Hans Miklas

Hans Miklas isn’t a real person. Well, I assume there are people past and present with that name, but this isn’t about any of them. It’s about a character in Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel Mephisto. Miklas stood out because I was finishing the book in July when I read this article by David Frum paraphrasing and synthesizing the statements of some Trump supporters he talked to:

You people in the Acela corridor aren’t getting it. Again. You think Donald Trump is screwing up because he keeps saying things that you find offensive or off-the-wall. But he’s not talking to you. You’re not his audience, you never were, and you never will be.

…In our America, the gender gap closed a long time ago—and then went into reverse. Obama in the Oval Office was humiliating enough. But Hillary will be worse: We’re going to lose any idea at all that leadership is a man’s job.

…You tell us we’re a minority now? OK. We’re going to start acting like a minority. We’re going to vote like a bloc, and we’re going to vote for our bloc’s champion. So long as he keeps faith with us against you, we’ll keep faith with him against you.

TV Tropes’ surprisingly thorough description of Mephisto* considers the character of Miklas – “the Nazi-sympathizing actor who grows disillusioned once Hitler actually takes power” - an example of “Break the Haughty,” but this doesn’t seem to me accurate. In fact, he’s presented sympathetically by Mann. In contrast to the successful and self-serving Höfgen, Miklas is a sickly, struggling young man who wants to see the haughty cut down to size. He believes Hitler’s triumph will mean the fall of the rich and arrogant – the elites who lord their position over people like him, humiliate them from a position of unearned power, and stand in the way of their path to glory.

The main characters in the novel are stand-ins for real people: Hendrik Höfgen, the famous actor who enjoys continued success after he chooses to collaborate with the Nazis, is Gustaf Gründgens (you can read more about him here); his wife Barbara is the author’s sister, the writer and actress Erika Mann; her father, the privy councillor Bruckner, is their father, Thomas Mann. I don’t know whether Hans Miklas represents a real individual or a composite. In any case, he illustrates some of the motivations for support for authoritarian movements.

The two most noble major characters in the novel view the Nazi sympathizer with compassion and pity. Otto Ulrichs, the principled Communist, often defends him as a misguided youth whose legitimate grievances and defiance have been exploited to bad ends:

Hans is basically a good fellow, I know he is, because I have often talked with him. With anyone so young you have to work hard and patiently. There is a chance he can still be won over to the right side. I don’t believe he’s already lost to us. His rebelliousness, his utter dissatisfaction have taken the wrong direction – you know what I mean? (28)

Miklas’ personal and economic struggles, despite his talent, hard work, and efforts to get ahead, have led him to rage and blame:

Ninety-five marks a month…. With that kind of money it’s hard to stay a decent human being. (29)

Naturally, he feels he’s being slighted and gets bad parts. He blames his lack of success on us – he believes we’re in league against him because of his political leanings. (29)

Central to Miklas’ character is that he’s driven by resentment and grievance, which Nazism both nurses and folds into its political philosophy. He’s told that the management of the theater where he works, whom he perceives as mistreating him, is “‘Jew-dominated’ and ‘Marxist-oriented’” (29), giving a racial and political cast to his personal animus and rage.

He particularly delights in the struggles and failures of Hendrik Höfgen and the Jewish actress Dora Martin, who “both belonged, in his view, to the same privileged, un-German, reprehensible clique” (31). He dreams of seeing them brought low:

‘That Martin woman’, he went on, his malicious, sickly young face sunk in his thin, not too clean hands, ‘they say she is always mouthing these salon-Communist phrases – her and her thousand marks every night. But there’s going to be a clean sweep of that crowd – even Höfgen will have to face up to that before long. (31)

For Miklas,

the beautiful day was when the Führer would at last come to power and his enemies would all be destroyed. And destruction would certainly descend on the most pernicious and fearful enemy of all – Höfgen. The overthrow of the object of his hatred, whose career Miklas followed from afar with impotent wrath, would be the most enjoyable event of the Great Day. (151)

The book’s heroine, Barbara, respects and pities the genuinely suffering and angry Miklas, while abhorring his social and political views. She believes he’s treated badly by the more powerful people in the theater and “is looking for something to cling to which can raise him up” (118). She sometimes takes him to lunch and listens to his complaints and wishes:

Never before had she sat at the same table with a man who voiced the kind of opinions that this boy put forward with such fanaticism. It became clear to her that he detested or despised everything that was dear and indispensable to herself, her father and her friends. What was he getting at when he violently attacked ‘corrupt liberalism’ or jeered at ‘certain Jewish and Jew-loving circles’ which according to him were sending German culture to the dogs? Yes, thought Barbara, he means everything I have ever loved or believed. When he says ‘Jewish rabble’, he means spiritual values and liberty. And deep down she felt afraid. (116)

What brought joy to such a mysterious creature as Hans Miklas? What ideas and ideals fired his aggressive enthusiasm? He dreamed of a German culture cleansed of ‘Jewishness’. Barbara could only shake her head in astonishment. When her strange companion contended that ‘the shameful Versailles treaty’ should be torn up and the German nation must again be ‘ready for battle’, his eyes lit up and even his forehead appeared to shine. ‘Our Führer will restore the German people’s honor!’ he cried. ‘We will no longer tolerate the shame of the republic, which is despised by foreigners. We want our honor back again – every decent German demands that. And there are decent Germans everywhere, even in this Bolshevik theater. They should hear how Herr Knurr speaks when he isn’t afraid he is being overheard. He lost three sons in the war. but he says that wouldn’t have been so bad if Germany hadn’t lost its honor. And it is the Führer – and only the Führer – who can restore our honor. (116-17)

When Barbara warily tells Miklas that “If one day Germany really becomes what you and your friends want it to be, than I would rather have nothing more to do with it. I would leave the country,” Miklas, eyes gleaming, responds

I can believe it. A whole mob of gentlemen and ladies are going to make a run for it – that is, if we let them go and don’t put them behind bars. For it will be our turn! Then at last the Germans will once again have their say in Germany. (117)

Barbara, a well-meaning liberal, tries to understand Miklas’ perspective, but is unable to fathom the depth of his resentments, and his choices and perceptions strike her as irrational. “Why does he get so worked up about German honor?” she wonders.

