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What I learned about al Qaeda from analyzing the Bin Laden tapes

A version of this article originally appeared in Vice.

In the months following the Taliban’s evacuation of Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 2001, cable news networks set up operations in the city in order to report on the war. In the dusty back rooms of a local recording studio, a CNN stringer came across an extraordinary archive: roughly 1,500 audiotapes taken from Osama bin Laden’s residence, where he had lived from 1997-2001, during al Qaeda’s most coherent organizational momentum.

Discovered untouched by a local Afghan family after the rest of the house had been ransacked, the tapes were slated for use as blanks for recording Pashto pop-songs. CNN intervened with a cash-down offer and a different plan.

The FBI first reviewed the collection and declined stewardship. The vast majority of the tapes feature speakers who, although well-known Muslim preachers, reformers, and radicals across the Arabic-speaking world, were not al Qaeda members. Some recordings dated back to the 1960s and were considered to be more of interest to historians than intelligence analysts.

Unable to use the tapes, CNN passed them on to academics, first at Williams College and later Yale University. During those years I was brought on as the archive’s primary researcher. Trained as a linguistic anthropologist, I had spent many years studying political discourse, Islam, and audiocassette technologies in Yemen, Bin Laden’s ancestral homeland.

Photo courtesy of Flagg Miller

Over 10 years later, my resulting book focuses on key tapes in order to re-examine al Qaeda’s origins, development, and ideology leading up to 9/11. At the center of my study are just over a dozen previously untranslated speeches by Bin Laden dating from the late 1980s through 2001.

What do the tapes reveal about Bin Laden and al Qaeda? Here are several surprising discoveries.

First, Bin Laden was not al Qaeda’s leader at its outset — in fact, the organization sought to marginalize him. The “al Qaeda” frequently evoked in Western intelligence and law-enforcement circles referred originally to a specific training camp in eastern Afghanistan called Al-Faruq. Founded in the late 1980s, the camp was directed largely by Egyptian and North African militants who aimed to overthrow ruling regimes within the Islamic world.

These leaders found Bin Laden’s Saudi credentials and wealth suspect since Saudi support came with strings attached: don’t bring your revolution back home. My analysis of the collection highlights an overlooked clause in al Qaeda’s founding charter: “Neither the commander of the guards nor his associates can be from any of the Gulf States or from Yemen.” Prevented from hiring his most reliable Saudi and Yemeni bodyguards, Bin Laden had to look for support and market his efforts beyond the Islamic world itself.

Second, while al Qaeda is typically distinguished from other militant and terrorist groups for its unequivocal focus on attacking the West and the United States, the organization’s chief leaders prioritized multiple enemies, foremost among them authoritarian leaders within the Arab world. Bin Laden’s speeches from as late as 1993 avoid any public mention of directing militant activity toward America, despite the fact that massive US-led coalition forces had been stationed in his homeland for a full three years.

Bin Laden makes no mistake that Saudi Arabia is occupied: “Disbelief has surrounded the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries [of Mecca and Medina] like a bracelet coiled upon the wrist. We ask God to liberate Muslims everywhere and to protect our Two Holy Sanctuaries.”

Yet he continues by turning his rage against Muslims themselves: “From your East come Shia ‘Rejectionists’… And then there are those empathetic with them who turn away from the oppressed. Tune into the media broadcasts, if you wish. Their slogans are: ‘One Arab community with an everlasting message: Unity, Freedom, Socialism!'”

In the years ahead, Bin Laden would tone down internecine rhetoric, especially when speaking to world television audiences. Images of a single pan-Islamic network of terror found far greater uptake than ones of division.

Third, Bin Laden’s first and most notorious “Declaration of War against the United States” in 1996 was neither a declaration nor a call to war. These labels were given to Bin Laden by Western journalists and translators who sought to draw attention to growing Arab anger at the devastating effects of US-led sanctions against Saddam Hussein on Iraq’s people.

Photo courtesy of Flagg Miller

Featuring 15 poems often condensed or omitted from English translations, the speech is better understood as an epistle to the Saudi monarchy warning them of militant insurrection should they continue to sacrifice Arab and Islamic cultural values to Western secularism.

Security analysts’ neglect of reports about his penniless and isolated status at the time suggested to Bin Laden how accentuating Western fears could play to his advantage.

