The West–reluctant self-propagandists

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Belmont Club’s Richard Fernandez has written this thought-provoking post on the enlistment of Batman–yes, you heard me right, Batman–in the fight against Al Qaeda.

Batman, of course, is not real–I assume that at least we can all agree on that. But he is nevertheless entering the arena of public opinion–otherwise known as propaganda–in this war.

The author of a planned book featuring the Batman character fighting modern-day terrorists is far from apologetic about this development:

Miller doesn’t hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it “a piece of propoganda,” where ‘Batman kicks al Qaeda’s ass.”

The reason for this work, Miller said, was “an explosion from my gut reaction of what’s happening now.” He can’t stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their ’40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is “a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we’re up against.”

It’s been a long time since heroes were used in comics as pure propaganda. As Miller reminded, “Superman punched out Hitler. So did Captain America. That’s one of the things they’re there for.”

“These are our folk heroes,” Miller said. “It just seems silly to chase around the Riddler when you’ve got Al Qaeda out there.”

Belmont Club writes:

Like politics, to which it is related as much as to war, terrorism is a vehicle for the propagation of ideas…Foad Ajami, writing in the Toronto Star understands that al-Qaeda has nothing whatsoever in common with the classical Islam of his memory. It’s a made for television psychodrama, a comic-book scam…And what we need, apart from robotic fighting platforms, laser gunships and networked battlefields is something that can reach into the realm of ideas and engage Osama Bin Laden — and Khomeini too for that matter — on their own level of reality. It sounds like a job for Batman.

Or, I might say, for Ymarsakar, frequent commenter here on the subject of propaganda.

As usual, the Belmont Club post raises an important and complex subject: the use of propaganda by the terrorists and their supporters, vs. the use (or lack of use) of propaganda on the other side.

It was famously said by Robert Frost, of all people, that “a liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.” These days, however, we can see by the evidence on the liberal side of the blogosphere that this problem has been remedied, and perhaps even overcorrected–today’s liberals certainly don’t seem to be shy about sticking up for their point of view in an argument.

But in the larger sense, as a liberal (read: pro-Enlightenment) society, we have indeed somewhat lost the ability to take our own side in the rather intense argument with extreme and violent Islamicists. They, in the meantime, have become master propagandists who are not the least bit hesitant to enlist every tool of the trade to further their cause, including lies.

This reluctance on our part was certainly was not present during WWII against the Nazis, even though we were fighting foes who had a master propagandist in Goebbels. And Radio Free Europe, in my youth, had a similar effect–on Europe, that is. In those days, domestic propaganda was taken care of, at least partly, by what has now become known as the MSM.

I’ve taken a lot of time to write about how and why this changed during the Vietnam/Watergate era. Some of the impetus behind the change was good, I am certain: the idea that blind and simplistic rah-rah support of country can lead to wretched excesses and wrongdoing. But, like most corrections, this one was an overcorrection. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that our press sometimes appears to effectively function as propaganda for the other side, although I don’t believe this is intentional.

Am I guilty of hyperbole here? I don’t think so. But, as I said, it’s a complex dilemma. We are all behind the idea of a free press, and a free press will always speak some unpleasant truths that go against our own interests. But it’s a question of balance, and I think the balance at the moment is skewed in such a way as to be counterproductive to our own ability to defend ourselves in the marketplace of ideas.

This is another post that could turn into a book if I tried to trace just why and how this has happened, and I don’t intend to do that here. But I think one of the reasons I’ve labored so long and hard (and in such picayune detail) on criticizing media such as the NY Times is to make it clear that, not only are such sources no longer acting as supporters for our side, they are doing so with slipshod methods and with a decided lack of devotion to the truth. In fact, they have often become de facto propagandists–if not exactly for the other side, then certainly against ours.

There is some history of this in the Times going back even before Vietnam. One famous example that comes to mind is that of Walter Duranty, Stalin apologist who wrote for the paper back in the Thirties. He was a particularly egregious but fairly unique case at the time.

Now, however, it appears to be a relatively common point of pride for journalists to refuse to jump on the bandwagon of our present war, and to emphasize instead the errors we have committed. Again, this is all well and good, up to a point–we very much need what Socrates called “gadflies” to point out errors, and this should be one of the functions of a press. But it is not the only one, and if the gadflies predominate (and especially if they play fast and loose with the truth), we become weakened in our ability to prosecute this war effectively. Propaganda is part of the prosecution of this or any other war, and we ignore that fact at our peril.

Thanks to Goebbels and others, the word “propaganda” has become synonymous in many people’s minds with “lies in the service of a political cause.” But propaganda need not be lies. It is simply information spread to influence a populace towards a certain opinion (see definitions here; most of the definitions make no mention whatsoever of deception).

Propaganda, by its very nature, is of course not a reasoned and leisurely debate in which both sides are given equal time and equal measure. Neither is it an academic exercise in politically correct fairness, nor a well-intentioned effort in being kind to the other side. It is most-decidedly one-sided. But the best propaganda is truthful, especially in this day of internet fact-checking. The best propaganda understands the arguments of the other side and counters them effectively. But all propaganda does have one thing in common: a conviction that it is acceptable to use it.

I believe the West, to some degree, has lost that conviction–or, at least, its press has. I’m not totally sure of the reasons behind this, although I’ve explored the historical details in my Vietnam “change” posts. Some of it is mere habit, no doubt. Some comes from an entrenched belief that the press should function more in opposition to the government than in lockstep with it. Some of it, I’m afraid, stems from the fact that it’s a Republican administration that so far has been in charge of this particular war, and most journalists are Democrats. Some of it is a real denial of the seriousness of the foe we face. Some of it is a repugnance towards war itself. Some is a lack of understanding of the military, stemming partly from the fact that a smaller percentage of journalists have served there as compared with earlier conflicts.

But this doesn’t account for the government‘s lack of ability to get into the propaganda business, as opposed to the press. There have been a few recent efforts at the foreign market, but domestic propaganda is not very effective at present (although some would say that bloggers and Fox News are taking up the slack).

One problem is Bush himself as orator. But in fact, oration has become a dying art in the last few decades. One way that domestic propaganda has always been delivered is through Presidential (or Prime Ministrial) speeches: think, if you will, of Roosevelt’s fireside chats and Churchill’s stirring and somber words. They both were masters of domestic propaganda at a time when the Western world had not yet turned its back on it, and both realized its great importance in the fight against Nazism.

Let me repeat: propaganda should not consist of lies. This is true both for ethical reasons (although some would say–especially today, on Valentine’s Day–that all’s fair in love and war) and for practical ones. I believe that truth is a far more effective weapon than lies, because it is much harder to discredit, and far less likely to backfire, especially in our modern world of sophisticated communications.

Somehow many of us have become convinced of the idea that patriotism is identical with chauvinism, and that both are identical with bigotry; also, that propaganda is equal to lies. None of this is the case. And, in fact, we need to reclaim both patriotism and propaganda, or we may find ourselves in a struggle similar to the one described by that master of propaganda, Winston Churchill (which I hereby offer without a hint of apology):

Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, and still yet if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you, and only a precarious chance for survival. – There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

And here is another example. It is how Churchill appealed to his fellow-citizens in the first speech he made as their new Prime Minister, during the dark days of 1940:

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

A different situation, of course. Certainly a different man, and a different time.

But one thing is quite the same, and that is his thought: without victory, there is no survival. I believe that we are actually fighting for the survival of the Western world of the Enlightenment, of the protection of human rights, and of respect for all of humankind. If those ideals are sometimes violated by the West–and there is no doubt whatsoever that they are–these are nothing as to what would occur if jihadist Islamicists were to be triumphant instead.