What mental picture does he have of this vague concept? Is it so enormously important for him that Germany should once again have tanks and submarines? Surely he should first see that he get rid of his dreadful cough and have a success in a good part and earn more money so that he can eat his fill every day. (117)

When she asks why, given his hatred of elites and the establishment, he doesn’t join the Communists, he responds that the Communists “have no patriotism for the fatherland, but are supranational and dependent on Russian Jews. And the Communists don’t know anything about idealism… We want our own revolution. Not one that will be directed by Freemasons and the Elders of Zion.” (118) Miklas insists that Nazism will explode the system:

When our day arrives and our Führer takes over supreme power, then that’s the end of capitalism and the economy of the big bosses. The servitude of usury will be abolished. Big banks and stock exchanges that bleed our national economy white can close their doors, and no one will mourn them. (117)

When Barbara points out, accurately, that “the Führer who wanted to dismantle capitalism was in fact receiving a good deal of money from heavy industry and large landed proprietors,” Miklas “furiously repulsed the assertion as ‘typical Jewish calumnies’” (118).

Following an altercation, Höfgen has Miklas fired from the theater. Miklas, whose rage has grown, is reinvigorated through his work as a leader of the Nazi Youth movement. He’s jubilant when Hitler comes to power:

In the first weeks after the government takeover by the National Socialists and their Führer, Miklas had felt he was in heaven. The great and beautiful day, the day of fulfillment, awaited so patiently and with so great a longing, had at last arrived. It was an explosion of joy. Young Miklas had sobbed and danced with happiness. In those days his face had shone with wild enthusiasm and his eyes had glowed.

During the torchlight procession in honor of the Reichskanzler, the Führer, the Savior, how he had roared in the in the streets and moved his limbs like a man possessed, swept along by the frenzy which seized not only a city but also a whole nation. Now all promises would become facts. Without any doubt a golden age was about to dawn. Germany had its honor restored, and soon its society would be transformed and wonderfully renewed in the form of a real people’s community. For so the Führer had promised one hundred times, and the martyrs of the National Socialist movement had sealed this promise with their blood. (174)

The fourteen years of shame were over. Everything up to now had been only struggle and preparation; now life began in earnest. Now at last men could work together for the construction of a healthy and powerful fatherland. (175)

A Nazi official arranges a job for Miklas at the state theater, and when it appears that Höfgen and his other antagonists have been humiliated and vanquished, he’s ecstatic – “The magic of this situation was so potent that it enabled the young man to overlook many things he might otherwise have found disappointing” (175). But gradually he begins to see the truth:

Was it really a new, a better world in which he now moved? Had it not many of the old world’s shortcomings that he had so bitterly hated – and even some new faults unknown till then? Hans Miklas did not yet dare admit such things to himself. But from time to time his young face assumed the clenched, sorrowful expression of defiance that it had worn in the Hamburg days. (175)

It appeared to Miklas that (alongside the persecution of thousands of political opponents and racial targets of the Nazis, be they members of the “establishment” or not) the old elites had at last received their comeuppance, but new elites quickly took their place, and people were servile and deferential toward these new establishment figures:

Germany had its honor restored, for Communists and pacifists sat in concentration camps and some of them had already been executed; and the world became really frightened of a nation that acclaimed such a Führer. But the renewal of social life had not yet begun: of socialism there was still no sign. (175)

The state of affairs that Nationalist agitators used to term the ‘boss economy’ had not disappeared…but had taken even worse and more extravagant forms. And among actors there were still ‘celebrities’ who looked down on the smaller fry, drove to the stage door in sleek limousines, and wore fabulous fur coats. (175)

But Miklas, “who had believed with too much fervor to succumb so soon to disenchantment,” clung to his belief: “Everything can’t be achieved instantly… Not even my Führer can manage to do that. We must have patience. First Germany must recover from the long years of humiliation” (175-6).

But having believed the social order would be upended and a new world begun, Miklas finds his faith destroyed when he learned that Höfgen – his nemesis and a former Communist and proclaimed Nazi-hater – was not only starring in the production in which Miklas had a minor part but had connections to the upper echelons of Nazi society. Witnessing Höfgen’s growing success and political protection is the final straw for Miklas, who now can’t hide from himself that Nazism wasn’t what he had believed it to be:

In the past he still had hopes and a great faith to sustain him. Now he had nothing left. He went around saying, ‘It’s all shit. We’ve been betrayed. The Führer wanted power and nothing else. What has improved in Germany since he took over? The rich have only become worse. Now they talk patriotic bilge while they make their deals – that’s the only difference. The intriguers are still on top. (198)

How can the Führer stand by and let all this happen – so many dreadful injustices? The rest of us were fighting for the movement when it hardly existed, and now they want to push us aside. (198)

Miklas meets his sad end when other young Nazis come to arrest him, drive him out to the forest, and murder him. His colleagues at the theater are told he was killed in a car accident, and don’t see fit to question it.

