Archives for category: Politics
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Muslims: Why Do They Hate Us?

Feb 5, 2017 //
4

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Muslims are all terrorists. 1.6 billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, are interchangeable variations of the same, freedom-hating towel head. From those in Uzbekistan to Bangladesh; from Morocco to Indonesia; from Algeria to Tunisia, all of them identical in every way. Actually, in doing some research so I could sarcastically list Muslim countries that nobody talks about because America isn’t drone-striking the shit out of them, I discovered that there are more Muslims in India and Pakistan than in the entirety of the Middle East! Normally this would imply vast cultural differences based on external influences, but we’re ignoring the incredible diversity that a quarter of the world’s population spread out over the globe necessarily implies, so again, for the sake of argument, Muslims are a homogeneous group with one goal in mind: destroying the West with suicide bombs and beheading videos.

Why do they hate our freedoms? I mean it’s just as easy to make blanket assumptions about their motivations (they’re evil) as it is to make blanket assumptions about their behaviours, but I’m going to hold motivations to a higher standard at this point otherwise this blog would be over very quickly.

I haven’t been entirely fair. I am certain there is another generalization that someone could use that doesn’t denounce Muslims as evil, and there is. They are just backward savages who haven’t caught up to civilization yet. It’s not bigotry if it’s condescending! I mean, the Iraq War was justified as a means to bring modernity and democracy to a simple, superstitious people who would surely be grateful for the wisdom (This was obviously after the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” excuse fell apart). If you consider the Medieval period when Christianity was pulling people apart on the rack, and now Muslims are beheading people, clearly parallels can be drawn. Muslims, a quarter of the planet, are just less culturally evolved, and surely they’ll catch up in the next few hundred years. That is how time works.

This is called Modernization theory. It basically says that all civilizations start out as baby hunter/gatherer tribes, and evolve through similar phases, until everyone ends up at the pinnacle of culture, us. We’re the best, and everyone else is just in an adolescent phase of their cultural development, and they can’t help that their limbic systems haven’t fully developed yet! This is what is commonly known as racism: the perceived notion that one’s own culture is superior to another. If a culture exists today, then it is a modern culture. THAT is how time works. The reason that one society might have longer life expectancies and less random violence isn’t part of some preordained path that each group of people must follow; human societies don’t exist in a vacuum. Shit goes on all around us, and that is what determines the direction groups of people will follow.

So what’s been going on with these generalized Muslims? Well, way back when Western secularism was first introduced to Muslim-dominated countries, the elites were all very impressed! They marveled at the technological advances that had been made; they listened to the Enlightenment ideas with rapt interest; they were awed by the massive expansion that the West was capable of, and they actually tried to secularize themselves with these Western ideologies. Except the problem with top-down ideological revolution is that it is indistinguishable from oppression. It usually involves banning practices from the previous paradigm, and violently enforcing its new social norms. This means that the Muslims who had been living out their lives quite contentedly were now being punished for that old way of living and were pushed toward this new way that allowed the powerful to buddy up with Western imperialists. Who cares what happens to the vulgar masses? Try to imagine what would happen if Obama implemented Sharia law while in office.  The reaction to that, I imagine, would be identical to the sordid Middle Eastern history of Islamic conflict with the West.

In addition to brutally enforced Westernization, the relationship between these two civilizations continued with a general disdain held by the West against the Middle East. Consider the creation of Israel. Turns out that the British, who did not even have ownership of the land at the time, promised it both to the Arabs, in the hopes that they would help them fight the Ottomans, and to the Jews as well, mostly to get them out of England. Given that someone was going to be inevitably screwed over by this incredible act of duplicity, and that the Jews had just suffered through the holocaust, Israel thus became a Jewish state. This Jewish state, now beholden to the West, acts as a stabilizer for the area. Stability in this context means that it will destroy with violence any group that gets out of line and does not provide appropriate resources at a steal of a price. The West betrayed the Muslims of the Middle East, and then allied themselves with the favoured demographic in order to marginalize and rob them.