And to that end–the survival of the Western world of the Enlightment–and towards that victory, I’m willing to enlist Batman, as well as other propagandists such as Churchill–Winston, that is, not Ward.

Your mother (or grandmother, or great-grandmother) should know: gloves and the flu

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An article appeared in this Sunday’s NY Times advising us that our relations with our neighbors may need to change if the much-feared bird flu pandemic ever arrives. This is what will be necessary if we want to protect ourselves from contagion:

To the pantheon of social arbiters who came up with the firm handshake, the formal bow and the air kiss, get ready to add a new fashion god: the World Health Organization, chief advocate of the “elbow bump.”…If the avian flu goes pandemic while Tamiflu and vaccines are still in short supply, experts say, the only protection most Americans will have is “social distancing,” which is the new politically correct way of saying “quarantine.”

But distancing also encompasses less drastic measures, like wearing face masks, staying out of elevators ”” and the bump. Such stratagems, those experts say, will rewrite the ways we interact, at least during the weeks when the waves of influenza are washing over us….the social revolution is likely to focus on the most basic goal of all: keeping other people’s cooties at arm’s length. The bump, a simple touching of elbows, is a substitute for the filthy practice of shaking hands, in which a person who has politely sneezed into a palm then passes a virus to other hands, whose owners then put a finger in an eye or a pen in a mouth. The bump breaks that chain. Only a contortionist can sneeze on his elbow.

It’s a sobering prospect indeed. But everything old is new again, and as I read the article, an image from childhood came to my mind: the top drawer of my mother’s bureau, fully one-third of which was filled with gloves.

No, not gloves like those we wear today: bulky, thinsulate, or fleece, made to shield from the cold and wet. Her gloves were fashion statements: the thinnest and supplest of leather (kid, I suppose), soft and silky materials, a rainbow of colors, short and medium and long.

The longest were actually the best: gloves meant to be worn with sleeveless ball gowns. In addition to being elegant, they did the double duty of hiding any jiggling imperfections of the upper arm (although, of course, as a child, such things never occurred to me). They sported a row of tiny buttons that opened them up in the middle as they stretched their seemingly endless way from fingertip almost to armpit.

Oh, the glamour, and the fun I had as a little girl rooting around in there and trying them on! Even then, I suppose, the fad for gloves was fading, and many of these were already relics, from my mother’s young womanhood during the 30s and 40s.

But gloves as proper fashion statement were still around; I myself was outfitted as a tiny girl with short, white (and, one memorable year when I was four, little pink) gloves for dress-up occasions, making me feel sophisticated beyond belief. Oh yes, and hats, too, with bows on them.

I never for a moment stopped to think that these glorious gloves (now gone the way of the dodo) might have had a protective function, as well–after all, what did grownups or old people know that we didn’t? Much as the parasols and sunhats of those fussbudget Victorians ended up having an actual purpose (as some of us discovered, much to our surprise, when skin began to collect the debt owed for all those year of sunbathing coated with baby oil)–so, perhaps, did the lowly glove. Might it not have acted to prevent the spread of illness through hand-to-hand contact, when contagious disease was so prevalent and difficult to treat?

I couldn’t find too much on the subject when I researched the role of the glove, but my guess is that slowing down the spread of disease has always been one of its functions. At the very least, wearing gloves may have given people the reassuring idea that they were protecting themselves, whether they actually were or not.

On the latter point, my mother tells a story that occurred when she was in her twenties, during the 1930s. She and a friend were traveling from New York to California on a cruise ship that made the journey via the Panama Canal. They were two attractive women–my mother’s friend, in fact, was exceptionally beautiful–and they received a certain amount of attention from the ship’s crew and the officers, who were a rather handsome bunch themselves.

The evening before the ship was to dock for a day visit in Havana,Cuba (isn’t this story quaint?), my mother and her friend were talking with some of the officers when my mother mentioned that one thing she’d really love to see was a Cuban house.

“Really?” asked the officer, raising an eyebrow. My mother nodded.

“Well, it can be arranged,” he said, with a charming and mysterious smile.

The next day several of the officers escorted my mother and her friend to a Cuban house, and started showing them around. The place seemed a bit strange; there were a number of women lazing about, and the officers explained that there were rooms decorated in the fashion of different countries of the world: would they like to view them?

The truth dawned on my mother and her friend at around the same time: they were actually in a Cuban brothel. They two young women made eye contact and then, both minds with a single simultaneous thought, opened their purses, took out their white gloves, and put them on for the remainder of the tour, satisfied that they were protected from whatever dreadful diseases might be swirling around the place.

So I advocate the return of the glove: it might work even better than an elbow bump in the event of the feared pandemic. Your mother–or perhaps your grandmother, or even your great-grandmother–should know.

Nor’easter

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Today has been one of those days when the weather intervenes and dictates things: snow and more snow, all up and down New England. It’s one of the largest accumulations of this year, a season in which snowfall has been unusually light–so far.

I’ve got visitors, and so I’m not planning any big posts today. But it’s fun to have this day of snow, especially on a Sunday when most people don’t really have to go anywhere, and we can sit around and read the paper, talk, eat, and generally do a lot of nothing without feeling much pressure to do any more than that. And tonight, when things clear a bit, we’re even planning to go out to eat.

So, no “Outcasts of Poker Flat” action here, I’m glad to report. When I was a child, something about that tale and the images it evoked gripped my imagination: the band of assorted people trapped in a cabin in a blizzard, day after day of snow and a dwindling food supply, drifts piling ever higher as the windows were obscured and the hut became buried. What started out as a cozy idyll ended up a horror story.

Snow in New England ordinarily has its plusses, as long as we don’t get too much of it. The ski areas have been hurting this year, and now they’ll be happy for a while. The kids–well, the kids love it, except for the unfortunate timing of this particular storm, that comes on a weekend and means they don’t get a longed-for snow day. The rest of us get to enjoy the beauty of it–let’s face it, it’s just not winter without snow, and this year’s snow cover has been a sometime thing.

Today brings us a nor’easter, one of those colorful old-fashioned words that basically means a big winter storm, with wind. Not a good time to be out at sea, but with modern weather forecasting the commercial fishermen and anyone else who might think of going out there in February are given plenty of advance warning.

Unlike the Outcasts, we here on land have also got the modern conveniences of electricity (so far), heat, refrigerators stocked with food, a market down the street, and snowplows hard at work to clear the way. It makes the storm a pleasant interlude rather than a fearful encounter with an overwhelming and sometimes harsh nature. But it’s still a reminder–although a relatively tame one–of how essentially vulnerable we all remain.

See you tomorrow!

Trust, but verify: David Irving and the writing of history

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David Irving, historian/Holocaust denier (although if anything should be an oxymoron, that would be it), is facing trial in Austria soon for violating a law against Holocaust denial (or, to be technical for “minimizing the crimes of the Third Reich“).

I’ve been doing some research lately on the despicable Irving. I’ve developed ideas for a number of posts related to him, some of which I may actually get around to writing some day.

But right now I’m going to deal with only one aspect of Irving’s tale. (All the information and quotes in the following post that are not otherwise linked come from the extraordinarily excellent book Lying About Hitler by historian Richard J. Evans, which I’m now in the process of reading).

I only vaguely followed Irving’s sensational trial in 2000, in which he sued Deborah Lipstadt for allegedly libeling him in her book Denying the Holocaust. In it, she wrote that Irving was “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial,” whose practice was to:

…misstate, misquote, falsify statistics, and falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources.

British libel laws are notoriously skewed in favor of the plaintiff, and Irving fully expected to win or to force Lipstadt to settle for a tidy sum. But Lipstadt’s publisher Penguin, to its everlasting credit, decided to spare no expense to defend her, and itself.