As Mann knew (the novel opens with an extravagant gala hosted by the Nazis and brimming with German and foreign elites), the desperate Miklas wasn’t representative of Nazi followers, and he isn’t of Trump’s followers, either – Trump lost among the lower-income groups and won among the higher ones. But both movements certainly include cadres of struggling people propelled by grievance, resentment, a sense of entitlement to power, and a hatred of elites. Many of them rely on government programs to survive.

The signs were there all along that Trump would betray them, and now it’s probably just beginning to sink in:

• “If you voted for Trump because he’s ‘anti-establishment,’ guess what: You got conned”

• “How Trump Conned America”

• “Trump Campaigned Against Lobbyists. Now They’re on His Transition Team”

• “With Trump’s Election, a Bonanza for Washington Lobbyists”

• “Donald Trump’s administration is going to be a bonanza for bankers”

• “Trump's victory sparks bankers' hopes for new deal”

• Trump wants Dodd-Frank repealed.

• “Paul Ryan Says Medicare Privatization Is On”

• “Ryan Plans to Phase Out Medicare in 2017”

• “Comparing the Clinton and Trump Tax Plans”

• “Who Benefits From Donald Trump's Tax Plan?”

• “While You Weren’t Looking, Donald Trump Released a Plan to Privatize America’s Roads and Bridges”

It’ll be a long and ugly road from a golden age about to dawn to “everything can’t be achieved instantly” to “It’s all shit. We’ve been betrayed.” Many won’t be able to take that road – having followed the Right down their destructive path for so long, blaming the Democrats and the vague “establishment” for their problems, they will continue to have faith in Trump and his party and to blame the Left for sabotaging their great plans. But some will recognize the bitter taste of betrayal.

* The novel. I haven’t seen the movie. I would love to see the movie, but it doesn’t seem to be available anywhere. It’s bizarre, given that it won the Best Foreign Language Oscar in 1981. Why isn’t it a Criterion Classic?

Quote of the day – “Resist, My People, Resist Them”

Resist, My People, Resist Them

Resist, my people, resist them.

In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows

And carried the soul in my palm

For an Arab Palestine.

I will not succumb to the “peaceful solution,”

Never lower my flags

Until I evict them from my land.

I cast them aside for a coming time.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Resist the settler’s robbery

And follow the caravan of martyrs.

Shred the disgraceful constitution

Which imposed degradation and humiliation

And deterred us from restoring justice.

They burned blameless children;

As for Hadil, they sniped her in public,

Killed her in broad daylight.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Resist the colonialist’s onslaught.

Pay no mind to his agents among us

Who chain us with the peaceful illusion.

Do not fear doubtful tongues;

The truth in your heart is stronger,

As long as you resist in a land

That has lived through raids and victory.

So Ali called from his grave:

Resist, my rebellious people.

Write me as prose on the agarwood;

My remains have you as a response.

Resist, my people, resist them.

Resist, my people, resist them.

This is an English translation of the work by Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour for which she was arrested by the Israeli government for alleged “incitement to violence,” jailed, and then placed under house arrest with no internet access. Her next hearing is on Monday. She faces a five-year prison sentence.

A petition to free Tatour organized by Jewish Voice for Peace and Adalah-NY has been signed by numerous Pulitzer and Guggenheim recipients.

In the US, the rightists in the Democratic Party are doing their best to support and conceal the crimes of the Israeli government.



True to form, though, the Republicans have managed to be worse.

Quote of the day - The City without Jews

“A human wall encircled the beautiful, calm, and noble parliament building. The wall extended from the city’s university and went all the way up to the Bellaria. This one morning in June at 10 o’clock, it seemed that the whole of Vienna had gathered to witness a historical event of unprecedented magnitude…. And again and again, an excited one would step forward and address the audience around him; and again and again, the same call could be heard:

‘Out with the Jews!’

…Suddenly, the masses cried out with one voice:

‘Let’s cheer for Dr. Karl Schwertfeger: hip, hip, hooray! Long live the liberator of Austria!’

…‘You’ll immediately hear what will happen. Our chancellor Dr. Karl Schwertfeger will explain meticulously the “Deportation of all Non-Aryan People from Austria Act’…

…‘Ladies and Gentlemen! I am here to introduce an act and an amendment to the constitution which together will do nothing less than to enforce the deportation of the non-Aryan, Jewish population of Austria.

…Throughout my five years as party leader, the so called liberal press and the social democratic press alike, or, in other words, all the newspapers published by Jews have tried to make me look like some sort of boogeyman. They portrayed me as an angry anti-Semite and as a fanatic hater of Judaism and the Jews. Today, now that the power of the press has come to an irrevocable end, I feel the urge to declare that all of this talk is nonsense. Oh, yes, I’m brave enough today to stand here on this very platform and to declare that I’m a friend of the Jews rather than their enemy!

…Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, I cherish the Jews. …I am prepared to admire the down-to-earth Jewish virtues, their extraordinary intelligence, their efforts to climb the social ladder, their exemplary sense of family, their internationality, and their ability to adapt to any milieu!

…Nonetheless, that’s exactly the reason why, with time, I came to believe that we, the non-Jews, can no longer live amongst and with the Jews. It’s either hook or crook. We have to either lose our Christian ways, our very essence, or renounce the Jews.

…They’ve taken control over our economy, our spiritual and our cultural life.

…And now that we hold the power in our hands, we’d be fools, no, our own enemies and the enemies of our children if we did not make use of this power and drive away the small minority that is destroying us. This has nothing to do with catchphrases and slogans such as “humanity,” “justice,” and “tolerance,” but with our mere existence, our very lives, and the lives of future generations!’