In Arabic, the term al Qaeda means a “base” or “rule.” Only once in the tapes is the term evoked by speakers in the collection in the sense it is typically used today: as Bin Laden’s global jihadi organization dedicated to attacking the US. This depiction was floated in March 2001, well after the idea had been picked up and amplified in the West.

On countless other occasions, the term al Qaeda is employed in sermons and lectures about founding precepts in Islamic ethics, theology, law, and linguistics. Reliance on scholarly consensus and precedent is paramount, yet paying homage to established tradition complicates the views of militants who focus on radicalized “base-camps” and who, like Bin Laden, tried to steer listeners toward a longer-term battle with the West.

The tapes in this collection ultimately show how evocations of al Qaeda have evoked more dissonance and controversy than agreement. This is all the more so given that most of al Qaeda’s victims, whether before or since 9/11, have been Muslims living outside the West. Any understanding of al Qaeda’s ideology, goals, and strategy must take account of its deep roots within the Arab world. To overlook this context in favor of al Qaeda’s global jihadi portfolio is to risk giving the organization undeserved coherence and, with it, greater influence.

Featured image: “CIA aerial view Osama bin Laden compound Abbottabad 2004 2011″ by CIA, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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What a load of BS: Q&A with Mark Peters

Terms for bullshit in the English language have grown so vast it has now become a lexicon itself. We talked to Mark Peters, author of Bullshit: A Lexicon, about where the next set of new terms will come from, why most of the words are farm-related, and bullshit in politics.

Words for bullshit seem to swing between single syllable exclamations (Bosh!) and lengthy reduplicative words (arkymalarkey). Is there any explanation for the pattern?

Those are definitely two patterns for BS words. I think the common denominator between those two types is that they’re both satisfying to say, much like the common words bullshit and horseshit. When hearing some BS, it feels good to say “Rot!” or “Bosh!” and it also feels good to later describe it as jibber-jabber or the less-common whitter-whatter. Also, the single-syllable and reduplicative words both tend to sound like nonsense, which is helpful when naming nonsense.

Many of the words for bullshit imply a certain projectile quality. Is this in the nature of bullshit that it can’t be casually passed off but rather expelled by force?

Maybe. Bullshit often has to do with hot air, and a lot of the words for it either describe hot air or have the projectile force you mention. This might have something to do with how bullshit makes people angry. For many BS words, some shouting is implied.

Most of the words for bullshit have farmyard origins. Why don’t we see more urban slang for bullshit? Surely there’s a metaphor in whatever is on the subway pole.

Ha! I don’t know. Maybe that subway pole, gross as it is, still doesn’t seem as repulsive as what comes out of a horse. But there’s always room for more terms, and I’m sure some will pop up.

One of the largest sources for new words in the last twenty years has been technology, but tech has made very little contribution to the bullshit lexicon. Are there any words on the verge of crossing-over?

Not that I’m aware of, though tech terms (and related terminology in marketing and business) are some of the deepest piles of meadow muffins out there today. If you’ve ever lacked the bandwidth to leverage your verticals, you’ve dealt with some classic mumbo jumbo.

You mention a few foreign words that have crossed over into English. Any great idioms for bullshit in other languages?

The best example is from the title of Jag Bhalla’s terrific book I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears. As that Russian idiom goes, to hang noodles on someone’s ears would be to unload a large pile of bullshit.

It’s election season in the United States. Any bullshit words in politics people should look out for?

Are there any political words that aren’t bullshit? Actually, I think the biggest is America—not because I think my country is bullshit! But it’s word beloved by bloviators and bullshit merchants because it sounds like eagles singing the National Anthem but can be attached to any idea whatsoever. America has appeared in so many campaign slogans over the years because it says nothing. By the way, I’m putting a label on different types of bullshit in a new blog: Bunk and Spinning on the Campaign Trail.

We particularly loved discovering the word psilology in your book. Were there any words that stood out for you?

I really love flubdub for some reason. It’s one of many reduplicative words, but it was new to me, and it’s just a perfect word for BS. I also dig four flusher. That’s a rootin-tootin word Yosemite Sam would love.

Featured image credit: Newtown Bullshit_2 by Travis. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr. 

