Saswat Blog
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Ahmadinejad, Bollinger, Holocaust: the Great American Hypocrisy
By Saswat Pattanayak
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was arguably the most important step taken by a world leader to initiate the global peace that is so much needed in the clearly terrorized world we live in.
Ahmadinejad is a leader of significant importance—chief of a major country and representative of a major world religion-- who was humble enough to accept a university invitation, and tolerant enough to appear in front of the most hostile audience that any academic institute in the world could feel ashamed of. And despite the odds, he was clearly on a mission: to promote the spirit of peace and open the road to desirable dialogue.
So, how was he received at the Land of the Free? First, the New York City Mayor displayed his level of arrogance by refusing Ahmadinejad a visit to 9/11 memorial site. Second, the Columbia University President exhibited unparalleled level of ignorance by verbally abusing the Iranian President. Third, the American President bathed in his self glory by refusing to entertain any possibility of any urgent dialogue.
Columbia: Elite University, Elitist Mindsets:
Columbia University characterized the drama usually associated with the great American Hypocrisy that has led to several wars and ideological confrontations during past many decades. One important way in which the First World countries have justified their position as regards to Freedom of Speech is by boasting about it. To prove that America allows freedom of speech, American administration needs to allow a certain amount of dissent to take place. Both the dissent and the freedom then have to be televised appropriately. Finally, the melodramatic confrontations are then needed to be compared with the economically subjugated world so as to prove an innate superiority in the methods of the free world.
In Ahmadinejad’s visit, all the above aspects were clearly evident. First, he was invited by Columbia University as the speaker. He was invited despite vehement protests from various student groups. This proved the spirit of tolerance that American democracy boasts of. However, critically deconstructing such an obvious reflection, one would fathom that the real reason why he was invited was not so much as “despite”, as was “because” of the protests from various groups of people. He was invited to speak on campus, because of the amount of controversy it would generate. And clearly, Columbia University did not do anything to stop the protests. Indeed, it advertised on its website additional permissions to student groups to create the noise and requested the community to bear with the protests which would continue for the entire day. Such vehement noisy protests where anyone could attribute any ghastly name to another country’s chief showcased a circus that was well planned and organized. Students and other social groups were not protesting against Columbia University (which they could have legitimately done by asking people to boycott a visit to the campus), rather they were enjoying the centrestage of press attention by using placards that could allow them to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler and use any amount of vulgar slangs to denounce Iranian politics. In a country where peace marchers including octogenarian peacenik grandmothers are imprisoned because of silent protests, the rowdy behaviors from various “free speech” and student groups in front of a university was in fact encouraged.
Why was Ahmadinejad invited to the campus if the university was well aware that there would be thousands of people on the streets to protest? It was because the university was not afraid that they will lose reputation. It was not because the university was going to be boycotted. Not because students who resent Ahmadinejad were going to dissuade potential applicants from joining the campus. After all, a university which invites a “Hitler” naturally was going to be branded as anti-semite and was going to get bad press, and was going to be mocked at. The university was going to lose its own face by inviting someone whom many people on campus considered or even studied as a dictator.
Then why did the Columbia University invite someone as a chief guest who was so deeply hated by many in the campus community? In fact, Ahmadinejad was unique because he was (and continues to be) hated by both conservatives and liberals alike. Even several Free Speech coalitions did not have kind words for him. None of the politically correct historians had good thoughts about him. None of the civil rights organizations thought Ahmadinejad should be tolerated.
Lee Bollinger’s speech answered why: Calling the Iranian President “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”, even before allowing him an audience, the Columbia University professor proved the invitation was premeditated to be insulting. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger called Ahmadinejad. It was with the sole purpose of insulting the Iranian head that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak. The spirit of sheer hatred continued as stealth mockery found resonance throughout Bollinger’s long introduction.
Lee Bollinger who in the mask of being a free speech advocate (Michigan Affirmative Action champion) went all the way to demonstrate how utterly vulgar and autocratic he could be. A proclaimed “free-speech” advocate, Bollinger not only did not feel sorry about Ahmadinejad not being granted the freedom to visit 9/11 site, but he went one step further. Even before Ahmadinejad could speak on his “defense”, the Columbian professor went on verbally attacking the Iranian head as befitting a liar, idiot, rogue and conman.
Bollinger said a number of Columbian graduates were the brave fighters serving the American troop in Iraq. That was spoken in order to praise the American war against the Iraqi people! He asked Iranian President on their behalf why “Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq killing US troops”. Whether it is a proxy war that Iran is fighting in Iraq is a matter of dispute. What, however has been true is that the US fought an unjust war in Iraq and American troops caused much military misconduct that have been quite extensively recorded in recent past. What the Columbia University President should have done was to apologize on behalf of the infamous troop that has caused much distress to the world citizenry by its brazen inhuman treatment of peaceful civilians. Even after prison tortures, and civilian rapes committed by American troops (yes the same “brave” Columbian graduates as cohorts), the highly educated and informed professor proved his agenda of falsehoods and pretensions time and again.
Bollinger continued with his series of malicious attacks that were not evidenced nor called for. He brought to the fore the issue of Iran’s nuclear deal, which suggested his lack of awareness about the matter. Contrary to his accusations against Iran as a country working to create an unsafe world, the UN’s agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been in close collaboration with Iran and has found no such threats as being decried by the professor. Inviting a guest, and accusing him and the country he leads in highly derogatory terms and verbally abusing him as insane and unintelligent without even having evidence or knowledge to back up marked the genius of Bollinger. Who does Bollinger quote to support his opinions? French president Sarkozy – a right wing conservative—who apparently has lost patience (according to Bollinger) with Iran. Did such trivial information make sense in an introductory speech provided to “welcome” an international guest?
Bollinger then asked Ahmadinejad, “Why have you made the people of your country vulnerable to sanctions?” If Bollinger had any sense of empathy or understanding, he could have instead asked why do the first world powers foster vulnerable conditions for Iranian civilians. In an unsurpassed level of academic elitism that should ideally call for much loath and disgrace, Professor Bollinger outdid his sense of self-glorification by finally challenging the head of state of Iran to respond to his speech: “Let me close with a comment. Frankly and in all candor, Mr President, I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do…I am only a professor who is also a university president, but today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion of what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”
A huge section of Columbia University audience cheered and clapped to their president’s hate speech and waited gleefully for Ahmadinejad to fail the test. In contrast to the obviously arrogant speech of Bollinger, Ahmadinejad’s talk was pensive, thoughtful, full of insights. Ahmadinejad asserted that he was still an instructor at a university and as an instructor he strived for the whole truth. Apart from the questionable religious wisdom and denial of homosexuality in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s speech was more than an answer to Bollinger’s outlandish accusations. Yes, he did not answer anything “straight”, despite pleading from the university for him to answer in “yes” or “no”. But that was more due to the fact that Islam logic is not necessarily as vertically dismissive as Christian expectations. In every sentence that Ahmadinejad spoke, there was humility, a touch of candor and empathetic understanding. In every sentiment of Ahmadinejad, there was a prayer for collaboration, a hope for global peace, a step towards mutual dialogue. In every answer of Ahmadinejad to the Q/A session, there was an assertion of a world leader who was humble enough to raise historical lessons, and of an educated non-elite who was unafraid to research.
Ahmadinejad was forced to revisit his stance on Holocaust. Clearly he had not come to the US to speak about his views on historical revisionism, but to extend a hand of friendship for future peace pacts. Even at that stage he said he was not a Holocaust denier, what he wanted instead was further research into the area of history that has led the world to prepare for the largest unrest in recent times. Palestine did not fight World War II. Europe did. And why are the Palestinians facing the crisis still? Not an easy answer to this question, and Ahmadinejad sought for further research into this aspect. Talking about the halt in Iranian progress, he dwelt on the root cause of the unrest and insecurity. Why was Iran under sanction? Why did the first world powers withdraw unilaterally after assuring nuclear energy support to Iran? Why should there be limitations imposed on Iran’s scientific endeavors especially when IAEA has not found any problem with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?
Moreover, Ahmadinejad did not just ask questions that were uncalled for. He offered agreements. Despite the insults and abuses and threats outside the campus building that were encouraged by the university officials, he invited American students to visit Iran, attend the universities and speak with civilians. Whether he would agree to hold a dialogue with the White House regarding resolution of US-Iran disputes? Of course, anytime! Ahmadinejad requested for a peaceful dialogue. “Everything can be resolved over talks. We need to talk”.
White House ignored Ahmadinejad during the rest of his stay. Ahmadinejad even called for a meeting of religious leaders to initiate global peace talks and succeeded. Around 140 religious leaders attended the meeting in New York, with the sole exception of any Jewish leader who refused to attend.
On the Homosexuality Question:
I waited for a few days to study media response to such an uncivilized treatment meted out to a state’s head. The American corporate media of course bathing in its biased glories preferred to maintain the line adopted by Columbia University and at their best, tried to provide a “balanced” perspective to the issue that clearly called for critical intellectual intervention.
Most reports mocked at the ignorance of Ahmadinejad when it came to issue of homosexuality. They chose to play moral pundits while not mentioning how America treats its own LGBT community. The fact that the US has consistently failed to provide for basic human rights to homosexual population even after acknowledging their presence in every sphere in social life here is clearly amiss from all reports that attacked Iran’s condition. “Mr President, in your country, homosexuals are treated in this and that way” has been a standard line of both the Columbia University president and our enlightened western press. Not for once did the educated pause awhile to review the fact that not so long ago American Psychology Association (APA), the famed master of all things research, used to consider homosexuality as an abnormality. And even to this date, the major state religion whose dictums appear on the courtroom walls and classroom prayers has been the single biggest enemy to the cause of the LGBT community.
On the Holocaust Question:
Most amount of time devoted by the university professor in his speech and later on by the university during Q/A session, and by media reports before, during and after the visit of Ahmadinejad focused on the alleged “holocaust denial” of the Iranian head. It has been accused severally that he is an Anti-Semite, like most of anyone we know in the recent history who has challenged the Holocaust issue from different perspectives.
Even as we have succeeded in challenging the legacy of Columbus and George Washington, the only and perhaps the largest event of significance has remained beyond recent review. Bollinger, the academician said there was absolutely no need to do any further research on Holocaust while Ahmadinejad said to presume that research on a topic is already exhausted is to underestimate the power of knowledge itself.
The wisdom which Ahmadinejad brought to the conference hall of the New York based university was clearly demolished to pieces with overriding imposition that calling for research into Holocaust amounts to challenging the truth itself.
The fallacious logic applied by the dominant historical thread about Holocaust is clearly evident in the manner in which they are unwilling to entertain any slightest of suggestions that can be introduced to enrich our collective historical knowledge.
If the leading academicians of the western world are so vehement in their resistance to any further research into one specific historical event, then commonsense implies there is something wrong somewhere. Personally, for me, to deny Holocaust is a crime by itself, and I am sure Ahmadinejad has not committed that crime. However it is equally a crime if we refuse to allow any more research on a historical process that changed the geographical face of the planet. Like Ahmadinejad said, we need to conduct research into every possible field in the world. We do not know whether our beliefs will be restored or quashed. The motive behind conducting a research is not to prove one or the other side. The motive of conducting a research has been to excavate further truths that may or may not unsettle previously known knowledge. On the day of his speech, Professor Ahmadinejad had not forgotten the basics of research methods. Professor Bollinger, had clearly forgotten that. And in all earnest observation, Bollinger behaved every bit unlike a student, unlike a teacher. Where is the zeal to conceal truth coming from? What legacy does Holocaust hold?
This is a crucial question of our times. Let me state that each human being of this planet has a stake in this question and each of us have a moral responsibility to respect the multiple truths that emerge from the researches done, and researches awaiting to be done. Neither the professor at Columbia holds the key to a sole truth, nor the head of Israel, Iran or United States.
If fact be told as has been chronicled by every historian of our age, the truth is the people who are steadfastly holding onto the Holocaust theory are probably the ones to have distorted the truth. That is why we need further research into the field. If truth be told, the truth is the mainstream history by denouncing Stalin and Soviet Communism and trumpeting the capitalistic cause of the age have in fact automatically joined the world of holocaust deniers.
The fact is it was the Red Army which for the first time in the world discovered the Auschwitz camps that led to an understanding of the Holocaust. The fact is when Stalin’s administration tried to send out this message to the first world for it to react, none of the western countries came forward either to help the Red Army or the victims of Hitler’s camps as was required. Quite the contrary, as has been well-evidenced, the truth is Western Europe and America were foremost in denying access to the victims of the Nazi camps.
The truth is when the Vatican learned of the secret chambers, it refused to act against the Nazi powers because the Communists had helped release the victims and for the church, communism as a political theory was more dangerous than Nazism was. The truth is Hitler’s army was heavily funded and in fact sustained by most of the leading business empires of America and Europe that continue to amass wealth and do great businesses worldwide. The capitalists during that time were aiding Hitler because for them badmouthing communism was more important than saving the lives of people who were victims of Hitler’s camps. The truth is those corporations today own most of the media business, most automobile industries. Both Ford and General Motors were aiding the Nazis then, and they are as household names in American families even now.
The truth is that the actual Holocaust deniers are those that have been hesitating to give due credits to Stalin and Red Army for their role in letting the world know about the secret chambers, by saving the lives of the remaining survivors, and by revealing the actual number of Nazi massacres to the world.
The truth is the Red Army, the only brave people who fought Hitler to his death, had put the number of dead as 4 million. This is the statistics that remained the only official figure for more than four decades. There was no question of anyone denying Hitler’s concentration camps. Of these 4 million, overwhelming majority of people were communists and communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. Hitler’s main ire—aided by his western capitalistic sponsors and the church—was against the consolidation of communism in the world. The world embracing communistic philosophy that aimed at redistributing private properties for social good was the biggest threat to the Fascist and Nazi forces that ruled the minds and hearts of rulers of every western imperial power then. Recently the formerly classified British intelligence reports have proven how the UK was a partner in crime with the Nazi forces in imprisoning, torturing and murdering communists during the WW II period. Countless American reports have suggested that the apparent threats of McCarthy seemed like a joke when compared to the actual CIA interventions in the lives of the progressives in the world. Anti-communism was the biggest single weapon that was used by Hitler then and continued till Reagan later. Interestingly, between the both, the fact is the same companies financed their respective empires wholeheartedly for them to rise and shine in power ladders.