…And 10.000 throats answered from the street: ‘Out with the Jews!’

Dr. Schwertfeger let the excitement fade out, received handshakes from his fellow ministers, and then started talking about how the law would be implemented. One would proceed with utmost care and fairness and in accordance with the demands of humanity and the terms of the League of Nations….” - Hugo Bettauer, The City without Jews (1922)

The City without Jews is a satirical work describing the unforeseen consequences of the deportation of Jewish people from Austria. It’s not a great work of literature but it is a short, lively story with some darkly funny moments.* That it was written as political satire with no knowledge of what was to happen in Austria or to the author himself and the comedic treatment of the situation and the leading anti-Semites (allegedly based on real political figures) make it a difficult book to read. Its prescient details – the greeting “Heil!” gains popularity after the deportations, for example – leave a knot in your throat.

In an interesting coincidence, two of the characters who are government representatives are Secretary of the Treasury Trumm and Privy Councilor Tumpel, who argues shortly after the expulsion that “the Indogermanic naivety of our people ventures out again!”

In 1925, following open calls for his death in Austrian Nazi publications and the release of the Expressionist film based on the popular book, Bettauer was murdered by a young Nazi named Otto Rothstock. Pleading insanity, Rothstock was sent to a psychiatric institution, from which he was released within months.

* I’ve read some reviews suggesting that Bettauer at times falls into anti-Semitic stereotypes, but I believe they’re missing the point. As a satirist Bettauer – a Jewish man who converted to Evangelicalism in his late teens, possibly to try for a career in the Austrian military – was likely using and exaggerating these stereotypes for comedic and critical effect. This would seem to be confirmed by the stereotypes of Austrian Christians, who often state themselves that they have to expel the smart and adaptable Jews for whom, in their honest simplicity, they’re no match. Some of the funniest moments are in the descriptions of Vienna in the months and years after the Jews have been deported – style, glamour, and sophistication gone; the city giving way to “ruralization”; women wearing dirndl skirts (“which, indeed, look very nice when worn in the open country. Here, they looked like a bad joke or caricature”); cultural establishments turned into beer halls; businesses going to pot; and so on. I think what Bettauer is trying to do is to show how the anti-Semitic stereotypes implied a contrasting, and amusingly stereotypical, picture of non-Jewish Austrians.

Recommended: Wild Tales (2014)

I loved this film despite hating its underlying premise.



As the title suggests, and the opening credits make explicit, Wild Tales is based on the notion that we’re a heartbeat away from “regressing” to our animal nature. As expected, this nature is characterized by: violence, vengeance, irrationality, lust, the reflexive defense of kin and tribe, greed, and gluttony.

This sort of speciesism – which itself underlies a great deal of racism, sexism, and political repression - we can and should avoid, particularly in works that aspire to political satire or social criticism. Director Damián Szifrón has discussed the film’s theme:

Despite the clear common theme of violence and vengeance, what connects the accounts, according to the director, is ‘the fuzzy boundary that separates civilization from barbarism, the vertigo of losing your temper, and the undeniable pleasure of losing control’. This is explored through the concept that human beings have animalistic features. Szifron considers the main difference between human and animals is the capacity one has to restrain oneself as opposed to animals who are guided by their instincts. Humans ‘have a fight or flee mechanism, but it comes with a very high cost. Most of us live with the frustration of having to repress oneself, but some people explode. This is a movie about those who explode’. It deals with ‘daily life’ aspects and ‘is a movie about the desire for freedom, and how this lack of freedom, and the rage and anguish it produces, can cause us to run off the rails’. The main issue, according to Szifron, ‘is the pleasure of reacting, the pleasure of reacting toward injustice’. (my emphasis)

The Freudian distinction between a repressed “civilization” and a “barbarous” freedom, in addition to isolating the human characters with their alleged instincts and drives, presents an obstacle to working out a real approach to political freedom and social justice. As I said, I loved the film, but it could have been a much stronger work of art, a stinging and biting social satire, had it questioned and challenged received wisdom about “civilization” and “barbarism,” “human” and “animal,” rather than reproducing it.

Quote of the day – hammock literature

This one hits a little too close to home.

…Literature? Yes. Hammock literature. Literature made of sugar and vanilla. Tourist literature. The Blue Travel Guide and General Confederation of Labor. Poetry, not in the least.

…And this:

Oh father of my father, you were standing there before
my soul which had not been born and, under the wind
the dispatch boats glided into the colonial night

Come on now, real poetry lies elsewhere. Far from rhymes, laments, sea breezes, parrots. Stiff and stout bamboos changing direction, we decree the death of sappy, sentimental, folkloric literature. And to hell with hibiscus, frangipani, and bougainvillea.

Martinican poetry will be cannibal or it will not be.

- Suzanne Césaire, “Poetic Destitution,” Tropiques, no. 4, January 1942 (quoted in Suzanne Césaire, The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945))

Quotes of the day – Nuit debout

Various committees have sprung up to debate a new constitution, society, work, and how to occupy the square with more permanent wooden structures on a nightly basis. Whiteboards list the evening’s discussions and activities – from debates on economics to media training for the demonstrators. “No hatred, no arms, no violence,” was the credo described by the “action committee”.

“This must be a perfect mini-society,” a member of the gardening committee told the crowd. A poetry committee has been set up to document and create the movement’s slogans. “Every movement needs its artistic and literary element,” said the poet who proposed it.

Demonstrators regularly help other protest movements, such as a bank picket over revelations in the Panama Papers or a demonstration against migrant evictions in the north of Paris.

