On the whole, the global Left seems more or less united in thinking that the overthrow of Gaddafi would be a step forward for the revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East. But not all agree. There is some disagreement on the Left as to how to react to the recent events in Libya. For example, there is a very small set of folks (e.g. here and here) who are clinging to a pro-Gaddafi argument that runs as follows: Gaddafi is a progressive champion of African solidarity and liberation whereas the opposition is racist and pro-imperialist. The trouble with this line is that it simply has no basis in fact. First off, Gaddafi has cozied up to imperialism in recent years in various ways. He has joined in participating in the "War on Terror", he has unsavory ties to Italy's Berlusconi, and he's been at pains to prove to world imperialist powers that he has "seen the light" and deserves to be integrated into global capitalism. Multinational capital has obliged and foreign direct investment has soared in Libya since the 1990s. At the same time, unemployment has soared and wages plummeted. Moreover, as Immanuel Wallerstein has pointed out, until recently Gaddafi was getting nothing but good press in the Western press (from the likes of Giddens, Blair, etc.). To say that Gaddafi stands for anti-imperialism, African solidarity and global emancipation is to say something that has absolutely no basis in fact.
Though this facile pro-Gaddafi position is not widely endorsed, there are still some on the Left who seem to be on the fence as to how we should adjudicate the civil war between the opposition and Gaddafi's regime. The arguments from those on the fence seem to run as follows. The political character of the opposition is unclear at best, and reactionary (even Monarchist) at worst. In this context, the argument goes, the least worst option for progressive may be to side with the Gaddafi regime against the revolt, unless it turns out that the opposition is more progressive than it appeared at first blush.
Let me say why I think this argument misses the mark. First of all, it seems to assume an unduly narrow scope of analysis. To genuinely be a Leftist today is to be an internationalist. And right now, we're living through an epoch of revolutions in the Middle East generally, and in North Africa in particular. We can't even grasp what's happening in Bahrain, Algeria, Yemen and Libya without talking about Tunisia and Egypt. This is an international explosion of struggle. Our assessment and evaluation of each uprising must at the same time answer to this international context.
Of course, each national conjuncture has its particularities, and Libya is no exception. I'm not saying that we should crudely paint each uprising with the same brush. Still, our evaluation of the struggle in Libya must not be narrowly national- ours isn't simply a question of Libya vs. Imperialism. The global Left must also confront the relation between this uprising and the context of the revolutionary upsurge sweeping the Middle East writ large. What happens (or doesn't happen) in Libya will have effects elsewhere in the region.
And it is in this context that Leftists should have no qualms about rejecting the Gaddafi regime root and branch. Whatever might replace it in the event that the opposition prevails (which is looking less and less likely, unfortunately), the Gaddafi regime has proven itself to be a permanent roadblock to the kind of robust, participatory democracy from below that socialists fight for. Even from an anti-imperialist standpoint he is a roadblock. In a word, his regime is an obstacle to further revolution in the region writ large.
Let us not forget that Gaddafi's response to the heroic (and ongoing) Tunisian uprising was that the masses were "foolish" for rejecting the "admirable" Ben Ali. Nor should we forget Gaddafi's ties to the Mugabe regime (which has said it would take him if were he to be ousted), which has recently jailed and tortured socialists for holding mass meetings discussing Egypt and Tunisia. The deep conservatism of figures such as Mugabe and Gaddafi is on full display here. There can be no doubt that they are stalwart obstacles to continent-wide revolutionary struggle. In the long-run, nothing good will come from the continuation of the Gaddafi regime- any destabilization of the regime that creates space for increased struggle from below is to be preferred (some will retort that this seems to give cover to imperialist intervention- but I register my deep skepticism that such intervention would actually create space for increased struggle from below). The regime is so ossified and repressive that a new configuration would very likely be more favorable from the standpoint of the possibility for mass struggle. The sooner the dictatorial, top-down regime in place is unseated the better for leftists in Libya.
Moreover, in the context of region-wide revolution, there is good reason to think that opening up the society to mass struggle is the most progressive way forward(within and without Libya). There is already a large gap between the ideals of the masses of people involved in the opposition and the embodiment of such ideals in the practices of the leaders of the opposition. That gap can only grow in the context of increased struggle. The future of struggle in Libya depends upon an opening that will not obtain so long as Gaddafi retains his grip over the nation.