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Is neuroculture a new cultural revolution?

Are we at the birth of a new culture in the Western world? Are we on the verge of a new way of thinking? Both humanistic and scientific thinkers suggest as much.

George Steiner said almost prophetically,

“All cultures are mortal, all religions too. All are mortal cultural events as mortal are the men who produce them. And it is now that there is a transition period. We are now entering a post-religion era. Christianity will die as Marxism did. What will fill the void? What awaits us? What will be born?”

As I recall, Steiner did not elaborate very much beyond justifying these questions historically and philosophically. However, he emphasized the possible emergence of a new era in which critical and analytical thinking would play major roles. Edward Wilson stated in his book The Future of Life that it was time to change to a culture of life-sustaining permanence of both ourselves and the biosphere. He advocated looking within the mind, gesturing towards the inner workings of the brain to discover its functioning via thoughts, emotions, and feelings, out of which the creation and the succession of different cultures have been moulded.

Biotechnology, genetic engineering, and neuroscience are producing a revolutionary change in our vision of the human world. New answers to old and univesal questions will emerge–those related to the nature of mind and consciousness or the social and moral nature of man. This “neuroculture” is based on the knowledge of how the human brain operates. The brain is integrated and interacting with the rest of the body and with its physical and social environment, and it determines everything man does and expresses in his behavior, feelings, thoughts, or beliefs.

Neuroculture presupposes that nothing occurs and nothing exists in the human world that has not been filtered through that sieve we call the brain. World events, a beautiful work of art, the successful development of a complex mathematical formula, or the deep feeling of having experienced the existence of God are all filtered through this sieve. In fact the rapid progress in our understanding about how the brain works is giving rise to a new way of thinking with the “neuro” discourses. There is a reassesment of the humanities, and a new bridge connecting those two large and classical bodies of knowledge, science and humanities.

Neuroculture is not intended to achieve any conception of a post-human nature. Human nature is and always will be human. It will certainly be redefined and reevaluated, but it will never cease to be human.

Neuroculture may produce an impact on human thinking similar to that produced by Darwinism over 100 years ago. It is possible that for many neuroculture will represent a backward step, a way of losing that spiritual essence of what it has been so far conceived as the true human nature. However, for many others, neuroculture will be a step forward, reaching towards a truth about human beings that has previously been hidden. Thus neuroculture should bring a conception of man, and the greatness of man, based on scientific evidence and critical and analytical thinking. It should provide a re-evaluation of those grand conceptions such as education, privacy, dignity, equality, politics, love, friendship, good and evil, truth, freedom, justice, dignity, and nobility.

Featured Image: Matterhorn, Zermatt, Switzerland. Photo by Joshua Earle. CC0 via Unsplash.

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Climate change and the Paris Conference: is the UNFCCC process flawed?

As representatives from 146 countries gather in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference, we’ve turned to our Very Short Introduction series for insight into the process, politics, and topics of discussion of the conference. The following extract is taken from Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction, by Mark Maslin, and considers the challenges of the UNFCCC process itself.

Is the UNFCCC process flawed?

Not far enough

The first major flaw in the UNFCCC procedure is that it has failed to deliver any lasting agreement and it has been criticized for not going far enough with the suggested targets. This is based on the scientific view that a global cut of up to 60 per cent on a 1990 baseline is required to prevent major climatic change by 2050. If room is to be left for development, it would mean that the developed world would have to cut emissions by at least 80 per cent.

No enforcement

The fundamental problem with international agreements and treaties is there there are no real means of enforcement. This was one of the arguments that the USA used when proposing the Copenhagen Accord, suggesting that even binding targets must in effect be voluntary as countries decide whether or not to comply. This is why policies and laws are required at a regional level, such as the EU, and at a national level, such as the UK’s Climate Change Act. The only way to translate international treaties is through regional and national laws. This multi-level governance is also required to stop gaming of particular systems.

Green colonialism

Many social and political scientists have raised philosophical and ethical doubts about climate negotiations as a whole. The main concern is that they reflect a version of colonialism, since rich developed countries are seen to be dictating to poorer countries how and when they should develop. Countries such as India and China have resisted calls to cut their emissions, stating that it would damage their development and attempts to alleviate poverty. Others have supported measures such the CDM as they provide a development dividend moving money from the rich to the poorer countries. Again, however, since 80 per cent of the project credits are allocated to China, Brazil, India, and Korea, which are among the richest developing countries, funding is still not necessarily reaching the world’s poorest. Also, 60 per cent of carbon credits have been purchased by the UK and the Netherlands, resulting in a very skewed financial exchange. The moral high ground of supposedly anti-green colonialism was employed by the EU and international NGOs during the Kyoto Protocol process to block the suggestion of global carbon trading. They felt that those who had polluted the most should be the first to cut back.

However, national NGOs such as Greenpeace Brazil, some developing countries, and the USA argued strongly that global carbon trading was the only way forward to ensure everyone signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. In many ways the then US president, Bill Clinton, knew the only way to get emissions reduction policies through Congress was to include a trading mechanism. As we know, the moral high ground won and only CDMs were included. It led to the USA’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. What is interesting is that the EU then realized it could not cut its own emissions the traditional way and thus set up the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) for all facilities above 20 megawatts in electricity, ferrous metals, cement, refineries, pulp and paper, and glass industries, which together represent over 40 per cent of the EU total emissions.

Delegate at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. Image by Johannes Jansson/norden.org. CC-BY-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.

Nation verses sector approach

The UNFCCC approach has another problem, which is embedded in the concept of the nation-state and is a major issue in a global capitalist world with supposedly free trade. For example, if the USA through the Copenhagen Accord wants to reduce carbon emissions from heavy industry, it could impose a carbon tax on steel and concrete production. However, if other countries in the world do not have this restriction, their products become cheaper, even including the cost of transportation by ship, air, or road to the USA, all of which would lead to the emission of more carbon dioxide overall. So global economics can undermine any national attempts to do the right thing and reduce their emissions.

An alternative approach would be for global agreements to be made at a sector level. For example, there could be a global agreement on how much carbon can be emitted per ton of steel or concrete produced. All countries could then agree only to buy steel or concrete produced in this low emission way, which would make for a fairer trading scheme, with countries not losing out as a result of changes within their industries to lower GHG emissions. The  problems are, of course, how to police such a scheme across so many different industrial sectors.

Featured image credit: Drought. By Maria-Anne. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Apocalypse and The Hunger Games

The final installment of The Hunger Games films (Mockingjay: Part Two) has been released. Amidst the acres of coverage about Jennifer Lawrence, the on-screen violence (is it appropriate for twelve year-olds?) and an apparently patchy and unconvincing ending, it is worth pausing to consider the apocalyptic nature of the franchise. Where does it stand within the current burgeoning landscape of popular cinematic apocalypticism, which ranges from mainstream classics such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Road (2009), blockbusters such as Independence Day (1996), 2012 (2009), and supposedly ‘kid-friendly’ apocalyptic films such as Disney’s WALL·E (2008), right through to Christian franchises such as The Left Behind films (2000-2005, 2014) and The Omega Code (1999 and 2000)?

The well-worn trope in the vast majority of these apocalyptic films is a vision of a dystopian landscape following some catastrophe—natural, man-made, or both—populated by a small band of plucky or not-so plucky survivors fighting against all odds. The most notable exception to this general rule is the explicitly Christian Left Behind series, though even that dwells far more on the tribulations undergone by its characters than on the promise of redemption. In this respect, The Hunger Games books and films are no exception. They are set in Panem, a fictionalised country that bears striking resemblance in many ways to North America, a century or more into the future. Panem is governed by President Snow and his evil acolytes from the safety of the technologically advanced, flashy Capitol while the rest of the population endures a primitive existence in semi-rural conditions. Heroine Katniss Everdeen, after being coerced into participating in the eponymous “Hunger Games” as her District’s tribute to the shadowy powers in the Capitol (which itself has its origins in the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur), becomes a powerful symbol of resistance. In the final installment of the film series, the evil powers appear to be defeated but a degree of uncertainty and sense of insecurity remain.