[Source]

Eloïse est professeure de physique-chimie dans un collège. Elle arpente la place de la République avec un panneau annonçant « Sciences debout : posez-moi vos questions ». Pourquoi cette démarche ? « Parce que la science est à tout le monde », sourit-elle. Avec ce vaste espoir de réappropriation (de l’espace, de la parole et du pouvoir) qu’incarne la Nuit debout, Eloïse ne voit pas pourquoi sa discipline resterait « cantonnée dans un laboratoire », victime d’une image élitiste.

[Source]

Quote of the day – Caroline Fourest, Judith Butler, and responsibility

“Yes, thank you very much Delphine to…giving me this opportunity to, to speak about this legendary newspaper of…who was already a legend before the seventh of January, before this drama. For the anti-racist left, I do belong to, it’s not only the newspaper that you know today [is] describe[d] as “Islamophobic” just because they, they dare mock fanatics from all religions, including Islamists. Charlie Hebdo is also mostly known in France as one of the most anti-racist newspapers.

…Between the ‘90s, all the movements against racism, like S.O.S. Racisme, who did fight the anti-Arab racism in France, took their cartoons from Charb, from Honoré, from…from people who are dead today. And not only dead - who are described as Islamophobic and racist after they are dead.

This is incredibly painful. You cannot imagine. It’s even…It’s like if they are dead twice, actually. When I have to explain it again and again, how much those guys were open-minded, were deeply anti-racist, and strongly, strongly open to every culture, and the most brilliant, talented, and funny guys I’ve ever known. And that people can [twist] their intentions, [twist] their cartoons, put them out of their context, to help the propaganda of the killers.

Because this is actually what these people are doing. And I really want to point that out. I really want to…to insist on that. It’s not only unprofessional, for example, as journalists to describe Charlie Hebdo as Islamophobic. It’s not only wrong and false. It is dangerous.

Because this word, “Islamophobia,” who is confusing the secularist intention, the fact that an atheist satirical newspaper wants to be able to laugh about fanatism – whatever it is, fanatics from Islam, fanatism from Judaism, or fanatism from Christianism – describing it as racist against Muslims by calling it Islamophobic is not only wrong and false, it is really, really dangerous. It is putting a target on the head of those journalists, on those cartoonists. It’s already killed those people. It’s maybe going to kill tomorrow the others who are being called Islamophobic still today.

And to answer your question: how is Charlie Hebdo today, how they are living today. They are living like prisoners. They are living in hell. Because they are all under police protection. Riss, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, have been… You know that Charb have been really targeted by Al-Qaeda. Now it’s Riss who’s targeted today. And not only by terrorist groups – also by, for example, a Pakistani very famous politician who said he will pay for everyone who is going to kill Riss.

We are in that crazy situation today. And this is why it’s so important first to stop to call secularist, or atheist, or just, again, anti-racist but secularist cartoonists and journalists “Islamophobic,” when they are just…who they are, which is the opposite. It’s important to…even to stop to use that word, actually. If you want to, if you want to target the real racism, which do exist, and that Charlie Hebdo is denouncing, when it’s fighting against the National Front for example, but not only, then you should say…words or acts “anti-Muslims.” And at least it is clear – it’s not saying phobia against Islam but phobia against Muslims. And phobia against Muslims is really speaking about racism, which is something we all want to fight against.”

It happens, fortuitously, that just after I transcribed these remarks by Caroline Fourest from early in the recent Newseum panel discussion I read the chapter “The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and the Risks of Public Critique” in Judith Butler’s 2004 Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence.* (A shorter version of was printed in the London Review of Books where it can still be read: “No, it’s not anti-semitic.”)

The chapter responds to portrayals of criticisms of the Israeli state as anti-Semitic, taking as its starting point a 2002 comment by Lawrence Summers, then still president of Harvard: “Profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent.”

Butler’s chapter is as relevant today, in a context of widespread censorious attacks on Palestinian rights activists and the BDS movement, as it was when it was first published. It’s worthwhile for its specific content. But it occurred to me that the response to Charlie Hebdo during the past year has in many ways been analogous to the portrayals and silencing tactics Butler discusses with regard to Israel, and that her arguments about our collective epistemic and political responsibility are also helpful in this context.

Summers’ remarks, Butler suggests, propose a few fundamental claims: first, the insinuation that criticisms of Israel are, or should be assumed to be, anti-Semitic in intent; second, that regardless of the critic’s intent the audience of these criticisms will hear them as anti-Semitic, such that the criticisms unavoidably help to foster and further anti-Semitism; third, that – again, whatever the alleged intentions of the critics themselves - such criticisms are so inherently and easily exploitable by anti-Semites that making them publicly is irresponsible and basically complicit with racism – “effectively” anti-Semitic. Butler contends, rightly, that these sorts of claims lead to a silencing of and self-censorship among those who would be critical of state violence, racism, and injustice. Anti-racists more than anyone fear being charged with racism or with stupidly or callously abetting racists.