Of course, it should go without saying that none of this commits us to enabling or otherwise supporting Western intervention. The whole point is that the Gaddafi regime is a fetter on the region-wide revolutionary surge, so it stands to reason that Western intervention would be an even more cumbersome fetter on that revolutionary energy. So it's not as if unremitting opposition to imperialist intervention commits us to defending the Gaddafi regime one iota- the whole point is that we should oppose both Gaddafi and intervention insofar as both deeply impinge upon the capacity of poor and working-class Libyans to rise up and fight for their own liberation. There is no reason that we should think we must choose between Gaddafi or imperialism- this is a false dilemma. We should be uncompromising in standing with the masses of Libyans who share neither the interests of the elites on either side of the Civil War, nor the interests of the imperialist powers looking to get a foothold in a region that is quickly slipping out of their control. There is no plausible argument for intervention- that is something leftists cannot endorse. But refusing to endorse intervention says nothing of whether we should give cover to Gaddafi- that is an entirely different question. And if the analysis above is sound- the answer to that separate question is obvious: Gaddafi is a repressive, conservative force that is a roadblock to the escalation of the region-wide revolutionary upsurge.
The basic question for Leftists is this: What is the best way forward for poor and working-class people in Libya and the region writ-large? I'm firmly convinced that the answer has to be: revolutionary mass struggle. The context created by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions (which are still underway) has spilled over into heretofore unthinkable locales, provoking strikes and direct action in Saudi Arabia of all places. This cannot be underestimated- and one has to believe that the momentum in the region is such that the old "stability" of years past is precisely what we don't need right now.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
On the Uprising in Libya
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Hypocrisy On Display
Compare and contrast the following.
First, this from when the protests first broke out in Egypt:
Asked if he would characterize Mubarak as a dictator Biden responded: “Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he’s been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with – with Israel. … I would not refer to him as a dictator.”Today:
The Obama administration was continuing its efforts to influence a transition. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. called Mr. Suleiman on Tuesday to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process. He also asked Mr. Suleiman to open talks on Egypt’s political future to a wider range of opposition members.Hmmm. So first he staunchly refuses to recognize Mubarak as a dictator (for reasons that are instructive). Then, in the face of unremitting struggle from below, he is forced to eat his words and "call on Mr. Suleiman", i.e. Torturer-in-Chief, "to ask him to lift the 30-year emergency law that the government has used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders, to stop imprisoning protesters and journalists, and to invite demonstrators to help develop a specific timetable for opening up the political process". But none of that should be necessary if, as Biden so vehemently maintained a few weeks ago, Mubarak really was not a dictator presiding over an authoritarian regime.
Now, we should be clear that this is basically just a rhetorical about face. I don't think the underlying objectives of Washington have changed one bit. But it's important to note how mass struggle and pressure from social movements can force elites to change, revise and adapt their legitimating narratives. And even more important is the obvious fact that the protesters aren't susceptible to such rhetorical flourishes or subtle revisions in the old legitimating stories. They're fed up with this brand of filth, and they don't want a new narrative from the old leaders. They want the old leaders to be history.
I'm watching very closely the emergence of mass strikes and the direct interventions by the working class in recent days. Washington has recently moved aircraft carriers to Suez ostensibly to "enable the evacuation of US citizens" from the area, but the more likely story is that they're trying to make sure that the canal, which facilitates close to 8% of worldwide trade, remains open.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Kristoff: "They want to be just like us!"
When I recently criticized the "Western" ideology which contorts the events in Egypt to fit the pre-packaged "they want to be just like us!" mold, this is precisely the sort of filth I had in mind.
The entire set of assumptions that Kristoff uses to "understand" recent events in Egypt are problematic. Take, first of all, his invocation of us "Westerners". I ask, again, who is this we? Next, consider the following paragraph:
In 1979, a grass-roots uprising in Iran led to an undemocratic regime that oppresses women and minorities and destabilizes the region. In 1989, uprisings in Eastern Europe led to the rise of stable democracies. So if Egyptian protesters overcome the government, would this be 1979 or 1989?This is an excellent distillation of the ideological framework undergirding what Kristoff says. One could, in effect, simply take this framework and churn out the rest of his conclusions without even so much as gathering a single piece of information about the concrete conditions in Egpyt. It all follows frictionlessly from a certain framework of discussion that is presupposed and unacknowledged.