Historian Richard J. Evans was hired by Penguin as a consultant, and became the star witness for the defense, which was ultimately victorious. They mounted the risky strategy of asserting that everything Lipstadt said about Irving was in fact true, which meant that the burden of proof was on them to prove it to be so. And yet they succeeded, and a verdict was rendered that stated unequivocally that Irving was indeed everything Lipstadt had alleged, and more (or, one might say, less).

Irving was ordered to pay millions, but so far has cannily avoided doing so, as well as somehow managing to keep up his pace of speaking engagements–that is, until he made the mistake of entering Austria, a country from which he’d been banned many years ago and where he knew if he set foot he ran the risk of being arrested. And arrested he was.

Even Lipstadt, however, has defended his right to freedom of speech, (ironic, since he tried so hard to trample on hers), saying Irving should not face imprisonment. Many agree, and I am among them, although I certainly would like to see him pay the money he owes from the British trial.

All of this is mere background, however, to my main topic, which is: how is it that Irving got away for so long with the lies and distortions in his books? After all, is there no fact-checking for historians?

In a certain sense, Irving hadn’t gotten away with it; some criticized him from the start for playing fast and loose with the facts. but only in a general way. No one had taken the time and expended the effort to do a systematic study of his research methods. So when Richard Evans was hired by the defense in the Lipstadt trial he had only a vague familiarity with Irving’s controversial works, and he sat down to a monumental task: to evaluate whether in fact Irving had consistently misrepresented his sources as Lipstadt alleged.

Irving, a university dropout who had never received formal training as a historian and who therefore stood outside the usual professorial system of networking and collegiality, had received mixed reviews from historians but universal praise for his ability to do original research: to dig deep into archival sources, diaries, and arcane papers. He spoke fluent German, and was acknowledged as a tireless worker who ferreted out information no one else could find.

Irving’s specialty was debunking the work of other historians. Irving alleged that other historians (unlike him) were lazy; that they relied on each other’s work far too much, something he referred to contemptuously as “inter-historian incest.” He turned his lack of academic credentials into a point of pride rather than embarrassment, superiority rather than inferiority. According to Evans:

Irving contemptuously almost never cited, discussed, or used the work of other historians in his books. Irving was evidently very proud of his personal collection of thousands of documents and index cards on the history of the Third Reich.

So Irving was a maverick right from the start, a sort of Indiana Jones of the history trade, going his own swashbuckling way. He burst on the scene as a very young man in his twenties, and had a great deal of success early on. But as time passed and his views became more strident, eccentric, and clearly Nazi-philic, and he lost a libel suit in the 70s, his reputation began to suffer greatly. It tanked when he became a Holocaust-denier. But he continued to write, and often to be read.

But still, by the time of the Lipstadt trial, it is a remarkable fact that no one seems to have actually done an in-depth study of Irving’s sources and methods, not even Lipstadt. It seems that history, like many other academic disciplines (research science comes to mind), is an endeavor based at least partially on trust. There is a sort of tacit gentleman’s agreement (forgive the sexism, I’m using it in the metaphoric sense) that we’re all playing by the same rules here.

But with Irving, it turns out it would have been far better to trust, but verify. Because it wasn’t until the lawyers for the defense obtained access to the bulk of Irving’s notes and papers through the liberal British discovery process, and Evans was paid to use his knowledge of German to take the time to do an in-depth study of how Irving’s original sources matched up with Irving’s depiction of them in his writing, that the truly colossal magnitude of Irving’s deception was revealed, as well as the depth of his anti-Semitism.

It’s one of those stories that is very satisfying in its denouement: it turns out that Irving’s own desire to silence his critics started a process in motion that ended up discrediting him in a comprehensive way that most likely would never have occurred had he not started the lawsuit. The wheels of historical justice grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

The larger fact is, however, as Evans writes in his book:

Historians…had to rely on each other’s works. There was noting wrong with this, where the work relied on conformed to the accepted canons of scholarly research and rested on thorough, transparent, and unbiased investigation of the primary sources. So vast was the material with which historians dealt, so numerous were the subjects they covered, so consuming of time, energy, and financial resources was the whole process of historical research, that it would be completely impossible for new historical discoveries and insights to be generated if every historian had to go back to the original sources for everything he or she wanted to say. The need to rely on each other’s work had nothing to do with copywriting or plagarism: on the contrary, the conventions of scholarship ensured that footnotes and other references were used in scholarly historical work to pinpoint precisely where the historian had obtained information, and to allow the reader to check up on this if so desired.

All those conventions of scholarship (that bored most of us to tears back in college), the careful and rigorous footnoting and sourcing, are designed to ensure that errors will not happen and that, if they occur, they will be discovered. But the entire edifice nevertheless rests on trust, because it is difficult if not impossible to check every footnote–and Irving cleverly made sure his were extra-impossible to check.

Not only was Irving in disagreement with other historians, but his footnotes were also unconventional, which should have been a tipoff. Many referred to private papers, and those that didn’t were often lacking crucially important information such as page numbers. In fact, according to Evans’s description, my guess is that if Irving had actually written his books in pursuit of a doctorate, his slipshod methods would probably have led to the degree being denied.

But Irving wasn’t going for a doctorate; he didn’t need one. He became successful without one. And, in fact, part of his stated motive for writing his books appears to have been his desire to show up the more regularly-credentialed historians–at the same time he was relying on their gentlemanly (and gentlewomanly) trust that he was following the same rules they were.

It turns out that he was not following those rules, but it took Evans’s remarkable scholarship and persistence to uncover it, and the peculiar circumstances of the libel trial to prove it. As Evans writes, historians do not ordinarily commit the following offenses, or imagine that other historians have committed them:

…manipulate and distort documents, suppress evidence that ran counter to their interpretations, wilfully mistranslate documents in a foreign language, consciously use unreliable or discredited testimony when it suited their purpose, falsify historical statistics, or apply one standard of criticism to sources that undermined their views and another to those that supported them.

But Evans was able to prove that Irving had consistently done just that.

Historians face a dilemma: they must rely on trust, as Evans says, or otherwise spend all their time checking each others’ work and re-inventing the wheel. And although one of the mottos of the blogosphere is, “we fact-check your ass,” even the internet would have been of no assistance at all in uncovering Irving’s game, unfortunately. He had an almost perfect m.o.: he choose arcane and difficult-to-find sources, and quoted them in ways that made them doubly difficult to trace. He became suspect, but no one had the actual goods on him until classic hubris drove Irving to push the envelope and sue someone who was accusing him of doing exactly what he was in fact doing.

Irving was arrogant enough to believe he would get away with it. Fortunately, he hasn’t. But his tale tells us how very fragile truth can be, if one is determined to falsity it, especially if one adopts the guise of historian (or perhaps, for that matter, journalist).

The purpose of movies and movies with a purpose

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First of all, a confession is in order: I’m not much of a moviegoer, especially recently. I think most of the movies I’ve seen in last ten years or so are just plain inferior to the older ones. So now–if there was any doubt before–I am officially an Old Fart, because I think They Just Don’t Make Them Like They Used To.

So I’m not holding myself out to be any sort of film buff. But I was interested in a discussion at Donkelephant, in which blogger Callimachus complains about a recent announcement from some moviemakers that they consider themselves to be social change agents. He cites a Guardian article in which the makers of the film “Syriana” are quoted as stating that this is their explicit goal in making movies:

Set up in 2004 by Jeff Skoll, billionaire co-founder of eBay, Participant’s express purpose is to make movies that will help to change the world. In the words of Meredith Blake, the firm’s executive vice-president: ”˜Our product is social change, and the movies are a vehicle for that social change.’

