Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 02:20:23 -0800 (PST)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [postanarchism] Katsiaficas: "Coexistence With Islamic Fundamentalism?"


I think the biggest issue here is that you all are
arguing, with people like Jameson, that we are
currently in the stage of 'postmodern capitalism',
whereas I see it more like Paul Virilio or Zygmunt
Bauman, that what we are in right now is more of
'hypermodernity', an epoch in which the instrumental
rationality that characterized the post-Enlightenment
era is now being stretched to the limit, with the rise
of the internet, information warfare, spy satellite
systems, total information awareness, etc. - from this
perspective, none of these technologies, none of this
'globalization', is really about 'difference' at all,
as is claimed, rather it is about the universalization
of the One, precisely *in order* to render difference
and mutual tolerance of the Other as a practical
impossibility. From this perspective, the postmodern
is more of something to aspire to, as a hope for the
future, for a world in which many worlds fit, rather
than a description of where we currently are, and I
find this to be much more accurate in its both
description and prescription.

In other words, you might say that whereas
premodernity was a god-centered world with no room for
divergence and modernity was a human-centered world
with no room for divergence (and still is),
postmodernity, if we make it as such, would be one in
which we would finally recognize that it is the lack
of the ability to diverge, even in seemingly
problematic ways, that unites both of these epochs, as
both premodernity and modernity have been based on a
very similarly problematic view of the Other, whether
that be heathens, nature, women, animals, foreigners,
etc., where they came to be seen as objects rather
than subjects, as things to be used and discarded at
will, rather than as having will in their own right. 

>From this perspective, an argument in favor of a
radicalized multiculturalism, panarchy, plurality,
difference, etc. sounds like a refreshing change, not
more of the same, it sounds like a direct challenge to
the logic of the One, a defiant spitting into the face
of instrumental rationality, since it is based on the
ethics of 'letting being be' as Heidegger put it. Be
that as it may, maybe the most useful thing would be
to go back and look at what Katsiaficas himself
actually stated, since that is what we are really
talking about here, not so much what I personally have
to say. I think that people have alot of
misconceptions about what was actually said in that
essay so I want to try to clear some of them up, at
least from my own perspective of what it is that is
being said here.

He begins the essay by saying that he is glad he was
not in the US at the time right after the September 11
attacks because he understanably prefers not to be
inundated with the mass media brainwashing campaigns
that tend to come about under such circumstances
(i.e., the little animated American flags that
appeared constantly on every television station for
months afterward). Then he says that it would be wise
for Westerners to be more aware that South Koreans, as
with many other third world inhabitants, were not
particularly surprised or even saddened by the
attacks, and that some of them even went so far as to
embrace Bin Laden as a new Che Guevara. Note that
nothing he has said so far agrees with these
judgements, but rather seeks to put them into
perspective, so that we realize the kind of soil from
within which such acts emerge (i.e., maybe they could
be prevented if we could bring about a world that
would allow people a greater degree self-determination
and local autonomy).

He then goes on to say that since 1929 international
warfare has been the primary solution to a lagging
world economy and that with the economic slump that
was happening in 2001, it is not surprising that the
Bush administration would seek to take advantage of
this convenient opportunity to push for as many wars
as the population will allow. For this reason in
particular, he argues that if the US had responded
differently, such as by allowing the Palestinians to
gain a modicum of self-determination and autonomy,
perhaps war would not have been the only response
possible. This is the point at which he begins to
discuss Islamic fundamentalism and the possibility
that perhaps the US should have considered its
grievances more carefully, so as not to endanger the
entire population of the Western world as it has.

Ironically, however, the very people who could have
pushed for such an approach, in the interest not only
of the inhabitants of the Islamic world, but indeed of
the West as well (a particularly good example of what
he calls the universal that resides within the
particular), these people began to tow the Bush line
and supported the war themselves. This includes not
only vast segments of the American Left, but also for
instance the German Greens, which he likens to the
French Communist Party's support for the war against
Algeria some decades prior. Unfortunately, these more
'enlightened' sectors of the population of the West
began to buy into the idea that the Taliban was
equatable with the Nazis, which allowed many to take
positions they otherwise would not, just as many
radicals of all kinds enthusiastically took part in
the Second World War. 

