Big and Strong as a Palm Tree

New Year 2012 Agenda!

2012-01-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to all those that follow my blog!

In the winter of 2012, I will teach 4 courses at the TEC de Monterrey (Campus Queretaro):

1) International Politics
2) European Politics
3) International Relations Theories II
4) Islamist Movements in the Middle East.

This year I also intend to publish my book The French New Right: Three More Interpretations, publish more peer-reviewed articles, and give talks in diverse locations.

May all your dreams come true in 2012!

Warmest regards,

Tamir Bar-On

Ninth Article!!!

2011-11-07T11:56:00.000-08:00

My ninth peer-reviewed article just appeared in the Mexican peer-reviewed journal Retos Internacionales. The article is entitled “Is the New Left today’s French New Right?,” Retos Internacionales 5 (Fall 2011), pp. 85-105.

All the best,

Tamir Bar-On

Fall and Winter Projects

2011-09-12T10:53:00.000-07:00

I hope you are all well! I am now into my sixth week of teaching at the TEC de MONTERREY (CAMPUS QUERETARO). This term I am teaching the following courses:

1) International Relations Theories 1

2) Geopolitics

3) Citizenry and the New Europe

4) Islamist Movements in the Middle East.

In addition, I have changed the title of my second book. It is now called The French New Right: Three More Interpretations. I anticipate that it will be out in 2012.

Second, I am working on two other books, an edited collection called Global Violence: A Reader and The 11 Lessons of Football. Those are longer-term projects for 2013 or 2014 respectively.

All the best,

Tamir Bar-On

Eighth Peer-Reviewed Article

2011-07-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

This month Patternsof Prejudice, a peer-reviewed journal from London, will publish my eighthpeer-reviewed article:

Tamir Bar-On, “Transnationalismand the French nouvelle droite,” Patternsof Prejudice, 45 (3).

A link to the journal below:

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0031322X.asp

New Book Project: Football (Soccer), Politics, and Culture

2011-05-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

My second book, The French New Right: Three More Interpretations, is currently with my publisher. I am waiting for the proofs and hope that the book will be published by the fall or early 2012.

My new project is a book uniting my two main passions: football (soccer) and politics/culture.

All the best and a wonderful spring and summer to all of you!!!

Tamir Bar-On

Popular Culture Association Conference

2011-04-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. Tamir Bar-On,

“Is Yesterday’s New Left today’s European New Right?”

OnDr. Tamir Bar-On,

From April 20-23 I will travel to San Antonio (Texas) to give a talk entitled "Is Yesterday's New Left today's European New Right?". The talk is part of a conference organized by the Popular Culture Association and there will be 3,000 participants in San Antonio! See conference details below:

http://www.pcaaca.org/conference/national.php

Tamir Bar-On

Tenure and completion of second book

2011-02-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

I hope that everyone is in good spirits!

The events in the Arab world, the stunning events in the Arab world, have captured our attention worldwide!

And good news for me recently:

1) I received my tenure at the TEC de MONTERREY (CAMPUS QUERETARO).

2) I completed my book The French New Right: Three More Interpretations. It should be out in print this year or next! I will keep you all updated!

Tamir Bar-On

Happy new year!

2011-01-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to everyone!!! Lots of health, love, and joy to all of you!!!

It has been a while since I last wrote in Big and Strong as a Palm Tree!

But I want to update you about my academic accomplishments recently:

1) Reviews of my book Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007) appeared in E-extreme 9 (2) (2008), Journal for the Study of Radicalism 2 (2) (2009), Patterns of Prejudice 43 (2) (2009), E+D (Germany) (2009), Political Studies Review 8 (2010), and Contemporary Review (October 1, 2010).

2) In the past year I published the following pieces:

a) Tamir Bar-On, “The Neo-Fascists Take Rome: How About Toronto or Mexico City?,” Retos Internacionales 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 66-79.

b) Tamir Bar-On, "Revolutions in World History," Retos Internacionales 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 7-8.

c) Tamir Bar-On, “Intellectual Right-Wing Extremism: Alain de Benoist’s Mazeway Resynthesis Since 2000,” in Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau (eds.), The Extreme Right in Europe: Current Trends and Perspectives (Ibidem-Verlag, 2010).

d) Tamir Bar-On, "Quebec Separatist Conflict," in Nigel Young (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Peace (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Tamir Bar-On

A Review of Where Have All The Fascists Gone?

2010-08-18T14:30:00.000-07:00

Below please find a link to a favourable review by Andreas Umland of my Where Have All The Fascists Gone?

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/50960635/Review-of-Tamir-Bar-Ons-Where-Have-All-the-Fascists-Gone

Tamir Bar-On

What's Right?: A Review Essay

2010-08-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

In 2009, the Journal for the Study of Radicalism published a review of my book Where Have All The Fascists Gone? by its editor Arthur Versluis. Here is the review below:

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_for_the_study_of_radicalism/v002/2.2.versluis02.pdf

Tamir Bar-On

"Revolutions in World History"

2010-07-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

I am helping to edit a journal at my university called Retos Internacionales. The new issue is about "Revolutions in World History". Here is my introduction below:

Dr. Tamir Bar-On, "Revolutions in World History"

This year is special in Mexico’s history. It is simultaneously the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s independence and 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. As a result, Retos Internacionales made the decision to explore the Mexican Revolution in the context of other revolutions in world history. I invite you to read the various pieces of “Revolutions in World History” with an eye to the unique historical, political, cultural, economic, and social circumstances surrounding revolutionary processes.

Revolution comes from the Latin word revolutio, meaning “a turn around.” Revolutions come in different forms. A revolution connotes a radical change of the existing political, economic, social, cultural, and institutional frameworks of a society and state. Examples of these types of often violent revolutions include the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and the 1922 Fascist Revolution in Italy. However, a broader understanding of revolutions allows us to examine long-term revolutionary processes with no precise dates, which nonetheless engender profound and radical changes in society, its institutions, and its dominant values. The Industrial Revolution in the latter part of the 18th and 19th centuries is one such example. Another is the Quiet Revolution in Quebec (Canada) from around 1960-66, corresponding to the tenure of Liberal Quebec Premier Jean Lesage. The Quiet Revolution was indeed non-violent. Yet, it represented a profound change in state and societal mentalities; rejection of the conservative, rural-based, clerical, and authoritarian values of the past; and a turn towards processes of modernization, industrialization, secularization, civil rights, national assertiveness, and state involvement in the economy.

Revolutions can result in failure or success for revolutionaries themselves. A major failed revolution is the spectacular worker-students revolts of May 1968 in France. Another is the Zapatista Army of National Liberation’s failed revolution against the Mexican state in the mid-1990s. Do failed revolutionaries go gently into the good night, or continue the fight with different tactics or ideological colours? A successful revolution was the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the worldwide and hypnotic pull of the internationalist, socialist revolution from the late 19th century until the official demise of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union in 1991.

Revolutions all have their springtime of hopes when revolutionaries are able to capture the state and offer radically new models of society and the state and sweep away the old “corrupt” order. Yet, revolutions also have their winters of discontent when the revolutionary ideals of the past are frozen in the coffins of rhetoric. New revolutionaries might arise to call for “a turn around” in which an alternative, radical society is proposed, or return to the "purity" of the original revolutionary ideals. From 1943-45, Benito Mussolini promised to take the pro-Nazi Italian Social Republic towards the original, “leftist”, “corporatist”, and revolutionary values of “movement fascism” in 1919 before Italian fascists captured the state.

Revolutions often have unexpected consequences for their own societies, but also regional and global repercussions. In these respects, the Industrial Revolution, the revolution born of the Information Age, and the biotechnological revolution have impacted diverse regions of the world in different periods with varied consequences. The struggle between competing revolutionary ideologies, whether liberal republicanism, socialism, and fascism, tore asunder Western societies in the 20th century and spawned world wars, totalitarianism, gulags, and concentration camps. Socialist ideas had great transnational pull until the official fall of the Soviet Union in diverse locations such as Nicaragua, Chile, Angola, Algeria, Yemen, Romania, and Vietnam, as well as among the Western and non-Western intelligentsia alike.

Moreover, there are often terrible human consequences with revolutions, but also perceived gains for individuals and societies. In his 1994 work Death By Government, R.J. Rummel estimated that the Stalinist, Maoist, and Hitlerian revolutions killed approximately 100 million people. Yet, revolutions are difficult to stop because they embody the hopes of selected elites or their societies for wholescale political, social, cultural, and economical changes, as well as the modernist desire to raze the “decrepit” order of the past and radically create new people, values, institutions, and even conceptions of time. Do revolutions perhaps represent an irrepressible human desire for change and a better world? The turn away from slave-holding societies in ancient times, or apartheid in South Africa in the mid-1990s were born of a desire for human betterment. The Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries spawned a progressive desire of individuals and societies in Europe to turn away from the static, hierarchical universes of the Church, feudalism, and aristocracy. Its repercussions were eventually felt with the desire of Mexican revolutionaries to achieve social justice in the context of liberal republican and national values. When the United States of America elected Barack Obama as its first ever black President in 2008, liberal republican revolutionaries of the past from Thomas Paine and Patrick Henry to the civil rights movements in the 1960 helped to radically shift mentalities, which made Obama’s victory possible. In short, the Enlightenment set in motion unseen revolutionary processes, which eventually allowed for the rise of the civil rights movement, feminism, gay and lesbian rights, multiculturalism, and the election of President Obama.

Today there are those that question the merits of the Enlightenment project and the notion that through human reason individuals and societies can achieve a better, saner, and more just and free social order. Others like Francis Fukuyama boldly proclaimed the “end of history” and the worldwide triumph of liberalism in 1989 in the context of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. If history has ended, we should ask why the rise of militant pan-Islamism in the mould of al-Qaeda, the proliferation of anti-globalization revolutionaries, or the rise of left-wing revolutionary populism in Venezuela and other parts of Latin America in the 1990s and into the new millennium? Might we say that the rapid spread of global capitalism and its attendant institutions worldwide, as well as the crashing of socialist and fascist revolutionary projects, highlight the demise of totalizing, revolutionary “grand narratives”? Or, might we read Fukuyama’s thesis as a call for human beings to take charge of their own lives and radically re-start history as revolutionary activists, movements, parties, and regimes have done since the erection of human communities?

Tamir Bar-On

International Conference at Universidad de Colima: 10-11 June 2010

2010-06-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

On Friday June 11, 2010, the same day as the opening of the football (soccer) World Cup in South Africa, I will deliver a paper entitled "The Transnational Worldview and Influence of the French Nouvelle Droite" at the Universidad de Colima. I have been generously invited to the conference by Dr. Avital Bloch, the director of the Centre for Social Research at the Universidad de Colima. The conference's name is "International Colloquium of History and Social Sciences."

Tamir Bar-On

Review of Ocalan's Prison Writings

2010-05-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the PKK (pictured above), sits in a Turkish jail since 1999. He has penned a book, Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation (2007), which I reviewed for the journal Millennium in 2008. The review, in conjunction with others, appears on the Web site for Ocalan's publisher. See the review below:

http://ocalan-books.com/reviews.html

As a footnote, Ocalan's lawyers are trying to pass him my review, but Turkish authorities insist it is translated into Turkish first. Ocalan's recent proposals for resolving the Kurdish-Turkish conflict along federalist lines are certainly interesting. A man that once lived by the gun, Ocalan now renounces ultra-nationalism, Marxism, and terrorist violence. Except the Turkish state is not so convinced about his change of heart.

Tamir Bar-On

My Summer Projects: Book, Article in Book, and Journal Article

2010-05-13T16:05:00.000-07:00

As my teaching duties are completed at the TEC of Monterrey (Campus Queretaro) until August, here are my main summer projects below:

1) Write lots of chapters for my book, The French New Right: Three More Interpretations (2011-2012).

2) Complete my chapter on "Intellectual Right-Wing Extremism" for the book edited by Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau entitled The Extreme Right in Europe: Current Trends and Perspectives. The book is a joint project of the UMR Cultures and Societies in Europe (Strasbourg, France) and of the Hannah Arendt Institute for Social Research on Totalitarianism (Dresden, Germany). This chapter will be completed at the end of June.

3) Write an article on the transnational worldview and influence of the French nouvelle droite. I hope to complete this article by next week and send it to an academic journal.

4) Solicit academics from around the world to take part in the Advisory Board for a new journal I am editing at the TEC of MONTERREY called Retos Internacionales.

5) As the picture above shows, hopefully spend some time near a Mexican ocean (I love the Pacific coast!).

Tamir Bar-On

Fifth Academic Article: Nouvelle Droite and Empire!

2010-05-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

Here is the title of my fifth academic article:

"Fascism to the Nouvelle Droite: The Dream of Pan-European Empire," Journal of Contemporary European Studies 16 (3) (December 2008), pp. 327-345.

Here is the abstract below:

The purpose of this paper is to trace continuity in the attachment of the nouvelle droite to a homogeneous notion of pan-European identity since its birth in 1968. Like the nouvelle droite, early post-war neo-fascism and significant fascist elements in Italy were similarly obsessed with the decline of homogeneous pan-European or Western identities. Despite the ultra-nationalistic origins of historical fascism, early post-war neo-fascism and the nouvelle droite in different historical periods, the thread tying them together is the notion of a strong, unified, homogeneous, pan-European empire regenerated in defense against the dominant 'materialist' ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, social democracy, socialism, capitalism and communism.

And the link to the full article:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/37770743/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-The-Dream-of-Pan-European-Empire

By the way, the map above is of the Roman Empire in C.E. 117. The nouvelle droite under its leader Alain de Benoist has stated as its geopolitical preference the recreation of a pan-European empire in which there is a "Europe of a Hundred Flags." Internally, the regions or states would be homogeneous (cleansed of immigrants) led by an imperial centre with an authoritarian, elitist, corporatist bent. Yes to a European union says the nouvelle droite, but no to the capitalist, technocratic European Union of today. A united imperial Europe, the nouvelle droite reasons, would be able to challenge the world's sole remaining superpower and its primary enemy, the liberal capitalist United States of America.

Tamir Bar-On

Fourth Academic Article: Fighting Violence!

2010-04-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Excuse the violent title (!), but here is the name of my fourth academic article:

"Fighting Violence: A Critique of the War On Terrorism," International Politics (42) (June 2005), pp. 225-245.

Here is the link below:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/33418617/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-Fighting-Violence-A-Critique-of-the-War-On-Terrorism-International-Politics-(42)-(June-2005)-pp-225-245

Here is the paper's abstract:

This paper reviews the various ways in which violence is resorted to in the service of political ends. While it is commonly thought that terrorism is an activity that is solely engaged in by political outsiders, this paper will demonstrate that even constitutionally legitimate political entities have been known to themselves engage in terrorist acts. From Robespierre to the World Trade Center, with numerous stops along the way in locations as diverse as Hiroshima, Buenos Aires, and Winnipeg, the paper aims to investigate just what exactly terrorism is, and therefore what the actual object of the war on terror ought to be.

I hope that the piece is useful for understanding the origins of the word terrorism and re-thinking some strategies in respect of the "war on terror". The paper also has a useful definition of terrorism, classifies terrorism along ideological types, and points out that terrorism can be committed by both state and non-state actors. I make no bones about it that governments, the right, and left all tend to excuse their political violence and simultaneously exaggerate the violence of their political foes.

I also have suggestions at the end of the piece for inching us towards a broader culture of peace.

Tamir Bar-On

Academic Leader at TEC of MONTERREY: Dr. Zahar

2010-04-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the pleasure to hear a former colleague at McGill University, Dr. Marie-Joelle Zahar, speak at the TEC of Monterrey (Campus Queretaro). She is now a professor at the University of Montreal. Here is a link to the Academic Leaders' project she was involved with at my university (in Spanish):

http://lideresacademicos.net/node/195

Marie-Joelle Zahar is an expert on militias and war economies. Zahar tries to analyze how militias might exit from the armed struggle, or the reasons why they continue to take up arms after official "peace deals" are signed. As a specialist on fascism and neo-fascism, what we have in common is a focus on political manifestations of violence.

Tamir Bar-On

Memorial for Two TEC students today...

2010-03-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

It is indeed a sad day. Today the TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY, the main campus in Monterrey, has a ceremony for two graduate students tragically killed by stray bullets on March 19, 2010. The two students are Javier Arredondo and Jorge Mercado. A Facebook site on their behalf has already generated close to 4,000 followers:

http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=102480629787015&share_id=106326476063157&comments=1#!/group.php?gid=102480629787015

There are serious questions asked of the Mexican authorities on the site, including why they could not be identified as TEC students.

Today my heart is filled with sadness for the students that will no longer smell the arid, hot sun of Mexico, their families, friends, and colleagues that must endure terrible pain. YOU DO NOT WALK ALONE. This Political Science professor from TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY, CAMPUS QUERETARO, is with you. And so are millions around Mexico. Javier and Jorge, may your souls rest in peace.

Tamir Bar-On

My Third Academic Article!

2010-03-19T13:10:00.000-07:00

In 2003-4, a heated debate about fascism took place in a German journal, Erwagen, Wissen, Ethik. In the debate, Roger Griffin, the esteemed historian of fascism, was invited to write a piece about contemporary fascism's "facelessness." Academics, including myself, were asked to respond to Griffin's article. Intellectuals from Germany, England, Canada, the United States, and numerous other countries responded. What was unique about the debate was the collaboration between German and Anglophone academics on Fascism.

My piece was entitled, “A Critical Response to Roger Griffin’s ‘Fascism’s new faces and new facelessness in the post-fascist epoch,’” Erwagen, Wissen, Ethik (Deliberation, Knowledge, Ethics) 15 (3) (April 2004), pp. 307-309.

The aforementioned article I wrote reappeared in the following book:

“A Critical Response to Roger Griffin’s ‘Fascism’s new faces" in Roger Griffin, Werner Loh, and Andreas Umland, (eds.), Fascism Past and Present, West and East (Ibidem-Verlag, 2006), pp. 85-92.

Here below is a link to the article and all other articles in the debate! A full 77 pages of text!

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/30279013/Dr-Tamir-Bar-On-“A-Critical-Response-to-Roger-Griffin’s-‘Fascism’s-new-faces-and-new-facelessness-in-the-post-fascist-epoch”

Tamir Bar-On

Full Text of My Second Academic Article on the Nouvelle Droite!

2010-03-12T17:15:00.000-08:00

Here is the full text of my second academic article:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/29067549/The-Ambiguities-of-the-Nouvelle-Droite-1968-1999

Please let me know your thoughts on this piece, which got me working on the French nouvelle droite and European New Right for many years!

Tamir Bar-On

My Second Academic Article: Figuring Out the Nouvelle Droite!

2010-02-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

My second academic article was a kind of summary of my Ph.D. dissertation, which I completed at McGill University. It is about how far right-wing intellectuals coped with the post-World War Two period and the official defeat of Fascism.

The title of my second, peer-reviewed academic article is the following:

"The Ambiguities of the Nouvelle Droite, 1968-1999," The European Legacy 6 (3) (2001), pp. 333-351.

The article became cited as one of the standard references on the nouvelle droite, or broader European New Right (i.e., by other academics and in Wikipedia).

Here is the Wikipedia link to the Nouvelle Droite, which cites my name and ideas:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_Droite

And the link to my article:

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713665584&db=all

Tamir Bar-On

My First Academic Article: Football, Politics, and Culture

2010-02-24T18:20:00.000-08:00

In the next few days, I will post my academic work online...It was back in 1997 that I published my first peer-reviewed academic article on the relationship between football (soccer), politics, and culture in Latin America. Check out the abstract and article below and let me know what you think!

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/cgi-bin/abstract.pl?2/4/2.html

http://www.socresonline.org.uk/2/4/2.html

Tamir Bar-On

Back from My Hiatus: At The TEC OF MONTERREY!

2010-02-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I was off managing my move to Queretaro and my new university, the TECNOLOGICO DE MONTERREY (CAMPUS QUERETARO) in Mexico. I teach in the Department of Humanities and International Relations. Here is a link to my university, one of the most highly rated in the Americas:

http://www.itesm.edu/wps/portal?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/migration/QRO2/Quer_taro/

(Please note that there is an English link too...And by the way, I am learning Spanish, but teaching in English. I teach International Relations Theories I and II, European Politics, and Geopolitics)...

Oh yes, and a link to the gorgeous colonial city of Queretaro:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quer%C3%A9taro,_Quer%C3%A9taro

In the next little while, I will post excerpts of my academic work throughout my career.

Peace and abrazos (hugs),

Tamir Bar-On

Morocco's King and Holocaust Awareness

2009-07-28T14:42:00.000-07:00

Morocco's King and Holocaust Awareness

While the Islamic Republic of Iran held a Holocaust denial conference, Morocco's monarch King Mohammed VI is raising awareness of the Holocaust tragedy and its centrality for the Jewish people:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1248277908622&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The stance of Mohammed VI makes me proud. I am a Jew of Moroccan heritage. I have always insisted that Morocco can and will continue to play a vital role in enhancing tolerance between religions and civilizations, as well as promoting Middle East peace. I wish the King well in this righteous endeavour. And hope that the message spreads throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. For peace to come, we must acknowledge the deep suffering of the other, yesterday and today.

Tamir Bar-On

Gaza's Creeping Islamicization

2009-07-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

A top judge in Gaza has insisted that female lawyers must wear the Islamic headscarf:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/26/gaza-judge-female-lawyers_n_245015.html

Hamas has not yet imposed Islamic law in Gaza, but is this a sign of creeping Islamicization? And will Gaza's people stand for such blatant expressions of religiosity? Remember Gaza was once the fiefdom of the left-wing, secularist Fatah faction of the PLO. But the times they are a changin', particularly with the new Islamists in power in Gaza.

Tamir Bar-On

Cheney Wanted to Send US Troops to Buffalo

2009-07-25T04:57:00.000-07:00

Cheney Wanted to Send US Troops to Buffalo

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney pressed to send US troops to Buffalo as part of the post-9-11 war on terror:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/25/troops-american-cities/

From Guantanamo to the US homeland, following the rule of law was not one of Cheney's strength, to say the least.

Tamir Bar-On

US Right-Winger Says Obama Has Chip on Shoulder

2009-07-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

US right-wing columnist Rush Limbaugh cannot get any more partisan and racist than his latest rant against US President Barack Obama:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/24/limbaughs-obama-is-black/

Obama may have won the presidency, but as equality increases so do racist sentiments, ultra-nationalism, and homogeneous conceptions of nationhood from those political movements that fundamentally reject de facto equality.

Tamir Bar-On

A New Fascism Consensus?

2009-07-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

A New Fascism Consensus?

In August, I will begin my new post as Professor in the Department of Humanities and International Relations at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Querétaro in Mexico (ITESM is the acronym in Spanish for Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey). As a political scientist with a specialisations in fascism, neo-fascism, terrorism, and the history of war and peace, I will teach international relations.