The statement reminds me a bit of the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate press. Long ago, reporters ordinarily used to enter their field (it wasn’t really thought of as a profession yet) to write stories, not to change the world. And moviemakers–at least in this country–used to be more inclined to entertain (and make money) than to teach. Although teaching was somewhere in there, too, for some of them, it tended to be secondary rather than primary.

The comments section following Callimachus’s post is rather long, and features a great deal of back and forth, and some further comments by Callimachus, including this one:

Hollywood producers are free to do was they wish; that’s the beauty of the free market. The other beauty is, if it sucks, people won’t go see it. And Hollywood seems to have forgotten that, along with the fact that a great chunk of its potential audience has a vague resentment about attempts to socially engineered them by the people who created the culture of Hollywood. Especially when there are so many other entertainment alternatives these days.

Somehow it all made more sense when the “insiders” made status-quo insider films like “The Green Berets” and left the outsiders to make social statement films like “Easy Rider.” Both seemed more relevant then, and more honest.

As far as I know, the founders of Participant are not out to make documentaries, like Michael Moore’s (or films that masquerade as documentaries, like Michael Moore’s). Nor are they making fictionalized biopics a la Oliver Stone, films that occupy some sort of postmodern halfway position where they purport to be a sort of “higher”–though fictionalized–truth. Participant is out to make movies that are straight fiction, but with a purpose–and that purpose is didactic, a form of propaganda.

This, of course, is nothing new. There have always been some movies (although, except for during World War II, I think they were a very small percentage of the whole) that functioned as propaganda. But the political movies of the past, up till the mid-to-late 60s (surprise, surprise–the Vietnam/Watergate era again), for the most part had an agenda that supported the actions of America and agreed with that of mainstream America and the majority of its population.

If we were at war, these movies supported that war, sometimes in an inspirational way. I can’t pinpoint the exact date of the change, but as Callimachus points out, at first it seemed to be an insider/outsider thing; the insiders kept making the old-fashioned films and the renegade outsiders were starting to make films that challenged the status quo.

Now, however, those in charge in Hollywood are mostly the liberals of that Boomer generation and their heirs. The politics of Hollywood are well known to veer quite to the left of mainstream America. Although Hollywood still make movies intended for the masses, the moviemakers seem likely to regard them in just that way–as “the masses.” And they, the moviemakers, are going to teach those masses, by gum–to educate them to their way of thinking, using their highly developed film-making skills as subtle propaganda.

I repeat: many films, especially historic or political or war films, were always at least partly propaganda. But this propaganda used to be in the service of what might be called the mainstream point of view of most Americans; now it is in the service of changing that point of view. Once it glorified America (perhaps in an overly simplistic way); now it critiques it (also in an overly simplistic way).

As Callimachus says, Hollywood can do whatever it wants, and people can go to the movies or stay home as they wish. I myself much prefer movies without a heavy-handed political message of any sort (one of my recent favorites was “Groundhog Day,” which had a message all right, but it wasn’t political).

And I find that whenever Hollywood turns its hand to history, it tends to get things wrong, and then I get angry about it. Film biographies are notorious for that sort of thing. There’s the abominable Oliver Stone, and before him the sanctimonious and distorting but Oscar-winning “Gandhi.” I’m not too familiar with many earlier film biographies, but my guess is that they also played fast and loose with the facts or the portrayals (a fairly minor one that comes to mind is watching Anthony Perkins throw–well, there’s just no other way to put it than “like a girl”–in a movie I enjoyed very much as a child, “Fear Strikes Out”).

Recently I did go to the movies, to a film that is supposed to be non-fiction: “Capote.” I really wanted to see it; as a writer and therapist, I was very interested in the premise, which is the exploitation of others that authors sometimes commit in the act of writing. The film contained material with which I’m unusually familiar; I had read the Capote biography on which it was based, and also In Cold Blood, the source of a great deal of the subject matter. I’d heard it was a very well-done movie, and that the actor who played Capote, Philip Seymour Hoffman, gave a tour de force performance.

But the movie itself disappointed me. It was a cold and repellent film. It made Capote himself into an even more cold and repellent character than I recalled from the biography, and simplified his relationships into the solely manipulative, whereas I remembered them as being more mixed (although Hoffman’s performance was indeed excellent). The actor who played murderer Perry Smith was markedly inferior to Robert Blake, who had played him in the original “In Cold Blood.”.

But what was far worse to me than all of this was that some important facts were changed in the scene in which Smith described his motivation for the murders. The whole film leads up to this revelation of Smith’s, which Capote has been coaxing and manipulating him into giving for most of the movie. So, why did the moviemakers see fit to change the facts?

First, a caveat: I’m relying on memory here (I don’t have the script of the scene in the film). But the reason I am relatively sure that there was a change, and why the change especially offended me, was that I’d recently gone back to the book and studied that exact section of it (Smith’s confession) in order to compose this post about shame, murder, and terrorism.

If you read the last half of my post, the one that deals with Smith’s confession and the shame he reveals as the motivation for the murders, you’ll see that it was an emotion apparently triggered by his being misled by his accomplice and a prison friend into thinking that the two would score big, monetarily, in the crime, and his resultant rage. But the “Capote” movie ignores all that, and makes Smith’s pivotal confesson revolve around some sort of class issue between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” In the movie (again, this is as best I can recall), Smith says he killed Mr. Clutter because the latter looked at him as though he were nothing, as though he were looking down at him.

Not only is this incorrect and gratuitous, it happens to be a libel against the murder victim, who actually did nothing of the sort. My guess is that the makers of the film altered the truth to suit a political agenda, even in this rather non-political film.

I have no doubt that films have always dealt in political messages–sometimes subtle, sometimes overt. And I have no doubt that moviemakers have always bent the truth to their purposes. I know that both things (but especially the latter) have made me turn more and more away from movies.

I’m really not asking for movies to go back to the days of all rah-rah America, all the time (if those days in fact ever existed). But more balance would be nice, and less lecturing. Oh, and it would be awfully good if movies that purported to be based on facts didn’t gratuitously change those facts to meet a didactic agenda.

Let’s have another cup of coffee, let’s have another piece of pie

The New Neo Posted on by

Come on, sing along with neo-neocon:

Just around the corner,
There’s a rainbow in the sky,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Trouble’s like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let’s have another cup of coffee,
And let’s have another piece of pie.

Why? Well, according to a long-term study of low-fat diets, (via the New York Times; via Austin Bay), they don’t help.

At least, they didn’t help half of a group of 49,000 women between the ages of 50-79, who for an eight-year period reduced their fat intake from an average of 35-37% of their diet to an average of 24-29%.

Those in the diet/health business aren’t sure what the results mean. They criticize it for not testing a large enough reduction in fat, or for not intervening long enough, or for not targeting the fat content by type of fat. And it is true that, like most studies of the sort, this one can be criticized on many grounds. But it is also true that it was large enough and long enough to have shown more effects than it did.

Actually, there was a modest decrease in the incidence of breast cancer, a change that didn’t approach the statistically significant level. But that’s about it, and it could well have happened through chance alone–that’s why we test for statistical significance.

The results are news. But it’s not news that one day we are told by doctors to do one thing, and then the next day it reverses (as Dr. Sanity points out, Woody Allen–back when he was still funny, long long ago–made a good joke about that in “Sleeper.”) I have been heartened by the dictum in recent years that eating certain kinds of nuts is good; likewise that the cholesterol in shrimp and other seafood doesn’t matter at all. And every now and then I am so bold as to eat an egg.