But what is content of this ideological framework exactly? It's first component becomes clear if we collapse the interests of all the different groups and classes in the United States into this mythical notion of the "national interest". This is the "we", the "Westerners" of whom Kristoff speaks. All of us, from the Washington foreign policy insiders and multinational corporate elites to the jobless and the disempowered... yes, all of us have the same interests at home and abroad. Yes, we are to believe that all ordinary Americans benefit equally from the foreign adventures put together by the Military-Industrial complex. The slogan "money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation" evidently has no merit whatsoever.
Next, having sold the lie that poor workers and rich corporate elites have the same interests here and abroad, we must explain what these allegedly coinciding interests are. Unsurprisingly, these "national interests" are precisely the same as the interests of the ruling class: e.g. "stability in the region" means stable US dominance and control, "moderation and tolerance" means tolerance of US imperialism, "democracy" means capitalism, etc. Thus the 1979 Iranian revolution was "bad" from the get-go because it through out the US-backed Shah and was therefore hostile to Washington's geopolitical and economic interests in the region. By contrast, the 1989 anti-Stalinist revolutions in the East Bloc were "good" because many of them ended up being subordinate to US interests in the region and were willing to accept neoliberal "economic shock therapy". Again, we see here a perfect embodiment of the binary between "anxious" imperialism and "co-opting" imperialism. At the end of the day, it hardly matters whether the interests of the peoples of these respective regions were well-served by what occurred there: the only criterion for "good" and "bad" here is good or bad for U.S. imperial interests.
A more sober, and factually accurate, analysis of 1979 and 1989 would go as follows: 1979 was an emancipatory, mass-democratic event in which a (deeply unpopular) US-backed and funded dictator was overthrown by an uprising from below. This event opened up space for all kinds of possibilities, and it was not fomented from above by the clerics who subsequently squelched it. It was not inevitable that the revolutionary eruption that created it would be extinguished, it's most impressive gains rolled back. But of course, Washington hardly cares that the gains of the revolution were rolled back, democratic participation drawn down. They only see two states of affairs: one in which they had control, and another in whic they don't. That is, one in which they had a client regime with the Shah, and another in which they no longer had the influence and power that client regimes afford. If Iran is not democratic today, Washington isn't losing sleep over that fact. After all, the US's closest allies in the Middle East are the most repressive and opposed to democracy.
1989 was, for Washington, sort of the opposite of 1979. Again, set aside empty rhetoric from US officials about "democracy" (if you want to know what they think about democracy see what they did in Chile in 1973). What happened, from a ruling class perspective, was this. A global power opposed to US interests (Stalinist Russia) disintegrated into a large number of smaller states that could be, for the first time in decades, brought into the orbit of US influence. Despite the fact that many involved in 1989 uprisings opposed both Stalinist domination and Washington-backed global capitalism, these events are all contorted into the model of pro-capitalist triumphalism: "Finally, now they fulfill their deep desire to be just like us!". This is the manic, co-opting/appropriating maneuver which often figures opposite the fearful, survivalist maneuver that captures the anxious, imperialist response to 1979.
So, the question Kristoff is really asking is this: will this revolution result in conditions favorable or unfavorable to the interests of the US ruling class? The perverse thing, whether he realizes it or not, is that he is substituting this narrow question for the following, more general question: "does this revolution create conditions favorable or unfavorable to the interests of the masses of ordinary Americans?" The obvious answer to the general question is "yes". The clear answer to the narrow question is "no". Anytime the oppressed fight for their own self-emancipation it is a boon to the interests of ordinary people everywhere, and, a threat to the rule of elites everywhere. As I've said, there is a lot we can learn from Egypt right here at home. It's not as though we live in a classless, horizontal society.