Remember how I said earlier that the Western excuse for Middle Eastern intervention is to bomb the countries into respectable democracies? Well it turns out that the Middle East has been quite capable of establishing democracies in the past, but they tend to elect leaders who have the interests of the people in mind, rather than the interests of the West. In 1953, Iran elected a leader who was going to nationalize the oil industry so that the profits could go to the people of the country rather than foreign corporations. Unlucky for him, America and England decided that this would not do, and assassinated him. They then put up their own puppet dictator that brutalized the populace, but made sure that the money and resources went to the right people. More recently in Afghanistan, when Hamid Karzai was elected, rather than allow the people of the country to put into power someone who might allow Afghans some degree of autonomy, the US simply populated parliament with the warlords who had torn up the country in the aftermath of the proxy war fought between America and Russia decades earlier. I suppose putting in your own violent puppets in the first place means you don’t have to assassinate democratically elected world leaders to do it after the fact. Fun fact: Jihadi extremism was encouraged by the Americans during their cold war forays into the region as a weapon against the communists, and then was simply allowed to run rampant after the US pulled out their troops. The Taliban used Jihadi textbooks literally provided by the US to indoctrinate children into this violent mindset. There are many other examples of American interventions in democratic countries, purposefully destabilizing them for the sake of the flow of capital, but those are mostly irrelevant for the purposes of this blog.

America is actually quite fond of supporting brutal dictators in the Middle East. Remember the Iraq war that allowed Bush Jr. to fight Saddam just like daddy did? Saddam was the worst human imaginable, as the story goes, which is odd considering that America was providing him with money and weapons almost right up until they invaded his country in the early 90s. Or how about Hozni Mubarak, the malevolent dictator that Obama condemned when the people overthrew him. Again this is odd considering America had been supporting the despot for about 30 years. The excuses typically given are that these autocrats provide stability to the region, the same kind of stability I was talking about earlier.

The Middle East doesn’t produce violent extremism because of any ideological differences between Islam and the secular/Christian West, but because the Middle East has resources that the West devours but doesn’t want to pay for, so they, without any subtlety, fuck over everyone who lives there. People who, in theory, ought to have the rights to that covetous oil in the first place. If Arabs are constantly fighting over everything and are dirt poor, they’ll never be able to stand up to the greed-driven powerhouses responsible for their squalor. The touted “stability” that the West supports in the region is actually its opposite, since a Middle East in solidarity would be able to actualize some form of control over those resources, thereby forbidding the West from exploiting them.

If you’re thinking, hey now, I never condoned that colonial barbarism being committed by my society against the Middle East! I shouldn’t be targeted by Jihadi terrorists! I’m completely innocent! Doesn’t feel good to be judged for the deeds and mentalities of individuals who are only related to you by the most superficial of connections, does it? Well, I doubt the vast majority of Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran are particularly fond that they are being targeted for the deeds of people only akin to them under the most desperate of comparisons either. Except technically, we are more responsible for Western destructiveness than Muslims are for general acts of terrorism because we elect the government officials who collude with vicious imperialists regimes, if not the ones who perform the vicious imperialism outright. Muslims bear no such responsibility for the deeds of entirely unrelated peoples.

If you’re thinking, hey now, I know what this is really about, and Donald Trump isn’t trying to ban Muslims, he’s only trying to ban people from seven Muslim majority countries! Except, he said he was going to implement a Muslim ban, Rudy Giuliani said Trump asked him how to institute a Muslim ban, and considering the fear that right-wingers have of terrorists swarming in from my own Canada, why wouldn’t he include Canadian visas on his list? (you should totally read that second hyperlink to Breitbart because they manage to turn Canada’s loose regulations on Muslims to somehow being Barack Obama’s fault. It’s fucking hilarious) Trump said that Mexico is sending America their criminals and rapists, as if the country itself is responsible for the problem, and yet Mexico is not on the list either. The 9/11 terrorists that allegedly inspired the executive order did not come from any of these countries. That they are “trouble-spots” ignores the problems going on in Burma, Israel/Palestine, Romania, the Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc. The only connection any of these countries have is that they are populated by mostly Muslims and don’t do business with Trump. Saying that this executive order is anything but a ban on Muslims ignores that it does not target the largest terrorist-producing nations, ignores what Trump himself has said about instituting a Muslim ban, ignores most of global conflict, and does not even coincide with the worldview espoused by its most fervent supporters. An interesting counter-argument that I haven’t seen in slogging through alt-right perspectives might be that these are countries that America is being overtly hostile toward, but that doesn’t work either, since America is very vocally claiming that it is fighting “terrorism” and not individual countries, so banning visas from those countries makes no sense from this perspective either. Also, how is “Obama and Carter did it too!” an argument against it being a Muslim ban? If the Democratic party is so hard on Muslims, then why fight tooth and nail to oust them? You can’t clamor for a ban on Muslims, and then when one is basically implemented, deny that it is exactly that when people call you out on it.

Post-script: There is actually a short version to this. I mean, these days the West is basically murdering civilians willy-nilly and then expecting that the region is not going to be pissed off about it. Why do Muslims-who-are-all-terrorists hate us? Really?

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Politics, Religion, Social Criticism

Identity Polemics

Jan 22, 2017 //
3

I’m not a huge fan of identity politics. My reasons are the common ones: they’re unnecessarily divisive, and they tend to ignore practicality. I’m not against the idea of identity politics; every identity has a right to celebrate themselves in an empowering fashion, but when that mental process is expanded to the grander scale of actual politics is when things fall apart. Luckily, I found a brilliant video that disagrees with me, and it puts forward the best case for identity politics I’ve ever seen:

Here’s a summary for those who opt out of watching this almost 12 minute video:

Identity politics is based on arbitrary distinctions between two groups, and those distinctions don’t necessarily even need to be defined all that well. Politics on the whole, as defined by Carl Schmitt, is the distribution of power along those hazy boundaries. Consider the One-Drop rule that governed the ‘blackness’ of individuals during the 20th century: insane nonsense, but still firmly embedded in the cultural psyche and accepted by the whole as a means of dividing power. To quote, “True political conflict isn’t about facts – it’s about the fight against other identities, however arbitrarily we might point them out.”

Politics therefore isn’t about policies, government programs, or their austere lack, but about “who is allowed to have power over themselves, and who is not.” The arguments over any other issue is what Olly, the presenter, calls, “management disagreements.” Those who focus on these management disagreements as the basis for their political identity are less zealous than those who adhere to Politics as defined by Schmitt. The zealotry behind a dogmatic identity can literally kill while milquetoast liberalism could never achieve such an extreme. Because of this, a government that runs on the ideologically weaker managerial proceduralism platform will be dangerously vulnerable against any group fueled by identity-based fanaticism that is big enough to threaten it. This means that anyone who doesn’t take into account power and identity when they are discussing politics will be doomed to lose every time.

Olly then goes on to say that when one considers the identity politics of the Left and compares it to those on the Right, there is a crucial distinction to make because they are not mirror images of one another. In this Us vs. Them mentality, the opposition to the Left is less rigid than the opposition to the Right. For example, when the Left defines itself as against the rich, a rich person could simply redistribute their wealth and they would be accepted by the Left, whereas gay people, transgendered people, Muslims, etc. who are the dichotomous Other to the Right, cannot change who they are because their identity is not a choice. He concludes by saying that the centrists who focus on liberal democracy and forget, or purposefully ignore, the role that power and identity inherently play within politics are essentially condoning the violence that those two factors play in every day lives.

