You've seen it before, I'm sure, many times. Very respectable parents telling enquiring journalists that their child would never have been involved in that kind of (illegal) activity.
The latest focus of attention is on fringe politics. 'Oh, Imogen would never get involved with anything violent.'
Well, Imogen would actually, especially if she gets carried away by the sense that the established order is racist and sexist and rotten to the core and hell-bent on destroying the environment and precipitating climate chaos in pursuit of profit and the maintenance of hegemonic power.
She has no religious scruples (what are they?); no sense of love for or identification with Western civilization (dead white males, etc.); nothing in fact to hold her back.
Take Felicity Ann Ryder. She is apparently hiding out somewhere in Mexico after the arrest of her presumed boyfriend Mario Antonio López Hernández who seriously injured himself when his improvised explosive device went off prematurely on a Mexico City street in June.
Her mother Jenny has told the press that it was 'beyond comprehension to think that our daughter would have had any involvement with violence... We as her parents, and her family, have the utmost respect for her beliefs, her commitment to social justice which we know is very close to her heart.'
Typical doting parents. (In denial?)
Felicity Ann Ryder, a politics and history graduate and a 'talented linguist', is described by friends as 'quiet and quite serious', 'not someone who drew attention to herself'. She is interested in animal liberation and environmental protest, and is said to have worked (as what is not clear) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
After the arrest of López, Ryder posted a statement on a Mexican anarchist website thanking 'everyone who has worried about me and my situation [and] those who have shown solidarity with Mario and I.'
Ryder, López and their revolutionary friends probably genuinely believe that the old power structures and those who benefit from them are in fact soon to be swept aside and replaced by a new, just and glorious social order.
Don't count on it.
I would counsel young anarchists (old ones are too far gone) to do a bit of reading on the fate and effectiveness of earlier anarchist movements; to note the parallels between their ideas and groupish ways, and religious ideas and structures; and consider the possibility that the ideals to which they aspire are ultimately unrealizable on any significant scale.
Sure, what you are doing feels good and right (and just a little bit exciting). But it is based on myth and fantasy.
In the end, you are fooling yourselves. And doing harm rather than good. Society is more complex than you think, and fragile in ways you do not understand.
Yours is a comic-book view of the world, of good and bad, of black and white. And your sense of solidarity is as fatally restricted and limited as your understanding of history and the human condition.
We are all – all of us – just stumbling around in the dark until death takes us. Base your sense of solidarity on that.
Showing posts with label anarchism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anarchism. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Islamism and the extreme left
When Jules Monnerot was writing his Sociologie du communisme in the late 1940s (see 'Possessed by the truth'), and for some decades thereafter, the greatest threat to Western democracy and economic liberalism seemed to many to be Marxism-Leninism and the communist states which exemplified this ideology. Western radicals were generally committed to Marxism in one form or another, and many had links of a sentimental or more substantial nature with the Soviet Union or other communist states.
Monnerot, seeking to explain the appeal of this ideology, made historical comparisons with Islam. His polemical purpose was not to attack Islam, however, which seemed at the time to be a tradition in decline and primarily of historical interest, but rather to attack Marxism-Leninism.
It is something of an irony that, only a few decades after Monnerot wrote, the tables have turned and it is Marxism-Leninism which is now of historical interest, whereas political Islam - or Islamism - is ascendant once more. In geopolitical terms, the Cold War threat does seem to have been replaced by the Islamist threat, but ideologically the situation is not so simple. Leftist and anarchist groups - which still find inspiration in the writings of 19th and 20th-century radical thinkers - are flourishing, and occasionally join forces with the Islamists in seeking to undermine the status quo.
One thing that particularly interests me in Monnerot's analysis is the concept of subversion. The liberal elites in the West in the second half of the 20th century generally did not take the notion seriously, and made fun of (or demonized) those whose love of their country and/or their way of life led them to be deeply suspicious of those who sought to promote communist ideas or to engage in (or to protect those engaged in) the process of supplying sensitive information to foreign powers.
In Patricia Highsmith's novel, The tremor of forgery, set amongst American and European expatriates and tourists in Tunisia at the height of the Cold War, there is a character I quite warmed to who secretly recorded weekly talks promoting American values which were broadcast to the countries of Eastern Europe. He was a good-hearted and serious soul who was (predictably) patronized by the sophisticated American writer whom he befriended. The writer-character called him (but not to his face) OWL (for Our Way of Life).
OWL acts as a counterweight to the relativizing and amoral forces which dominate in this novel and typically dominate in Highsmith's fictional world. He represents a much-maligned tradition of boring and reassuring decency that I find very attractive - but such an attitude is usually tethered to an actual social order which supports it.
Socially, so much has changed, of course, since those times. America and other Western countries are scarcely recognizable. We don't seem to have the option of that simple patriotism any more. The new patriots are all too often loud and xenophobic, seeking to regain something that has been lost rather than - as in the past - simply being quietly proud of their country, its customs and its history.
Some might say, then, that there is nothing left to subvert. I disagree. Despite all the ugliness and dysfunctionality of Western societies at present, they still embody notions of decency and political and economic freedom. And those violent groups which join in street protests against austerity measures or who organize their own violent protests and attacks on property at various economic forums are clearly bent on attacking and undermining this system which still delivers - in varying degrees - freedom, prosperity and order.
Islamists of various kinds - from the openly violent to the ambiguously intellectual - have been and will remain in an uneasy relationship with the extreme left. Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan has expressed support for anti-globalization protests and many anarchists and leftists have seen in him and others like him useful allies.
As Paul Berman writes: "On the activist far left, some of the anti-globalist radicals and the die-hard enemies of McDonalds saw in Ramadan, because of his denunciations of American imperialism and Zionism and his plebian agitations, a tribune of progressive Islam, even if his religious severities grated on left-wing sensibilities." [The flight of the intellectuals (Melville House, 2010, p. 17)]
The recent killing of the Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni is a tragic illustration of the paradoxes inherent in the de facto alliance between Islamist groups and the far left.
Monnerot, seeking to explain the appeal of this ideology, made historical comparisons with Islam. His polemical purpose was not to attack Islam, however, which seemed at the time to be a tradition in decline and primarily of historical interest, but rather to attack Marxism-Leninism.
It is something of an irony that, only a few decades after Monnerot wrote, the tables have turned and it is Marxism-Leninism which is now of historical interest, whereas political Islam - or Islamism - is ascendant once more. In geopolitical terms, the Cold War threat does seem to have been replaced by the Islamist threat, but ideologically the situation is not so simple. Leftist and anarchist groups - which still find inspiration in the writings of 19th and 20th-century radical thinkers - are flourishing, and occasionally join forces with the Islamists in seeking to undermine the status quo.
One thing that particularly interests me in Monnerot's analysis is the concept of subversion. The liberal elites in the West in the second half of the 20th century generally did not take the notion seriously, and made fun of (or demonized) those whose love of their country and/or their way of life led them to be deeply suspicious of those who sought to promote communist ideas or to engage in (or to protect those engaged in) the process of supplying sensitive information to foreign powers.
In Patricia Highsmith's novel, The tremor of forgery, set amongst American and European expatriates and tourists in Tunisia at the height of the Cold War, there is a character I quite warmed to who secretly recorded weekly talks promoting American values which were broadcast to the countries of Eastern Europe. He was a good-hearted and serious soul who was (predictably) patronized by the sophisticated American writer whom he befriended. The writer-character called him (but not to his face) OWL (for Our Way of Life).
OWL acts as a counterweight to the relativizing and amoral forces which dominate in this novel and typically dominate in Highsmith's fictional world. He represents a much-maligned tradition of boring and reassuring decency that I find very attractive - but such an attitude is usually tethered to an actual social order which supports it.
Socially, so much has changed, of course, since those times. America and other Western countries are scarcely recognizable. We don't seem to have the option of that simple patriotism any more. The new patriots are all too often loud and xenophobic, seeking to regain something that has been lost rather than - as in the past - simply being quietly proud of their country, its customs and its history.
Some might say, then, that there is nothing left to subvert. I disagree. Despite all the ugliness and dysfunctionality of Western societies at present, they still embody notions of decency and political and economic freedom. And those violent groups which join in street protests against austerity measures or who organize their own violent protests and attacks on property at various economic forums are clearly bent on attacking and undermining this system which still delivers - in varying degrees - freedom, prosperity and order.
Islamists of various kinds - from the openly violent to the ambiguously intellectual - have been and will remain in an uneasy relationship with the extreme left. Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan has expressed support for anti-globalization protests and many anarchists and leftists have seen in him and others like him useful allies.
As Paul Berman writes: "On the activist far left, some of the anti-globalist radicals and the die-hard enemies of McDonalds saw in Ramadan, because of his denunciations of American imperialism and Zionism and his plebian agitations, a tribune of progressive Islam, even if his religious severities grated on left-wing sensibilities." [The flight of the intellectuals (Melville House, 2010, p. 17)]
The recent killing of the Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni is a tragic illustration of the paradoxes inherent in the de facto alliance between Islamist groups and the far left.
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