However, to erase the fact that Communists were the actual victims of Nazi camps, the attempts on part of conservative religious groups finally led to the revision of the 4 million figure. The revisionist conservative historians conveniently “denied” the camps and its death toll and revised the number from 4 million to a little over 1 million. And the revisionists claimed that the number was much less that 4 million because 1 million of them were the Jews that were killed.
Much before Ahmadinejad proposed for a revision, it was Dr. Franciszek Piper who did revisionist research into the number of prison camps, and his research erased more than 3 million people from the total number. And the Poland’s museum which for four decades mentioned 4 million as the number of people killed by the Nazis was forced to revise the number to 1.1 million because of the revisionist historians.
The sole purpose of reducing the number was to discredit the Soviet role in combating Hitler, and to erase the historical truth about the majority of those who were killed. The majority from 4 million were actually murdered because of political reasons, and if research is led in this direction to actually demonstrate the way the Nazi-Capitalism-Church combine led their ugly war against the communists of that era, much academic curiosities will end up perhaps in suggesting the need for further research into this area of history.
Israel was built on the legacy of Holocaust. Soviet Union was disintegrated on the legacy of Communism, and the Third World was ravaged on the legacy of anti-imperialism. This is our history. We must demand to know why the 3 million victims of Nazi Capitalism were forgotten from the history. We must demand to know why the millions of Red Army soldiers were eminently discredited because they fought the Hitler to his death. We must demand to know why the Vatican and the America and the Europe did not admit the Communists to their countries even after aiding the perpetrators of the biggest genocide in recent world history. We must demand to know why the corporate houses and banks that materialized Hitler’s army and funded it to wipe off millions off the face of earth still continue to dominate businesses. We must demand to know why the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians still continue to remain dispossessed in their own lands while the plans laid out by the perpetrators have been allowed to succeed to decide on their fates. We must demand to know why intellectually dishonest academicians and historians on their own sweet will decide what constitutes apt to be called a history despite their revising it, and why something will be rejected as history simply because they do not approve of it. We must demand to know. We must demand. History is about us.
Helpful Links:
Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch
Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University
Film: America and the Holocaust
Film: Amen
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University was arguably the most important step taken by a world leader to initiate the global peace that is so much needed in the clearly terrorized world we live in.
Ahmadinejad is a leader of significant importance—chief of a major country and representative of a major world religion-- who was humble enough to accept a university invitation, and tolerant enough to appear in front of the most hostile audience that any academic institute in the world could feel ashamed of. And despite the odds, he was clearly on a mission: to promote the spirit of peace and open the road to desirable dialogue.
So, how was he received at the Land of the Free? First, the New York City Mayor displayed his level of arrogance by refusing Ahmadinejad a visit to 9/11 memorial site. Second, the Columbia University President exhibited unparalleled level of ignorance by verbally abusing the Iranian President. Third, the American President bathed in his self glory by refusing to entertain any possibility of any urgent dialogue.
Columbia: Elite University, Elitist Mindsets:
Columbia University characterized the drama usually associated with the great American Hypocrisy that has led to several wars and ideological confrontations during past many decades. One important way in which the First World countries have justified their position as regards to Freedom of Speech is by boasting about it. To prove that America allows freedom of speech, American administration needs to allow a certain amount of dissent to take place. Both the dissent and the freedom then have to be televised appropriately. Finally, the melodramatic confrontations are then needed to be compared with the economically subjugated world so as to prove an innate superiority in the methods of the free world.
In Ahmadinejad’s visit, all the above aspects were clearly evident. First, he was invited by Columbia University as the speaker. He was invited despite vehement protests from various student groups. This proved the spirit of tolerance that American democracy boasts of. However, critically deconstructing such an obvious reflection, one would fathom that the real reason why he was invited was not so much as “despite”, as was “because” of the protests from various groups of people. He was invited to speak on campus, because of the amount of controversy it would generate. And clearly, Columbia University did not do anything to stop the protests. Indeed, it advertised on its website additional permissions to student groups to create the noise and requested the community to bear with the protests which would continue for the entire day. Such vehement noisy protests where anyone could attribute any ghastly name to another country’s chief showcased a circus that was well planned and organized. Students and other social groups were not protesting against Columbia University (which they could have legitimately done by asking people to boycott a visit to the campus), rather they were enjoying the centrestage of press attention by using placards that could allow them to equate Ahmadinejad with Hitler and use any amount of vulgar slangs to denounce Iranian politics. In a country where peace marchers including octogenarian peacenik grandmothers are imprisoned because of silent protests, the rowdy behaviors from various “free speech” and student groups in front of a university was in fact encouraged.
Why was Ahmadinejad invited to the campus if the university was well aware that there would be thousands of people on the streets to protest? It was because the university was not afraid that they will lose reputation. It was not because the university was going to be boycotted. Not because students who resent Ahmadinejad were going to dissuade potential applicants from joining the campus. After all, a university which invites a “Hitler” naturally was going to be branded as anti-semite and was going to get bad press, and was going to be mocked at. The university was going to lose its own face by inviting someone whom many people on campus considered or even studied as a dictator.
Then why did the Columbia University invite someone as a chief guest who was so deeply hated by many in the campus community? In fact, Ahmadinejad was unique because he was (and continues to be) hated by both conservatives and liberals alike. Even several Free Speech coalitions did not have kind words for him. None of the politically correct historians had good thoughts about him. None of the civil rights organizations thought Ahmadinejad should be tolerated.
Lee Bollinger’s speech answered why: Calling the Iranian President “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated”, even before allowing him an audience, the Columbia University professor proved the invitation was premeditated to be insulting. “You exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator,” Bollinger called Ahmadinejad. It was with the sole purpose of insulting the Iranian head that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak. The spirit of sheer hatred continued as stealth mockery found resonance throughout Bollinger’s long introduction.
Lee Bollinger who in the mask of being a free speech advocate (Michigan Affirmative Action champion) went all the way to demonstrate how utterly vulgar and autocratic he could be. A proclaimed “free-speech” advocate, Bollinger not only did not feel sorry about Ahmadinejad not being granted the freedom to visit 9/11 site, but he went one step further. Even before Ahmadinejad could speak on his “defense”, the Columbian professor went on verbally attacking the Iranian head as befitting a liar, idiot, rogue and conman.
Bollinger said a number of Columbian graduates were the brave fighters serving the American troop in Iraq. That was spoken in order to praise the American war against the Iraqi people! He asked Iranian President on their behalf why “Iran is fighting a proxy war in Iraq killing US troops”. Whether it is a proxy war that Iran is fighting in Iraq is a matter of dispute. What, however has been true is that the US fought an unjust war in Iraq and American troops caused much military misconduct that have been quite extensively recorded in recent past. What the Columbia University President should have done was to apologize on behalf of the infamous troop that has caused much distress to the world citizenry by its brazen inhuman treatment of peaceful civilians. Even after prison tortures, and civilian rapes committed by American troops (yes the same “brave” Columbian graduates as cohorts), the highly educated and informed professor proved his agenda of falsehoods and pretensions time and again.
Bollinger continued with his series of malicious attacks that were not evidenced nor called for. He brought to the fore the issue of Iran’s nuclear deal, which suggested his lack of awareness about the matter. Contrary to his accusations against Iran as a country working to create an unsafe world, the UN’s agency (International Atomic Energy Agency) has been in close collaboration with Iran and has found no such threats as being decried by the professor. Inviting a guest, and accusing him and the country he leads in highly derogatory terms and verbally abusing him as insane and unintelligent without even having evidence or knowledge to back up marked the genius of Bollinger. Who does Bollinger quote to support his opinions? French president Sarkozy – a right wing conservative—who apparently has lost patience (according to Bollinger) with Iran. Did such trivial information make sense in an introductory speech provided to “welcome” an international guest?
Bollinger then asked Ahmadinejad, “Why have you made the people of your country vulnerable to sanctions?” If Bollinger had any sense of empathy or understanding, he could have instead asked why do the first world powers foster vulnerable conditions for Iranian civilians. In an unsurpassed level of academic elitism that should ideally call for much loath and disgrace, Professor Bollinger outdid his sense of self-glorification by finally challenging the head of state of Iran to respond to his speech: “Let me close with a comment. Frankly and in all candor, Mr President, I doubt you have the intellectual courage to answer these questions but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mindset that characterizes so much of what you say and do…I am only a professor who is also a university president, but today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion of what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.”
A huge section of Columbia University audience cheered and clapped to their president’s hate speech and waited gleefully for Ahmadinejad to fail the test. In contrast to the obviously arrogant speech of Bollinger, Ahmadinejad’s talk was pensive, thoughtful, full of insights. Ahmadinejad asserted that he was still an instructor at a university and as an instructor he strived for the whole truth. Apart from the questionable religious wisdom and denial of homosexuality in Iran, Ahmadinejad’s speech was more than an answer to Bollinger’s outlandish accusations. Yes, he did not answer anything “straight”, despite pleading from the university for him to answer in “yes” or “no”. But that was more due to the fact that Islam logic is not necessarily as vertically dismissive as Christian expectations. In every sentence that Ahmadinejad spoke, there was humility, a touch of candor and empathetic understanding. In every sentiment of Ahmadinejad, there was a prayer for collaboration, a hope for global peace, a step towards mutual dialogue. In every answer of Ahmadinejad to the Q/A session, there was an assertion of a world leader who was humble enough to raise historical lessons, and of an educated non-elite who was unafraid to research.
Ahmadinejad was forced to revisit his stance on Holocaust. Clearly he had not come to the US to speak about his views on historical revisionism, but to extend a hand of friendship for future peace pacts. Even at that stage he said he was not a Holocaust denier, what he wanted instead was further research into the area of history that has led the world to prepare for the largest unrest in recent times. Palestine did not fight World War II. Europe did. And why are the Palestinians facing the crisis still? Not an easy answer to this question, and Ahmadinejad sought for further research into this aspect. Talking about the halt in Iranian progress, he dwelt on the root cause of the unrest and insecurity. Why was Iran under sanction? Why did the first world powers withdraw unilaterally after assuring nuclear energy support to Iran? Why should there be limitations imposed on Iran’s scientific endeavors especially when IAEA has not found any problem with Iran’s peaceful nuclear program?
Moreover, Ahmadinejad did not just ask questions that were uncalled for. He offered agreements. Despite the insults and abuses and threats outside the campus building that were encouraged by the university officials, he invited American students to visit Iran, attend the universities and speak with civilians. Whether he would agree to hold a dialogue with the White House regarding resolution of US-Iran disputes? Of course, anytime! Ahmadinejad requested for a peaceful dialogue. “Everything can be resolved over talks. We need to talk”.
White House ignored Ahmadinejad during the rest of his stay. Ahmadinejad even called for a meeting of religious leaders to initiate global peace talks and succeeded. Around 140 religious leaders attended the meeting in New York, with the sole exception of any Jewish leader who refused to attend.
On the Homosexuality Question:
I waited for a few days to study media response to such an uncivilized treatment meted out to a state’s head. The American corporate media of course bathing in its biased glories preferred to maintain the line adopted by Columbia University and at their best, tried to provide a “balanced” perspective to the issue that clearly called for critical intellectual intervention.
Most reports mocked at the ignorance of Ahmadinejad when it came to issue of homosexuality. They chose to play moral pundits while not mentioning how America treats its own LGBT community. The fact that the US has consistently failed to provide for basic human rights to homosexual population even after acknowledging their presence in every sphere in social life here is clearly amiss from all reports that attacked Iran’s condition. “Mr President, in your country, homosexuals are treated in this and that way” has been a standard line of both the Columbia University president and our enlightened western press. Not for once did the educated pause awhile to review the fact that not so long ago American Psychology Association (APA), the famed master of all things research, used to consider homosexuality as an abnormality. And even to this date, the major state religion whose dictums appear on the courtroom walls and classroom prayers has been the single biggest enemy to the cause of the LGBT community.
On the Holocaust Question:
Most amount of time devoted by the university professor in his speech and later on by the university during Q/A session, and by media reports before, during and after the visit of Ahmadinejad focused on the alleged “holocaust denial” of the Iranian head. It has been accused severally that he is an Anti-Semite, like most of anyone we know in the recent history who has challenged the Holocaust issue from different perspectives.
Even as we have succeeded in challenging the legacy of Columbus and George Washington, the only and perhaps the largest event of significance has remained beyond recent review. Bollinger, the academician said there was absolutely no need to do any further research on Holocaust while Ahmadinejad said to presume that research on a topic is already exhausted is to underestimate the power of knowledge itself.
The wisdom which Ahmadinejad brought to the conference hall of the New York based university was clearly demolished to pieces with overriding imposition that calling for research into Holocaust amounts to challenging the truth itself.
The fallacious logic applied by the dominant historical thread about Holocaust is clearly evident in the manner in which they are unwilling to entertain any slightest of suggestions that can be introduced to enrich our collective historical knowledge.
If the leading academicians of the western world are so vehement in their resistance to any further research into one specific historical event, then commonsense implies there is something wrong somewhere. Personally, for me, to deny Holocaust is a crime by itself, and I am sure Ahmadinejad has not committed that crime. However it is equally a crime if we refuse to allow any more research on a historical process that changed the geographical face of the planet. Like Ahmadinejad said, we need to conduct research into every possible field in the world. We do not know whether our beliefs will be restored or quashed. The motive behind conducting a research is not to prove one or the other side. The motive of conducting a research has been to excavate further truths that may or may not unsettle previously known knowledge. On the day of his speech, Professor Ahmadinejad had not forgotten the basics of research methods. Professor Bollinger, had clearly forgotten that. And in all earnest observation, Bollinger behaved every bit unlike a student, unlike a teacher. Where is the zeal to conceal truth coming from? What legacy does Holocaust hold?
This is a crucial question of our times. Let me state that each human being of this planet has a stake in this question and each of us have a moral responsibility to respect the multiple truths that emerge from the researches done, and researches awaiting to be done. Neither the professor at Columbia holds the key to a sole truth, nor the head of Israel, Iran or United States.
If fact be told as has been chronicled by every historian of our age, the truth is the people who are steadfastly holding onto the Holocaust theory are probably the ones to have distorted the truth. That is why we need further research into the field. If truth be told, the truth is the mainstream history by denouncing Stalin and Soviet Communism and trumpeting the capitalistic cause of the age have in fact automatically joined the world of holocaust deniers.