She takes issue with the premise of these claims. With regard to intent, she offers:

[W]hereas Summers himself introduces a distinction between intentional and effective anti-Semitism, it would seem that effective anti-Semitism can be understood only by conjuring a seamless world of listeners and readers who take certain statements critical of Israel to be tacitly or overtly intended as anti-Semitic expression. The only way to understand effective anti-Semitism would be to presuppose intentional anti-Semitism. The effective anti-Semitism of any criticism of Israel will turn out to reside in the intention of the speaker as it is retrospectively attributed by the one who receives – listens to or reads – that criticism. The intention of a speech, then, does not belong to the one who speaks, but is attributed to that speaker later by the one who listens. The intention of the speech act is thus determined belatedly by the listener. (105-106; emphasis in original)

And despite making this distinction which ostensibly allows for a nonracist intent, as Butler points out, Summers himself, as listener, assumes, proffers, and models a reading of all criticisms of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic: “[N]ot only, it seems, will Summers regard such criticisms as anti-Semitic, but he is, by his example, and by the normative status of his utterance, recommending that others regard such utterances that way as well” (108). “His understanding of what constitutes anti-Semitic rhetoric,” she argues,

depends upon a very specific and very questionable reading of the field of reception for such speech. He seems, through his statement, to be describing a sociological condition under which speech acts occur and are interpreted, that is, describing the fact that we are living in a world where, for better or worse, criticisms of Israel are simply heard as anti-Semitic. He is, however, also speaking as one who is doing the hearing, and so modeling the very hearing he describes. (108)

In other words, he himself is priming the audience to hear these criticisms in precisely the way he’s arguing they’re inevitably heard. Regarding Summers’ depiction of the audience’s response – which assumes that the audience will naturally understand these criticisms as anti-Semitic or actively use them in promotion of anti-Semitism - Butler argues that “to claim that the only meaning that such criticism can have is to be taken up as negative comments about Jews is to attribute to that particular interpretation an enormous power to monopolize the field of reception for that criticism.” And of course such selective attention has the effect of promoting the interpretation favored by the Israeli government and the Right generally.

Of great importance here is what Butler goes on to argue about responsibility. Note that Summers’ argument places all of the responsibility on the critic of Israel (even for the intent attributed to her!) and, despite the powerful interpretive role he attributes to the audience, none whatsoever on them. You’re left with the impression that while these criticisms are so dangerous that would-be critics are best off refraining from voicing them publicly, potential hearers and interpreters are under no epistemic or political obligation to base their interpretations on facts or to challenge misrepresentations. This is a very convenient situation for those who seek to silence dissent.

As Butler sensibly offers: “According to Summers, there are some forms of anti-Semitism that are characterized retroactively by those who decide upon their status. This means that nothing should be said or done that will be taken to be anti-Semitic by others. But what if the others who are listening are wrong?” (110; emphasis added). It seems so plainly obvious that we have a responsibility to try our best not to be wrong, particularly in situations in which there are reputations and lives at stake, that it never ceases to amaze me how passive and irresponsible audiences are expected and encouraged to be.

Moreover, people in positions of power or influence, those putting forward interpretations for large audiences, have both a “negative” obligation not to promote misreadings and a “positive” one to educate actual and potential audiences. Butler doesn’t deny the very real potential for criticisms of Israel to be misread, misrepresented, or exploited, and argues that critics should be on guard for and seek to counteract such misuse. But that many people can and do misunderstand or misrepresent criticisms of Israel as anti-Semitic isn’t a fact of nature to which critics and other public speakers must resign themselves but a social and political problem everyone needs to address:

[E]ven if one did believe that criticisms of Israel are by and large heard as anti-Semitic (by Jews, by anti-Semites, by people who could be described as neither), it would then become the responsibility of all of us to change the conditions of reception so that the public might begin to learn a crucial political distinction between a criticism of Israel, on the one hand, and a hatred of Jews, on the other (106: emphasis added).

Arguments like Summers’ have deleterious consequences:

If the possibility of…exploitation serves as a reason to quell political dissent, then one has effectively given the domain of public discourse over to those who accept and perpetrate the view that anti-Semitism is authorized by criticisms of Israel, including those who seek to perpetuate anti-Semitism through such criticisms and those who seek to quell such criticisms for fear that they perpetuate anti-Semitism…. To remain silent for fear of anti-Semitic appropriation that one deems to be certain is to give up on the possibility of combating anti-Semitism by other means.

This week we’re in the midst of yet another wave of performative outrage and self-righteous denunciations of Charlie Hebdo’s “racist” cartoons. Article after article after article after article after article after article after article after article rushing to join the chorus of condemnation and rebuke and to offer stupidly earnest responses to so-called racist provocations.**

I have no idea what Butler’s views are on Charlie Hebdo. (Of course I also have no idea how knowledgeable she is on the subject and thus of what weight I would give her views.) But it seems to me that the response to the magazine over the past year strongly resembles the sorts of comments Butler is addressing and that her arguments are useful in understanding this phenomenon. We see the same claims of “effective racism” intermingled with insinuations of intentional racism, the same attribution of overwhelming power to a single interpretation, the same refusal to accept responsibility for making claims of racist intent, the same priming of audiences for attributions of racist intent or effect under the guise of mere sociological observation, and the same propensity to encourage self-censorship and hostility toward challenging voices.

I’ve argued for a long while, fairly fruitlessly it appears, for a recognition of our epistemic responsibilities in this context. I and others have repeatedly called on people to refrain from uncritically accepting superficial interpretations, to actively investigate Charlie Hebdo’s history and mission; its primary audience (the French anti-racist, atheist, and secularist Left); its primary targets (political figures and institutions, primarily the Right); the nature of its satire and the history of its form of humor in France; the fact that the cartoons are connected to pages and pages of text which informs their meaning;*** the powerful people and groups who have a strong interest in misrepresenting the magazine and alienating its potential supporters, and the way they’ve altered its cartoons and encouraged others to interpret them as racist; and so on. I’ve called on influential people to work themselves to make, and educate others about, crucial distinctions between satire of powerful people and institutions or mockery of ideologies on the one hand and racism on the other. I’ve asked that at the very least people appreciate their own level of ignorance before making consequential declarations and judgments.