>From the denunciations of Lynne Cheney to the
denunciations of Christopher Hitchens, Katsiaficas
shows, the 'Left' and 'Right' had united around their
opposition to the great Other of the West, Islam. This
he says, causes him great consternation, particularly
since President Bush is well known to be a business
associate of the Bin Laden family, and a member of a
family with numerous connections to Nazi collaborators
of all sorts. Here we begin to see a little more
clearly how he is not 'embracing' Islamic
fundamentalism at all, but rather he is trying to show
how ironic it is that from the right to the left, from
liberals to radicals, much of the American population
became convinced that the war against Islam was
essentially a 'just war' unlike most any other war
before, since in the name of liberty, equality and
fraternity, we were bombing Afghanistan back into the
stone ages (the dialectic of enlightenment manifest?)
- Virilio is another who has shown how the rhetoric of
'just war', this time in regard to Kosovo, allows for
all the more horrendous atrocities, since the action
is taking place in the name of 'good'.

One of the most important sentences in his essay is
the contention that "if US progressives are to have
any chance of intervening in the current constellation
of forces, to change the direction of the world's
great powers currently lined up for a long-term war on
Islamic fundamentalism and Arab nationalism, we first
need to rethink our perspectives and values". This
would involve first of all cultivating a sense of
empathy, at least an attempt to imagine putting one's
self in another's shoes, such that when the US
military attacks an Islamic nation, whichever one that
might be, this is seen as at least as much of a
tragedy, no matter what the politics of the nation
being attacked, as an attack on the WTC. Instead what
we got was 'muted criticism' and generalized silence
from precisely those who could have impacted such
events the most, not only amongst the Right and the
mainstream Left but even amongst many anarchists,
"indications of how the entire country marches in
lockstep to the tunes played  by a propaganda system
that values some lives above others".

Thus the new anti-Semitism, he says, is that directed
against "Arab oil sheiks and 'terrorists'" and it is
an emotion expressed across the entire population,
from sea to shining sea, from anarchists to
Republicans. Thus, he intones, "as for the wretched of
the earth, if their anti-imperialist movements do not
accept our values, our notions of feminism and gay
liberation, of 'democratic' elections and individual
'freedom', then to hell with them - no solidarity, no
sympathy and certainly no legitimacy". He goes on to
say that "Islamic fundamentalism" (his words) is
almost always painted as universally reactionary in
its content rather than having agency in its own
right, as coming for instance, out of the fact that
the Koran is seen as the direct word of God and thus
not as open to interpretation as many Western
religions, particularly Protestant ones, are. Thus,
"for those fundamentalists who take their holy book
literally, god's commandments about everyday life are
loud and clear". 

Contrary to some assertions that he is uncritical, due
to some imagined 'third-worldism', he explicitly
states that he detests the destruction of Buddhist
statues and the cruel treatment of Islamic women, yet
he argues that it is not ethical to devalue their
lives for these reasons alone, and that it is
precisely because of these reprehensible features of
Islamic fundamentalism that we should consider how we
might be able to maintain some kind of peaceful
coexistence with it, rather than bombing the people
living under these regimes to smithereens. The problem
is that within the ranks of supposed
progressively-minded people, there is a very
totalizing view of the Islamic Other, and the word
'fundamentalism', when it is used amonst such crowds,
often comes to stand in for essentially every element
that is not well understood, while offering what Zizek
would surely agree is a kind of negatively-invoked
support for Empire. Thus he quotes someone on the Left
who states that "fundamentalism's doctrine of
intolerance simply cannot stand in contemporary
society" as complicit with the sort of Christopher
Hitchens logic whereby war against Islam comes to be
seen as 'just war against terror' (Elshtain) - and for
those who don't support the war per se, the criticism
becomes suspiciously muted, the outrage not so
outrageous.

His argument from this point on is that "these
examples flow from an inability to respect difference
and a notion that there is only one just way of life".
This feature he calls the 'monocentric notion of
justice' embraced by most of the Left and even amongst
some anarchists, which can be seen as a product of the
Enlightment project of universality, which he
rightfully attaches to the thought of Jurgen Habermas
and those influenced by him. Instead he argues in
favor of for instance the approach taken in South
Africa after apartheid, in which a "limited autonomy
for white homelands" became a reasonable solution for
those who stubbornly did not want to integrate, which
while it might sound problematic, is probably not such
a bad idea in extreme cases like that, where not
taking this approach means throwing the whole project
of a mutually respectful society into disarray.

One of the most interesting examples of Left hypocrisy
and quietism that he gives is that of the Polish
Solidarity movement and how the Left uncritically
allowed for that movements conservative patriarchal
and  religious approach, primarily because it matched
the romanticized working-class ideal - this is the
kind of thing I used to hear all the time from the
less critical of my 'fellow workers' in the IWW, about
how we need to 'meet people where they are at', no
doubt it is common throughout anarchist, socialist and
other such movements, and probably for good reason, so
why the double standard suddenly when it comes to the
Islamic world, why is this immediately labeled as
fundamentalist when it crops up within the ranks of
the Other but is seen as 'harmless' when it is a
characteristic of the ranks of the Self? 

Instead of succumbing to this double-standard, he
argues that we should start thinking of alternative
solutions, other ways of living together on the same
planet, that might go beyond the immediately obvious
solutions and think a little harder about how to
approach things. For Katsiaficas, this is a very
important question as American empire continues its
long decline (as history shows, Empires fall at one
point or another) because with that decline comes a
whole host of dangers, including continued attacks of
the Al-Qaeda variety, as well as the possible
disintegration of Israel, which could easily become a
major human catastrophe. In response to such threats
he argues that we should completely abolish all
militaries, all weapons of mass destruction, as well
as all conventional weapons, at the same time that we
transition into a completely different kind of world
political economy (I assume he is referring to
decentralized libertarian-socialist autarky of some
kind).

He goes on to talk about as the security of Israel
begins to decline along with the decline of American
empire, since "every Palestinian death, each missile
fired at defenseless Arabs and Afghanis only further
diminishes the security of a Jewish State in the Holy
Land", there may well come a time when there will be
an urgent need to rethink the anti-Semitic immigration
policies of the UK and the USA that ultimately lead to
their financial and other forms of logistical support
for the creation of Israel in the first place (see
Stephen Shalom for more on that at
http://home.mindspring.com/~fontenelles/shalom/shalom2.htm
). Ironically, as Katsiaficas shows, Jews have been
treated much better historically under the umbrella of
the Islamic world than they have in any Western
'secular' country, and thus contemporary anti-Semitism
in these territories is not reflective of some
intrinsic bias, but is actually reflective of the
*Westernization* of Islam, not some imagined prior
'fundamentalism' that is often referred to, parroted
straight of the set of CNN, an obervation that is
quite complementary to that of Shalom's.  

He concludes the essay by arguing that South Koreans
(since he was in Korea when he wrote it) can have an
affect on the current drive to global war that the
Americans are waging by mounting massive
demonstrations, which he suggests might inspire
activists in the US and Europe to take action
themselves (hardly a 'third-worldist' perspective).
This he likens to the way that the infamous Kwangju
Uprising in the 1980s helped to spawn the democracy
movements in Burma, China, Nepal and Thailand in the
years following, as well as the European antinuclear
movement around the same time, which spread from
London to Rome, and which eventually helped to end the
Cold War, all of which shows how an 'eros effect'
http://www.eroseffect.com can help to spread radical
ideas like wildfire. This is perhaps the best way to
approach the aspects of the Islamic world that many
Western radicals find so reprehensible, rather than
imperialistically imposing our values on another
culture, while offering only muted critism (which as
Zizek argues, is really little different from muted
support) of American military adventures, we should
take advantage of the fact that we have the ability to
set a radical example that can catch fire and spread
around the world spontaneously, but in ways which are
always quite different, relevant in an explicitly
local context, which, as Katsiaficas demonstrates, we
really do scarcely understand.




















===="Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the 
        mania
     Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth and
         one way."

- Friedrich Hölderlin, 1799

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