The fact is it was the Red Army which for the first time in the world discovered the Auschwitz camps that led to an understanding of the Holocaust. The fact is when Stalin’s administration tried to send out this message to the first world for it to react, none of the western countries came forward either to help the Red Army or the victims of Hitler’s camps as was required. Quite the contrary, as has been well-evidenced, the truth is Western Europe and America were foremost in denying access to the victims of the Nazi camps.
The truth is when the Vatican learned of the secret chambers, it refused to act against the Nazi powers because the Communists had helped release the victims and for the church, communism as a political theory was more dangerous than Nazism was. The truth is Hitler’s army was heavily funded and in fact sustained by most of the leading business empires of America and Europe that continue to amass wealth and do great businesses worldwide. The capitalists during that time were aiding Hitler because for them badmouthing communism was more important than saving the lives of people who were victims of Hitler’s camps. The truth is those corporations today own most of the media business, most automobile industries. Both Ford and General Motors were aiding the Nazis then, and they are as household names in American families even now.
The truth is that the actual Holocaust deniers are those that have been hesitating to give due credits to Stalin and Red Army for their role in letting the world know about the secret chambers, by saving the lives of the remaining survivors, and by revealing the actual number of Nazi massacres to the world.
The truth is the Red Army, the only brave people who fought Hitler to his death, had put the number of dead as 4 million. This is the statistics that remained the only official figure for more than four decades. There was no question of anyone denying Hitler’s concentration camps. Of these 4 million, overwhelming majority of people were communists and communist sympathizers and fellow travelers. Hitler’s main ire—aided by his western capitalistic sponsors and the church—was against the consolidation of communism in the world. The world embracing communistic philosophy that aimed at redistributing private properties for social good was the biggest threat to the Fascist and Nazi forces that ruled the minds and hearts of rulers of every western imperial power then. Recently the formerly classified British intelligence reports have proven how the UK was a partner in crime with the Nazi forces in imprisoning, torturing and murdering communists during the WW II period. Countless American reports have suggested that the apparent threats of McCarthy seemed like a joke when compared to the actual CIA interventions in the lives of the progressives in the world. Anti-communism was the biggest single weapon that was used by Hitler then and continued till Reagan later. Interestingly, between the both, the fact is the same companies financed their respective empires wholeheartedly for them to rise and shine in power ladders.
However, to erase the fact that Communists were the actual victims of Nazi camps, the attempts on part of conservative religious groups finally led to the revision of the 4 million figure. The revisionist conservative historians conveniently “denied” the camps and its death toll and revised the number from 4 million to a little over 1 million. And the revisionists claimed that the number was much less that 4 million because 1 million of them were the Jews that were killed.
Much before Ahmadinejad proposed for a revision, it was Dr. Franciszek Piper who did revisionist research into the number of prison camps, and his research erased more than 3 million people from the total number. And the Poland’s museum which for four decades mentioned 4 million as the number of people killed by the Nazis was forced to revise the number to 1.1 million because of the revisionist historians.
The sole purpose of reducing the number was to discredit the Soviet role in combating Hitler, and to erase the historical truth about the majority of those who were killed. The majority from 4 million were actually murdered because of political reasons, and if research is led in this direction to actually demonstrate the way the Nazi-Capitalism-Church combine led their ugly war against the communists of that era, much academic curiosities will end up perhaps in suggesting the need for further research into this area of history.
Israel was built on the legacy of Holocaust. Soviet Union was disintegrated on the legacy of Communism, and the Third World was ravaged on the legacy of anti-imperialism. This is our history. We must demand to know why the 3 million victims of Nazi Capitalism were forgotten from the history. We must demand to know why the millions of Red Army soldiers were eminently discredited because they fought the Hitler to his death. We must demand to know why the Vatican and the America and the Europe did not admit the Communists to their countries even after aiding the perpetrators of the biggest genocide in recent world history. We must demand to know why the corporate houses and banks that materialized Hitler’s army and funded it to wipe off millions off the face of earth still continue to dominate businesses. We must demand to know why the inhabitants of the land, the Palestinians still continue to remain dispossessed in their own lands while the plans laid out by the perpetrators have been allowed to succeed to decide on their fates. We must demand to know why intellectually dishonest academicians and historians on their own sweet will decide what constitutes apt to be called a history despite their revising it, and why something will be rejected as history simply because they do not approve of it. We must demand to know. We must demand. History is about us.
Helpful Links:
Ahmadinejad Meets Clerics, and Decibels Drop a Notch
Iranian President Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University
Film: America and the Holocaust
Film: Amen
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A Review of "The Darker Nations"
By Saswat Pattanayak
[Originally published in
Radical Notes, 18 March 2007]
Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, New York, 2007. Hardcover, 384 pp. Amazon/NP
The Darker Nations is a critical historiography of the Third World. Vijay Prashad's deeply instructive as well as occasionally mordant looks at events and processes that made up the history of oppressed peoples in the 20th century comprise this brilliant work. It is a book profound for being peremptory, and absolutely necessary for being so relevant today that it is imperative for activists and researchers alike.
For one, the various assumptions that form a dominant paradigm of Eurocentrism need radical reproving. Yet that would merely amount to a criticism of the thesis itself. Prashad goes beyond that and proposes an alternative narration to the history - not just of the Third World, but also through its lenses, the peoples' history of the world during the last century. Darker Nations in some ways could be appositely used to speak for aspirations of the oppressed everywhere. In this sense, the book is a celebration of collective hope, even as it traces the demise of a grand project based on it.
I
The thesis of the book circles around the Third World as a unique project on its own. Even as there have been far too many usages of "First" and "Second" Worlds in contrasts, the reader is never lost darker nationsto the main point: that is, the Third World was not merely in response or reaction to the prevailing 'cold war' grand narration, but it was more importantly an independent culmination out of unique historical necessities to combat neocolonialism and to promote internationalist nationalism.
To that extent, the author has conducted painful researches and unearthed valuable and often less quoted documents. The book thus does justice to the Suez Canal nationalization controversy and credits Nasser for his motives beyond cold war considerations. It brings Nehru alive through his letter drafted for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that argued against nuclearism, appealing to both Kennedy and Khrushchev. The book researches Che Guevara's UN speech that assumed a necessary political standpoint for all oppressed countries: "As Marxists, we maintain that peaceful co-existence does not include co-existence between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed."
What, then, was common to the Third World? For the nationalist leaders, the fact that they were all colonized. Prashad writes, "For them, the nation had to be constructed out of two elements: the history of their struggles against colonialism, and their program for the creation of justice....The Third World form of nationalism is thus better understood as an internationalist nationalism." (p.12)
Prashad's assessment of "neopatriarchy" and domestic capitalism in the third world is quite worthwhile. This book is clearly a critical document for collective introspection of the oppressed peoples than an empty glorification of a united umbrella. In this sense, it is a necessary and long awaited work, which while marking the sites of struggle does not lose sight of the continuing struggles.
The author has cleverly named the chapters after the various sites of significance. Clever, because the chapters (Paris, New Delhi, Bali etc.,) have less to do with specific descriptions of the cities of those times than they have to do with bringing these otherwise disparate places together in context - at times stretching the contexts well out of bounds of the chapter title; at times celebrating the specificity with a poem by Neruda. One would be tempted to verify the header of the page several times while going through the texts just to make sure that she is in the right page. Yet such deliberate discursions are wisely scheduled to make for chapters that elucidate points contextually, rendering Prashad into a master narrator.
Illustratively, the author makes clear the intent of the book at the end of "Paris" chapter and perhaps leading one to wonder how much of the chapter was actually devoted to Paris. Of course that's the idea of a project, the professor would convince us: each section needs to have scope for a flow into the next without exhausting every specific reference. It's a project after all. A process, not a few events.
The book covers all that it promises to: Brussels meeting of "League against Imperialism", Afro-Asian gathering at Bandung, Women's conference at Cairo, NAM at Belgrade and Tricontinental Conference at Havana.
Prashad unearths the role of international communists in formation of the Brussels conference - a landmark event patronized by Einstein and attended by 37 countries/colonies. He writes about Pan-Africanism, Pan-Americanism, and Pan-Asianism in the context of colonial dominations, along with deconstructing the Kuomintang massacres of communists that might have contributed to severance of the ties between the Comintern and several nationalist leaders.
Prashad quotes W.E.B. DuBois in relation to Pan-Africanism within the Brussels context, although he omits Paul Robeson's solidarity with the colored peoples at Bandung. It was in 1955 that Robeson sent his famous greetings to Bandung: "...peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtse and the Niger. Nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion. It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning point in all world affairs." Heralding it as a history-making conference, Robeson expressed, "Indeed the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world."
Prashad aptly summarizes what Bandung achieved: "a format for what would eventually become Afro-Asian and then Afro-Asian-Latin American group in the UN." He also takes a stab at the inherent weaknesses of the member countries that lost moral grounds because of several reasons, from murdering communists to hoarding weapons, despite agreeing on some basic precepts of "cultural cooperation".
"Principle Problem" of Raul Prebisch is explained in context to economic policies, in the crucial introduction to the role of UNCTAD, of which he was the founding general secretary. If Buenos Aires is visited for economics, Tehran is the metaphoric site of cultural struggles. Khrushchev's betrayal of cultural workers in face of opposition to Shah regime is well articulated in a chapter that describes "roots of the Third World intellectual's quandary was how to create a new self in the new nations", thus reinforcing nationalism, democracy and rationalism.
Prashad's political argument that the relationship between Third World and Second turned tumultuous after the demise of Stalin may draw some criticisms, but he amply demonstrates its foundations. He argues that the "new leadership led by Khrushchev and Bulganin adopted peaceful co-existence and pledged their support to the bourgeois nationalist regimes (often against the domestic Communists). The unclear situation suggested that the USSR seemed keener to push its own national interests than those of the national Communist parties to which it pledged verbal fealty" (p. 97).
Prashad makes a point that is vital to understanding of the Third World formation and crisis. In the Soviet Union, the Second World indeed "had an attitude toward the former colonies that in some ways mimicked that of the First World." But this did not necessarily require pitiful stance at the Third World recipients. Prashad argues quoting Sauvy and Nkrumah that the Third World was not "prone, silent or unable to speak" before the powers. It was an independent political platform on its own, which according to Nehru stood for "political independence, nonviolent international relations, and the cultivation of the UN as the principle institution for planetary justice."
So he asks, "What about the two-thirds who remained outside the East-West circles; what of those 2 billion people?" The narration of the author is instructive in a poetic sense. As obviously gigantic is the scope of such an inquisitiveness, he offers a plethora of factors/voices that could have been representing this Third World.
The book analyzes the various complexities of state politics in the Third World countries. It correctly mentions the several betrayals of communist workers in the hands of Moscow and Peking leaderships in the aftermath of Stalin and Mao. The book describes accurately the growing militarization of the developing nations. Prashad, while upholding the vision of the Third World, well encapsulates the elements of utopianism inherently present in some of the documents.
As an instance, the Arusha Declaration validated the twin principles of liberty and equality, individual rights and collective well-being. Prashad argues, "The main problem with the Arusha-TANU project, however, came not in its goals but in its implementation." Though defying academic limitations, he does not give away credence to neoliberal economists/politicians like Rajaratnam of Singapore. Even as he describes the feud between Singapore on one extreme and Cuba on another, Prashad instructs us wisely about the pitfalls of economic liberalization. "The abandonment of economic sovereignty lost the national liberation regimes one of their two principal pillars of legitimacy. When IMF-led globalization became the modus operandi, the elites of the postcolonial world adopted a hidebound and ruthless xenophobia that masqueraded as patriotism", Prashad writes.
Succinctly enough, Prashad encapsulates the present scenario: "The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities. That is the mecca of the post-Third World era."
II
Prashad's ending of the book with an obituary to Third World would have perhaps perplexed the writer he invokes in the beginning of his work: Franz Fanon. He even quotes the prophetic statements from The Wretched of the Earth: "The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose project should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers."
Prashad's persistent declaration in the book about demise of the Third World may bring back nostalgic chords, but would not undermine Fanon's question. Have the problems that bore out of colonialism been resolved? The answer is no. Has Europe or the USA been able to find the answers yet? The answer is no.
In that case, is it not too early to declare the Third World a dead project? Moreover, is the author at times tending to air the lost leaders' voices over the struggling peoples'?
No doubt, Prashad's book is unique in its stress on women's movements in the Third World - an aspect that's comfortably overlooked when such taxonomies are applied to political texts. In his Cairo chapter, Prashad examines the role of women in Third World liberation struggles - from Rameshwari Nehru to Aisha Abdul-Rahman. This is significantly noteworthy, as women have joined the guerrilla wars as well as street protests in almost all of the Third World countries. And yet many progressive forces have difficulties in understanding gender relations, thereby resulting in mere "state feminisms". However, was this chapter written because Cairo had women members on its podium necessitating a mention/discussion, or because a tribute to women activists is necessary to understand the Third World project? In either way, the book does not employ a lens of the women to understand the movement, although does a commendable job at understanding women struggles through the lens of the Third World. Considering that only this chapter has a portion devoted to a few women activists in context to Cairo, while the rest of the book mostly quotes the three "titans" or famous "fives" in explaining the history, I would say there are quite a few questions unanswered still.
The chief criticism against this work would primarily come from two quarters: One, from a strictly Third Wave (interesting how the growth of Third Wave coincides with the recognition of the Third World) feminist critique: independent struggles by women could have been much better encompassed within this book, given its scope. Prashad does a cursory mention of the alternative movement (considering that third-world women had a movement within, and against the larger movement) limiting it to a chapter and focusing on a couple of eminent speakers. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the "titans" and "giants", but by women comrades who were voices of resentments against the hierarchies of nationalist and communist parties? Prashad does not dwell on this aspect.
Two, the criticism may become more scathing from the perspectives of militant activists. Third World, like Rome, was not built in a day. And certainly not through some leaders of few countries. Prashad is arguably right in crediting the giants and bringing forth the canons, but at the same time, these very leaders certainly rode the wave of success utilizing the larger unrest that was recognized by the anti-status-quo forces, often united through guerrilla wars, and almost going unnoticed after making vital impacts. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the giants, but by the larger oppressed peoples engaged in organized and otherwise struggles? We do not know for sure, but it would have been worthwhile to ponder over that a bit more than the book does.