But I have also found that, for myself, certain foods just make me feel lousy, and I’ve come to respect that and to generally avoid them. Oh, they don’t make me feel lousy while I’m eating them–au contraire! It’s afterwards that I pay.

Sugar, for one. It just doesn’t seem to agree with me, and I feel better when I cut it out, although that’s not easy. High salt foods are another.

But for me, the worst of it is that a few years ago I started having regular migraines. By “regular,” I mean very often. They weren’t usually of the variety where I had to take to my bed in a darkened room (although sometimes they were; it was unpredictable). But they made me miserable nevertheless.

It turned out that there were a couple of food triggers for the migraines, but the worst one by far was chocolate. Chocolate!! Even a little bit was enough to start the headache up (often preceded by those lovely flashing zigzag light shows), sometimes within just a couple of hours.

It was hard to accept that I couldn’t eat chocolate any more. Until that point I’d no idea how much I liked it–or just how often, when I chose a special dessert in restaurant, it would be a chocolate one. After a subsequent difficult but rewarding year of no chocolate–and very few headaches–I decided, at Christmas time, to give myself a treat. I went to a Godiva store and bought a box. After all, if I was going to indulge, why not have some of the good stuff?

I don’t remember the exact quantity I ate that evening, but it was certainly significantly less than a pound, but more than a piece or two. I was prepared to have a headache the next day, but I’d factored that in already. And indeed, I did have a headache the next day.

And the next day. And the next day. In fact, I had a headache that lasted two weeks, from that one evening of indulgence.

That was a few years ago, and it was my last chocolate fling. Now, when I look at the stuff, it doesn’t tempt me in the same way. But I musn’t get arrogant: it’s one day at a time.

Humor in the Moslem/Arab world

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems to be a hot topic today, so I thought I’d do a few links:

At Dean Esmay’s, Mary Madigan points out that humor about Mohammed was not always verbotan in the Moslem world.

Dr. Sanity has an excellent post on the different varieties of humor and the function they serve.

And then there’s this.

Unfortunately, I can’t find the appropriate link right now despite searching–but I recall shortly before the Iraqi War reading an article about the Iraqi people and their culture. It mentioned that the Iraqis were known throughout the Arab world for their sense of humor.

I thought at the time that, if true, this was indeed a hopeful sign for the future of the country. And, since the end of the war, I’ve noticed evidence of an excellent sense of humor on many of the Iraqi blogs (notably, Iraq the Model). A good thing; they’ve needed it, and will continue to need it.

More arguments about Israel/Palestine

The New Neo Posted on by

This post is based on one of those comments of mine that grew and grew until I realized I’d written what almost amounted to an article. So, why not make it one?

Well, one reason is that arguments about Israel and Palestine are rather like a circle dance, round and round and round, and in the end, people usually end up pretty much where they began. I’ve read many such discussions on other blogs, and listened to many in person (even participated in a few at times, as you might imagine).

The same arguments, over and over. The information is out there, but it takes time to read and sift through, and few are willing to do so. Even fewer are willing to do so with open minds. In this, perhaps it’s not all that different from many other issues.

Without getting too far ahead of my own “change” story, I want to say that until a few years ago I was one of those “cycle of violence” folks on the topic of Isreal. As part of my post-9/11 education, I spent an incredible number of hours reading about the topic online: pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sites in fairly equal measure. And I came to the conclusion that Israel–which, like any nation, is imperfect and flawed–has the stronger case.

I’m not going to devote this blog to arguing that issue. The information is out there; you can do your own research. So don’t expect any sort of exhaustive point-by-point discussion here, or tons of links.

However, in the comments section of my post discussing the Irgun/Hamas comparison, an anonymous commenter offered some of the classic anti-Israel arguments here. I responded to some of them in a comment of my own, and I’d like to repeat and discuss a few of my remarks (follow the links if you want the full text of anon’s comment and my response; I’m only dealing with some of the points here).

First, an observation: I’ve noticed that commenters who disagree with me sometimes misunderstand what I’ve written. I’ve wondered about this quite a bit–surely there’s enough to disagree with in what I’ve actually written; there’s no need to twist it or misunderstand it to find fault. But I’ve become convinced that (and this probably happens on both sides) when a person is emotionally incensed about a discussion, and is engaged in reading something on the “other side,” it’s especially easy to fall into the trap of misunderstanding what has been said. I’d really like my critics (and even my defenders!) to be aware of this potential problem, and to try to stop misreading or putting words into my mouth, or into the mouths of others.

An example is the following, from the comments in the Irgun/Hamas thread:

Commenter “anonymous” writes:

Neo-neocon: “I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers”.

A most stunning intellectual leap. Imagine that, “even go so far” as to “speculate” Irgun intended to kill an English soldier? I certainly stumbled onto a cutting edge site here.

..You’re damned right they intended to kill British soldiers, I know, my father (Irgun) was one of them (again so did Palmach, the Stern Gang and Haganah).

But in fact, when I wrote, “I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers”” I was writing about the King David Hotel incident only. In the very next sentence, I wrote: “in fact, if you read the Irgun links, you will see that there were definitely other Irgun operations that had the explicit purpose of killing British soldiers and which did accomplish that end, as well as killing some others into the bargain,” thus explicitly saying that, whether or not the Irgun intended to kill British soldiers at the King David, they most definitely targeted them in other operations.

So, commenter anonymous did not understand (or pretended not to understand) my point, and I wanted to clear that up.

But more importantly (and this is really why I’m highlighting anon’s comments here), I think that he/she offers an excellent example of what have become the standard arguments against Israel. As such, anon (although he/she no doubt has his/her own special history and agenda) is an excellent example of a certain approach to the issues involved.

Once again, to refute the comments point by point would take years. The arguments about the unfairness/fairness of Israel’s offers at Camp David are a case in point. One can go to countless websites online and read the pro-con. As stated before, I spent many long hours reading both sides carefully and tried to do so with as open a mind as possible. I became convinced that Arafat was offered a decent (not perfect, but pretty decent) deal but refused it because he was an utterly corrupt “leader” who most definitely could not change. He sold his people down the river, and had been doing so for decades. Subsequent events and revelations certainly bore that out; anyone who thinks Arafat had his people in mind is ignoring the preponderance of the evidence against the man (here’s an excellent article on the subject from the Atlantic Monthly, by the way, if you’re interested in reading more).

I believe that anonymous’s bias was revealed in this statement of her/his:

There are many reasons why Israel didn’t write down it’s true aims on paper, as Hamas has, foremost being the necessary illusion that Israel, and it’s western backers, stand for something decent.

So, Hamas gets points for honestly stating its desire to obliterate Israel, whereas Israel is hiding its true aim–which I can only conclude that anon believes is an analogous desire to obliterate the Palestinians and all its Arab neighbors? And, indeed, there is a group in Israel which believes that Israel should take over all of historical Palestine (although not all the Arab countries). But they are a minority and do not represent what Israel stands for, which is indeed something “decent.” My guess is that anonymous knows that, and chooses to ignore it for purposes of sophistry.

Anonymous also writes: “The Palestinians on the other hand have, well, ..nothing, do they? Only hate, and who can blame them. Perhaps a reason for their ‘terrorism’?”

This is the classic excuse for Palestinian suicide bombers, which I’ve discussed at some length previously, here.

Indeed, however, the Palestinians have been misused and shunted around by their Arab “friends,” and kept isolated and as second-class citizens in “camps” administered by a corrupt UN and “leaders” such as Arafat who’ve rob them blind and reign through terror. Yes, it’s unfortunate, but don’t blame Israel for that.