But the journalists and opinionators involved in round after round of ignorant denunciations have willfully ignored any such requests and persisted in misrepresenting Charlie Hebdo and encouraging others to do the same. Maybe the most ironic and galling aspect of these boilerplate condemnations is their preening judgment of the alleged irresponsibility and callousness of the magazine’s cartoonists. These people, whose colleagues and friends have been massacred, work every day under immediate threat of violence and death. They live the responsibility for their actions and choices in the starkest possible terms. Their supposedly sensitive and responsible judges, on the other hand, can’t be bothered to investigate whether their public statements are true or false, whether they’re blithely destroying the reputations of murder victims, whether they’re being used by censorious and authoritarian forces, or whether they’re contributing to an environment of abandonment and hostility toward the magazine which increases the chances of further violence against them and others as well. That is as irresponsible and callous as I can imagine.

* A book which I recommend highly despite its significant flaws (rampant speciesism in particular).

** As usual, there have been a handful of dissenting voices, but far too few.

*** At the panel discussion in New York last spring, Gérard Biard joked that it sometimes felt like people thought that the magazine consisted entirely of cover cartoons; I’m starting to suspect that, with the addition of a few images plucked from inside pages (but often misrepresented as covers), this might actually be the case.

Quotes of the day – Charb

“So long as the biggest jerk in the Taliban is unable to understand my art, I refuse to express myself – is that it?”

“Asserting that Islam is not compatible with humor is as absurd as claiming that Islam is not compatible with democracy or secular governance.”

“Forgive me, but the fact that racists may also be Islamophobic is essentially incidental. They are racists first, and merely use Islam to target their intended victim: the foreigner or person of foreign extraction. By taking only the racist’s Islamophobia into account, we minimize the danger of his [sic] racism.”

“While, unlike the existence of God, it is difficult to deny the existence of Marx, Lenin, or Georges Marchais, it is neither blasphemous, racist, nor communistophobic to cast doubt on the validity of their writings or their speech. In France, a religion is nothing more than a collection of texts, traditions, and customs that it is perfectly legitimate to criticize. Sticking a clown nose on Marx is no more offensive or scandalous than popping the same schnoz on Muhammad.”

“In protest against the decree of July 21, 2010, which outlawed the desecration of the French flag, and against the law of March 18, 2003, which outlawed any public affront to the national anthem or the tricolor flag, in January 2011 Charlie Hebdo called on the citizenry to rise up against censorship. We asked them to ridicule, destroy, or soil the symbol of the Republic. This was an invitation not to destroy anyone’s property, but to demonstrate that a secular republic may not decide for its citizens which symbols are sacred and which are not.”

“[O]n February 18, 2014, François Hollande visited the Grand Mosque of Paris to inaugurate a memorial honoring Muslim soldiers who died for France from 1914 to 1918.

…

It’s perfectly natural for Muslim leaders to pay homage to Muslims killed in the First World War. But it’s absurd for a President of the Republic to pay homage to Muslims ‘who died for France’. These natives – colonized and enslaved who, for the most part, were rounded up and enlisted by force – did not die for France in their capacity as Muslims. They died in their capacity as low-cost cannon fodder. And if they did die for France, it wasn’t by choice. They died because of France; they died defending a country that had stolen their own. Hollande honored them as heroes, but they were, above all, victims. Before them, German bullets; behind them, French bayonets. Among the native colonial casualties of the Great War who are purported to have been Muslims, it would be astonishing to find even one who fought to defend the values of Islam.

…

Let the Republic raise a monument to the colonial peoples it led to slaughter rather than dream up Muslim fighters who died for France!”

-Stéphane Charbonnier, Charlie Hebdo editor murdered a year ago today, from Open Letter: On Blasphemy, Islamophobia, and the True Enemies of Free Expression, completed days before the massacre

I AM MORGAN

Venezuela in the mesh

Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1948 In the Mesh – a scenario for a film which was never produced as such – isn’t his best work. His emerging themes of political responsibility and the use of violence in liberation movements are largely sidelined in favor of a melodramatic portrayal of a love quadrangle (which itself is marred by sexism), the characters and their relationships are simplistically drawn, and many of the events are improbable.

But it’s of interest for two reasons. First, for its suggestions of experimental film techniques, marking a different artistic path for Sartre, who preferred “transparent” writing that didn’t draw attention to itself. Film, it seems, freed him to try new creative approaches. More important, for the premise of the film, even if it wasn’t realized as well as it could have been. It was prescient for 1948 and is of continuing relevance today.

The movie is set in a small, oil-rich country. It begins with a revolutionary storming of the presidential palace, and the action follows a hastily convened trial of the overthrown president for his seven years of repressive rule. We understand through trial testimony and flashbacks that he himself had been a revolutionary leader who rose to power in similar circumstances, and is seen to have betrayed the very movement he once led. While he came to power with a promise to nationalize the oil fields, he hasn’t done so. He’s restricted the press and refused to call free elections. He’s undertaken a mechanization of agriculture in the face of mass opposition from the country’s farmers and violently repressed their rebellion. The insurgents demand explanations.

We learn over time that he was operating under powerful constraints from the start. Moments after entering office, he was informed by the representatives of the government controlling oil concessions – presumably the US, but never named – that any nationalization would be regarded as an act of war and would result in an invasion and/or occupation. All of his actions, in his view, have responded to this dreadful possibility. He couldn’t nationalize, and democracy would have led immediately to legislative decisions to do just that. He was caught in the mesh. The only option he saw was to stall long enough for the superpower to become involved in a dispute with the other superpower and lose interest, which could take years but appeared to him the best of the very limited options.