The more crucial question then, is if such precepts were actually already written (or worked on with) by the peoples who did not find mentions in the historical documents that Prashad cites towards the book's end spanning 60 pages. The focus of the book, although is in continuance of Prashadisque tradition of Afro-Asian unity, is slightly away from Africa. In fact, Mandela is mentioned just once in the book (that too as a pure travesty - citing a Ruth First memorial). The truth is Third World texts had been written in South Africa as well as in Nepal. However, such underground struggles went largely amiss from the work. Sure, the book by the author's admission is inexhaustive and merely illustrative, but even a 300-page work could have inculcated some unknown peoples' movements than chronicling lesser known leaders' engagements.
Ironically enough, before proceeding to Havana chapter, Prashad mentions "From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, the rhetorical denunciation of imperialism reached its apogee even as the Third World began to lose its voice". This is a dangerous statement to make if one considers that indeed from the 1970s onwards, the peoples voice in the Third World had immensely proliferated. No doubt the leaders - those giants who we find exalted throughout the work - had fallen to deaths or arrests, but the period thereafter also signaled the end of dominant and diplomatic voices, and somewhere alongside highlighted the obscure and powerful ones.
People who spoke truth to power were the people on the streets that challenged the nationalist parties which came to power in the pretext of newfound freedom from the foreign rulers. The growth of domestic capitalist classes in comfortable alliance with these nationalist parties were indication enough that the new powers were no less different from the old ones, except in their make-up and "patriotism". In fact, these illusive weapons of nationalism and patriotism helped strengthen exploitative capitalism on basis of trusts of the "own" people. Such betrayals of faiths, notwithstanding goodwill of the famous leaders, were also being fought against on a daily basis in the Third World. Beyond the conferences and meetings and gatherings of Third World leaders under different names, there were large-scale protests of poverty and unemployment. Beyond the famous rhetoric of anti-nuclearism (while proliferating conventional weapons domestically) and socialist development (while harassing voices of dissent at home), people had on their own formed two classes in the society. The haves went to the ruling elites that apparently "voiced" the Third World for few years, and the have-nots remained with the unknown millions of peoples whose only commonality was their resentment against the power-grabbers. Be it Nehru or Indira in India, Sukarno or Suharto in Indonesia, the popular imagination went beyond such leaders that treaded the careful path all the while claiming to be representing the Third World.
Third World was neither the name of a place nor merely a documented project. And certainly it did not die. Considering that its origin was a necessity in itself, a necessity borne of conditions of colonialism, about which Sartre (another contextually grand omission from the book except for one mention - his writings on neocolonialism were far more instructive) writes in the preface to Albert Memmi's 'The Colonizer and the Colonized': "Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of 'sub-humanity'." This sub-humanity does not see its history changing with the midnight bells of colonialist departures. It takes quite a while for the real freedom to be conquested for even after the colonialists are gone. This is why South Africa's period of struggle just began after Mandela came to power. South Africa's Third World status will not die anytime soon.
So the assumption that "the Third World began to lose its voice" may have been made a little too early. Keeping in line of the eloquent narration of events as Prashad has done (for example, referring to revived "armed struggle not only as a tactic of anticolonialism but significantly as a strategy in itself"), the book perhaps wished away the Third World before examining its overbearing presence today. Do we have a Second World? I have no answer to that. But if the name Third World was admittedly accepted by the oppressed people of several continents basing on their historical heritage, then the phrase is as relevant today as it was before. Perhaps some countries would want not a place in it. Earlier, China was a question. Today, Singapore is. All the same, for the rest of the countries, nothing much has changed, except that the capitalist exploitation has intensified and expanded manifold, the national regimes have lost faith and people are more politically conscious.
If the Third World was imagined out of former colonies and if the colonial problem was chiefly an economic one, then the Third World has become even all the more relevant today. Simplistic as it may sound, there is a greater need for Afro-Asian-Latin solidarity today in the world than ever before. And Prashad, a remarkably profound scholar who gave to us treasures of arguments through his previous works about the need for alliances of the oppressed, would be among the firsts to acknowledge the necessity of such unity.
III
However, apart from remaining in want of more comprehensive analysis of women's movements and of peoples' liberation movements (both-dually oppressed by former colonizers as well as the nationalist rulers, and more importantly conflicted between the both - male and female comrades), the book also offers cursory looks at the external roles played by the First World in maintaining indirect subjugation of the Third.
Prashad rightly critiques the predominant views held by leftists about the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He argues that such a minimalist assumption renders people of the Third World insignificant and often passive audience in the larger world stage. Whereas he is absolutely correct in this critique - largely identified by the radical feminist movements worldwide - there is no harm in going through the roles of the CIA that have been well documented in a work that does chronicle interactions of the Third World "leaders" with the First World instigators. Many conflicting situations have been initiated and fuelled through CIA interventions in the Third World politics and that should have found a deserved mention. For instance, a critique of the Nixon administration vis-à-vis the Third World (including the recently released notes with Kissinger) is found lacking.
One need not subscribe to conspiracy theories to gain insights about how the First World allies in the "neocolonial" period have acted towards the Third World: less through coercion, and more through lucrative measures such as economic aids, western education and religion. Prashad misses out on the role of the Catholic Church that was the first body to significantly recognize the Third World as an entity worth pondering over. The large money, the pool of debts that would crumble the economic backbone of the Third World came from the consent of the Vatican during the early 1960s.
Prashad mentions religion quite casually, when he describes how "Mother Teresa would soon get more positive airtime as the white savior of the dark hordes than would the self-directed projects of the Third World nationalist governments." Immediately following this, he goes on to make references to military invasions and embargoes.
Here the book could have made a crucial connection between the recognition of the Third World by the First World through the Catholic Church decisions. Mother Teresa's airtimes were neither incidental nor were to be seen only through a liberal critique. The missing piece is that Vatican Council II which was the 21st ecumenical (general) council of the Roman Catholic Church was crucial to recognition of the Third World in an official manner.
In fact this council brought the most far-reaching reforms within the Catholic Church in 1000 years. This most significant reform movement in the world's leading religion was brought forth during its four sessions in Rome during (the first Council after its suspension in 1870). The idea was to aim for aggiornamento (renewal and updating of Catholic life and teaching). Such a vital step was taken by the Vatican as a result of emergence of the Third World. This council altered the nature of the church from being a European-centered institution to become a worldwide one so as to acknowledge the Third World countries, where it counted most of its followers. Mother Teresa and her likes were thus byproducts of this acceptance of the third force in the world.
Prashad says that Nehru, Sukarno and Nasser among other leaders did not use Third World to describe their domains, but does not corroborate their reasons, if any. For the framework of this book, the constant usages of "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" is imperative, but considering that Prashad is eager to lash out against the "camp mentality" or "East-West" conflicts, he does avoid a critical exposition of the limitations that such three "Worlds" may bring for the readers.
One way to understand why the three "worlds" were not sufficient explanations (although necessary at many junctures) is to detail how the three worlds could not be thus compartmentalized either in degree or by their types. More importantly, the countries thus categorized under such headings definitely had uniquely different histories (colonial and otherwise), treated differently by their respective partners in their perceived specific worlds. On the one hand, Singapore had a different colonial experience than India. On the other, China's Security Council membership put it on a unique platform, and there is no comparing between Soviet Union and Hungary. What is vital to this discussion is also the fact that there was not a yardstick that was used to specify categories either for the First, the Second or the Third. As much as the Third World was a movement against colonialism, such a usage of categories would still render it as a site affected by Eurocentric worldviews.
Prashad says Nehru et al., instead of calling themselves to be part of the Third World, "spoke of themselves" as the NAM, G-77 or the colonized continents. Although accurate, here the author's own argument that kickstarts the book will be subject to questioning. Prashad says in the first line of the book, "The Third World was not a place. It was a project". And yet he compares the project with some conferences and places (continents) to bring home the point that the leaders evaded "Third World". Certainly there were other reasons why all Third World titans did not prefer the phrase (if at all). And that, we are still unsure of.
The author writes: "The phrase 'East-West conflict' distorts the history of the Cold War because it makes it seem as if the First and Second Worlds confronted each other in a condition of equality." He contends that the USSR was socially and economically way behind due to its unique recent history. "The dominant classes in the First World used the shortages and repression in the USSR as an instructive tool to wield over the heads of their own working class, and so on both economic and political grounds the First World bore advantages over the Second." Whereas this could be one truth, it does underscore the fact that more countries on the earth joined the Second World than they could be declared as the First World also because of the lacunae starkly evident in the First World. Whereas massive racism was predominant in the First World, economic depression and political censorships in the capitalist countries also contributed to popularity of the Second World.
A connection between the third world "project" and the United Nations (UN) is well established in the book. What perhaps amiss is a discussion on manners in which either of them might have contributed to the downfall of the other. Prashad says, "Today there is no such vehicle for local dreams". The larger question then would be if the United Nations played a role in obliterating its dependant. On the other hand, a stark reality in the post-Iraq scene is the redundancy of a forum such as the United Nations today that effectively has no role either in shaping a collective conscience or implementing a pro-people agenda. Least of all, the UN has failed to safeguard the sovereign nations from external aggressions. It has failed to overcome the elitism of its Security Council, almost unquestionably letting the powerful countries to run their own little League of Nations inside the UN. Amidst such cynicism that the UN has contributed to, what responsibilities must the Third World project shoulder.
Amidst several responsibilities, the Third World still has to its credit a Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP), a fact that is missing a mention in the book. Over 40 news agencies in non-aligned countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe have pooled their resources for the exchange of news reports and information to defy the vertical information flow of corporate media. The "Pool" was adopted at the Fourth Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, held in Algiers in 1973. During that period, the New World Information and Communication Order was also proposed to democratize the knowledge domain of the world. No doubt, UNESCO was criticized by the American and European intellectuals, but the MacBride Commission succeeded in recognizing the divergent voices of the Third World in order to challenge the media hegemony world over. Responsibilities of the Third World still include an informed opposition to militarization, providing alternative channels to western corporate media, campaigning for need-based distribution of world resources, and most of all, representing the popular voices of dissent, opposition and celebrations. One wonders if the struggles to attain the above has waned any bit, if looked from the peoples' perspectives. And in this context, the Third World still holds hopes, possibilities and victory. One is perhaps disappointed if the Third World is perceived to be voicing only a limited elite constituency - often opposed to the peoples' dissents.
IV
Hence, finally, the book questions not the constitution of the Third World itself. If it was brought around through its various leaderships under certain historical period, what expectations should we have of this "project"? Were such leaders to be expected to play the truly internationalist roles, and to what avail? In the preliminary draft thesis on the National and the Colonial Questions, for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin wrote: "Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital." Between the elite internationalism founded on peaceful co-existence and peoples' internationalism based upon rejection of the international capitalist order, did the Third World got somewhere hijacked or we refuse to acknowledge its existence because we already defined its proponents?
Needless to state, the criticisms above demand for more literature for inclusion into the book, than specifically target the author's works. Such a case arises only because the book is an extraordinarily brilliant effort that is bound to encourage readers to plunge more into the relevance of the subject. All of that credit goes to the humanely written, accessibly crafted work that shuns academic elitism and genuinely attempts at a peoples' history of the oppressed world.
[Originally published in
Radical Notes, 18 March 2007]
Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World, The New Press, New York, 2007. Hardcover, 384 pp. Amazon/NP
The Darker Nations is a critical historiography of the Third World. Vijay Prashad's deeply instructive as well as occasionally mordant looks at events and processes that made up the history of oppressed peoples in the 20th century comprise this brilliant work. It is a book profound for being peremptory, and absolutely necessary for being so relevant today that it is imperative for activists and researchers alike.
For one, the various assumptions that form a dominant paradigm of Eurocentrism need radical reproving. Yet that would merely amount to a criticism of the thesis itself. Prashad goes beyond that and proposes an alternative narration to the history - not just of the Third World, but also through its lenses, the peoples' history of the world during the last century. Darker Nations in some ways could be appositely used to speak for aspirations of the oppressed everywhere. In this sense, the book is a celebration of collective hope, even as it traces the demise of a grand project based on it.
I
The thesis of the book circles around the Third World as a unique project on its own. Even as there have been far too many usages of "First" and "Second" Worlds in contrasts, the reader is never lost darker nationsto the main point: that is, the Third World was not merely in response or reaction to the prevailing 'cold war' grand narration, but it was more importantly an independent culmination out of unique historical necessities to combat neocolonialism and to promote internationalist nationalism.
To that extent, the author has conducted painful researches and unearthed valuable and often less quoted documents. The book thus does justice to the Suez Canal nationalization controversy and credits Nasser for his motives beyond cold war considerations. It brings Nehru alive through his letter drafted for the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that argued against nuclearism, appealing to both Kennedy and Khrushchev. The book researches Che Guevara's UN speech that assumed a necessary political standpoint for all oppressed countries: "As Marxists, we maintain that peaceful co-existence does not include co-existence between exploiters and exploited, between oppressors and oppressed."
What, then, was common to the Third World? For the nationalist leaders, the fact that they were all colonized. Prashad writes, "For them, the nation had to be constructed out of two elements: the history of their struggles against colonialism, and their program for the creation of justice....The Third World form of nationalism is thus better understood as an internationalist nationalism." (p.12)
Prashad's assessment of "neopatriarchy" and domestic capitalism in the third world is quite worthwhile. This book is clearly a critical document for collective introspection of the oppressed peoples than an empty glorification of a united umbrella. In this sense, it is a necessary and long awaited work, which while marking the sites of struggle does not lose sight of the continuing struggles.
The author has cleverly named the chapters after the various sites of significance. Clever, because the chapters (Paris, New Delhi, Bali etc.,) have less to do with specific descriptions of the cities of those times than they have to do with bringing these otherwise disparate places together in context - at times stretching the contexts well out of bounds of the chapter title; at times celebrating the specificity with a poem by Neruda. One would be tempted to verify the header of the page several times while going through the texts just to make sure that she is in the right page. Yet such deliberate discursions are wisely scheduled to make for chapters that elucidate points contextually, rendering Prashad into a master narrator.
Illustratively, the author makes clear the intent of the book at the end of "Paris" chapter and perhaps leading one to wonder how much of the chapter was actually devoted to Paris. Of course that's the idea of a project, the professor would convince us: each section needs to have scope for a flow into the next without exhausting every specific reference. It's a project after all. A process, not a few events.
The book covers all that it promises to: Brussels meeting of "League against Imperialism", Afro-Asian gathering at Bandung, Women's conference at Cairo, NAM at Belgrade and Tricontinental Conference at Havana.
