Bostom in all his papers about my book devotes not a single syllable to this. He regrettably did not to take up the challenge my book presents to his generalizing approach. Alan Johnson: I think it’s important to know that Jews were members of parliament in Egypt in the 1920s and to rivet our attention to what happened between that time and the period twenty years later when all this had gone. It’s important to ask what happened. And politically it is very important to ask what was new in the situation. Matthias Küntzel: Indeed. Between 1830 and 1930 there was a connection between modernity and Islam. This period produced an Egyptian constitution which abolished the Sharia law as far as public law was concerned. It produced Ataturk’s reforms and the secularization of a country which used to be the centre of Islam. It is necessary to study this period of time and draw lessons about how Islam can be adapted as a religion to modernity.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Alan Johnson: When I interviewed Saad Eddin Ibrahim, this was his point also. He talked of a conspiracy of silence about that period. The theocrats don’t want to talk about it because it involved the tentative emergence of a secular polity in some places. The autocrats don’t want to talk about it because there were competing parties and elections. He argues there is no reason for us to join in that conspiracy of silence. Matthias Küntzel: That’s exactly what I feel.

Part 3: A new eliminationist anti-Semitism? Alan Johnson: Are we witnessing the rise of a new eliminationist or genocidal antiSemitism in the world? You have noted the not untypical sermon given by Sheikh Muhammad Saleh Al-Munajjid, in a September 2002 at a mosque in Al-Damam, Saudi Arabia: The Jews are the helpers of Satan. The Jews are the cause of the misery of the human race, together with the infidels and the other polytheists. Satan leads them to Hell and to a miserable fate. When eight Jewish students were murdered in a religious school in Jerusalem in March 2008, many laughed and celebrated in the streets. Even leading religious authorities within the Muslim world espouse quite extraordinary views about Jews. Sheikh Tantawi, the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University (the closest thing to a Muslim ‘Pope’) wrote a long book rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, Banu Isra’il fi al-Koran wa al-Sunna [ Jews in the Koran and the Traditions]. He argued: [The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah, corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness…only a minority of the Jews keep their word….[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not. (Koran 3:113) How widespread is that kind of antisemitic obsession? Is this new demonological anti-Semitism confined to organised Islamist groups or is becoming a popular ‘common-sense?’

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel Matthias Küntzel: This antisemitic obsession is not at all confined to organised Islamist groups. In fact let me say this: anti-Semitism has never been as widespread in history as it is today. During the Nazi time eliminationist anti-Semitism was not widespread across the world. But think about the reaction to 9/11. It was a watershed, the way 9/11 was interpreted across many parts of the world. Take the myth of the 4,000 Jews who didn’t enter the World Trade Centre on that day. What does that myth, and its astonishing popularity, tell us? If you believe it, it means, first, that Israel can call upon thousands of Jews all over the world; second, that those Jews will obey the secret services of Israel like disciplined soldiers; and third, that they are happy to see their non-Jewish colleagues killed. That they knew but didn’t warn their colleagues. Now, this is the kind of rumour that used to create pogroms. It’s a very aggressive lie, painting the Jews as the enemies of mankind, and it was invented by Hezbollah TV in the days after 9/11. But people willing to believe it were found all over the world. People want simple explanations for things they can’t explain, and 9/11 was such a thing. But we have to distinguish between the Tantawi-Hamas anti-Semitism (which I call Islamic anti-Semitism because it is not only the Islamists who adhere to it but ‘normal’ leading figures of Islam, such as Tantawi as well), and hatred of Israel within the intellectual left in western countries. These two expressions of hate are not the same. Alan Johnson: What is the relationship between the two, in your opinion? Matthias Küntzel: Well, that’s a very good question. European thinking has been influenced by antisemitic patterns for centuries – in this regard, no criticism of Jews or Israel is a priori immune from antisemitic stereotypes. Contemporary anti-Zionism, in my opinion, is a kind of Trojan horse that brings a new version of antisemitic sentiment into the quarters of society which normally hate discrimination and racism. It’s a Trojan horse because it seems to be aimed only against a powerful state. It’s also a Trojan Horse because, in an intellectual environment that internalized the PLO version of Middle East history decades ago, people are no longer able to recognize its aggressive potential. So it’s very effective. The international left did not deal in an accurate way with the Holocaust, otherwise they would be much more alarmed by the antisemitic ideology of movements like Hamas. Thus, in defending Hamas directly or indirectly, the left plays the role of useful idiot for the Islamists. Today, hostilities against Israel result in the form of a

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 pincer movement. On one side we have anti-Semites such as Ahmadinejad or Hamas who draw their ‘knowledge’ about Jews from the Koran and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. On the other side we have non-Jewish and Jewish fellow travellers of anti-Semitism in progressive Western movements and governments who take up and proliferate, albeit in muted form, the Islamists’ attempts to delegitimize Israel.