Anonymous also offers the following as the explanation for the Palestinians’ refusal in 1947 to accept the state that was offered them by the UN partition:

In 1947 the U.N. “offered” the Palestinians to be ruled under a non-Palestinian, the Hashemite King of Jordan (more malable to western interests then the troublesome Mufti of Jerusalem). I wonder if the Jews would have accepted the State of Israel ruled by ..the Pope? In other words the Palestinians were offered nothing. No homeland anyway.

My response:

I am relatively certain you are quite aware that the objections to the formation of the Palesinian state in 1947 did not rest on problems with a Hashemite king, although that may have not been to their liking, either. You no doubt know that the entire kingdom of Jordan was carved from Palestine, also, and that early in the game the Palestinians did not consider themselves to be a distinct people from the Jordanians. That came later. The Jordanians managed to accept their king, somehow. The objection to the creation of Palestine was that it coincided with the creation of Israel. Israel was unhappy with many elements of the deal, also, but they accepted it. The Palestinians did not. It is a great tragedy.

And ah, yes, that “troublesome” Mufti of Palestine, less malleable to Western interests. It would be helpful if you would level as to the truth about that troublesome Mufti (see this and this). No doubt the Mufti would have made a completely acceptable head of a Palestinian state at its creation–acceptable to Hitler, that is, had he still been alive.

Anonymous also writes the following:

As for “the goals of Israeli’s” and Jews it’s worth mentioning that prior to the creation of Israel, many, if not a majority of Jews were against a solely Jewish State. They (Jews at the time) were predominantly socialist and communist, and saw such a State, based solely on race and religion, as inherently undemocratic, “the Siamese twin” of that other purely despised racist State, facist Germany. That nothing fruitful could come out of something so unjust was clear to them. They were right.

I have no doubt whatsoever that many Jewish residents of the area prior to the creation of Israel were in fact Socialist and Communists, and no doubt many didn’t want Israel to have a solely Jewish identity. But anonymous must know that he/she is distorting the facts about Israel’s identity and its so-called racism. In fact, the shoe is on the other foot. Jews are not allowed to be residents of Israel’s Arab neighbors, whereas Arabs constitute one-fifth of the population of the country of Israel. I am fairly certain that anonymous knows that fact, but chooses to ignore it for his/her own purposes, and instead to use the despicable comparison to its “Siamese twin,” fascist (ie, Nazi) Germany.

In an interesting irony, that is a comparison worthy of Goebbels (and I don’t care who made it, even if those persons are Jews; it is still worthy of Goebbels to call Israel a Siamese twin of Nazi Germany). I don’t mean this as sophistry, either; I mean it as the literal truth: it is a statement worthy of Goebbels in its use of the Big Lie. But of course, as Goebbels himself said, if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes the truth.

Once again, let me reiterate that this post is not meant to be any sort of definitive and exhaustive discussion of Israel and Palestine. My purpose is merely to highlight a few points. My arguments here are not to convince those such as anonymous (an impossible task, anyway). I am simply attempting to respond relatively briefly, in an effort to clear up some things in the record.

For further information, I refer you once again to the following website (and, believe me, this is just the tip of the iceberg): Mideast Web. You can do a search and find countless other pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian sites that offer information. My guess is that many of you have already done so, and have formed your own opinions.

Hamas is a difficult (or impossible?) thing to change

The New Neo Posted on by

A question posed by the folks at Augean Stables:

Michael Portillo, Conservative Member of Parliament for Kensington and Chelsea (UK) hopes that Hamas will change. He makes the following analogy in an Op-Ed piece in the London Times:

Terrorist organisations do sometimes metamorphose into law-abiding political parties. Anything is possible if Menachem Begin, once leader of the Irgun movement that carried out the murderous attack on British forces in Jerusalem ’s King David hotel, could go on to be Israel’s prime minister and a Nobel peace prize winner.

I heard this analogy many times (including by those who are strong supporters of Israel, such as Michael Portillo). Israelis were once terrorists and then changed. The same will happen with the Palestinians. My question is: is it a fair analogy?

Well, there’s a short answer, a long answer, and a very long answer. The very long one could be a multi-part series (oh no, another?) Perhaps some day I’ll tackle it. But today I’ll take the (relatively) short route.

The history of Israeli terrorism, and the definition thereof, is complex. One problem with looking up the history of Israeli terrorism online–where I’ve done most of my research so far– is that most of the websites offering information have a rather transparent agenda, either pro-Israel or con. Now, having an agenda doesn’t mean that a site can’t offer correct and objective information. But it certainly can make it hard to evaluate the truth and completeness of the information one finds there.

From my own rather brief foray into researching the topic, my impression is that one of the better sites for general information about the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict is this one. The article is long, but I think you’ll find it worth reading if you’re interested in the details.

The oft-cited example of the bombing of the King David Hotel, mentioned in the London Times op-ed piece quoted by Augean Stables, is one of the most famous instances of Israeli terrorism. The details of that event are shrouded in a certain amount of mystery, but the preponderance of evidence (check out that link, and the ones that follow this paragraph) seems to make it fairly clear that the bombers only intended to demolish the building and some incriminating documents within it. A warning was delivered by the Irgun in enough time for the inhabitants to have evacuated, and this warning was apparently ignored or the evacuation bungled (it’s not clear which).

But some may deny or question that fact. What’s the truth? Here are some further sites on the subject: this and this.

What of the case for the other side? I’ve spent some time searching for the Palestinian viewpoint on the King David Hotel bombing. My search couldn’t be called exhaustive, but it wasn’t brief, and all I’ve been able to find are the usual cursory references to the bombing as terrorism, and the fact that people were killed–nothing that contradicts the official Israeli story. (I found an article at Al Jazeera on the subject, but I’ve lost the link and can’t find it now–I’ll try to recover it later).

So as best we can conclude from the historical record, the King David Hotel bombing differed in many important respects from the usual terrorism employed by a group such as Hamas. The site had strategic value, and a warning was given. If we concede that the King David bombing was only intended to destroy the building rather than the people in it, and that it went horribly wrong, then I think it’s clear it should have been called an act of sabotage rather than terrorism.

But those who place a bomb in a building loaded with people, even for purposes of sabotage and with a warning, are aware that they are putting those people at risk. I’ll even go so far as to speculate, for the sake of argument, that the Irgun actually intended to kill British soldiers, and even understood that some civilians might die in the process. If so, this would certainly have made the bombing a terrorist act–and, in fact, if you read the Irgun links, you will see that there were definitely other Irgun operations that had the explicit purpose of killing British soldiers and which did accomplish that end, as well as killing some others into the bargain.

But even so, are all terrorist acts the same? Are terrorist attacks that target only soldiers always morally acceptable for that reason, for example? I don’t think so, but I absolutely refuse to put them on the same moral plane as purposely targeting as many civilians (including women and children) as possible. I think there is a hierarchy of terrorist acts, and that the latter is considerably more heinous.

So, did the Irgun ever target Arab civilians rather than British soldiers? The plot grows thicker here, and murkier. Here are two interesting articles on the history of the Irgun: this and this. The first site is the official Irgun site, but it seems relatively straightforward; the second, of course, is Wikipedia, which has its own drawbacks.

In fact, speaking of drawbacks, take a look at this. It gives you an idea of the quicksand into which one almost immediately sinks when attempting to research this area. It’s a discussion of whether many of the alleged Irgun attacks (especially some on Arab civilians) in fact happened, and whether they can be attributed to Irgun. It’s way beyond the purview of this post to even try to sort it out right now. But again, for the sake of argument only, let’s just say that some attacks on Arab civilians occurred, and that Irgun was responsible. This would make the Irgun/Hamas analogy more tenable. However, there still remain many differences, which I will get to in a moment

Getting back to the original question–whether Hamas is likely to undergo some sort of change and renounce the use of terrorism, as Irgun did–it is extremely important to look at context. Much Israeli terrorism existed in the shadow of World War II and the Holocaust, and was a desperate attempt to allow the Jews of Europe a place to emigrate when all other avenues were largely blocked. The terrorism was always considered temporary and strategic, with the long-term goal of driving the British out of the country and establishing the only Jewish refuge on earth.