Prashad unearths the role of international communists in formation of the Brussels conference - a landmark event patronized by Einstein and attended by 37 countries/colonies. He writes about Pan-Africanism, Pan-Americanism, and Pan-Asianism in the context of colonial dominations, along with deconstructing the Kuomintang massacres of communists that might have contributed to severance of the ties between the Comintern and several nationalist leaders.
Prashad quotes W.E.B. DuBois in relation to Pan-Africanism within the Brussels context, although he omits Paul Robeson's solidarity with the colored peoples at Bandung. It was in 1955 that Robeson sent his famous greetings to Bandung: "...peoples come from the shores of the Ganges and the Nile, the Yangtse and the Niger. Nations of the vast Pacific waters, greetings on this historic occasion. It is my profound conviction that the very fact of the convening of the Conference of Asian and African nations at Bandung, Indonesia, in itself will be recorded as an historic turning point in all world affairs." Heralding it as a history-making conference, Robeson expressed, "Indeed the fact that the Asian and African nations, possessing similar yet different cultures, have come together to solve their common problems must stand as a shining example to the rest of the world."
Prashad aptly summarizes what Bandung achieved: "a format for what would eventually become Afro-Asian and then Afro-Asian-Latin American group in the UN." He also takes a stab at the inherent weaknesses of the member countries that lost moral grounds because of several reasons, from murdering communists to hoarding weapons, despite agreeing on some basic precepts of "cultural cooperation".
"Principle Problem" of Raul Prebisch is explained in context to economic policies, in the crucial introduction to the role of UNCTAD, of which he was the founding general secretary. If Buenos Aires is visited for economics, Tehran is the metaphoric site of cultural struggles. Khrushchev's betrayal of cultural workers in face of opposition to Shah regime is well articulated in a chapter that describes "roots of the Third World intellectual's quandary was how to create a new self in the new nations", thus reinforcing nationalism, democracy and rationalism.
Prashad's political argument that the relationship between Third World and Second turned tumultuous after the demise of Stalin may draw some criticisms, but he amply demonstrates its foundations. He argues that the "new leadership led by Khrushchev and Bulganin adopted peaceful co-existence and pledged their support to the bourgeois nationalist regimes (often against the domestic Communists). The unclear situation suggested that the USSR seemed keener to push its own national interests than those of the national Communist parties to which it pledged verbal fealty" (p. 97).
Prashad makes a point that is vital to understanding of the Third World formation and crisis. In the Soviet Union, the Second World indeed "had an attitude toward the former colonies that in some ways mimicked that of the First World." But this did not necessarily require pitiful stance at the Third World recipients. Prashad argues quoting Sauvy and Nkrumah that the Third World was not "prone, silent or unable to speak" before the powers. It was an independent political platform on its own, which according to Nehru stood for "political independence, nonviolent international relations, and the cultivation of the UN as the principle institution for planetary justice."
So he asks, "What about the two-thirds who remained outside the East-West circles; what of those 2 billion people?" The narration of the author is instructive in a poetic sense. As obviously gigantic is the scope of such an inquisitiveness, he offers a plethora of factors/voices that could have been representing this Third World.
The book analyzes the various complexities of state politics in the Third World countries. It correctly mentions the several betrayals of communist workers in the hands of Moscow and Peking leaderships in the aftermath of Stalin and Mao. The book describes accurately the growing militarization of the developing nations. Prashad, while upholding the vision of the Third World, well encapsulates the elements of utopianism inherently present in some of the documents.
As an instance, the Arusha Declaration validated the twin principles of liberty and equality, individual rights and collective well-being. Prashad argues, "The main problem with the Arusha-TANU project, however, came not in its goals but in its implementation." Though defying academic limitations, he does not give away credence to neoliberal economists/politicians like Rajaratnam of Singapore. Even as he describes the feud between Singapore on one extreme and Cuba on another, Prashad instructs us wisely about the pitfalls of economic liberalization. "The abandonment of economic sovereignty lost the national liberation regimes one of their two principal pillars of legitimacy. When IMF-led globalization became the modus operandi, the elites of the postcolonial world adopted a hidebound and ruthless xenophobia that masqueraded as patriotism", Prashad writes.
Succinctly enough, Prashad encapsulates the present scenario: "The mecca of IMF-driven globalization is therefore in the ability to open one's economy to stateless, soulless corporations while blaming the failure of well-being on religious, ethnic, sexual, and other minorities. That is the mecca of the post-Third World era."
II
Prashad's ending of the book with an obituary to Third World would have perhaps perplexed the writer he invokes in the beginning of his work: Franz Fanon. He even quotes the prophetic statements from The Wretched of the Earth: "The Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass whose project should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not been able to find the answers."
Prashad's persistent declaration in the book about demise of the Third World may bring back nostalgic chords, but would not undermine Fanon's question. Have the problems that bore out of colonialism been resolved? The answer is no. Has Europe or the USA been able to find the answers yet? The answer is no.
In that case, is it not too early to declare the Third World a dead project? Moreover, is the author at times tending to air the lost leaders' voices over the struggling peoples'?
No doubt, Prashad's book is unique in its stress on women's movements in the Third World - an aspect that's comfortably overlooked when such taxonomies are applied to political texts. In his Cairo chapter, Prashad examines the role of women in Third World liberation struggles - from Rameshwari Nehru to Aisha Abdul-Rahman. This is significantly noteworthy, as women have joined the guerrilla wars as well as street protests in almost all of the Third World countries. And yet many progressive forces have difficulties in understanding gender relations, thereby resulting in mere "state feminisms". However, was this chapter written because Cairo had women members on its podium necessitating a mention/discussion, or because a tribute to women activists is necessary to understand the Third World project? In either way, the book does not employ a lens of the women to understand the movement, although does a commendable job at understanding women struggles through the lens of the Third World. Considering that only this chapter has a portion devoted to a few women activists in context to Cairo, while the rest of the book mostly quotes the three "titans" or famous "fives" in explaining the history, I would say there are quite a few questions unanswered still.
The chief criticism against this work would primarily come from two quarters: One, from a strictly Third Wave (interesting how the growth of Third Wave coincides with the recognition of the Third World) feminist critique: independent struggles by women could have been much better encompassed within this book, given its scope. Prashad does a cursory mention of the alternative movement (considering that third-world women had a movement within, and against the larger movement) limiting it to a chapter and focusing on a couple of eminent speakers. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the "titans" and "giants", but by women comrades who were voices of resentments against the hierarchies of nationalist and communist parties? Prashad does not dwell on this aspect.
Two, the criticism may become more scathing from the perspectives of militant activists. Third World, like Rome, was not built in a day. And certainly not through some leaders of few countries. Prashad is arguably right in crediting the giants and bringing forth the canons, but at the same time, these very leaders certainly rode the wave of success utilizing the larger unrest that was recognized by the anti-status-quo forces, often united through guerrilla wars, and almost going unnoticed after making vital impacts. Would the Third World have been different had the precepts for it not written by the giants, but by the larger oppressed peoples engaged in organized and otherwise struggles? We do not know for sure, but it would have been worthwhile to ponder over that a bit more than the book does.
The more crucial question then, is if such precepts were actually already written (or worked on with) by the peoples who did not find mentions in the historical documents that Prashad cites towards the book's end spanning 60 pages. The focus of the book, although is in continuance of Prashadisque tradition of Afro-Asian unity, is slightly away from Africa. In fact, Mandela is mentioned just once in the book (that too as a pure travesty - citing a Ruth First memorial). The truth is Third World texts had been written in South Africa as well as in Nepal. However, such underground struggles went largely amiss from the work. Sure, the book by the author's admission is inexhaustive and merely illustrative, but even a 300-page work could have inculcated some unknown peoples' movements than chronicling lesser known leaders' engagements.
Ironically enough, before proceeding to Havana chapter, Prashad mentions "From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, the rhetorical denunciation of imperialism reached its apogee even as the Third World began to lose its voice". This is a dangerous statement to make if one considers that indeed from the 1970s onwards, the peoples voice in the Third World had immensely proliferated. No doubt the leaders - those giants who we find exalted throughout the work - had fallen to deaths or arrests, but the period thereafter also signaled the end of dominant and diplomatic voices, and somewhere alongside highlighted the obscure and powerful ones.
People who spoke truth to power were the people on the streets that challenged the nationalist parties which came to power in the pretext of newfound freedom from the foreign rulers. The growth of domestic capitalist classes in comfortable alliance with these nationalist parties were indication enough that the new powers were no less different from the old ones, except in their make-up and "patriotism". In fact, these illusive weapons of nationalism and patriotism helped strengthen exploitative capitalism on basis of trusts of the "own" people. Such betrayals of faiths, notwithstanding goodwill of the famous leaders, were also being fought against on a daily basis in the Third World. Beyond the conferences and meetings and gatherings of Third World leaders under different names, there were large-scale protests of poverty and unemployment. Beyond the famous rhetoric of anti-nuclearism (while proliferating conventional weapons domestically) and socialist development (while harassing voices of dissent at home), people had on their own formed two classes in the society. The haves went to the ruling elites that apparently "voiced" the Third World for few years, and the have-nots remained with the unknown millions of peoples whose only commonality was their resentment against the power-grabbers. Be it Nehru or Indira in India, Sukarno or Suharto in Indonesia, the popular imagination went beyond such leaders that treaded the careful path all the while claiming to be representing the Third World.
Third World was neither the name of a place nor merely a documented project. And certainly it did not die. Considering that its origin was a necessity in itself, a necessity borne of conditions of colonialism, about which Sartre (another contextually grand omission from the book except for one mention - his writings on neocolonialism were far more instructive) writes in the preface to Albert Memmi's 'The Colonizer and the Colonized': "Colonialism denies human rights to people it has subjugated by violence, and whom it keeps in poverty and ignorance by force, therefore, as Marx would say, in a state of 'sub-humanity'." This sub-humanity does not see its history changing with the midnight bells of colonialist departures. It takes quite a while for the real freedom to be conquested for even after the colonialists are gone. This is why South Africa's period of struggle just began after Mandela came to power. South Africa's Third World status will not die anytime soon.
So the assumption that "the Third World began to lose its voice" may have been made a little too early. Keeping in line of the eloquent narration of events as Prashad has done (for example, referring to revived "armed struggle not only as a tactic of anticolonialism but significantly as a strategy in itself"), the book perhaps wished away the Third World before examining its overbearing presence today. Do we have a Second World? I have no answer to that. But if the name Third World was admittedly accepted by the oppressed people of several continents basing on their historical heritage, then the phrase is as relevant today as it was before. Perhaps some countries would want not a place in it. Earlier, China was a question. Today, Singapore is. All the same, for the rest of the countries, nothing much has changed, except that the capitalist exploitation has intensified and expanded manifold, the national regimes have lost faith and people are more politically conscious.
If the Third World was imagined out of former colonies and if the colonial problem was chiefly an economic one, then the Third World has become even all the more relevant today. Simplistic as it may sound, there is a greater need for Afro-Asian-Latin solidarity today in the world than ever before. And Prashad, a remarkably profound scholar who gave to us treasures of arguments through his previous works about the need for alliances of the oppressed, would be among the firsts to acknowledge the necessity of such unity.
III
However, apart from remaining in want of more comprehensive analysis of women's movements and of peoples' liberation movements (both-dually oppressed by former colonizers as well as the nationalist rulers, and more importantly conflicted between the both - male and female comrades), the book also offers cursory looks at the external roles played by the First World in maintaining indirect subjugation of the Third.
Prashad rightly critiques the predominant views held by leftists about the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He argues that such a minimalist assumption renders people of the Third World insignificant and often passive audience in the larger world stage. Whereas he is absolutely correct in this critique - largely identified by the radical feminist movements worldwide - there is no harm in going through the roles of the CIA that have been well documented in a work that does chronicle interactions of the Third World "leaders" with the First World instigators. Many conflicting situations have been initiated and fuelled through CIA interventions in the Third World politics and that should have found a deserved mention. For instance, a critique of the Nixon administration vis-à-vis the Third World (including the recently released notes with Kissinger) is found lacking.
One need not subscribe to conspiracy theories to gain insights about how the First World allies in the "neocolonial" period have acted towards the Third World: less through coercion, and more through lucrative measures such as economic aids, western education and religion. Prashad misses out on the role of the Catholic Church that was the first body to significantly recognize the Third World as an entity worth pondering over. The large money, the pool of debts that would crumble the economic backbone of the Third World came from the consent of the Vatican during the early 1960s.
Prashad mentions religion quite casually, when he describes how "Mother Teresa would soon get more positive airtime as the white savior of the dark hordes than would the self-directed projects of the Third World nationalist governments." Immediately following this, he goes on to make references to military invasions and embargoes.
Here the book could have made a crucial connection between the recognition of the Third World by the First World through the Catholic Church decisions. Mother Teresa's airtimes were neither incidental nor were to be seen only through a liberal critique. The missing piece is that Vatican Council II which was the 21st ecumenical (general) council of the Roman Catholic Church was crucial to recognition of the Third World in an official manner.
In fact this council brought the most far-reaching reforms within the Catholic Church in 1000 years. This most significant reform movement in the world's leading religion was brought forth during its four sessions in Rome during (the first Council after its suspension in 1870). The idea was to aim for aggiornamento (renewal and updating of Catholic life and teaching). Such a vital step was taken by the Vatican as a result of emergence of the Third World. This council altered the nature of the church from being a European-centered institution to become a worldwide one so as to acknowledge the Third World countries, where it counted most of its followers. Mother Teresa and her likes were thus byproducts of this acceptance of the third force in the world.
Prashad says that Nehru, Sukarno and Nasser among other leaders did not use Third World to describe their domains, but does not corroborate their reasons, if any. For the framework of this book, the constant usages of "First World", "Second World" and "Third World" is imperative, but considering that Prashad is eager to lash out against the "camp mentality" or "East-West" conflicts, he does avoid a critical exposition of the limitations that such three "Worlds" may bring for the readers.
One way to understand why the three "worlds" were not sufficient explanations (although necessary at many junctures) is to detail how the three worlds could not be thus compartmentalized either in degree or by their types. More importantly, the countries thus categorized under such headings definitely had uniquely different histories (colonial and otherwise), treated differently by their respective partners in their perceived specific worlds. On the one hand, Singapore had a different colonial experience than India. On the other, China's Security Council membership put it on a unique platform, and there is no comparing between Soviet Union and Hungary. What is vital to this discussion is also the fact that there was not a yardstick that was used to specify categories either for the First, the Second or the Third. As much as the Third World was a movement against colonialism, such a usage of categories would still render it as a site affected by Eurocentric worldviews.
