Anthony McIntyre's Blog, page 1131
July 9, 2018
July 8, 2018
Who Are We To Judge People Living In Islamic Countries?
Armin Navabi explains to Scott Jacobsen from Atheist Republic the dangers of moral relativism.
Add caption
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I hear arguments from different people on Islamic countries and people who live in them. Some argue for different standards for different beliefs and groups. If not in an explicit manner, then the implicit understanding in the conversation amounts to different standards for different people. The conversations start with the general question about judgment of people who live in Islamic countries. In these dialogues, the person may respond with a question, “Who are we to judge people living in Islamic countries?”
Armin Navabi: We are all human beings. That is what we all are. Why does care for our fellow human beings have to be dependent on their location? Why does it have to be dependent on where they were born, their race, or how far or how close they are to us? I do not understand the relevance of that. Pain is pain. Happiness is happiness. I believe that it does not matter if somebody is hungry next to you, or if somebody is hungry a thousand kilometers from you. It does not matter if somebody is being oppressed right next to you or if somebody is being oppressed a thousand kilometers from you. That somebody is human. They need your help.
We Are All Connected
The idea of “I can help people who are next to me more than I could help people far away from me” does not exist anymore. We are all connected globally, through the advances in technology, that it is so easy to help other people with little effort and little budget.
Today, you can make a huge difference for people you have never even met or will never even meet. You can make a difference for people, whichever corner of the world they are in now. In fact, you might be able to make more of a difference because you live in a country where you could speak freely.
They Need Your Voice
You live in a country where you could say whatever you want. People living in Islamic countries do not. They do not live in a country where they can speak their minds. That is why you might be able to make a bigger difference in their lives compared to people close to you. They need your voice. Because when they do speak, these people will get prosecuted and go to jail. They lose their freedom. They lose their safety. These are people taken away from their children. There are even people who pay the government for the cost of executing their loved ones.
Arrogance in Freedom
Liberated countries enjoy some or most of these rights: freedom of speech, right to peace, equality, anti-discrimination, men and women are equal, homosexuals should not to be prosecuted for being gay, and for people of the minority to express their views without being punished. The people who are enjoying these rights have no empathy for what the people in Islamic countries are suffering from there. To me, it is arrogant when some people suggest that this is maybe because these are our values but not theirs.
Morally Superior
Because of this, they claim moral superiority for following these values. That people who follow such humanist values are going to enjoy life more, and live a life with more peace and more happiness. Since we are claiming superiority for this, we think we are deserving of these values and other people are not.
Other people might never be able to see that these values are good for them because they weren’t always in the situation where they had these values. Later on, they progressed to adopt these values, but people are denying them on the same grounds. They might say, “We came to these values ourselves. They should do the same thing.” I call bullshit. There is no country, no idea, and no value that has not been influenced by other countries, by other values, by philosophers and thought leaders from different corners of the world. Europe was introduced to its own ancient values through the Arab Empire. If it wasn’t because of the Arab Empire, we would not know how much of those ancient values would have come back from Greek philosophers. They were influenced by foreign countries, foreign philosophers, and foreign thought.
No group of people or country lives in a bubble. Of course, they are going to be influenced by foreign countries. They are going to influence other countries. They are going to be influenced by other countries. There is no way a country could progress in a bubble. They need outside influence as we need outside influence. The world is connected. If that was true a thousand years ago, it is more true today because we are more connected today. If European countries want an enlightenment, because of the influence of foreign countries at that time, are you going to deny foreign influence to these countries today since we are even more connected now?
Moral and Pleasure Matrix
I will say to people who do not agree with these values, to bring on your values and sell your values to these people, but do not deny us the opportunity to come and introduce these values to people that might want them. Compete with us in the market of ideas, compete with us and tell us why your values are better; however, that is not what you are doing. You are telling us, we are not in a position to judge, so we should shut the fuck up. That is the position you are taking. I am saying, if you think our ideas are wrong, bring up better ideas, but do not deny these people the opportunity to choose their ideas. Ideas that we think are better.
If you think we are wrong, introduce them to more ideas, not fewer ideas. That is how you compete with our ideas. That is how you respond to a bad idea. That is how we respond to your shitty backwards barbaric ancient ideas. We do not silence you. We compete with you. If you think our ideas are imperialist, foreign, too liberal, too free, too empty of spiritual guidance, too empty of meaning, too empty of providing purpose to people, then I am sure. If your ideas are better, they are going to do good.
Exploiting Evolution
You should bring your ideas to the public and compete with us. Do not deny the people, who might prefer our values, the opportunity to hear us because you think somebody might take advantage of these ideas for their agenda. Because if that is your argument, then we should stop teaching evolution in Western countries. Because it was not that long ago, when the Nazis took advantage of the evolution of science to sell their agenda and to tell people why we need to stop letting some races spread, some races should be superior. The whole genocide of the Jews. All those gas chambers and crimes were committed by the Nazi Regime. They were based on the truth, based on the misuse of an actual true scientific principle, which is evolution.
If you are looking at how people could misuse something, we should stop teaching evolution in Western countries because we have a history. In fact, you should try to suggest a value to me. I could come up with a way that it could be misused.
Misuse of Human Rights
In fact, if you are worried about the fact that we are talking about human rights being misused by the military/industrial complex to bring war to these countries, why are you not equally concerned about the Islamic values that have been used, time and time again, in history, for killing, for war, for torturing people, and for denying people’s rights? We have more examples of Islamic values being used to do the same thing. Based on the argument, we should deny Muslims the opportunities to spread their ideology because of the history and examples that came from the misuse of it.
You cannot stop telling the truth because of somebody being able to misuse it. Because if you do that, then you cannot say anything. Everybody should stay home and shut the fuck up.
The only way that you could fight the misuse of good ideas is to expose them as misuse of good ideas. Because if you do not compete bad ideas with better ideas, those bad ideas are more easily used, more easily misused, than good ideas. If your values are better values, then any misuse of it is a misrepresentation and is another inferior value that you should fight for rather than it. When we say these values are superior and you say, “Well, who are you to say?” You could still say that about any claim. I could say, “Who are you to say? Who am I to say?” Let us say your claim is we should not interfere in other people’s countries, who are you to say we should not interfere in other people’s countries?
Challenge Your Ideas
The point of bringing your ideas out there is to challenge them. If you go around the argument and look at the person who is making the argument and you think that they do not deserve to make such argument, then you are making a judgement about the person, whether or not they are deserving to make an argument. Now, you are in that position where we can ask the same from you: who are you to deny this person making the argument?
Another thing is when people say, “Oh, Christianity is the same. It is as bad here. Look at the people. Look at how many police are killing black people or look how Christianity is also barbaric. Ancient ideology that could be as harmful.”
To that, I say, “Fuck you.” I am not talking about those things. I am talking about something else. An
example: Imagine if you have a fundraiser for cancer. You are trying to raise money to fund research for cancer. You want to fight cancer, and then people come in and start shouting. They say, “What about
AIDS? Why are you not talking about AIDS? AIDS is a disease too. AIDS is also killing people. You guys do not care about AIDS!” What would I do? I would probably kick these people out. AIDS is bad. Yes! However, we are talking about cancer because we are talking about the problems of cancer. That does not mean we are denying that AIDS is also a problem.
However, you are not helping by shifting the discussion to something that this fundraiser is not fighting for now. You are not helping, and fuck you for making everything about you. Because what you are doing is you are taking part in the Oppression Olympics. You think that if the conversation is not about the things that attacks your people or the things that have affected your life, then it is not worth talking about now. If you have been hurt by Christianity or by racism in the US, then when we come and say, “Islam is hurting people,” you are saying, “No, let us pay attention to this.” That makes you self-centered because you cannot stand it when other people are talking about being victims of something else other than what concerns you. You cannot stand people who are bringing awareness to something that you or the people around you are not victims of. If that is the case, then you are selfish and arrogant. However, some people might say this cancer and AIDS example does not make sense because Islam and Christianity have the same root.
Religion As A Whole
This is why we always want to say that we should not talk about Islam. Talk about religion as a whole. Okay, let me add to my example. Let us say we had a fundraiser about pancreatic cancer and then somebody came and said, “Skin cancer is a problem too. Why are you not talking about skin cancer?”
Is that close enough for you?
Sometimes, it makes sense to focus on a specific problem, even if it has similarities with other problems. Different problems manifest themselves in different ways. They harm people in different ways. They have different answers.
It makes sense to focus on a certain problem. Sometimes, it makes sense to look at it as a whole. However, it does not make sense when you always try to shift the attention to a different category when we are focusing on another one. It does not make sense because you are not helping. We are having a discussion about a certain topic and all you are doing is coming and saying, “pay attention to the problem that I care about.” That is what you are doing.
Better Than Most
The obsession for a certain issue might be for different reasons. It could be because you were hurt. It
might be because you know more about a particular topic. It might be simply because you care more about a certain issue. Who cares? At least, you are talking about a problem, which makes you better than most people.
For example, if somebody is going out there and rescuing dogs, I am not going to tell them, “What the fuck do you have against cats? Why are you not rescuing cats? Are other animals not good enough for you? Do they not deserve saving?”
This person maybe cares about dogs. Maybe, he is passionate about dogs. However, the fact that he is
rescuing dogs. He might be doing more than most people. Do you know what you say to somebody who is going out there and rescuing dogs? You say, “Thank you.” That is what you say to that person.
For example, let us say somebody says to me, “Why are you focused on Islam? Why not all religions?” I tell them, “Why are you so focused on other religions? Why not all dogma?” They might say, “Okay, all dogma.”
I am like, “Why are you focusing on all dogma? Why are you not focusing on all bad ideas? Does a bad idea have to be a dogma for you to focus on it?” Then they go, “Okay, all bad ideas.” I am like, “Bad ideas? What about other bad things? Does something have to be an idea for you to attack it? Diseases are not ideas. Why are you focusing on bad ideas?”
“Alright, so let us be more general, bad things are bad. Good things are good. Is that general enough for you? Is that good? How helpful is that? How helpful of a claim that is… bad things are bad?” You cannot get more general than that.
General Activism
Some people prefer to look at it more generally. Others might want to look at it more focused in a more specific situation. For example, there is a certain village in the Philippines, where the people need help now. This person wants to specifically focus on this group of people. People who do not have access to water. It is focused. Nobody will go to this person and be like, “Why are you focusing on that specific village?” That is incredibly focused, but I am sure most people will say, “Congratulations, that is good. Thank you for helping these people.”
But when it comes to Islam, many people, atheists especially, say, “Why are you focusing on Islam?” I do not think it is because their problem is that you are being too focused. I think they feel a certain amount of bigotry if you are focused on Islam because they do not say that about any other form of activism if it is focused on anything.
Have you ever heard anybody say that about any other form of activism? It looks ridiculous. Let us say somebody is focusing on the environment in Iran. Nobody comes to him and says, “Why do you not care about the environment in Iraq?”
Pushed Back for Bigotry
Every form of activism gets this bigotry pushback. However, this specific claim that you are being too focused is either regarding Islam or nationalism. For example, if Americans are focusing on other countries, they might get accused on why are you not focusing on problems at home.
I know a lot of people who are nationalistic and anti-globalist do not like this. However, I do not understand it. Why do we have to care about a certain group of people because they happened to be born on this side of the border instead of on the other side of the border? Is that good criteria for us to start caring about somebody? Why is that? What makes this so special? With this line in the sand, all of the sudden the person that is born on this side of it matters more?
Western Values
Another thing, I want to address Western values. The name: “Western values.” The reason why it is called Western values is because it first happened in Western countries. The fact that these values were adopted more in Western countries is a historical accident. Because they are named, “Western values,” now, that does not mean that the West should own these values. The West does not own women’s rights. The West does not own human rights. The West does not have a monopoly over not discriminating against gay people. The West does not have a monopoly on secularism. The West does not have ownership over freedom of speech.
The fact people are accusing us of bigotry because we are suggesting that these values should be global and introduced globally, you are being the bigots. You are claiming ownership over some values because you happened to historically come across it -- before the rest of the world. You are the people unwilling to share. You think that this is good for you, but it is not good for other people. Why is it not good for other people? What makes them so different from us that it works for you but not for them?
Western Superiority
You are the people claiming superiority. What is it about values that make somebody claim ownership over them? Why can we not introduce these values? Why can we not promote these values? It has been introduced, but we could promote it even more. Why can we not promote them? Could somebody use it to attack these countries? Reality check: somebody is using other values to oppress women.
If we go back to arguments people use when you are talking about Muslims and Islamic ideology, you are not looking at the main threat in the world. You are not looking at the main powers at play, at the destruction and the harm that they cause.
You have to see who is in control and not look at these minority Muslims in our Western countries. You have to make the difference where it matters the most now. Those are the ideas. The values that are being used to oppress people in foreign countries and in their countries by these major superpowers in the West.