Here is a wonderful new academic article from a mentor, the Oxford Brookes University (England) historian of fascism Roger Griffin:

http://roger-griffin.blogspot.com/2009/07/conference-paper-new-new-consensus-on.html

Defining fascism is a monumental task. Griffin has not been shy in respect of this endeavour. His works have sought to highlight a "minimal" definition of fascism: A palingenetic (rebirth) form of populist ultra-nationalism. Other academics like Payne insist that fascism needs a more "maximalist" definition to encompass its negations (what it was against), ideological goals, and organizational framework.

A further question that preoccupies Griffin: Was fascism epochal (inter-war years)? Did it spread beyond Europe? And is fascim possible after the official defeats of the two main fascist regimes in history, Fascist Italy (1922-43) and Nazi Germany (1933-45)?

Questions to chew on...Griffin's paper will surely inform some of the debates with my students and colleagues in my new home at ITESM, Querétaro.

Tamir Bar-On

Blackwater's Dirty Tactics

2009-07-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

Blackwater's Dirty Tactics

Blackwater's name is all that is synonymous with war, greed, the excesses of privatization, and the de-humanization of Iraqi lives. And their tactics are getting dirtier:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090803/scahill

General Sherman once said that war is hell and there is no way we can refine it. A good start might be banning Blackwater and other private contractors from the domain of war.

Tamir Bar-On

Islamists Find Toronto Home

2009-07-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Islamists Find Toronto Home

It is frightening the degree to which Islamists pull the wool over our eyes in both Toronto and Canada at large. Check out this Taliban-loving, death-rejoicing Islamist that is coming to Canada's largest city to set up an Islamic institute:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/21/terry-glavin-canada-s-new-taliban-booster-says-good-muslims-love-death.aspx

Tamir Bar-On

Polish Intellectual Giant Dies

2009-07-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

The Polish intellectual giant Leszek Kolakowski has died:

http://www.slate.com/id/2223212/?from=rss

A leftist with real critical skills, as well as humour and irony in abundance. He will be sorely missed.

Tamir Bar-On

Fayyad: Israeli Settlers Can Stay In Future Palestinian State

2009-07-20T10:11:00.001-07:00

Palestinian Prime Minister surprised last week when he said Jewish Israeli settlers would be able to stay in the West Bank once it achieves full statehood:

http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/fayyad-welcomes-settlers-to-stay-in-a-palestinian-state/

So then why is there such an insistence on a Jewish settlement freeze by the US, EU, and Palestinians? And why have Jews been removed fully from Gaza by Israel under Sharon in 2005? And certainly they have no hope of returning under an Islamist government in Gaza.

Meanwhile in Israel there are over one million Israeli Arab citizens. They are being subject to a terrible loyalty/fifth column discourse by elements of the new right-wing government. At the same time, Israel treats its minority Arab population better than any country in the Middle East.

In the end, Palestinians and Jews are so interconnected in terms of daily life, business, cultural activities, political future, and security that they will both have to ultimately respect minorities in their midst. The sign of any civilized society is ultimately the way it treats its minorities.

Tamir Bar-On

Creepy Republican Right: Obama A Fascist

2009-07-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

Creepy Republican Right: Obama a Fascist

A US senator from South Carolina could not go further in distasteful comparisons by linking US President Barack Obama's administration to Nazi Germany's national socialist ethos:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/18/demint-nationalsocialism-nazi/

Amazing that Obama's quest to give medicare to 50 million Americans without insurance is compared to Hitlerian totalitarianism! Perhaps senator DeMint might read a few standard books about fascism.

Tamir Bar-On

Leonard Cohen: No Ramallah Concert

2009-07-17T15:40:00.000-07:00

Leonard Cohen: No Ramallah Concert

The Canadian singer, poet, novelist, and icon Leonard Cohen was to play in Ramallah in the West Bank. Palestinian activists wanted him to cancel his concert in Israel. The poet of love, faith, and longing said sorry, but can't do that. What a shame now that he won't inspire in Ramallah with his message of hope. See the story below:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jul/14/leonard-cohen-ramallah-gig-cancelled

When will the militant anti-colonial and reactionary left learn that two states, love, and the end of demonisation of both Israel and Palestine is the answer?

Tamir Bar-On

Shifting Sands of Honduran Politics

2009-07-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Shifting Sands of Honduran Politics

Since President Zelaya's ouster/coup in Honduras, the Honduran political situation has been shifting quicker than the washed sands of a Pacific seaside resort. For the latest news, see these two wonderful stories:

http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2009/07/support-for-zelaya-in-honduras.html

http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2009/07/micheletti-and-shifting-sand.html

A political situation is being attempted between Zelaya and current ruler, Micheletti. Of this we should be grateful. Yet, we can be sure that there will be more shifting sands in the Honduran political drama that has gripped an entire continent.

Tamir Bar-On

A Leftist Against the Left

2009-07-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

A Leftist Against the Left

UBC professor and blogger Terry Glavin is a rare bird: A leftist that takes on the faux, reactionary left that claims to want to save the world and always sides with the supposedly oppressed forces of the world. Glavin sees through the left's hollow anti-colonial mantra and its dreadful siding with political Islamism:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/13/terry-glavin-a-leftwing-intellectual-appalled-at-the-reactionary-left.aspx

Three cheers for Glavin: An authentic, thinking progressive that shames the dinosaur left!

Tamir Bar-On

Islamic Iran's Disintegration?

2009-07-14T09:32:00.000-07:00

Islamic Iran's Disintegration?

Moshen Rezai, the leading conservative candidate in the recent rigged Iranian elections, now warns of the Islamic Republic of Iran's possible 'disintegration':

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2009/07/iran-nation-headed-for-disintegration-if-political-crisis-festers.html

As the Islamic Republic of Iran faces growing opposition at home and abroad, it will increase the repressive apparatus of the state. But even the hardest authoritarian or totalitarian states can fall, particularly if they do not have popular legitimacy. In Iran, there is hope that the fall of the regime will come from within. In Iraq, it came from outside. In the Soviet Union, it fell from within. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy fell due to defeat from without. Either way, the days of the mullahs are numbered. A war to prop up national unity might sadly be their last option.

Tamir Bar-On

Russia's Political Future?

2009-07-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Russia's Political Future?

If there is a candidate for a renewed fascism in the new millennium, it is Russia. Loss of national territory and diminishing status in the regional or international communities are fundamental prerequisites for fascism's return. Or the desire for territorial expansionism. When Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany shook the foundations of international politics, they were both seeking to radically reformulate territorial and national borders through colonialist expansionism. Russia might long for the return of territories lost after the fall of the USSR in 1991, but chances of regaining them are slim. Russia's own territory is rife with simmering territorial disputes such as Chechnya and Ossetia.

Yet, for a more optimistic note on Russia's political future, see Deepak Chopra's appraisal of the sleeping Russian "giant":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/will-russia-join-the-worl_b_230773.html

When Chopra asks whether Russia will join the world, does he mean follow the American model of liberal capitalist democracy? Given the history of the Russian czars, Bolshevik and Stalinist totalitarianism, and Putin-led authoritarianism, the chances are slim that Russia will embrace the American or Western models. But the deeper question is whether the world inexorably moves towards a homogeneous, liberal political and economic model on a planetary scale?

Tamir Bar-On

China's New PR War

2009-07-12T09:10:00.001-07:00

China's New PR War

China will not let recent ethnic riots in Urumqi and Kashgar undermine its image in the West. Check out this great story on China's new PR war:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0710/p06s05-woap.html

Now I won't buy the savvy PR strategy of the Chinese communist regime. It was also on display during the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008. It cannot hide the fact that this is the same regime that charges families bullet prices for executing its own citizens. The same regime that is literally destroying Kashgar on the pretext of a potential earthquake collapse in order to "modernize" the Uighurs and destroy their cultural heritage in the process. Located on the ancient Silk Road, Kashgar would certainly be a world heritage city, if the Chinese bothered to apply to make it one. This is China that brought us the dogmatic cruelty of Maoism and its perhaps 50 million dead. The country that suffocates Tibet with its colonial control. The country that jails dissidents like a national past time. The country that shoots at its own people in cold blood, as the rest of the communist world shakes off the yoke of oppression in 1989.

The rulers in Beijing are getting PR savvy for sure. The Chinese economic powerhouse status is impressive. And China will increasingly play a major role in international affairs. Perhaps the major role in international affairs. But the people of China are not merely economic beings or obedient followers of a dying communist faith. They are also freedom-seeking beings longing to express themselves, free of the constraints of the Leviathan-like Chinese state.

Tamir Bar-On

Africa's Future Up To Africans

2009-07-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

Africa's Future Up to Africans

A full text of President Obama's inspiring speech to Africans in Ghana in which he states that "Africa's future is up to Africans":

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/11/obama-ghana-speech-full-t_n_230009.html

If there is one man that can inspire hope and a new renaissance in Africa, it is prince Obama!

Tamir Bar-On

Obama's Blunt Talk in Ghana

2009-07-11T10:28:00.000-07:00

Obama's Blunt Talk in Ghana

US President Obama is in Africa, the land of his ancestors. Being of partially Kenyan African stock, Obama spoke bluntly to the people of Ghana and Africa in general:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/11/obama-in-ghana-africa-not_n_229984.html

Obama chose Ghana for his African visit since he wants to promote a country that has a multi-party democracy and seeks to undermine endemic corruption. A country that is also developing economically and has great promise as a model for all of Africa. If Obama did it, the message to Africans is that they can too.

Tamir Bar-On

Mexican Left's Collapse and Return of PRI

2009-07-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

Mexican Left's Collapse and Return of PRI

In Mexico's mid-term elections, the left took a real battering. And the PRI, the party that held a grip on Mexican power for about 70 years until 2000, has made a comeback. The conservative, ruling PAN under President Calderon was also an election loser. Check out these two excellent stories about Mexico's elections:

http://mexico.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/07/07/priscience/

http://mexico.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/07/08/whats-left/

Tamir Bar-On

Tehran's Genocidal Incitement Against Israel

2009-07-09T07:16:00.000-07:00

The Iranian mullahs are busily killing their own people and would love to dearly wipe out the Jewish people. Now that they thumb their noses at the West with their nuclear course, the anti-Israel genocidal incitement is no joke. An excellent, well-documented piece about Iran's systematic genocidal incitement against Israel:

http://www.spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=5661

The UN and International Court of Justice should try to prosecute Iranian leaders for incitement to genocide. It is a crime against humanity. And it matters that it is the highest political officials of a nuclear-ambitious regime that are engaged in the incitement. All the genocides of the 20th century (and sorry President Ahmadinejad the Palestinian one is not included if you are a serious scholar of genocide!), including the Armenian, Holocaust, Pol Pot (Cambodia), Kurdish (1987-8 under Saddam Hussein known as the Anfal), Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur (Sudan), begin with a systematic pattern of genocidal incitement in the state and civil society.

Tamir Bar-On

Obama Born in Hawaii?

2009-07-08T10:59:00.000-07:00

Obama Born In Hawaii?

An odd story about whether US President Barack Obama was born in Hawaii (USA) or Kenya:

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103294

A strange story with serious political, constitutional, and partisan implications, particularly in the US. But President he remains!

Tamir Bar-On

Xinjiang Burns: Hu Will Miss G-8

2009-07-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

Xinjiang Burns: Hu Will Miss G-8

There were more weekend ethnic riots in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi. As a result of the terrible scenes of bloodshed and vengeance, Xinhua (China's national news agency), reported 156 dead. Han Chinese and Uighur Muslims have long clashed in Xinjiang, which has a secessionist movement that wants to break with China. China will not likely let Xinjiang go because it is oil-rich and would encourage other secessionists within China. As a result of the riots, which saw Uighurs beat Han Chinese to death in the streets, the Chinese President Hu Jintao will skip the G-8 summit in Italy:

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5650SW20090708

Han Chinese are reportedly roaming the city of Urumqui looking for revenge against the Uighurs. Uighurs complain of arbitrary arrests and harassment by the Chinese police and security forces. They also say that jobs, educational opportunities, and upward mobility within the state all favour Han Chinese, who have flooded the region since the Communists won China in 1949. Let us pray for the end of bloodshed and a legitimate political dialogue between Han Chinese and Uighurs. Let us pray for the end of senseless killings.

Tamir Bar-On

Obama Got Iran Wrong?

2009-07-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

Obama Got Iran Wrong?

Yesterday elected and exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya circled the skies over Tegucigalpa, but the Honduran military would not give him the green light to land on Honduran soil. So he headed to Managua, Nicaragua.

In line with the rest of the OAS, Obama had powerful words for the need to restore Zelaya to power in Honduras. This is a contrast with his Iran position, which one New Republic commentator argues suffered from the "Iraq effect" and fear that he would be branded an imperialist meddler in Iranian affairs:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/06/nader-mousavizadeh-obama-s-iran-mistake.aspx

Now the Iranians can go around the world to Buenos Aires in 1994 to bomb a Jewish centre killing 85, but that is not meddling. Or to help form Hezbollah in Lebanon in the early 1980s to extend their regional grip and find favour with the Shi'ite population. No meddling here either. Or to fund Shi'ites in Iraq (including militias) and the Gulf states, as well as Hamas in Gaza. No trace of meddling here either. Go figure!

Tamir Bar-On

Zelaya to Make Honduran Return

2009-07-05T11:29:00.000-07:00

Zelaya to Make Honduran Return

Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has threatened to come back to Tegucigalpa, the nation's capital, today. While Zelaya's authoritarian tendencies were starting to worry people in Honduras and beyond its borders, the role of the military in the coup has troubled all of the Americas. The Organization of American States (OAS) has roundly condemned the generals and the new government, and called for Zelaya's immediate re-instatement.

Today I read one of the more balanced views of the Honduran crisis, which has amazingly seen the US, Canada, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, all in the same pro-Zelaya camp:

http://www.slate.com/id/2222241/?from=rss

Let's hope bloodshed will be avoided. Perhaps a deal can be brokered between Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, the new interim President of Honduras. Fearing OAS reprisals for refusing to re-install Zelaya, Honduras has already withdrawn from the OAS. The Honduran political, business, military, and religious ruling classes are against Zelaya, but it is harder to gauge his level of popular support. Whatever happens, Hondurans fear the dreaded return of the military dictatorship. But, as we have seen when the generals sent Zelaya on a plane to San Jose, the military always lurks in the wings waiting for its opportunity to influence the political future of Honduras.

Tamir Bar-On

Key Clerics Reject Iran Election Results

2009-07-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Key Clerics Reject Iran Election Results

Key Iranian clerics from the holy city of Qom now challenge the recent electoral results in Iran. Check out this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/world/middleeast/05iran.html?exprod=myyahoo

Good news for the Iranian opposition. More cracks in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It won't end with a real struggle, a very mighty struggle, but for now more praise to the brave people of Iran.

Tamir Bar-On

Canadian Arab Federation: Radicalism Uncovered

2009-07-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

Canadian Arab Federation: Radicalism Uncovered

The Canadian Arab Federation was once a voice for tolerance. Not so today. Check out this excellent story about the sad descent into heightened radicalism of the Canadian Arab Federation:

http://blazingcatfur.blogspot.com/2009/07/ali-mallah-tete-one-more-islamist-thug.html

Tamir Bar-On

What is Canada?

2009-07-02T09:40:00.000-07:00

What Is Canada?

A day after Canada's 142nd birthday, 23 quick thoughts on what is Canada?:

1) The collectivist land of "Peace, Order, and Good Government," which often prevails above individual liberty.

2) The land of official, government multiculturalism since 1988.

3) The land of Anglo-French bilingualism and accommodation, but also the land where claims for full Native self-governance (as opposed to autonomy) are crushed.

4) The land of perpetual "death certificates" for Quebecois nationalism, but Quebecois nationalism frequently returns to plague Canada with profound existential crises.

5) The land that loves to say that it is a more caring society than the US in terms of universal medicare, university grants, employment insurance, crime statistics, race relations, quality of life, and international image.

6) The land that if you ask people what Canada is, there will be millions of answers for our 35 million inhabitants.

7) The land that is one of the most de-politicized countries in the world both domestically and in terms of foreign relations.

8) A G-8 and G-20 economic powerhouse.

9) A signatory to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), but a land that knows little about the third signatory nation, Mexico.

10) A signatory and leading player in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

11) The creator of the UN Blue Helmets, the peacekeeping force created by former Prime Minister and Nobel prize-winner Lester Pearson.

12) The land that generally oscillates between English and French-speaking prime ministers, but sometimes I wonder if we are ready for a black, Jewish, or Muslim prime minister in Canada.

13) The land that still has a monarch for the head of state, although we speak the language of democratic governance.

14) The land that saw thousands of Canadian die in two world wars, with over 40,000 killed in WW II.

15) The land that is the second biggest country in the world in terms of area.

16) The land where urban/rural divisions are profound in terms of political allegiances, worldviews, and lifestyles.

17) The land that has produced a very colourful Prime Minister P.E. Trudeau, as well as cultural and intellectual heavyweights such as Leonard Cohen, Alice Munro, Marshall McLuhan, and George Grant.

18) The land where Protestantism, Catholicism, and Native spiritualism are the major religions, but hockey is the national religion.

19) The land where nature, the weather, and winter dominate conversations. I wish we would be more original!

20) The land where you can be a hyphenated Canadian and it is chic, but secretly detested by those non-hyphenated Canadians that see multiculturalism as a sham and waste of money.

21) The land that will still be trying to chart its identity 100 years from today.

22) The land that has a stunning range of natural beauty, unique cultural enclaves, numerous languages, and peoples living peacefully.

23) The land that is the immigrant-receiving society of the world par excellence. Immigrants have built Canada and it is time that merit more fully determine Canadian social, cultural, and political life.

Tamir Bar-On

Morocco: Great Hope For Arab Democracy?

2009-06-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Morocco: Great Hope For Arab Democracy?

As we witness the stunning anti-government protests in Iran, we wonder why no similar protests sweep the Arab world from Morocco and Mauritania to Saudi Arabia and Iraq? Could the kingdom of Morocco be the place where democracy is possible in the Arab world? Check out this piece:

http://www.slate.com/id/2221750/?from=rss

That democracy is not embedded in the Arab world does not mean that it will not be one day. We often make the fallacy that the present politically is the eternal present. That political history is merely static. This is a narrow reading of history. Do we forget the US and French Revolutions abolishing monarchies, the fall of Nazism and Fascism, and the demise of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union in 1991? Or, the fall of empires from the Aztec to the Roman? It will be a struggle, a mighty struggle, and the antiquated political structures will not fall easily. But there are cracks. And this is where the light will shine through both in Morocco and beyond its borders.

Tamir Bar-On

Honduras Coup: Back to the Days of the Generals?

2009-06-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

Honduras Coup: Back to the Days of the Generals?

It has been about twenty years since there was a coup in Latin America. The post-Cold War period ushered in an era of election fever and the retreat of the dreaded, rule of military generals in many nations in the region. Yesterday the military forced Honduran President Manuel Zelaya (pictured above) into exile to Costa Rica. The reaction has been swift from the Organization of American States (OAS) and leftists such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Check out this story on the Honduran crisis:

http://www.slate.com/id/2221716/?from=rss

Let's hope that there is no demonstration effect in the region and we do not return to the days of the Latin American anti-communist 'security state' with its horrific human rights abuses, disappearances, and repression of popular democratic forces. Today our prayers should be with the people of Honduras. I hope that constitutionalism, the rule of law, and the peaceful alternation of power prevails again soon.

Tamir Bar-On

An Unlikely Lebanese Zionist

2009-06-28T09:56:00.000-07:00

An Unlikely Lebanese Zionist

Few people in the Arab world will publicly accept the existence of a Jewish and democratic state (Israel) in their midst. The Lebanese intellectual Brigitte Gabriel swims against this tide:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245924926596&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Gabriel upsets many in the Arab world and the left in Israel and the West. Whatever your political biases, Gabriel's story is worth reading.

Tamir Bar-On

Clerics Say Protesters Working Against God

2009-06-27T20:33:00.000-07:00

Clerics Say Protesters Working Against God

The clerics of Iran now argue that the anti-government protesters are working against God and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Newspapers are closed, professors increasingly detained, and protests are being prevented by a massive security presence in Tehran. No desire by the religious rulers of Iran to open a full investigation into vote rigging. My reply to the clerics: When God made us all, he made a tree filled with political biodiversity.

Tamir Bar-On

Iran and Revolution: The Historical Context

2009-06-26T07:52:00.000-07:00

Iran and Revolution: The Historical Context

Iranians are perhaps at the precipice of another revolution. To understand the historical cycle of political revolutions in Iran, see this excellent piece from The New Republic:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=f21c3ec1-291a-414f-8c4b-4d8d451c50f3

Just as the revolutionary moment comes closer, the repressive apparatus of the Iranian state will certainly accelerate its crackdown on ordinary people, intellectuals, and opposition forces of a religious and secular hue. But I feel this time the people will continue to fight on for their legitimate rights. Repression will not stop the movement of the Iranian people, which is bold, brave, and morally courageous.

Tamir Bar-On

The Iranian Dictator Has The Logic of a Madman

2009-06-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Iranian Dictator Has The Logic of a Madman

Iranian President Ahmadinejad wants US President Obama to apologize to the Iranian nation for meddling in Iranian post-election affairs (i.e., the dictator's cold-blooded crackdown on his own people):

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1095615.html

The Iranian dictator has the logic of a madman. Obama must shut up as justice is denied to ordinary Iranians and they are slaughtered for upholding Section 27 of the Iranian Constitution - the right to peaceful assembly. To add to the madness, this is the dictator that sent child soldiers to die as early as 12 in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). The one that supports genocidal Islamists in Lebanon (Hezbollah). The one that meddles in Iraqi affairs by funding Shi'ite militias. The country that refused to apologize for killing 85 in a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994. The country that killed thousands in a 1989 crackdown on its people, with no apologies to the dead families. The man that has an open Holocaust denial conference and threatens the annihilation of the Jewish state.

So President Obama. You tried to open your arms to the dictator. Enough is enough. Do not pander to the logic of the madman from Iran. He is poison to his people and the entire world. The quicker he goes, the better for all of us. No wonder we hear the words "Death to the Dictator" at the anti-government protests! May the dictator fall quickly. He is merely a paper tiger.

Tamir Bar-On

Obama Finally Gets Tougher on Iran

2009-06-24T12:22:00.000-07:00

Obama Finally Gets Tougher on Iran

US President Obama is finally getting rhetorically tougher on Iran. Check out this story:

http://www.slate.com/id/2221227/?from=rss

The statement still does not go far enough for some Republicans and Democrats, as well as democrats in Iran looking for more US support. My Iranian friends would agree. They say they are neither for the Islamic Republic, nor Mousavi supporters. Both are Islamists and they call for a republic, which separates what belongs to God (church) and what belongs to Caesar (state).

With general strike possibilities in the air and clashes reported near the Iranian parliament today, we can all smell the winds of change in Iran. That is, the same winds of change that were blowing for the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe before the fall of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union.

Tamir Bar-On

General Strike Next?

2009-06-23T06:22:00.000-07:00

General Strike Next?

As the theocrats in Tehran are showing the true, naked brutality of the regime to the entire world, the opposition must be wondering what next? The streets are more militarized with army, police, Basij, and Revolutionary Guards. The streets of Tehran are very dangerous. Snipers fire into crowds from buildings. Hundreds have been arrested and many killed in cold blood.

There are swirling rumours that a general strike might be the next possibility in an effort to put more pressure on the mullahs. The photo above is of the famous 1919 General Strike in Winnipeg (Canada) that paralyzed the city in 1919. The authorities responded violently, including mass arrests and the death of a protester. This Iranian general strike might begin as early as today. Remember the protests also have a socio-economic underpinning, as ordinary Iranians are feeling the economic pinch and the stifling nature of state-led corruption. Remember that if oil workers go on strike, as in 1979 under the Shah of Iran, then the days of the regime are numbered. Oil greases the wheels of the authoritarian mullahs and the lack of revenues from oil could be the beginning of the end for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

To the people of Iran, the peoples of Canada, Israel, Mexico, Morocco, and the world are with you. You are heroes for resisting tyranny and breathing the air of freedom. You do not walk alone in these world historical changing times!

Tamir Bar-On

Angel of Iran: Martyr of Our Times?

2009-06-22T09:22:00.001-07:00

Angel of Iran: Martyr of Our Times?

She was no religiously-motivated suicide bomber, or a martyr dying purposefully to 'liberate occupied lands.' Neda Agha Soltani, now dubbed the 'Angel of Iran,' was gunned down Saturday in Tehran as she got out of her car for a breather on a warm day. She was caught in a wave of protests against the theocratic Ahmadinejad regime. She was likely killed by a pro-government Basij militiaman. The Basij is a revolutionary, people's (volunteer) paramilitary force founded by Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Guide of the Islamic Revolution. The Basij is dedicated to the preservation of the principles of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They take their marching orders from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Here is the Angel's story and the disturbing footage:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1195060/The-YouTube-Martyr-How-Neda-Agha-Soltan-symbol-help-topple-Irans-fanatical-rulers.html

Soltani can now become the martyr of our times; the heroine of the You-Tube generation. May her struggle and death not be in vain and democracy and human rights triumph in Iran!

Tamir Bar-On

You Touch Us All - From Toronto to Tel-Aviv!

2009-06-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

You Touch Us All - From Toronto to Tel-Aviv!

The anti-government protesters in Iran have inspired us all with their courage, determination, tenacity, bravery, solidarity, and humanity - from Toronto to Tel-Aviv. Check out these touching pictures of the protests sent to me by an Iranian friend:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html

In the image above, in a spirit of profound and tender humanity, a pro-Mousavi anti-government protester helps an injured riot policeman. He surely saved him from imminent death at the hands of the angry crowd...

Tamir Bar-On

More Blood and the Islamic Republic In Doubt

2009-06-21T17:54:00.000-07:00

More Blood and the Islamic Republic in Doubt

More blood today on the streets of Tehran. Ten, thirteen, perhaps more killed today by the Iranian security forces. Green protest banners were draped with the black of mourning and mixed with more red blood smelling of death.

The red-black-green flag pictured above, which was created in New York in 1920 by the United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), could easily symbolize the 2009 anti-government protests in Iran. The green could symbolize the anti-government Mousavi opposition. The black could stand for the eight protesters killed by the state at the outset of the protests. The red might signify the blood of the new protesters killed today.

The incredible protests continue against the Ahmadinejad regime. Mousavi told his supporters to fight on, even if he is killed. The sanctity of the Islamic Republic of Iran has now been questioned by the opposition protesters. A more free press, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law have been demanded. Twitter, Facebook, and amateur video feeds are sustaining support for the protesters from Toronto to Los Angeles and Berlin to Paris. An LA rabbi, who lives in an area with a high concentration of Iranians, said that the protesters resembled a biblical vision for freedom from bondage!

I am glad that the Canadian government today spoke out against the brutality of the regime, which mercilessly kills its own people:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/21/the-iranian-people-deserve-to-have-their-voices-heard/

Some now wonder, including US Republicans, whether the Obama administration will come out with such a powerful statement. I continue to salute the brave people of Iran. They should be a source of great inspiration for people under authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to Libya and North Korea to Cuba. And for all of us, who long for more democratic political spaces.

Tamir Bar-On

Movement by the People For The People

2009-06-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

Movement by the People For The People

Check out this extraordinary letter sent by an Iranian anti-government protester to the US, which is reprinted in The Jerusalem Post:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184872971&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

If the assertion that the protests are 'in the millions' is correct, then hopefully the days of the Ahmadinejad regime are short-lived!

Tamir Bar-On

Brave Iranian Footballers!

2009-06-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

Brave Iranian Footballers!

You probably all know that I am a massive soccer fan! Before a recent World Cup soccer qualifying match, a number of Iranian footballers (including star player Ali Karimi pictured above) showed solidarity with the Iranian protesters by wearing the green colours of the anti-government protesters. Here is the story below:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1093916.html

These Iranian footballers are brave men, like the Iranian men and women that have risked their lives to express their dignity, freedom, and fundamental rights against a dictatorship. They have inspired people around the world. If open protests can rock the theocratic, authoritarian Islamic Republic of Iran for days, another, better world is possible. To use the phrase of the French 1968 protesters, "Dream the impossible!" This is what the pro-Mousavi protesters have done.

The Iranians failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup this time. Yet, they have inspired hope and solidarity in a nation longing for freedom. I am an Israeli-Canadian football fan. I strongly salute the Iranian footballers and the Iranian protesters. With their silent, peaceful protests, they have showed dignity, hope, and solidarity to the world. They have taught us all to hate tyranny in all its manifestations. And to "dream the impossible!" Dream it and it will come one day!

Tamir Bar-On

Are the Iranian Protests for Democracy?

2009-06-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

Are the Iranian Protests for Democracy?

The supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate for the Islamic Republic of Iran, yesterday wore black instead of their traditional green to mourn for the deaths of eight supporters. The regime is already jailing opponents, blocking media of communications, and intimidating possible dissenters. The biggest protests to rock Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the US-led tyrant known as the Shah of Iran, raise the following questions:

1) Are the protests about preserving the theocratic legacy of the Islamic Republic of Iran?

2) Are the protests about seeking to overthrow the Islamic Republic and institute a system of governance based on Western traditions consisting of the rule of law, human rights, respect for minorities, gender equality, and the separation of church and state?

3) Is it an exercise of co-optation designed to show the West that Iran is democratic?

4) Is Iran currently on the precipice between authoritarianism and democracy, and which force is ultimately more powerful in civil society and the state?

5) Can Mousavi really be a democrat if as Prime Minister he helped to create genocidal anti-Semites like Hezbollah back in the early 1980s?

6) Will the Council of Guardians, the supreme body in Iran politically under the Supreme Leader Khamenei, ultimately win the day and "order" be restored?

7) If the Council of Guardians prevails, will democracy take a backseat in Iran to nuclear war cries with Israel, Holocaust denial, and confrontation with the US?

8) Would the victory of Mousavi really change the poor constitutional and political reality for Iran's beleaguered Jewish, Christian, Bahai, and other minorities?

Don't get me wrong. The votes of Mousavi supporters should be properly counted. The brave people of Iran should be venerated for confronting an autocratic regime, which cannot even properly cover up its corrupt voting mechanisms! To get answers to some of these aforementioned questions, see the following interview with a Jewish Iranian activist, Frank Nikbakht (photo above), who is based in southern California:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/iranianamericanjews/item/qa_iranian_jewish_expert_nikabkht_sheds_light_on_irans_elections/

Tamir Bar-On

Mexico's Null Vote Drive: Practical Politics or Flight from Politics?

2009-06-17T10:21:00.000-07:00

Mexico's Null Vote Drive: Practical Politics or Flight from Politics?

Mexico's congressional elections will be next month. Yet, apparently some Mexicans will not be going to the polls in order to express disdain with the entire political class. See the story below:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/06/16/mexico-to-take-to-the-polls-but-not-to-vote/

The French had a similar null voting campaign a bunch of years back. Is the campaign worthwhile in terms of practical politics, or rather a flight from politics and Mexico's nascent democracy? It is unclear that the null voting campaign will catch popular fire in Mexico. Polls indicate that it has not yet captured the popular imagination of Mexicans. Moreover, if one is upset with all political parties and politicians, is the creation of new movements and parties not a good step in order to re-animate democratic political life? It was only in 2000 that Mexico's centre-left (sometimes centre-right) Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) finally lost its grip on political power after more than 70 years to the Christian Democratic National Action Party (PAN) under Vicente Fox. The current President of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, also belongs to PAN. This democratic turn has given Mexico more choices and opened the political landscape to rightists, leftists, Greens, and null voters. A null vote might tell all politicians that they are all crooks, but it does not tell them whom they might want in power, or the type of political society they might wish to create.

Tamir Bar-On

Netanyahu's Two-State Gambit

2009-06-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Netanyahu's Two-State Gambit

When Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu spoke the other day at Bar Ilan University, it was a much anticipated speech in Israel, as well as for the Obama administration, the EU, and the political representatives of the Palestinians and Arabs.

The speech is now being appraised through various interpretive lenses by different political constituencies both within Israel and beyond its borders. First, from the domestic Israeli perspective, now the entire political landscape, from Labour to Kadima and Likud, support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For the sake of pragmatism and under pressure from the Obama administration, Netanyahu uttered the words "Palestinian state." He said Israelis did not want to rule over the Palestinians. That the Palestinian state should be de-militarized and recognize the Jewish character of Israel was predictably rejected by Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and Egyptian autocrat Muabarak. Netanyahu echoed the prevailing Israeli view when he said that the Holocaust did not create Israel, but the presence of Jews in the ancient land of Israel created a Jewish national consciousness and the modern desire for statehood. Had there been a Jewish state in the inter-war years when Fascism and Nazism dramatically rose, there would have been no Holocaust, opined the Israeli PM.

Second, the Palestinians and Arab states have generally come out against Netanyahu's speech. A Jewish state undermines the possibility of a one-state solution, which most Arabs and Palestinians favour for demographic, political, and religious reasons. Israel is still viewed as an illegitimate, colonial, racist Jewish outpost and an usurper of holy Palestinian Muslim land by the vast majority of the Arab world. A Jewish state would recognize what is anathema for Arabs and Muslims in general: Jewish dominant control over Muslim land. This type of outdated thinking undermines the possibility for a solution and helps perpetuate the conflict. In addition, Arabs were unhappy with Jerusalem as an "undivided" capital of Israel and Netanyahu's refusal to halt "natural growth" in settlements.

Third, the EU is happy with Netanyahu's overtures, but will not yet upgrade ties with Israel. For economic, geostrategic, and domestic reasons, the EU has traditionally tended to take a more pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian foreign policy than either the US or Canada.

Finally, Netanyahu's speech was most interested in pleasing the new US administration under President Obama. Israelis want to logically be on good terms with their major ally. So Netanyahu essentially uttered the dream, if not the full substance, of the Israeli left: Two states for two peoples living in "amity". Very few Israelis now do not support the two-state solution, for both pragmatic and moral reasons. The right-wing secular and religious fanatics of "Greater Israel" are slowly being squeezed out of the political landscape. Yet, if the conflict continues to fester, their attitudes and supporters will grow and harden. Similarly, the continuing lack of solution since Oslo's failure fuels radicals among Palestinians and the Arab world.

Netanyahu is not so far from Arab peace initiatives proposed in 2005 and 2007. He has welcomed all Arab leaders to seek full diplomatic relations with Israel and agreed in principle to a Palestinian state. If we get hung up on the details, we won't begin negotiations. This would be a pity and more lives will be lost. Palestinians and Israelis, as well as Israelis and Arabs, must talk officially and afford full recognition to each other. If a so-called right-wing "radical" like Netanyahu can say yes to two states, Palestinians and Arabs might also be more flexible on recognizing a Jewish state. Hope will only come through dialogue and compromise. Not by sticking to winner-take-all-formulas. And for opening the window of fresh air in the entire Middle East (e.g., the Iranian protests, Lebanese election results, and Netanyahu's conciliatory speech), we should all thank Obama.

Tamir Bar-On

Netanyahu's Two-State Solution Speech

2009-06-15T08:11:00.000-07:00

Netanyahu's Two-State Solution Speech

Yesterday's speech by Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu endorsing a two-state solution, with some preconditions:

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1244371096849

More commentary on the speech in the next posting!

Tamir Bar-On

Young Iranians Are'nt Going to Take It No More!

2009-06-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Young Iranians Are'nt Going to Take It No More!

The Islamic Republic of Iran is facing its greatest crisis in years. The huge population of kids born long after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the bitter memories of the Iran-Iraq War will not accept the blatant electoral corruption of older generations. Check out the latest video from a Jerusalem Post blog of Iranian anti-Ahmadinejad protests, which are obviously the work of "foreign agents," according to the beloved Iranian autocrat:

http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/persianabyss/entry/iranian_reactions_from_across_social

Incredible that the Iranian mullahs have to even fix elections of candidates they had pre-approved!

Tamir Bar-On

Conflict and the Triumph of the Human Spirit

2009-06-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Conflict and the Triumph of the Human Spirit

Our stories of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are filled with conflict, blood, vengeance, and human cruelty. Here is a story, which shatters all the stereotypes about the conflict:

http://azizabusarah.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/palestinian-youth-save-settler-woman-and-infant-after-car-flips-in-west-bank/

It is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit. This human spirit works for the evolution of humankind. It does not ask if we are Palestinian or Israeli, Jew or Arab, left or right, believer or unbeliever, occupier or occupied.

Tamir Bar-On

Goran Bregovic: A Balkan Idol Plays Toronto

2009-06-12T10:23:00.001-07:00

Goran Bregovic: A Balkan Idol Plays Toronto

I am a lucky man today: A free Goran Bregovic concert in Toronto! This is a Balkan idol, expressing the unbridled enthusiasm of Serbian music with its edgy underbelly, folk-blues, gypsy influences, sky-high ecstasy, and existential melancholy. Check out this story about Bregovic:

http://www.thestar.com/article/648885

And see the lengthy Wikipedia entry for the Sarajevo-born singer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goran_Bregovic

My Serb and Bosnian friends are riding high, ready to party tonight! Let the slivovitz flow! Let the summer finally begin!

Tamir Bar-On

Academic Freedom, Hate, or the Fiction of Debate?

2009-06-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

Academic Freedom, Hate, or the Fiction of Debate?

A fascinating piece generously sent to me by York University's Ph.D. candidate in political science, Laura Kane, about York's upcoming conference in the latter part of June entitled "Israel/ Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/11/conference

A few questions about the conference and the reviewing of conference funding by the ruling Conservative government:

1) Is the issue merely one of academic freedom?

2) Is it a question of demonisation and hate of the "collective Jew" (Israel) under the cover of anti-racism and anti-colonialism?

3) Is the conference really a gathering of like-minded anti-Zionists without any interest in substantive debates? In short, is the conference a case of an appeal to academic freedom, while engaging in a fiction of debate where the answers are pre-determined according to ideological biases?

4) Why is the federal government reviewing funding now?

5) Does the chill of academic discussions apply to all political movements, on the left, right, and beyond, including the York conference creators?

Questions to chew on....Let the debate begin...

Tamir Bar-On

Why the Far Right is Sweeping Europe?

2009-06-10T16:43:00.000-07:00

Why the Far Right is Sweeping Europe?

Why is the far right sweeping almost all the nations of the European Union (EU)? Is fascism making a comeback? Or is the far right of the new millennium qualitatively divorced from the jackboot fascist ultra-nationalism of the past?

In this entry, I will suggest a number of broad, sweeping explanations for the rise of far right-wing political parties from the French Front National (FN) and the Austria Freedom Party to the Italian Lega Nord (LN - Northern League) and the British National Party (BNP). Hardly any European country is immune to the rising tide of the European far right, although Southern European countries (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) that had prolonged authoritarian nationalist forces in power as late as the late 1970s have tended to generally reject the far right electorally. Here then are 15 explanations for the rise of the European far right:

1) Disdain and disillusionment with governments, politicians, and all political parties of both the right and left. They are all the same, goes the old refrain, about political parties and politicians. Ideologically, in a post-communist age, it is true that the parties are more alike in terms of support for the capitalist market. Governments are impotent to stop corporations and their impact on political life, citizens feels taken for granted and ignored, and politicians are increasingly associated with sleaze, cheating, and lying.

2) The hammering away of an anti-immigrant agenda since the early 1980s, which has increasingly found broader acceptance among mainstream political parties and the press. The French FN was born in 1972, but its message only started to grab national attention in the mid-1980s with regional and municipal election victories. It was the prototype for all far right-wing, anti-immigrant parties.

3) The anti-Islamic, anti-multicultural, and anti-globalization messages of the far right parties, which have become more potent after 9-11, as well as after the London and Madrid bombings. In the latter two cases, the bombers were European Muslims, which shocked average Europeans. One Austrian far right-wing party recently had as its anti-EU slogan "No to Turkey, no to Israel." Although Muslim Turkey has applied for EU membership, Israel has not. Thus the slogan combined two powerful European historical tendencies, anti-Islamism and anti-Semitism, with a distrust of open capitalist globalization processes. Geert Wilders, the Dutch far right-wing politician, has compared the Qur'an to Mein Kampf. Generally the far right parties reject multiculturalism, insisting it is a "racist" project designed to kill white Europeans! In a rather perverse logical formulation, anti-racism and multiculturalism are viewed as disguised forms of racism (see my book Where Have All The Fascists?, Ashgate, 2007, for the intellectual origins of this rhetorical trope with the French nouvelle droite).

4) Homogeneous notions of national identity and belonging throughout Europe, which can be resurrected in times of political, economic, social, and cultural crises. The perception that the far right creates, like it did in the inter-war years, is that Europe is in a period of profound crises that necessitates a revival of ultra-nationalism. For far right-wingers a period of cultural, political, economic, institutional, and geopolitical paralysis has hit Europe. Europeans, they insist, no longer control their political and economic destinies, but it is controlled by immigrants, wishy-washy liberal-socialists, rapacious corporations, and ascendant and foreign powers from the US to China.

5) A history of far right-wing, neo-fascist, and fascist political movements throughout Europe, from Hungary and Britain to France and Romania. In Germany, Nazism and the Holocaust were so awful, horrible, and profound that this is a burden for the far right today. In Southern Europe, memories of Franco, Salazar, and the colonels in Greece, all connected with the far right, were so recent that it is even difficult to elect conservative right-wing governments of a non-fascist hue. In Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Romania, where fascists all came to power (sometimes briefly, sometimes as collaborationist regimes), the far right was able to build on existing far right-wing traditions and thinkers and to relativize the past. In all these four countries, the fascist or proto-fascist past was never properly assessed and questioned, as in post-war Germany. As a result, the far right has already joined national coalition governments in Italy and Austria, while in Hungary and Romania it has made substantive gains in the new millennium.

6) The virtual collapse of hard communist left-wing political parties with their anti-capitalist, social message, particularly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of the Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union in 1991. The Italian Communist Party was the second largest political party in Italy in the 1970s (over 35 per cent of the popular vote in 1976 national elections) and today it can barely enter parliament. The far right parties now play the anti-system role formerly played by communist parties.

7) The appeal to xenophobic nativism in which slogans such as "France for the French" or "British jobs for the British" embody a rejection of liberal multiculturalism in favour of ethnic conceptions of belonging, welfare rights (e.g., welfare for "French French" rather than those of Muslim North African French extraction), and even citizenship (e.g., citizenship based on blood belonging rather than birth on the soil of the country in question).

8) Corruption scandals that indict all political parties, as in Britain before the recent 2009 European elections. In 1994, the neo-fascist MSI under Gianfranco Fini (photo above), as well as the LN, entered the national coalition government on the heels of a national corruption (bribery) scandal, which indicted all the major political parties from the Christian Democrats to Socialists. The far right, as it was shut out of government for years due to a post-war taboo of cooperating with fascists, was finally accepted into the European mainstream. It was the first time the far right participated in a national coalition government anywhere in Europe in the post-World War Two era.

9) The distant nature of the EU project in Brussels, which feels far away from voters, alienating, and excessively bureaucratic. Far right parties insist the EU means a loss for national or regional cultures, and an attack on principles of parliamentary democracy and national sovereignty. Both direct and representative democracy are undermined by the EU's political structures, argue far right-wing politicians. As a result, far right politicians have been at the forefront of anti-EU campaigns, rejecting Maastricht and Lisbon treaties on the functioning of the EU, and the call for authentic national independence against supranationalism.

10) The populist, charismatic appeals of far right leaders. They are said to represent the "heartland" of France or Romania, rather than "multicultural elitism," corporations, or EU bureaucrats. They are said to represent the ordinary people, or "les petits gens" (the small guys) (a slogan of FN leader Le Pen), against the distant, elitist, liberal-left-wing politicians and parties. The leaders are often very charismatic, whether Le Pen or Wilders, insisting that through immigration their respective national political classes have sold out native, white, European Christian nationals to a silent "genocidal" project that is "racist" against homogeneous, titular ethnic national groups. This is a clever multicultural, anti-racist inversion picked up from the intellectual new right. A Le Pen or Wilders insist they are sent like saviours to rescue their peoples from national collapse, whether due to neo-liberalism, social democracy, socialism, multiculturalism, or EU gigantism.

11) An attention to concrete issues, particularly uncontrolled immigration, which is made the cause of all Europe's ills: increased unemployment, the economic crisis, political dissatisfaction with the entire political class, the loss of national culture and national sovereignty, and a decay of social order and quality of life linked to increasing criminality.

12) Distancing far right parties from overt displays of support for fascism, Nazism, anti-Semitism, and violent extra-parliamentary politics (i.e., more attachment to legality or the rule of law). A good example is the current President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Alleanza Nazionale (AN - National Alliance) leader, Gianfranco Fini. In the new millennium, Fini has already been Italy's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. His party has been in several national coalition governments since 1994, despite the fact that it was created out of the ashes of the neo-fascist MSI. Fini has steered the party towards full legality (i.e., severing overt ties with neo-fascist terrorism) and participation in Berlusconi's current conservative national coalition. In addition, Fini has distanced himself from overt manifestations of Fascism, anti-Semitism, and racism. He went to Israel in 2003 to apologize for the racist anti-Semitic laws under Mussolini's Fascist Italy beginning in 1938. Fini claims to be "post-fascist" today rather than fascist. His party has been less willing to scapegoat immigrants than the extreme right-wing and regional Lega Nord under firebrand Umberto Bossi, who ironically comes from an anti-fascist tradition. Some of Fini's supporters within the AN, however, retain lingering nostalgia for the fascist myths and symbols of the past.

13) Fading memories of the inter-war years, as well as Fascism and Nazism. This is bad news for those like me that want to challenge the far right, but good news for the far right itself because the old inter-war generation and its knowledge and wisdom are literally dying. The younger generation might not understand that the legality of the far right is often a tactical ruse for political parties that long for greater authoritarianism and the overturning of liberal democracy.

14) Proportional representation electoral systems, which tend to reward extremist political outfits with a decent share of the national popular vote. The BNP finally won two seats in the 2009 European elections precisely because the system used was proportional representation rather than Britain's first-past-the-post (single-member constituency) system. In some countries like Germany, there have been barriers of entry for smaller parties, even as high as five per cent. This hinders chances of success for the far right. If thresholds do exist, the far right will argue that the political class is anti-democratic. Yet, Popper's democratic paradox remains, as in the inter-war years. That is, authoritarians can come to power through the ballot box and later annul parliament and democracy.

15) A powerful appeal to emotion and total crises (political, economic, social, and cultural) based on a rejection of liberal individualism, democracy, and multiculturalism, and a collective sense of national or regional belonging and the superior destiny of a homogeneous national group. This certainly has echoes of the pull of fascism in the inter-war era. When one hears a Le Pen speak, the emotions are raw, visceral, and powerful. He wants to give voters the feeling that he is a patriot working for the destiny of France. When he speaks for the "silent majority" of French men and women that want to get tough on crimininals, or when he is silent but would argue his silence echoes the mystical, historical, civilizing grandeur of France.

Keep in mind that national histories and memories (particularly dealing with or ignoring the fascist or pro-Nazi collaborationist past), the performance of far right-wing parties in actual electoral contests, their interaction with parties outside the far right milieu, and differing levels of success of implantation in the various national party and cultural systems will determine the varied successes of respective far right-wing political parties.

What is clear is that the mainstream parties need to listen up to these far right voters. This may not be good news for immigrants, multiculturalists, and traditional liberals. The pressure for tightening immigration has been building since the late 1980s and it contradicts both capitalism and globalization. Yet, some contradictions might be accepted by Europeans beyond the far right-wing constituency to purchase social peace. For the far right there is the desire for new wars between cultures and civilizations, or at minimum, a war against liberal multiculturalism.

Luckily Europeans are now constrained by the anti-nationalistic impulse of the EU project. They are not making war against each other, which in the inter-war years had a major role in letting the Fascist and Nazi genies out of the bottle. Yet, 60 years after the defeats of Nazism and Fascism, a new genie is out of an old bottle. While it has shed many of the old trappings of fascism (street violence, excessive leadership cult, overt anti-Semitism and racism, and the doctrine of totalitarianism), historical memories should teach us of the lurking dangers of racist stigmatisation and scapegoating.

Tamir Bar-On

Far Right Gains in European Elections

2009-06-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Far Right Gains in European Elections

In the last post, I highlighted how the British far right finally won representation in the European Parliament. Since the mid-1980s and 1990s, far right-wing parties in continental Europe under charismatic leaders such as Heinz-Christian Strache (Austria - top left), Jean-Marie Le Pen (France - top right), and Geert Wilders (Netherlands - bottom left) have been far more successful in European elections than their British counterparts. Check out the results for the far right in the recent European elections:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/archive/2009/06/08/europe-s-far-right-make-gains.aspx

My main area of specialisation revolves around far right-wing political movements and parties, and their relationship to the history of fascism. Why then is the far right doing so well? And is the far right akin to historical fascism? In my next posting, I will try to answer these difficult questions.

Tamir Bar-On

Now Far Right Truly European Phenomenon

2009-06-08T08:33:00.000-07:00

Now Far Right Truly European Phenomenon

On Monday the far right British National Party (BNP) under Nick Griffin (top) won its first two seats in the European Parliament. See this story about the BNP below:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091192.html

The BNP gained nearly one million votes in Britain and over six per cent of the popular vote. Given the recent corruption scandals that have indicted all British parties of the right and left and the economic recession, this was not completely surprising. The anti-immigrant, anti-EU, and anti-globalization message of the BNP has finally made inroads with British voters. The extremely low turnout for European electoral contests also helped the BNP.

Now the BNP has finally joined a pan-European trend of turning towards the far right, anti-immigrant politics, and the scapegoating of the Muslim Other. The trailblazer in anti-immigrant politics was the French Front National (FN), winning municipal and regional seats as early as the mid-1980s. Then came the shocking participation of the neo-fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI - Italian Social Movement), turned "post-fascist" Alleanza Nazionale (AN - National Alliance) in 1995, in national coalition governments in 1994 and several other times in the new millennium. The AN is now part of Berlusconi's ruling conservative Il Popolo della Libertà coalition in Italy. It has even decided to merge with Berlusconi's aforementioned centre-right political party. In Austria, the far right Freedom Party joined the national coalition government in 2000, despite widespread international condemnation.

In the 1990s and new century other formerly mild social democratic bastions saw far right parties make impressive gains through an appeal to xenophobic nativism, which insisted that welfare rights and citizenship ought to be given to "natives" only (i.e., Christian, European, white, non-Muslims). These parties made inroads in Scandinavia (Progress parties in Norway and Denmark, as they were ironically named), Holland, Belgium, and Germany (thank god, to a lesser extent). In Eastern European countries like Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia, far right anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy parties have become more politically powerful. In Hungary, Jobik, an anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic party, finished third in 2009 European elections with about fourteen per cent of the popular vote.

So the BNP is just jumping on a European far right bandwagon that continues to view national identity in rather static, homogeneous terms. Britain was historically slow to ride the fascist inter-war years wave. It essentially resisted the fascist and authoritarian tide sweeping Europe, although there was a British Union of Fascists (BUF) under a Mussolini imitator, Oswald Mosley. Countries that did embrace fascism or serious collaboration with the Nazis are more likely to see its return today: Germany, Italy, Austria, Romania, and Hungary. Germany is probably the mildest case precisely because its de-Nazification process has been the most profound. This was not the case for Italy, Austria, Romania, and Hungary, where the far right is returning with a vengeance. In France, a strong far right-wing tradition and Vichy collaboration in conjunction with a charismatic leader (Jean-Marie Le Pen) and concrete issues (e.g., immigration, crime, economic decline, the dramatic demise of the left, and the perception of corruption of all established parties) assisted the rise of the FN. The FN miraculously made it to the second round of the French presidential elections in 2002, finishing with 5.5 million votes and close to 18 per cent of the popular vote. Chirac trounced Le Pen in the second round, winning more than 80 per cent of the popular vote, but the far right had truly arrived in France. Croatia, which also had a sordid history of Nazi collaboration under the Ustashe regime from 1940-1, saw its first leader after the fall of Yugoslavia refuse to acknowledge the creation of concentration camps for killing Serbs (as well as Jews) under the genocidal philo-Nazi state.

Britain's turn towards the BNP now makes the far right a truly European phenomenon. That the British did not embrace the BNP message earlier is linked to the powerful history of anti-fascism in Britain. That other countries embraced it sooner is a testament to the magnetic pull of far right-wing historical memories in numerous European countries outside Britain.

Tamir Bar-On

Saudis Hard Talk to Obama

2009-06-07T17:52:00.001-07:00

Saudis Hard Talk To Obama

Now that Obama is set on a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Saudis under King Abdullah (top left) want Obama to impose such a solution on Netanyahu's right-wing Israeli government. See this interesting story from the liberal-left Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1090975.html

The Saudis are concerned with growing Iranian Shi'ite influence in the region in Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and the Gulf states. The Israelis are similarly seeking to stem the tide of Iranian-led Islamism in their backyard. Other key secular Arab states like Egypt are also keen on arresting the spread of a Tehran-driven Islamic fundamentalism.

It looks like Israel will eventually have to accept a two-state solution, which is being pushed by the US, Saudis, Egyptians, and Europeans. In exchange for a two-state solution, the end of settlements, and withdrawal from the West Bank (and perhaps added sweeteners for Arabs like East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital), there will be full diplomatic ties between Israel and all Arab states. Hamas will need to be reigned in, but that is a matter that still remains a big question mark.

The deal would be great for the Saudis because they will look like champions of peace, but continue to maintain an antiquated, authoritarian system of governance. The rest of the Arab states will do the same. They will buy some peace from their own people, who generally see Israel as an "alien body" that ought to be eliminated from the region.

The Islamists all over the Muslim world will cry treason. All of Palestine should be liberated from Jewish control, they insist. They will argue, perhaps accurately, that they would win elections in every Arab capital if they were held in a free, fair, and open manner. As the electoral victory of Hamas in Gaza showed, democracy might not produce the outcomes the West or Israel like.

Israel will gain credibility among Arabs, Palestinians, Europeans, and the United States. They will increasingly be seen as partners in peace rather than as an alien, colonialist, expansionist upstart.

It all seems too good to be true in the Middle East, except for the collusion with Arab authoritarianism. Still, the two-state solution would be a great step for the Middle East and the world. We can only hope that the Saudi hard talk to Obama works. I would have never thought that I would approve of tough talk from the monarchy in Riyadh!

Tamir Bar-On

From Cairo to Buchenwald to D-Day in France: Obama Is Right On!

2009-06-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

From Cairo to Buchenwald to D-Day in France: Obama is Right On!

In the last few days, US President Barack Obama has gone from giving a historic speech to the Muslim world in Cairo to visiting the Buchenwald concentration camp and celebrating D-Day in France. This is a man that does not miss a note. He is impeccable in his attempt to seek the just middle against the power of extremists.

Obama is certainly alienating some constituencies, but his vision is to solve festering problems like the Israel-Palestinian conflict rather than languishing in old ideological boxes filled with hatred and devoid of compromise. He is already making enemies, not least of all the al-Qaeda leader that recently put out a new communique.

US conservatives say he should project more toughness vis-a-vis a nuclear-bent Iran, Arab authoritarian regimes, and the tide of political Islamism. He should advance US democracy and free markets around the globe, without making excuses for "our way of life."

Israelis are wary that he did not visit Israel, but stopped in Cairo and Riyadh. Right-wing pundits like David Horovitz in the Jerusalem Post have wondered why in Cairo Obama made a linkage between the creation of Israel and the Holocaust when ancient Jewish sovereignty rested in Palestine well before Nazi madness. Furthermore, the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the San Remo Conference recognized Jewish statehood claims in Palestine, thus restoring a Jewish longing expressed in their prayers and memories of self-governance.

Arab press outlets like The Jordan Times and The Daily Star liked Obama's two-state solution (although if given the chance, they prefer one-state), tough position on Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and acknowledgement of Palestinian suffering and statelessness. Yet, many commentators in the Arab world are waiting for the goods to be delivered. For the bold rhetoric to match US actions. The perception in the Arab world is that US policy is far too cozy towards Israel and detrimental to the Palestinians. Some insist Israel will block the way to peace.

Obama will not please all. That is the reality of politics. Yet, in going to Cairo to open a hand of peace and dialogue to the Arab and Muslim worlds, he is clearly taking a different approach from his Republican predecessor G.W. Bush. Moreover, in going from Cairo to Buchenwald the next day, he stressed the importance of never forgetting, the horrors of Jewish history, and the cruelty of those that would continue to deny the Holocaust. This is a good sign for Jews around the world and the notion of a Jewish state.

And finally in going to France for D-Day today, to commemorate the 65th anniversary of a key Allied victory in the horrendous war against Nazism (which was arguably won earlier at the Battle of Stalingrad), he stressed a more combative tone with President Sarkozy against Iran and North Korea. With these comments, he somewhat satisfied US conservatives, who still can't wait until Obama leaves office.

Obama is a unique, visionary politician who combines a 1960s idealism with the pragmatism of a fox from ancient Rome. When he made his successive trips from Cairo to Buchenwald to France for D-Day, he was right on! He remembered the wisdom in seeking dialogue between religions and civilizations, the horrors of "the crime of crimes" with the Holocaust, and the brave young soldiers like his grandfather that died to stop the advance of a global, racialist totalitarian empire.

Tamir Bar-On

13 Terrorism Solutions: A Clarion Call To Terrorist Groups and Governments Worldwide

2009-06-05T09:38:00.000-07:00

13 Terrorism Solutions: A Clarion Call To Terrorist Groups and Governments Worldwide

As US President Barack Obama tries to woo the Muslim world and press for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, we might reflect on what brought us to the current mess from Afghanistan and Iraq to Israel and Palestine. We are all guilty of terrorism double standards. We are loathe to admit that terrorism is often what the other side does to us. Despite the best efforts of governments, non-governmental organizations, academics, and terrorism practitioners of both state and non-state varieties, we live without a universal consensus definition of terrorism.

Almost all states usually argue they can never commit acts of terrorism because they are legal entities with what Max Weber called “the coercive monopoly over the use of violence.” Terrorist groups challenge the state’s monopoly in respect of the utilization of violence. Yet, these groups often call themselves “liberation movements,” thus conveniently excusing their use of violence. In reality, both states and terrorist groups can commit acts of terrorism. As Jonathan Barker points out, if states or non-state terrorist actors use violence against civilians (as opposed to combatants or soldiers) with the aim of pursuing a political objective, they engage in terrorism. With this definition in mind, our world is impregnated with terrorism. Yet, few are willing to accept such a definition because we live in a moral universe that often legitimizes the violence of our side and de-legitimizes the “illegal” violence of our opponents. Remember that the International Criminal Court (ICC) could be a perfect forum for prosecuting state and non-state terrorists, if only we could agree on a worldwide definition.

Leaving these thorny definitional issues aside, what can be done to stem the tide of terrorism as we enter the eighth anniversary of 9-11? As 13 is a lucky number for this writer, I have 13 suggestions for reducing terrorism, which I hope some governments and terrorist organizations will have the good sense to hear:

1) Avoid invasions of territorially sovereign countries because they are expensive and accelerate the rise of terrorist forces that call for national self-determination, free of foreign forces. Civilians and soldiers pay a heavy price. French colonial presence in Vietnam and Algeria eventually led to armed rebellions and two ignominious defeats against technologically inferior enemies at Dien Bien Phu (Vietnam) in 1954 and Algeria in 1962. The principle of national self-determination has been internationally recognized by the United Nations. In his Fourteen Points delivered to a joint session of Congress on January 8, 1918, US President Woodrow Wilson affirmed the principle of national self-determination. Point fourteen stated: “A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.” Moreover, the principle of national self-determination was already recognized in 1776 when the US revolutionaries overthrew British monarchical oppression.

2) When you defeat a terrorist foe militarily, as the Sri Lankan government recently did with the LTTE on May 17, 2009, winning the military battle is not necessarily the same as winning the war for hearts and minds. Remember how quickly the US routed the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion, only to face an underground insurgency consisting of secular Ba’athists and Islamists that was both lethal and sustained.

3) To win the war of hearts and minds, simmering territorial, ethnic, cultural, and national disputes must be solved. This means, at least minimally, recognizing the claims for autonomy of your adversaries. More often than not it means creating new states, which in effect politically recognizes terrorists in the international community. Both Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat made the transition from terrorists (Irgun and PLO respectively) to heads of sovereign or semi-autonomous states (Israel and Palestinian Authority). This position of negotiating with terrorists undermines the claims of ultra-nationalists that refuse to abandon even an inch of “sacred land.” It is also absolutely incumbent on states to minimize civilian deaths through counter-terrorist operations and wars. When we go after the bad guys that ordered suicide bombings against Israel or Turkey, we tend to also kill and injure lots of civilians. We sometimes wrongly use the long arm of the law to curtail the civil liberties of innocents. Both these communities become easy breeding grounds for new recruits to engage in “martyrdom operations.”

4) Winning the war of hearts and minds means negotiations with terrorist foes. It means giving ordinary people basic government services, security, fair chances for employment, and hope for a better tomorrow by teaching tolerance between cultures, nations, and religions in the schools, media, synagogues, mosques, and churches. Israel negotiated with the PLO after years of saying that it would never do so. Hamas will eventually need to talk with Israel, despite its covenant calls for Israel’s destruction.

5) No so-called “intractable” conflict is really “intractable” if there is enough goodwill, leadership, vision, and a spirit of compromise. All sides sometimes get addicted to conflicts. In conjunction with major powers like the United States, European Union (EU), and Arab states, Israelis and Palestinians are addicted to conflict. Taking a hard look at ourselves might get us to re-examine our mutual addiction to fundamentalist ideologies, unrealistic solutions devoid of compromise, hatred, and the ritualistic legitimization of violence. Historically, France and Germany, or Britain and France were addicted to geopolitical conflicts. Today they are all EU members committed to mutual trade and common political regulations, rule of law, human rights, and the principle of non-violence vis-à-vis member states. A peaceful EU for the Middle East is also possible one day.

6) Solutions will need to vary based on different historical circumstances of the conflicts in question. We cannot impose a one-size-fits-all solution on Turks and Kurds, Israelis and Palestinians, or Colombian leftist guerrillas and the Colombian state.

7) No side will get all it wants. Palestinians will not get Haifa and Israel will not get Hebron. Yet, if national groups understand that they will nonetheless survive and not be annihilated by the other side, then solutions can be flexible, open, and innovative. Jailed Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has made the transition from a Marxist committed to the armed struggle against Turkey with full independence towards Kurdish autonomy within Turkey. In his 2007 Prison Writings: The Roots of Civilisation Ocalan expressed regrets about “swallowing nationalist poisons” and violent insurrection, while pointing out that peace in the Middle East requires the rule of law, democracy, gender equality, separation of church and state, and respect for minority rights.

8) Full statehood might be re-considered by some groups like the PKK or LTTE. Perhaps autonomy is a better option because it will not invite the harsh repressive apparatus of state authorities and the rise of genocidal ultra-nationalist tendencies. About 30,000 people have died as a result of the armed conflict between the PKK and Turkish state. Consequently, autonomy is an option that the PKK’s Ocalan now seriously entertains, provided Kurd cultural institutions are protected and Kurds can achieve upward mobility with equal rights within the Turkish state and society.

9) Harsh state repression, as with the Chechens in Russia, will only invite harsher and more militant forms of terrorism. The group that seeks independence or autonomy from the state will carry sentiments of hatred and revenge that are difficult to extinguish. Chechens have rebelled against Russian rule many times since the 1850s and they were massively expelled by Stalin from their ancestral homeland. In the 1990s, disappearances of Chechen men accelerated as a common tactic of Russian security forces. The state repression led Chechen terrorists to undertake bolder suicide attacks against crowded schools and theatres even in Moscow. In addition, it is estimated that 100,000 Chechens died in two wars against the Russians between 1994 and 2009. In short, state repression hardens rejectionist and fundamentalist attitudes on both sides and sustains the conflict.

10) The reverse is also true: Little or no state repression can invite and embolden terrorists to seek more concessions through the gun. This is the reality of the current crisis in Pakistan where the Swat Valley was ceded to Islamists. As a result, the Islamists began to grab areas near the Swat and wanted to march to Islamabad. Israel under Ariel Sharon unilaterally left Gaza in 2005. Hamas responded by continuing to call for Israel’s destruction and a barrage of thousands of rockets. A tragic war ensued in 2008-9 in which over a thousand Palestinians and thirteen Israelis lost their lives. Yet, if we follow the logic of Point 3, which calls for the absolute necessity of states minimizing civilian deaths through counter-terrorist operations and wars, then it follows that the war could have been avoided. A more robust UN security force might have stopped both Hamas and Israel from firing their missiles.

11) Think about bringing in international monitors and organizations with the ability to use force to hold the peace. To paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, “Covenants without swords are but empty words.” Peace agreements without enforcement mechanisms become meaningless treaties, particularly if one party or both constantly violate its provisions using armed violence. If Obama is a real visionary, he might propose that Israel and a new Palestinian state both become full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The NATO charter prevents member states from using armed aggression against each other. An attack on one NATO member state means that all other states must come to the defense of the attacked state. This would be an ideal mechanism to maintain the peace of a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine.

12) Think about ending the conflicts in a realistic fashion based on mutual compromise such as a viable two-state solution for the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Individuals, especially the maximalist radicals on both sides, will not be completely satisfied because they did not get “Greater Israel” or “all occupied Palestine.” Yet, both sides retain a residue of hope because they are alive and are recognized collectively as peoples within constitutional documents both regionally and internationally.

13) All of us must dream of solving these simmering conflicts, hope the impossible, and know that a “clash of civilizations” is something pushed by the fundamentalist fear-mongers of the world because they want the sirens of war to ring in our ears eternally. The peace of the brave will come if we understand that genuine peace is noble and humane. Peace will come if we understand that killing the other is like killing ourselves.

If terrorist groups and government want to sign on to this clarion call to stem the tide of terrorism, they can open their hearts, dial their enemies, tell their friends, and ostracize the war profiteers in their communities from the arms dealers to the religious and media preachers of hate. They can challenge authoritarianism and creeping authoritarianism, which breed ignorance, dogmatism, hatred, and the desire to have eternal foes. They can challenge the naysayers, the ones that won’t give peace a chance because they think humanitarianism and peace are synonymous with weakness. Governments and terrorist groups should begin by not killing their own people in acts of wanton terrorist cruelty, which illegally target civilians for political purposes. They should extend their care for the loss of life to all people of the planet, irrespective of culture, faith, sex, or ideology. For the loss of one life in the service of an abstract political ideology, whether state or terrorist group, is a grave loss to all of humanity.

Tamir Bar-On

Obama's Address to the Muslim World

2009-06-04T06:37:00.000-07:00

Obama's Address to the Muslim World

Today US President Barack Obama gave his much anticipated speech of reconciliation to the Muslim world. Below is the link to the text of his speech from Cairo:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/06/04/obamas-speech-in-cairo/

It is a wonderful speech! But we cannot be surprised. This is a man that is a prince of hope to the world. Now begins the hard work of forging peace between Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs, and Muslims and the West. Now begins the tough task of stemming the tide of terrorist violence, authoritarianism, and ideologies of hatred in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Blessed are the peacemakers of the world: For they shall inherit the kingdom of heaven!

Tamir Bar-On

I Look Like the Libyan Dictator: Perhaps I Can Be His Double!

2009-06-03T07:53:00.000-07:00

I Look Like The Libyan Dictator: Perhaps I Can Be His Double!

Take a look at these two pictures above. The one of me on the left and the other of the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. His name is spelled a hundred different ways! We kind of look alike, right? Well I recently met a Libyan student in Toronto that thought Gaddafi and I looked alike! My roots are in North Africa (Jewish Moroccan), like the Libyan autocrat. The Libyan told me that in current pictures of Gaddafi, we don't look alike and that the authoritarian leader is looking crazier than ever! I guess that if Gaddafi was younger (he has been in power since a 1969 coup d'etat), I could have been his double. In popular lore that is sometimes hard to distinguish from political truth, did not Tito or Saddam Hussein have many doubles?

Gaddafi is a man in search of a role. The anniversary of his birthday is coming up on June 7, 1942. To add to the Gaddafi connections, I was also born in June! His upcoming anniversary has made me reflect about this enigmatic figure, the author of Green and White books, the Brother Guide and Leader of the Revolution, the man that has penned short stories, and proposed a one-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a recent New York Times op-ed (April 1, 2009). He has gone from outright terrorist supporter (remember Pan-Am and arming the PLO) to a fighter against international terrorism. From pan-Arab socialist agitator he became a critic of the Arabs and longed for pan-African unity. He has stated that he is allegedly willing to compensate Jews that were officially expelled from Libya after the Six-Day War in 1967.

Gaddafi, of course, is known for his theatrical performances on the international stage. Here is a recent gem:

"I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam (leader) of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level."

And a second Gaddafi gem:

"Whenever I ask about Pepsi Cola or Coca Cola, people immediately say it is an American or European drink ... this is not true, the cola is African! They have taken the cheap raw material from us and produced it into a drink [that] they sell [back]for an exorbitant price! Why are Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola expensive? Because they have taken our cola and cheated us! We should produce it ourselves!"

Gaddafi clearly wants to leave his mark on history. His ideological migrations have been all over the map. What remains is the authoritarianism. Despite the direct democracy calls, Libyan consultative popular assemblies, and the blistering rhetoric, authoritarianism has remained since 1969. The attacks on any opposition, the jailing of dissidents (including the recent death of democracy activist Fathi Eljhami), the arbitrary arrests, and the lack of press freedoms remain. There have been numerous assassination attempts and even riots against his rule. Gaddafi is the model of the Arab world: Whether secular, monarchical, or religious, the region has remained thoroughly authoritarian. Democracy is a dead letter. Popular democratic participation, mass education, and power-sharing are all fictions. This is detrimental to peace for Arabs internally and in respect of conflicts with Israel and the wider world.

Tribe, faith (pan-Islam), nation, pan-Arabism (the political unity of Arabs from Morocco to Iraq), and socialism have all struggled for political ascendancy in Libya and the wider Arab world. Democracy has made few inroads, despite elections in Iraq. Pan-Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise, socialism in rapid decline. Pan-Arab unity had its heyday with Nasser, but is now a fading mirage. Tribalism, nationalism, and authoritarianism are the embedded realities in Libya and the Arab world.

Which ideology Gaddafi will gravitate towards next all depends on where he can make his mark in history. When Gaddafi exits the stage of history, perhaps I can be his double in a play about his life! My acting skills need help, but I have been watching his videos on his personal site to get ready to showcase my theatrical skills to the world! Check out the site below:

http://www.algathafi.org/html-english/index.htm

In the meantime, may Libyans and Arabs find ways to abolish antiquated systems of authoritarian governance! It will truly help the struggle for global peace.

Tamir Bar-On

Reflections on Life and Death

2009-06-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

Reflections on Life and Death

Today's entry is a little bit different. I recently found out that a male friend from Vancouver died and a woman I loved is now an al-Jazeera reporter. The friend was in his early 40's, the woman in her early 30's. It made me think of life and death, about why we are here, about my goals in life, and how precious each day really is. About how life is mysterious, grand, powerful, and beautiful. About the memories we keep in our hearts. About opening our doors of perception. About healing the world. About being good to each other, as one reggae singer said at at a recent outdoor concert at Toronto's brilliant Kensington Market. About how short our time is here. About how short our time is here and now, but about how we must toast to both "here and now and then and there," as the Sufi mystic Rumi would often do.

These two friends have been given very different paths. One is now a dead Jew with a bohemian spirit. The other is a living Palestinian with the journalist's voice of an angel and the poetic spirit of Nadia Tueni (a Lebanese poet she introduced me to). Yet, they both live in my heart. They have made me reflect and write this piece. They have touched me. In life and death, both of you do not walk alone. I send you love, peace, laughter, humanity, and joy.

And let me say this about both of you. Leon, you made me laugh and you were mad with life. You rubbed a bunch of people the wrong way, but you would constantly joke with me about how I could simultaneously be an Arab prince or a Mossad agent! If you could take a look at this blog carefully, you know I would not make a good spy! Zeina, my wellspring of love for you used to overflow at the gates of heaven. I still remember how it felt to meet you and to dream about meeting you. They don't make many in life like you! For both of you I repeat and paraphrase what Tueni once said: I love your words, but also your silences. A toast to both of you. A toast to life and death. So that life will always triumph! And so that the awakening spirit of the sun, moon, rivers, trees, and wind sustains us all, in life and death.

Tamir Bar-On

Obama's Tough Talk to Israel: Good for Two-State Solution

2009-06-01T10:32:00.001-07:00

Obama's Tough Talk To Israel: Good for Two-State Solution

US President Barack Obama is prepared to talk tough with Israel, the US's most loyal ally. An Obama administration official has stated that he might allow anti-Israel UN resolutions to pass, if Israel does not remove illegal settlements in the West Bank.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346518710&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

I am a firm supporter of two states for two peoples. I applaud Obama's maneuvering on the Palestinian-Israeli track. It is good for the future of the two-state solution. Good friends and allies must be able to speak frankly to each other. The US must enhance its credibility in the Arab world and stem the tide of radical Islam. The two-state solution might advance these goals, reasons Obama. I do not buy the ultra-nationalist Israeli position that Obama's tough talk is a bad sign for Israel. Now we need to get Hamas on board, as well as Netanyahu. Both for now are rejecting a two-state solution. They delay what is inevitable. It is more or less the solution that was proposed in 1947 by the UN Partition Plan. The boundaries were slightly different. Whether this two-state solution will stop the conflict is another question. I believe it will weaken its intensity and minimize the power of the maximalist fundamentalists on both sides. Yet predicting Middle East politics is like predicting that waiting for Godot will one day bring Godot. But that is precisely the type of abundant hope that we need to one day end the Palestinian-Israeli and Arab-Israeli conflicts.

Tamir Bar-On

Perhaps 20,000 Dead in Sri Lankan Offensive: But UN Says OK!

2009-05-30T10:33:00.000-07:00

Perhaps 20,000 Dead in Sri Lankan Offensive: But UN Says OK!

According to some estimates perhaps 20,000 people died in the recent Sri Lankan offensive to root out the LTTE. In the 26-year insurgency, both the government and LTTE should be condemned for the sustained violence against civil populations, including LTTE suicide bombings, shelling of civilian population centres, and the forcible use of human shields by both sides.

The UN Human Rights Commission has once again made a mockery of itself by refusing to open a war crimes investigation into the Sri Lankan government's latest offensive and the large number of Tamil civilians killed:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6382331.ece

Now such a war crimes commission should examine the conduct of both the Sri Lankan government and LTTE. This same UN body ritualistically criticizes Israel, making it appear the most heinous regime on the planet. A large bloc of Asian and Muslim countries, as well as Russia, China, Pakistan, and India all supported Sri Lanka's position rejecting a war crimes investigation. They are obviously afraid of similar investigations against their own repressive, autocratic regimes. Yet, when Israel defends itself from armed attacks by Iranian-backed thugs Hezbollah and Hamas in a manner consistent with Article 51 in the UN Charter(while also inflicting civilian casualties), they are routinely condemned.

My conclusion: There is no morality in politics. Politics is often about the will to power, irrespective of moral considerations. Morality is used when we think it will advance our political cause and jettisoned when we think it will hurt it. This is the sad truth. In the process, it is innocent blood that is shed. When the Old Testament injunction of Thou Shall Not Kill was invoked, it applied to all peoples for all times. All of our favoured political movements and regimes, whether on the left or right, do humanity a disservice when they play political games with human lives.

Tamir Bar-On

After the Champions League Hangover: Nuclear Proliferation and Peace in the Middle East

2009-05-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

After the Champions League Hangover: Nuclear Proliferation and Peace in the Middle East

After the Champions League finals hangover, let’s get back to some key world events and issues. These include the following: North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, Iran’s continued desire to acquire nuclear weapons and existential threats against Israel, Pakistan’s all-out assault on Taliban Islamists in the Swat and surrounding regions, and Obama’s clear message to the Israelis and Palestinians that a two-state solution and the end of settlements in the West Bank are crucial for regional and global peace.

Some of the aforementioned issues are indeed connected. Others have their own logic. The North Koreans and Iranians challenge the right of a select group of nations to acquire nuclear weapons. They are both totalitarian-authoritarian regimes that use the nuclear issue as much to cement national support as question the nature of global politics. Kim Jong-Il and Ahmadinejad might appear mad, fanatical, and ideological, but their pressing of the nuclear issue is designed to gain more concessions from the international community from regimes that are losing domestic popular support. Elections are coming up in June in Iran, while the North Korean dictator is showing perhaps one last flash of rejection to the international community before he dies.

Ahmadinejad’s Islamic Republic of Iran, the Pakistani state's offensive in Swat, and Obama’s two-state approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are surely connected. For the US, the West, and Israel, the aim is to stop the tide of political Islamism. This is a growing concern for Israel with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah on its northern flank in Lebanon, and a growing constituency of Islamists in both Israel proper and the West Bank (Fatah-controlled). It is a growing concern for Israel that Iran funds Islamists in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq. It is troubling for the US that wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have increased the power of Islamist movements, which radically reject foreign intervention in the Muslim ummah (pan-Islamic “nation” or community of believers). For Islamists, Israel is an alien, foreign body that must be destroyed and united as part of the ummah. For the Pakistanis, who were allied to the Taliban pre-9-11 and have many Islamist sympathisers among the ISI (Pakistan’s secret services), they now realize that giving the Islamists the Swat region was a grave mistake. It emboldened Islamists to march to other parts of Pakistan. They hope to one die take Islamabad, sever the relationship of the state with the US, and turn Pakistan into a radical, shari’a (Islamic law) state.

Obama’s logic is the following: Arab states since 2005 have increasingly expressed a desire for full relations with Israel in exchange for a two-state solution, the end of settlements, and the full return of the West Bank and Golan to the Palestinians and Syrians respectively. Iran is a growing presence in the region, turning the tide away from compromise and a two-state solution. Iranians carry the rejectionist front mantle vis-à-vis Israel that was once carried by radical secular Marxists, pan-Arabists, and nationalists. Of course, there are outstanding issues like the right of return, Jerusalem, and the boundaries of the new Palestinian state. The first will perhaps be acknowledged through compensation, or a statement of contrition. Jerusalem can perhaps be under joint Palestinian-Israeli control, acting as a model of friendly relations in a land that is holy to three monotheistic faiths. On boundaries, most acknowledge the 1967 boundaries, before Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights.

But like in any conflict, the key is a will for compromise by all parties. The Obama gamble is that a two-state solution undermines political Islamism and brings quiet among Palestinians and the Arab world. Yet, with Hamas in power in Gaza and the right-wing Netanyahu government ruling Israel, a two-state solution may be delayed. A two-state solution might not stop radicals that want to annihilate Israel (secular leftists and Islamists), but maintaining the state of affairs of Palestinian semi-statelessness, checkpoints, demolitions, and the arming for war is also no option.

The two-state solution is really in the interests of the US, Israel, the Palestinians, and the Arab world. Yet not in Iran’s interest, or in the interests of the Islamists. Can you imagine Palestinians, Israelis, and Arabs with full trading, diplomatic, scientific, sporting, and cultural exchanges? Can you imagine swords turned into ploughshares from Gaza and Jenin to Tel-Aviv and Haifa? Can you imagine the military industrial complex of the region turned into institutes of cultural and national understanding and tolerance?

Conflicts continue because of mistrust, sentiments of revenge, fundamentalist visions, historical enmity, and all-or-nothing calculations. Yet, there must be a will for peace. Then there will be a way to peace. Leaders must rise to the task in both the Arab world and Israel. Ideologies of hatred and extermination in the schools and media must be undermined in the Arab world. If we miss this opportunity to miss another opportunity for peace, then Palestinians, Israelis, Syrians, and other Arabs must ask themselves if they have the stomach for more wars, bloodshed, and suffering? For how long? And if they do, then are they not addicted to conflict, violence, and war?

Tamir Bar-On

Barcelona Champions of Europe!

2009-05-28T10:38:00.000-07:00

Barcelona Champions of Europe!

Barcelona defeated Manchester United yesterday 2-0 in the Champions League finals. They are the champions of European football (soccer)! They now have the mantle of the best football club in Europe!

When the match began, the first 9 minutes were dominated by Manchester United. Ronaldo, the Portuguese star of Manchester United, was buzzing early on. He had three chances in the first 9 minutes of the match. Had Ronaldo scored early, it might have been a different match. Yet, in a moment of brilliance, Barcelona's indomitable lion, the Cameroon-born striker Eto'o, made one of the best defenders in the world (the Serb international Vidic) look like an amateur. At the edge of the box, Eto'o turned Vidic like he was used furniture, then proceeded to hit a low drive with the outside of his right foot to give no chance to United's Dutch keeper Van der Saar. Eto'o's maneuver was so lightning fast that it adhered to Muhammad Ali's old adage that he was faster than the speed of light!

After Eto'o knock-out punch in the 10th minute of play against the run of play, the match was essentially decided. United stuttered and sputtered. They could not recover. Only Ronaldo tried to play and the other 10 men on the pitch seemed like they did not show up for the greatest match of the European footballing season. Barcelona began to stroke the ball around the entire pitch with small passes, one or two touch passes that made them seem like the Brazilian national team of the 1980s. The Barcelona midfield of Busquets, Xavi, and Iniesta were masterful. Yaya Toure was a rock in the back, but a rock with great technical skill. Puyol, normally a sweeper, was incredible as a fullback running the flanks and making dangerous offensive runs. Messi is a football genius, who makes love to the ball with his delicate touches. His rapid acceleration with the ball is breathtaking. Barcelona's second goal in the 70th minute was a leaping Messi header of sublime beauty off a gorgeous Xavi cross.

The score could have been more than 2-0, but Barcelona was in command the entire match. Henry could have made it 3-0 when he made another great United defender, Ferdinand, look like minced meat, only to be saved by Van der Saar. It is true that United hit a post, but they were never in the match for 10 minutes, not to speak of 90 minutes!

Some questions about the match: 1) If Alex Ferguson is the greatest coach in the world, he did not show it yesterday. He was outcoached by a coaching neophyte, the former Barcelona star Guardiola. He did little to change the Barcelona mastery in midfield. He did nothing to vary his tactics throughout the entire match. Why? 2)Why did Barcelona not score more goals despite their mastery in possession? 3) What happened to United after the 9th minute of the match? 4) Why did United not show the hunger it normally shows on the pitch? 5) Why was the result never in doubt? 6) Did Barcelona win because of tactics or a sheer skills gap?

Congratulations to Barcelona for becoming champions of Europe. Too bad for the violence after the match in Barcelona where 100 Barcelona fans were arrested and another 153 were injured. Football is never merely just about football!

Tamir Bar-On

Champions League Finals Today: Give Us A Great Match!

2009-05-27T09:31:00.000-07:00

Champions League Finals Today: Give Us A Great Match!

I know that there are lots of hot political issues to discuss: North Korea's nuclear test, the nomination of the first Hispanic-American female to the US Supreme Court, and, of course, Silvio Berlusconi's affair with an 18-year old! But today is the biggest match day in the European football (soccer) season: The Champions League finals. The two biggest European clubs duking it out to determine the best club in Europe and arguably the world. Today's finalists: Manchester United and Barcelona.

Most of us that will watch the match today will be neither Manchester nor Barcelona fans. All we ask for is an entertaining, thrilling match. All we are saying is give us a great match. In the age of football commercialism and match-fixing scandals, winning has become the objective. Winning at all costs. Winning dirty even. Against the practical commercial imperatives and this philosophy of winning for the sake of winning, true football fans like myself want a brilliant match. An entertaining match. A dramatic match. Heroic fighters, guile, and exquisite skill. Attacking football too. I know I am asking a lot, but these foootball clubs that will be playing today are mini corporate empires. They pay stars like Messi (photo left), Henry, Eto'o, Ronaldo (photo right), Tevez, and Vidic millions of dollars. So we the fans expect entertaining, action-packed football.

I don't care about the result because Manchester and Barcelona are not clubs close to my heart. I care about a good match, whereas the respective supporters of the two clubs want to win, plain and simple. My memories as a kid are of excellent teams that won and others that lost. That is the name of the game. The best team will not always win. Brazil's national team in 1982 and 1986 had gifted players in abundance (more gifted than the team that won the World Cup in 1994), but they lost. But they played with gusto, joie de vivre, and brilliant attacking, one-touch football. Football that mesmerizes its viewers. It was a joy to see them play and real football fans cried when they were defeated.

The best Champions League finals in recent memory was in 2005 when Liverpool defeated AC Milan 4-3. Something amazing occurred that day. Liverpool was down 3-0 at the half and won the match in unlikely fashion. This is my template for an entertaining, dramatic finals. It will be hard to repeat the heroics of that day. So when Manchester United and Barcelona take the pitch today in Rome all we are really saying is give us a great match!

Tamir Bar-On

Polish Man Sentenced For Publishing Mein Kampf

2009-05-26T09:59:00.000-07:00

Polish Man Sentenced For Publishing Mein Kampf

On Monday a Polish man from the city of Wroclaw was sentenced to a three-month suspended sentence by a Polish court for copyright infringement because he published Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925). The Polish man, known in court documents as Marek S due to Polish privacy laws, was also fined the equivalent of about $3000 US dollars. Copyright of the key Nazi ideological work belongs to the German state of Bavaria. Yet, the book is banned in Bavaria and Germany.

In 2005, Marek S actually published 20,000 copies of Mein Kampf. Should he publish more copies in the next two years, the Polish man will need to serve his prison sentence. The Bavarian and German governments are keen to prevent the spread of Mein Kampf because it can become a neat recruiting vehicle for extreme right-wing, ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist, and neo-Nazi political movements.

Mein Kampf is no doubt one of the toxic books in human history. Its call for the extermination of Jews, Slavs, liberalism, socialism, communism, social democracy, and parliamentarism are indeed chilling. Its desire for expansionism towards the "sub-human" Slavic East makes a mockery of the principle of the right of self-determination of nations.

Yet, Mein Kampf presents a problem for a scholar of fascism and Nazism like myself. On the one hand, for historical reasons, I understand the position of the German state vis-a-vis the banning of the Hitlerian text.

On the other hand, Mein Kampf, as well as the works of other racialists both yesterday and today, are indispensable tools for understanding one of the most significant and chilling political movements of the 20th century. In the age of the Internet and global communications, it becomes increasingly difficult to prevent individuals from getting a hold of Mein Kampf, Holocaust denial materials, or other literary forms of annihilationist racial hatred such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They are all freely available on many Internet sites. Banning breeds suspicion and an underground following. It creates free speech martyrs out of people that do not care much about free speech. Court testimony revealed that Marek S was interested neither in historical scholarship, nor free speech, but merely in making more Polish zlotys!

Tamir Bar-On

A Leftist Student Martyr Murdered by the Left

2009-05-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

A Leftist Student Martyr Murdered by the Left

Almost 41 years ago on June 2, 1967, a German university student protestor named Benno Ohnesorg (photo above) was brutally gunned down in West Berlin by a plain clothes police officer, Karl Heinz Kurras. There are new juicy revelations about the Ohnesorg murder, which radically galvanized 1968 student hero Daniel Cohn-Bendit, German politicians of the period, and left-wing activists and terrorists such as the Baader-Meinhof gang. The 2 June Movement, a left-wing student movement, was named after the day in which Ohnesorg was killed. The new revelations are worthy of a spy novel, conspiracy legend, and the realpolitik intrigue of Cold War politics.

German newspapers such as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung have recently reported that Ohnesorg was murdered by no mere West German police officer, but a Stasi East German government spy:

http://www.faz.net/s/RubFC06D389EE76479E9E76425072B196C3/Doc~E254C1CCAF2444DE9909C2BA756B19170~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

I thank my German artist friend, a profound man named Georg Muhleck, for alerting me to this exceptional story.

Kurras, the police officer, was an unusual fellow, to say the least. He was originally from East Germany (including membership in the East German Communist Party), moved to West Germany, and became disillusioned by materialistic, alienated life in the West. He became a police officer in West Germany, but longed to return to former socialist East Germany. He applied to return to East Germany, but the Stasi proposed that he stay to become an East German spy.

The questions remain: What motivated the Ohnesorg murder? Why would a leftist kill a leftist student demonstrator? Did he have Stasi orders to shoot demonstrators? And why? Incredible revelations and difficult questions.

What we know is that in the aftermath of Ohnesorg's death there was a radicalization of German students and political movements on the left. German terrorism of the left-wing variety increased. And the German state, like its counterpart in Italy in the late 1960s and 1970s, used dubious tactics to increase the repressive apparatus of the state in the context of the anti-communist Cold War struggle.

It is clear that the East German socialist state had an interest in weakening the liberal democratic and capitalist West German state. So it hired Kurras and others as agents in the West. Western spies operated in the East. How many others like Kurras were working in the West German police force? And government? And did they contribute to a "strategy of tension" that caused so much terrorism in West Germany in the 1970s? Was the terrorism also in the interest of the West because it identified clear communist foes?

My conclusion: If a so-called leftist state can assist in killing a leftist activist (even if indirectly perhaps), then is there a left left? If the right, which represents the West German state and law and order, can justify the murder, then to what degree do right and left collude in maintaining a hierarchical, stratified system of inequality? Are left and right fictions? Is there agreement on maintaining just enough conflict, tension, and division so that the left and right appear like radically different political forces?

The Ohnesorg political murder raises hundreds of questions. It is indeed sobering that the most noble, idealistic, and honourable of youth are subject to paths of political manipulation. This is why, in the end, no political project can legitimize the blood of even one martyr. Benno Ohnesorg lives in my heart not because he was on the left, but because he was Benno Ohnesorg, a fellow man struggling with the courage of a lion for a better world.

Tamir Bar-On

You Are Never Safe: Even in Montreal

2009-05-23T07:27:00.000-07:00

You Are Never Safe: Even in Montreal

Yesterday the long arm of the law finally caught up to Desire Munyaneza (photo above), the university-educated genocidal killer from Butare, Rwanda. The Rwandan genocide by the Hutu-led government killed about 850,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. It was a brutal affair, which was prepared for nearly two years and undertaken with primitive efficiency by both the Rwandan state and their Interhamwe militia allies. If you can imagine, most of the killing was conducted using machetes, axes, and hoes. Very different from the Nazi use of advanced technological, scientific machineries of death such as concentration camps and movable gas vans. The result was the same: Death, genocide, and the attempt to annihilate an identifiable ethnic or religious group.

Munyaneza, who came from a prominent merchant family, immigrated to Canada in 1997. Yesterday Montreal judge Andre Denis convicted him under a new Canadian genocide law, which was enacted in 2000. He is charged with genocide, as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. He directly helped organize genocide against Tutsis in conjunction with the blood-thirsty Interhamwe. Charges against him included systematic mass rapes against Tutsis. Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general that witnessed the carnage and could do nothing but warn the world and a UN that turned its back on Tutsis, was a star witness in the case.

This was a historic day for Canada and Rwanda. It was a hopeful day in the world struggle against genocide. The simple message: You can run from committing the "crime of crimes," as anti-genocide activist Raphael Lemkin dubbed it, but you can't hide. You are never safe from the law, even in Montreal. Now it is time Canada go after other assorted war criminals, ultra-nationalist thugs, and Islamists that slip in under the radar screen because Canadians are too busy to care about politics. What a shame! Three cheers for Justice Denis for fighting against real genocide! The survivors, some of which are in Montreal, must live with the pain perpetually.

Tamir Bar-On

Guantanamo Will Not Close Just Yet: Obama Can Do No Wrong

2009-05-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

Guantanamo Will Not Close Just Yet: Obama Can Do No Wrong

The newly minted President of the US, Barack Obama, promised to close Guantanamo within one year. Now that the hour of power has come he is not so sure. He is not even being assisted by fellow Democratic senators, who refused to vote for the money to close Guantanamo. Let's be clear: Guantanamo will not close just yet in the post-Bush era and Obama can do no wrong. Remember we forgave Obama for the Wright affair, for hanging around for many years with a religious preacher that spewed anti-US, anti-white, anti-Jewish venom. And we will forgive Obama, even if his administration continues to torture, interrogate clandestinely, and engage in abhorrent techniques with the hope of making us safe from genocidal Islamists. We will forgive Obama because Guantanamo is the model of our global politics, Obama or no Obama.

Guantanamo as the model of global politics? I thought that with Obama we were entering an era of dialogue, speaking to our enemies, and new approaches to foreign policy? But Guantanamo is the model and microcosm of the global political order after 9-11. For the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, Guantanamo represented "the state of exception," a type of emergency situation that becomes the model for societies around the world. Please see the following 2004 Agamben interview about "the state of exception" conducted by the German Law Journal:

http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437

The US in Guantanamo abandoned the Geneva Conventions until 2006 because al-Qaeda and the Taliban were "enemy non-combatants" (terrorists) that did not qualify for legal protection of captured national soldiers or guerrilla fighters. These captured fighters did not even have the status of people, argued Agamben. It is interesting how the prelude to torture and de-humanization is the loss of legal status for "enemies," something the Nazis did very well. The "state of exception" of the Nazis allowed the regime to combat national enemies (Jews, communists, unionists, liberals, etc.) from 1933 and lasted a terrible twenty years. Twenty years that included concentration camps, expansionist wars throughout Europe, and a racialist project that was a perpetual revolution. The heinous regime was only defeated by external Allied forces.

All populations around the world in a post-9-11 climate live under "the state of exception": constant surveillance by state authorities. New anti-terror laws, legal (illegal?) spying on citizens, and growing police and military powers from the US and China to Egypt and Pakistan. The entire political body is treated like criminals were in the past. We are all suspects, constantly living under an extraordinary state of emergency that can last perpetually. So whether you are for Cheney or Obama on the matter of Guantanamo, Guantanamo is the new model for our political world. All those concerned about civil liberties, whether on the right, left, or beyond, should be revolted. For as Obama put it himself yesterday:

On one side of the spectrum, there are those that make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view of the world that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right.

I am an Obama fan and cheered for him before he won and when he won. He is the symbol of the US's great promise: a beacon of cultural and racial tolerance and multiculturalism to the world. Yet, what Obama is saying above is that we won't take the Bush-Cheney approach on Guantanamo, torture, and waterboarding, but that sometimes we might need to because of "the unique challenges of terrorism." National security might in extraordinary circumstances trump transparency, meaning torture will sometimes be permissible against deadly enemies. Obama has a way to find solutions based on the justice of the middle, but in this case he undermines civil liberties for the terrorists and for us.

But Obama can do no wrong. He is the darling of the US, European, and world media. A feel-good story in a world troubled by economic chaos, global poverty, terrorist threats, simmering ethnic conflicts, environmental decay, and a potentially nuclear Iran. But Obama will not stop the new ugly reality: Guantanamo is the model of our global politics, whether he definitively closes it or stalls the process. For this we will all be losers, whether in Toronto, Washington, Paris, Tel-Aviv, or Islamabad. State powers will have triumphed and our liberties will be a thing of the past.

Tamir Bar-On

From Che to Prabakharan: Dead or Alive?

2009-05-21T06:36:00.000-07:00

From Che to Prabakharan: Dead or Alive?

Amazing footage the other day. On May 18, the leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Velupillai Prabakharan (left: please excuse the tiny photo!), supposedly died! For LTTE supporters, this is merely Sri Lankan government propaganda. Hard to accept this when the Sri Lankan army has dealt a death-blow to the LTTE, which admitted defeat on May 17. Hard to accept this when you check out this You-Tube footage of the dead terrorist or freedom fighter, depending on where you stand on the issue of a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaSL7XinAvk

It is indeed hard to believe that the LTTE leader is dead. It was hard to believe that about forty years ago in 1967 the mythical figure of revolutionary Marxism, the Argentinean Ernest Che Guevara, was executed by the Bolivian army. See right for the photo of the dead Che that was shown to the world press on October 10, 1967. Both Prabakharan and Che lived and died by the gun of armed struggle. Prabakharan, like Che, was larger than life. He was a mythical figure in the struggle of independence for Tamils against the Buddhist-Sinhalese dominated Sri Lankan state. It is hard for LTTE supporters to imagine that their leader and demi-god is dead. He has been the heart and soul of the LTTE since 1976. He helped to create a precursor organization to the LTTE in 1972. He was the man responsible for the wave of suicide bombings that began in 1981, before Islamists would use it to vicious and great political effect in Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, the United States, England, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Prabakharan was both a nationalist and a Marxist. His campaign against the Sri Lankan state was waged viciously for 26 years, without consideration for human life. His nationalism/Marxism was a contradiction in terms ideologically, one that also mired the political trajectory of jailed Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan was captured by the Turkish state in 1999, knocking life out of the violent armed struggle of the PKK. Yet, both Prabakharan and Ocalan are more nationalists than Marxists, believing in first and foremost the national liberation of Tamils and Kurds respectively. Similarly, the defeat of the LTEE and now the death of the all-powerful leader spells trouble for Tamil nationalists. Sri Lanka might take this victory as an opportunity to solve the political crisis that led the Tamils to armed rebellion in the first place. They might offer Tamils autonomy and greater Tamil participation within the highest sectors of the Sri Lankan government.

It took time to accept that the mythical hero of the Cuban Marxist Revolution in 1959 died in the misty Bolivian jungles in an inglorious, sobering spectacle with few fighters against a powerful Bolivian army. This was the heroic Che of perpetual revolution, the man who sought to make revolutions in remote places like the Congo and Bolivia. The man that was not even supported by Castro or the communists in Bolivia because he was an eternal revolutionary in the Trotskyite mould. It will take time for LTTE supporters to accept that their leader, who was persona non grata for 32 governments worldwide, has gone in a blazing fury of Sri Lankan fire. It will take time because for LTEE supporters Prabakharan was leader, hero, god, and the symbolic hope of Tamil independence. As one Indian commentator noted, Prabakharan was not merely the representative of the Tamil national dream, but their "everything." Their "everything" that caused great suffering for Tamils and Buddhist Sinhalese alike in a protracted, cruel, and gruelling civil war since 1983.

Tamir Bar-On

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style (Part Two)

2009-05-20T08:44:00.000-07:00

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style (Part Two)

In my first in a three-part series of blogs on Black Power and Pride, I wrote about Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympic Games. In part two, I sought to point out that Sephardic Jews are the "black Jews," although many of them don't necessarily look black. This "black Jew" label can be especially applied to Sephardic Jews in Israel: A political, socio-economic, and cultural proletariat vis-a-vis European Ashkenazi Jews since Israel's foundation in 1948.

In today's blog entry, I will highlight the various Sephardic Jewish communities throughout the world, major Sephardic figures of yesterday and today, and how Sephardic Jews hold a key for Middle East peace.

The largest Sephardic community in the world is in Israel, the country of my birth. I was born in Beersheba, a town in the Negev desert with a substantive Moroccan Sephardic population. It is estimated that there are about 800,000 Sephardic Jews in Israel, although the figure is probably much higher, if we include all non-Ashkenazi communities in Israel. The second biggest Sephardic Jewish community will surprise many people: France with 350,000. I have relatives on my mother's side that live in France and came their from Morocco. Unlike its Ashkenazi counterparts that sought to demonstrate that they were Frenchmen and women of the "Mosaic persuasion" for centuries, the Sephardic Jewish community in France was extremely assertive about its Judaism beginning in the 1980s. When a Sephardic Jew, Ilan Halimi, was murdered in a brutal slaying in 2006 they made it clear to political and police authorities that the crime should be classified as a race killing.

The Americas have the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh largest Sephardic communities in the world: the United States (80,000), Canada (60,000), Argentina (60,000), Brazil (60,000), Mexico (40,000), Venezuela (35,000), and Uruguay (30,000). Other sizable Sephardic communities in the world include: Italy (30,000), Turkey (25,000), United Kingdom (18,000), Spain (12,000), Greece (8,000), Bulgaria (5,000), Colombia (5,000), Morocco (3,000), Cuba (3,000), and Serbia (3,000). There are also small Sephardic communities in the Netherlands, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Portugal, Gibraltar, Tunisia, Peru, and Puerto Rico, numbering 600 to 3,000 individuals.

Historically, Sephardic Jews have made many contributions to all fields of human existence from literature to politics and medicine to astronomy. If you take a look at the photo above, we have Maimonides (12th century Spanish Jewish philosopher, physician, and rabbi), Isaac Abrabanel (15th century Portuguese Jewish statesman and financier), Baruch Spinoza (17th century Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish descent), David Nieto (Italian-born philosopher, astronomer, physician, and leader of the Portuguese and Spanish community in London in the early 18th century), Daniel Mendoza (English boxing champion from 1792-5), and David Ricardo (world famous political economist who lived from 1772-1823).

The second row in the picture has more prestigious figures: Moses Montefiore, Benjamin Disraeli, Sabato Morais, Emma Lazarus, Benjamin Cardozo, and David de Sola Pool. In order these figures are: A world renowned financier, a 19th century British prime minister, a Leghorn-born Italian Jew and founder of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, the famous American poet, a US Supreme Court judge from 1932-1938, and a renowned London-born US rabbi.

And finally the third row of Sephardic who's who includes: a famous Jewish philanthropist, a French politician and prime minister, a singer, the founding father of philosophical deconstruction, Israel's Chief Sephardi rabbi since 2003, and an American film and television actor.

Now my claim at the outset was that Sephardic Jews are a key to peace in the Middle East. Peace between Israelis and Palestininans, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Jews (and Christians) must come one day. We will wake up and see our common humanity. We will wake up and stop preaching ideologies of hatred, division, and war. And as Sephardic Jews lived and soaked Arab and Muslim cultures, they can assist in the process of peace in Israel between Israelis and Palestinians. Even within Israel proper itself between Jews and Arabs. Sephardic Jews are the bridge of many world cultures: Jewish, Arabic, Berber, and various European cultures. It is this cultural melange that is the future of humanity. A culture melange that is open to different cultures and yet proud and strong of its own cultural richness and identity.

Peace will come! Shalom, salam, paix, and paz will ring in the Middle East. And Ashkenazim and Sephardim both understand that it is necessary for the future of the Jewish people and for the spiritual improvement of humanity. I stretch my hand of peace to my Arab brothers and sisters from Palestine to Morocco to take the path of peace. The path of two peoples, two sovereign peoples, with two states. And I ask Europeans and Americans to help us in this fundamental "peace of the brave." We are tired of the dead on both sides. One dead Jew or Palestinian is too much. One dead Jew or Palestinian is a loss for all of humanity.

Tamir Bar-On

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style

2009-05-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

Black Power and Pride: Sephardic Style

In my last post, I spoke about Tommie Smith and John Carlos and their powerful Black Power salutes at the 1968 Olympic Games. Without the audacity of Smith and Carlos, there would probably be no "audacity of hope." There would be no Barack Obama. There would be no black US president in 2009. The Black Power and Pride of Smith and Carlos paved the way for President Obama. Obama, of course, did not cause the same fears in white America as Smith and Carlos, but those were different days in which black upward mobility in politics, academia, and the media were not yet acceptable in the mainstream.

Today I will write about another type of Black Power and Pride, namely, Sephardic Jews. You might be scratching your heads. Jews and Black Power and Pride? Well, I am a Sephardic Jew, a Jew that traces his family origins to the expulsion of Jews from Spain with the infamous Alhambra decree in 1492. My family found refuge in Africa: Morocco. Sephardic Jews took with them their Judeo-Spanish dialect, Ladino, to Morocco, Sarajevo, Istanbul, Salonika, and other locations in and around the Mediterranean basin. Many lived among Muslim Arab rulers for centuries in Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya. While they were culturally Jews in a minority situation like their Ashkenazi European Jewish counterparts in Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Russia, they were deeply influenced by the cultural milieu of the Arabs and Berbers. Sephardic Jews often spoke Arabic (as well as Spanish or French), engaged in Arab-like hospitality, picked up Arab customs like saint worship and various superstitions such as the evil eye, and maintained a joie de vivre that is common in warm climates.

Like the Ashkenazi Jews that faced constant harassment from Christian authorities and second-class status in Russia, Poland, or Belarus, Sephardic Jews were at the mercy of Muslim rulers. In the Spanish Golden Age, when Spain was under Muslim control before the 1492 expulsion decree by Queen Isabella I and Ferdinand II (which also applied to Muslims), they were special political advisors, doctors, brilliant poets, scientists, and philosophical giants of their times. They were a tolerated minority, but when rulers changed they were sometimes subject to pogroms like their European counterparts.

When Israel was created in 1948, it was a project that was devised largely by European-based Ashkenazi Jews in the 1890s. This did not mean that the Sephardic Jewe were not Zionists before Zionism's birth in the 19th century. Through the poetry and philosophy of Halevy and Ibn-Gabirol, as well as their prayers, Sephardic Jews longed to go back to Jerusalem and shake off the yoke of Arabo-Islamic oppression. So my parents, like other Sephardic Jews from Morocco to Turkey, settled in Israel with great pride after the state's hopeful birth in 1948.

Yet, because Zionism as a political movement was largely pushed by Ashkenazi Jews (with Sephardic Jews naturally sympathetic), Sephardic Jews became the "black Jews" of Israel. Pierre Vallieres, the Quebecois nationalist of the 1960s, called francophones Quebecois the "white niggers of North America." Like francophone Quebecois until the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, Sephardic Jews were for years kept out of the political and cultural establishment controlled by an Ashkenazi European elite that thought they were superior because they came from supposedly civilized Europe. This racism, paternalism, and condescension was what my parents lived through in Israel. It made us change our name from the Moroccan Jewish Bitton to the more Ashkenazi Bar-On. If Arabs were suspect, Sephardic Jews were also suspect because they came from the Arab world. Moroccan Jews gained a sterotypical reputation in Israel for delinquency, theft, and low socio-economic status in Israel's early years. They rioted in 1959 in Haifa because they truly were the "Jewish blacks of Israel" with low educational opportunities, high rates of unemployment, and delinquency. Like blacks in the United States, Moroccan Jews in particular were stigmatized as a lost cause that resisted European cultural greatness.

I suspect that part of the reason we left for Canada was the stigma faced by Moroccan Jews in particular and Sephardic Jews in general in Israel. My parents remained fervent Zionists. My dad saw the best and the brightest killed in three wars he participated in for Israel's existence. Like the blacks of the United States, Sephardic Jews understood that Israel could do better. That whether you were Ashkenazi, Sephardic or none of these (Iranian Jews, Indian Jews, Georgian Jews, or those that remained in Palestine for centuries before Israel's creation, etc), your true worth is your character, intelligence, knowledge, spirit, determination, and willpower. That merit matters and can win the day above ethnic cliques or nepotism. The struggle was hard. Gains have been made, but like for black Americans, some of the old stigma and racism remains vis-a-vis Sephardic Jews.

Contrary to the history of anti-Moroccan and anti-Sephardic sentiments among Israel's Ashkenazi establishment, Sephardic Jews have a heritage of rich traditions and personnel that rivals its Ashkenazi counterparts. So in homage to a different Black Power and Pride, here is my list of famous Sephardic Jews that have influenced history in different domains of life:

Moses Maimonides, Yehudah Halevy, Baruch Spinoza, David Ricardo, Benjamin Disraeli, Emma Lazarus, Pierre Mendes-France, Jacques Derrida, Yossi Benayoun, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Albert Cohen, Helen Cixous, Salvador Luria, Amedeo Modigliani, Yitzhak Navon, Georges Moustaki, Francis Salvador, Norman Podhoretz, Haim Saban, Siegfrid Sassoon, and Emilio Segre.

In the next post, I will comment on these prominent Sephardic figures (see photo above) and others. These figures include Nobel prize winners, writers, philosophers, rabbis, business magnates, singers, politicians, economists, painters, and footballers. In addition, I will tell you where Sephardic Jews live today and why they are a fundamental ingredient in the elusive search for peace in the Middle East.

Tamir Bar-On

Black Power and Pride

2009-05-17T10:50:00.000-07:00

Black Power and Pride

It is hockey and basketball playoff time and it made me wonder how so few of our professional athletes have any political balls! It was the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. And two black American sprinters, Tommie Smith (centre) and John Carlos (right) had just won Olympic medals in the 200-metre sprint. Tommie Smith set a world record with a blazing time of 19.83 seconds, while Australia's Peter Norman (left) finished second and John Carlos third.

Yet, what they did shocked Mexico, the United States, and the world. Under the influence of the black sociologist Harry Edwards and the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), Smith and Carlos picked up their medals in black socks only, to symbolize black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf as a symbol of the new black pride movement. Carlos decided to unzip his jacket to show solidarity with all US blue collar workers. He also wore a necklace of beads in honour of "those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage." Both Smith and Carlos raised their hands defiantly in Black Power and Pride, while Norman sympathized with the two black athletes by wearing an OPHR badge. They bowed their heads, as they raised their clenched fists.

There is a funny moment to the story. Note that the athletes are raising two different hands, with Smith raising the right and Carlos the left. It turns out both athletes were to wear black gloves, but Carlos forgot his in his room. Smith gave him one of his gloves. Norman suggested Carlos wear the glove on his left hand. Traditionally, the Black Power salute was with the right hand. As the US athletes left the podium, they were booed. Smith later said the following about their powerful gestures: "If I win, I am American, not a black American. But if I did something bad, then they would say I am a Negro. We are black and we are proud of being black. Black America will understand what we did tonight."

The two athletes were expelled from the Olympic Games. The mainstream US media treated Smith and Carlos like pariahs. Smith and Carlos ended up being professional football players. Smith took the post of Assistant Professor of Physical Education at Oberlin College in 1995. Carlos became a high school track coach. Norman's story was more tragic. He was derided by the Australian media and Olympic authorities for supporting Smith and Carlos. He was not picked for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, despite finishing third in his time trials. He kept running, but got gangrene in 1985 after a terrible Achilles tendon injury. His life was never the same, as the leg was nearly amputated. He drank heavily. In 2006, he died of a heart attack. In a wonderful spirit of solidarity, Smith and Carlos were the pallbearers at his funeral.

At the 2008 Olympic Games, British athletes refused to sign a gag letter that would have prevented them from making political statements. Contrary to the stereotypes, athletes are not always mental automatons. Smith and Williams spoke out for the deep pain and anguish of their people, for pride in their blackness, and to make the US the country that it could be in fighting racial inequality and socio-economic marginalization. The Brazilian soccer star of the 1980s, Socrates, began a campaign for democratization in Brazilian soccer that later spread to the country's political realm and undermined military rule. Ajax Amsterdam, the Dutch football club from a multicultural city, defiantly wears the star of David as part of an anti-racist campaign against racist soccer hooligans.

Soccer governing bodies like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee don't like the political involvement of athletes because they threaten business-as-usual. They threaten the money-making goliaths and sponsorship deals of these organizations. It should be all about the circus! Forget about the bread, the butter, the issues that matter in our lives. But athletes are organically part of a larger political milieu. They will speak. They will not be silenced. I just lament that there are not more Smiths and Carlos in athletics today, aside from rare cases like the Canadian basketball star Steve Nash. This speaks to the poverty of our political involvement. This speaks to the poverty of our political imagination. I am not a black man, although for some I might look like one. But I will always salute the courage, heroism, pride, and spirit of defiance of Smith, Carlos, and Norman. I salute their spirit of dissent. If only we had less steriods and more models like them today!

Part Two will be continued in the next post!

Tamir Bar-On

The Toronto Quarterly and Exile

2009-05-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

The Toronto Quarterly and Exile

The latest issue of the Toronto Quarterly (volume 3, Spring 2009) is out! It is a Toronto-based poetry magazine edited by Darryl Salach. You can download the entire issue, which includes my poem "Exile" and materials by renowned Toronto poets Desi Di Nardo and Ewan Whyte:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-toronto-quarterly-issue-three/6774479

Also, check out The Toronto Quarterly's blog:

http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.com/

Although I have been writing poetry since 2005, I just decided to publish my stuff this year. In particular, I thank a brilliant poet-friend from Serbia living in Toronto for many years, Nebojsa Vasovic, for encouraging me by meticulously going through my poems. He, too, is an exile and so will understand the sentiment of the poem. A toast of Havana Club rum to him and to life! "Exile," which appears in the new issue of The Toronto Quarterly, is my first published poem. Here it is below:

EXILE

They say that exile ended in 1948,
the birth of the state,
the springtime of its hopes.
Now we are in the diaspora
wandering in the desert for forty years,
wondering when it will end?
But should I return,
would I not again be an exile in my own land?
Would I not long for the dream palaces of Granada,
or the azure-domed synagogue at Kensington Market?
Would I not lament what the state had become,
the new exiles in our midst caught by barbed wire?
Exile is deep pain like being pulled from the roots of an ancient tree.
Exile is the exodus of freedom.

by Tamir Bar-On

Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

2009-05-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

Of Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Dissent

I am a dissident, forever a dissident, marching to my own drummer. No Canadian newspapers can quench my appetite for real debate and dissent in the spirit of an open, liberal pluralism. No doubt, I find great pieces in The National Post, Globe and Mail, and sometimes even the Toronto Star. Yet, more open political debate occurs in the blogsphere today than in Canada's national newspapers. And Canada's newspapers are not alone, from Le Monde to the New York Times, I can almost predict the editorial positions and certainly what particular columnists will say. This is not debate for me, but mere ritualism, like reciting a profession of faith when you rise each morning with the sun. I love ritual, don't get me wrong. But the ritual repetition of the same poliical platitudes by left and right is tiring, dogmatic, and masks substantive political debates.

So I guess I was secretly excited when Facebook recently said they would remove a few Holocaust denial groups from its site. Then we discovered that there were more Holocaust denial groups on Facebook. And that Facebook has a policy that prohibits hate against identifiable groups, yet is now defending the right of the Holocaust deniers to air their noxious positions. I am a Facebook user and I was secretly excited because it is with the toughest of "free speech" issues like Holocaust denial that we come to know our collective values as a society. We come to know the degree to which free expression is an authentic value, or a rhetorical ploy used by those with power to be the guardians of morality and the shifting winds of political correctness.

Some Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors and their relatives have pushed Facebook to chase out the Holocaust denial sites. The Holocaust denial groups use the mantra of free speech, while they are merely interested in using Holocaust denial as a platform to finish the job the Nazis began when they came to power in 1933. Free speech advocates can be divided into two classes: Radical libertarians where all is fair game (including Holocaust denial) and more nuanced free speech supporters. The latter included a former professor when I was studying at York University, Aurel Braun. Braun correctly pointed out that there is a distinction between free speech and political speech that veers into action and can cause "imminent harm and danger." I am not talking about hurting morals, sensibilities, worldviews, or your comfortable conception of the world. I am talking about Rwanda's Hutu-led government in 1994 getting on public radio to call for the "cutting down" (extermination) of Tutsis. I am talking about the Nazi Party in inter-war years Germany calling for the annihilation of world Jewry. This is the terrain of Holocaust denial and this is what makes it so tricky.

So I stand for free expression, even noxious free expression, and the collision of radically different worldviews, which is the essence of politics. Yet, I am the author of a book on neo-fascism in Western Europe, Where Have All The Fascists Gone? (Ashgate, 2007), which argues that generally fascists in Europe are no longer of the Holocaust denial type. They are no longer open fascist or Nazi sympathizers. They have changed their clothes, as all good wolves do. And this has made them more effective in an "anti-fascist" and even "post-fascist" age. In short, I am sympathetic to the people that argue in favour of legal sanctions for those that call for the extermination of particular groups. If I threaten someone with murder on the street, I can certainly go to jail. If I threaten the annihilation of Jews, blacks, Arabs, blue people, or the green-eyed, have I not entered the terrain where acceptable speech ends and the incitement to genocidal murder begins?

Facebook understands that Holocaust denial is an entire industry with millions of worldwide followers from Iran and Egypt to Russia and the United States. Anti-Jewish conspiracies have also grown in the post-9-11 climate. And supposedly smart people eat them up like a delicious corned beef sandwich, but one that gives indigestion to the eater and the society in question. And Facebook knows that if they act more vociferously against the Holocaust deniers, they will say: "We told you so. Jews control the world. They control the media. They control what we can say and what we cannot say."

So what to do about mad people that want to restart Auschwitz? What to do about the Holocaust hoaxers on Facebook? I have 12 suggestions:

1) Combat blatant falsehoods with social truths. This is the surest path to victory. This minimizes the use of creeping authoritarian legislation and protects free expression. As Deborah Lipstadt, the author of Denying the Holocaust, notes: "I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship… The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."

2) Educate people about the "crime of crimes" (genocide), the Holocaust, and genocides in the 20th century. An excellent starting point is Samantha's Power's "A Problem From Hell" because it also highlights our worldwide indifference (as well as US governmental indifference) vis-a-vis six genocides of the 20th century: the Armenian, Holocaust, Cambodian, Iraqi Kurd, Bosnian, and Rwandan.

3) Tolerate some denial in civil society as it is out there in abundance on the Net and will not be stopped. Yet, legally punish those that veer into action by inciting for the wholesale destruction "in whole or in part" of identifiable ethnic groups in the here and now. This is certainly more important with those in positions of state power, although the Nazis began their ascent as an insignificant national socialist party in 1920. In this respect, Ahmadinejad's Holocaust hoax theories are far more troubling than a Texas lone wolf Christan, racist patriot that spews Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) garbage on Facebook.

4) Jail individuals and leaders that actually engage in violence against particular ethnic, cultural, or religious groups. And jail them without amnesty. Remember Hitler wrote his venomous Mein Kampf in jail after a failed coup. His amnesty and political rehabilitation should have been foiled by German political and legal authorities.

5) Know that Holocaust denial is a species of an ancient passion, anti-Semitism (or the "socialism of fools"), which cannot be fully defeated because of human hatred, envy, jealousy, and negative mimetic behaviour. It expresses the real powerlessness of people in a globalized world where capitalist institutions, states, and ordinary people have less power to determine their sovereign political affairs. Jews are the convenient scapegoat for the loss of power of all, whether in authoritarian or liberal democratic contexts. If the Jews were not around, as the French royalist anti-Semite Charles Maurras once said, they would need to be invented. The Jewish scapegoat is an easy answer for all of our grave ills from the current banking crisis to the loss of national identity, and from 9-11 to world poverty. I suppose Jews are also to blame for radical Islamism, Nazism, and Stalinist communism. Yes, the anti-Semitic conspiracy cranks really go that far!

6) Provide more positive models for humanity than the Holocaust deniers. Provide examples of positive cooperation and unity between Jews and Christians, Jews and Muslims, and Arabs and Israelis. Or show how love, spirituality, and cultural understanding rather than Holocaust hate can help us heal the world.

7) Mainstream cultural and political organizations, Jewish or non-Jewish, do not necessarily need to be so defensive and whiff out anti-Semitic abuses everywhere at all times in all places. When a madman howls at the wind, do we need to inflame him with our incendiary commentary? When we call for the banning of the Holocaust deniers, we give them the oxygen of publicity they so crave. Sometimes silence is more powerful than outright condemnation. This is something to be considered on a case-by-case basis. The decisions are indeed difficult and complex ones.

8) If we err, we ought to err on the side of speech, dissent, the right of even cranks of all political camps to have their say.

9) When banning begins of one political camp, it will never end there. Before you know it, the state will be determining your thoughts, acceptable worldviews, and movements. My family did not come to liberal democratic Canada to be policed by a nanny state.

10) Know that Holocaust denial is both a free speech issue and simultaneously a test case for the limits of political speech. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theatre is illegal because it will cause "imminent harm and danger" to people in the theatre. When political authorities start to call for the physical elimination of certain cultural or religious groups from our universe, their right to speech has crossed into the toxic river of genocidal murder.

11) Know that Holocaust denial is sometimes a terrible provocation against those that are tired of perceived media control of political debate by the same newspapers, columnists, and editors.

12) Know that in the end humanity, the spirit of dissent, and the memory of the victims of the Holocaust can be preserved with our vigilance. But also know that as the Holocaust survivors will all soon be gone. The deniers of the world will count on time, the loss of political memory, ignorance, and hatred to continue the legacy of denial. The truth and the memory of the Holocaust dead should hang permamently in all our hearts as a testament to humanity's inhumanity. The lesson is applicable for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Tamir Bar-On

Something's rotten in the state of Canada

2009-05-15T00:49:00.000-07:00

Something's rotten in the state of Canada

Canada is a country that is world-renowned for Anglo-French biculturalism, legally enshrined multiculturalism, increasing Native autonomy gains, and the championing of peace through the multilateralism of the United Nations. In 1957, future Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson was awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize for his role in the creation of UN peacekeeping missions. Canada’s international reputation has always positively differentiated it from both continental European nations and its superpower neighbour the United States. Given this record, one might expect for Canadians to be honest brokers in respect of the Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

Yet, Canada increasingly tolerates intolerance, the silencing of political foes, and annihilationist ideologies on its university campuses. Unfortunately, government and civil society alike have participated in the denigration of Canada’s once healthy liberal democracy and the lack of even-handedness. Canada has the most pro-Israel government ever under Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, yet the undercurrent of Canadian society is increasingly a left-wing progressivism that views the struggle against Israel as the most potent human rights struggle of our age.

Let me offer some examples to illustrate this dichotomy between official Canadian government policy on Israel, one the one hand, and the anti-Israel chorus in civil society, on the other hand. Canada has declared Hamas an illegal terrorist organization, refused to participate at the recent UN conference on racism because it considers it an anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic “hate-festival,” and unambiguously spoken out against violence against Jewish students on Canadian campuses. The Canadian government recently banned British MP George Galloway from entering the country on the pretext of material support for Hamas. They gave a marginal figure untold numbers of new supporters in Canada and around the world.

The picture in Canadian civil society is radically different. Despite his support for child “martyrs” (suicide bombers), claim that the Holocaust was a “fairytale exploited by Israel,” and his admission of “rage towards the Jews,” on April 5 2009 Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, addressed Canadian Arabs near Toronto. The head of the Canadian Arab Federation since 2006, Khaled Mouammar, has radicalized a once tolerant organization by openly opening his heart to genocidal Islamists such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

Between 2006 and 2009, resolutions calling for boycotts of Israeli academics at Ontario universities found a welcome ear with student organizations at Toronto’s Ryerson University and the president of the powerful Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) in Canada’s largest province. Ryan manipulatively compared an Israeli bomb that hit the Islamic University in Gaza to Nazi burnings. In a McCarthyite moment, Ryan outlandishly argued that unless Israeli academics condemned Israel for the 2008-9 war against Hamas in Gaza they should be banned from Canadian campuses.

In 2006 and 2008 respectively, conservative pundits Marc Steyn and Ezra Levant were threatened with censorship by Muslim organizations as a result of complaints to human rights commissions. In 2006, Steyn penned “The Future Belongs to Islam,” in Canada’s leading political magazine Maclean’s. He argued that Muslims in North America and Europe represent a potential Islamist political constituency due to demographic assertiveness and clashing values.

Levant, the editor of conservative publication the Western Standard, reprinted the infamous Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad on his website in 2008. Syed Soharwardy of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada launched a complaint against Levant for spreading hatred. Levant was farcically dragged to the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to respond to the complaint. Levant taped the proceedings. The video catapulted to You-Tube cult status as Canadians were made aware of how the government gurus of anti-racism chillingly participated in the silencing of political speech. The complaint was eventually dropped.

In 2003, student rioters at Montreal’s Concordia University violently intimidated the administrators to the point that they shamefully cancelled the speaking engagement of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Ehud Barak, the current Israeli Labour leader, could not set foot on the Montreal campus due to the hooligan tactics of the anti-Zionist protestors.

I am a product of the Canadian university system. I completed my BA and MA at Toronto’s leftist hotbed York University. Crude anti-Marxist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialism prevailed in the late 1980s, but open displays of anti-Semitism and calls for the liquidation of Israel were practically taboo. When I completed my Ph.D. at Montreal’s McGill University in 2000, I was involved in amicable Jewish-Arab dialogue groups attempting to solve conflicts in the Middle East.

Today I am a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University, an anglophone university in Waterloo (Ontario) graciously named after Canada’s first French-Canadian prime minister. I have witnessed our campuses degenerate into institutions of greater intolerance. New lines of political toxicity have been crossed. Authentic political discussions are stifled. Righteous, moral sloganeering wins the day. Racism and anti-Semitism are more openly expressed today. Intimidation and harassment have multiplied against Jewish students. Hate against Israel is expressed like the latest Che Guevara fashion accessory.

At times, the hate is open. Most often it arrives in coded language such as “Zionist imperialism” or “international Jewish lobby.” The campuses are not alone. On April 7 2009 left-wing Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig wrote lines that shockingly smacked of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The 19th century anti-Semitic forgery insisted a tiny Jewish cabal insidiously destroys national governments and rules the world. Reacting to the infantile banning of Galloway by the Canadian Conservative government, McQuaig writes “it seems likely Israel had a hand in the decision to ban Galloway from Canada.” McQuaig forgets that Israel itself did not prevent the British MP from entering its country. Galloway’s ban was allegedly “influenced by a foreign government,” insists McQuaig. Presumably Israel, not superpower United States. As a G-8 country, why would Canada need Israel to make a decision about a British MP? McQuaig calls a 2008 security pact between Canada and Israel a “secretive management committee,” which might have a detrimental impact on Canada’s Arabs and Muslims. McQuaig provides no proofs for her allegations. If Canada is doing the bidding of a “foreign government,” would it not make more sense to back Arab governments with their massive oil reserves?

McQuaig is not considered a crank in Canada. Along with another fierce critic of Israel, Naomi Klein, McQuaig is one of the stars of Canada’s anti-globalization left. She is the author of It’s the Crude Dude: War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet (2004), which simplistically argued that the US invasion of Iraq was principally about securing a steady stream of petroleum.

Klein, the author of international anti-corporate best-sellers such as No Logo (2000) and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007), recently signed an anti-Israel petition, “Jewish Canadians Concerned About Suppression of Criticism of Israel” in leading Toronto left-wing weekly Now (March 19-25, 2009). She was joined by 160 Canadian Jews, who tragically insist that “false charges of anti-Semitism” are utilized to block dissent against Israel. The anti-Zionist signatories claim that Israel does not act in self-defense and “causes immeasurable suffering and injustice to the Palestinians.” Despite the manifesto’s claim that it combats all forms of racism and anti-Semitism, there is not a word about the genocidal anti-Semitism of Hamas, Iran’s role in killing 85 Jews at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, growing anti-Semitism on Canadian campuses or European cities, or the disproportionate demonisation of Israel among the community of nations. Not a word about real genocide in the Sudan today. Yet, there is a tasteless insinuation that “Never Again!” from the post-Holocaust era “means never again for all peoples.” The ringing conclusion: Palestinians suffer a new genocide akin to the Holocaust, which must be unambiguously blamed on Israel.

When did Canadian civil society become so virulently anti-Zionist? For me, the tip of the iceberg was the birth of “Israeli Apartheid Week” (IAW) through the efforts of Toronto-based academics in 2005. The fact that IAW is increasingly tolerated by universities across Canada reflects profound and frightening changes in Canada’s political climate. According to IAW organizers, by 2009 IAW comprised 42 participating cities, with a staggering 13 in Canada. I was immensely troubled by IAW at my own university and campuses throughout Canada. IAW presents one-sided anti-Zionist, anti-Israel events where moderate voices for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict are silenced. At IAW in Canada, there was not a single pro-Zionist speaker. Is this what passes for debate on Canadian campuses today?

Writing in the National Post on March 10 2009, Judy Rebick and Alan Sears insisted IAW is a free speech issue in respect of Palestinian rights. All states, including Israel, should be legitimately criticized in the international arena. In reality, the aim of IAW is not merely criticism, but to compare Israel to formerly apartheid South Africa. The dubious label ends debate. It leads to the conclusion that, like one of the most heinous regimes of the 20th century, Israel ought to be eliminated. Irwin Cotler aptly points out that the aim of IAW is to deny the collective Jew (Israel) the right to statehood among the community of nations. Yet, the deeper question I ask is why have Canadian universities been at the forefront of dubbing Israel an “apartheid state”?

The clues to the answer are provided by “All’s well in the kingdom of Canada” (March 8, 2009), penned by Toronto Star columnist Haroon Siddiqui. Siddiqui offers a sanitized and inaccurate picture of IAW. He insists that IAW is “anti-racist” and disingenuously compares its supporters to the multicultural peaceniks of the 1960s anti-Vietnam war movement. Unfortunately, the legitimization and proliferation of IAW on Canadian campuses means that something’s rotten in the state of Canada. University administrators, professors, and students have failed to sufficiently speak out against IAW because the cause is branded as “progressive” and “anti-racist.”

IAW is a step backwards akin in its annihilationist goal to the infamous Zionism equals racism resolution passed by the UN in 1975 and revoked in 1991. IAW calls for equal individual rights under one national state for Israel’s Jews and Arabs (over one million legal citizens of allegedly “apartheid Israel”), as well as Palestinians in the territories of Gaza (Hamas-controlled), the partially occupied West Bank (Palestinian Authority and Israel), and foreign refugee camps. For Canadians, this sounds appealing. But do Jews who were expelled from Arab lands not also have the right of compensation or return to Libya or Egypt? Moreover, IAW seeks to extinguish the right of Jews to exist as a national community. Would a more appropriate solution not be to recognize the right to self-determination of Palestinians and Jews living in peace with their respective viable states?

Speaking to Jewish students from Wilfrid Laurier University to University of Toronto, I know they no longer feel safe on campuses supporting Israel, even if they also support the creation of a Palestinian state. IAW has made them more afraid. Through IAW Canadians are fed the false mythology that destroying “apartheid Israel” is the most “progressive” human rights struggle of our age. In jumping on the IAW bandwagon and speaking the language of “Israeli apartheid” and “genocidal Israel,” Canadian campuses participate in perpetuating what English philosopher Jeremy Bentham might have called “nonsense upon stilts.” They also cheapen the memory of the victims of South African apartheid and genocide victims from Armenians and Jews to Tutsis and Darfuris.

Canadians are being deluded by IAW as a straightforward anti-racist, human rights struggle with evil Israel on one side and eternally good Palestinians on the other side. Canadians are proud of their human rights tradition, but Canada’s political culture is increasingly de-politicized and deep historical knowledge of unique conflicts weakened by a sloganeering moral righteousness. This is perhaps why too many Canadians uncritically support IAW.

Would Canadians rally to the IAW cause if they understood that in destroying “apartheid Israel” they would destroy the most vibrant civil society and democratic state in the Middle East? Or, that Israel with all its warts can be a model to end centuries of authoritarianism in the Arab and Muslim worlds?

Canadians and others around the world should reconceptualise what it means to be “progressive” and “anti-racist.” IAW created strange bedfellows: left-wing “progressives,” radical Islamists, and rabid anti-Semites of the far right and left. Prominent anti-Zionist Jews support IAW’s one-state solution. They are in dubious company sandwiched between Hamas and Libyan autocrat Muammar Qaddafi.

Sadly, Canadian “progressives” fail to see the raging storm that has begun with Israel’s absolute demonisation will not end with it. Canadians should be under no illusion that the aim of IAW supporters, sometimes unwittingly, is annihilationist vis-à-vis Jewish and democratic Israel. Should they succeed one day, the impact will be felt beyond Jews. Liberal democratic ideals and their supporters will also be threatened with elimination.

An Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who died in a government-controlled Fascist prison after years of incarceration, clearly understood that liberal democracies engender mass consensus based on common ways of seeing in civil society. Consensus is moulded by common sense, as well as shared attitudes and worldviews. The repressive apparatus of the state, Gramsci argued, is less important in liberal societies than the creation of mass consensus, which legitimizes capitalism and the parliamentary system. Governments come and go, but the underbelly of long-term power rests in cultural power shaped by civil society in the media, universities, voluntary associations, and think-tanks.

If we pay attention to Gramsci, we can predict that Canada’s most pro-Israel government in history does not hold the key to durable power. Civil society holds the key. In respect of Israel, Canadian civil society is increasingly alienated from the mantra of Canada’s current Conservative government. The danger of the rising anti-Zionist tide is that it will become “self-evident” to ordinary Canadians that Israel is an “illegitimate Zionist entity” fit for the dustbin of history. And then will not Canadian governments have to follow suit? It might not be long before Canada’s civil society’s hatred for Israel rivals that of France, Greece, or Venezuela. It would still not rival the Jew and Israel hatreds of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Authority, and other Arab bastions of freedom. Already Hamas and Hezbollah banners are openly displayed at anti-Israel marches in multicultural havens such as Toronto and Montreal. Israel’s foes in Canada wait to regularly and legitimately scream “Death to the Jews!” at “anti-racist,” anti-Zionist marches. Their “progressive” anti-Zionist friends on the faux left do not dare open their mouths. Perhaps they hope to be naively spared from the coming storm.

Tamir Bar-On

McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways

2009-05-13T07:47:00.000-07:00

McCarthyism Cuts Both Ways

Joseph McCarthy (right) is one of the most infamous American senators of all-time. He served as a Republican U.S. Senator of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. McCarthy was the representative of U.S. anti-communist hysteria during the Cold War. He insisted that the U.S. federal government was filled with communist subversives and spies. The term McCarthyism today extends beyond anti-communist fear-mongering to include under its ambit extreme ideological dogmatism, unsubstantiated accusations against people or their characters, and public questioning of the patriotism of individuals. McCarthyism is also associated with demagoguery, shrill intolerance, and the silencing of political debates in the defense of ultra-nationalist values.

McCarthy is dead, but indeed McCarthyism lives. And it is not merely practiced by the right, but also by the left and other political outfits across the political landscape. A Toronto-based artist, Reena Katz (left), is at the centre of a political controversy with McCarthyite overtones. Katz had a project, "Each hand as they are called," slated to open on May 14 at Toronto's Jewish-run Koffler Centre of the Arts. The project was politically benign, telling the history of Toronto's Jewish community in historic Kensington Market and the multicultural evolution of one of Toronto's most vibrant neighbourhoods. When the organizers discovered that Katz supported Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), they decided to pull their name and support from the exhibit but let Katz keep her $20,000 project fee.

Katz's plight has received great media attention in Toronto and beyond. JVoices.com published a piece from MuzzleWatch, "More McCarthyism in Toronto." The "more" was probably an allusion to the way British MP George Galloway was banned from entering Canada for a speaking engagement in Toronto on March 30 because of his material support for Hamas, an outlawed terrorist organization in Canada. The "more" was also an allusion to IAW, which took place in 13 Canadian cities and 42 locations around the world from March 1-8. Local Toronto Jewish organizations such as B'nai Brith called for the banning of IAW because they termed it a "hate-festival" directed against the collective Jew (the state of Israel). They insisted that IAW masks anti-Semitism under the rhetorical fog of anti-Zionism, while increasing hate attacks against real flesh-and-blood Jews. The IAW poster was unfortunately banned at Carleton University in Ottawa.

I am a professor of political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, about a one and a half hour drive from where I live in Toronto. The characterization of the Katz incident by MuzzleWatch as "McCarthyism" is indeed an accurate one. Yet, what Katz and political outfits across the ideological spectrum fail to understand is that McCarthyism cuts both ways. If Katz is a supporter of IAW, why did she not openly extend the right of Zionists to speak at the events? In 13 IAW participating cities in Canada, there was sadly not one pro-Zionist speaker. Is this what passes for debate on our campuses? Is this not McCarthyism in action practiced by the left? And where was the progressive left in Canada in 2003 when violent pro-Palestinian protests at Montreal's Concordia University led administrators to shamefully cancel the speaking engagement of current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu? Even Labour leader Ehud Barak, who favours a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, could not set foot on Concordia.

So McCarthyism is alive and well in Canada, on the left, right, and beyond. In 2006 and 2008, Muslim organizations like the Canadian Islamic Congress sought to silence Canadian magazines Maclean's and The Western Standard for alleged anti-Muslim xenophobia. The latter media outfit, led by Ezra Levant, went before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission to answer a complaint of anti-Muslim bias. Levant's testimony before the human rights commission was a You-Tube sensation. See it here:

http://www.youtube.com/EzraILevant

Levant's testimony showed how the guardians of anti-racism, tolerance, and multiculturalism in Canada are also the McCarthyite haters of free expression. In 2006, Levant reprinted the infamous Muhammad cartoons published by a Danish newspaper, which set off a wave of anti-Danish, anti-Christian, and anti-Western Muslim protests and violence around the world. It echoed the Salman Rushdie affair, another McCarthyite event with global implications. Who can forget Khomeini's pathetic and shrill fatwa on the British author?

Let me make it clear. What the Koffler did is not acceptable in terms of defense of artistic values and free expression. Yet, we are increasingly policing ourselves through media outlets like Facebook, the site that has played a key role in the Katz controversy. Don't like that view, won't hire that academic. Those pictures are too explicit, perhaps you're not trustworthy. Don't like your politics, won't show you the money. We have entered a dark, Kafkaesque world where the guardians of thought are policing everywhere at all times. And post-Cold War, post-9-11, the deceased senator from Wisconsin would have been proud that his McCarthyite methods are being carefully expanded and refined. Reena Katz was caught in the McCarthyite web.

But the reality is that we are all caught in the McCarthyite web. We check for peoples' political affiliations all the time in all fields of human existence, sometimes subtly and other times more conspicuously. I pride myself on being a dissident against the establishment right and the left. So I empathize with Katz. But I must tell Katz that her lack of political realism strikes me as naive and disingenuous. Did she never hear the word realpolitik? And did she think it was free from the hip arts scene, academia, journalism, or governments? Let's assume Katz ran the Koffler. A stretch, I know! Would Katz allow a Holocaust-denier artist to be funded? Or, how about a rabid right-wing ultra-nationalist of a Greater Israel variety? How about a Christian fundamentalist that hates gays and lesbians?

My point is that McCarthyism is wrong from the perspective of a pluralistic liberalism, but McCarthyism cuts both ways. You cannot support McCarthyite political projects like IAW and then expect that you will not be the victim of McCarthyism. If we are against McCarthyism, then we ourselves must not practice it, or support organizations and movements that practice it. IAW is more interested in winning the war of public opinion by peddling falsehoods about Israel than solving the tragedy of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Katz's statements, in light of the Koffler's decision, highlight her lack of realistic political instincts. She plays the ritualistic role of the artistic victim with no role in the unfolding drama: "It repulses me that I have to justify my practice here, as I sit falsely accused. I am as Jewish as they come, and not the Jew the Koffler claims me to be." Perhaps Katz does not know the type of Jew she sits accused of by the Koffler? Katz is a gay artist working to bridge cultural divides. Noble ideals, no doubt. Yet, Katz fails to see how she follows rather than leads. She is led by a self-declared anti-racist, multicultural, progressive left that does not practice what they preach. The IAW crowd is the same one that supported Durban and unwittingly Ahmadinejad's recent anti-Israel, anti-Zionist UN diatribe.

To be on the progressive left in Canada means that you must ritualistically recite the anti-Zionist mantra. To be on the left in Canada, in the arts, academia, or government bodies, is good for academic and artistic careers. And those same people are McCarthyite experts in chasing out perceived racist, anti-feminist, anti-multicultural voices from their organizations. Or, chasing out those that don't like the abstract, dogmatic labels that characterize you by your politics rather than the merits of your ideas.

Yet, Katz and IAW supporters cannot see how the causes they support, particularly among anti-Zionist Jews, are imbued with a dark McCarthyite spirit. 161 anti-Zionist Jews in Toronto recently signed a petition in March, saying they were tired of silencing of criticism of Israel through the distorted lenses of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Tasteless but legitimate political debate. Yet, not a word about growing anti-Semitic murders in Paris, police vigilantism against Jews in Caracas, the beatings of Jewish students on Canadian campuses, Hamas or Hezbollah rockets and suicide bombings, or Iran's role in killing 85 Jews at a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994? Why the omissions by Jews concerned with racism? Because they are intolerant of a diversity of political perspectives. They want to show their leftist brothers and sisters that they are good Marxists by even taking on their own cruel, apartheid co-religionists in Israel. They are a left that is about winning, black and white dualism, and the silencing of alternative voices. They also cannot get their facts straight about IAW, as Katz shows below:

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) and its organizers do not act to delegitimize Israel, but rather, “to educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and to build Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.” I have not stated that I advocate for the “extinction of Israel as a Jewish State” as the Koffler’s statement claims. What I do state publicly is that I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is an ideological stance, not one that determines any specific outcome for the contemporary state of Israel. I consider the Koffler’s press release a blatant misrepresentation of my position as well as that of IAW.

Let me wrap my head around the aforementioned verbal gymnastics. IAW does not delegitimize Israel? I will not rehearse my arguments about IAW, but will refer you to a piece I wrote about IAW in Canada's national newspaper, The National Post, on February 26, 2009:

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/02/26/tamir-bar-on-the-manipulative-mythology-of-israeli-apartheid.aspx

The aim of IAW is to compare Israel to one of the most heinous regimes on the planet, former apartheid South Africa. The aim is to show that Zionist Israel ought to be an extinct political entity, like apartheid South Africa.

But let's not be too defensive. Apartheid Israel is better than Nazi Germany. And frequently the IAW crowd will bring out the Israel = Nazism posters. The reality is that Israeli dailies like Ha'aretz and university campuses have debated Israeli apartheid for years. Yet, apartheid claims should cuts both ways. Why does Katz or IAW supporters not speak of apartheid in Arab and Muslim lands where Jews have been cleansed and even officially expelled from countries like Libya? Where are the Jews of Gaza, Morocco, Libya, and Saudi Arabia? In contrast, one million Israeli Arabs are citizens, MP's, professors, mayors, judges, and footballers in allegedly "apartheid Israel". Moreover, IAW proponents want us to believe that Israel alone is responsible for Palestinian suffering. It is responsible, but so are Palestinian political actors, Arab states, and major powers. But nuanced positions are not necessarily a forte of the IAW crowd.

Second, Katz says she does not advocate the extinction of a Jewish state, but this is precisely what IAW supports. No two-state solution. And don't be fooled, as New Historian Benny Morris astutely points out recently in One State, Two States (2009), there is no official Palestinian support for "one, secular, democratic Palestine" with equal rights for all cultural and religious groups. It is a slogan that has been conveniently utilized by the Palestinian movement, understanding that there can be no equal rights for non-Muslims. The "one, secular, democratic Palestine" is neither supported by the genocidal Islamists Hamas, nor the Fatah secularists.

Third, Katz admits she is an anti-Zionist Jew. She has the right to be an anti-Zionist Jew, but the Koffler also has the right to determine what it does with its money. It prefers to promote Jews that are pro-Zionist. Jews that defend Israel's right to exist, with all its warts, just like most people defend the right of their nation-states to exist. A Zionist is compatible with a Palestinian nationalist. Katz would have us believe otherwise because she swims under the cloudy spell of the IAW crowd. The same crowd that does not utter a word for real genocide in Darfur, yet farcically calls Israel a genocidal state. What is so wrong with two states for two peoples caught in a terrible, tragic drama created by both parties, as well as external influences?

Fourth, Katz states that her anti-Zionism is an "ideological stance". A stance on Zionism that is not ideological? Is Zionism not the dream for a homeland for the Jews of Palestine, with the caveat that Palestinian rights are respected? Is Katz a religious anti-Zionist, insisting that the Jew cannot make an idol out of state worship? Given her left-wing secular politics, this is unlikely. Katz says that her stance does not determine a "specific outcome" for the state of Israel. Worldviews, political ideologies, and media are all powerful tools in what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci called the "war of position" in civil society. There is a struggle in civil society between competing groups (some with more power than others) for hegemonic control of what becomes acceptable and common sense, and the future direction of political and cultural systems. One cannot put out a particular "ideological stance" and then say it has no impact on the world. Fascism, extreme communism, and Islamism were all born first as ideological constructs. They then gained adherents in civil society. They challenged the existing hegemonic conceptions of their respective political systems. They all proposed to get rid of liberal parliamentary democracy. They formed movements, parties, paramilitary organizations, and captured the levers of power in different historical epochs. They were all McCarthyite to the core.

Does Katz not see that the IAW supporters similarly want political victory and not justice? That they practice McCarthyism. I have spoken to many IAW supporters on campuses throughout Canada. I have never heard of an IAW supporter acknowledge genuine Jewish suffering both yesterday and today. And that Israel is a response to that suffering, which had its claim to statehood already recognized at the 1920 San Remo Conference well before the Holocaust. Palestinian statelessness and suffering are indeed real, but the realities go both ways. Mutual recognition of suffering and statehood claims will lead to peace in Israel-Palestine.

I do, however, agree with Katz's brilliant defense of political pluralism and dissent:

I do not expect the Koffler or the UJA to agree with my political leanings. The issue here is the silence because of my political affiliations, and the stonewalling of internal dissent and debate within our cultural institutions. I am deeply committed to open discussion both within Jewish communities and with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities worldwide. Dissent and discourse are crucial parts of this now global conversation; silencing and blocklisting are cowardly and toxic.

It is true that the Koffler acted like the CIA, or the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), by spying on Katz's Facebook for her political leanings. Welcome to our McCarthyite world! But let us not be too hasty to judge. Remember the British MP Galloway that is now a martyr of free speech in this country and around the world. Well, he supported the bannning of Geert Wilders, the anti-immigrant Dutch politician, from Britain. He said Jean-Marie Le Pen, another despicable anti-immigrant politician and head of the French Front National, was a Nazi and should be denied entrance to Britain. Katz supports IAW, which completely banned Zionist voices from its speaker list in 42 locations around the globe. And now Katz faces the chilling, Arctic winds of McCarthyism. McCarthyism is unfortunately part of the zeitgeist of the age. We should fight it with all our hearts. But it is about time we understand that McCarthyism cuts both ways.

Tamir Bar-On

Zeitgeist to Zarqawi

2009-05-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

This is my last day for completing all the letters of the alphabet. Before I write today's entry, Zeitgeist to Zarqawi, let me wish all the mothers of the world blessings and love on this mother's day! Many of them are the unknown heroines of the world.

Zeitgeist is a German word adopted by the English language, which roughly means "the spirit of the times." Or, "the spirit of the age and society." When we talk about zeitgeist, we refer to the political, economical, cultural, social, intellectual, and moral (and ethical) climate of the age. It was German Romantics such as Herder that first identified a zeitgeist, but also Hegel in his philosophy of history. Hegel saw human history evolving towards a more advanced universal spirit. For Hegel, there was a World Spirit, but each nation also had its spirit that was part of the larger World Spirit. Nations play different roles in creating a World Spirit. Nations, insisted Hegel, rise and fall in terms of their impact on the World Spirit. Zeitgeist for Romantics like Herder often treated the past as an essence, not as a generalized description of an epoch. So sometimes the German meaning of zeitgeist is different from its English connotation. But we might think of the zeitgeist as the collective consciousness of our age.

Today I will try to identify the zeitgeist of the world. Given the diversity of nations, cultures, and political outlooks, is this possible? I will contrast this zeitgeist with my other Z word, Zarqawi. Zarqawi's full name is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (1966-2006) (top right), the Jordanian-born Islamist and former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. He was a veteran of the Afghanistan War in 1979, which would eventually drive the atheistic, communist superpower from a Muslim country. He also led an Islamist group, Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Group of Monotheism and Jihad), from the 1990s until his death by a US air strike in 2006. In 2004, the group made a pledge to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and became known as al-Qaeda in Iraq. Zarqawi's group included Jordanians, Iraqis, and other radical Islamists.

Zarqawi's foes were Westerners, the United Nations, the United States, foreign forces in Muslim lands, Iraqi security forces (seen as US agents), the monarchical regime in Jordan, and Kurdish and Shi'ite militias in Iraq. Zarqawi's group follows a fundamentalist brand of Sunni Islam, which played a key role in perpetuating the de facto civil war in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003. It was an extremely ruthless organization known for beheadings of foreigners (American, South Korean, Turkish, Bulgarian, etc.), the killings of 86 Shi'ites at the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf in 2003, bombings in Baghdad and Karbala during the Shi'ite Ashura holiday in 2004 that killed 178, as well as suicide bombings of UN personnel, Iraqi government officials, Italian and US troops, and oil pumping stations. Its operations have been spectacular, shocking, and cruel.

So Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of our age. He is an expression of the rising tide of Islamism, particularly militant Islamism, in the Arab and Muslim worlds. We think that al-Qaeda and Zarqawi are merely products of 9-11. Yet, historians of the Muslim world from Bernard Lewis to Edward Said (from two very different schools) pointed to the rising Islamic tide back in the 1970s.

This rising Islamist militancy, which has as its goal the creation of a pan-Islamic state following the shari'a (Islamic law) throughout the Muslim world, has both internal and external causes and key triggering events. These include the following:

1) Western or foreign presence on Muslim lands is viewed as occupation. As a result, Afghanistan and Iraq are hot Islamist hotbeds. For Islamists, violence is viewed as permissible in wars of self-defense against foreign occupiers.

2) The creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979. Iran became a model for Islamists all over the world because an authoritarian, US-backed regime was overthrown and the dream of national sovereignty for Muslims was restored. Note it does not matter that the Iranians are Shi'ites and Zarqawi and bin Laden are Sunnis. They unite in their desire to cleanse all Muslim lands of foreign forces, end cosy relationships with great powers, get rid of secular laws and replace them with Islamic law, and restore the Muslim world to its grandeur in the history of world politics (i.e., the period of the Islamic conquests from the 7-9th centuries, or the 500-year reign of the Ottoman Empire that officially ended after World War One with the creation of a Turkish secular republic).

3) The victory of expelling the Soviets from Afghanistan after the 1979 invasion. Bin Laden, Zarqawi, and other Islamist militants got their start here and see it as their duty to come to the defense of Muslims wherever they are threatened, whether they are in Bosnia, Palestine (Israel), Kashmir, Afghanistan, or Iraq. The victory in Afghanistan by Islamist fighers became a model for taking on the Americans, which bin Laden infamously called a "paper tiger." It inspired fighters with low technological sophistication, stealth, and religious fanaticism to challenge the United States in Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and even the US homeland. Bin Laden's logic, as well as Zarqawi's, is that the US is a superpower in name only. Once it takes losses, the public will not stomach it and ask for the return of its soldiers home. Paper tigers are made out of paper, not steel and determination. When it gets heavy, they will flee as the United States did in Somalia in 1993. This emboldens Islamists to fight to gain more victories.

4) The failure of imported, Western ideologies in the Arab and Muslim worlds: Pan-Arabism, liberalism, socialism, and communism. Islamists are viewed as more indigenous, pure, and less tainted by the temptations of power. Or, Islamists are seen as an alternative to US-backed monarchies or military regimes that block popular democracy. The rigid authoritarianism in the Arab world will continue to produce violent Islamists because it is very difficult in the region to express oneself openly.

Yet, Islamists are becoming more clever and nuanced. They won elections in Algeria in 1992, which were late annulled and in Gaza under Hamas in the new millennium. Over 100,000 Algerians died in the ensuing civil war between the military and Islamists. A de facto civil war took place between the secular Fatah and Islamist Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank. Winner takes all in the Arab world. There is no compromise with opponents, but either expulsion or annihilation of political opponents.

5) The creation of Israel in 1948. Israel is viewed as an "alien body" in the region by Islamists. It is a daily reminder of the constant losses of the Muslim world vis-a-vis the West. Israel for Islamists is seen as an extension of the West, a colonial Jewish outpost. It is also a shock for Islamists to see Israel thrive in the international community. At the same time, Arab and Islamic unity are weakened by feuding national interests. Moreover, there is a feeling of defeat among the Arabs. There is little hope of restoring the ancient glories of Muslim empires of the past. Yet, this is precisely the dream of Islamists. Iran's stated goal of annihilating Israel strikes chords in the Muslim world because Israel is seen as usurping Palestinian Muslim land and undermining preponderant control over the "abode of Islam".

6)The Islamists offer a comprehensive, total, community-based response to the ills of globalized modernity: the loss of community solidarity, the decline of Muslim political sovereignty, alienation of individuals increasingly living in urban landscapes, the loss of faith, loose morals and permissive sexuality, the onslaught of mercantilist Western and US values, the lack of social and economic development, and lack of concern for the poor and social justice. Islamists might valorize the first Islamic polity created by Muhammad in Mecca in the 7th century, but they also want what A.J. Gregor has termed a "developmental dictatorship" that will rescue Muslims from social and economic backwardness. In this respect, the Islamic Republic of Iran's quest for a nuclear bomb should be viewed in the context of a developmental dictatorship that wants to restore national sovereignty and grandeur to Islamic countries through aggressive military posturing. Islamists are not against technology, development, or modernization per se, but they must be in defense of Muslim values and nations.

Zarqawi and his ilk are certainly enemies of liberal or socialist politics of a secular type. They are fans of violence, like the extreme communists, fascists, and Nazis of the inter-war era that all sought to overturn liberal parliamentary democracies. There is no gentleness or compromise with political opponents. They are genocidal vis-a-vis Jews, Christians, Shi'ites, and Westerners. In terms of their tactics, they are indeed madmen without morality, even for their own people. And they are mostly men, seeking to restore the order of a puritanical, male-dominated Sunni Islam. But are they mad? Or, merely the guardians of the zeitgeist of our age? And what is the zeitgeist of the age? Surely it is Zarqawi and Barack Hussein Obama, the newly elected black US president.

Each epoch has its defining zeitgeist. In the 1960s, the hippie generation, flower power, Che Guevara, and peace, worker, student, and anti-war demonstrations marked the era. The feminists made their mark in the US in the 1970s. In the 1980s, Wall Street greed, Reaganism's attack on social services, and a hyper neo-liberal capitalism marked the age.

Perhaps the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago and the attendant end of official communist states from the Soviet Union to East Germany marks my generation. It was a wonderful moment to see that wall of division crumble, people spontaneously crying and embracing, and the symbol of communist totalitarianism crumble like a house of cards. See one such photo above in the middle, from November 11, 1989, of Germans helping each other scale the Berlin Wall. I was touched by the opening lyrics of "Winds of Change" by German heavy metal band Scorpions, the 1990 anthem that defined freedom from communist tyranny:

I follow the Moskva
Down to Gorky Park
Listening to the wind of change.

The Scorpions had been in Moscow in 1989 and could already feel the beginning of the end for Soviet communism. We won't miss the secret police, one party dogma, the gulags that killed bodies and hopes in the millions. We won't miss Soviet tanks rolling into Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw to quell democratic reform. We won't miss the ruthless crushing of more democratic variants of bottom-up socialism. Germans paid a heavy price for supporting Nazism with the division of their country and people for almost 50 years, and in 1989 Germans were united and forgiven by the international community. We should still, however, maintain a deep memory in respect of the inglorious German past.

Yet, the fall of the Berlin Wall means very little to the students I teach today. It is for them a "point of detail in history," to paraphrase Jean-Marie Le Pe'n's awful remark about the Holocaust. They live in the age of the corporate university, Facebook and Twitter, gadgets and stars. They live in the age of show-me-the-dough and get me the job. History, even recent history, is an afterthought and luxury.

But my generation is perhaps no better. I was born in 1967, but I cannot say that my generation has defined itself. We are a generation without a dominant zeitgeist. We let history largely determine our fates, rather than determining history ourselves. And the more we do this, the more the Zarqawis of the world will define our age, both in the Muslim world and in the West. Yet, we must be proud of Obama and happy about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

What will the zeitgeist of tomorrow be? We in the West might be a little smarter and less malevolent. Do we really need to be in Muslim lands? By being in Muslim lands do we not create the seeds and soil for future Zarqawis? How do we expect to "pacify" Afghanistan when the British, Soviets, and Americans have all failed? The "surge" in Iraq might have worked, but what does not work is our imposition of a system of government on a supposedly sovereign state. How can we mediate between so many competing ethnic, cultural, religious, and tribal identities in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is true that trying to compromise will not work with the Zarqawis of the world. The Pakistanis are learning this with the Taliban today. They are hitting the Taliban hard, as I write these words. A few months ago a deal was brokered between the Taliban and Pakistani regime in Swat. Swat could amazingly have its Islamic law. The Taliban Islamists understood that if you give us Swat, we will continue to march to the capital city in Islamabad. They began to occupy towns outside Swat. The Pakistani army had to act, particularly as they were also under US pressure in the "war on terror" with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sadly Zarqawi is part of the zeitgeist of the age. The trick is to convince Muslims that where you have Islamists, you have more repression, suffering, authoritarianism, violence, and complete intolerance. The trick is to democratize the Muslim world. Where are the takers?

Obama (top left) is a great hope of our age. His election in 2008 might be the third defining moment of my generation after 9-11 (and Islamism) and the fall of the Berlin Wall. His politics is of a different style, which is certainly more inclusive. He provides great hope to minority groups throughout the world. He reinvigorates the liberal dream of greater participation for all cultural groups based on the principles of universal equality of opportunity and merit.

But my generation needs to dream more. What are we without our dreams? We need to dream of social justice for the huddled and poor masses of the world still yearning to be free. Billions that will not eat properly, never mind read this post. We need to dream of making peace in the Middle East, with two sovereign states (Palestinian and Israeli). We need to dream of democracy throughout the Arab world. We need to dream of more direct democracy in the West and other lands. We need to dream of people being allowed to speak out openly, from China to Myanmar, to their corrupt, despotic leaders. We need to find better ways of solving simmering national, ethnic, cultural, and religious disputes. We need to heal the earth, the depleted environment that is crying for help, but has very few real champions in key positions of power. We need to go beyond the shallow cults of money and technology towards an inclusive spirituality and politics, which puts people and the environment rather than ideology at the centre of our quest for a better world.

My generation, my generation cannot just fade away. It must enter history and dream. Dream more and bigger and better. Our zeitgeist can be truly universal and the greatest in human history. Are we up for the challenge?

Tamir Bar-On