Prashad says Nehru et al., instead of calling themselves to be part of the Third World, "spoke of themselves" as the NAM, G-77 or the colonized continents. Although accurate, here the author's own argument that kickstarts the book will be subject to questioning. Prashad says in the first line of the book, "The Third World was not a place. It was a project". And yet he compares the project with some conferences and places (continents) to bring home the point that the leaders evaded "Third World". Certainly there were other reasons why all Third World titans did not prefer the phrase (if at all). And that, we are still unsure of.
The author writes: "The phrase 'East-West conflict' distorts the history of the Cold War because it makes it seem as if the First and Second Worlds confronted each other in a condition of equality." He contends that the USSR was socially and economically way behind due to its unique recent history. "The dominant classes in the First World used the shortages and repression in the USSR as an instructive tool to wield over the heads of their own working class, and so on both economic and political grounds the First World bore advantages over the Second." Whereas this could be one truth, it does underscore the fact that more countries on the earth joined the Second World than they could be declared as the First World also because of the lacunae starkly evident in the First World. Whereas massive racism was predominant in the First World, economic depression and political censorships in the capitalist countries also contributed to popularity of the Second World.
A connection between the third world "project" and the United Nations (UN) is well established in the book. What perhaps amiss is a discussion on manners in which either of them might have contributed to the downfall of the other. Prashad says, "Today there is no such vehicle for local dreams". The larger question then would be if the United Nations played a role in obliterating its dependant. On the other hand, a stark reality in the post-Iraq scene is the redundancy of a forum such as the United Nations today that effectively has no role either in shaping a collective conscience or implementing a pro-people agenda. Least of all, the UN has failed to safeguard the sovereign nations from external aggressions. It has failed to overcome the elitism of its Security Council, almost unquestionably letting the powerful countries to run their own little League of Nations inside the UN. Amidst such cynicism that the UN has contributed to, what responsibilities must the Third World project shoulder.
Amidst several responsibilities, the Third World still has to its credit a Non-Aligned News Agencies Pool (NANAP), a fact that is missing a mention in the book. Over 40 news agencies in non-aligned countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe have pooled their resources for the exchange of news reports and information to defy the vertical information flow of corporate media. The "Pool" was adopted at the Fourth Summit Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, held in Algiers in 1973. During that period, the New World Information and Communication Order was also proposed to democratize the knowledge domain of the world. No doubt, UNESCO was criticized by the American and European intellectuals, but the MacBride Commission succeeded in recognizing the divergent voices of the Third World in order to challenge the media hegemony world over. Responsibilities of the Third World still include an informed opposition to militarization, providing alternative channels to western corporate media, campaigning for need-based distribution of world resources, and most of all, representing the popular voices of dissent, opposition and celebrations. One wonders if the struggles to attain the above has waned any bit, if looked from the peoples' perspectives. And in this context, the Third World still holds hopes, possibilities and victory. One is perhaps disappointed if the Third World is perceived to be voicing only a limited elite constituency - often opposed to the peoples' dissents.
IV
Hence, finally, the book questions not the constitution of the Third World itself. If it was brought around through its various leaderships under certain historical period, what expectations should we have of this "project"? Were such leaders to be expected to play the truly internationalist roles, and to what avail? In the preliminary draft thesis on the National and the Colonial Questions, for the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin wrote: "Petty-bourgeois nationalism proclaims as internationalism the mere recognition of the equality of nations and nothing more. Quite apart from the fact that this recognition is purely verbal, petty-bourgeois nationalism preserves national self-interest intact, whereas proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital." Between the elite internationalism founded on peaceful co-existence and peoples' internationalism based upon rejection of the international capitalist order, did the Third World got somewhere hijacked or we refuse to acknowledge its existence because we already defined its proponents?
Needless to state, the criticisms above demand for more literature for inclusion into the book, than specifically target the author's works. Such a case arises only because the book is an extraordinarily brilliant effort that is bound to encourage readers to plunge more into the relevance of the subject. All of that credit goes to the humanely written, accessibly crafted work that shuns academic elitism and genuinely attempts at a peoples' history of the oppressed world.
The UN has to Go. Ban Ki-moon or Not.
By Saswat Pattanayak
Today marks the beginning of a new era. The demise of United Nations as we ever knew it. With Kofi Annan, the last conscience keeper of the largest global association formally retiring yesterday, the hopes that the UN has some utilities any longer are tarnished.
Far from being skeptical, this is perhaps a desired opinion. After all, do we really need a United Nations that functions as a casino for a few fraud whitejackers—those conmen who own the place and its crooked tables?
The UN has been converted into the League of Nations of 21st Century. Like the Axis powers using the League to further their war goals, the UN is being categorically used these days for the mere purpose of legitimizing imperialist war as “democratic” crusades.
I recently visited the UN Headquarters to pay my tribute to the rich legacy it inherited from ‘The Declaration of the United Nations’ signed exactly 65 years ago, on January 1, 1942. Comrade Stalin, the then Time Magazine ‘Man of the Year’ and the most celebrated icon in the US for having stopped Hitler, had initiated the idea of creating a global peacemaking organization. And much as Einstein’s expressed desire, the major powers—Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom—assumed responsibility of their actions to shape a global organization. The idea would subsequently be furthered by internationalists in Africa and Asia, from Robeson to Nasser to Nehru. Peace and sovereignty proved to be the foundations of this high and unique ideal.
Not anymore, sad as it may sound. The relevance of the UN as a pillar of global conscience had waned since three decades now, with revisionism within communist bloc and resignations among non-aligned front. Sovereignty of independent states no more featured on the UN agenda. And consequently, annihilation of peace concept at the alter of destroying sovereignty took precedence.
But what is worse now is that even the foundations have changed. The UN ideals have been replaced while an American ally takes over as new Secretary General today (after competing with other petty candidates, most prominently the Indian representative Shashi Tharoor—that infamous SaiBaba and sly Godmen promoter). South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon ends up joining a UN that’s based on sycophancy, wars and unipolarism, as best exhibited by the veto powers vested in the hands of its Security Council that’s no more than a conglomerate of power abusing business empires. Ban Ki-moon is the famous chair of the CTBTO (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) commission that has binding effects on all the countries, save for the rogue powerful nations. In fact, it is to get North Korea to sign the treaty, that such a commission was founded. But will he be able to force the US to at least ratify the treaty? Seemingly, it will be quite the contrary. The US is not North Korea, after all. So, the Security Council thought Ban Ki-moon was the only contestant who did not need a veto against him.
And no wonder, the UN today is not just a replica of failure to keep peace and uphold sovereignty, but has been reduced to become an instrument of nepotism for the European-American chamber of UN council that legitimizes international and illegal aggressions.
A result of such nepotism, Kofi Annan, in his farewell speech last month clearly emphasized his ignorance about how the peace processes work. Annan placed beautifully his naïve arguments and vast hearsay rhetoric all the while as he stood silently for the wars to tear apart the world in last 10 years of his tenure. None should be surprised. Annan had got it entirely wrong. After all, he was nominated to play his role, after the make-believe showdown between the US and France got over in terms of their chosen one.
In the speech, he began by eulogizing Truman who according to him was the force behind the United Nations. That’s because Annan looked up a lame history textbook to trace the year the UN was founded formally. And 1945 was Truman’s time. Alas, while paying tribute to Truman, Annan forgot that the UN was planned since long time by Stalin and FDR and Churchill, much before Truman had any such idea. Instead Truman was only six months into his presidentship when UN was formed in ’45, and indeed he was the man behind the downfall of UN ideals.
Annan recollects: “Truman's name will for ever be associated with the memory of far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor.”
He conveniently forgets that Truman Doctrine, the infamous anti-communist propaganda lies, was the cornerstone of UN fallibility. Not to mention his legacy of usage of Atom Bomb, not to end the World War II, but to herald the so-called Cold War. Truman was not the “master-builder” of the United Nations, as Annan recollects. Rather, he was the master-builder of a war fanatic organization called North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the elite association of war mongers that he founded in 1949, that would subsequently prove nemesis to the ideals of the United Nations and land UN in such a precarious condition today.
Kofi Annan, the last failed secretary general also misread the history of UN role in peacekeeping, which is why, his own attempts at curbing assaults on Iraq despite WMD myths failed pathetically. According to Annan, Marshall Plan the hateful red-scare treaty was a success, and not just that, the Korean War was an instance of wisdom!
Dangerous omission of critical historical knowledge leads us to pathetic leaderships. The lip-serviced fashionable criticism of American hegemony is far from the desired objective. Despite Annan’s farewell speech being nothing more than a glorification of Truman legacies, the mainstream media portrayed that as critical of America’s stance in Iraq. This is utter ridiculous. At any stretch of imagination, if Truman was right, as the two-term secretary general would point out, then I wonder where did the Bush regimes go wrong.
UN needs not just leaderships that have astute knowledge of world history and processes of war and peace, but also great visionaries who can implement changes on accords of social justice. Not stooges of an elite club of capitalists and neo-liberal bullshitters on the elite security council.
At the very least, the veto powers of these powers have to go, now that these 15 members have proved themselves to be perfectly incapable of holding a moral position of authority with their shrewd, cruel and crude methods at handling Iraq to mention just the latest, and the democratization must begin. UN must be tuned to actually prevent wars, withdraw engaged troops, collect arrears from defaulting countries (the US tops the list with $1.25 billion default) and radically engage in returning the lands to the landless (in much of Africa and Asia where the populations have been evacuated and countries have been forced into debt traps).
Else, it has to go. We urgently need to replace this League of United Nations. If we don’t want to see another series of inactions perpetuating mass scale imperialistic wars, then the time to act is now.
Today marks the beginning of a new era. The demise of United Nations as we ever knew it. With Kofi Annan, the last conscience keeper of the largest global association formally retiring yesterday, the hopes that the UN has some utilities any longer are tarnished.
Far from being skeptical, this is perhaps a desired opinion. After all, do we really need a United Nations that functions as a casino for a few fraud whitejackers—those conmen who own the place and its crooked tables?
The UN has been converted into the League of Nations of 21st Century. Like the Axis powers using the League to further their war goals, the UN is being categorically used these days for the mere purpose of legitimizing imperialist war as “democratic” crusades.
I recently visited the UN Headquarters to pay my tribute to the rich legacy it inherited from ‘The Declaration of the United Nations’ signed exactly 65 years ago, on January 1, 1942. Comrade Stalin, the then Time Magazine ‘Man of the Year’ and the most celebrated icon in the US for having stopped Hitler, had initiated the idea of creating a global peacemaking organization. And much as Einstein’s expressed desire, the major powers—Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom—assumed responsibility of their actions to shape a global organization. The idea would subsequently be furthered by internationalists in Africa and Asia, from Robeson to Nasser to Nehru. Peace and sovereignty proved to be the foundations of this high and unique ideal.
Not anymore, sad as it may sound. The relevance of the UN as a pillar of global conscience had waned since three decades now, with revisionism within communist bloc and resignations among non-aligned front. Sovereignty of independent states no more featured on the UN agenda. And consequently, annihilation of peace concept at the alter of destroying sovereignty took precedence.
But what is worse now is that even the foundations have changed. The UN ideals have been replaced while an American ally takes over as new Secretary General today (after competing with other petty candidates, most prominently the Indian representative Shashi Tharoor—that infamous SaiBaba and sly Godmen promoter). South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-moon ends up joining a UN that’s based on sycophancy, wars and unipolarism, as best exhibited by the veto powers vested in the hands of its Security Council that’s no more than a conglomerate of power abusing business empires. Ban Ki-moon is the famous chair of the CTBTO (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) commission that has binding effects on all the countries, save for the rogue powerful nations. In fact, it is to get North Korea to sign the treaty, that such a commission was founded. But will he be able to force the US to at least ratify the treaty? Seemingly, it will be quite the contrary. The US is not North Korea, after all. So, the Security Council thought Ban Ki-moon was the only contestant who did not need a veto against him.
And no wonder, the UN today is not just a replica of failure to keep peace and uphold sovereignty, but has been reduced to become an instrument of nepotism for the European-American chamber of UN council that legitimizes international and illegal aggressions.
A result of such nepotism, Kofi Annan, in his farewell speech last month clearly emphasized his ignorance about how the peace processes work. Annan placed beautifully his naïve arguments and vast hearsay rhetoric all the while as he stood silently for the wars to tear apart the world in last 10 years of his tenure. None should be surprised. Annan had got it entirely wrong. After all, he was nominated to play his role, after the make-believe showdown between the US and France got over in terms of their chosen one.
In the speech, he began by eulogizing Truman who according to him was the force behind the United Nations. That’s because Annan looked up a lame history textbook to trace the year the UN was founded formally. And 1945 was Truman’s time. Alas, while paying tribute to Truman, Annan forgot that the UN was planned since long time by Stalin and FDR and Churchill, much before Truman had any such idea. Instead Truman was only six months into his presidentship when UN was formed in ’45, and indeed he was the man behind the downfall of UN ideals.
Annan recollects: “Truman's name will for ever be associated with the memory of far-sighted American leadership in a great global endeavor.”
He conveniently forgets that Truman Doctrine, the infamous anti-communist propaganda lies, was the cornerstone of UN fallibility. Not to mention his legacy of usage of Atom Bomb, not to end the World War II, but to herald the so-called Cold War. Truman was not the “master-builder” of the United Nations, as Annan recollects. Rather, he was the master-builder of a war fanatic organization called North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the elite association of war mongers that he founded in 1949, that would subsequently prove nemesis to the ideals of the United Nations and land UN in such a precarious condition today.
Kofi Annan, the last failed secretary general also misread the history of UN role in peacekeeping, which is why, his own attempts at curbing assaults on Iraq despite WMD myths failed pathetically. According to Annan, Marshall Plan the hateful red-scare treaty was a success, and not just that, the Korean War was an instance of wisdom!
Dangerous omission of critical historical knowledge leads us to pathetic leaderships. The lip-serviced fashionable criticism of American hegemony is far from the desired objective. Despite Annan’s farewell speech being nothing more than a glorification of Truman legacies, the mainstream media portrayed that as critical of America’s stance in Iraq. This is utter ridiculous. At any stretch of imagination, if Truman was right, as the two-term secretary general would point out, then I wonder where did the Bush regimes go wrong.
UN needs not just leaderships that have astute knowledge of world history and processes of war and peace, but also great visionaries who can implement changes on accords of social justice. Not stooges of an elite club of capitalists and neo-liberal bullshitters on the elite security council.