Sartre set the film for some reason in Europe, but it would have more plausibly taken place in Iran or another less powerful nation of the global south. The constraints on movements and governments attempting to claim popular sovereignty, nationalize national resources, and institute social welfare policies in the face of US imperialism became all too clear in the years that followed. Outright invasion and occupation have been joined by covert actions: staged and assisted coups, the installation of puppet regimes, destabilization, underground support for the rightwing opposition, economic and resource warfare, financial warfare, diplomatic warfare, propaganda and (social) media warfare,…

Venezuela is facing these offensives, and has been since 1999 when it openly defied US dictates. Reading Sartre’s scenario, you wonder why the leader didn’t tell his comrades about the threat or include them in the decision, why he didn’t reach out to those in other countries in a similar situation. But that was to come in reality. In response to Venezuela’s defiance, as Sartre foresaw, the attacks never end, or even abate. A news search for the country reveals a constant barrage from the US government and its subservient media. Determined to have their way – or what they foolishly believe is their way - they won’t stop.

Whatever happens in today’s legislative – not presidential, as the English-language corporate media would have us believe – elections, the one certainty in the immediate future is that Venezuela will continue to be caught in, and its people to struggle against, the mesh.

They demanded juxtaposition

“Dinshaway Al-Razzaz"

“Imperfect Chronology” – modern and contemporary Arab art at the Whitechapel Gallery, London

Through early December, the gallery is hosting what looks like a fascinating show of pieces from the Barjeel Art Foundation collection, founded by Sultan Saood al-Qassemi.

Inji Efflatoun, “The Dinshaway Massacre,” c. 1950s

One of the artists featured is Syrian painter Marwan Kassab Bachi, who now lives and works in Germany. Here are a few of his earlier works:

“Munif Al-Razzaz,” 1965

“The Husband,” 1966

“Three Palestinian Boys (Fidayeen),” 1970

Quote of the day – the mediatization of the death of a child

“This drawing did not mock migrants but our liberal and hypocritical society… this rich, hyper-consumerist Europe that had to wait for the mediatisation of the death of a child to reflect on the fate of migrants.”

- Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz, who will leave the magazine next week, discussing the most recent issue

Quote of the day – who you are and what you value

“WHY ART?

You may own the best gadgets, the coolest fashions, and the swiftest cars, but the next generation’s hipper iterations have already been imagined. When all else is replaced, repaired, expired, or obsolete only your paintings will remain and will say the most about who you are and what you value.”

- advertisement for Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, purveyors of “Important American Paintings,” in October 2015 Architectural Digest

New York Times not half bad on Charlie Hebdo

It’s not brimming with political insight, but this piece by Robert Mackey about the reaction to some of the cartoons in the most recent issue of Charlie Hebdo is reasonably good. The headline is accurate. He discusses the images in the context both of the surrounding text in the magazine itself (imagine that!) and of the responses of the artists themselves to the uproar. (The article unfortunately doesn’t show the issue’s cover and in fact uses that photograph of the cover overlaid with one of the cartoons from the back pages, which is highly misleading and should be corrected.) He does do the twitter-shot thing, but the tweets from Nathaniel Tapley are helpful. He also includes a link to a BuzzFeed selection of “respectful” cartoons so schmaltzy and treacly they put in sharp relief the need for Charlie Hebdo’s raw satire.

Quote of the day – attacked for putting potent symbols through the grinder

(As much as I detest quoting from a capitalist rag…)

“If the people who now wax indignant about the Aylan Kurdi cartoons supported Charlie Hebdo last winter and joined demonstrations carrying ‘Je suis Charlie’ signs, they clearly did it for the wrong reasons. The magazine was attacked for putting potent symbols through the grinder. It’s done that again with the now-iconic photograph of the dead boy. As usual with Charlie, the message is transparent: Don’t dare use this photograph to advertise shallow, ineffectual charity; don’t be secretly dismissive because it was not your child and not a European child; don’t trivialize Aylan Kurdi’s death by turning it into a political cliche. ‘If you can look at the original photograph without averting your eyes but you can’t look at these cartoons, there’s something wrong with you’, the artists tell their audience.”

- Leonid Bershidsky

And we should be aware of the additional level of irony – that the dead at Charlie Hebdo have been used in the same way. Fortunately, their surviving colleagues are contesting their exploitation as a sacred political symbol by carrying on their iconoclastic work.

The cover

This, by the way, is the cover of the issue:

Un terroriste de 3 ans, neutralisé par la marée

Don’t ever change, Charlie Hebdo.

Another round

More of this nonsense. I would ask whether people really believe xenophobia or “mocking the death of Aylan Kurdi” is the point of the cartoons, but I’m all too aware that self-satisfied, self-righteous ignorance (and its cynical exploitation) is the norm.

Also disappointing is how many people think journalism consists of pitting a series of tweets attacking the magazine against a series of tweets defending it (or worse, simply reporting the allegedly justified outrage). It hasn’t occurred to these people to try to understand the satirical purpose of the images, by, say, reading the magazine or seeking comment from those who are more informed? Of course not. What was I thinking? Reporting on and goading a social-media mob while briefly alluding to a few people suggesting the images are being misread is all that’s required.

Well, at least there’s this.

garden rock

“[T]he goal of a karesansui garden is to suggest magnificent scenes from nature by forming the shapes of various landscape elements such as waterfalls, mountains, islands and ocean … thus the garden expresses the vastness of nature in miniature, within a strictly limited space.”

- Kinsaku Nakane, designer, Tenshin-en, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston