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One for the files

The last thing I read before turning out the lights in our hotel last night:  on Lebanon and the left, by Hazem Saghieh.

Posted by on 08/15 at 10:01 AM

  1. ’American policy, especially in the middle east, is certainly despicable, but love for Lebanon and other countries and peoples should come before hating America and its policy, just as devotion to concrete peoples should always take precedence over allegiance to “causes”.’

    Thanks for refering to this wise article. It makes up for your nubbingly academic piece on “participatory parity” earlier in the week.

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  01:01 PM

  2. I think last week’s pieces had a very casual tone that I wouldn’t really call academic. I thought Michael did an excellent job of capturing the complexity and chaos of trends in leftish opinion.

    Again, the linked article nails the problem. Opposing conflict cannot be accomplished by reinforcing lines drawn in the sand.

    Posted by Central Content Publisher  on  08/15  at  01:50 PM

  3. http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/08/15/open-democracy-karl-marx-and-hezbollah/

    Posted by Louis Proyect  on  08/15  at  02:55 PM

  4. Lou is all Hezbollah now!  And no, folks, I promise I didn’t invent “The Unrepentant Marxist” just to prove my point about the extremister-than-thou “left.” That there hyperlink in comment 3 is real.

    “Nubbingly”?  Dang, that sounds like nebbishly and numbingly—only worse.

    Posted by Michael  on  08/15  at  07:55 PM

  5. I had read this article with interest but was disappointed by its reference to a generic left.

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  08:38 PM

  6. Interesting article. I don’t appreciate the bit about “hatred [...] of America itself,” but I suppose there are a number of liberals who genuinely feel that way. Also, the idea that Marx would roll over in his grave simply because his “followers” were donning clerics robes is a common oversimplificiation.

    And while we’re on the subject of Lebanon and in light of your recent (soft-spoken) tirades about Chomsky, Mr. C himself was on Open Source with Christopher Lydon tonight talking about his dinner with Hassan Nasrallah. If you’ve got an hour to kill, it’s probably worth it.

    Posted by Bryan McKay  on  08/15  at  09:19 PM

  7. Well, maybe you might want to follow the link marked “historical record”. The linked-to article reads like pure pro-Maronite (the Phalange, for example, is not even mentioned by name, only as “Christian militias, provoked beyond endurance") and anti-Syrian/Palestinian propaganda (the Palestinians were a proxy for Syria in Lebanon while the Christians heroically fought Syria all along - really? Kamal Jumblatt was an “inspired leader” (and, it is implied, in no way as murderous as others)? Lebanon, and of course in particular Lebanese culture, has largely Christian roots?). I can only warn against falling for such racist nonsense. Even if the aricle happens to agree with you on the topic of “the Left”. Does this mean we should uncritically support Hizbollah? Of course not. But maybe the “liberal internationalists” shouldn’t fall into the old “enemy-of-my-enemy” trap either.

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  11:09 PM

  8. The Ed Hermann discussion points up two weird aspects of today’s left: (1) they don’t do class/economic analysis and (2) they insist on political strategies that can never appeal to anyone beyond their little circle. It’s especially odd how European “leftists” want to insist that European countries are good citizens of the international system as if, other than the bad US and Zionists, the rest of the world’s states were serious about moral behavior and rule of law. It makes me want to beat them with a copy of “Collected Works of Immanual Wallerstein” bound to a folio edition of “Heart of Darkness”.

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  11:11 PM

  9. Bryan Mckay:
    I was astounded by this comment on the Chris Lydon website:
    --
    His[ Chomsky’s] analysis is one dimensional and resembles the logic of a child more than that of an MIT professor.
    ---

    How can people be so naive about MIT professors?

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  11:18 PM

  10. citizen k, could you name some “European leftists” (in the double-scare-quote sense Michael uses) that insist that European countries are “good citizens of the international system”? Especially their own countries? Whatever problem, for example, you might have with the blog “leninology” - referenced repeatedly here as somehow symbolic of the evilness/stupidity of the radical left - you can’t say he praises the UK. Or read French leftists on French imperialism in Africa. Or what German leftists had to say about Kosovo. Or Italian leftists about Italy’s participation in Afghanistan and Iraq…

    Posted by  on  08/15  at  11:18 PM

  11. Wow: “left-wingers paid scant attention to the reactionary nature of Ayatollah Khomeini’s ideology, his misogyny and hostility to agricultural reform and anything else that might be called progressive.” The things I learn about us.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  12:11 AM

  12. Whew, good thing I didn’t post a link to this essay and say “I love everything about it.” It’s too sweeping and dismissive of The Left in places.  But it’s a useful reminder that one can support Lebanon without supporting Hezbollah.

    Posted by Michael  on  08/16  at  12:48 AM

  13. Christian:

    Take, for example, Joosten Gaarder’s essay in Norway.  But perhaps I’m over-reacting to what I read on the blogs like moonofalabama and eurotrib - both of which have some quite sharp commentators, btw. I find on them a common story about the exceptional level of Israeli atrocity as if the wealth of europe had materialized from the sky.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  09:12 AM

  14. Re #11: Reading Sam Harris’ chapter on Islam in THE END OF FAITH is a good smelling salt when one becomes enraptured with faraway religious zealots leading social causes unto the death of themselves, their followers or their opponents.

    Re #8: If you’re not taking into account who’s making money on what by screwing over whom you’re always gonna be two steps behind what’s really going on.

    Posted by Bob in Pacifica  on  08/16  at  09:33 AM

  15. Michael says that I am “all Hezbollah” now. I am not exactly sure what that means. I would have supported Haile Selassie against Mussolini’s invasion, so I have no trouble supporting Hezbollah on the same basis. If Michael can drag himself away from Saussure and company, he might take the trouble to read Adam Shatz’s interesting articles on Hezbollah. Shatz is the book review editor of the Nation Magazine and ostensibly does not belong to the 9th circle of hell that Michael has assigned people like Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky to.

    Posted by Louis Proyect  on  08/16  at  09:45 AM

  16. Lou is all Hezbollah now!

    There’s nothing “all Hezbollah now” about Louis Proyect’s commentary on the Hazem Saghieh piece. There’s something disturbingly sectarian about your just-a-tad-too-eager differentiation of “good” liberal left from “bad” radical left, Michael. Yes, anti-sectarian sectarianism may sound like an oxymoron but there never seems to be any shortage of it.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  10:48 AM

  17. Citizen k, this is the second time I’ve read claims that lefties single out Israel and ignore the crimes of their own country.  It’s startling, because in my experience lefties usually criticize Israel by comparing its crimes to those committed by their own country.  Americans compare Israel vs. the Palestinians to American conflicts between whites and Native Americans.  Europeans compare Israel to their own imperialist days.
    Where are all those lefties who think America and Europe are without sin?  You’ve named one in Norway.  I visit moonofalabama sometimes and never picked up this idea that Israel is the first Western country to practice imperialism.

    Michael, if you want to say lefties shouldn’t support Nasrallah, go right ahead and say it on your own account.  (I agree.)

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  01:34 PM

  18. The thesis in the NY Times magazine that Hezbollah’s act of war against Israel constituted a coup against the Lebanese government seemed obvious to me once someone pointed it out:  Hezbollah usurped the government’s power to make war. 

    I don’t doubt that the Lebanese Shi’ites have legitimate grievances against the Lebanese government.  But Hezbollah’s strategy of redressing them seems designed to sow chaos, violence, and death.

    I oppose that as much as I oppose Israel’s response.

    Posted by john  on  08/16  at  01:37 PM

  19. Curse you Bérubé and your un-amurkin leftishness--forcing your Marxist-secular-Darwinist views on us; and for making us use our brains, read the threads, and critically analyze the posts of the last ten days.

    the following from John Sugg on Alternet:

    Education earned the most vitriol at the conference. Effusing that the Religious Right has captured politics and much of the media, North proclaimed: “The only thing they (secularists) have still got a grip on is the university system.” Academic doctorates, he contended, are a conspiracy fomented by the Rockefeller family. All academic programs (except, he said, engineering) are now dominated by secularists and Darwinists.

    “Marxists in the English departments!” he ranted. “Close every public school in America!”

    Among North’s most quoted writings was this ditty from 1982: “[W]e must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation...which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.” Titus followed that party line when he proclaimed that the First Amendment is limited to guaranteeing “the right to criticize the government,” but “free expression is not in the Constitution.” When I asked him if blasphemy—castigating religion—was protected, he shook his head.

    Like North, Titus sees public education as decidedly satanic. Also, welfare. He contended the Founding Fathers—and Americans today—owe their “first duties to God. It’s not just worship. It’s education… welfare to the poor. Welfare belongs exclusively to God. Why do schools fail? They’re trying to do the business of God. Medicaid goes. Education goes. The church gets back to doing what it should do.” And what should the church be doing According to these self-appointed arbiters of God’s will, running our lives. And stoning those who disagree.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  01:41 PM

  20. Gaarders essay was way over the line. However, he is a bad example for the original contention - as Norway never really was that much into imperialism as far as I know - in fact it really became an independent country in modern times only in 1905.

    Regarding the more general discussion, if you read for example the Socialist Worker(UK) - the paper of the SWP(UK) - then you will see that they are very well aware of the reactionary ideology and politics of Islamic fundamentalism, including Hizbollah.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  02:16 PM

  21. Just to add my bafflement: how is Lou’s essay supposed to show he is “all Hizbollah now”? Try as I may, I cannot read that into it. Or maybe anybody not casting Hizbollah as evil incarnate is “all Hizbollah now”.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  02:25 PM

  22. Certainly, Gaarder’s claim that israeli actions are so repulsive and its violations of international law are so outstanding as to earn it a place of special infamy are common ones from Europeans. I spend a good bit of time in Europe and have even had Belgians tell me that Israel’s imperialism is the worst ever! Why next they will be cutting ears off of people who don’t bring them enough ivory or something.

    Here is Indymedia Paris

    Israël est le dernier Etat colonial. Il fut possible à l’époque des accords Balfour car il s’insérait dans les intérêts coloniaux britanniques. Aujourd’hui, il ne subsiste que grâce au support des Etats-Unis qui croient encore qu’Israël sert leurs intérêts dans la région. Le projet sioniste se base sur une forme spéciale d’Etat :

    une idéologie raciste et élitiste
    une économie fortement contrôlée par l’Etat avec une structure militaire corporatiste
    une économie dépendante de l’aide étrangère et de ses échanges avec l’étranger.

    Imagine the shock of a delicate French person confronted with an economy strongly controlled by the State with a military-corporate structure! Or with a colonial adventure - perhaps in some third world nation in Africa, say Ivory Coast, or someplace like that. The last colonial state!! WTF do they think is going on in Iraq? Not to mention what states they believe are operating in the New World, Australia, and New Zealand.

    There’s a reason why Tasmanians are not organizing armed resistance from their refugee camps - or Saami sending rockets into Oslo.

    What I see is an absolute refusal to understand the world in terms of anything but cartoons, because otherwise the dubious moral position of those of us in the first world would make things complicated.

    this is interesting

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  04:28 PM

  23. There’s nothing “all Hezbollah now” about Louis Proyect’s commentary on the Hazem Saghieh piece.

    Um, yes there is.  Shorter Louis Proyect:  Lebanese Shi’ites are underdogs, Marx always took the side of the underdog (how’s that for the most simplistic Marxism yet devised?), therefore Marx would have been OK with Hezbollah.

    here’s something disturbingly sectarian about your just-a-tad-too-eager differentiation of “good” liberal left from “bad” radical left, Michael

    Maybe rereading Lou’s piece would clarify things, Sandwichman.  Gitlin and Postel are “wretches” and opendemocracy.net “maintains a steady drumbeat for the war on terror and against ‘Islamofascism’ and the Bolivarian revolution.” This is really vile stuff, m’fren’—and the bit about the steady drumbeat for war is, how shall I put it?  ah, I know: a pack of lies.  There’s no such thing as being too eager to differentiate oneself from slander of that order.

    So:  lefties shouldn’t support Nasrallah, and John has it just right in number 18.  As for Lou P., he is wearing out his welcome quickly, most recently with his illiterate claim that I have placed Chomsky in the same category with Ed Herman.

    Posted by Michael  on  08/16  at  10:59 PM

  24. I spend a good bit of time in Europe and have even had Belgians tell me that Israel’s imperialism is the worst ever! Why next they will be cutting ears off of people who don’t bring them enough ivory or something.

    This made me laugh.  Grimly.  Thanks, citizen k.

    Posted by Michael  on  08/16  at  11:20 PM

  25. Okay, I’m completely ignorant of what goes on in leftist circles in France, Norway, and Belgium.  I can only say that lefties who bash Israel’s sins and seem utterly oblivious to the imperialist sins of their own ruling elites don’t sound like any kind of lefty I’ve ever encountered or read.  They sound like rightwingers to me, or perhaps just very uneducated.  You can go through back issues of Z Magazine (including essays by both Noam and Ed), the Progressive, the Nation, Monthly Review and (certainly) Dissent and never find anything that remotely resembles what you’re talking about.  And my impression is that British leftists are also critical of their own country and what we and they have been doing in Iraq.  But maybe leftists on the Continent are a totally different breed.  Maybe they all denounce Israel and softpedal what Leopold did to the Congo and maybe they all think the genocide of the Tasmanians was in some way “progressive” and so forth.  If so, then perhaps these people should be called nationalist leftists, or antisemitic socialists, or national socialists, or something like that.

    Posted by  on  08/16  at  11:54 PM

  26. Donald Johnson:

    Subjects of Poodle-stan, I guess, have a harder time pretending to be above all that.

    Actually, what I hear when I bring those types of things up is “that was all long ago” or “so we don’t have a right to object to XXX(bad deeds by someone else) because in the vast mythic misty past someone distantly related to our cro magnon forebearers may have made a mistake?!!!” (tones of outraged disbelief to be imagined).

    In any case, I don’t disagree all that much with LProyect, but the language he uses and the different but no less off-putting language Professor Chomsky uses, seem to me to be almost designed for ineffectiveness.

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  01:57 AM

  27. Michael: “Um, yes there is. Shorter Louis Proyect:  Lebanese Shi’ites are underdogs, Marx always took the side of the underdog (how’s that for the most simplistic Marxism yet devised?), therefore Marx would have been OK with Hezbollah.”

    Michael, have you ever read Marx? He took the side of the Sepoy rebellion against Great Britain. By any standards, Hezbollah is far more enlightened than the Sepoys. Speaking of which:

    ---

    Q: What is the current state of your relations with the Socialist movement? 

    Hasan Nasrallah: The socialist movement, which has been away from international struggle, now for a considerable time, at last began to become a moral support for us once again. The most concrete example of this has been Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela. What most of the Muslim states could not do has been done by Chavez by the withdrawal of their ambassador to Israel. He furthermore communicated to us his support for our resistance. This has been an immense source of moral for us. We can observe a similar reaction within the Turkish Revolutionary Movement. We had socialist brothers from Turkey who went to Palestine in 1960s to fight against Israel. And one of them still remains in my memory and my heart; Deniz Gezmis..!

    Full: http://www.emep.org/girisen.htm

    Now I imagine that this might mean nothing to you since the “decent left” hates Hugo Chavez almost as much as it hates Hezbollah…

    Posted by Louis Proyect  on  08/17  at  09:23 AM

  28. Even if Hezbollah’s aims are admirable (which is questionable), the methods they employ are not. Hiding behind women and children isn’t a position that Marx would have been likely to adopt. They’ve been more damaging to the working class proletariat than they have to the bourgeois Israeli government.

    And Louis, are you defending the logic that “Marx always took the side of the underdog”? I suppose then that he would have voted Libertarian in American politics? Or perhaps he’d support the few right-wing white supremacist groups like the National Vanguard, simply because they run counter to public opinion! Michael’s point was that your logic is simplistic and flawed, which it undeniably is.

    Posted by Bryan  on  08/17  at  09:53 AM

  29. Brian: “Hiding behind women and children isn’t a position that Marx would have been likely to adopt.”

    Oh, please. The Sepoys cut off the noses of women and children.

    Brian: “Or perhaps he’d support the few right-wing white supremacist groups like the National Vanguard, simply because they run counter to public opinion!”

    I think it should be obvious from what I wrote that I was speaking about clashes between the colonizer and the colonized. Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and non-Marxists like Franz Fanon always made distinctions between the violence of the oppressed and the oppressor. This is called class politics. It allows us to distinguish between John Brown and the KKK, for example.

    Posted by Louis Proyect  on  08/17  at  10:00 AM

  30. Once again, I assure everyone that I have not invented Louis Proyect.  (I’m not that postmodern.) He’s just making my argument for me all by himself, because he’s a nice guy that way.

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  10:11 AM

  31. Louys: “Oh, please. The Sepoys cut off the noses of women and children.”

    Which Marx was highly critical of. He backed the sepoys despite this, but it was in the context of equivalency - “oh, but look what’s been done to the sepoys!” I’m not sure if the same kind of equivalency exists in this case, or if it’s a very good argument to begin with.

    Louys: “I think it should be obvious from what I wrote that I was speaking about clashes between the colonizer and the colonized.”

    But you wrote “he always took the side of the underdog.” And are we talking colonizer/colonized or oppressor/oppressed, because these are two different dialectics here. One could make an argument that many white supremacists are working class and thus oppressed. If one is willing to stick race as just another category under class oppression as many vulgar Marxists are apt to do, then you can make a pretty convincing case for “white solidarity,” no? I’d rather not take this analogy much further though, lest things get ugly.

    Either way, what are Hezbollahs legitimate current grievances of oppression against Israel? What instigated the kidnapping of two soldiers and subsequent missile attacks? Not that I’m defending all of Israel’s actions, mind you, but it seems silly to look to Hezbollah as an example of a noble group fighting against class-based oppression.

    Posted by Bryan  on  08/17  at  10:16 AM

  32. Well, okay. If the “decent left” followed Marx’s lead and backed Hezbollah despite behavior such as cutting off noses, etc., then there would be no problem. But this is not what the opendemocracy article was about. It was a plague on both your houses type article. I probably would have not commented on it at all, if it had not tried to invoke Karl Marx as an authority rather like the devil quoting scripture.

    On the working class character of the KKK et al. There is nothing in Marx that automatically gives benediction to working class people. In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “...The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.”

    Posted by Louis Proyect  on  08/17  at  10:28 AM

  33. Maybe rereading Lou’s piece would clarify things, Sandwichman.

    No, Michael. I know what I read and I read what you wrote about what you think you read. All I have to say is that polemic is a blunt instrument. Those who engage in it shouldn’t deceive themselves that they are using a scalpel.

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  10:42 AM

  34. So read the Ed Hermann arguments in the previous post. What kind of person uses phrasing like “the so and so phalanx”? His prose sounds way too Horowitzianism for my reading pleasure, snd it draws on the same source.

    I think this silly language hides reality and puts us in this leftie world of symbolic actions and self-isolated “intellectuals”. Why do we need simple labels for complex geopolitical disputes among powerful and generally unpleasant forces? Do we have to “support” Hizbolla for whatever good that will do anyone or pretend that Nasrullah is an incipient democratic socialist in order to oppose Israels bombing of children and dimwitted service to the neo-con? If I applaud Hugo Chavez’s spectacular nose-thumbing at Bush and his last minute save against the theft of Venezualen oil do I have to not notice the traditional strong-man trappings of the Venezualan government?

    There is a difference between “plague on both houses” and “geopolitics is not a sports match where you have to pick a team to cheer for and against.”

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  10:50 AM

  35. I know what I read and I read what you wrote about what you think you read. All I have to say is that polemic is a blunt instrument. Those who engage in it shouldn’t deceive themselves that they are using a scalpel.

    OK, very well then.  But I would hope that Proyect’s remarks in this thread have helped to bear out my construction of what I wrote about what I think I read.

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  01:53 PM

  36. I see what you’re saying, citizen k.  In my limited English-language experience, I’ve never seen that.  I have seen people defend Israel on occasion by saying “Well, what right do Americans have to criticize considering what the US did to the Native Americans or what right do the British have to criticize considering what they did to the Irish, the Indians, the Kenyans, etc...” To which I would have thought any leftist would have said--"You’re right that Israel is no worse than many others and not nearly as bad as some, but you’re also making my case.  Israel is behaving like a Western colonial power, not the worst of the lot by any means, but there’s an unmistakeable family resemblance.” The lefty would then go on to describe how his own country continues to act in imperialist ways.  Or that’s how American lefties act, anyway.  I forgot to include the religious left--the Tikkun and Sojourners crowd.  They’re even more likely to point the finger at their own countries and themselves.  That’s why lefties are so often accused of self-flagellation.

    The European lefties you describe--well, it’s that lack of the self-flagellating spirit that makes them unrecognizable to me.

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  08:58 PM

  37. Well, keeping on track with our own ‘Merican left, my question remains: why does Ed Hermann use 1930s stalinistish language? The Citizen K Clique wants to know? Why doesn’t Pacifica do some market research to, you know, broaden their audience? Who are they trying to impress? Louis P, I’m somewhat sympathetic, but who cares if we and/or Karl Marx’s dead self “support” Hizbolla?  What will that “support” do? What does it matter if Karl Marx would have supported Hizbolla ?

    Posted by  on  08/17  at  11:13 PM

  38. Hezbollah to all accounts did not hide behind women and children; that’s just Zionist propaganda. Israel deliberately went for the civilian population of Lebanon on the good old theory that terror bombing a country, “setting the clock back twenty years” as it was charmingly called, would force it to depose Hezbollah.

    Posted by Martin Wisse  on  08/21  at  05:07 PM

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