Like I said: good stuff. I myself have written about the perilous implications of a possibly universal Us vs. Them mentality, and given that that would encompass politics as well, then Schmitt’s Identity Politics are truly the only type that need to be addressed. However, if that’s the case, then Olly’s argument fails on one critical point. Consider Vladimir Lenin. Or Mao Zedong. Or Pol Pot. These were identity politicians on the Left who engineered a violent, inflexible attack against their identity-based opposites: the bourgeoisie. There was no talk about allowing the rich into the loving warmth of their Leftist ideology. There were massacres. The same could be said for Malcolm X who did not want white people to end their racist ways, he simply wanted them gone in a black-people-only utopia. The Left can be just as ideologically vicious as the Right when they are inflamed by their identity-based righteousness. If politics is only Identity Politics, and both sides at their extremes work only to eliminate their opposites, then ultimately we’re just fucked.

In a glimmer of hope, let’s consider this excellent Al Jazeera article that has a similar theme to Olly’s lovely video. It mentions a similar distinction between the populism on the Right and the populism on the Left, but uses an example of Bernie Sanders demonstrating left-wing populism by wishing to break up the big banks as the contrast to the Right’s anti-pluralism. Olly hints at this as well when he says that the rich and powerful can give up their oppressive ways to become a friend of the Left. It is not the identity that is at issue in these examples, but the practices of those who possess that identity. In order for Schmitt’s Politics to have a happy ending, the Other needs the capacity to change.

It could be argued that this is simple: give up racism, or sexism, or homophobia, and people will be welcomed into that loving embrace of the Left I was fantasizing about earlier, but unfortunately this is too simplistic. Consider the arguments of Anne Bishop, who declares that everyone possessing oppressor traits (straight, white, male, able-bodied, etc.) will always be oppressors because regardless of their deeds, they will always benefit from the privileges that those identity markers bestow upon them. In addition, they will have grown up under conditions that reinforce their superiority, and undermining that conditioning is an infinite process that can never successfully be accomplished. Bishop claims that the person who believes that they have finally rid themselves of their oppressor qualities becomes more oppressive for holding these impossible beliefs. What Bishop is essentially saying is that the dichotomous Other of the Left cannot shed their incompatible identity any more than the Other of the Right. Are we just fucked then?

Since identity is inescapable from either side, then we must look elsewhere for solutions. The key lies in the example I used from the Al Jazeera article where Sanders wants to break up the big banks. Breaking up the big banks has absolutely nothing to do with identity. In fact, it is closer to what Olly might call a management proposal. This management proposal, however, is the mechanism for change that would allow the rich to absolve themselves of their oppressive identity to something more acceptable to the Left. Or consider the Black Lives Matter campaign demanding an end to the shooting of black men by police. This is Schmittian Politics because so long as police are trained to use deadly force, and crimes are still committed by black people, even if racism is taken out of the equation, this will always produce the use of deadly force against black people. It is an impossible demand for change. Further evidence is the call to defund the NYPD and expel the police department from Pride Parades; clear indications of inflexible dogmatism. This isn’t allowing capacity for change, it’s demanding the elimination of police from within the Leftist fold: an explicit Us vs. Them mentality. Instead of an overarching ban on police, or calls to defund and therefore ultimately abolish the institution of policing, why not look at mechanisms for change? In the UK (save Northern Ireland), cops do not carry firearms, and if this system were imported into the United States, it would certainly eliminate the police killings of black men. While I am by no means saying this is the panacea for the shootings of black men by police, and other, better solutions are certainly available, it is one example of a mechanism for change that does not call for vindictive polarization.

If we are to accept the implications of Schmittian Politics, then the passionate zeal that drives us must be directed against the management disagreements that Olly insists are not involved in that type of Politics at all. Creating a Them out of an identity marker, no matter which direction it is coming from, will only ever be destructive. My initial critique was right: we must avoid divisiveness and focus on practical, real-world solutions. Identity must be dismissed in favour of these mechanisms for change, as they are the only way to bridge the friend and enemy divide. I mean sure, maybe that is an impossible request, and we are hardwired to pursue an Other based on arbitrary identity markers. If that’s the case, then, as I’ve been saying, we’d just be fucked.