At the very least, the veto powers of these powers have to go, now that these 15 members have proved themselves to be perfectly incapable of holding a moral position of authority with their shrewd, cruel and crude methods at handling Iraq to mention just the latest, and the democratization must begin. UN must be tuned to actually prevent wars, withdraw engaged troops, collect arrears from defaulting countries (the US tops the list with $1.25 billion default) and radically engage in returning the lands to the landless (in much of Africa and Asia where the populations have been evacuated and countries have been forced into debt traps).
Else, it has to go. We urgently need to replace this League of United Nations. If we don’t want to see another series of inactions perpetuating mass scale imperialistic wars, then the time to act is now.
Saddam, Ford: One Killed, One Pardoned
By Saswat Pattanayak
Call me superstitious, but somehow I always tend to hope for the maxim that speaks: All’s well that ends well. And hence, certainly in the last week of this month, I had not imagined the year 2006 would leave such bitter memories behind.
It all started with one death: Gerald Ford’s. And ended with one execution: Saddam Hussein’s.
What has Ford got to do with Hussein? I would probably have not wondered aloud such an analogy on another occasion. After all, one was the celebrated president of world’s oldest democracy, and the other was the disgraced president of a dictatorial regime. For celebration of Ford’s legacies, there are museums, schools, world leaders and history books. For Hussein, only condemnations follow from all above quarters. We are observing memorial services cherishing the memories of Ford beginning Friday, whereas the global condemnation ceremonies to mark the former Iraqi head have started from Saturday. New York Times while pouring in rich tributes for Ford churned out a news story out of an obituary, headlined its editorial as “Gerald R Ford” to portray the legend on Thursday. And yet on Saturday, the liberal paper had made an editorial out of a hard news piece, and headlined its lead story of the day thus: “Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity.” Yes, that’s the headline from world’s most respected newspaper, not a sentence from some kangaroo court.
And yet, amidst the word-games of the colonial language that accentuates the stark differences perpetuated by its mainstream media masters, I am struck by few similarities between the two dead former leaders.
Both climbed the ladders of politics not through legitimate elections, but by assuming power. Ford quietly succeeded a corrupt tax evader Spiro Agnew to become the vice president, and with a lot of pomp and show, inherited a corrupt war criminal Richard Nixon’s throne to become the president. Similar “corrupt bargains” were made in Iraq for Saddam to remain in power. Hussein quickly ascended Ba’ath Party ladders without the credentials, political, military, or otherwise. And earned his fame and glory in his attempt to assassinate the then Iraqi head Abdul Qassim. Ironically, just like Ford who rose to power without any mandate except merely with approval from the US Congress, Saddam’s claim to fame was reached through the American interventions in Iraq to fund the Ba’athists to get rid of left-leaning Qassim. In a sure manner well recorded, but seldom quoted, the US war machine created both Saddam, and Ford.
A New York Times columnist in an editorial piece had done some elaboration, at least about Saddam, a few years back:
The US war mongers funded the Iraqi despot to continue murdering communists and innocent civilians. At the same time, back home, they got Ford to continue the same legacy. Not surprisingly, Ford became not just the only unelected president, but even the most unpopular one at his time. He pardoned without any conditions whatsoever the biggest war criminal of recent times: Richard Nixon, the officially recognized disgraced president. Like Hussein, Nixon was a zealot anti-communist, a massive war and hate proponent. And Gerald Ford whose six day national mourning continues with half-mast flags, was the greatest supporter of Nixon. He provided all the support that Nixon required to save face, and his life. And no, all thanks to Ford, Nixon was not hanged.
Times have changed. But times do not change philosophically on their own tunes. They change just the way the ruling classes decide. And as predicted, after an initial hue and cry by the marketplace of ideas, Ford continued to be cherished for having pardoned Nixon and saved America’s image. Saddam, soon after the demise of communist powers, was brushed off as forgotten legacy that could have otherwise tarnished America’s image.
Today, alas, if we recall history accurately in its sequence and reasoning and ruling class motives and working peoples resentments, there is just one fallen guy between the two. And not surprisingly, Ford has been pardoned.
But there is worse in store. Now that Saddam is not there anymore, perhaps true to the nature of obituaries, true to the nature of support lent to Ford’s legacies after his death, many of us would invariably see light in Saddam as well. In the battle of ideologies, perhaps it would seem as though Saddam fought a different battle than that of American power elites. And after much accentuation of these differences, the corporate media would have succeeded in establishing a hyper reality of virtues and vices. And the reification of historical insanities may again begin when we either pay rich tributes to Saddam to posit him against America or vice versa. Or like the European allies in the war, when we take the moralist positions against capital punishment in order to oppose Saddam’s death.
Saddam’s death should have been quite predictable. After all, those that stop serving the masters, are condemned to harsh course. It’s the masters that we need to beware of. The masters that enslaved Africa, colonized Asia, and impoverished majority of world population through global capitalism. If they kill their disobedient agents, that’s not a bother. We didn’t ask for the agent anyway. The point is we need not take the masters any longer either.
And neither do we want any more of their agents. Some of them may rally behind the masters, like Pinochet who died a natural honorable death recently. And some may yet go pose a challenge, like Bin Laden who may end up in Saddam’s shoes one day soon. But any indulgence in positing the agents against the masters is well playing into the plans. Its like supporting the European leaderships today who are their virtuous best in the criticism of American punishment degrees. Or listening to New York Times declaring how the criminal against humanity is our man no more.
Either way, we would miss the boat. The issue is not in differences between two such elements borne out of greed, competition and oppressions. Not the difference between Ford and Hussein. It’s the similarities among them that should make us shiver.
Brother Malcolm X used to open his address with: “brothers and sisters, friends and enemies.” If we succeeded in identifying the categories, we hopefully would have left the worst of times behind as we start marking a new year tomorrow.
(Originally published in Radical Notes)
Call me superstitious, but somehow I always tend to hope for the maxim that speaks: All’s well that ends well. And hence, certainly in the last week of this month, I had not imagined the year 2006 would leave such bitter memories behind.
It all started with one death: Gerald Ford’s. And ended with one execution: Saddam Hussein’s.
What has Ford got to do with Hussein? I would probably have not wondered aloud such an analogy on another occasion. After all, one was the celebrated president of world’s oldest democracy, and the other was the disgraced president of a dictatorial regime. For celebration of Ford’s legacies, there are museums, schools, world leaders and history books. For Hussein, only condemnations follow from all above quarters. We are observing memorial services cherishing the memories of Ford beginning Friday, whereas the global condemnation ceremonies to mark the former Iraqi head have started from Saturday. New York Times while pouring in rich tributes for Ford churned out a news story out of an obituary, headlined its editorial as “Gerald R Ford” to portray the legend on Thursday. And yet on Saturday, the liberal paper had made an editorial out of a hard news piece, and headlined its lead story of the day thus: “Dictator Who Ruled Iraq With Violence Is Hanged for Crimes Against Humanity.” Yes, that’s the headline from world’s most respected newspaper, not a sentence from some kangaroo court.
And yet, amidst the word-games of the colonial language that accentuates the stark differences perpetuated by its mainstream media masters, I am struck by few similarities between the two dead former leaders.
Both climbed the ladders of politics not through legitimate elections, but by assuming power. Ford quietly succeeded a corrupt tax evader Spiro Agnew to become the vice president, and with a lot of pomp and show, inherited a corrupt war criminal Richard Nixon’s throne to become the president. Similar “corrupt bargains” were made in Iraq for Saddam to remain in power. Hussein quickly ascended Ba’ath Party ladders without the credentials, political, military, or otherwise. And earned his fame and glory in his attempt to assassinate the then Iraqi head Abdul Qassim. Ironically, just like Ford who rose to power without any mandate except merely with approval from the US Congress, Saddam’s claim to fame was reached through the American interventions in Iraq to fund the Ba’athists to get rid of left-leaning Qassim. In a sure manner well recorded, but seldom quoted, the US war machine created both Saddam, and Ford.
A New York Times columnist in an editorial piece had done some elaboration, at least about Saddam, a few years back:
“The Iraqi leader seen as a grave threat in 1963 was Abdel Karim Kassem, a general who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. Washington's role in the coup went unreported at the time and has been little noted since. America's anti-Kassem intrigue has been widely substantiated, however, in disclosures by the Senate Committee on Intelligence and in the work of journalists and historians like David Wise, an authority on the C.I.A.
From 1958 to 1960, despite Kassem's harsh repression, the Eisenhower administration abided him as a counter to Washington's Arab nemesis of the era, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt -- much as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush would aid Saddam Hussein in the 1980's against the common foe of Iran.
Then, on Feb. 8, 1963, the conspirators staged a coup in Baghdad. For a time the government held out, but eventually Kassem gave up, and after a swift trial was shot; his body was later shown on Baghdad television. Washington immediately befriended the successor regime. ''Almost certainly a gain for our side,'' Robert Komer, a National Security Council aide, wrote to Kennedy the day of the takeover.
As its instrument the C.I.A. had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Baath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi Army. According to the former Baathist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the C.I.A. in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958.
According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.”
The US war mongers funded the Iraqi despot to continue murdering communists and innocent civilians. At the same time, back home, they got Ford to continue the same legacy. Not surprisingly, Ford became not just the only unelected president, but even the most unpopular one at his time. He pardoned without any conditions whatsoever the biggest war criminal of recent times: Richard Nixon, the officially recognized disgraced president. Like Hussein, Nixon was a zealot anti-communist, a massive war and hate proponent. And Gerald Ford whose six day national mourning continues with half-mast flags, was the greatest supporter of Nixon. He provided all the support that Nixon required to save face, and his life. And no, all thanks to Ford, Nixon was not hanged.
Times have changed. But times do not change philosophically on their own tunes. They change just the way the ruling classes decide. And as predicted, after an initial hue and cry by the marketplace of ideas, Ford continued to be cherished for having pardoned Nixon and saved America’s image. Saddam, soon after the demise of communist powers, was brushed off as forgotten legacy that could have otherwise tarnished America’s image.
Today, alas, if we recall history accurately in its sequence and reasoning and ruling class motives and working peoples resentments, there is just one fallen guy between the two. And not surprisingly, Ford has been pardoned.
But there is worse in store. Now that Saddam is not there anymore, perhaps true to the nature of obituaries, true to the nature of support lent to Ford’s legacies after his death, many of us would invariably see light in Saddam as well. In the battle of ideologies, perhaps it would seem as though Saddam fought a different battle than that of American power elites. And after much accentuation of these differences, the corporate media would have succeeded in establishing a hyper reality of virtues and vices. And the reification of historical insanities may again begin when we either pay rich tributes to Saddam to posit him against America or vice versa. Or like the European allies in the war, when we take the moralist positions against capital punishment in order to oppose Saddam’s death.
Saddam’s death should have been quite predictable. After all, those that stop serving the masters, are condemned to harsh course. It’s the masters that we need to beware of. The masters that enslaved Africa, colonized Asia, and impoverished majority of world population through global capitalism. If they kill their disobedient agents, that’s not a bother. We didn’t ask for the agent anyway. The point is we need not take the masters any longer either.
And neither do we want any more of their agents. Some of them may rally behind the masters, like Pinochet who died a natural honorable death recently. And some may yet go pose a challenge, like Bin Laden who may end up in Saddam’s shoes one day soon. But any indulgence in positing the agents against the masters is well playing into the plans. Its like supporting the European leaderships today who are their virtuous best in the criticism of American punishment degrees. Or listening to New York Times declaring how the criminal against humanity is our man no more.
Either way, we would miss the boat. The issue is not in differences between two such elements borne out of greed, competition and oppressions. Not the difference between Ford and Hussein. It’s the similarities among them that should make us shiver.
Brother Malcolm X used to open his address with: “brothers and sisters, friends and enemies.” If we succeeded in identifying the categories, we hopefully would have left the worst of times behind as we start marking a new year tomorrow.
(Originally published in Radical Notes)
Russian Revolution Unabridged..
24/10/06 10:09 Filed by Saswat Pattanayak in:
Reference
A complete depiction of events that unfolded during 1917. In six parts. Original texts and artworks belong to Progress Publishers, Moscow.
A Warning From An “Eyes On The Prize” Creator
Got this from Dr TSB of the media blog
Drums in the Global Village.
Hey, Folks -
Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.
Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott
Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.
Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides
Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham
Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer
Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March
**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo
It’s also in the 2nd series that
you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the
establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica
Rebellion.
So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.
Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.
Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)
Hey, Folks -
Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.
Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott
Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.
Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides
Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham
Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer
Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March
**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo
It’s also in the 2nd series that
you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the
establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica
Rebellion.
So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.
Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.
Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)
Hindus, Muslims and Secular Traditions: Vande Mataram (Part II)
By Saswat Pattanayak
Vande Mataram debate has almost engulfed India these days. I would not claim it to be entirely of no consequence. And those who say that people should be left to sing what they want to, in the tradition of liberal democracy, in my view again, are continuing to enjoy a Hindu privilege. If for a moment, they would imagine how it feels to be member of a minority group being subjected to a song that was targeted against them, most of us would clearly understand the inherent pain. Muslims in India have been told from the beginning that they are citizens of a secular country, and it is the responsibility of the Hindu majority to live upto that expectation. There must not be any confusion in this regard.
Furthermore, some of my beloved readers of this blog have vociferously attacked the communalism in Islam, and in fact to that extent shown solidarity with Bankim Chandra, the poet of Vande Mataram, who also happens to be the founding father of modern Bengali literature.
I am not surprised at the way both perceptions have been intertwined. However, I shall like to dispel some myths about the dismissal of Islam as a communal or fanatical religion, as many in the Hindutva brigade would like to portray it and influence some of us in that process in their abominable quest to establish a “Hindu Rashta”. Some even bring to question the credibility of Mohd. Iqbal who penned down “Sare Jahan se Achha” and compared it with “Vande Mataram”, which I think is a valid comparison, but a grossly non-issue, this time. I will attempt to make some clarifications within the limits of a weblog:
Vande Mataram vs Sare Jahan se Achha:
Let there be no doubt that the origins of the writings and the world-views of the authors are important in understanding the significance of any work. However, even while doing so, one should always keep in mind the socio-political context in which the works have been authored.
I have elaborated on Vande Mataram already in a previous post. The origin of the song was embedded in the work “Ananda Matha” which was just like every other written work of Bankim Chandra, a highly hindu supremacist literature. It clearly outlined Bankim’s aversion towards Muslim people and possibly could have sowed the seed among the Bengali community to later on engage in the religious animosities that eventually led to partition of India into two separate religious regions (East Bengal-Pakistan region and India).