Though Kristoff tries to offer, within this frustrating ideological framework, the "counter-intuitive" insight that democratic struggle in Egpyt "might not be that bad after all", I don't think this means we should let him off the hook here. Once we make the distinction between "soft" and "hard" imperialism, between appropriating and anxiety-ridden imperialism, it becomes clear that Kristoff is no progressive. I genuinely believe that he means well, but that's simply not enough. Perhaps some colonial officials really did believe that they were on a civilizing mission in what was called the Third World. But that hardly obscures the barbarity of colonialism and the unequal social relations it presupposes. Moreover, that things should look so distorted from the top should not come as a surprise. It would be stranger, in fact, if the "natural" way that things appeared to a person like Kristoff were clear-eyed and unsentimental about power.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
What we can learn from Egypt
Egyptians are revolting over rising costs of living, soaring unemployment, economic misery, and an ossified political system that is hardly democratic and which is unresponsive to their needs. They're sick and tired of crony capitalism imposed on them from above.
How different are things right here in the good ol' USA? To be sure, we're better off with Obama than with Hosni Mubarak. But that doesn't obscure the fact that many of the deep problems facing Egyptians are afflicting our society as well, and for similar reasons.
As Bob Herbert makes clear in a recent column on the suffering caused by the crisis in the US:
What’s really happening, of course, is the same thing that’s been happening in this country for the longest time — the folks at the top are doing fabulously well and they are not interested in the least in spreading the wealth around.He's talking about the US, not a the strange "Other-ized" image of Egpyt produced by mass consensus media.
The people running the country — the ones with the real clout, whether Democrats or Republicans — are all part of this power elite. Ordinary people may be struggling, but both the Obama administration and the Republican Party leadership are down on their knees slavishly kissing the rings of the financial and corporate kingpins.
I love when the wackos call President Obama a socialist. Wasn’t it his budget director, Peter Orszag, who moved effortlessly from his job in the administration to a hotshot post at Citigroup, beneficiary of tons of government largess? And didn’t the president’s new chief of staff, William Daley, arrive in his powerful new post fresh from the executive suite of JPMorgan Chase? And isn’t the incoming chairman of Mr. Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness very conveniently the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, Jeffrey Immelt?
You might ask: Who represents working people? The answer, as Tevye would say with grave emphasis in “Fiddler on the Roof,” is, “I don’t know.”
And, as I said in a recent post, the inference to draw from Egpyt isn't that we should pat ourselves on the back and rejoice in how eager the Egyptians are to join us in the world of freedom and prosperity. No, the inference to draw is that the Egyptians are showing us something about how power works and how social change happens. They are standing up to an uncaring political/economic strata of elites who have profited from their immiseration for decades. It's time for Americans to do the same. Real change, the sort of change we can really "believe in", is not going to come from on high by way of the usual suspects in the two major corporate parties. It will not be handed to us after a mass email-campaign to our senators or a funding-drive organized by MoveOn.org. It will be won in the same way that all progressive changes have been one in this country: through hard-fought struggle.
The sooner that ordinary people in the US begin rising up, demanding that their government assuage their suffering and economic misery, the better. The sooner we begin demanding real health care reform for all, full employment, and a re-investment of war funding in education and infrastructure, the better. Tunisia and Egypt are teaching the world a valuable lesson. The first step to understanding it is to open ourselves to the raw facts of our situation in the US, and those facts are not pretty.
Two Left Views of the Revolutionary Situation in Egypt
Žižek has a piece in The Guardian here, which skewers the "cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilized through religious fundamentalism or nationalism". Indeed, he also puts a lie to the even more cynical wisdom that liberation can only be "brought" to the Middle East by way of U.S. military occupation.
Also, see Ahmed Shawki's excellent update on the situation from SW.org here. As he notes, "Right now, the movement is united around the political aim of getting rid of Hosni Mubarak. But hopefully, once Mubarak is unseated, the political questions will then mesh with social questions that still remain unresolved...If that happens, there will be a really explosive mix of political and social issues that represents the possibility of political and social revolution."
Both focus in on the most exciting thing about what's happening in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere: the fact that there is a space being opened up in which social transformation is possible. Comparing recent events to the early, emancipatory stages of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Žižek argues that "it did lead to a breathtaking explosion of political and social creativity, organizational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. This genuine opening that unleashed unheard-of forces for social transformation, a moment in which everything seemed possible, was then gradually stifled through the takeover of political control by the Islamist establishment."
It is always easy to say, in a cynical deterministic way, that unsuccessful revolutions were always fated from the very beginning to turn out as they did. But this facile bit of cynicism is not grounded in fact. The 1979 Iranian Revolution was not fated to turn out as it did from the very beginning, and, though seldom discussed, there were many emancipatory possibilities in its early stages. We must learn from such failures, such "revolutionary rehearsals", so that we can do better the next time around. The same is true right now: we cannot say what the result of these uprisings will be a priori. The exciting thing is precisely that, unlike the normal functioning of an oppressive society, space is being opening up in which people may have the opportunity to determine their own fate, to shape society in a humane, democratic way that brushes against the grain of neoliberal capitalism.
To fear this opening as such, to distrust this new possibility in itself, is just to side with the status quo. It is also to verge on an old colonial kind of racism which suggests that "I'm not sure the time is right for the Arab region to go through the democratic process", i.e. "the Arabs are not yet ready for self-governance". To fear incredible possibility of a free and democratic society created by these uprisings is to fear freedom and democracy themselves. It is to be content with the slow-grinding, everyday, ordinary oppression and exploitation that characterizes an unjust social order. No one except the most inveterate conservative could take such a position.
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Sort-of Update: I might have added a third, namely, this piece by Noam Chomsky in the guardian. Echoing the views above, Chomsky holds that "It's not radical Islam that worries the US – it's independence...The nature of any regime it backs in the Arab world is secondary to control. Subjects are ignored until they break their chains."
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
"Why... they want to be just like us!"
The imperialist orientation toward "events" elsewhere in the world typically falls on one or other side of the following dichotomy.
On the one hand, there is the survivalist, frightened, anxious gaze that "Otherizes". On the surface, it can be relatively collected or vitriolic, but the basic attitude is the same. Such a gaze regards that which is "other" as nothing but a threat. Underlying all of this is a rigid unwillingness to question the basic beliefs and ideological framework that legitimate the status quo.
On the other hand, there is the co-opting, appropriating gaze that obliterates all difference. This orientation tends to project a great deal onto other people (expectations, presumed endorsement of one's own politics, etc.). This gaze appropriates movements elsewhere on the globe, and contorts them in such a way that they are entirely consistent with the status quo at home. Again, underlying all this is a similar unwillingness to question or revise basic status quo beliefs and ideological coordinates.
I think we could plausibly argue that the Anglophone media has covered the events in Egypt in one or other of these two ways. Whereas the first response from the US ruling class was one of disbelief, shock, and anxiety, the most recent news from Washington suggests that a shift is underway toward a more co-opting, appropriating gaze. Again, this is typical: when power is in a position to do so, power often reacts swiftly to put down resistance that is visible enough as to not be ignored. But when conditions are such that resistance is growing in confidence and numbers, powerful groups often attempt not to simply "oppose" resistors directly, but to "accommodate" or "co-opt" them in such a way as to undermine their potential as a threat. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is absolutely a case of the latter, whereas the indifference and direct violence against the black liberation movement that preceded it seems more like a case of the former.
It has been obvious from the beginning of the Egypt protests that the US could not directly intervene, for both political and logistical reasons. Politically, there would have been very little support or legitimating grounds for a direct US intervention. The fallout within and without Egypt would have been massive for a US war machine that is already held in contempt by much of the world for its brutal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, the US has indirectly lorded over Egypt by "soft imperialist" tactics, and a move toward direct, "hard imperialist" intervention would breach this longstanding approach. Logistically, the US is over-extended and facing a deep economic crisis at home. It simply could not afford an adventure or increase of military expenditure in Egypt. Thus, the only available course of action for Washington is to work its connections and to try to manage "damage control" via PR. The PR effort, predictably, has shifted back and forth between chastising the protesters and expressing anxiety on the one hand, and appearing to support them and "democracy" on the other.
Now that Mubarak is on his way out, now that it is clear that the protesters will prevail, it comes as no surprise that Obama and Co. have come out as tentative supporters of some kind of "regime change". How could they take any other position at this point? They are merely being dragged along with the tide of this revolution. The interesting question is not "is Washington publicly taking a "pro" or "con" position vis-a-vis the protests?" The question is "what kind of "alternative" is Washington pushing for, and what sort is it pushing against"? Once power realizes that something must change, its task is to influence and mold the alternative in such a way that as little changes as possible (e.g. this is more or less exactly what happened to health care "reform" the US).
So, now that much of the outright anxiety and fear (what about our oil?, what about the "islamofascists"?, etc.) has given way to appropriation, the line coming from the "soft imperialists" is "Look! The Egyptian people want to have freedom just like us!".
Thus, the inspiring revolutionary uprising in Egypt is de-fanged, sanitized and re-packaged for mass consumption. Rather than implicitly criticizing our own society and proposing ways that we, Americans, could change it... the protests are merely an affirmation of our status quo. It's as if they're simply holding a big 4th of July BBQ celebration in our honor in demonstration of their "desire" to "graduate" and join "us" at the adult table.
The reality, of course, is precisely the opposite of this rose-tinged fantasy. The Egyptian people are sick and tired of a frozen, ossified political system that is unresponsive to their needs and interests. They are sick and tired of skyrocketing food prices, high unemployment, repression of labor, neoliberal policies and economic insecurity. They are, in short, angry about problems that are angering Americans every single day. They want changes that Americans desperately need: a complete transformation of the political institutions in society, an overturning of the existing strata of elites, a turn towards more Left economic policy, a full-employment economy, etc. etc.
To say that there is no friction between Egyptian protests and the political situation in the USA is to deeply misunderstand both Egypt and the US. It is to walk about covering ones eyes and chanting the trite slogans that cover up the deep cracks in the status quo. The Egyptian people aren't "trying to be like us". They are doing something that we should take note of, that we must learn from: real change only comes as a result of mass struggle from below. The protesters are bearing witness to a basic fact about entrenched power which Fredrick Douglass captured nicely when he said:
"The whole history of the progress of human a
liberty shows that all concessions yet made
to her august claims have been born of
earnest struggle.... If there is no struggle,
there is no progress. Those who profess to
favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation
are men who want crops without plowing up
the ground, they want rain without thunder
and lightning. They want the ocean without
the awful roar of its mighty waters. The
struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a
physical one, and it may be both moral and
physical, but it must be a struggle.
Power concedes nothing without a demand.
It never did and it never will."
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Who's "We"?
Sholto Byrnes of the New Statesman asks, "If we are in favour of democracy in Tunisia and Egypt, how does this fit with our continuing friendly relations with the absolute monarchies of the Gulf?" This framing of the question dominates much of the English-language media coverage of the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.
But who is this "we"?
When foreign policy-makers in the back rooms of Washington decide what they're going to do, it has literally nothing to do with the interests or views of the vast majority of ordinary Americans. To be sure, the discussions in the back rooms include conversations about what they can reasonably expect to get away with, so "public opinion" has some (albeit quite small) bearing in the form of a weak constraint. But the priorities and general political trajectory of the foreign policy establishment represents the interests of the most powerful, not the vast majority. The decision calculus used by Washington to determine what should be done has literally nothing whatsoever to do with my views on the matter.
Yet when debates about foreign policy arise in the mass media in the US, the discussion is almost always focused on the nebulous concept, thoroughly steeped in ideology, of the "national interest". Thus we hear talk of "pro-US" forces, or "Western-friendly" groups. But in what sense is a friend of the US ruling class, such as Hosni Mubarak, a friend of mine? This is absurd.
The concept of the "national interest" assumes that all is well here in the US. It assumes that all US citizens, regardless of class divisions, share some core set of interests in the preservation of the status quo. This is "radically false" as Chomsky recently put it:
The whole framework of discussion is misleading. We’re sort of taught to talk about the world as a world of states, which, if you study international relations theory, there’s what’s called “realist international relations theory,” which says there is an anarchic world of states, and states pursue their national interest. It’s all mythology. The interests of the CEO of General Electric and the janitor who cleans his floor are not the same. There are a few common interests, like we don’t want to be destroyed. But for the most part they have very different interests. Part of the doctrinal system in the U.S. is to pretend that we’re all a happy family, there are no class divisions, and everybody is working together in harmony. But that’s radically false.So, to answer Byrnes's misconceived question, I myself (and 99% of U.S. citizens) have never had "friendly relations with absolute monarchies", so I don't see any difficulty whatsoever in standing behind a mass, revolutionary groundswell that is aiming to throw off a brutal, corrupt oppressor.
Let the ideologists for the ruling class worry about how they'll spin their narrow imperialist interests. Ordinary people need not worry themselves with such nonsense. Our task is to find a way to learn the lessons from the struggles in Tunisia and Egypt (and who knows where else next). Our task is to find ways to apply their struggles to our own conjuncture -and this seems to me to rather clearly suggest that mass struggle from below is needed in order to shut down the U.S. war machine and roll back the coming austerity onslaught that is sure to come from our "representatives" in both major parties. When people get together and say "enough is enough", the ruling order cannot but take notice. When people perpetually acquiesce to the "lesser evil" and write flowery letters to their rulers asking nicely for reform, it's not hard for our "representatives" to turn their backs and bow before wealth and power.
UPDATE: It appears that Byrnes has edited and clarified what he means by adding a parenthesis that didn't appear when I first read the post. Now, it reads: "If we – by which I mean the governments of Europe and North America – come out in favour of popular uprisings that sweep away dictators, how do we justify our past (indeed, our very recent) support for autocrats such as Mubarak?", whereas the bits between the dashes did not appear when I first read the piece. Perhaps he read the post?
Thursday, January 27, 2011
US State Dept: Egypt Not Ready for Democracy
(Hat tip to Lenin's Tomb for this video). Al Jazeera is great. Wow. How refreshing is it to see an anchor actually take a clear look at what's going on in the world.
Yes, doesn't this make it clear just how much of a beacon from "freedom" and "democracy" the US is all over the globe? Every time there has been a progressive uprising anywhere, they have tried to sabotage it or put on the brakes. To tell the Egyptian people that they should take it easy and put on the brakes is beyond offensive, particularly given Washington's relationship with the repressive, autocratic Mubarak regime.
Now, Washington isn't stupid. Of course, Obama will come out and say something vague about the need for reform and blah blah. But the facts are rather clear cut here:
"The U.S. does not want to see the Egyptian regime fall any time soon,’’ Hamid said in a telephone interview. “But people who are protesting, the tens of thousands, do want to see the regime fall some time soon. They are diametrically opposed interests."It hardly needs repeating that Mubarak has been propped up single-handedly by the US, from whom he receives the tidy sum of $1.3 billion each year (his regime received the annual aid every year since 1979, and he's been president since 1981... you do the math). The US doesn't do that for nothing- and it's not as though they don't already know that the $$ they give to Mubarak has been used to torture and repress the Egyptian people in order to legitimize his autocratic rule. Egypt is the second-largest recipient of military aid from the US behind Israel, and a close third is Colombia, the most right-wing and repressive government in all of South America by a large margin.
It will be interesting to watch how much longer the US foreign policy elite can successfully walk this delicate tight rope of sponsoring Mubarak's repression while appearing to take a "moderate" stance vis-a-vis the protesters who are demanding real democracy and freedom.
Obama has come out and patronizingly admonished the Egyptian protestors to be "peaceful". "Violence is not the answer" he said. It's interesting that someone who has authorized far more drone bombings than Bush is all of the sudden a fan of avoiding violence. It's interesting that someone who gladly has paid for and loaded the weapons being used against the protesters should have the audacity to tell the protesters to "calm down". It's interesting he's all of the sudden for "non violence" given that Obama, "winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, has, ...in his first eleven months in office, ordered troop escalations in Afghanistan of 21,000 and 30,000, to effectively double the U.S. fighting force—while military contractors will continue to outnumber those in uniform." As unemployment tears through millions of lives accross the US, Obama still found it in his heart to increase war funding by $100 billion in 2010. That's a lot of money to spend on devices and training devoted to exterminating human beings in a foreign country. Funny that such a person can be taken seriously for suddenly coming out in support of "peace".