Some, of course, would say this is the goal of Hamas re Israel: driving out the “occupiers,” and creating a Palestinian homeland. However, the history is quite different: for one thing, the Palestinians had a chance for their homeland in 1947, and refused to take it. Also, take a look at their charter and study it; see whether you think it resembles the goals of the Israelis in regard to the British, or if you think Hamas would be satisfied if the Israeli “occupiers” left the current area known as Palestine, and whether Hamas would allow Israel to exist.

Another very important difference is in the context of the societies involved: among the Israelis there were, and are, no generations systematically and broadly steeped and educated in deepest hatred (although no doubt there are individuals), no children wearing bomber belts in parades, no glorification of the act of bombing as martyrdom, no deliberate intent to maximize the number of women and children as casualties. In fact, there have been no deliberate martyrs, as far as I know; the perpetrators of the Irgun bombings wished to live. There was/is no glorification of killing and death itself, no nihilistic fury, except by one or two random individuals.

Israeli society as a whole has consistently condemned terrorism, whereas Palestinian society has come to embrace and elevate it. This, along with the careful education of an entire generation in hatred of Israelis and Jews, is one of the most unfortunate and deepest obstacles to any change in Hamas.

In summary, I don’t think the analogy to Irgun is a valid one; there are too many points of difference.

Is change impossible for Hamas, then? I would never say “impossible,” especially if we are looking at change over a very lengthy time. But is it likely to happen, if only the Palestinians can get their own country, as occurred with Irgun? My answer is a most definite “no,” although I sincerely hope I’m wrong.

Welcome back, Nelson Ascher

The New Neo Posted on by

I am very happy to announce that Nelson Ascher is back and blogging at his old address, Europundits.

If you’re unfamiliar with Ascher, it’s probably because he’s been away from blogging for quite some time. After several years of fairly regular blogging, his entries became almost nonexistent for the first part of 2005, and then totally dried up. Apparently, work and family sorrow intervened: specifically, the death of his elderly father.

He was one of my favorite bloggers back when I was a rabid consumer of blogs and not yet a producer. When I first set up my own blog I put Ascher on my blogroll immediately. I kept him there all this time mainly out of respect, long after I assumed he’d stopped blogging forever. I’ve been thinking I really should get around to deleting that link, and then–lo and behold!–I happened to idly click on it today, apropos of nothing, and discovered to my surprise and delight that he was writing again.

You may ask: who’s Nelson Ascher? He’s Brazilian, for starters. Despite the name of his blog “Europundits”, he now resides (as best I can determine) in Sao Paulo primarily, although he was living in Europe when he began his blog some years ago.

Ascher is not only a blogger. He is also a poet, in fact one of Brazil’s best-known and highly regarded; also an essayist, journalist, and translator. His style of writing in his English-language blog is forthright, fluid, bold, and conversational, all at once.

Ascher is the child of Holocaust survivors who fled Hungary after the war and emigrated to Brazil in the early fifties, with a brief stop in Israel along the way. He is a Brazilian native, but that parental history informs much of what he writes and is part of his unique perspective. Ascher is wide-ranging, as you might expect: he muses on politics, poetry, and whatever happens to suit his fancy and catch his interest.

Of special interest to me is the fact that Ascher is another post 9/11 “changer.” A liberal all of his life until that event, he has described his change thusly:

Look, I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in the supernatural.

But let’s say I’m walking along a deserted street around midnight and I see a vampire, with extra-long canines, sucking blood from a girl’s neck. There’s a mirror somewhere close by where I can see the girl but not the vampire. Then the girl reaches for a crucifix and, thouching the vampire with it, burns his skin and makes him run away. I know I’m not under the effect of booz or drugs. Later, as I get in touch with her, she confirms the story. People living where the event took place saw it from their windows and they also confirm it. Let’s say I reach logically the conclusion there actually was a real vampire right there.

Now, I won’t be able to say that my worldview remains the same as before and that what happened was just a meaningless exception to it….

Before 911 I was a social-democrat, a liberal. I thought the worst things in human history were either over of confined to small isolated groups operating in the world remotest places. There would be no nuclear war, world war, genocides in the developed world, mainstream anti-Semitism in Europe, large scale religious wars and so on anymore .

We lived in a new age of reason and human rights. Most of mankind had reached rational maturity.

On 911, however, I had to repeat with TS Eliot: “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” or “Humankind cannot bear much reality.”

I spent a month or so coming to terms with the fact that I had to change my whole worldview, that it wasn’t just a matter of some derranged terrorists and of an isolated incident.

My view of Europe and the Muslims, democracy and dictatorship, the Arab-Israeli conflict, human rights and the Euro-American left, the UN and the EU, of the late 20th century and the post-Cold War world, Clinton and Bush and Chirac and Blair and Schré¶der and Putin, of religion and secularism, of many intellectuals, writers, philosophers and movie-makers, even of human nature had to change.

There was almost nothing in my mind that didn’t have to be seriously reconsidered. This was the meaning of “everything has changed” for me: there actually are mosters, vampires, werewolves, death-cults and, besides, people I considered perfectly reasonable and rational were their objective allies and rooted for their victory.

That gives you a bit of the special flavor of Ascher’s style of thinking and writing. I’ve missed his voice in the blogosphere, and I offer a hearty welcome on its return.

[ADDENDUM: I wrote the following in the comments section, in response to those who felt that Ascher’s post-9/11 change was motivated by fear. I thought it was important enough to reproduce it here in the main thread:

I am quite puzzled at those who assume Ascher’s “change” experience was motivated by fear. That’s not my impression at all.

There is not a word of fear in his essay, at least as I see it. There is merely shock at the existence of people whose motives and actions are far worse than he had expected, and a resultant abandonment of his previous idea that we are all rational, reasonable, and kindly-disposed actors here. And an amazement that many of his seemingly rational and kindly friends were rooting for the victory of those who would be out to destroy us and the virtues and accomplishments of the Enlightenment.

This is what caused him to change his view of the world: the knowledge that the world was different than what he had thought it to be.

I also think it’s interesting that some of you are so eager to leap on the bandwagon of fear as an explanation. This seems to be, as I wrote here, a newly popular way to slam those who have undergone the change. But it totally ignores what’s going on here.

Perhaps what’s going on with people such as myself and Nelson Ascher is just too threatening, and it is easier to chalk it all up to some sort of fearful reactivity rather than a cognitive reorganization, based on facts.

I would like to add that you may not agree with that cognitive reorganization, and you may even dispute the facts, but don’t distort and belittle the motivation and the process by which the change occurred. If you’ve read my “change” series, you should know better than that.]

Tolerance and intolerance: the anti-cartoon jihad

The New Neo Posted on by

So far I haven’t written about the recent uproar sparked by the publication of cartoon depictions of Mohammed. It’s been covered so thoroughly by others that there wasn’t anything I felt I needed to add.

Especially good roundups and discussions are to be found at Michelle Malkin’s blog (just scroll down; there are quite a few), at Alexandra’s All Things Beautiful (see this and this), as well as at Gates of Vienna (scroll down for many posts).

But it seems I feel the need to add a few thoughts of my own.

