By Russell A. Berman · Monday, June 24, 2013 Telos 163 (Summer 2013) is now available for purchase in our store.
 Profound change in society may involve shifting control of political power, the character of economic systems, or access to resources, but it can also have to do with the structures of meaning we bundle together in various understandings of culture. This issue of Telos looks at the explosive forces located specifically in the intangible dimensions of culture and how they may play out in revolutionary or counter-revolutionary processes.
Continue reading →
By Russell A. Berman · Tuesday, September 5, 2006 Despite the approaching mid-term elections and the criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of foreign policy, the left—domestically and internationally—has had a hard time in articulating an alternative positive vision. “Not Bush” only gets you so far: sooner or later a substantive alternative is needed to give opposition credibility. Facing turmoil (to say the least) in the Arab and Islamic world, what foreign policy would be preferable? Evidence demonstrates that neither “UN” nor “EU” is a believable response. But the problem is deeper than the pragmatics of current diplomacy.
The left (and liberal) imagination would prefer to cast the confrontation with Islamic extremism or, yes, Islamic fascism, as a matter of imperialism and “anti-imperialism.” The terminology constitutes a treasured legacy of the left, not only from Lenin’s account of imperialism and capitalism (which then permitted him and his successors to mask Soviet Russian expansionism as somehow “anti-imperialist”) but also from a more honorable resistance in the US and Europe to imperial expansion of the late nineteenth century.
In the meantime, anti-imperialism is today’s last hurrah of the traditional left. Having given up nearly all of its other principles, especially in the phase of multiculturalism and post-modernism, it drapes itself in the anti-imperialist flag as a way to remember its glory days. Hence the grotesque sight of the (extreme) left celebrating the reactionary forces of Hezbollah (ask about the role of women or the status of free unions).
The problem however is that the theory of anti-imperialism—probably insufficient already a century ago—is simply irrelevant today. Exactly which natural resources are being fought for in Afghanistan, that fabled land of plenty? Which advanced capitalist company really needs to export its “surplus capital” to the Sunni triangle? And which is the national liberation movement that leads Sunni to kill Shi’a in Pakistan?
None of these conceptualizations of empire and anti-imperialism is adequate to the current situation, which is very explicitly being driven by something else: either an ideological-religious fanaticism or, on a deeper cultural level, a desire for death. Let us consider the account most recently televised by our compatriot and now Al-Qaeda operative Adam Gadahn, otherwise known affectionately as “Azzam the American.” Gadahn, who has been sought by the FBI for several years aired an address on tajed.net on September 2. In it he articulates aspects of the Islamic-fascist critique of the West and, as has been widely reported, called for conversion to Islam. . . .
Continue reading →
By Russell A. Berman · Sunday, September 3, 2006 One of the features of the historical totalitarian regimes was the refusal to concede losses or defeats. In part this reflects ideological blinders, a refusal to recognize reality—or to test one’s views against reality—as was the case with the last Minister of Propaganda under Saddam, who claimed the American forces had been repelled, even as they were entering the capital. In addition, this inability to admit to defeat functions as ideology, a way to coerce support to movements or regimes, which promote themselves as victors in order to cement loyalty. Finally, the insistence on maintaining the appearance of victory despite losses reflects a willingness to sacrifice both resources and people: no matter how many have been killed, the totalitarian PR apparatus calls it a win. It is callousness in the face of suffering.
Hezbollah’s declaration of victory follows these patterns. While it is true that the Israelis were not able to oust Hezbollah, neither did Hezbollah achieve its goals—which is only a “victory” if the standard is dumbed down far enough. Journalistic echoing the credo of a victory amplifies Hezbollah ideology, but the claim just does not match reality. Sober and moderate voices in the Arab world are beginning to point that out. To the extent that this blog has made the argument regarding “Islamic fascism,” it is equally important to take note of the critical analyses within the Arab world itself. . . .
Continue reading →
By Russell A. Berman · Saturday, September 2, 2006 In the debates during and after the recent war in Lebanon, supporters of Hezbollah have tried to represent it as a deliverer of social welfare and not as a terrorist organization. Let us leave aside the question as to why a social welfare organization would be armed to the teeth and dwell for a moment in order to consider the claim itself and its theoretical/political implications. The utopia of the social welfare state has been phrased for a more than a century in terms of providing benefits to its client-citizens “from cradle to grave.” In other words, the whole life course would become an object of state administrative practices. This bureaucratic apparatus logically necessitates some level of intrusion by the state into the private sphere of family life: care-taking, starting with the cradle, means a politicization of the nursery, and so forth. Hence Hayek’s anxieties that even a modest social state would not stay modest for long and set out on a “road to serfdom.”
To talk about Hezbollah as only a welfare state is an apologistic misrepresentation, akin to discussing Hitler in terms of managing unemployment and building the Autobahn (the way the press praises Hezbollah for its Iran-bankrolled big-spending in the Lebanese reconstruction). Hezbollah is however like a “welfare state” in the Hayekian sense: leveraging its resources and political clout to extend a tyrannical control over the private sphere. This is nowhere more evident than in the fate of the Hezbollah children.
 
The intrusion of Nazi ideology into nascent pan-Arabism in the 1930s in fact included the establishment of youth movements modeled on the Hitlerjugend, and the lynchpin in this connection was none other than Baldur von Schirach, the leader of the Nazi youth program. This sort of fascist politicization of youth therefore has a long history, but Hezbollah has taken it to new heights. Its message to the Lebanese is evidently this: the price for the social welfare benefits is sacrificing your children. The content of Hezbollah’s welfare state practice is to accelerate the itinerary from cradle to grave: straight from the cradle, into the grave.
Continue reading →
By Russell A. Berman · Friday, September 1, 2006 Of course, it was Imperial Japan, not Nazi Germany, that attacked Hawaii. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the day of infamy, the United States entered a war both in Europe and in the Pacific. Although the political structures and ideologies of Japan and Germany were hardly identical and their geopolitical ambitions were not at all thoroughly aligned (who would replace the British in India?), President Roosevelt was able to articulate a clear opposition between the democracies and the fascist powers. Differences among the various fascist regimes could still leave room for nuanced policies and strategic decisions: there was no allied invasion of Franco’s Spain. Yet the fact that Mussolini was not Hitler did not prohibit the invasion of Sicily, a crucial link in the chain that would lead to victory in both theaters.
Such was the ability of American society then and its political leadership to resist and defeat the dictatorships of the Second World War, followed decades later by the successful conclusion of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union. That capacity for such political and military resolve is however of a completely different nature than academic inquiry which, characteristically, has developed a rich insight into the specific features and differences among the dictatorships. Scholars distinguish and differentiate, and this variegated knowledge can, at times, inform policy decisions, but, in the end, academics have the professional luxury of never having to act and certainly not to take action to contribute to national security.
Some intellectuals nonetheless have the ability to see the big picture. Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism of 1951 draws primarily on the examples of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, between which she describes important similarities. Aside from the left, which has always resented the impugning of Communism, academic objections to Arendt’s study have pointed out the undeniable differences between Hitler and Stalin, and their respective regimes. Within scholarly research, such criticisms should not be discounted, but there is a point, particularly when one moves from the university into the political arena, where this quibbling becomes a debilitating fixation: insistence on the specificity of each tree, while refusing to take note of the forest.
This is a problem with categories as such. Individual phenomena retain an irreducible particularity, which makes up the texture of lived life, the Lebenswelt; at the same time, we cannot do without a conceptual vocabulary to describe commonalities and to enable action in the world. Action is a defining condition of humanity, the ability to build on reflection to transform the world through creative innovation. Without the conceptual tools of thought, action becomes blind; but without an active pursuit of human goals—telos—thought diminishes.
Continue reading →
By Russell A. Berman · Monday, July 31, 2006 Against the backdrop of the violence between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, an interesting letter-to-the-editor appeared in the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel on July 30. The author, Dr. Mounir Herzallah, self-identifies as a Lebanese Shiite and comments:
“Until 2002, I lived in a small village in the south of Lebanon near Mardschajun, with a majority population of Shiites, like myself. After Israel’s departure from Lebanon, it did not take long for Hezbollah to show up and to take over, not only with us but in all the neighboring villages as well. Greeted as successful resistance fighters, they came loaded with arms and, in our village too, they constructed missile storage facilities in an underground bunker. The social work of the Party of God entailed building a school and an apartment building right on top of the bunker! A local sheikh explained to me, with a smile, that the Jews would lose in any case: either because they would be hit with the missiles or because, should they attack the missile storage, they would be condemned by the world public due to ensuing civilian deaths. The [Hezbollah] was not at all interested in the Lebanese people; they only used them as shields and—when they were dead—as propaganda. As long as Hezbollah remains there, there will be no peace and quiet.” (my translation)
The connection between war and welfare—schools on top of bunkers—is intriguing and reminiscent of other “guns and butter” debates. So is the simultaneous suggestion that Hezbollah merely instrumentalizes the local population: it may claim to be fighting in the name of some population, in order to invoke a democratic legitimacy, but in fact it only uses the locals as human shields. Hence also the reports that in some instances Hezbollah has prevented civilian departures from the warfront in Southern Lebanon precisely in order to increase casualty rates. One notes similarly the willingness to tolerate deaths when its own missiles hit Israeli Arabs. This predisposition of an extremist political movement to argue, occasionally, with a democratizing rhetoric (defending a people) while in fact disregarding the lives of the people is a symptomatic feature of totalitarian mentalities: neither Hitler nor Stalin cared much about the numbers of their own who were lost.
Continue reading →
|
|