Sensitizing the Bengali population to become reactionary elements in that age was the sole aim of Bankim Chatterjee, and he fairly succeeded in it (which is why the Hindu hymn became so popular to begin with). It can be said without a doubt Bankim was the founding father of reactionary Bengali literature and unfortunately as it is, quite a handful of works during that time thrived with feudal stories and patriarchal protagonists with entire omission of British misrule, (Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s stories included) thanks to the unmistakable popularity of this legendary writer.
Speaking of historical context, Bankim Chatterjee lived at a time that was not about “Islam invasion”, that his works were so apprehensive about. It was rather a time when British people had already invaded India. The primary enemies of Indian people were the British colonialists. And yet, Chatterjee was a loyal civil servant of the British administration, and worked as a deputy collector. And he was instrumental in sowing the seeds of two-nation theory through his works full of hatred for Muslims, who he used to describe as “Mlechhas”.
As regards Mohd. Iqbal, who is unfortunately brought to discussion in the context of Bande Mataram controversy, one can only say this. Mohd. Iqbal was a patriot of the highest order whose revolutionary songs were targeted against the British rule only. He had no expressed hatred against Hindus, although looking at growing popularity of Hindutva brigade within the Congress those days, he had sufficient reason to turn skeptical. Muslims, Buddhists and Dalits were among the most oppressed in India, and yet they were the least represented in the high echelons of Congress power. Congress was losing its secular focus with continued tension between Nehru and Patel. Despite Gandhiji’s reluctance, the Patel faction was growing in strength also due to the immense influence the Indian business houses had on sponsoring Gandhi’s visits and shelters at Ashrams. In disillusionment, Netaji Subhas also had to quit Congress. One needs to remember that the hindu fanatics had taken up so much of political space that Netaji Subhash was as unsure as Mohd. Iqbal about the eventual victory of Indians under leadership of mere religious reformers. Netaji was always known for his determined effort to persuade people to give up all their political differences and get united under the banner of Congress. He has emphatically stated that Congress was the only platform that needs support from people all across political spectrum, thus helping to enlist thousands of communists as well as receiving communist support to win the presidentship. However, Netaji was deeply influenced by the Soviet system of governance, its secularism and collective ownerships and he wanted to establish India in similar lines. Except for Nehru, who had himself visited Soviet Union and was a pronounced supporter of Marxist philosophy, Netaji could not gather support from any other major leader, finally leading to his quitting the party and forming an alternative Left organization.
It was during these times that Mohd. Iqbal also went through transformation as he was witnessing how the power structure of Congress was slipping into the hands of Hindu fundamentalists. He used to be a teacher in Philosophy after completing MA from Lahore University. During the college days, his radical poetry to destabilize the British rule with united efforts from Hindus and Muslims were inflammatory enough. At the same time, while on a short visit to London, Iqbal became conscious of the international Islamic revolutions against the European colonial powers, and his alignment towards Islamists became sharper. India was not merely struggling for independence from British during those days, one also needs to remember that some Hindu supremacists within the Congress were making clear their intent to get rid of Urdu as the lingua franca (which it was till that period), and to declare a Hindustan where Muslims would be tokenly represented as was the trend. Hindu leaders like Rajendra Prasad, Radhakrishnan, Sardar Patel were rabidly pursuing Hindu scholarships. And Gandhi himself was trying to adjust to Hinduism demands by “reforming” the religion, not condemning it. Clearly the country was about to be divided, just like Bankim Chatterjee had envisaged, the question was regarding when.
Bankim and Iqbal: Dichotomies
Again unlike Bankim Chatterjee who preached religious violence based on Militant Hinduism, Mohd Iqbal was deeply secular despite being a Muslim. And this is why there were attempts to caste aspersions on his popularity. Iqbal’s poetry were nationally sung and were widely popular (interestingly, it became popular even on the space when Rakesh Sharma made India proud by saying he saw “Sare Jahan Se Achha” from above when asked by Indira Gandhi about what India looked like to him while he was on the Soviet space expedition). Iqbal’s poetry was in Urdu, as opposed to Sanskrit, and that was a great dichotomy already. He was a Muslim revolutionary writing about the poor and the oppressed people of India grounded on realism of political economy. Chatterjee was a Hindu Brahmin reactionary who was writing about glorification of one-nation of Hindu India that was conditional upon annihilation of the Muslims. Whereas Chatterjee was preaching that deaths of Muslims were inevitable for India to be a proud nation, Iqbal was writing:
(roughly translated it means: We are where our hearts are, and even when we reside abroad, our hearts live in our land. Thus artificial borders cannot separate our patriotic feelings. What of the religions? Our religions do not teach us to create enemies among each other. We are the people from the land of the Hind and shall remain thus despite religions and artificial borders.)
This was the great radical poet Mohd. Iqbal who wrote this “Taraana-e-Watan” among other brilliant works where he always stressed on Hindu-Muslim unity that was needed to overthrow the British rulers.
Sadly, the country was so taken hostage by the Hindu supremacists that they did everything possible to highlight Bankim Chatterjee’s conservative anti-Islam works while they continued to demean Mohd Iqbal. Any serious reader of progressive literature would be able to fathom the length at which Iqbal was subsequently saddened by the way his hopes for a united India was being shattered through the aspirations of the growing Hindu militancy even within the rank and file of the mainstream Congress.
I am reproducing a rare poem of Mohd Iqbal written to his beloved son, where he is asking his child to treat poverty as an asset, and not a weakness. Living the life of the oppressed calls for revolution against the foreign invaders, he declares. He directs his son to recognize that Mother Nature (interesting because its not a similar portrayal like Goddess Durga) has gifted a heart to him that must be used to appreciate the diversity of flowers (his stress on ‘Gul’ is consistently present in most of his poems, including another poem by the name ‘Gul Hai to Gulistan ho’. Also interesting, considering that flowers have universal appeal unlike nation-state names). Iqbal asks his son to dedicate life towards serving the poor and the oppressed in a colonial India and not get disheartened by inherent limitations. “Do not be a sell-out; Make a name amidst poverty!”
Vande Mataram debate has almost engulfed India these days. I would not claim it to be entirely of no consequence. And those who say that people should be left to sing what they want to, in the tradition of liberal democracy, in my view again, are continuing to enjoy a Hindu privilege. If for a moment, they would imagine how it feels to be member of a minority group being subjected to a song that was targeted against them, most of us would clearly understand the inherent pain. Muslims in India have been told from the beginning that they are citizens of a secular country, and it is the responsibility of the Hindu majority to live upto that expectation. There must not be any confusion in this regard.
Furthermore, some of my beloved readers of this blog have vociferously attacked the communalism in Islam, and in fact to that extent shown solidarity with Bankim Chandra, the poet of Vande Mataram, who also happens to be the founding father of modern Bengali literature.
I am not surprised at the way both perceptions have been intertwined. However, I shall like to dispel some myths about the dismissal of Islam as a communal or fanatical religion, as many in the Hindutva brigade would like to portray it and influence some of us in that process in their abominable quest to establish a “Hindu Rashta”. Some even bring to question the credibility of Mohd. Iqbal who penned down “Sare Jahan se Achha” and compared it with “Vande Mataram”, which I think is a valid comparison, but a grossly non-issue, this time. I will attempt to make some clarifications within the limits of a weblog:
Vande Mataram vs Sare Jahan se Achha:
Let there be no doubt that the origins of the writings and the world-views of the authors are important in understanding the significance of any work. However, even while doing so, one should always keep in mind the socio-political context in which the works have been authored.
I have elaborated on Vande Mataram already in a previous post. The origin of the song was embedded in the work “Ananda Matha” which was just like every other written work of Bankim Chandra, a highly hindu supremacist literature. It clearly outlined Bankim’s aversion towards Muslim people and possibly could have sowed the seed among the Bengali community to later on engage in the religious animosities that eventually led to partition of India into two separate religious regions (East Bengal-Pakistan region and India).
Sensitizing the Bengali population to become reactionary elements in that age was the sole aim of Bankim Chatterjee, and he fairly succeeded in it (which is why the Hindu hymn became so popular to begin with). It can be said without a doubt Bankim was the founding father of reactionary Bengali literature and unfortunately as it is, quite a handful of works during that time thrived with feudal stories and patriarchal protagonists with entire omission of British misrule, (Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s stories included) thanks to the unmistakable popularity of this legendary writer.
Speaking of historical context, Bankim Chatterjee lived at a time that was not about “Islam invasion”, that his works were so apprehensive about. It was rather a time when British people had already invaded India. The primary enemies of Indian people were the British colonialists. And yet, Chatterjee was a loyal civil servant of the British administration, and worked as a deputy collector. And he was instrumental in sowing the seeds of two-nation theory through his works full of hatred for Muslims, who he used to describe as “Mlechhas”.
As regards Mohd. Iqbal, who is unfortunately brought to discussion in the context of Bande Mataram controversy, one can only say this. Mohd. Iqbal was a patriot of the highest order whose revolutionary songs were targeted against the British rule only. He had no expressed hatred against Hindus, although looking at growing popularity of Hindutva brigade within the Congress those days, he had sufficient reason to turn skeptical. Muslims, Buddhists and Dalits were among the most oppressed in India, and yet they were the least represented in the high echelons of Congress power. Congress was losing its secular focus with continued tension between Nehru and Patel. Despite Gandhiji’s reluctance, the Patel faction was growing in strength also due to the immense influence the Indian business houses had on sponsoring Gandhi’s visits and shelters at Ashrams. In disillusionment, Netaji Subhas also had to quit Congress. One needs to remember that the hindu fanatics had taken up so much of political space that Netaji Subhash was as unsure as Mohd. Iqbal about the eventual victory of Indians under leadership of mere religious reformers. Netaji was always known for his determined effort to persuade people to give up all their political differences and get united under the banner of Congress. He has emphatically stated that Congress was the only platform that needs support from people all across political spectrum, thus helping to enlist thousands of communists as well as receiving communist support to win the presidentship. However, Netaji was deeply influenced by the Soviet system of governance, its secularism and collective ownerships and he wanted to establish India in similar lines. Except for Nehru, who had himself visited Soviet Union and was a pronounced supporter of Marxist philosophy, Netaji could not gather support from any other major leader, finally leading to his quitting the party and forming an alternative Left organization.
It was during these times that Mohd. Iqbal also went through transformation as he was witnessing how the power structure of Congress was slipping into the hands of Hindu fundamentalists. He used to be a teacher in Philosophy after completing MA from Lahore University. During the college days, his radical poetry to destabilize the British rule with united efforts from Hindus and Muslims were inflammatory enough. At the same time, while on a short visit to London, Iqbal became conscious of the international Islamic revolutions against the European colonial powers, and his alignment towards Islamists became sharper. India was not merely struggling for independence from British during those days, one also needs to remember that some Hindu supremacists within the Congress were making clear their intent to get rid of Urdu as the lingua franca (which it was till that period), and to declare a Hindustan where Muslims would be tokenly represented as was the trend. Hindu leaders like Rajendra Prasad, Radhakrishnan, Sardar Patel were rabidly pursuing Hindu scholarships. And Gandhi himself was trying to adjust to Hinduism demands by “reforming” the religion, not condemning it. Clearly the country was about to be divided, just like Bankim Chatterjee had envisaged, the question was regarding when.
Bankim and Iqbal: Dichotomies
Again unlike Bankim Chatterjee who preached religious violence based on Militant Hinduism, Mohd Iqbal was deeply secular despite being a Muslim. And this is why there were attempts to caste aspersions on his popularity. Iqbal’s poetry were nationally sung and were widely popular (interestingly, it became popular even on the space when Rakesh Sharma made India proud by saying he saw “Sare Jahan Se Achha” from above when asked by Indira Gandhi about what India looked like to him while he was on the Soviet space expedition). Iqbal’s poetry was in Urdu, as opposed to Sanskrit, and that was a great dichotomy already. He was a Muslim revolutionary writing about the poor and the oppressed people of India grounded on realism of political economy. Chatterjee was a Hindu Brahmin reactionary who was writing about glorification of one-nation of Hindu India that was conditional upon annihilation of the Muslims. Whereas Chatterjee was preaching that deaths of Muslims were inevitable for India to be a proud nation, Iqbal was writing:
“Gurbat mein ho agar hum, rehta hai dil watan mein
Samjho wohi humein bhi, dil mein jahna hamara
Majhab nahni sikhata, aapas mein bair rakhna
Hindi hain hum, watan hain Hindustan humara”
(roughly translated it means: We are where our hearts are, and even when we reside abroad, our hearts live in our land. Thus artificial borders cannot separate our patriotic feelings. What of the religions? Our religions do not teach us to create enemies among each other. We are the people from the land of the Hind and shall remain thus despite religions and artificial borders.)
This was the great radical poet Mohd. Iqbal who wrote this “Taraana-e-Watan” among other brilliant works where he always stressed on Hindu-Muslim unity that was needed to overthrow the British rulers.
Sadly, the country was so taken hostage by the Hindu supremacists that they did everything possible to highlight Bankim Chatterjee’s conservative anti-Islam works while they continued to demean Mohd Iqbal. Any serious reader of progressive literature would be able to fathom the length at which Iqbal was subsequently saddened by the way his hopes for a united India was being shattered through the aspirations of the growing Hindu militancy even within the rank and file of the mainstream Congress.
I am reproducing a rare poem of Mohd Iqbal written to his beloved son, where he is asking his child to treat poverty as an asset, and not a weakness. Living the life of the oppressed calls for revolution against the foreign invaders, he declares. He directs his son to recognize that Mother Nature (interesting because its not a similar portrayal like Goddess Durga) has gifted a heart to him that must be used to appreciate the diversity of flowers (his stress on ‘Gul’ is consistently present in most of his poems, including another poem by the name ‘Gul Hai to Gulistan ho’. Also interesting, considering that flowers have universal appeal unlike nation-state names). Iqbal asks his son to dedicate life towards serving the poor and the oppressed in a colonial India and not get disheartened by inherent limitations. “Do not be a sell-out; Make a name amidst poverty!”
“Garibi mein Naam Paida Kar”
Dayare-Ishq mein apna muqaam paida kar
Naya Zamaana naye subh-o-shaam paida kar
Khuda agar dil-e-fitrat-shanaas de tujhko