What percentage of European Moslems is represented by the fiery protesters, the ones calling for death and destruction? (Please take a look at these photos to see the sort of thing I’m talking about). I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone knows. I tend to think most people lack a natural bent for fanaticism, so my guess is that they are not in the majority.

But that’s just a guess. More importantly, it may be irrelevant. If an extremist minority is sizeable enough, angry enough, active enough, and well-armed enough, it can do a great deal of harm; especially if the majority is silent, and is cowed by that minority.

So I’m really not interested in speculating on what the majority of Moslems in Europe or even in a moderate country like Indonesia believe, and I’m even willing to concede for the sake of argument that they’re not in sympathy with the more extreme protestors. What’s far more important is that the movement which–for want of a better term–I’ll call fanatical Islamicist jihadists (I tried “Islamofascists” for a while, but I’ve since decided to abandon it as an imprecise use of the word “Fascist”) is plenty large, active enough to be a force, angry enough to be taken seriously as a threat, and appears to be seeking to enhance its weaponry (Iran, for example).

So we need to pay attention, and not make excuses or stick our heads in the sand.

I remember back when the fatwa against Salman Rushdie was issued–oh, those innocent days when my ignorance was bliss!–the calls for his death seemed to be a mysterious and surprising anomaly. It was declared by the mullahs of Iran, after all, strange figures who didn’t seem at the time to represent much of anything except their own medieval ways, the law of the land only in Iran.

But that fatwa seems to have represented the rumblings of a strain of Islam that has since become bolder, more widespread, and more vocal. In Europe in particular, this strain has been widely catered to in the name of tolerance and diversity. But the Europeans should have recognized far sooner that this may be another case of feeding an alligator in hopes that it will eat you last.

And that’s because alligators are never sated; they just grow stronger and hungrier when fed. Islamicist fanatics in Europe have sensed that they themselves just might be (in Bin Laden’s memorable phrase) the strong horse and the Europeans the weak. Secular liberal Enlightenment notions of freedom of speech have not caught on with the fanatic Islamicists (no surprise there), probably much to most Europeans’ shock. Or, rather, to fanatic Islamicists, European freedom of speech is a useful tool–good when it supports Moslem causes, bad when it does not.

I’ve written before that one pitfall of tolerant societies is tolerance of the intolerant. When all alternate beliefs are respected and supported, what happens to those who, in the name of the tolerance of others for them, seek to impose their beliefs that freedom of speech be limited to that which does not offend them?

At that point a society must choose, and that’s the point Europe is facing at the moment. I have written about this “tolerance of intolerance” question before, here. But I think it bears repeating:

Tolerance should not be tolerant of intolerance, or it sows the seeds of its own destruction.

Why do I call the Moslem demonstrators “intolerant?” Well, take a look at the posters and their slogans, for starters. For an offense of “mere words,” they are demanding the death penalty (unlike, for example, demonstators against the “piss-Christ” art exhibit in Brooklyn. The “piss-Christ” controversy, however, is the closest analogy I can think of in which Christians are making the demands. I hope to deal with the similarities and differences between the present controversy and that earlier one in a subsequent post; the issues involved are so huge that if I were to discuss them here, it would make this post even more unwieldy than it’s already turning out to be).

The intolerance of Islamicist extremists runs very deep: they feel that they should be able to impose their own standards on the European societies they have entered but not embraced. In their successful attempt–encouraged by European tolerance–to keep their own customs and religion and culture, they have failed to adopt the most important tenet of Enlightenment thought: the idea that they cannot dictate their own mores to others.

There are extremists in every religion, to be sure. These extremists ordinarily believe that others who don’t follow their extreme ways are sinners. Often, they also believe that others who don’t follow their ways will be punished, either in this life or the afterlife. But even among these religious extremists, the vast majority believes that each individual decides these things for him/herself, and that the extremists cannot demand that others follow their ways or die. The extremists may indeed feel morally superior to others in their customs and beliefs, and seek to convert people to those beliefs. But that’s where it usually ends.

For example, some religions prohibit card-playing or dancing, but only for those who have embraced that religion. The esoteric and doctrinal rules of conduct for each religion are ordinarily limited to practitioners of that religion, and enforcement is ordinarily through persuasion and threats of divine punishment, as well as ostracism at times.

Fanatical Islam is quite different. It is the only religion I’m aware of that offers death as the punishment for apostasy (this offense, as well as blasphemy, was the reason behind the anti-Rushdie fatwa). And please don’t bring up the fact that in medieval times there were similar penalties against blasphemy in Christianity; we are not talking history here, we are talking about the present. There is no modern movement of any size in any other major world religion that has failed to embrace tolerance of other religions to the degree that Islam has failed to do so, and none that prescribes the Draconian death penalty for leaving the fold.

Because Islam is a religion, its extremists have gotten a great many passes in the name of tolerance. But not everything about a religion must be tolerated, simply because it is a religious belief (in fact, I’ve written an entire post on this topic). However, many fanatical Islamists feel they should not only be tolerated, but that the secular societies in which they live have a duty to accede to the demands of Islam–for example, that the prophet Mohammed not be depicted in a cartoon in any way that could be construed as negative.

That this demand conflicts with freedom of speech is of no import to those who are demonstrating. They believe their cause to be a higher one which trumps freedom of speech. They either do not understand–or do not care–that the societies in which they live disagree.

But we shouldn’t be too surprised that they think they can make these demands, and that Europe will listen. And indeed, who could blame them? Everything in their experience has led them to that notion. In retrospect, the furor over the alleged Koran-abuse incidents at Guantanamo was merely a warm-up act. Islamicist extremists not only think that their beliefs should triumph over the Enlightenment beliefs of their new countries for reasons of moral and religious superiority, but they believe that their beliefs will do so because their experience has been that Europeans will almost always capitulate.

Whether this capitulation by European countries is in the name of tolerance and respect, or of fear of the consequences, is probably not of great importance to the Islamicist extremists. What’s important is that they think they have found the soft underbelly of Western Enlightenment nations, and plan to exploit it.

As I wrote earlier:

It’s like one of those brain twisters–those paradoxes or syllogisms or whatever they were called–in a course I took so long ago and dropped before I flunked it: symbolic logic. The idea is that, if one takes a certain principle to its extreme, it very often will be found to contain an internal contradiction… Tolerance applied without any distinction can become a trap. That way lies madness–not to mention the seeds of the destruction of tolerant societies themselves.

There are certain universal legal principles that are based at least partly on religious ones: the prohibition against murder, for example. But our Western society has separated church and state, and therefore those religious rules that have not been adopted into the secular legal system are not going to be enforced by that system. Blasphemy has not been a crime in the US for an awfully long time, for example.

Likewise, those acts that violate that secular legal system–for example, polygamy in Utah; or the refusal of some Seventh Day Adventists to allow their children needed blood transfusions –are, at least theoretically, prosecutable, even though those practicing these acts may be citing religious beliefs in their own defense. Although people in our society are most definitely entitled to their religious beliefs, they are not entitled to act on those beliefs in ways that violate secular law.

Similarly, they are not allowed to forcefully and violently impose those beliefs on others who do not share them. Abortion is a good example. Those who oppose abortion out of religious conviction are allowed to preach and to speak out against abortion, and also to peacefully demonstrate against it. Most certainly, they are allowed to refuse to have abortions themselves–no one is forcing abortions on them. But when a few–a very few–religious extremists cross the line into the murder of or injury to abortionists or their clients, then those religious extremists are to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The bottom line is that members of a society must adhere to the rules of that society or face the consequences. Islamicist fanatics in Europe see their opportunity to remake the rules, and see a chink in the armor of Europe’s Enlightment secularism. How Europe chooses to respond will help to determine the course of its own future, and perhaps much more.