Part 4: Taking Ahmadinejad seriously Alan Johnson: Let’s turn to Iran. In a stream of articles and lectures presented around the world, you have pleaded with us to ‘take the Iranian leader’s Weltanschauung [worldview] seriously as a specific outlook with its own principles and history.’ You have invited us to ‘look inside Ahmadinejad’s fantasy world and seek to grasp the immanent logic behind his attacks, even if this involves insights which may send a shiver down the spine.’ You see the regime’s ideology – a ‘mish-mash of Jew-hatred, Holocaust denial and Shiite death-cult messianism’ – as the real context for its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Let’s begin with that aspect that most observers find frankly bizarre – Holocaust denial. What is the meaning and import of what you call ‘this new form of Holocaust denial: creative, modern, unrestrained, and extremely self-assertive?’ Matthias Küntzel: I should say first that I am convinced that they believe what they say. It’s not just propaganda for their public. They are also trying to influence UN debates, suggesting that Israel should not be allowed to ‘spread the lie of the Holocaust’ and so on. Iran is pushing its own ‘truth’ within institutions. And this is little understood. Alan Johnson: Is this what you mean when you say that when it comes to Iran we must understand we are dealing with ‘a phantasmagoric parallel universe in which the reality principle is constantly ignored …the laws of reason have been excluded and all mental energy is harnessed for the cause of anti-Semitism?’ Matthias Küntzel: Exactly. Anyone who wishes to engage in a serious study of this centre of Islamism must first attempt to grasp the internal logic of this ‘parallel universe.’ Its main component is a particular form of Islamist epistemology. Islamists think reason is a sin. You have to believe in what God says, and reason endangers this naïve belief in God. To give you an example: No Islamist would challenge the statement in the Koran that Allah changed Jews into apes and pigs,

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel because everything the Koran says is true. The only permissible debate which took place in the theoretical monthly magazine of Hamas, Falastin Al-Muslima, is about whether the Jews who became animals are able to have offspring or not, since the Koran provides no answer to this question. Truth is not a matter of trial and error but a matter of belief. Even on the occasion of his speech at Columbia University Ahmadinejad claimed that only the true believer is gifted by Allah with truth. Nothing else counts. Therefore the Western style of historiography is rejected as well. Therefore Islamists are able to say that Moses was ‘the first Muslim,’ that the Holocaust is a myth and that the reappearance of the Twelfth Imam is a reality. Secondly, there is the emotional infrastructure of anti-Semitism. Holocaust denial brings anti-Semitism to its extreme point. Holocaust deniers implicitly claim that for 60 years the Jews have lied to the world. They claim that the Jews have every academic and media post sewn up to sustain the lie in order to browbeat the world. Every denial of the Holocaust thus tacitly contains an appeal to repeat it. Alan Johnson: Western observers find it hard to judge the significance of the Iranian regime’s beliefs concerning the return of the ‘Twelfth Imam’ and the connection of this belief to either Holocaust denial or the pursuit of the nuclear bomb. Should we take this idea seriously? Matthias Küntzel: We must take it extremely seriously. Different religions have different ideas about the Messiah. It’s normally a form of metaphorical thinking about utopia – a better world in a future to come. But in the case of the special brand of Shiite Islam that Ahmadinejad and the group around Khatami represent, it’s quite another story. They have transferred the abstract idea of a Messiah into a political programme for today. That’s why it matters. If the Mayor of Rome knocked down a quarter of the city to build a giant boulevard to prepare for the reappearance of Jesus Christ as a Messiah, I think the Italian people would remove him, maybe to the Asylum! But this is exactly what happens in Tehran. It was part of the last election campaign. Ahmadinejad won with the promise of building a boulevard for the return of the Twelfth Imam. Look, it’s the first time in human history that the special threat of destruction connected to the nuclear bomb is connected to this kind of religious apocalyptic thinking. This is extremely dangerous.

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Alan Johnson: You recently compared the reaction to the November 2007 American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran [which concluded Iran probably stopped the active pursuit of nuclear weapons in 2004] to ‘the euphoria inspired by Chamberlain’s words on Sept. 30, 1938, as he … announced that he had achieved ‘peace in our time.’ Why did you make that comparison? Matthias Küntzel: People see what they want to see, and read what they want to read. Chamberlain didn’t want to notice the connection between the Sudeten German question and the overall ideology of Nazism. He wanted to separate these things. The NIE also wants to separate things. It takes the view that if Iran has declared uranium enrichment to be peaceful then we should believe the regime. (There is a footnote to this effect in the report). They disconnect the question of the nuclear programme from the whole ideology. But if you look at the constitution of Iran one part says ‘every means’ must be used to defend and to spread Islam. There is nothing which can’t be used for military means, according to the constitution of the ‘Islamic Republic.’ Once you disconnect the technique and tools of the nuclear programme from the ideology, you are committing the same mistake as Chamberlain did. I read British journals from the 1930s. When Chamberlain came back, people were so happy! More important: the British reporting of Nazi Germany changed instantly. Before Munich, the press was critical of the internal workings of the Nazi regime, of how it dealt with Jews and so on. After the huge sight of relief of Munich, they changed their reporting. Things were now seen in a brighter light. The realism faded. A rosier view emerged. Here we have one main consequence of appeasement. In order to defend the decision you have taken, you’ll start to see the enemy in a new light. After the NIE, in Germany at least, Iran vanished from the headlines. When Ahmadinejad called Israel a ‘dirty microbe’ – without doubt the language of Julius Streicher – there was no mention in any German newspaper. Alan Johnson: Speaking of Germany, we have both been attending a conference in Berlin titled ‘Business as Usual? The Iranian Regime, the holy war against Israel and the West and the German Reaction.’ You are critical of Germany’s stance towards sanctions against Iran, accusing it of ‘departing from the Western block in order to make common cause with China and Russia against the core Western powers.’ Is Germany simply subordinating all to the short-term pursuit of economic selfinterest or is it more than that?

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel Matthias Küntzel: You also have to see the position of Chancellor Angela Merkel as expressed in her recent acclaimed speech to the Knesset. At this time we can’t know how serious she was when she said that we must stop Iran getting the nuclear bomb and we must learn the lessons of the Holocaust. There may be a split within the coalition, with the Foreign Ministry much more in favour of appeasement, while the Chancellor is, in her words at least, more realistic about Iran. We need to study these contradictions. I tried to do this in my recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Those who view a nuclear bomb in Iran as not such a terrible thing talk about a ‘strategic partnership’ between Germany and Iran. They talk in big geo-strategic terms about this connection. They want a special alliance with Iran in order to enhance Germany’s position and to confront American influences in this region. This kind of connection is always, at some level, directed against the West. Our German history of being an enlightened society is not a very long one as you know. It started only in 1949. Ideological traditions on the other hand are strong. I do not exclude the possibility that talk of a new strategic partnership with Iran involves the idea of distancing Germany from the West. Alan Johnson: Where do the German Social Democrats stand on this? Matthias Küntzel: Today, there is no well-known Social Democrat who would dare to reiterate what Chancellor Merkel told the Knesset last month namely that if ‘we Europeans’ were to shrink from tougher sanctions in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme, ‘we would have neither understood our historical responsibilities nor developed an awareness of the challenges of our time.’ This party destroyed the floodgates of resentment in 2002 when Chancellor Schröder based his election campaign on blatant anti-Americanism. German Social Democrats still consider the USA to be the main threat, not Tehran.

Part 5: Israel at 60 Alan Johnson: At 60 Israel finds itself insecure and demonised. It faces a fascistic Hezbollah on the Northern border, rearming and preparing a new assault. A fascistic Hamas unleashes rockets and eliminationist rhetoric from Gaza. Syria, it seems, came close to obtaining a nuclear capability with North Korea’s help. Iran’s leaders openly proclaim their intent to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ and create ‘a

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 world without Zionism,’ and is enriching uranium at great speed. Meanwhile world opinion is hostile to Israel, which is routinely compared to apartheid South Africa. Demands spread for a boycott of Israeli goods, or Israeli intellectuals. You argue that ‘the character of the Middle East conflict has fundamentally changed in the last 20 years’ as ‘a war of Weltanschauung and religion has emerged from a minor conflict between Palestinians and Zionists, which later escalated into a larger conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs.’ Can you elaborate? Matthias Küntzel: At the beginning, this conflict was a territorial dispute – perhaps until the middle of the thirties. Then it started to become a conflict between the Arab world and the Zionists, and then with Israel. During the 1980s, after the Iranian revolution, it again changed its profile and scope. The basic framework is now Islamism against the West. Israel is not the root but just the front line in this war. The Islamists tell us they want to destroy liberal democracies and free societies the world over. They are outspoken about this but the Western world prefers not to listen to what they say. Even in his letter to President Bush, President Ahmadinejad boasted that he ‘can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.’ I’m neither Jewish nor even religious. Thus I have no love affair with Israel. For me it’s nevertheless quite obvious that Israel defends my freedom against Islamism and that giving support to Israel is in my self-interest. Alan Johnson: In the UK the debate has become very confused. The lecturer’s trade union, the UCU, passed a resolution at its national conference that proclaimed ‘criticism of Israel cannot be construed as antisemitic.’ When does legitimate criticism of Israel stop and anti-Semitism begin? Matthias Küntzel: First of all this UCU resolution is unbelievably ridiculous. It is a historical fact that since the year 1921 there has been an antisemitic anti-Zionism in existence. Alfred Rosenberg wrote his first book against Zionism in that year, and it is completely antisemitic. Second, anti-Semitism has been a part of Europe for two millennia. And anti-Semitism is like a chameleon that changes its complexion over time as its environment changes. In such a deeply antisemitic world as Europe, it’s just common sense to look for the ways in which the establishment of a Jewish state would reshape antisemitic thinking. It’s logical to think that it would. In fact, it would be a kind of miracle if this were not the case!

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Johnson | An Interview with Matthias Küntzel The EU adopted a reasonable definition of anti-Semitism that includes the phenomenon of antisemitic anti-Zionism. It says that criticism of Israel becomes antisemitic 1) when Israeli policy is equated with Nazi practices or when symbols and images of long-established anti-Semitism are assigned to Israel; 2) When Israel’s right to existence is denied; 3) When a double standard applies and demands are made of Israel that would never be expected or demanded of another democratic state. For instance, it is normal for a state to defend itself against rocket attacks from outside. You must give Israel the same right. Otherwise you are dealing with Israel in the same way anti-Semites deal with Jews. The way the attacks on Sderot are dealt with reminds me of how attacks on European Jews were dealt with in the Middle Ages. At that time also, it was very normal that Jews got punished and beaten, but if the Jew got up the courage to defend himself it was a big scandal. Today, the big headlines only come when Israel tries to defend itself against the rockets. The rockets themselves are treated as, well, normal. Alan Johnson: Writing in the New York Times Book Review, Jeffrey Goldberg, after praising your book, complained that you had oversimplified the Israeli-Arab conflict, noting that ‘Jews today have actual power in the Middle East, and Israel is not innocent of excess and cruelty.’ Do you recognise any validity in Goldberg’s criticism? How much responsibility does Israel bear for the failure thus far to achieve the two-state solution? Matthias Küntzel: If you go back through the history you find that there was more than one opportunity to have a two-state solution. In 1937 first, when the Zionists and the moderate Muslims in Palestine supported it. The Mufti destroyed that opening. In 1947 there was a second big chance. Again, the obstacle was the ideology that said there must be no Jewish state in any corner of the Middle East. That blocked the two-state solution proposed by the UN which the Jews and many Arab leaders (though only privately) had accepted. And again in 2000 at Camp David the two-state solution was available but Arafat rejected it without making any kind of counter-proposal. I expect that any Israeli government would be happy if a moderate Palestinian leadership really and seriously went for the two-state solution. Or not? The fact is that this has never happened yet. It’s vital to see that the leadership of the Palestinians, until Abbas, has been dominated by the Mufti of Jerusalem and the

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 successor he chose, Arafat. Today, with Hamas’ propaganda outpourings, antiSemitism in the Palestinian territories is worse than ever. It might be more realistic therefore to retreat to a ‘three-state solution,’ with Israel within clearly defined and internationally accepted borders, Gaza as an Egyptian province and the West Bank as a part of Jordan. In such a case, the Mufti and his legacy would for the time being have robbed the Palestinians of their statehood. Alan Johnson: What are you working on now? Matthias Küntzel: I am preparing a book about the special relationship between Germany and Iran, with an emphasis on the time since the Islamist revolution.

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Letters Page Hezbollah and Terrorism: An Exchange between Rayyan AlShawaf and Barry Rubin Editors: Barry Rubin’s ‘Confessions at a Funeral’ (Democratiya 12) includes a serious mischaracterisation of recent pronouncements by Hezbollah. Rubin makes much of Hezbollah’s posthumous praise of recently assassinated Imad Mughniyyah and the revelation that he was one of its leaders. (The author apparently is unaware that Hezbollah had long praised Mughniyyah but refused to confirm his membership in the organisation due to a security policy concerning the makeup of its armed wing. Now that Mughniyyah is dead, Hezbollah can openly claim him.) Rubin’s central argument is that in confirming Mughniyyah’s membership and praising his actions, Hezbollah has admitted to involvement in terrorism, and that the same holds true for Hezbollah’s backers Iran and Syria. Unfortunately, the entire premise of Rubin’s article is false. Hezbollah’s confirmation that Imad Mughniyyah was one of its members does not in any way imply an admission that Hezbollah and Mughniyyah were involved in acts of terrorism. In fact, Hezbollah specifically denies such allegations. Contrary to the evidence, Hezbollah continues to maintain that it played no role in terrorist attacks such as the bombing of both the US marines’ and French paratroopers’ barracks in Beirut (1983), the US embassy in Beirut (1983, embassy annex in 1984), and both the Israeli embassy and Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires (1992 and 1994, respectively). Only once – addressing former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani’s comments – does Rubin mention that Mughniyyah’s supporters do not consider his ‘actions’ to have constituted terrorism. Crucially, however, Rubin does not reveal that the ‘actions’ in question are Mughniyyah’s military exploits against Israeli troops occupying Lebanon; indeed, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria deny outright Mughniyyah’s involvement in terrorist attacks against civilians. Rubin misleadingly makes it appear as though Hezbollah, Iran and Syria admit Mughniyyah’s involvement in attacks on civilians but do not consider such acts to be terrorism.

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Letters Page In fact, Rubin goes further, engaging in an explicit mischaracterisation of Hezbollah/Iran/Syria’s position on Mughniyyah. ‘When Iran, Syria, and Hizballah embrace such a person as a great hero and role model they are openly admitting their association with many pasts acts of terrorism, and making clear that they favor murderous attacks deliberately designed to kill civilians.’ Nowhere in the various Hezbollah tributes to Mughniyyah – most of which were televised – was there any admission of his involvement in the terrorist outrages that the Unites States, Israel, Argentina, Kuwait and other countries ascribe to him. Instead, Mughniyyah was lauded for his role in the struggle against Israel’s occupation of south Lebanon, which ended in 2000, and his command of Hezbollah’s forces in the 2006 war with Israel, in which the latter failed to achieve its objectives. Knowledge of Arabic is not required to follow Hezbollah’s pronouncements; the organisation runs a television and internet propaganda campaign in several languages – including English – that has not veered from the official line. When Hezbollah officials have been asked about Mughniyyah’s alleged involvement in terrorism – including specific acts for which there is specific evidence – they have resolutely denied all charges, reiterating that his role was confined to the struggle against Israeli military forces occupying Lebanon. For all its implausibility, Hezbollah’s propaganda remains consistent. Statements made by Hezbollah official Ibrahim al-Mousawi during his recent tour of the UK are but one example of this. Rubin has erroneously concluded that because Hezbollah exalts a man accused by many of terrorism that this is an implicit admission of his culpability. Rubin even finds time to assert that Iran and Syria – not just Hezbollah – claim responsibility for Mughniyyah’s actions: ‘Now that Hizballah, Iran, and Syria have ‘taken credit’ for Mugniyah’s past killings.’ This assertion is ludicrous; Iran and Syria deny providing Hezbollah with material support, let alone being responsible for its actions. More important than Rubin’s overreaching is the nature of Hezbollah’s propaganda. It is telling that Hezbollah should scrupulously avoid claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks, and focus instead on the defensive military role it has played since the party’s inception in 1982. In the Arab world (and beyond), Hezbollah’s and other groups’ attacks on Israeli military forces occupying Lebanese land from 1978 until 2000 are considered to have been entirely legitimate. Similarly, although many Arabs condemned Hezbollah’s unprovoked attack on Israel in July 2006,

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 few questioned the militia’s right to resist the subsequent massive Israeli onslaught, especially insofar as military operations targeting Israeli troops on Lebanese soil (as opposed to rocket attacks on civilians in Israel) were concerned. Support for the kidnapping of foreigners, hijacking of airplanes, destruction of embassies and wholesale slaughter of civilians, however, is another matter entirely. The same applies to Hezbollah’s recent violent takeover of the western half of Beirut. Indeed, Hezbollah is well aware that most Arabs maintain a distinction between legitimate armed resistance and terrorism. As a result, when singing the praises of Mughniyyah and its other fallen operatives, Hezbollah remains careful to avoid linking them to attacks on civilians – despite evidence to the contrary – and commemorates only their role in military resistance of the sort deemed acceptable by the majority of Arabs and Muslims. Rayyan Al-Shawaf, Beirut, Lebanon

Rayyan Al-Shawaf misunderstands the whole point of my article: A Reply from Barry Rubin Editors: I was going to write a long and detailed response to this letter but will not do so because the correspondent simply misunderstands the whole point of my article and thus what he says is irrelevant. His critique is that I claimed that Hizballah has consciously and deliberately admitted its involvement in terrorism by its behavior around the death of Imad Mughniyyah. He also claims to read my mind as to what I was or was not aware of regarding these questions. Let me state, as someone who knows very well what I think and know, that I was completely aware of every point he makes. I was not saying at all what he claims. My point was that objectively the statements of Hizballah and behavior are clear evidence of its involvement in international terrorism. As I have written repeatedly elsewhere, of course Hizballah does not consider anything it has done to be terrorism. Everyone knows that. But Mughniyyah has been involved in acts of international terrorism as generally defined – and specifically so charged by the United States – so celebrating him as

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Letter Page a great hero and leader does involve taking responsibility for all those operations. And of course Hizballah did not explicitly list them and of course Hizballah did not characterize them as terrorism. The key point is one the letter-writer himself acknowledges: they admitted that Mughniyyah was a leader of the organization and it took pride in his ‘accomplishments,’ without reservation. That was my point. At a moment when Lebanon has fallen under Hizballah’s sway and the country’s short-lived true independence has been lost it is a shame to be wasting time on whether or not Hizballah wants to admit publicly or merely to demonstrate publicly its own record. Constructive criticism is always welcome but it is silly to have to deal with insults regarding ideas I never held nor put forth. I have consulted with other readers of the article, including those in Lebanon, who have all told me that they completely understood my article and intentions. Let me try an example which admittedly goes further but I think makes the point effectively. Suppose a group praised the leader of the September 11 attack as a highranking official of the organization in whom they take great pride and has done a wonderful job. Someone writes an article saying this and is then attacked by a reader who says: but the organization did not explicitly claim responsibility for the September 11 attack or say that it was an act of ‘terrorism.’ So what? Such a response would be either the product of an apologist or someone who did not properly understand English. Of course, many in the region still don’t think al-Qaeda was responsible for – or objectively admitted – responsibility for September 11 so I suppose there is a good parallel here. All the same goes for Iran and Syria. I couldn’t care less whether they said: ‘Yes! We gave them arms and we are responsible for their actions!’ Political analysts use evidence to demonstrate the actual situation. If the evidence is compelling than their conclusions are accepted. As I write this response I read a recent interview in al-Sharq al-Awsat by Muhammad Hassan Akhtari who writes, ‘The sons of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance are the legitimate sons of the Islamic Republic of Iran, spiritually and morally.’ He added that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, ‘supported Hizbullah in terms of training and special orders. I don’t remember that any of them took part in the fighting.’ He also noted that, ‘We held meetings with them. They would arrive, report their situation and say what they would do and what they need. They would report to us and we would relay the reports to Iran.’

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Democratiya 13 | Summer 2008 Sounds like an admission of sponsorship to me going beyond anything I wrote in my article. Mr. Nasrallah is, of course, the official representative in Lebanon of Iran’s leader. Crates of weapons were recovered and shown by Israel bearing the marks of the Russian factory that produced them and the Syrian military that received them. I could go on providing details for many pages. In future I do hope that the letter writer tries to understand what an author is actually saying before making all sorts of nasty characterizations about other people’s ignorance and mistakes. Otherwise, he only succeeds in looking rather foolish. Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal Editor, Turkish Studies

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13 | Summer 2008