I tell them that is a narrow way of looking at it because where I come from Islam is in power. You are underestimating Islam as a major superpower when you think about it that way. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Islam is going to become the number one main ideology in the world soon.
Islam Colonization
Islam is dominating not lands but minds. Islam is used to rule over people and to oppress people. Islam has been used to colonize people. Do you think white people are the only people that can colonize?
Islam has been used for colonization way before the British discovered what that even means and that it is even an option. It is okay if it happens voluntarily. If people are adopting other people’s cultures or ideas or values voluntarily, that is not colonizing them. We are asking for these other values and ideas to be heard and considered rather than suppressed or silenced.
We asking for a seat at the table, at every table. I am not talking about a seat at a table talking about humanism and secularism in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, or in France. I am talking about a seat at a table in Iran, in Bangladesh, in Saudi Arabia, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Pakistan.
We demand a seat at a table. We are going to get it. if you think that that is us imposing our values on other people, fuck you. Because you are enjoying the benefits of these values, somebody at some point in your history was told that these values are not for your country. They did not stay silent. They sacrificed their lives. They sacrificed their safety. They sacrificed their comfort for you to enjoy that today. People are doing these things in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, and in Bangladesh. They are suffering for it.
Moral Cowardice
You are a moral coward for thinking that it is morally wrong for us to voice our feelings on the killing of secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Do you think it is not right for us to judge? Do you think you are not in a position to judge? To judge whether women having less inheritance rights in government, as a witness in court, on what they wear, where they go, what jobs they get, who they talk to, do you think that you are not in a position to make a moral judgment on that? That makes you a moral coward.
But what is moral or not? If you are making that judgement based on how different sets of actions
influence people’s well-being, then there is always a right answer and a wrong answer. There are many good answers and many bad answers. It does not take a genius to see that hanging gay people is not good for the well-being of the society. If you think that you are not in a position to make a moral judgment for other countries, I want you to tell me what you would say to the person that is about to be hanged because they are gay.
Go ahead and tell that to that person right before they are being hanged, say, “This is not
that bad. In my country it is bad, but here, this is your culture, so shame on you for being gay. If
you were in the United Kingdom, I would be marching for gay pride and being gay and proud, but here it is a different country. So, fuck you, fuck your gay ass, you deserve being hanged here.”
For The People in Islamic Countries
All the people who are in jail in Iran or Saudi Arabia; all the bloggers who died trying to spread secularism and humanism; all the people in Malaysia who after the government came out and said that they need to hunt down atheists; on behalf of those people, all the people that were burned or tortured for accusations of desecrating the Quran in Pakistan; on behalf of all those people, I want to say, “Fuck you to whoever says that it is their culture and who are we to judge and ask, ‘What’s right for them?’” On behalf of every woman that suffered from Islam; on behalf of every homosexual person that suffered in Islam; and on behalf of anybody that dares speak against Islam and paid the consequences for it, I want to say, “Fuck you” to whoever says, “Who are we to judge?”
Enlightenment for All
The Western countries went through the Enlightenment. Now we want this for other countries as well. We want the same enlightenment values. We want to fight for those values. If you are arrogant enough to want to deny the rest of us the same process, if you are not going to help, then stay out of our way. It is interesting a lot of people come and tell me, “Armin, why are you saying these things? That is our country. It has nothing to do with our country. That is Iran.” I almost, almost want to say, “Mother fuckers, I am from Iran.” However, I do not think that is even relevant because I think you should not need to be from there for you to care about them.
Situation in Yemen
Who do I care more about right now than even the people in Iran? I care more about the people in Yemen. If I could speak Arabic, I would have been tweeting more about the situation that is happening in Yemen because they are suffering more than the people in Iran. The fact that you think we have to be from there to care about them makes no sense to me. However, if you think that, and if you do not want to be part of the solution, and if you do not want to lend a voice to people that need you to lend them a voice, the people that are voiceless. The people that cannot speak for themselves.
If you are not going to use your platform to help them, then stay out of our way because we are going to keep doing that. We are going to keep doing that. It does not matter how many times you call us a bigot. We are going to keep fighting for those people.
If you think they need to do it themselves, then fuck you again because it would be much faster and much easier if we could help them out. Because we enjoy the freedom of speech here. We enjoy some security. We could bring more attention to their problems, to their suffering. We could help. We could help. They need our help. They are asking for our help. For you to deny that to them because you think they do not deserve it, it is selfish. It is selfish to judge your life by a different standard than what you are judging their lives by.
So, who are we to judge how people in Islamic countries live? To that I say, “That is the wrong question. The right question is, “Who do you have to be to remain silent?” The answer to that is, “You have to be a monster.” You have to be a monster to have seen such crimes being done against your fellow human beings and judge it by a different standard than what you would have done if it was happening in your own backyard.
About Atheist Republic
Follow Atheist Republic on Twitter @AtheistRepublic
Add captionScott Douglas Jacobsen: I hear arguments from different people on Islamic countries and people who live in them. Some argue for different standards for different beliefs and groups. If not in an explicit manner, then the implicit understanding in the conversation amounts to different standards for different people. The conversations start with the general question about judgment of people who live in Islamic countries. In these dialogues, the person may respond with a question, “Who are we to judge people living in Islamic countries?”
Armin Navabi: We are all human beings. That is what we all are. Why does care for our fellow human beings have to be dependent on their location? Why does it have to be dependent on where they were born, their race, or how far or how close they are to us? I do not understand the relevance of that. Pain is pain. Happiness is happiness. I believe that it does not matter if somebody is hungry next to you, or if somebody is hungry a thousand kilometers from you. It does not matter if somebody is being oppressed right next to you or if somebody is being oppressed a thousand kilometers from you. That somebody is human. They need your help.
We Are All Connected
The idea of “I can help people who are next to me more than I could help people far away from me” does not exist anymore. We are all connected globally, through the advances in technology, that it is so easy to help other people with little effort and little budget.
Today, you can make a huge difference for people you have never even met or will never even meet. You can make a difference for people, whichever corner of the world they are in now. In fact, you might be able to make more of a difference because you live in a country where you could speak freely.
They Need Your Voice
You live in a country where you could say whatever you want. People living in Islamic countries do not. They do not live in a country where they can speak their minds. That is why you might be able to make a bigger difference in their lives compared to people close to you. They need your voice. Because when they do speak, these people will get prosecuted and go to jail. They lose their freedom. They lose their safety. These are people taken away from their children. There are even people who pay the government for the cost of executing their loved ones.
Arrogance in Freedom
Liberated countries enjoy some or most of these rights: freedom of speech, right to peace, equality, anti-discrimination, men and women are equal, homosexuals should not to be prosecuted for being gay, and for people of the minority to express their views without being punished. The people who are enjoying these rights have no empathy for what the people in Islamic countries are suffering from there. To me, it is arrogant when some people suggest that this is maybe because these are our values but not theirs.
Morally Superior
Because of this, they claim moral superiority for following these values. That people who follow such humanist values are going to enjoy life more, and live a life with more peace and more happiness. Since we are claiming superiority for this, we think we are deserving of these values and other people are not.
Other people might never be able to see that these values are good for them because they weren’t always in the situation where they had these values. Later on, they progressed to adopt these values, but people are denying them on the same grounds. They might say, “We came to these values ourselves. They should do the same thing.” I call bullshit. There is no country, no idea, and no value that has not been influenced by other countries, by other values, by philosophers and thought leaders from different corners of the world. Europe was introduced to its own ancient values through the Arab Empire. If it wasn’t because of the Arab Empire, we would not know how much of those ancient values would have come back from Greek philosophers. They were influenced by foreign countries, foreign philosophers, and foreign thought.
No group of people or country lives in a bubble. Of course, they are going to be influenced by foreign countries. They are going to influence other countries. They are going to be influenced by other countries. There is no way a country could progress in a bubble. They need outside influence as we need outside influence. The world is connected. If that was true a thousand years ago, it is more true today because we are more connected today. If European countries want an enlightenment, because of the influence of foreign countries at that time, are you going to deny foreign influence to these countries today since we are even more connected now?
Moral and Pleasure Matrix
I will say to people who do not agree with these values, to bring on your values and sell your values to these people, but do not deny us the opportunity to come and introduce these values to people that might want them. Compete with us in the market of ideas, compete with us and tell us why your values are better; however, that is not what you are doing. You are telling us, we are not in a position to judge, so we should shut the fuck up. That is the position you are taking. I am saying, if you think our ideas are wrong, bring up better ideas, but do not deny these people the opportunity to choose their ideas. Ideas that we think are better.
If you think we are wrong, introduce them to more ideas, not fewer ideas. That is how you compete with our ideas. That is how you respond to a bad idea. That is how we respond to your shitty backwards barbaric ancient ideas. We do not silence you. We compete with you. If you think our ideas are imperialist, foreign, too liberal, too free, too empty of spiritual guidance, too empty of meaning, too empty of providing purpose to people, then I am sure. If your ideas are better, they are going to do good.
Exploiting Evolution
You should bring your ideas to the public and compete with us. Do not deny the people, who might prefer our values, the opportunity to hear us because you think somebody might take advantage of these ideas for their agenda. Because if that is your argument, then we should stop teaching evolution in Western countries. Because it was not that long ago, when the Nazis took advantage of the evolution of science to sell their agenda and to tell people why we need to stop letting some races spread, some races should be superior. The whole genocide of the Jews. All those gas chambers and crimes were committed by the Nazi Regime. They were based on the truth, based on the misuse of an actual true scientific principle, which is evolution.
If you are looking at how people could misuse something, we should stop teaching evolution in Western countries because we have a history. In fact, you should try to suggest a value to me. I could come up with a way that it could be misused.
Misuse of Human Rights
In fact, if you are worried about the fact that we are talking about human rights being misused by the military/industrial complex to bring war to these countries, why are you not equally concerned about the Islamic values that have been used, time and time again, in history, for killing, for war, for torturing people, and for denying people’s rights? We have more examples of Islamic values being used to do the same thing. Based on the argument, we should deny Muslims the opportunities to spread their ideology because of the history and examples that came from the misuse of it.
You cannot stop telling the truth because of somebody being able to misuse it. Because if you do that, then you cannot say anything. Everybody should stay home and shut the fuck up.
The only way that you could fight the misuse of good ideas is to expose them as misuse of good ideas. Because if you do not compete bad ideas with better ideas, those bad ideas are more easily used, more easily misused, than good ideas. If your values are better values, then any misuse of it is a misrepresentation and is another inferior value that you should fight for rather than it. When we say these values are superior and you say, “Well, who are you to say?” You could still say that about any claim. I could say, “Who are you to say? Who am I to say?” Let us say your claim is we should not interfere in other people’s countries, who are you to say we should not interfere in other people’s countries?
Challenge Your Ideas
The point of bringing your ideas out there is to challenge them. If you go around the argument and look at the person who is making the argument and you think that they do not deserve to make such argument, then you are making a judgement about the person, whether or not they are deserving to make an argument. Now, you are in that position where we can ask the same from you: who are you to deny this person making the argument?
Another thing is when people say, “Oh, Christianity is the same. It is as bad here. Look at the people. Look at how many police are killing black people or look how Christianity is also barbaric. Ancient ideology that could be as harmful.”
To that, I say, “Fuck you.” I am not talking about those things. I am talking about something else. An
example: Imagine if you have a fundraiser for cancer. You are trying to raise money to fund research for cancer. You want to fight cancer, and then people come in and start shouting. They say, “What about
AIDS? Why are you not talking about AIDS? AIDS is a disease too. AIDS is also killing people. You guys do not care about AIDS!” What would I do? I would probably kick these people out. AIDS is bad. Yes! However, we are talking about cancer because we are talking about the problems of cancer. That does not mean we are denying that AIDS is also a problem.
However, you are not helping by shifting the discussion to something that this fundraiser is not fighting for now. You are not helping, and fuck you for making everything about you. Because what you are doing is you are taking part in the Oppression Olympics. You think that if the conversation is not about the things that attacks your people or the things that have affected your life, then it is not worth talking about now. If you have been hurt by Christianity or by racism in the US, then when we come and say, “Islam is hurting people,” you are saying, “No, let us pay attention to this.” That makes you self-centered because you cannot stand it when other people are talking about being victims of something else other than what concerns you. You cannot stand people who are bringing awareness to something that you or the people around you are not victims of. If that is the case, then you are selfish and arrogant. However, some people might say this cancer and AIDS example does not make sense because Islam and Christianity have the same root.
Religion As A Whole
This is why we always want to say that we should not talk about Islam. Talk about religion as a whole. Okay, let me add to my example. Let us say we had a fundraiser about pancreatic cancer and then somebody came and said, “Skin cancer is a problem too. Why are you not talking about skin cancer?”
Is that close enough for you?
Sometimes, it makes sense to focus on a specific problem, even if it has similarities with other problems. Different problems manifest themselves in different ways. They harm people in different ways. They have different answers.
It makes sense to focus on a certain problem. Sometimes, it makes sense to look at it as a whole. However, it does not make sense when you always try to shift the attention to a different category when we are focusing on another one. It does not make sense because you are not helping. We are having a discussion about a certain topic and all you are doing is coming and saying, “pay attention to the problem that I care about.” That is what you are doing.
Better Than Most
The obsession for a certain issue might be for different reasons. It could be because you were hurt. It
might be because you know more about a particular topic. It might be simply because you care more about a certain issue. Who cares? At least, you are talking about a problem, which makes you better than most people.
For example, if somebody is going out there and rescuing dogs, I am not going to tell them, “What the fuck do you have against cats? Why are you not rescuing cats? Are other animals not good enough for you? Do they not deserve saving?”
This person maybe cares about dogs. Maybe, he is passionate about dogs. However, the fact that he is
rescuing dogs. He might be doing more than most people. Do you know what you say to somebody who is going out there and rescuing dogs? You say, “Thank you.” That is what you say to that person.
For example, let us say somebody says to me, “Why are you focused on Islam? Why not all religions?” I tell them, “Why are you so focused on other religions? Why not all dogma?” They might say, “Okay, all dogma.”
I am like, “Why are you focusing on all dogma? Why are you not focusing on all bad ideas? Does a bad idea have to be a dogma for you to focus on it?” Then they go, “Okay, all bad ideas.” I am like, “Bad ideas? What about other bad things? Does something have to be an idea for you to attack it? Diseases are not ideas. Why are you focusing on bad ideas?”
“Alright, so let us be more general, bad things are bad. Good things are good. Is that general enough for you? Is that good? How helpful is that? How helpful of a claim that is… bad things are bad?” You cannot get more general than that.
General Activism
Some people prefer to look at it more generally. Others might want to look at it more focused in a more specific situation. For example, there is a certain village in the Philippines, where the people need help now. This person wants to specifically focus on this group of people. People who do not have access to water. It is focused. Nobody will go to this person and be like, “Why are you focusing on that specific village?” That is incredibly focused, but I am sure most people will say, “Congratulations, that is good. Thank you for helping these people.”
But when it comes to Islam, many people, atheists especially, say, “Why are you focusing on Islam?” I do not think it is because their problem is that you are being too focused. I think they feel a certain amount of bigotry if you are focused on Islam because they do not say that about any other form of activism if it is focused on anything.
Have you ever heard anybody say that about any other form of activism? It looks ridiculous. Let us say somebody is focusing on the environment in Iran. Nobody comes to him and says, “Why do you not care about the environment in Iraq?”
Pushed Back for Bigotry
Every form of activism gets this bigotry pushback. However, this specific claim that you are being too focused is either regarding Islam or nationalism. For example, if Americans are focusing on other countries, they might get accused on why are you not focusing on problems at home.
I know a lot of people who are nationalistic and anti-globalist do not like this. However, I do not understand it. Why do we have to care about a certain group of people because they happened to be born on this side of the border instead of on the other side of the border? Is that good criteria for us to start caring about somebody? Why is that? What makes this so special? With this line in the sand, all of the sudden the person that is born on this side of it matters more?
Western Values
Another thing, I want to address Western values. The name: “Western values.” The reason why it is called Western values is because it first happened in Western countries. The fact that these values were adopted more in Western countries is a historical accident. Because they are named, “Western values,” now, that does not mean that the West should own these values. The West does not own women’s rights. The West does not own human rights. The West does not have a monopoly over not discriminating against gay people. The West does not have a monopoly on secularism. The West does not have ownership over freedom of speech.
The fact people are accusing us of bigotry because we are suggesting that these values should be global and introduced globally, you are being the bigots. You are claiming ownership over some values because you happened to historically come across it -- before the rest of the world. You are the people unwilling to share. You think that this is good for you, but it is not good for other people. Why is it not good for other people? What makes them so different from us that it works for you but not for them?
Western Superiority
You are the people claiming superiority. What is it about values that make somebody claim ownership over them? Why can we not introduce these values? Why can we not promote these values? It has been introduced, but we could promote it even more. Why can we not promote them? Could somebody use it to attack these countries? Reality check: somebody is using other values to oppress women.
If we go back to arguments people use when you are talking about Muslims and Islamic ideology, you are not looking at the main threat in the world. You are not looking at the main powers at play, at the destruction and the harm that they cause.
You have to see who is in control and not look at these minority Muslims in our Western countries. You have to make the difference where it matters the most now. Those are the ideas. The values that are being used to oppress people in foreign countries and in their countries by these major superpowers in the West.
I tell them that is a narrow way of looking at it because where I come from Islam is in power. You are underestimating Islam as a major superpower when you think about it that way. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Islam is going to become the number one main ideology in the world soon.
Islam Colonization
Islam is dominating not lands but minds. Islam is used to rule over people and to oppress people. Islam has been used to colonize people. Do you think white people are the only people that can colonize?
Islam has been used for colonization way before the British discovered what that even means and that it is even an option. It is okay if it happens voluntarily. If people are adopting other people’s cultures or ideas or values voluntarily, that is not colonizing them. We are asking for these other values and ideas to be heard and considered rather than suppressed or silenced.
We asking for a seat at the table, at every table. I am not talking about a seat at a table talking about humanism and secularism in the United States, in the United Kingdom, in Canada, or in France. I am talking about a seat at a table in Iran, in Bangladesh, in Saudi Arabia, in Malaysia, in Indonesia, in Pakistan.
We demand a seat at a table. We are going to get it. if you think that that is us imposing our values on other people, fuck you. Because you are enjoying the benefits of these values, somebody at some point in your history was told that these values are not for your country. They did not stay silent. They sacrificed their lives. They sacrificed their safety. They sacrificed their comfort for you to enjoy that today. People are doing these things in Iran, in Saudi Arabia, and in Bangladesh. They are suffering for it.
Moral Cowardice
You are a moral coward for thinking that it is morally wrong for us to voice our feelings on the killing of secular bloggers in Bangladesh. Do you think it is not right for us to judge? Do you think you are not in a position to judge? To judge whether women having less inheritance rights in government, as a witness in court, on what they wear, where they go, what jobs they get, who they talk to, do you think that you are not in a position to make a moral judgment on that? That makes you a moral coward.
But what is moral or not? If you are making that judgement based on how different sets of actions
influence people’s well-being, then there is always a right answer and a wrong answer. There are many good answers and many bad answers. It does not take a genius to see that hanging gay people is not good for the well-being of the society. If you think that you are not in a position to make a moral judgment for other countries, I want you to tell me what you would say to the person that is about to be hanged because they are gay.
Go ahead and tell that to that person right before they are being hanged, say, “This is not
that bad. In my country it is bad, but here, this is your culture, so shame on you for being gay. If
you were in the United Kingdom, I would be marching for gay pride and being gay and proud, but here it is a different country. So, fuck you, fuck your gay ass, you deserve being hanged here.”
For The People in Islamic Countries
All the people who are in jail in Iran or Saudi Arabia; all the bloggers who died trying to spread secularism and humanism; all the people in Malaysia who after the government came out and said that they need to hunt down atheists; on behalf of those people, all the people that were burned or tortured for accusations of desecrating the Quran in Pakistan; on behalf of all those people, I want to say, “Fuck you to whoever says that it is their culture and who are we to judge and ask, ‘What’s right for them?’” On behalf of every woman that suffered from Islam; on behalf of every homosexual person that suffered in Islam; and on behalf of anybody that dares speak against Islam and paid the consequences for it, I want to say, “Fuck you” to whoever says, “Who are we to judge?”
Enlightenment for All
The Western countries went through the Enlightenment. Now we want this for other countries as well. We want the same enlightenment values. We want to fight for those values. If you are arrogant enough to want to deny the rest of us the same process, if you are not going to help, then stay out of our way. It is interesting a lot of people come and tell me, “Armin, why are you saying these things? That is our country. It has nothing to do with our country. That is Iran.” I almost, almost want to say, “Mother fuckers, I am from Iran.” However, I do not think that is even relevant because I think you should not need to be from there for you to care about them.
Situation in Yemen
Who do I care more about right now than even the people in Iran? I care more about the people in Yemen. If I could speak Arabic, I would have been tweeting more about the situation that is happening in Yemen because they are suffering more than the people in Iran. The fact that you think we have to be from there to care about them makes no sense to me. However, if you think that, and if you do not want to be part of the solution, and if you do not want to lend a voice to people that need you to lend them a voice, the people that are voiceless. The people that cannot speak for themselves.
If you are not going to use your platform to help them, then stay out of our way because we are going to keep doing that. We are going to keep doing that. It does not matter how many times you call us a bigot. We are going to keep fighting for those people.
If you think they need to do it themselves, then fuck you again because it would be much faster and much easier if we could help them out. Because we enjoy the freedom of speech here. We enjoy some security. We could bring more attention to their problems, to their suffering. We could help. We could help. They need our help. They are asking for our help. For you to deny that to them because you think they do not deserve it, it is selfish. It is selfish to judge your life by a different standard than what you are judging their lives by.
So, who are we to judge how people in Islamic countries live? To that I say, “That is the wrong question. The right question is, “Who do you have to be to remain silent?” The answer to that is, “You have to be a monster.” You have to be a monster to have seen such crimes being done against your fellow human beings and judge it by a different standard than what you would have done if it was happening in your own backyard.
About Atheist RepublicFollow Atheist Republic on Twitter @AtheistRepublic
July 7, 2018
Provos: “We Killed Jo Jo”
Tarlach MacDhónaill writes on the Andersonstown Town News admission of IIRA culpability in the 2000 murder of Joseph O'Connor.
This week’s Andersonstown News has finally accepted and printed what Belfast Republicans have known for almost two decades, that the Provisional I.R.A. murdered Volunteer Joseph O’Connor.
It is not altogether surprising that such a ground-breaking shift from Provisional policy has passed-off largely unnoticed. The O’Connor family are in mourning following the tragic, sudden death of Jo Jo’s second youngest son Eamon (18) only weeks ago. Eamon’s death was preceded by that of his Grandmother Margaret’s just last year.
It is then understandable that the wider O’Connor family and their friends are presently consumed by grief. As Jo Jo was a member of the Real I.R.A which doesn’t exist anymore; it is unlikely that any statement from the group in relation to Jo Jo’s death will ever be carried in the media again.
The British-backed murder of I.R.A volunteer Joseph O’Connor arrived at an extremely delicate time for the Provisionals, during the initial stages of a sham-peace. The murder was planned and carried out with an immediate dual-aim, to execute an anti-agreement Republican while designating blame to other Anti-agreement Republicans in the process. From the very moment they shot him multiple times in the head and face, the death-squad busied themselves with the task of concealing their movement’s involvement in his murder.
Unfortunately for Sinn Féin, Ballymurphy is a small place. A seemingly arrogance-based brazenness allowed people to identify the death-squad who shot ‘Jo Jo’. This was followed by a number of mistakes being made during their escape. Logistical blunders aside, locals talk, and literally within minutes of Joseph O’Connor’s murder, his neighbours, his family, his friends and his comrades knew who was responsible, the Provisional I.R.A.
Immediately after the murder, local Sinn Féin spokespersons attempted to deflect blame onto other Republicans, they were assisted in their attempts by the RUC who raided the offices of Republican Sinn Féin, publicly citing Joe’s murder as their motive.
Within days the party’s accepted local mouthpiece “The Andersonstown news” also helped to raise the notion of an internal Republican feud by using ambiguous language to report on what the community knew to be facts. Even a year later the “Andersonstown news” continued to ply the idea of an internal Republican dispute as being responsible for the murder of Joseph O’Connor. Upon being challenged by members of Belfast 32CSM the paper’s editorial board smugly stated that their editorial line was ‘No I.R.A. involvement in the murder of Joseph O’Connor’, and that his death was the result of a ‘dissident feud’.
Joseph’s family friends and comrades were not alone in voicing their disgust at what the Provisional movement had done. Many well-known Republicans, including former life-sentence prisoner and blanket-man Anthony McIntyre and Maidstone escapee Tommy Gorman, added their voices to a steady stream of condemnation which naturally emanated from within the Republican base.
All of those who told the basic truth, for the simple sake of basic truth, faced immediate vilification for doing so, homes were picketed, vile abuse was spat at the direction of honest commentators, and one of the weapons used to attack them was the indisputable Sinn Féin alligned “Andersonstown news.”
A decade ago an opinion piece written by ‘Squinter’ criticising Gerry Adams appeared in the Andersonstown News. This story made international headlines because the Andersonstown News was then, as it is now, considered to be an organ of the Provisional movement and such internal criticism of Sinn Féin was unprecedented. When Gerry Adams was accused of forcing the paper’s editorial board to issue a grovelling, front-page apology to him, Sinn Féin’s critics went into overdrive. It is in this story that you will find evidence of the AndersontownNews’ links to and representation of Sinn Féin.
The magnitude therefore of the paper’s admission of I.R.A responsibility for Joe O’Connor’s murder poses a particular significance at this time.
Margaret O’Connor did not want revenge for her son’s death, all she asked was an admission of responsibility, perhaps an apology from those behind it. As a grieving mother, she lobbied Sinn Féin through Relatives for Justice and promised that as a republican, she would not pursue prosecutions, she kept that promise till her dying day.
Margaret O’Connor was denied this grace, she was offered nothing in return and sadly died last year in the very same turmoil that had been imposed upon her by a Provisional death-squad on Friday 13th of October 2000 outside her own home.
Perhaps the Andersons town News did not intend to accept that Jo Jo’s death was at the hands of the I.R.A. It has done so however and this simply cannot be ignored. The paper has gone out of its way over the years in publicizing its position that there is only one I.R.A, and that they are the Provisionals. Maybe it is an editorial oversight and maybe it is in preparation for something to come, maybe it is even a huge-leap forward in the pursuit of truth for victims of conflict.
Whatever the reasons questions now exist which demand answers. Why was Margaret O’Connor sent to her grave without an admission by Sinn Féin that the Provisional I.R.A had murdered her son?
Why has a media outlet, so closely and openly associated with Sinn Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir challenged the leadership of Sinn Féin in this fashion?
Will Sinn Féin now tell the Republican people of Belfast the truth and apologise for the lies they told them in 2000 and ever since?
Will all of those who received Provisional death threats for telling the truth about Joseph O’Connor’s murder now be pardoned by the Army Council?
Or, Will Squinter return next Wednesday and apologise for making the biggest blunder since ‘they haven’t gone away you know’?
This week’s Andersonstown News has finally accepted and printed what Belfast Republicans have known for almost two decades, that the Provisional I.R.A. murdered Volunteer Joseph O’Connor. It is not altogether surprising that such a ground-breaking shift from Provisional policy has passed-off largely unnoticed. The O’Connor family are in mourning following the tragic, sudden death of Jo Jo’s second youngest son Eamon (18) only weeks ago. Eamon’s death was preceded by that of his Grandmother Margaret’s just last year.
It is then understandable that the wider O’Connor family and their friends are presently consumed by grief. As Jo Jo was a member of the Real I.R.A which doesn’t exist anymore; it is unlikely that any statement from the group in relation to Jo Jo’s death will ever be carried in the media again.
The British-backed murder of I.R.A volunteer Joseph O’Connor arrived at an extremely delicate time for the Provisionals, during the initial stages of a sham-peace. The murder was planned and carried out with an immediate dual-aim, to execute an anti-agreement Republican while designating blame to other Anti-agreement Republicans in the process. From the very moment they shot him multiple times in the head and face, the death-squad busied themselves with the task of concealing their movement’s involvement in his murder.
Unfortunately for Sinn Féin, Ballymurphy is a small place. A seemingly arrogance-based brazenness allowed people to identify the death-squad who shot ‘Jo Jo’. This was followed by a number of mistakes being made during their escape. Logistical blunders aside, locals talk, and literally within minutes of Joseph O’Connor’s murder, his neighbours, his family, his friends and his comrades knew who was responsible, the Provisional I.R.A.
Immediately after the murder, local Sinn Féin spokespersons attempted to deflect blame onto other Republicans, they were assisted in their attempts by the RUC who raided the offices of Republican Sinn Féin, publicly citing Joe’s murder as their motive.
Within days the party’s accepted local mouthpiece “The Andersonstown news” also helped to raise the notion of an internal Republican feud by using ambiguous language to report on what the community knew to be facts. Even a year later the “Andersonstown news” continued to ply the idea of an internal Republican dispute as being responsible for the murder of Joseph O’Connor. Upon being challenged by members of Belfast 32CSM the paper’s editorial board smugly stated that their editorial line was ‘No I.R.A. involvement in the murder of Joseph O’Connor’, and that his death was the result of a ‘dissident feud’.
Joseph’s family friends and comrades were not alone in voicing their disgust at what the Provisional movement had done. Many well-known Republicans, including former life-sentence prisoner and blanket-man Anthony McIntyre and Maidstone escapee Tommy Gorman, added their voices to a steady stream of condemnation which naturally emanated from within the Republican base.
All of those who told the basic truth, for the simple sake of basic truth, faced immediate vilification for doing so, homes were picketed, vile abuse was spat at the direction of honest commentators, and one of the weapons used to attack them was the indisputable Sinn Féin alligned “Andersonstown news.”
A decade ago an opinion piece written by ‘Squinter’ criticising Gerry Adams appeared in the Andersonstown News. This story made international headlines because the Andersonstown News was then, as it is now, considered to be an organ of the Provisional movement and such internal criticism of Sinn Féin was unprecedented. When Gerry Adams was accused of forcing the paper’s editorial board to issue a grovelling, front-page apology to him, Sinn Féin’s critics went into overdrive. It is in this story that you will find evidence of the AndersontownNews’ links to and representation of Sinn Féin.
The magnitude therefore of the paper’s admission of I.R.A responsibility for Joe O’Connor’s murder poses a particular significance at this time.
Margaret O’Connor did not want revenge for her son’s death, all she asked was an admission of responsibility, perhaps an apology from those behind it. As a grieving mother, she lobbied Sinn Féin through Relatives for Justice and promised that as a republican, she would not pursue prosecutions, she kept that promise till her dying day.
Margaret O’Connor was denied this grace, she was offered nothing in return and sadly died last year in the very same turmoil that had been imposed upon her by a Provisional death-squad on Friday 13th of October 2000 outside her own home.
Perhaps the Andersons town News did not intend to accept that Jo Jo’s death was at the hands of the I.R.A. It has done so however and this simply cannot be ignored. The paper has gone out of its way over the years in publicizing its position that there is only one I.R.A, and that they are the Provisionals. Maybe it is an editorial oversight and maybe it is in preparation for something to come, maybe it is even a huge-leap forward in the pursuit of truth for victims of conflict.
Whatever the reasons questions now exist which demand answers. Why was Margaret O’Connor sent to her grave without an admission by Sinn Féin that the Provisional I.R.A had murdered her son?
Why has a media outlet, so closely and openly associated with Sinn Féin MLA Máirtín Ó Muilleoir challenged the leadership of Sinn Féin in this fashion?
Will Sinn Féin now tell the Republican people of Belfast the truth and apologise for the lies they told them in 2000 and ever since?
Will all of those who received Provisional death threats for telling the truth about Joseph O’Connor’s murder now be pardoned by the Army Council?
Or, Will Squinter return next Wednesday and apologise for making the biggest blunder since ‘they haven’t gone away you know’?
July 6, 2018
Contract In Blood
Christopher Owens reviews a book by musician and writer, Ian Glasper.
The best books about music are the ones that are so absorbing, it doesn't matter if you like the music or not. And the best authors are the ones who focus just as much on the unloved ones as much as the classic bands.
A scribe for metal magazine Terrorizer since forever, Ian Glasper is what we would call a lifer. Being immersed in punk since 1980, he has played in numerous bands and feels compelled to catalogue the various scenes for posterity. For this, we are truly grateful.
His previous books have focused on the UK punk scene in all it's guises (UK82, anarcho/crust, hardcore, metalcore, pop punk, melodic hardcore) so it makes sense for him to turn his focus to the UK thrash scene from its beginnings in the early 80's, to the present day, where younger bands pick up the baton and spread the music far and wide.
What's always been infectious about Glasper's tomes is that he gives just as much space to the lesser known bands as he does to the big hitters (i.e. the ones you've come to read about) and their tales are just as compelling. Quite often, it can just be about the environment that they come from. Reading about the likes of Richard III (from Co. Cavan) act as a reminder just what a conservative, backward looking hellhole this country was in the early 90's, culturally speaking.
Or Lord Crucifier, originally from Rome but who ended up settling in Halifax, Yorkshire because Rome had nothing to offer them.
Of equal interest are the tales of tension between the thrashers and the hardcore punks, always fascinating to read. Although, to most, thrash metal and hardcore punk sound similar, both cultures come with their own set of rules and influences. And sometimes, crossing over isn't good for a band's health (one of the first "crossover" bands, English Dogs, were universally sneered at by punks when they turned metal).
And it's rather telling that, for me, the most creative records of that era were put out by bands with backgrounds in hardcore punk (English Dogs, Warfare, Hellbastard, Sacrilege).
And this is a crucial point because it's important to remember that, at the time, Britain had little credibility in the thrash scene, which was dominated by the Americans (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth) and the Germans (Kreator, Sodom, Destruction) with Swiss pioneers Celtic Frost dropping jaws around the world for their twisted, evil and avant-garde approach to the genre.
Although Britain helped create the genre with Venom (who are now mainly synonymous with black metal), the biggest bands it could boast of were Onslaught, Slammer and Sabbat, with bands like Acid Reign and Xentrix retaining a sizeable national following but never translated into anything worldwide.
Throughout, Glasper queries why the UK never garnered sufficient credibility. Although the answers vary, the cold truth is that if you put any record by those bands up against the likes of Reign in Blood, Morbid Tales or Pleasure to Kill, you will see that they are worlds apart. And that's just in terms of extremity. Put the same records up against bona fide metal classics like Master of Puppets, Peace Sells...But Who's Buying and Among the Living, albums that are hailed by mainstream critics and music fans as the epitome of heavy metal and the British ones just don't stand up.
To be fair, Britain were pushing the boundaries when it came to hardcore punk, giving us Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death, Sore Throat and giving birth to the genre that we now call grindcore. And gothic metal (coming out of bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride) was also on the ascendency in this period.
So, by contrast, the UK thrash acts couldn't help but come across as also-rans. But the ones with some punk in their system could end up creating something that stands above most of their peers.
However, leaving aside tribal allegiances,, Glasper has to be saluted for his efforts. He takes a genre that has long been written off for the reasons listed above and shows it sufficient respect for readers unfamiliar with the bands to take an interest in the recordings. It's the human touch, the dreamers who felt they were just as good as the big boys. They're the ones who keep going regardless of trends, and the ones who talk about their time with pride and affection.
Contract in Blood is a celebration of an area of underground music and a great jumping off point for readers who now want to check out Slammer or Evil Priest.
Ian Glasper Contract in Blood: A History of UK Thrash Metal 2018 Cherry Red Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1909454675
➽ Christopher Owens reviews for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland.Follow Christopher Owens on Twitter @MrOwens212
The best books about music are the ones that are so absorbing, it doesn't matter if you like the music or not. And the best authors are the ones who focus just as much on the unloved ones as much as the classic bands.
A scribe for metal magazine Terrorizer since forever, Ian Glasper is what we would call a lifer. Being immersed in punk since 1980, he has played in numerous bands and feels compelled to catalogue the various scenes for posterity. For this, we are truly grateful.
His previous books have focused on the UK punk scene in all it's guises (UK82, anarcho/crust, hardcore, metalcore, pop punk, melodic hardcore) so it makes sense for him to turn his focus to the UK thrash scene from its beginnings in the early 80's, to the present day, where younger bands pick up the baton and spread the music far and wide.
What's always been infectious about Glasper's tomes is that he gives just as much space to the lesser known bands as he does to the big hitters (i.e. the ones you've come to read about) and their tales are just as compelling. Quite often, it can just be about the environment that they come from. Reading about the likes of Richard III (from Co. Cavan) act as a reminder just what a conservative, backward looking hellhole this country was in the early 90's, culturally speaking.
Or Lord Crucifier, originally from Rome but who ended up settling in Halifax, Yorkshire because Rome had nothing to offer them.
Of equal interest are the tales of tension between the thrashers and the hardcore punks, always fascinating to read. Although, to most, thrash metal and hardcore punk sound similar, both cultures come with their own set of rules and influences. And sometimes, crossing over isn't good for a band's health (one of the first "crossover" bands, English Dogs, were universally sneered at by punks when they turned metal).
And it's rather telling that, for me, the most creative records of that era were put out by bands with backgrounds in hardcore punk (English Dogs, Warfare, Hellbastard, Sacrilege).
And this is a crucial point because it's important to remember that, at the time, Britain had little credibility in the thrash scene, which was dominated by the Americans (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth) and the Germans (Kreator, Sodom, Destruction) with Swiss pioneers Celtic Frost dropping jaws around the world for their twisted, evil and avant-garde approach to the genre.
Although Britain helped create the genre with Venom (who are now mainly synonymous with black metal), the biggest bands it could boast of were Onslaught, Slammer and Sabbat, with bands like Acid Reign and Xentrix retaining a sizeable national following but never translated into anything worldwide.
Throughout, Glasper queries why the UK never garnered sufficient credibility. Although the answers vary, the cold truth is that if you put any record by those bands up against the likes of Reign in Blood, Morbid Tales or Pleasure to Kill, you will see that they are worlds apart. And that's just in terms of extremity. Put the same records up against bona fide metal classics like Master of Puppets, Peace Sells...But Who's Buying and Among the Living, albums that are hailed by mainstream critics and music fans as the epitome of heavy metal and the British ones just don't stand up.
To be fair, Britain were pushing the boundaries when it came to hardcore punk, giving us Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death, Sore Throat and giving birth to the genre that we now call grindcore. And gothic metal (coming out of bands like Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride) was also on the ascendency in this period.
So, by contrast, the UK thrash acts couldn't help but come across as also-rans. But the ones with some punk in their system could end up creating something that stands above most of their peers.
However, leaving aside tribal allegiances,, Glasper has to be saluted for his efforts. He takes a genre that has long been written off for the reasons listed above and shows it sufficient respect for readers unfamiliar with the bands to take an interest in the recordings. It's the human touch, the dreamers who felt they were just as good as the big boys. They're the ones who keep going regardless of trends, and the ones who talk about their time with pride and affection.
Contract in Blood is a celebration of an area of underground music and a great jumping off point for readers who now want to check out Slammer or Evil Priest.
Ian Glasper Contract in Blood: A History of UK Thrash Metal 2018 Cherry Red Publishing ISBN-13: 978-1909454675
➽ Christopher Owens reviews for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland.Follow Christopher Owens on Twitter @MrOwens212
July 5, 2018
Desperately Seeking Socialism
A response by Gabriel Levy to Dissidents Among Dissidents, by Ilya Budraitskis – and Budraitskis’s response to that response. Dissidents Among Dissidents (Dissidenty Sredi Dissidentov) was published in Russian in 2017 by Free Marxist Publishers [Svobodnoe Marksistskoe Izdatelstvo].)
Русская версия здесь / Russian version here
The existence of a “new cold war” was already being treated in public discourse as an “obvious and indisputable fact”, Budraitskis argues – but “the production of rhetoric has run way ahead of the reality” (pp. 112-3).
To question the assumptions behind the rhetoric further, in the essay, “Intellectuals and the Cold War” (in English on line here), Budraitskis considers the character of the original cold war, i.e. between the Soviet bloc and the western powers between the end of the second world war and 1991. The cold war was a set of “principles of the world order”, construed by ruling elites and then confirmed in intellectual discourse and in the everyday activity of masses of people, he writes (p. 112).
The reality of continuous psychological mobilisation, and the nerve-straining expectation of global military conflict, as apprehended by society as a whole, became a means of existence, reproduced over the course of two generations, in which loyalty to beliefs was combined with fear and a feeling of helplessness before fate.
This proposition, that the cold war was essentially a means of social control, in which masses of people were systematically deprived of agency, certainly works for me. I wondered whether Budraitskis knows of the attempts, made during the cold war on the “western” side of the divide, to analyse this central aspect of it – for example of the work of Hillel Ticktin and others in the early issues of the socialist journal Critique (from 1973). (Ticktin wrote on the political economy of the Soviet Union, interpreting it in the context of world capitalism. The journal web site is here.)
Prague, 1968: students take on Soviet tanks
Today, the cold war’s binary ideological constraints live on, Budraitskis argues. “The trauma of choice between hostile camps has still today not been overcome” (p. 123). As an example, he quotes the reactions to Russia’s participation in the war in eastern Ukraine by, on one hand, Aleksandr Dugin, the extreme right-wing Russian “Eurasianist”, and, on the other, the American historian Timothy Snyder. (See here (Russian only) and here.)
For Dugin, the military conflict in eastern Ukraine amounted to “the return of Russia to history”. For Snyder, it was confirmation that Ukraine had finally to recognise that it was part of Europe. Dugin’s anti-Europe and Snyder’s Europe leave no room for a third way, Budraitskis asserts gloomily (p. 120).
On this at least, I feel more optimistic. It is undeniable that elite-controlled public forums have increasingly been dominated by this two-sided, one-dimensional discourse. On the “left”, this false dichotomy has been reflected in “geopolitical” stances that base themselves on the relative qualities of imperialist blocs, and deny agency to, or sideline, society generally and social movements particularly. But those social movements exist, and there are voices in the intelligentsia that reflect them.
Escaping the binary
From the late 1940s, both in the west and in the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia began to be transformed “from a group that was capable simply of implementing an ideological order, to one that was prepared independently to formulate it, make it more precise and reproduce it”,
Budraitskis writes (pp. 113-114). In the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia was constrained by the state’s imperialistic and chauvinistic approach to politics. That defined not only 1960s debates such as those about the scientific-technical revolution and “socialism with a human face”, but even 1970s Soviet dissidents’ discussions of the relationship between “national” and “universal-humanist” values.
It was “self-evident”, and “required no special confirmation from above”, that a “third way” for intellectuals, that escaped the “binary structure of the East-West conflict [of states]”, was “impossible”, Budraitskis argues. The proof, for him, was that as official “Marxism-Leninism” became completely discredited in the two decades prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that collapse “could not then be understood otherwise than as the victory of one of the military-political blocs [i.e. the western one]” (p. 115).
I read this passage hoping for more caveats and qualifications. I accept that the western liberal narrative about the “collapse of communism” in the 1990s became ubiquitous and overwhelming in those spaces – journalism, academia, etc – that in the west are called “public opinion”. But surely there were dissenting and critical strands in the intelligentsia – particularly if understood in the wider way that it used to be in Soviet times – both in the west and in the former Soviet states.
In Russia, those public spaces were taking shape, uncensored, in a new way. Immediately before and after the collapse of the USSR, Russian journalism was in its heyday, lashing out at corruption and the horror of the first war in Chechnya, before corporate control and Putin-era censorship tightened the screws. In film, the reckoning with Stalinism began, running from Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) to Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt By The Sun (1994). In literature, Viktor Pelevin’s Generation “P” (1999), magnificently, turned Yeltsin’s regime into an absurd phantasmagoria.
These are just the (perhaps rose-tinted?) memories of a western leftist who started travelling to Russia at that time. But I want to know how this rich, chaotic ferment fits in to Budraitskis’s argument.
The dissidents’ history
The centre-piece of Budraitskis’s book is a longer essay, “Dissidents Among Dissidents”, that traces the history of socialist trends in the Soviet dissident milieu between the mid-1950s and the Gorbachev reforms of the mid-1980s. It is a fascinating and valuable piece of work.
Budraitskis describes (p. 34) how a “wave of social discontent” in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, echoing the workers’ revolts in Hungary, Poland and the German Democratic Republic – from large-scale riots in Chechnya (1958) and Kazakhstan (1959) to protests and attacks on Communist party offices in Murom and Aleksandrov (1961) and culminating in the Novercherkassk rebellion (1962) – formed the background not only to the twentieth Communist Party congress (1956) and Nikita Khrushchev’s post-Stalinist “thaw”, but also to the emergence of the first big wave of socialist dissident groups. They were mostly made up of students and young workers in larger cities, they always met in secret, were usually isolated from each other, and their activity was almost always cut short by arrests.
There had been precursors, in the last years of Stalin’s rule, such as the “Communist Party of Youth” (formed in Voronezh in 1948) and the “Union of Struggle for the Cause of Revolution” (formed in Moscow in 1951). These student groups were soon crushed by arrests and long prison sentences. But the “thaw” of the late 1950s and early 1960s brought such public forums as gatherings in Moscow for poetry reading and discussion at the statue of Vladimir Mayakovsky, and a corresponding widening of political activity.
The meaning of socialism, then and now
In the early 1970s, the conservative wing of the Soviet dissident movement, with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at its head, lurched politically to the right, and Budraitskis’s account of this was for me one of the most interesting passages.
In 1974, soon after his forced emigration, Solzhenitsyn launched a broadside against the idea of socialism in general, and the socialist dissidents particularly. One of his chief targets was the historian Roy Medvedev, who from the late 1960s, influenced by “Eurocommunism”, had advocated “the democratisation of the economy, education and structures of power”, aims that he believed could be pursued both through samizdat (illegal publications) and through official channels, including pressure on elements in the Communist party.
Budraitskis describes (pp. 65-66) how tensions between Medvedev on one side, and Solzhenitsyn and the physicist Andrei Sakharov on the other, came to a head over, among other things, the wording of an appeal to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in defence of the socialist poet Pablo Neruda. Medvedev scorned a sympathetic reference to Pinochet’s “epoch of Chilean renaissance and consolidation” (which had of course been founded on the killing and torture of thousands of his opponents).
Рой Медведев в 70-х гг.
In a collection of essays From Under The Rubble (1974), Solzhenitsyn denounced “cleaned-up” Marxists whose differences with the official line were “insignificant”. He clearly had Medvedev in mind. The latter responded in samizdat that, for Solzhenitsyn, “in general there is no difference at all between the idea of socialism and its implementation in reality”; socialism had won out in countries such as Russia and China precisely because the suffering of millions of people there under capitalism had been so severe. Budraitskis writes (p. 68):
It was precisely at this time that the dissident milieu began to see the use of Marxist language – which was completely dominant in Soviet politics and academia (where Medvedev worked) – as negative in and of itself. “In oppositional ideological discussions, Marxism was taken to be a ‘Soviet language’, which it was indecent to use.”
This issue starts, in my view, to get to the heart of the problems faced not only by Soviet dissidents, but by anyone who wants to understand socialism in the light of the Russian revolution and the Soviet experience. My fervent plea to Budraitskis would be to develop this theme further.
The underground dissident groups of the 1960s and 1970s about which Budraitskis writes, who had neither Medvedev’s privileges nor Solzhenitsyn’s fame, braved the danger of arrest and imprisonment precisely to try to recover the meaning of “socialism”. Having so inspired 19th-century workers’ movements, and the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers who made the 1917 revolution, this idea had – by the post-war period in the Soviet Union – had its meaning completely mangled.
The lifeless “Marxist” prose of every school textbook was the butt of a thousand jokes. This language had indeed become indecent. I remember clearly how, when I first visited the Soviet Union, in 1990, I declared myself a socialist to militants in the newly-independent trade union movements – and they looked at me as though I had two heads. The positive connotations of the word in my naïve western mind simply did not register with their life experience of “socialism”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1953, in a prison camp in Kazakhstan
The socialist idea had been trashed; the meaning of words had been turned inside-out. This was the problem that – unknown to me, and probably unknown to those workers too – the dissidents had been arguing about in the 1970s. Today, in the time of the “socialist” Bashar al-Assad and the “communist” Xi Jinping, it remains unresolved.
Budraitskis’s essay on the centenary of the Russian revolution, “A Heritage Without Inheritors” (“Nasledie bez naslednikov”), did not bring clarity to this issue. He argues (p. 130) that “the aim of the transition to socialism did not arise out of the dynamic of class struggle itself”; rather, it was posed as a Kantian imperative; “the Leninist party took upon itself this moral burden: the transition to socialism in a country that was by any definition unprepared for it”. Fair enough. But what was this “socialism” that the Bolsheviks was trying to build? What was the corrosive effect of this “socialist construction” on the understanding, in Russia and beyond its borders too, of socialism as an aim?
To my mind, the search for a meaningful soul of socialism is more effectively pursued in Budraitskis’s research of the dissidents. He explains (p. 56) how State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin became a key text for the socialist dissidents of the 1960s. That most hopeful and democratic of Lenin’s pre-revolutionary attempts to discuss what a future socialist state might be like was – unlike many more far-sighted and utopian imaginings by 19th century European socialists and anarchists – officially published, and therefore widely available, in the Soviet Union.
The Leningrad dissident Mikhail Molostvov, who formed a discussion group in 1956 and was soon afterwards sent to a prison camp for seven years, recalled in his memoirs a worker who went around libraries, underlining in copies of State and Revolution passages calling for the regular election and recall of all officials, and for their pay to be limited to the average. Another dissident of that generation, Boris Weill, met workers in his prison camp who had been arrested after re-covering officially published copies of Lenin’s book with jackets picturing barbed wire.
These stories reminded me that Solzhenitsyn’s early novels – which, notwithstanding his lurch to the right in the 1970s remain for me a profound contribution to my understanding of Stalinism – are full of references to these very issues. In The First Circle (chapter 19), he riffs on Lenin’s musings in State and Revolution about every cook being able to participate in state administration. Stalin’s thoughts, as imagined by Solzhenitsyn, were that Lenin had made promises that turned into a rod for Stalin’s back. Every cook will be able to run the state? – what on earth was he [Lenin] thinking, concretely? That every cook on Fridays won’t cook, but will go and work in the district executive office? A cook is a cook: she has to prepare meals. But directing people – that is a great calling, which can be trusted only to special cadres, specially selected cadres.
Characters in The First Circle (chapter 90) discuss the mind-bending “just inequality” (?!) that characterised the Soviet Union. In Cancer Ward (chapter 29), Pavel Rusanov, the personnel officer and bully who personifies the Soviet “workers’ state”, is subject to a withering denunciation by the central hero, Oleg Kostoglotov. What do you know about work, he asks, when you have such lily-white hands?
In these books, written and published both in samizdat and in the west by the end of the 1960s, Solzhenitsyn had, clearly, already broken free of the constraints of official Soviet “Marxism” and its contorted language – at a time when he had not yet developed a clearly anti-socialist ideology. Did the socialist student and worker dissidents also make such a break? Or did they, like Roy Medvedev, remain constrained in a linguistic, and therefore to some extent ideological, framework, set by officialdom? Budraitskis’s fascinating quotations from their political manifestos, many of which characterised the Soviet economy as exploitative and its political regime as hierarchical, left me wanting to know more.
A street exhibition on the life and writing of Varlam Shalamov, in Moscow in 2016
There are related questions, about the extent to which the prison camp writers, of which Solzhenitsyn was the best known, influenced the small groups of students and workers that Budraitskis has researched. To what extent did those groups integrate the camps – that in many ways were a world apart – into their understanding of Soviet society and economy? Had they read Solzhenitsyn? And Varlam Shalamov? I imagine he was far closer in spirit than Solzhenitsyn was to the left-wing dissidents – in his socialist humanism, in the way that his politics were shaped when he was young in the workers’ movement of the 1920s, and even in the bleak pessimism of his later writings. Here too, I am looking with the eyes of an outsider, who read these books not in samizdat but in the comfort of my London home. But I am perhaps not the only western reader for whom Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were stepping stones, and who needs to try to join these up with the stepping stones that Budraitskis is pointing to.
Analysis in the underground
Budraitskis’s focus on the small underground groups, who were far less visible than the internationally-known dissidents, is welcome. Those who considered themselves socialists almost all characterised the Soviet system as an exploitative one with class divisions, he explains. Revolt Pimenov, who with Boris Weill established a dissident group in Leningrad in 1956-57, drafted theses asserting that in the USSR, “the state has become the only capitalist, the only landlord and the only thinker”. For Pimenov, Budraitskis writes (p. 49), the Soviet economy was “state capitalist”; state property could not be socialised property; and state property and socialism were mutually exclusive. Another Leningrad group, organised by Molostvov, while declaring Stalinism and Trotskyism both to have taken a bureaucratic road, nevertheless advanced a political programme that, unlike Pimenov’s, clearly saw the road ahead through reforms, advocating that “the mass of working people are brought into the management of the country” (p. 50).
Some of the left-wing dissidents – if I have understood Budraitskis’s account correctly – saw the USSR, for all its reactionary characteristics, as a stepping-stone towards a truly socialist society. For example the Union of Communards, set up in Leningrad in the 1960s, entitled its main platform document “from the dictatorship of the bureaucracy to the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and included an epigraph by Lenin advocating a republic where there would be election and recall of all officials, and “no police, no army and no state bureaucracy”.
Another significant aspect of the socialist dissidents’ politics was their internationalism, which in the 1950s underpinned their support for workers’ revolts in eastern Europe, and in 1968 for the “Prague spring”. Budraitskis underlines (pp. 73-76) the role of socialist dissidents in Ukraine and other non-Russian Soviet republics, whose attempts to combine ideas of socialism with those of national liberation from Russian imperialism would stand in sharp contrast to the increasingly strident nationalism of Solzhenitsyn and other right-wing Russian dissidents.
The end of the Khrushchev political “thaw” in the mid 1960s opened a new chapter in the history of the dissident milieu. The hopes among the most reformist elements for the “self reform” of the Soviet bureaucracy had been dashed. Socialist dissidence, Budraitskis argues, continued in two parallel trends: one that worked in the dissident milieu and human rights organisations in the big cities, including prominent figures such as Roy Medvedev; the other comprising “underground socialist groups, continuing in the traditions of the ‘thaw’” (p. 61).
In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, such groups appeared and reappeared repeatedly, across the Soviet Union: Budraitskis writes (pp. 77-78) of groups in Chisinau (Moldova), Odessa (Ukraine), Tallinn (Estonia), Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk, Ukraine), Ryazan, Saratov, Petrozavodsk, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) and Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), as well as in Leningrad and Moscow. “Practically all of them took positions of Marxism and ‘cleaned-up’ [‘ochishchenny’] Leninism, considered the [Communist] party to have degenerated and the USSR to be some type or other of exploitative society”. This was the background against which the clash between Medvedev and Solzhenitsyn was played out.
The Soviet dictatorship relied heavily on controlling and limiting the flow of information (and in this respect at least can not be replicated in the 21st century), and the dissident groups worked in suffocating isolation, often learning of each other’s existence only in the prison camps. Budraitskis’s essay is the first I know of by a post-Soviet socialist to start to summarise, compare and think about their experiences collectively – something that was hardly possible at the time. I hope it will soon be translated into other languages, and that the discussion of the dissidents’ legacy will be conducted not only in the former Soviet countries, but internationally, where their heroic battles to recover the meaning of socialism from its Soviet imprisonment are no less significant. Gabriel Levy, 17 June 2018.
Ilya Budraitskis comments: How circumstances defined the possibility of a “third position”
I may say that I am doubly grateful to Gabriel Levy for his response to my book: this is a review not only by an attentive and educated reader, but also by a politically engaged person, a socialist activist who almost three decades ago witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Levy’s political position helped him to evaluate that dramatic process in all its diversity and contradiction: on one hand, the atmosphere of social animation, the intensive searches for democratic alternatives to the Soviet system, the widespread mineworkers’ strikes, and the rapid growth of the independent trade unions; and, on the other, the brutal primitive accumulation, the destructive transition to the market, the mass impoverishment, and the beginning of the evolution of the post-Soviet political regime, the results of which we are still living through today, with all the consequences.
Ilya Budraitskis’s book
This experience gave rise to questions which, in essence, have for the past two decades not been seriously considered on the Russian left. What were the objective reasons for the collapse of “really existing socialism”? What can we, and must we, counterpose to the historical-political speculation on the Soviet legacy both by the authorities and by the liberal opposition? And finally, how can we establish a relationship between our own historical continuity and the Russian socialist tradition of the twentieth century?
My collection Dissidents Among Dissidents obviously did not exhaust these questions, but I hope that it helped to pose them correctly. The texts included in the volume, including the outline of the history of the Soviet Union’s socialist dissidents, are in one way or another related to establishing the possibility of a “third position” between uncritical apologetics for the Soviet system and aggressive anti-communism.
Today, the rhetoric of the “new cold war” – the second time more as “farce” than as “tragedy” – brings back the logic of an enforced choice between two opposing camps, a logic to which so many intellectuals in the past, from Sartre to Sakharov, were subordinated. Attempts to get away from that choice, and from the loss of political independence that it signified, were all too often seen as evasions of responsibility, as indifference to the real struggle for social emancipation or for human rights (which in the binary logic of the cold war were made to stand in opposition to each other).
In this way, the possibility of a “third position” came to be defined not as a once-and-for-all dogma, but by the force of concrete circumstances. The socialist dissidents, who criticised the Soviet regime from the left, acted under the constant pressure of these circumstances – not only repression by the Soviet regime, but also the “right turn” in the mood of the intelligentsia, so evident from the beginning of the 1970s. (The issue of the contradictory social and political character of the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia is the subject of another of the essays in my collection.)
The collapse of the USSR resulted in the collapse of the Soviet intelligentsia as a social group, with all the consciousness specific to it. The striking cultural artefacts of the late 1980s and early 1990s that Gabriel mentioned essentially reflected this phase, of both the disintegration of the intelligentsia’s way of thinking, and the fragmentation of social consciousness in general. From the epoch of “glasnost” (with its bold engagement with the traumas of the past, that had previously been forbidden), the intelligentsia moved to the post-modernism of the 1990s. The other side of that coin often turned out to be dogmatic political judgments – above all, with respect to the eternal ghost of the “Soviet”, which blocked the transition of post-Soviet Russia to global modernity and “normality”. (I wrote about this in the article “Eternal hunt for the Red human”, also in my book.)
It seems to me that the ideas presented in Dissidents Among Dissidents may be of significance not only for Russian leftists but also in the context of current discussions internationally of the political nature of modern Russia and its relationship with the Soviet past.
Ilya Budraitskis.
■ If others wish to join this discussion, please email me with contributions, which – within the usual guidelines (see here) – I’ll be happy to publish. GL.
■ Many thanks to Open Democracy Russia, who also published this article. GL.
More about Soviet history on People & Nature
■ Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate: staring history in the face (May 2018)
■ “The street has already spoken, gentlemen. The Russian revolution in real time (March 2017)
■ Russia and Ukraine: history called up on national service (July 2015)
⏩Gabriel Levy blogs @ People And Nature.
Follow on Twitter @Pe0pleAndNature
Русская версия здесь / Russian version here
The existence of a “new cold war” was already being treated in public discourse as an “obvious and indisputable fact”, Budraitskis argues – but “the production of rhetoric has run way ahead of the reality” (pp. 112-3).
To question the assumptions behind the rhetoric further, in the essay, “Intellectuals and the Cold War” (in English on line here), Budraitskis considers the character of the original cold war, i.e. between the Soviet bloc and the western powers between the end of the second world war and 1991. The cold war was a set of “principles of the world order”, construed by ruling elites and then confirmed in intellectual discourse and in the everyday activity of masses of people, he writes (p. 112).
The reality of continuous psychological mobilisation, and the nerve-straining expectation of global military conflict, as apprehended by society as a whole, became a means of existence, reproduced over the course of two generations, in which loyalty to beliefs was combined with fear and a feeling of helplessness before fate.
This proposition, that the cold war was essentially a means of social control, in which masses of people were systematically deprived of agency, certainly works for me. I wondered whether Budraitskis knows of the attempts, made during the cold war on the “western” side of the divide, to analyse this central aspect of it – for example of the work of Hillel Ticktin and others in the early issues of the socialist journal Critique (from 1973). (Ticktin wrote on the political economy of the Soviet Union, interpreting it in the context of world capitalism. The journal web site is here.)
Prague, 1968: students take on Soviet tanksToday, the cold war’s binary ideological constraints live on, Budraitskis argues. “The trauma of choice between hostile camps has still today not been overcome” (p. 123). As an example, he quotes the reactions to Russia’s participation in the war in eastern Ukraine by, on one hand, Aleksandr Dugin, the extreme right-wing Russian “Eurasianist”, and, on the other, the American historian Timothy Snyder. (See here (Russian only) and here.)
For Dugin, the military conflict in eastern Ukraine amounted to “the return of Russia to history”. For Snyder, it was confirmation that Ukraine had finally to recognise that it was part of Europe. Dugin’s anti-Europe and Snyder’s Europe leave no room for a third way, Budraitskis asserts gloomily (p. 120).
On this at least, I feel more optimistic. It is undeniable that elite-controlled public forums have increasingly been dominated by this two-sided, one-dimensional discourse. On the “left”, this false dichotomy has been reflected in “geopolitical” stances that base themselves on the relative qualities of imperialist blocs, and deny agency to, or sideline, society generally and social movements particularly. But those social movements exist, and there are voices in the intelligentsia that reflect them.
Escaping the binary
From the late 1940s, both in the west and in the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia began to be transformed “from a group that was capable simply of implementing an ideological order, to one that was prepared independently to formulate it, make it more precise and reproduce it”,
Budraitskis writes (pp. 113-114). In the Soviet Union, the intelligentsia was constrained by the state’s imperialistic and chauvinistic approach to politics. That defined not only 1960s debates such as those about the scientific-technical revolution and “socialism with a human face”, but even 1970s Soviet dissidents’ discussions of the relationship between “national” and “universal-humanist” values.
It was “self-evident”, and “required no special confirmation from above”, that a “third way” for intellectuals, that escaped the “binary structure of the East-West conflict [of states]”, was “impossible”, Budraitskis argues. The proof, for him, was that as official “Marxism-Leninism” became completely discredited in the two decades prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, that collapse “could not then be understood otherwise than as the victory of one of the military-political blocs [i.e. the western one]” (p. 115).
I read this passage hoping for more caveats and qualifications. I accept that the western liberal narrative about the “collapse of communism” in the 1990s became ubiquitous and overwhelming in those spaces – journalism, academia, etc – that in the west are called “public opinion”. But surely there were dissenting and critical strands in the intelligentsia – particularly if understood in the wider way that it used to be in Soviet times – both in the west and in the former Soviet states.
In Russia, those public spaces were taking shape, uncensored, in a new way. Immediately before and after the collapse of the USSR, Russian journalism was in its heyday, lashing out at corruption and the horror of the first war in Chechnya, before corporate control and Putin-era censorship tightened the screws. In film, the reckoning with Stalinism began, running from Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) to Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt By The Sun (1994). In literature, Viktor Pelevin’s Generation “P” (1999), magnificently, turned Yeltsin’s regime into an absurd phantasmagoria.
These are just the (perhaps rose-tinted?) memories of a western leftist who started travelling to Russia at that time. But I want to know how this rich, chaotic ferment fits in to Budraitskis’s argument.
The dissidents’ history
The centre-piece of Budraitskis’s book is a longer essay, “Dissidents Among Dissidents”, that traces the history of socialist trends in the Soviet dissident milieu between the mid-1950s and the Gorbachev reforms of the mid-1980s. It is a fascinating and valuable piece of work.
Budraitskis describes (p. 34) how a “wave of social discontent” in the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, echoing the workers’ revolts in Hungary, Poland and the German Democratic Republic – from large-scale riots in Chechnya (1958) and Kazakhstan (1959) to protests and attacks on Communist party offices in Murom and Aleksandrov (1961) and culminating in the Novercherkassk rebellion (1962) – formed the background not only to the twentieth Communist Party congress (1956) and Nikita Khrushchev’s post-Stalinist “thaw”, but also to the emergence of the first big wave of socialist dissident groups. They were mostly made up of students and young workers in larger cities, they always met in secret, were usually isolated from each other, and their activity was almost always cut short by arrests.
There had been precursors, in the last years of Stalin’s rule, such as the “Communist Party of Youth” (formed in Voronezh in 1948) and the “Union of Struggle for the Cause of Revolution” (formed in Moscow in 1951). These student groups were soon crushed by arrests and long prison sentences. But the “thaw” of the late 1950s and early 1960s brought such public forums as gatherings in Moscow for poetry reading and discussion at the statue of Vladimir Mayakovsky, and a corresponding widening of political activity.
The meaning of socialism, then and now
In the early 1970s, the conservative wing of the Soviet dissident movement, with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at its head, lurched politically to the right, and Budraitskis’s account of this was for me one of the most interesting passages.
In 1974, soon after his forced emigration, Solzhenitsyn launched a broadside against the idea of socialism in general, and the socialist dissidents particularly. One of his chief targets was the historian Roy Medvedev, who from the late 1960s, influenced by “Eurocommunism”, had advocated “the democratisation of the economy, education and structures of power”, aims that he believed could be pursued both through samizdat (illegal publications) and through official channels, including pressure on elements in the Communist party.
Budraitskis describes (pp. 65-66) how tensions between Medvedev on one side, and Solzhenitsyn and the physicist Andrei Sakharov on the other, came to a head over, among other things, the wording of an appeal to the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in defence of the socialist poet Pablo Neruda. Medvedev scorned a sympathetic reference to Pinochet’s “epoch of Chilean renaissance and consolidation” (which had of course been founded on the killing and torture of thousands of his opponents).
Рой Медведев в 70-х гг.In a collection of essays From Under The Rubble (1974), Solzhenitsyn denounced “cleaned-up” Marxists whose differences with the official line were “insignificant”. He clearly had Medvedev in mind. The latter responded in samizdat that, for Solzhenitsyn, “in general there is no difference at all between the idea of socialism and its implementation in reality”; socialism had won out in countries such as Russia and China precisely because the suffering of millions of people there under capitalism had been so severe. Budraitskis writes (p. 68):
For a significant part of the samizdat readership, though, these conclusions were hardly convincing. On the contrary, Medvedev’s position was considered to be comfortable and collaborationist, by comparison with the uncompromising author of The Gulag Archipelago [i.e. Solzhenitsyn].
It was precisely at this time that the dissident milieu began to see the use of Marxist language – which was completely dominant in Soviet politics and academia (where Medvedev worked) – as negative in and of itself. “In oppositional ideological discussions, Marxism was taken to be a ‘Soviet language’, which it was indecent to use.”
This issue starts, in my view, to get to the heart of the problems faced not only by Soviet dissidents, but by anyone who wants to understand socialism in the light of the Russian revolution and the Soviet experience. My fervent plea to Budraitskis would be to develop this theme further.
The underground dissident groups of the 1960s and 1970s about which Budraitskis writes, who had neither Medvedev’s privileges nor Solzhenitsyn’s fame, braved the danger of arrest and imprisonment precisely to try to recover the meaning of “socialism”. Having so inspired 19th-century workers’ movements, and the Russian workers, peasants and soldiers who made the 1917 revolution, this idea had – by the post-war period in the Soviet Union – had its meaning completely mangled.
The lifeless “Marxist” prose of every school textbook was the butt of a thousand jokes. This language had indeed become indecent. I remember clearly how, when I first visited the Soviet Union, in 1990, I declared myself a socialist to militants in the newly-independent trade union movements – and they looked at me as though I had two heads. The positive connotations of the word in my naïve western mind simply did not register with their life experience of “socialism”.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1953, in a prison camp in Kazakhstan The socialist idea had been trashed; the meaning of words had been turned inside-out. This was the problem that – unknown to me, and probably unknown to those workers too – the dissidents had been arguing about in the 1970s. Today, in the time of the “socialist” Bashar al-Assad and the “communist” Xi Jinping, it remains unresolved.
Budraitskis’s essay on the centenary of the Russian revolution, “A Heritage Without Inheritors” (“Nasledie bez naslednikov”), did not bring clarity to this issue. He argues (p. 130) that “the aim of the transition to socialism did not arise out of the dynamic of class struggle itself”; rather, it was posed as a Kantian imperative; “the Leninist party took upon itself this moral burden: the transition to socialism in a country that was by any definition unprepared for it”. Fair enough. But what was this “socialism” that the Bolsheviks was trying to build? What was the corrosive effect of this “socialist construction” on the understanding, in Russia and beyond its borders too, of socialism as an aim?
To my mind, the search for a meaningful soul of socialism is more effectively pursued in Budraitskis’s research of the dissidents. He explains (p. 56) how State and Revolution by Vladimir Lenin became a key text for the socialist dissidents of the 1960s. That most hopeful and democratic of Lenin’s pre-revolutionary attempts to discuss what a future socialist state might be like was – unlike many more far-sighted and utopian imaginings by 19th century European socialists and anarchists – officially published, and therefore widely available, in the Soviet Union.
The Leningrad dissident Mikhail Molostvov, who formed a discussion group in 1956 and was soon afterwards sent to a prison camp for seven years, recalled in his memoirs a worker who went around libraries, underlining in copies of State and Revolution passages calling for the regular election and recall of all officials, and for their pay to be limited to the average. Another dissident of that generation, Boris Weill, met workers in his prison camp who had been arrested after re-covering officially published copies of Lenin’s book with jackets picturing barbed wire.
These stories reminded me that Solzhenitsyn’s early novels – which, notwithstanding his lurch to the right in the 1970s remain for me a profound contribution to my understanding of Stalinism – are full of references to these very issues. In The First Circle (chapter 19), he riffs on Lenin’s musings in State and Revolution about every cook being able to participate in state administration. Stalin’s thoughts, as imagined by Solzhenitsyn, were that Lenin had made promises that turned into a rod for Stalin’s back. Every cook will be able to run the state? – what on earth was he [Lenin] thinking, concretely? That every cook on Fridays won’t cook, but will go and work in the district executive office? A cook is a cook: she has to prepare meals. But directing people – that is a great calling, which can be trusted only to special cadres, specially selected cadres.
Characters in The First Circle (chapter 90) discuss the mind-bending “just inequality” (?!) that characterised the Soviet Union. In Cancer Ward (chapter 29), Pavel Rusanov, the personnel officer and bully who personifies the Soviet “workers’ state”, is subject to a withering denunciation by the central hero, Oleg Kostoglotov. What do you know about work, he asks, when you have such lily-white hands?
In these books, written and published both in samizdat and in the west by the end of the 1960s, Solzhenitsyn had, clearly, already broken free of the constraints of official Soviet “Marxism” and its contorted language – at a time when he had not yet developed a clearly anti-socialist ideology. Did the socialist student and worker dissidents also make such a break? Or did they, like Roy Medvedev, remain constrained in a linguistic, and therefore to some extent ideological, framework, set by officialdom? Budraitskis’s fascinating quotations from their political manifestos, many of which characterised the Soviet economy as exploitative and its political regime as hierarchical, left me wanting to know more.
A street exhibition on the life and writing of Varlam Shalamov, in Moscow in 2016 There are related questions, about the extent to which the prison camp writers, of which Solzhenitsyn was the best known, influenced the small groups of students and workers that Budraitskis has researched. To what extent did those groups integrate the camps – that in many ways were a world apart – into their understanding of Soviet society and economy? Had they read Solzhenitsyn? And Varlam Shalamov? I imagine he was far closer in spirit than Solzhenitsyn was to the left-wing dissidents – in his socialist humanism, in the way that his politics were shaped when he was young in the workers’ movement of the 1920s, and even in the bleak pessimism of his later writings. Here too, I am looking with the eyes of an outsider, who read these books not in samizdat but in the comfort of my London home. But I am perhaps not the only western reader for whom Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov were stepping stones, and who needs to try to join these up with the stepping stones that Budraitskis is pointing to.
Analysis in the underground
Budraitskis’s focus on the small underground groups, who were far less visible than the internationally-known dissidents, is welcome. Those who considered themselves socialists almost all characterised the Soviet system as an exploitative one with class divisions, he explains. Revolt Pimenov, who with Boris Weill established a dissident group in Leningrad in 1956-57, drafted theses asserting that in the USSR, “the state has become the only capitalist, the only landlord and the only thinker”. For Pimenov, Budraitskis writes (p. 49), the Soviet economy was “state capitalist”; state property could not be socialised property; and state property and socialism were mutually exclusive. Another Leningrad group, organised by Molostvov, while declaring Stalinism and Trotskyism both to have taken a bureaucratic road, nevertheless advanced a political programme that, unlike Pimenov’s, clearly saw the road ahead through reforms, advocating that “the mass of working people are brought into the management of the country” (p. 50).
Some of the left-wing dissidents – if I have understood Budraitskis’s account correctly – saw the USSR, for all its reactionary characteristics, as a stepping-stone towards a truly socialist society. For example the Union of Communards, set up in Leningrad in the 1960s, entitled its main platform document “from the dictatorship of the bureaucracy to the dictatorship of the proletariat”, and included an epigraph by Lenin advocating a republic where there would be election and recall of all officials, and “no police, no army and no state bureaucracy”.
Another significant aspect of the socialist dissidents’ politics was their internationalism, which in the 1950s underpinned their support for workers’ revolts in eastern Europe, and in 1968 for the “Prague spring”. Budraitskis underlines (pp. 73-76) the role of socialist dissidents in Ukraine and other non-Russian Soviet republics, whose attempts to combine ideas of socialism with those of national liberation from Russian imperialism would stand in sharp contrast to the increasingly strident nationalism of Solzhenitsyn and other right-wing Russian dissidents.
The end of the Khrushchev political “thaw” in the mid 1960s opened a new chapter in the history of the dissident milieu. The hopes among the most reformist elements for the “self reform” of the Soviet bureaucracy had been dashed. Socialist dissidence, Budraitskis argues, continued in two parallel trends: one that worked in the dissident milieu and human rights organisations in the big cities, including prominent figures such as Roy Medvedev; the other comprising “underground socialist groups, continuing in the traditions of the ‘thaw’” (p. 61).
In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, such groups appeared and reappeared repeatedly, across the Soviet Union: Budraitskis writes (pp. 77-78) of groups in Chisinau (Moldova), Odessa (Ukraine), Tallinn (Estonia), Voroshilovgrad (now Lugansk, Ukraine), Ryazan, Saratov, Petrozavodsk, Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) and Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg), as well as in Leningrad and Moscow. “Practically all of them took positions of Marxism and ‘cleaned-up’ [‘ochishchenny’] Leninism, considered the [Communist] party to have degenerated and the USSR to be some type or other of exploitative society”. This was the background against which the clash between Medvedev and Solzhenitsyn was played out.
The Soviet dictatorship relied heavily on controlling and limiting the flow of information (and in this respect at least can not be replicated in the 21st century), and the dissident groups worked in suffocating isolation, often learning of each other’s existence only in the prison camps. Budraitskis’s essay is the first I know of by a post-Soviet socialist to start to summarise, compare and think about their experiences collectively – something that was hardly possible at the time. I hope it will soon be translated into other languages, and that the discussion of the dissidents’ legacy will be conducted not only in the former Soviet countries, but internationally, where their heroic battles to recover the meaning of socialism from its Soviet imprisonment are no less significant. Gabriel Levy, 17 June 2018.
Ilya Budraitskis comments: How circumstances defined the possibility of a “third position”
I may say that I am doubly grateful to Gabriel Levy for his response to my book: this is a review not only by an attentive and educated reader, but also by a politically engaged person, a socialist activist who almost three decades ago witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union. Levy’s political position helped him to evaluate that dramatic process in all its diversity and contradiction: on one hand, the atmosphere of social animation, the intensive searches for democratic alternatives to the Soviet system, the widespread mineworkers’ strikes, and the rapid growth of the independent trade unions; and, on the other, the brutal primitive accumulation, the destructive transition to the market, the mass impoverishment, and the beginning of the evolution of the post-Soviet political regime, the results of which we are still living through today, with all the consequences.
Ilya Budraitskis’s bookThis experience gave rise to questions which, in essence, have for the past two decades not been seriously considered on the Russian left. What were the objective reasons for the collapse of “really existing socialism”? What can we, and must we, counterpose to the historical-political speculation on the Soviet legacy both by the authorities and by the liberal opposition? And finally, how can we establish a relationship between our own historical continuity and the Russian socialist tradition of the twentieth century?
My collection Dissidents Among Dissidents obviously did not exhaust these questions, but I hope that it helped to pose them correctly. The texts included in the volume, including the outline of the history of the Soviet Union’s socialist dissidents, are in one way or another related to establishing the possibility of a “third position” between uncritical apologetics for the Soviet system and aggressive anti-communism.
Today, the rhetoric of the “new cold war” – the second time more as “farce” than as “tragedy” – brings back the logic of an enforced choice between two opposing camps, a logic to which so many intellectuals in the past, from Sartre to Sakharov, were subordinated. Attempts to get away from that choice, and from the loss of political independence that it signified, were all too often seen as evasions of responsibility, as indifference to the real struggle for social emancipation or for human rights (which in the binary logic of the cold war were made to stand in opposition to each other).
In this way, the possibility of a “third position” came to be defined not as a once-and-for-all dogma, but by the force of concrete circumstances. The socialist dissidents, who criticised the Soviet regime from the left, acted under the constant pressure of these circumstances – not only repression by the Soviet regime, but also the “right turn” in the mood of the intelligentsia, so evident from the beginning of the 1970s. (The issue of the contradictory social and political character of the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia is the subject of another of the essays in my collection.)
The collapse of the USSR resulted in the collapse of the Soviet intelligentsia as a social group, with all the consciousness specific to it. The striking cultural artefacts of the late 1980s and early 1990s that Gabriel mentioned essentially reflected this phase, of both the disintegration of the intelligentsia’s way of thinking, and the fragmentation of social consciousness in general. From the epoch of “glasnost” (with its bold engagement with the traumas of the past, that had previously been forbidden), the intelligentsia moved to the post-modernism of the 1990s. The other side of that coin often turned out to be dogmatic political judgments – above all, with respect to the eternal ghost of the “Soviet”, which blocked the transition of post-Soviet Russia to global modernity and “normality”. (I wrote about this in the article “Eternal hunt for the Red human”, also in my book.)
It seems to me that the ideas presented in Dissidents Among Dissidents may be of significance not only for Russian leftists but also in the context of current discussions internationally of the political nature of modern Russia and its relationship with the Soviet past.
Ilya Budraitskis.
■ If others wish to join this discussion, please email me with contributions, which – within the usual guidelines (see here) – I’ll be happy to publish. GL.
■ Many thanks to Open Democracy Russia, who also published this article. GL.
More about Soviet history on People & Nature
■ Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate: staring history in the face (May 2018)
■ “The street has already spoken, gentlemen. The Russian revolution in real time (March 2017)
■ Russia and Ukraine: history called up on national service (July 2015)
⏩Gabriel Levy blogs @ People And Nature.
Follow on Twitter @Pe0pleAndNature
July 4, 2018
The Plague
Sean Mallory focuses his ire on political rats and their parasitic pilgrims.
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
There are many, many interpretations and definitions of the nursery rhyme Ring-a-ring o' Roses and the biggest urban legend being that it refers to the plague, specifically to the Great Plague of London. An interpretation dismissed by many folklorists.
But when we consider the political rats and their parasitic pilgrims that currently infest Downing Street perhaps folklorists should revise or amend their dismissive attitude.
Just like crocodiles and returning for more, Theresa May abruptly dispelled any notions of such behaviour from the DUP when she candidly informed them in her own particular direct and forked-tongue fashion that there was now every chance that Britain was heading for crashing out of the EU rather than a negotiated settlement.
Not waiting for the penny to sink in she went on to describe the likely implications of such a fractured departure will have on the Union. It certainly wasn’t going to be benign what with the Scots already stomping out of Westminster and it would most likely spell the end of the Good Friday Agreement. Basically, if there was to be a border poll that the DUP shouldn’t be under any illusions that they would win it. Hard, brutal and to the point, May was simply reminding the DUP that they needed to bite the bullet, put the bibles away and get Stormont back up and running again if they wanted to avoid such a scenario.
And so to overcome this doomsday scenario May encouraged her fleas to seek restitution with all those who they have previously viciously bitten and scarred with contempt and disdain in the hope that they can convince them that their future lies best within the UK and specifically with the DUP in charge locally.
And so, off they went on their charm offensive beginning with Robinson’s inaugural speech for his Honorary Professorship from Queens. A speech that clearly set out that Unionists and specifically that the DUP would need to give a lot, quite a lot, such as equal rights whilst at the same time receiving something minor in return if they wanted to restore Stormont.
A mention of agreeing a little minor insignificant issue of a generation border poll. The flesh on the bones of such being fattened with more variables than just a yes or no vote, unlike Brexit, which the DUP fully endorsed, and that it couldn’t simply be a +1 vote...a case of the DUP fearing May's words of doom may come true and stacking the cards in their favour!
A call that was fully approved by the DUP hierarchy as they sat in the front row and dutifully applauded their auld maestro's speech, carefully written by them for him! Now that it was out it was time to move on.
In the meantime while Arlene and the DUP were fermenting their upcoming about face, Fermanagh GAA had succeeded in reaching the Ulster Championship final. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, they were congratulated by Foster on their success and described by her as her fellow ‘county men’ but not all the time especially when her father would have held them at checkpoints going to and from such games! But those days are behind us now. A comment that caused many a GAA supporter throughout the 9 counties of Ulster to remark, ‘what the fuck!!!’
Nonetheless, a comment that after the initial shock had calmed was reciprocated with an invite to the final and she has hinted that if her diary is free she may very well attend......so far the DUP olive branch was being well received.
Having finished wooing the Fenians Foster left the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and away from the shops, headed back to Belfast to take up an invite from the Muslim community at their celebration of Eid marking the end of the Muslim Holy month, Ramadan.
Arlene, not wanting her loyalist brethren to feel left out agreed to a henna tattoo made up of 1690 and ‘no surrender’.....unlike she and her brethren, it will fade away over time.
Another community once scorned and now ticked off the DUP bucket list, she next has announced that she will later meet with the LGBT community at Stormont at an investor event. What she failed to announce is that she wasn’t invited by the Rainbow community but the investors....never mind, she’ll be there!
A sharp change in direction by the DUP that could see David Simpson, DUP MP, being re-instated in to the Orange Order and the Royal Black Institute having been initially ejected for his extra-marital affair with a close female (no rainbows over Portadown mate!!!!) friend of the family and while moralising to the general public on good ethics –and all founded on old school DUP policy too....policies now confined to the dustbin of history...well, for a while anyway.
So what is there to make of Arlene and the DUP's sudden about face? Couple all this with Theresa May's promise of £20b for the NHS, a dividend ridiculed by a senior Tory as ‘tosh’- Sarah Wollaston, the pro-EU Chairwoman of the Commons Health Committee and how this money will become available has yet to be properly explained by any member of May's cabinet, one gets the feeling that a British general election could be on the horizon!
Meanwhile elsewhere two other plagues were meeting, Trump and Kim Jung-un to discuss denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Apparently the meeting was a success and Kim has agreed to de-nuke while Trump has agreed to stop the war games at Kim's border. Trump applauded Kim for his willingness to negotiate and has apparently been nominated for Nobel Peace prize...Trump that is, not Kim.
Trump did remark that he wished to emulate Kim in his ability to have his people’s full attention when he spoke.....well, I suppose, the alternative option of being strapped to a filed mortar and fired into oblivion, can make most people sit up and pay attention!
Sean Mallory is a Tyrone republican and TPQ columnist
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
There are many, many interpretations and definitions of the nursery rhyme Ring-a-ring o' Roses and the biggest urban legend being that it refers to the plague, specifically to the Great Plague of London. An interpretation dismissed by many folklorists.
But when we consider the political rats and their parasitic pilgrims that currently infest Downing Street perhaps folklorists should revise or amend their dismissive attitude.
Just like crocodiles and returning for more, Theresa May abruptly dispelled any notions of such behaviour from the DUP when she candidly informed them in her own particular direct and forked-tongue fashion that there was now every chance that Britain was heading for crashing out of the EU rather than a negotiated settlement.
Not waiting for the penny to sink in she went on to describe the likely implications of such a fractured departure will have on the Union. It certainly wasn’t going to be benign what with the Scots already stomping out of Westminster and it would most likely spell the end of the Good Friday Agreement. Basically, if there was to be a border poll that the DUP shouldn’t be under any illusions that they would win it. Hard, brutal and to the point, May was simply reminding the DUP that they needed to bite the bullet, put the bibles away and get Stormont back up and running again if they wanted to avoid such a scenario.
And so to overcome this doomsday scenario May encouraged her fleas to seek restitution with all those who they have previously viciously bitten and scarred with contempt and disdain in the hope that they can convince them that their future lies best within the UK and specifically with the DUP in charge locally.
And so, off they went on their charm offensive beginning with Robinson’s inaugural speech for his Honorary Professorship from Queens. A speech that clearly set out that Unionists and specifically that the DUP would need to give a lot, quite a lot, such as equal rights whilst at the same time receiving something minor in return if they wanted to restore Stormont.
A mention of agreeing a little minor insignificant issue of a generation border poll. The flesh on the bones of such being fattened with more variables than just a yes or no vote, unlike Brexit, which the DUP fully endorsed, and that it couldn’t simply be a +1 vote...a case of the DUP fearing May's words of doom may come true and stacking the cards in their favour!
A call that was fully approved by the DUP hierarchy as they sat in the front row and dutifully applauded their auld maestro's speech, carefully written by them for him! Now that it was out it was time to move on.
In the meantime while Arlene and the DUP were fermenting their upcoming about face, Fermanagh GAA had succeeded in reaching the Ulster Championship final. Not wanting to miss the opportunity, they were congratulated by Foster on their success and described by her as her fellow ‘county men’ but not all the time especially when her father would have held them at checkpoints going to and from such games! But those days are behind us now. A comment that caused many a GAA supporter throughout the 9 counties of Ulster to remark, ‘what the fuck!!!’
Nonetheless, a comment that after the initial shock had calmed was reciprocated with an invite to the final and she has hinted that if her diary is free she may very well attend......so far the DUP olive branch was being well received.
Having finished wooing the Fenians Foster left the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and away from the shops, headed back to Belfast to take up an invite from the Muslim community at their celebration of Eid marking the end of the Muslim Holy month, Ramadan.
Arlene, not wanting her loyalist brethren to feel left out agreed to a henna tattoo made up of 1690 and ‘no surrender’.....unlike she and her brethren, it will fade away over time.
Another community once scorned and now ticked off the DUP bucket list, she next has announced that she will later meet with the LGBT community at Stormont at an investor event. What she failed to announce is that she wasn’t invited by the Rainbow community but the investors....never mind, she’ll be there!
A sharp change in direction by the DUP that could see David Simpson, DUP MP, being re-instated in to the Orange Order and the Royal Black Institute having been initially ejected for his extra-marital affair with a close female (no rainbows over Portadown mate!!!!) friend of the family and while moralising to the general public on good ethics –and all founded on old school DUP policy too....policies now confined to the dustbin of history...well, for a while anyway.
So what is there to make of Arlene and the DUP's sudden about face? Couple all this with Theresa May's promise of £20b for the NHS, a dividend ridiculed by a senior Tory as ‘tosh’- Sarah Wollaston, the pro-EU Chairwoman of the Commons Health Committee and how this money will become available has yet to be properly explained by any member of May's cabinet, one gets the feeling that a British general election could be on the horizon!
Meanwhile elsewhere two other plagues were meeting, Trump and Kim Jung-un to discuss denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. Apparently the meeting was a success and Kim has agreed to de-nuke while Trump has agreed to stop the war games at Kim's border. Trump applauded Kim for his willingness to negotiate and has apparently been nominated for Nobel Peace prize...Trump that is, not Kim.
Trump did remark that he wished to emulate Kim in his ability to have his people’s full attention when he spoke.....well, I suppose, the alternative option of being strapped to a filed mortar and fired into oblivion, can make most people sit up and pay attention!
Sean Mallory is a Tyrone republican and TPQ columnist
Anthony McIntyre's Blog
- Anthony McIntyre's profile
- 2 followers
Anthony McIntyre isn't a Goodreads Author
(yet),
but they
do have a blog,
so here are some recent posts imported from
their feed.