Tags , , , , ,
Categories Politics

The End of Weimar America

Nov 10, 2016 //
0

In Germany, the crippling Treaty of Versailles contributed to the democratic election of their notorious, inhumane despot. It imposed harsh financial debts on the people of Germany, forbid their voices from being heard in its construction, and punished them for over a decade as a consequence for the actions of their leaders. When the Great Depression rolled in, the finances that the US was loaning Germany for its recovery disappeared, destroying the final remnants of the already ravaged German economy. The people sought to lash out after their global bruising, and were offered a scapegoat by right-wing populism in the form of the Jews (and gays, and the disabled, and gypsies, and Christians…).

So America, what’s your excuse? It may sound contrived and a little petty, but it’s a question that needs to be asked, and it’s a question that needs to be answered.

America did not have an outside coalition enforcing punitive economic policies onto their country, but rather, it slyly enacted them itself. The increasing personal debt, the outsourcing of jobs, the apathy of the elites for the working class; all of this is reminiscent of Weimar Germany but without the diktat of outside countries. The Great Recession moniker that was ascribed to the recent economic crisis should have been the ultimate foreshadowing of who was to come. The cause of that Great Recession is multifaceted and complex, but many attribute it to the repealing of the Glass-Steagall act back in 1999; notably, an event perpetrated by a Democrat. Repealing the Glass-Steagall legislation removed the banking regulations created in response to the Great Depression, another harbinger of history repeating itself.

You can also just look at this. It illustrates pretty nicely that the institution of America left its people behind a long time ago.

You can also just look at this. It illustrates pretty nicely that the institution of America left its people behind a long time ago.

When the inevitable market crash violently ripped across the country, the proposed solution was to bail out the banks. No punishments for the culpable, no legislation was changed, the banks were simply given back the money they had swindled from the hapless people. Again, this disgrace of justice was meted out by yet another Democrat.

America’s descent into totalitarianism was almost preordained. It is undeniable that there were elements of misogyny hindering Clinton’s campaign, but even if she won, what kind of monstrous candidate would have arisen after four years of more of the same? Clinton denigrated unions, she ridiculed environmentalists, and is just as entrenched into corporate welfare as any of the less insane Republican candidates. Progressing along the status quo that spawned a Trump campaign would not have improved with age.

Those who fear the journalistic sanctions under a Trump presidency should be aware that the mainstream media has been complicit in perpetuating the discourse of the status quo for ages. Even recently, Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman was charged with criminal trespassing for covering the Dakota Access Pipeline protest. Though the charges were dropped, it appears we do not need to wait for Trump to be sworn in before dissenting voices are criminalized. In addition, you might consider the unprecedented crackdown on whistleblowing under the Obama administration as further disregard for accountable governance. America has been tailspinning for a long time now, and it is of no use to pretend like it would never crash. Looking at historical precedents, someone like Trump is not entirely unsurprising.

I know I’ve been picking on Democrats, and maybe there are some of you demanding I account for the Republican congresses that blocked progressive legislation or Republican presidents that put forward their own destructive policies, and yes, those exist. This isn’t a problem created solely by the Democrats, but by the American political institution itself. When government becomes structurally plutocratic, even overt partisanship becomes more of a charade than an allegiance to any particular group.

Some have already begun blaming third party candidates for the failures of Clinton and the Democratic party (as if Gary Johnson, who wanted to eliminate taxes and abolish all government programs, would siphon votes away from the Democrats), when the reality is that a vote for a third party is a rejection of that broken political system in the vain hope that, this time, maybe people might pay attention to the shards of their democracy lying on the floor and decide to do something about it. Voting for a third party is not a vote for the greater of two evils, it is a refusal to participate in the system that enables constant concessions from the left as the Democrats can essentially behave however they want, knowing full-well that they will always have a Republican bogeyman to point at each election. Constantly voting for the lesser of two evils under this pretense will only allow its evil to grow.

Many people wish to attribute this grave election loss to racist individuals who have succumbed to the xenophobic rhetoric spewed by Trump, and judging by the endorsements given to him by white supremacist groups, it is a likely contributor. But the alt in alt-right intrinsically defines it as outside of the mainstream, so the pockets of racist support backing Donald Trump is difficult to attribute to the majority. In fact, blaming the election on the fear of the Other could very well be blaming the racial scapegoating rather than the cause of the necessity for scapegoating in the first place. Was Hitler’s rise attributable entirely to Germany’s antisemitism, or were there other factor’s at play? Hint: think the Treaty of Versailles…

It might also be convenient to claim that this is a racist backlash against having a black president. Except Obama had two terms, meaning that a majority did not seek to punish him for his race the first time around. If we consider when the Civil Rights act was implemented in 1964 by Lyndon B. Johnson, which might have garnered comparable racialized political backlash, we could expect a similar white supremacist to emerge in the next election. Except LBJ won 44 states to 6 in the subsequent election, and when the Democrats lost the following election to a Republican, this ended up being Richard Nixon, who worked on desegregating schools in the South, enforced the controversial busing of black children outside their neighbourhood to accommodate equal representation in schools in the North, and implemented the first federal affirmative action plan. However much backlash there may have been in interpreting the Civil Rights act in certain states, the federally elected official (Nixon) maintained a greater degree of racial sensibility than either political candidate in this last election.

Today, the voices standing up for racial equality tend to make broad, denigrating statements about white people in order to get their messages across, while during the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King was very purposeful in his inclusion of them. If we want to attribute Trump’s victory to a racist backlash, we must consider that the large number of white people who voted for Trump may have ignored those voices simply because they were tired of being attacked. If we, as progressives, wish to create allies or a dialogue, we have to be aware that maligning entire demographics of people is not an appropriate way to gain their sympathies. If, however, progressives insist on attacking whites, they may become so disillusioned with progressivism that they might elect Donald Trump! Oh wait. I suppose we can’t get that one back, can we…

Part of Trump’s success is also due in part to the media’s insatiable desire to tell Trump shock stories, knowing full-well how many papers his antics will sell, and in the process distract from the real drivers pushing forward his campaign. Arlie Russell Hochschild is a sociologist who went deep into Trump country to find out what attracted voters to Trump, and found that it was generally people who felt as though they had been left behind by the establishment and believed in Trump’s sales pitch that he could do something about it. What differences might there have been had the focus of the Democrats been on acknowledging the failures of the system and promising to adjust them, instead of attacking the character of the “deplorables”?

The Tea Party movement began in the wake of the bank bailouts, driven by anger at having been betrayed by the banks and the government. Yes, there was racism involved, but that was only ever an auxiliary motivator for the disdain of the government. Unlike the Occupy movement which preferred to abstain from actively creating change, the Tea Party successfully rallied behind their leaders and managed to vote in several political candidates. Regardless of how you feel about the Tea Party and the recent political movements of the Right, they were quite successful in establishing themselves in practical ways within the system to effect change, and now, one of their leaders is the president.

I’m aware racism is a thing, and I’m aware it played a role in Donald Trump’s success. I literally compared this election to Nazi Germany, and saying that I’m ignoring the impacts of race is telling me I’m ignorant of the hatred of Jews during the Holocaust. My point is that we can’t ignore the factors that have exacerbated American xenophobia, we must find alternative ways of discussing racial progress so as to not alienate the majority of the population, and the broken democratic system of America needs to be reformed. Cowardly hiding behind the Democratic party should no longer be considered morally acceptable.

If we believe this to truly be a cycle of history, then I expect that, after the upcoming World War III, the equivalent of the Nuremberg trials for America will not be as forgiving as the Obama administration was on the war crimes committed during the Bush era. That is, of course, if anyone is left to hold America accountable for its failure to stop a Trump presidency.

Tags , , , ,
Categories Politics
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »