A very readable, short essay called One Mean Jewish Settler, by Judah Ben-Yosef who gives tours for German tourists and journalists in a large Jewish settlement in the West Bank. I like this section especially:
A not unattractive lady journalist asked me how I feel when I read the kind of things that are written about Israel. The question was not especially provocative, but maybe I was just in a bad mood. Maybe my advancing years had made me lose my patience. For whatever reason, on that day, I didn’t feel like playing games. For once I’d say what I really felt.
“It reminds me of the story of the man who comes home unexpectedly one day to find his wife in bed with the neighbor. He was shocked! He was shocked….. but he wasn’t surprised. (laughter – timing the punch line is everything.)
Am I shocked? Am I shocked when I read the reports? Of course I am. Who could read such lies and not be shocked?
Am I surprised? Am I surprised that the grandchildren of the monsters who dragged by great-grandfather into a gas chamber or buried him alive write articles that are critical of Israel? How surprised should I be?”
(a conversation I had last Saturday when I exercised a great deal of restraint, reminded me of this bit, and so I took the opportunity to put it up.)
Malte Lehming, der ein Tor bei der Fussball-WM augenzwinkernd auch mal als “Deutschlands inneres Auschwitz” bezeichnet, ist ein bisschen genervt von den Juden.
Deshalb wird der Antisemitismusvorwurf oft nur noch als Teil der jüdischen Folklore wahrgenommen, ein bisschen wie Klezmer-Musik. Der Papst warnt vor Kondom und Pille, die FDP vor “anstrengungslosem Wohlstand”, ein Marxist vor dem Privatbesitz an Produktionsmitteln, und die Juden warnen halt vor dem stets zunehmenden Antisemitismus. Ohne viel Gefühl für Relevanz und Proportionen ziehen sie in symbolische Schlachten, auto-immunisiert gegen die Realität. Frei nach Asterix lautet das Resümee: Die spinnen, die Juden, jedenfalls einige, jedenfalls manchmal.
(via)
Greta Berlin, a leader of the pro-Palestinian Free Gaza Movement, speaking by telephone from Cyprus, rejected the military’s version.
“That is a lie,” she said, adding that it was inconceivable that the civilian passengers on board would have been “waiting up to fire on the Israeli military, with all its might.”
Bei Jörg Marx eine schöne Darstellung von selbstbewußten Deutschen, die gestern im Freudentaumel (so etwa)über die “nationale Leistung” sauer auf die unbotmäßige Benotung aus Israel waren. Unter anderem postet er diesen Auszug aus dem #esc twitterfeed (click on image to enlarge or go directly to Marx’ blog).
“Ellis” of The Barbaric Document fails to understand something.
Atwood is well known as an outspoken campaigner for human rights, the environment and social justice
gushed Green MP Caroline Lucas in last Saturday’s Guardian.
Oh yeah?
Neither the Tel Aviv University that developed the DIME bombs used against civilians in Gaza, nor the state of Israel whose commitment to cultural openness does not include allowing Atwood’s books into Gaza, were taken to task, but the letter campaign asking her to refuse the prize was the target of her moral outrage. How noble!
The answer to the question in the middle is: oh yeah. Follow Ellis’ links and you end up on the homepages of people who want to abolish Israel, who want an Arab state to take its place. Thankfully neither Atwood nor Ghosh ceded to their pressure. Atwood’s own statements, which I only found on a page I will not link to, are remarkably clear-headed, careful and nuanced. They show a moral writer who has not ceded to today’s hot climate of fanaticism. The same writer you also find in her marvelous novels and good poems, which I fully recommend to any and all of you.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, second only to Pope Benedict, has *found* the reason for the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests:
“Many psychologists, many psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia but many others have demonstrated, I was told recently, that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia. That is true. I have the documents of the psychologists. That is the problem.”
While this may just sound incredibly stupid, that kind of thinking (yes, the sad thing is that I think they do believe this nonsense) may lead to more problematic policies by the Church:
He added that some “surprising” initiatives regarding the sex abuse scandal would soon be revealed but did not elaborate.
Come to think of it, it may also just be another brazen assertion, such as other claims lanced by other Catholic officials during the past month. As one twitter said:
Vatican forgets that when you’re in a hole, you should stop digging
Or, another one
Is the pope saying this shit for a bet?
edit. We might be glad that none of the officials have so far succumbed to the typical Catholic theological (historically documented and recently revived by, oh, what a coincidence, the current pope) urges w/ respect to Jews, as this sickening example by a retired Italian bishop shows
We’re living in the Age of Globalization, and it seems that chutzpah, like latkes, isn’t just for Jews any longer. Last week, retired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the “eternal enemies of Catholicism, namely the freemasons and the Jews, whose mutual entanglements are not always easy to see through… I think that it is primarily a Zionist attack, in view of its power and refinement. They do not want the church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God-killers.”You might think that the 81-year-old Babini had already said more than enough for one day, but once some people “pop,” they just can’t stop. “The Holocaust was a shame for all of humanity,” the good bishop told the world, “but now we have to look at it without rhetoric and with open eyes. Don’t believe that Hitler was merely crazy. The truth is that the Nazis’ criminal fury was provoked by the Jews’ economic embezzlement, by which they choked the German economy.” He concluded that the Jews’ “guilt is graver than what Christ predicted would happen to them, saying ‘do not cry for me, but for your own children.’”
This, sickeningly, in the Guardian. Jesus.
Britain has acted to increase pressure on Israel over its West Bank settlements by advising UK supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods.
The government’s move falls short of a legal requirement but is bound to increase the prospects of a consumer boycott of products from those territories.
Until now, food has been simply labelled “Produce of the West Bank”, but the new, voluntary guidance issued by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), says labels could give more precise information, like “Israeli settlement produce” or “Palestinian produce”.
Some of these days it hurts to look at the paper or at message boards I usually frequent, especially when the name ‘Israel’ crops up. I’m glad there’s some sanity in the world still, though. There’s Max Boot, bitter and flippant but sadly correct in saying this in the Commentary
After reading the Goldstone Report on human-rights abuses committed during the Gaza War (December 27, 2008–January 19, 2009), all I can say is, it’s a good thing that the United Nations wasn’t around during World War II. I can just imagine its producing a supposedly evenhanded report that condemned the Nazis for “grave” abuses such as incinerating Jews, while also condemning the Allies for their equally “grave” abuses such as fire-bombing German and Japanese cities. The recommendation, no doubt, would have been that both sides be tried for war crimes, with Adolf Hitler in the dock alongside Franklin Roosevelt. Actually, that may be giving the UN more credit than it deserves. To judge by the evidence before us, the likelihood is that the UN in those days would have devoted far more space to Allied “abuses” than to those of the Axis and would have recommended that FDR stand alone before the world court.
and on the more careful side, Dan Kosky, in a very considered, well argued article in the Guardian states, among other things
Grave doubts over the investigative process have been realised by the mission’s conclusions. … The report is replete with dubious statistics and sources. Casualty figures are quoted from the Gaza based Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), a politically motivated organisation, which consistently refers to terrorism as “resistance”. PCHR’s faulty statistics include senior Hamas military figures such as Nizar Rayan and Said Siam, as civilians.
Reading the report, one would be unaware of Hamas’s human-shield strategy, a significant contributory factor to the civilian deaths in Gaza. … Although he states: “Palestinian armed groups were present in urban areas during the military operations and launched rockets from urban areas”, he avoids the logical conclusion of the massive use of human shields. … Yet, rather than state the inconvenient truth, the report reinforces preconceived Israeli culpability.
Goldstone is similarly evasive over the unreliability of key “eyewitnesses”. … The report applies entirely illogical reasoning, failing to elaborate on “a certain reluctance by the persons … interviewed in Gaza to discuss the activities of armed groups”. This observation provides a glimpse of the dangers faced by those speaking out against the regime in Gaza, yet Goldstone omits to mention how Hamas intimidation undermines witnesses and with it the very foundation for his conclusions.
If you didn’t notice, currently, there’s the Durban II conference in Geneva, which promises to be as much of a sham as Durban I. I’m somewhat happy that my government (however reluctantly) is not taking part. Here’s a look at one of the participants: a member if Ahmadinejad’s entourage calls Elie Wiesel a Zio-Nazi.
It’s somewhat surprising that the British government would go through with the conference even though the outcome is predictably nauseating.
A recent online discussion has reminded me that I wanted to post a reference to a blog post of Yaacov Lozowick’s. It’s funny how knee-jerk many reactions to Israel are, screeching unconfirmed (and partly proven wrong) facts as soon as they are out there, indicting Israel and Jews. The farce with the UN school (oh, the bile!) is a case in point, but far from the only occurrence. Lozowick’s point is well made and worth making:
Jews argue among themselves loudly and stridently, while their haters listen in, indifferent to any context, and choose the choicest quotations with which to damn the Jews.
Though I’d note this describes a dynamic, but doesn’t explain the decision to use it. The determination to hate the Jews precedes listening in to their conversations. The reason Haaretz’ website is world-famous while the Irish Times’ isn’t, has to do with the fodder for Jew-hatred one can cherry-pick from Haaretz.
Discussing Israel with older lefties often means ducking so the antisemitic spittle from foaming mouths doesn’t hit you. At least these immediate reactions are honest, and revealing.
My third and last post (#1 and #2) on Ward Churchill’s trial, who has correctly won his suit against the University of Colorado, but I want to draw attention to Fish’s nuanced account of the affair on his blog.
How did a garden-variety academic quarrel about sources,evidence and documentation complete with a lot of huffing and puffing by everyone get elevated first into a review of the entire life of a tenured academic and then into a court case when that academic was terminated. How and why did it get that far? (…)It was the jury’s task to determine whether Churchill’s dismissal would have occurred independently of the adverse political response to his constitutionally protected statements. In the ordinary academic course of things would his writings have been subject to the extended and minute scrutiny that led to the committee’s recommendations? (…) The answer seems obvious to me and it has now been given authoritative form in the jury’s verdict.
Been drunk for too long. Forgot this. I recorded my anticipation re: the Ward Churchill trial a few days ago. Now the verdict has come through and “A jury found on Thursday that the University of Colorado had wrongfully dismissed” him. Correctly, I may add. They awarded him, however, damages in as high an amount as $1. And he may not, after all, get hired again. For in-depth coverage of the trial and the aftermath, I recommend this blog.
After a four-week trial, a jury in Denver is deliberating the case of Ward L. Churchill, a former University of Colorado professor who says he was fired because of an essay he wrote in which he called victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks “little Eichmanns.”
The university says Mr. Churchill plagiarized and falsified parts of his academic research, particularly on American Indians, and cited this as grounds for his dismissal in July 2007. Mr. Churchill brought a wrongful termination suit against the university, seeking monetary damages for lost wages and harm to his reputation. He also wants to be reinstated to his job teaching ethnic studies. [...]
Throughout the trial, the university maintained that it fired Mr. Churchill solely “for his research misconduct, for taking other people’s work and making it his own, for fabricating research, for falsifying research,” as Steven K. Bosley, a university regent, told the court.
“It was not one time, not even one time on purpose,” Mr. Bosley added. “It was a pattern of misconduct.”
Stanley Fish, while providing one of the more balanced statement on the unbelievable and odious call for a boycott of Israeli academics, opts for moral bankruptcy in his column.
The American Association of University Professors ties itself up in knots explaining that while its own history includes “support for divestiture during the anti-apartheid campaigns in South Africa,” it nevertheless opposes this boycott. The rationale seems to be that South Africa was a special, one time case — “South Africa is the only instance in which the organization endorsed some form of boycott” — but that is hardly going to satisfy those who are prosecuting the “if-you-protested-injustice-then–you-should-protest-it-now” argument.
The better course would be for the AAUP and other boycott opponents to accept the equivalence of the two situations, and repudiate what they did in the past. Not “what we did then is different from what we decline to do now,” but “we won’t boycott now and we were wrong to boycott then.”
Whether or not divestiture and other actions taken by academics were decisive in, or even strongly contributory to, ending the apartheid regime is in dispute. What should not be in dispute is that those actions, however salutary and productive of good results, were and are antithetical to the academic enterprise, which while it may provide the tools (of argument, fact and historical research) that enable good and righteous deeds, should never presume to perform them.
Wieso lese ich eigentlich noch SPON-Artikel? Das hier in einem Artikel über die Gaza-Geberkonferenz. Mal abgesehen von den anderen problematischen Sachen – das hier ist doch fast unverschämt.
Zahlreiche Politiker wirkten auf der Konferenz ungewohnt frei in ihren Aussagen – womöglich weil Mubarak keine Delegation aus Israel eingeladen hatte und die israelische Presse dem großen Treffen fernblieb.
Haruki Murakami, possibly the world’s most overrated writer, received the Jerusalem Prize and proceeded to spit in his hosts’ face with a hate- and spiteful speech that starts badly:
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power.
and gets worse with each paragraph that passes. Read it and cringe.
He’s right, you know.
“Was da wieder gelaufen ist, ist unsagbar pietätlos und ehrabschneidend”, sagte SWR-Rundfunkratsmitglied Theresia Wieland unserer Zeitung. Selbst wenn Pocher womöglich das Ziel gehabt habe, mit seinem Auftritt die Rolle von Schauspieler Tom Cruise in dem Stauffenberg-Film “Operation Wallküre” zu parodieren, sei dies letztendlich gründlich misslungen. “In diesem Moment identifiziert man das doch nicht mit dem Schauspieler, sondern mit der historischen Figur. Und es ist nicht hinnehmbar, dass man den Helden des deutschen Widerstandes so ins Lächerliche zieht”, übte Wieland scharfe Kritik an Pochers Auftritt.
aus den Stuttgarter Nachrichten. Das muß man nicht mehr kommentieren, oder?
Als die ersten Demonstranten die Flaggen erkannten, stand P. mit seiner Freundin auf der Straße, in unmittelbarer Nähe. Er hatte den Zug begleitet, weil er eventuelle Hetzparolen dokumentieren wollte. Was sich angesichts der Flaggen entwickelte, nennt P. “eine Lynchstimmung”. “Tod Israel”, sei von einigen Demonstranten geschrien worden, und “Verrecke!”. Die Polizei erschien ihm überfordert.“Plötzlich”, berichtet der Student weiter, “sah ich einen Polizisten auf dem Balkon im zweiten Stock”, der zur Wohnung unter seiner eignen gehört. Der Beamte riss die eine Israelfahne, die an P.s Balkon befestigt war, ab. Kurze Zeit später sah P., wie in seinem eigenen Wohnzimmerfenster ein Beamter die innen angebrachte Fahne abmachte.
Die Aktion der Polizei löste bei den Demonstranten Jubel aus.
(spon)
“Sie riefen immer wieder Parolen wie “Vergast die Juden”, “Ermordet die Juden” und “Steckt die Juden in die Gaskammer”. Ich war erschrocken dass die Kirche so etwas auf ihrem Gelände duldet. Das hat doch mit Meinungsfreiheit nichts mehr zu tun. Man darf doch nicht die Ermordung anderer Menschen fordern.” Die Polizei rief B. nicht – denn die war ja schon vor Ort – zog es aber vor nicht einzugreifen: “Die Polizei stand direkt daneben und muss alles mitbekommen haben. Gehandelt hat sie aber nicht.” Die Aufforderung zum Genozid an den Juden war der Polizei später noch nicht einmal eine Erwähnung wert. In der Pressemitteilung zur Demo heißt es lapidar, die Demonstration sei friedlich verlaufen. Nur ein paar Schneebälle seien auf die Polizei geworfen worden: “Dabei rutschte ein Jugendlicher auf dem glatten Untergrund aus und zog sich eine Kopfplatzwunde zu. Ein Rettungswagen brachte ihn zur ambulanten Behandlung in ein Krankenhaus.”
Auch die Ordner, die Demonstration war von deiner “Parteilosen Wählergruppe Gelsenkirchen (PWG)” angemeldet worden, hätten die Hetzparolen gehört ohne einzugreifen, so B.. Wie gut das keine Israelfahne die zünftige Proteststimmung störte.
Skandalös ist auch das Verhalten der Mainzer Polizei. Während er gegen die anti-israelische Demonstration offenbar nichts einzuwenden hat, äußerte Polizeisprecher Kai Süßenbach gegenüber dem SWR die Ansicht, dass die israelsolidarische Aktion – das Zeigen der Fahne des jüdischen Staates! – eine „Provokation“ darstellen würde, da die Beteiligten keine Israelis waren.
New study, somewhat interesting results:
Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish feelings are rising in several major European countries, according to a worldwide survey released on Wednesday.The Washington-based Pew Research Centre’s global attitude survey found 46 percent of Spanish, 36 percent of Poles and 34 percent of Russians view Jews unfavourably, while the same was true for 25 percent of Germans, and 20 percent of French. [...]
The figures are all higher than in comparable Pew surveys done in recent years, the report said, and “in a number of countries the increase has been especially notable between 2006 and 2008.”
Opinions of Muslims are also dimming compared to previous years with 52 percent in Spain, 50 percent in Germany, 46 percent in Poland and 38 percent in France having negative attitudes toward them. [...]
“There is a clear relationship between anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim attitudes,” the report said. “(Those) that view Jews unfavourably also tend to see Muslims in a negative light.”
(via)
Liza hat ausnahmsweise mal recht:
Es ist darüber hinaus bezeichnend, dass kaum ein Kommentator die Arbeitsdefinition des EUMC (European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia) zum Antisemitismus heranzog, um Hecht-Galinskis Äußerungen und damit auch Broders Einschätzung zu beurteilen. Der Grund liegt auf der Hand: Nach dieser Definition, die den EU-Staaten eine offiziöse Richtschnur sein soll, werden unter anderem der Vergleich Israels mit dem Nationalsozialismus, die Dämonisierung des jüdischen Staates, der Vorwurf, Juden verhielten sich zu Israel loyaler als gegenüber den Staaten, in denen sie leben, sowie die Behauptung einer jüdischen Kontrolle der Medien und Politik als antisemitisch eingestuft – und damit fraglos auch Evelyn Hecht-Galinskis Statements. Als prominente jüdische Kronzeugin hätte sie also ausgedient. Und das wollen in Deutschland nur wenige – schließlich weiß selbst der Durchschnittsleser am besten, wer Antisemit ist. Und vor allem: wer nicht.
Mögen die Juden nicht, die Ravensburger. Seitdem sie den Kindermordprozeß gehabt haben und ihre Juden gemartert, gebrannt und geplündert, hassen sie uns mehr als das ganze andere Schwaben. Das sind jetzt dreihundert Jahr. Heute hat man humanere Methoden, weniger komplizierte, dem Juden sein Geld zu stehlen. Aber wenn man solches Unrecht getan hat, versteht sich, daß man weiter gegen den gereizt ist, auch nach dreihundert Jahr. Nun, wir werden’s überleben.
aus Lion Feuchtwangers großem Roman Jud Süss
But the original Get Smart comes from a time when Jewish identity, and Jewish humor, were tickled by a very different set of issues in the West. It was an era when Jews in the U.S. were still struggling to be seen as anything other than mouth-breathing nerds or commie spies. Maxwell Smart is a Jew from that era: He’s a total dork who struggles to be a super-agent. In fact, he’s not even openly a Jew, though every Jew who watched that show knew what was up. (Jewish pranksters Mel Brooks and Buck Henry created the show, and a ton of Jewish guys worked on it as writers.) What’s jarring about the movie remake is how little the writers tried to update the humor.The new Get Smart film’s references to nudniks, and Alan Arkin’s hilarious hand-wavey schtick, seem retro because they are still the covert Jewish jokes of the 1960s. They are straight from an era when Hollywood Jews were closety about their ethnic backgrounds. Despite the fact that the Get Smart TV show featured a robot named Hymie and was packed with Yiddish references, you can bet that most of its audience had no idea they were giggling at Jewish humor. To update Get Smart for a new generation, the writers needed to make all that old-school covert Jewishness into something hilariously overt, or just get rid of it.
Was für ein Saftladen. Nicht nur wendet sich zuerst die Kölner CDU gegen einen Ratsbeschluß, die Bevölkerungsmehrheit und die Vernunft, indem sie einen bereits beschlossenen und abgenickten Moscheebau behindert, jetzt gibt es ein ganz ähnliches Schmierentheater um das geplante jüdische Museum. Liza schreibt
Die Reaktionen auf den Siegerentwurf fielen durchweg positiv aus, auch bei den Stadtoberen. „Dankbar und froh“ war etwa Oberbürgermeister Fritz Schramma, dass „an dem historischen Platz, wie es ihn in dieser Konstellation nördlich der Alpen kein zweites Mal gibt“, eine Lösung gefunden wurde. Auch Kulturdezernent Georg Quander („mir fällt mit der Entscheidung ein Stein vom Herzen“) und Städtebaudezernent Bernd Streitberger („genial, eine fast poetische Architektur“) zeigten sich sehr zufrieden. Es schien, als seien alle Hürden überwunden, zumal der Förderverein zuversichtlich war, die Frage der Finanzierung – laut Schramma „eine schwierige Aufgabe, aber eine lösbare“ – schnell und erfolgreich zu klären. [...]Doch nur wenige Tage nach der Entscheidung wollten die politischen Verantwortungsträger Kölns plötzlich nichts mehr von ihrem ursprünglichen Urteil wissen. „Der Entwurf stellt einen Riesenkomplex dar, der so hoch ist wie das Rathaus“, klagte der Oberbürgermeister nun im Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
*
Lesenswerter Artikel bei Liza über den Professor für Sportgeschichte und Sportsoziologie an der Uni Göttingen, Arnd Krüger
Doch niemand stieß sich an diesem Interview, und so legte Krüger am 20. Juni nach, als er bei der Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung für Sportwissenschaft (DVS), Sektion Sportgeschichte, einen Vortrag mit dem Titel „Hebron und München. Wie vermitteln wir die Zeitgeschichte des Sports, ohne uns in den Fallstricken des Antisemitismus zu verhaspeln?“ hielt. „Die 1972 beim Olympiaattentat durch palästinensische Terroristen getöteten israelischen Athleten hätten von den mörderischen Plänen gewusst und seien freiwillig in den Tod gegangen – ‚um der Sache Israels als ganzer zu nutzen’“, fasste unter anderem die Süddeutsche Zeitung, die sich auf Teilnehmer der Tagung berief, Krügers Darstellungen zusammen. „Dieser spektakuläre Opfergang hätte die Schuld (und auch die Schulden) Deutschlands gegenüber dem Staat Israel verlängern sollen. Zudem konstruierte der Professor Zusammenhänge zwischen diesem angeblichen Opfergang sowie einem unterschiedlichen Körperverständnis, das in Israel herrsche. Im Vortrag hieß es, die Abtreibungsrate in Israel sei bis zu zehnmal höher als in anderen westlichen Industrienationen. Die jüdische Kultur versuche, Leben mit Behinderungen massiv zu verhindern.“
Adam Roberts in the Guardian on old English translations of Jules Verne
But when I checked the 1877 translation against the original my heart sank. It was garbage. On almost every page the English translator, whoever he, or she, was (their name is not recorded), collapsed Verne’s actual dialogue into a condensed summary, missed out sentences or whole paragraphs. She or he messed up the technical aspects of the book. She or he was evidently much more anti-Semitic than Verne, and tended to translate what were in the original fairly neutral phrases such as “…said Isaac Hakkabut” with idioms such as “…said the repulsive old Jew.” And at one point in the novel she or he simply omitted an entire chapter (number 30) – quite a long one, too – presumably because she or he wasn’t interested in, or couldn’t be bothered to, turn it into English.
And here is a second article, same author, a few days later (for completists)
Saw 300, the movie last night and I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said before. It’s just…take everything I wrote here and quadruple it. What a hatefest.
Broder spricht sehr eloquent und sehr treffend über Antisemitismus. Transkript bei Liza:
Der Antisemitismus, über den wir immer noch am liebsten reden,[...] ist, um mit Bebel zu sprechen, der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle, die noch immer einem Phantom nachjagen. [...] Diese Art des Antisemitismus ist hässlich, aber politisch irrelevant, ein Nachruf auf sich selbst.Der moderne Antisemit dagegen tritt ganz anders auf. Er hat keine Glatze, dafür Manieren, oft auch einen akademischen Titel, er trauert um die Juden, die im Holocaust ums Leben gekommen sind, stellt aber zugleich die Frage, warum die Überlebenden und ihre Nachkommen aus der Geschichte nichts gelernt haben und heute ein anderes Volk so misshandeln, wie sie selber misshandelt wurden. Der moderne Antisemit glaubt nicht an die „Protokolle der Weisen von Zion“, dafür fantasiert er über die „Israel-Lobby“, die Amerikas Politik bestimmt, so wie ein Schwanz mit dem Hund wedelt. [...] Oder er dreht kausale Zusammenhänge um und behauptet, die atomare Bedrohung gehe nicht vom Iran, sondern von Israel aus [...].
Der moderne Antisemit findet den ordinären Antisemitismus schrecklich, bekennt sich aber ganz unbefangen zum Antizionismus, dankbar für die Möglichkeit, seine Ressentiments in einer politisch korrekten Form auszuleben. Denn auch der Antizionismus ist ein Ressentiment, wie der klassische Antisemitismus es war. Der Antizionist hat die gleiche Einstellung zu Israel wie der Antisemit zum Juden. Er stört sich nicht daran, was Israel macht oder unterlässt, sondern daran, dass es Israel gibt. [...]
Denn der moderne Antisemit verehrt Juden, die seit 60 Jahren tot sind, nimmt es aber lebenden Juden übel, wenn sie sich zur Wehr setzen.
I have talked to people recently who extolled the virtues of disagreeing with academic opinion, regardless of the soundness of yr arguments against the old position. They appeared to be entirely unfazed by the fact that the argument in these books seems to rely entirely on common sense, not on thinking or careful reasoning (for example this book).
Last night it occurred to me that the funny thing about most of these ‘rebellious’ attacks against the academic establishment is that they only work for a reader who is rather roughly or not at all acquainted with the ‘facts’. While it is true that many of these ‘facts’ are created by academia (and I would be the very last person to defend something like ‘objective historical facts’, indeed I think that to posit the existence of knowable objective historical facts means almost always a shoddy methodological framework) and that there is a strong intolerance against alternative theories, the carefully reasoned book that would actually have an impact on the generally accepted theory is rare. The only thing it actually does is stir up the uneducated masses without educating them first. It’s pure demagoguery, and not in a nice way.
This is anti-intellectualism at its worst. It may not look like this sometimes but take a closer look at the premises and you’ll see it. And Common Sense, as the instrument of such arguments, appears to me sometimes to be downright evil. I am not very firm on English etymology, but the German equivalent, “gesunder Menschenverstand”, which, roughly, awkwardly, translates as “healthy human reasoning”, shows how Common Sense works. It attacks things which are outside of a given societal norm, which, of course, reflects strongly the dominant anti-emancipatory ideas of a given society. Small wonder then that, say, in the realm of philosophy, books, nay, pamphlets abound which are bashing Feminism and any strain of postmodern/poststructuralist thought that is not in agreement with the dominant norm. The sick elements of society, if you will, channeling Agamben and Foucault here.
Thus, Common Sense often surfaces in the most evil of contexts. Antisemitic, racist literature is built on a foundation of ‘common sense’. The whole insidious concept of political correctness is built on ‘common sense’ as well, the idea being that, if we were really honest, we would admit that what is perceived as ‘pc speech’ is really only pc mumbo-jumbo. There is, as to modern antisemitism, an aspect of down-to-earth, almost agrarian, simplicity to the whole thing. Small wonder that both concepts can often be found in nationalistic ‘Blut und Boden’-contexts and in anti-cosmopolitanist arguments. It does not, though, usually make an appearance in islamophobic contexts, as the stereotypes directed at that particular minority are others. Debauchery, decadence, yes, but Islam is so strongly identified with a particular ethnic group that the particular nexus described above is never really activated. Islamophobia is, currently, a rather obvious affair, and so widely and fundamentally accepted, that it has had no need to hide behind a rhetorical veil yet.
The strangest aspect of this, though, is that even intellectuals, and those who are very much in favor of emancipatory movements, tend to view ‘common sense’ and the gesture of rebellion as an acceptable ally in the battle against orthodoxy and then proceed to attack nilly-willy those who work within orthodoxy, who urge others to try to read and understand what you are criticizing before you go off on a 200page commonsensical rant (or at least to be open to arguments from orthodox academia). Happened to me once here and several times in person. And no, this is not about left-wing antisemitism (think anticapitalism, think usury). And no, I have no answer to this, really. It baffles me, honestly. Did I mention that they are all really, really smart, some of them way, way smarter than this blog’s dim-witted excuse for an author? They are. You see me throwing my hands up. I have no answer. Do you have one? I’d love to hear it. A book you can direct me to?
Have a great week, btw., folks.
*sigh* This Pope should get a Nazi medal or something. In the Post’s On Faith columns
But in condemning Nazi antisemitism before that Jewish congregation in Cologne, Pope Benedict defined it univocally as having been “born of neo-paganism.” That was true, a reference to the odd mysticism that underwrote the Teutonic myths on which claims for Aryan racial superiority rested. But Nazi hatred of Jews was born of two parents, and the other one – the long history of Christian anti-Judaism – the pope did not mention. This was not a slight omission. It is urgently important, in going forward into the 21st century, that the context out of which the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people grew, and within which it nearly succeeded, not be forgotten. The crimes of Hitler were not the crimes of Christianity, but the Final Solution depended, both for the recruitment of active perpetrators and for the passivity of a continent’s worth of bystanders, on the ingrained anti-Jewishness of Christian theology, liturgy, and tradition. You would not know that from what the pope said in the Synagogue in Cologne. [...]Benedict went to Auschwitz, he said, “as a son of the German people, a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation.” In Germany itself by now, there is an established tradition of a much fuller recognition of national complicity in the Nazi project. For a generation, Germans have declined to portray themselves as mere victims and dupes, and German church leaders in particular have been forthright in confessing their sin in relation to the Holocaust. In his portrayal of the past, both at Cologne and Auschwitz, Benedict is becoming a German apart.
And as a Christian? Here is how he defined the Nazi aim in murdering Jews: “Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people…by destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the tap root of the Christian faith.” As if to dramatize this astounding claim that the “ultimate” Nazi target at Auschwitz was the Church, Benedict greeted 32 camp survivors, all but one of whom were Polish Catholics. A lone Jew represented the more than one million Jews who died there. With no apparent embarrassment, the pope prayed, “Why, Lord, did you remain silent?”
[...] the dark legacy of Christian antisemitism began to be redeemed when the Second Vatican Council both repudiated the “Christ-killer” charge against the Jewish people, and affirmed the on-going validity of Jewish religion. The days of scapegoating Jews, and seeking their conversion are over. Or are they? When Pope Benedict meets with Jewish leaders in New York this week, the cordial greetings will be heartfelt, but so will an undercurrent of wondering. Why, under his authority, has the Vatican recently restored the pre-Vatican II Good Friday prayers for the conversion of Jews? Does this pontificate represent a retreat from Christian moral reckoning with the Holocaust? Does it intend to restore the lethal Christian conviction that God’s only plan for Jews is baptism?
Here is the complete English transcript.
Und hier ist die deutsche Version seiner Rede.
More on the Pope’s outrageous behavior. Susan Jacoby wrote last week
Benedikt has taken less trouble [...] to conceal his dedication to a theology that regards other religions (not to mention secularism) as inferior. The pope’s personal baptism, at a widely publicized Easter vigil service, of an Egyptian-born Muslim, Magdi Allam [...] is a case in point. Allam, in a column discussing his conversion, wrote in his newspaper that the “root of all evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.” [...]Allam, who once attended a Catholic school in Egypt, is persona non grata not only to most Muslims but to a great many secular Italians, who tend to view his conversion as an exemplary “out of the frying pan, into the fire” move. [...]
Does anyone seriously think that the Vatican finances mission schools around the world because it does not hope to gain converts? In this regard, it should be noted, the Catholic Church does not differ from other proselytizing Christian churches that offer a wide variety of social services along with a strong dose of religious indoctrination. [...]
The Catholic emphasis on conversion has remained remarkably consistent throughout history. Pope John Paul II’s canonization of the Carmelite nun Edith Stein, a German Catholic convert from Judaism who died in Auschwitz, is a prime example. Stein was sent to Auschwitz for one reason: she was born a Jew, and for the Nazis, no religious conversion wiped out the “racial” stain of Jewishness. Yet the church considers her a Catholic martyr–a position as offensive to many Jews, and as impervious to the fact of who was targeted for extermination during the Holocaust–as some of Benedict’s statements about Islam have been to many Muslims. Stein was murdered by the Nazis because of her Jewish “blood,” not her Catholic faith.
Of course, Benedict can get away with offending Muslims more easily at the moment than he can with offending Jews. Much of post-Christian, secular Europe is terrified of the Muslim immigrants in its midst and would probably love to see a population of Muslim converts to Catholicism.
Hm. In der Dutch News dies
Entertainment entrepreneur Harry de Winter has taken out a page-wide advert on the front page of Monday’s Volkskrant newspaper accusing MP Geert Wilders of racism.‘If Wilders said the same about Jews and the Old Testament as he does about Muslims (and the Koran) he would have been long picked up and sentenced for anti-semitism,’ the advert reads.
Zusammen mit der überwältigend negativen Berichterstattung von Publikationen wie Spiegel Online, die sonst eigentlich recht zuverlässig das Abendland verteidigen, es scheint, als ob Broder mal recht hat? Er schreibt nämlich
Geert Wilders mag vieles sein – selbstbewusst bis an die Grenze der Eitelkeit, borniert bis an den Rand der Selbstaufgabe. Ein “Rechtspopulist” ist er nicht. Erstens ist er ein radikaler Liberaler, zweitens ist das, was er gerade macht, extrem unpopulär.
Das und das was folgt, muß Broder natürlich schreiben, damit er sich selbst eine Rechtspopulismusfreiheit bescheinigen kann. Aber trotzdem: hat er nicht recht? Selbstverständlich hat er nicht recht, denn, wie eine von Broder selbst verlinkte Besprechung des Films feststellt:
Doch wie soll sich ein westliches Publikum, das mit den aufwendig inszenierten Bilderwelten Hollywoods groß geworden ist, mit dieser dilettantisch inszenierten, antiquierten Hauruck-Ästhetik politisch mobilisieren lassen, die Wilders in “Fitna” bietet?
Es ist die Form des Produkts, die Geert Wilders Film auf solche zurückhaltende und -weisende Reaktionen treffen läßt. Längst gibt es populärere und besser gemachte filmische Formulierungen der selben haßerfüllten Idee, etwa Edward Zwick’s Film The Siege. All das ist längst ein gängiges und beliebtes Element der Populärkultur und nur das dumpfe Vorgehen Geert Wilders ist es, das die Leute zurückstößt. Inhaltlich liegen sie voll auf seiner Linie, und es ist keine wilde Zusatzannahme, daß Wilders, wie schon beim Streit um den EU Beitritt, diese ‘Volksmeinung’ seinen Parolen zugrunde legt. Das würde ihn tatsächlich zum Populisten machen, ob Herr Broder das glaubt oder nicht. Der andere Aspekt, das mit dem Rechtspopulisten, da liefert Broder selbst die besten Gegenargumente und ich kann nur auf den werten Herrn zurückverweisen.
Der Soldat vergaß nicht zu erwähnen, daß Manöver und Rüstung entbehrlich wären, sobald die Ausbeutung des Menschen durch den Menschen in allen Ländern abgeschafft wäre. “Und die Ausbeutung der Frau durch den Menschen.” sagte Beatriz. “Wie”, sagte der Soldat. Sein Unverständnis erklärte sich Beatriz mit den idealen Zuständen seiner Heimat.
(Irmtraud Morgner)
Es ist mir ein Rätsel, nicht nur mir, aber ich bin ja der mit der großen Klappe, also rede ich von mir, daß Menschen, die in bestimmten Belangen zu einer guten und kleinteiligen, sorgfältigen und ausgewogenen Analyse fähig sind, diese Fähigkeit in anderen Bereichen völlig vermissen lassen.
Ich dachte immer, es gibt sowas wie eine Fähigkeit zum kritischen Denken, die man entwickeln kann. Wenn man sie hat, wendet man sie an. Oder so. Dass ich seit einiger Zeit über die blogroll von classless kulla an den blogs verschiedener, entweder der gleichen Szene wie Kulla (ich bin mir unsicher. Ich sach mal: antideutsch. Das sind aber auch mindestens zwei verschiedene Szenen, habe ich bei der Kloppe, die Antideutsche untereinander manchmal verteilen, den Eindruck. Eine Klarstellung fänd ich hilfreich. Schreiben: mir!) oder einer ähnlichen Szene angehöriger Menschen, mitlese, desillusioniert mich da ein bißchen. Da findet man ausgezeichnete Analysen des Antisemitismus und freut sich schon und dann schlägt der Dorn-Effekt voll zu (hier im ersten Satz beschrieben.).
Denn, lo and behold, es stellt sich manchmal plötzlich heraus, daß man es mit einem islamophoben Menschen zu tun hat. Und zwar mindestens auf dem Dämlichkeitsniveau eines Herrn Broder. Aber was ist denn mit den anderen Sachen? Was ist denn plötzlich passiert? Mit einem Mal findet der bestürzte Leser Analysen auf dem Niveau einer knapp bestandenen mittleren Reife. Etwa hier, wo jemand die offensichtliche Islamhetze in den Medien so vom Tisch wischt:
Zwar mühen sich ausnahmslos alle etablierten Medien damit, den Islam vom „Islamismus“ und die (angeblich oder tatsächlich) friedlichen von den terroristischen Muslimen zu trennen; zwar beruft der Innenminister „Islam-Konferenzen“ ein, von denen dezidierte Kritiker der selbst ernannten Religion des Friedens ausgeschlossen bleiben; zwar wird allenthalben vor einem „Generalverdacht“ gegen die Anhänger des Propheten gewarnt und auf die kulturellen Leistungen des Islams hingewiesen –
Das, meine ungläubig schauenden Lieben, ist wirklich ein Argument der Autorin. Da kommt nichts mehr. That’s it. Das war’s schon. Man könnte nun glauben, gut, diese Autorin ist leider etwas oberflächlich, nicht interessiert, zum Beispiel an der Tiefenstruktur, die rassistischen Argumenten meist zugrunde liegt, etwas in der Art, bitteschön. Das hätte ich auch fast geglaubt. Aber nur wenige Zeilen später findet sich diese Bemerkung:
Rether merkte entweder gar nicht, welches antisemitische Klischee er da bediente, oder er nahm es bewusst in Kauf; die letztgenannte Möglichkeit ist bei einem, der Israel auch schon mal als „ganz normalen Apartheidstaat“ bezeichnet, zumindest nicht auszuschließen.
Ach? Auf einmal gibt es also die Möglichkeit, Klischees zu bedienen? Wohl gemerkt, Rether hat Juden nicht einmal erwähnt. Selbstverständlich hat die Autorin recht in ihrer Analyse, aber das hier ist ein völlig anderes Maß, das hier angelegt wird. Und wieso? Zeigt ihre Analyse, zum Beispiel auch in diesem völlig angebrachten Artikel, nicht, daß sie es kann? Daß sie es besser wissen müßte? Bei der Auflösung dieses Rätsels greift vielleicht ein Vorwurf, den sie dem armen dummen Kabarettisten vor seine kabarettierenden Füße wirft:
das könnte Rether wissen, wenn er es denn wissen wollte
Ja eben. Sie könnte es besser wissen und sagen. Nur mit dem wollen, da hakt es etwas. Es ist, als sei es unbewusst eine so große Überwindung, nicht antisemitisch zu sein, daß man ein Ventil braucht, um den Hass loszuwerden. Und wieso sollte das nicht der Islam sein? Den konnte man schon immer ganz gut hassen, alte Islamverunglimpfer wie Bernard Lewis, denen ihre Unwahrheiten Mal aufs Mal nachgewiesen wurden, erfreuen sich noch immer einer hohen credibility, aber versuch du mal, Weininger zu zitieren. Lewis geht immer noch runter wie Öl. Und das Beste ist, daß man sich beim Islam, im Gegensatz zum Antisemitismus, bei dem man sich zwar keine neuen Klischees ausdenken mußte, aber durchaus ‘neue’ Leute, denen man sie anhängen konnte, man konnte mit einem Mal zB nicht mehr einfach ‘der Jud’ sagen, wenn man den Jud meinte, gar nichts neues ausdenken mußte. Früher meinte man genau die gleichen Leute, die man heute meint, man verwendet exakt die gleichen Klischees, exakt die gleiche Argumentation und auf deutsch kann man auch immer noch sehr schön ‘Araber’ sagen, mit starker Betonung auf dem ersten A.
Ich würde ja sagen: whatever gets you through the day, aber traurig macht mich das schon. Wenn schon die, die eigentlich auf der ‘richtigen’ Seite stehen, dies nur deshalb machen können, weil sie mit einem Bein eigentlich noch auf der anderen Seite stehen, um dem kinderschändenden Ziegenficker einen Tritt zu verpassen, da kriegt man bloß wieder Kopfweh. Und damit schlagen wir den Bogen zum Eingangszitat aus einem Roman der großen Irmtraud Morgner. Natürlich, so stellt sich heraus, hat das Unverständnis des jungen Soldaten einen anderen Grund. An diesen Aspekt hat er nämlich gar nicht gedacht. Oder nicht auf die gleiche Art und Weise.
Übrigens. Das mag mir auffallen, weil ich gerade den prison break/doctorow artikel umgeschrieben habe (die Änderungen sind noch nicht online), aber daß die Autorin des hier zitierten blogs ausführliche Artikel über die Fußballbundesliga schreibt, ist vielleicht nur ein blöder Zufall. Hm.
Ps. Daß ich hier diese spezielle Art der selektiven Blindheit gewählt habe, heißt nicht, daß es nur die gibt, ein ganz anderes Beispiel aus einer anderen Richtung hätte ich mit Arne Hoffmann gehabt, der u.a. auch für den watchblog islamophobie schreibt, und der ganz eigene blinde Flecke entwickelt, wenn er wiederum über Antisemitismus oder Feminismus schreibt.
Nachtrag Lange bevor ich diesen post geschrieben habe, hat sich übrigens Herr Broder zu Wort gemeldet, was ich beinahe übersehen hätte (via):
“Wehe uns, wenn hier demnächst die Moscheen brennen, dann wills WIEDER keiner gewesen sein”, orakelt der Dhimmi und meldet sich freiwillig zum Dienst bei der Leibstandarte “Osama”.
Das Wort Dhimmi ist übrigens von seiner Wucht, Brutalität und Menschenverachtung heute im bürgerlich einigermaßen akzeptierten Vokabular kaum zu übertreffen. Es findet sich zum Beispiel auch unter den Fittichen von classless Kulla, bei dem Kommentare stehen wie
Deine Argumentation ist inhaltlich eher die eines Dhimmi
Dieser Kommentar, wohlgemerkt, steht unter einer simplen religionshistorischen Auslassung eines anderen Kommentierenden und wird von Kulla gebilligt, anders als das bloße Anführen von Personen übrigens, die in einem völlig anderen Bereich antisemitismusverdächtig sind. Kulla selbst schreibt über Rassismusvorwürfe etwa an Adresse der bahamas, die ich oben an einer signifikanten Stelle zitiert habe
Wenn es jemand für rassistisch hält, wenn sich zugunsten von Israel und von nicht-ethnisierten Migranten ausgesprochen wird, weiß ich auch nicht, warum ich mit ihm unbedingt diskutieren muß.
Nein, ich auch nicht. Und das ist auch nicht das Problem und das wissen wir alle. Duh.
Das schließt wieder den Kreis zum Artikel, unter dem dieser Nachtrag steht. Wäre diese Argumentationsweise an anderer Stelle, etwa bei Arne Hoffmanns Antisemitismusverteidigung, so aufgetaucht, ich glaube Kulla hätte sich (zu Recht) nicht einmal damit befaßt. Also wieso…? Wieso hält er solchen islamophoben oder zumindest antiislamischen Rassismus für eine “offene Frage”? Ich weiß es nicht. Ich weiß es einfach nicht. An der Blödheit kann es nicht liegen, blöd ist nämlich weder Kulla noch Liza. Noch Broder. Aber woher kommt das? Antworten nehme ich gerne an, obwohl zum Beispiel individualpsychologische Begründungen à la wojna (“du kommst mit deinem Leben nicht klar”) natürlich Unfug sind.
Oh there are many things to complain about in Mel Gibson’s latest movie, which, given my curiosity about it, I really took my time watching. I admit, I was still nonplussed by The Passion of the Christ. The line from Braveheart to The Passion was less than promising. However, to say this first: I found Apocalypto hugely entertaining. Not good, really, colors and angles were sometimes, how do I put that, less than appropriate and whoever did the cuts was obviously drunker than I am now, but, his irritating oscar nonwithstanding, let’s face it, we always knew Mel Gibson is not a particularly good director. He is a great entertainer though, and Apocalypto proved it again, if we still needed any proofs for that.
The other thing he’s great at is hating. After having watched any one of his movies, it’s overwhelmingly clear what and whom he hates and, three movies in, he has now made a movie that in a way can be said to sum up his concerns. In my usual muddled way I will eventually arrive at them. First I will, however, talk about that, which might or might not be racism, but which obviously is hate, at the Mayans or at what they represent. I am not sure myself. Typing up notes in a vodkafied state of mind after having watched a movie only once is a method that might (watch the conjunctive!) not be very precise.
So. At a quick glace, what have we. The whole idea of Maya writings, Maya science, is all, of course, generously glossed over. We see rather gruesome drawings but, as these are shown to be the only means of conveying meaning of their doom to the prisoners which are led through a dark tunnel in a pyramid (no, this is not the place to talk about historical inaccuracies. Yes, we all know the pyramids belong to a different era than the one portrayed but we know it’s allegorical so be done with it), they might as well be stone-age pictures of slain mammoths on cave walls, for all that it concerns this point. Also, the language that the Mayas with the pyramids, which I will proceed to call only “Mayas” while calling the wood-dwelling tribe of Mayas “the tribe” (this suits my rhetorical purposes best, if you need to know), use is a sort of language gone bad. It is shown to be only good for stuff like haggling, screaming, threatening, and making evil religious speeches to the orgiastic populace, which are less like speech and more like shouts. Goebbels comes to mind. The antagonists, the tribe, use their language for all kinds of ‘natural’ things. Joking, flirting, and above all, expressing myth. There is the obligatory scene with a wise old storyteller who tells the village a story about creation, the Ur-scene of storytelling and the epitome of an oral tradition. We don’t need Saul “Show me Tolstoy of the Zulus” Bellow to know that we will not find writing here.
History, with a capital ‘H’, however, will be recorded via the decadent Mayas, which meet the incoming conquistadores at the beach. The Mayas may have destroyed themselves, as the quote at the beginning of the movie “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it is destroyed from within” (The gall of using Durant! I was really astonished) seems to say. In the movie, however, nevermind history, the Mayan civilization is ailing but still at the peak of its powers when the conquistadores arrive. The conquistadores, having for a long time in cinematic history been used as an announcement of the doom of the indigenous civilizations, are obviously a hint of what will be happening to the flourishing, violent, plentiful Mayan civilization we’ve just encountered. Destruction. AND THEY DESERVED IT. That’s what the movie, Gibson’s protests nonwithstanding, is proclaiming. (And this is almost as fun a claim as the current Pope’s claim that the indigenous people actually in a way WANTED to be christianized.) Not loudly, but perceptibly enough.
The ‘antidote’ to the destruction might have been, Apocalypto also declares, sticking to “your” forest. The Mayas are shown to have succumbed to the vices of civilization: greed, cruelty (unnecessary cruelty at that), gluttony. The scenes in the Mayan city are full of symbols for that. For instance, in one scene, women are shown in the famous reclining eating pose familiar enough from all sorts of depictions of decadent Rome. These Mayans don’t have writing, really, and as I said, History is going to happen to them. Jaguar Paw, the main character and sole male adult survivor of the Tribe, slips the nets of History and retreats into his own history (note who the catalyzer of even this little history is, who ‘writes it’, within the bounds of what Gibson has written, of course. Ah, the irony), into nature and starts anew. You could say this is a new optimism for Gibson.
Whereas in Braveheart the vicious and evil Englishmen were victorious, here the vicious and decadent party loses to the down-to-earth Jaguar Paw, who, a mixture of Crocodile Dundee and McGyver, uses his forest’s means to defeat the de-natured Mayans. He, painted blue in order to be sacrificed, sheds this very blue so inflammatingly adopted by the mighty displayer of butt-cheeks, Braveheart, and dips into a muddy brownish black, which obviously and immediately raises questions of race. A scene that this rising from the mud of JP’s reminded me of was Martin Sheen’s rising from the waters at the end of Apocalypse Now, a movie that did discuss similar issues, just this time any ambivalence is cut from the image and an image of race is added.
Obviously, both parties involved (no, we’re sorta leaving the Spaniards’ cameo out here) are shown to be archetypes. African tribes and the Mayan tribe are blended, as well as the decadent Romans and Mayans. Most likely, looking at the extent to which this movie is studded with symbols, there are more blendings hidden, on both sides, that I have simply overlooked, having just watched it once. One of these further blendings might well be the purported nexus between Jewishness and decadence that is an old antisemitic staple, one thinks of Weininger‘s seminal and weird philosophical work Geschlecht und Charakter, for example, and in certain scenes, for instance when the Mayans fight scrabble over some coins dropped in the dust, I smelled a possible reference, and after all, the whole history of attacks against decadence, one thinks not only of Weininger but also of ideas in Spengler‘s and Pound‘s work etc. has always had more than just a strong whiff of antisemitism. Sometimes more overt than at other times, and after The Passion, who would complain were I to suspect Gibson of antisemitism or antisemitic references.
Speaking of Weininger, all of this talk of nature entails of course an idea of masculinity as well. From Braveheart who had to oppose the whining, scheming, feminine Englishmen and the overly feminized and decadent The Bruce on his own side, there is a clear line to the strong and simple people of the tribe, who are, or try to be, fearless, without base suspicions. They are early on shown to be at odds with the sneaky Mayans whose first appearance in the movie is that of picture book villains. Looking villaineous, sneaking up to the village and burning the huts. Whereas the tribe believes in fighting to the last, suicide (oooh how awful) is acceptable for the decadent Mayans (again a possible link to Rome).
The whole birth-from-the-earth- and the later occurring birth-in-the-water-imagery underlines the closeness to nature that could of course be channeled through a figure of a ‘white goddess‘ (even though there clearly is in the village, I’d say, a triumvirate maiden/bride/hag) or a woman, but is ultimately shown to be guaranteed only by the male element of the society. It is not only the man who has to save the woman at the end, but it is also the man who turns into the jungle at the end, taking with him a hesitant wife, who clearly would have wanted to meet those Spaniards. Misogyny is rife in that movie anyway. The whole madonna/whore thing is debated repeatedly. In most of the scenes depicting debauchery and decadence, women are placed centrally and the other things have been mentioned before. The repudiation of a feminized masculinity, for example, is of course, also a sign of misogyny, since it implies a clear value judgement.
As I said before, this is an incredibly hateful movie, and by now, it should have become clear at what its hate is directed. Yes its racist, but only incidentally so, the racism in the portrayal of the Tribe is common and barely noteworthy and the racism in the portrayal of the Mayans is not really directed at them, as a ‘race’, but at what they represent. Feminity, depravity, debauchery, decadence. This Gibson’s movie hates and hates with all its metaphorical heart. It’s not alone in that. A very famous book which shares this movie’s hate, is The Lord of the Rings, whose venomous end I consider to be barely, um, bearable. Fitting, isn’t it, that Gibson is planning to shoot a movie on the creation of the OED now, as I read somewhere.
On a final note, I applaud Mel Gibson’s cheek, who apparently “wants to dismiss the popular myth that history “only began with Europeans””. Hmmmmyes. That’s exactly what that movie is very helpful in doing, hm? The gall!
Oh, by the way:
This really great poster more than sums up the movie’s agenda, doesn’t it. Pictures. Amazing stuff.
Den meisten Uelzenern ist es gleich, wann Marco in seine Heimatstadt zurückkehrt. “Hauptsache, er ist dort weg”, sagt ein Mädchen von seiner Schule. “Sein Leben hat einen totalen Knick bekommen, den kann man nur ganz schwer wieder ausbügeln.” [...] Der Ort zelebriert die Nachricht mit einem Autocorso und einem Hupkonzert wie zu Zeiten der Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft. Doch als der Gottesdienst beginnt, verstummt das Gebrüll. “Da legen wir nach, wenn Marco wirklich hier angekommen ist”, sagen drei Halbstarke mit Stadion-Trompeten an der Eislaufbahn in der Stadtmitte.Die Solidarität und das Mitgefühl in der niedersächsischen Kleinstadt sind ungebrochen. Jeden Mittwochabend gab es seit Marcos Inhaftierung eine gut besuchte Andacht in der St. Petri-Kirche, die entgegen der üblichen Öffnungszeiten jeden Tag von acht Uhr morgens bis halb neun abends ihre Tore öffnete.
Jubelnde Massen von Deutschen, die sich freuen daß er “dort” weg ist. Das hat mehr als nur ein Geschmäckle. Es hat ein bißchen was vom Friedmann-Fall, sowie verschiedenen Übergriffen Israels auf seien Nachbarn, die wochenlang Antisemitismus als normales Diskurselement wieder eingeführt hatten. Der Fall Marco hat ähnliches für Islamophobie und ganz gewöhnlichen Rassismus geschafft. Solange Marco noch eingesperrt war, konnte man seinen Rassismus hinter pseudogutmenschlichem ‘Engagement’ verbergen. Das war besonders angenehm für solche, die sich für keine Rassisten hielten und halten, da konnten sie mal gut vom Leder ziehen, ohne daß ihnen mulmig wurde. Das ist die alte “Ich hab nichts gegen Ausländer, aber…”-Fraktion. Bezeichnend ist diese Passage, in diesem sonst mäßig geschriebenen SPON-Artikel:
Am meisten freuen sich die Deutschtürken über Marcos Heimkehr. “Ich wurde hier in der Firma täglich von deutschen Kollegen wegen Marco angemacht”, erzählt ein Türke aus Duisburg dem Hürriyet-Forum im Internet erleichtert. “Wenn noch einmal so etwas passiert, bitte schickt den Beschuldigten sofort zurück in seine Heimat. Die Leidtragenden sind zum Schluss doch nur wir und unser Land.”
Immer lesenswert auch classless’ schlaue Kolumnen wie dem Ökonomischen Gottesdienst.
Paul Gilroy’s text, “The Black Atlantic as a Counterculture of Modernity”, the first chapter of his book on the Black Atlantic, struggles to arrive at a clean notion of ‘blackness’. His problems, however are due to the same problems he shows ‘Cultural Studies’ to have, moreover, problems, that most academical writing informed by modernity struggles with. So his own difficulties are symptomatic for the topic he discusses and they might resurface in my own discussion of his text.
There have been many definitions of what would constitute the ‘modern’ or ‘modernity’, but modernity’s roots in the Enlightenment [ Of course, Gilroy oversimplifies how influences worked at that crucial time. How the Romantics resurrected the racialized idea of the nation and used it against 'scientific' tendencies, in short, how the Enlightenment as the Age of Reason and the Romantics as the resurrectors of 'culture' have worked together to produce Modernity has not been considered by Gilroy, yet these are minor disagreements; they would not have an impact on his thesis.] have always been stressed. The so-called Age of Reason is usually evoked whenever politicians or academics attack ‘intolerance’ and ‘racism’. Yet that same age has not only been instrumental in inventing the modern nation-state, it also helped racializing culture via the “fatal junction of the concept of nationality with the concept of culture” (2). The crucial aspect was the notion of a racial community of members of the same nation. Germans were Germans because they were linked by blood [2 Blood, as a juridical marker of Germanness was kept until 1996, which explains many racialized arguments in this country, but not similar arguments in others. Gilroy's argument, however, holds true for all of the 'West'.] and culture. The same applied to Britishness. Thus, Britishness or Germanness took on a transcendent meaning. And British persons and Germans were, racially speaking, considered white [3 And Christians, of course. In the same period of time, modern Antisemitism was born from a cluster of notions similar to the cluster considered by Gilroy].
The racialization of culture is most obvious when the major role of ‘blackness’ (not darkness) as a trope in early 19th century lectures and discussions on aesthetics, which could be said to provide a foundation for most of modern aesthetics [4 This is of course a bold claim, but I think its true, considering the extent to which major claims of Hegel's lectures in Jena and A.W. Schlegel's lectures in Berlin keep resurfacing in modern aesthetics.], is considered. Thus, blackness, as the other, has been ingrained in the very basis of modern thought and writing. The idea of the black man as the adversary has long since become part of cultural thought and the identity of ‘Germans’ and ‘the British’ has for a long time been white. To black Europeans or Americans this has been a major problem, as they could not partake of the identity of their nation. As a result the idea of an African ‘homeland’ and of a black history arose that is -examined closely- basically identical to the history of Africa and the history of the Middle Passage. Thus, black empowerment, instead of changing anything about racist attitues, was intrumental in creating a nation for blacks.
However, blacks were not only in so far part of the creation of Modernity as they served as a trope. Gilroy stresses the extent to which blacks have been actively participating in crucial movements in ‘white’ history, from “Columbus’ pilot, Pedro Nino” (16) to the likes of Olaudah Equiano, who was involved “in the beginnings of organized working-class politics” (12). In the realm of whites, blacks were only seen as a victimized people, never as agents. Purportedly emancipated branches of cultural studies which are concerned with the study of blacks, reinforce that impression by reiterating the nation/culture juncture, the nation being, in this case, Africa. The consequence of these studies is the identity, for instance, of the Black American as the exception to the (white) rule. Gilroy’s focus on the Enlightenment makes clear to what extent the racialized notions of nation and culture have informed the tacit racism on Campuses around the world, and how much of it went unnoticed by scholars.
The difference in method in Gilroy’s text is the emphasis on traveling. Instead of focusing on nations as creators of culture, he creates the Black Atlantic as the epitome of travel. The Atlantic, upon which black slaves were carried from Africa to America, but upon which black captains, too, navigated on many routes. From the ships going back and forth several were built by blacks, and books and ideas crossing the Atlantic were -in part- written by blacks. The trope of the Black Atlantic, in other words, serves to destabilize the notion of stable cultural identities.
Gilroy proposes a “theorization of [...] hybridity”, which would still (of course) be based on black and white identities, which is where Gilroy’s problems with the notion of ‘blackness’ enter, but focusing on travel and not on the awkward construction of a ‘homeland’ might very well be the way out of the trap set by Enlightenment, which ensured that you cannot dispense of talking about black and white if you do not want to drag these concepts along implicitly. However, using the Black Atlantic as a trope for the inbetween, these identities do not fuse (as this would create only new ‘stable’ identities), but instead, they are disregarded, losing their power in a theory concentrating on the fluidity of identities instead of their stableness.
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