There are certainly strong apocalyptic themes here, including but not limited to a binary opposition between good and evil, the idea of evil masquerading as “good” and sophisticated, and a time of escalating tribulation, as well as a strong theme of martyrdom. All of these ideas have their origins in the ultimate apocalyptic text, the biblical Book of Revelation, as well its Jewish antecedents. However, just as important as the depictions of disasters and battles in the Book of Revelation is the coming of the New Jerusalem (for believers at least). Even more, the pivotal figure in Revelation is Christ represented as The Lamb of God, a willing victim whose self-sacrifice enables the old order to be definitively overturned.

Therefore, in narratives like The Hunger Games, what we are presented with is a bizarre fusion of some of the key features of the apocalyptic with post-modernist views—a world in which evil is defeated (but not necessarily definitively) and “good” characters are imbued with seemingly divine goodness (and a Teflon-like ability to avoid death) whilst remaining resolutely human in other respects.

This typically contemporary take on apocalypse may be more realistic in some sense, but it is not apocalyptic in the original biblical understanding of the term. Within the pantheon of contemporary apocalyptic cinema, The Hunger Games franchise therefore stands firmly within the mainstream trend of what should more properly be called “apocalyptic revisionism.”

Image Credit: “Hunger Games” by Mike Mozart. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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The life and work of Émile Zola

To celebrate the new BBC Radio Four adaptation of the French writer Émile Zola’s, ‘Rougon-Macquart’ cycle, we have looked at the extraordinary life and work of one of the great nineteenth century novelists.

Born in Paris in 1840, Zola lived through periods of dire poverty, great wealth, fame and latterly, a different kind of fame due to his influential intervention in the Dreyfus affair. A leading figure of the naturalist movement, Zola’s ‘Rougon-Macquart’ cycle of twenty novels follows two very different branches of a the same family tree set during the Second Empire. The novels explore the themes of heredity and environment with a wide range of characters and milieus, exposing all aspects of contemporary nineteenth century French society.

Featured image credit: Letters by wilhei. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Place of the Year 2015 nominee spotlight: Greece

Earlier in the year, Greece faced some unsettling economic troubles. The country voted on a referendum that would decide whether they would pull their membership from the European Union (and thus, the union’s currency and economic system). It’s a wonder to think that this country, less than a decade ago, was among one of the richer nations. In this excerpt from Stathis N. Kalyvas’s Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know, we look at the country’s arduous path from riches to rags in the past seven years.

How did Greece go from economic boom to bust?

Things in Greece looked ideal in 2008. By most indices of economic and human development, the country was in an enviable position. It was reaching the end of a decade that had been remarkable for its robust economic growth. An average real GDP growth rate of close to 4 percent had led to a per capita GDP of $32,100 (Purchasing Power Parity, PPP), bringing Greece into the exclusive club of the forty richest nations on earth. Perhaps more importantly, Greece ranked 26th globally on the Human Development Index (HDI), which combines indicators of life expectancy, educational attainment, and income. Growth translated into prosperity, reflected in a variety of indicators, such as very high rates of both primary and secondary home ownership (in 2013, 73 percent of the housing stock was occupied by owners versus 22 percent that were rentals, while 21 percent of the total housing stock was composed of secondary homes). Social modernization proceeded apace. Fertility rates dropped from 2.4 children in 1950 to 1.4 in 1990, and the share of urban population grew from 37 percent to 59 percent during the same period. By 2011, life expectancy reached 78.3 years for men and 83.1 years for women. In short, Greece was in the midst of unprecedented material prosperity, and its politics had acquired the predictable features of a two-party system strongly anchored at the center.

Underneath the surface, however, things were far from perfect. Public opinion surveys indicated a growing malaise, expressing a combination of very low trust in most institutions and relatively low but persistent unemployment, especially among the country’s youth. Social commentators were concerned by the spread of pervasive cynicism, crude materialism, and rising corruption. A few voices also raised red flags about enduring problems in the economy, which undermined the sustainability of the economic model that had produced all this spectacular growth. They were not heard, but they were right: the amazing expansion of the Greek economy had a very soft underbelly. It was based mainly on domestic consumption, fanned by a loose fiscal policy made possible by the influx of foreign capital following the liberalization of the financial sector and, more than anything else, a set of factors related to Greece’s membership in the Eurozone.

It would be wrong to describe all of the Greek economy’s growth as a bubble. Exports grew considerably during this period, although imports grew much faster. Portugal, facing similar incentives and eventually a similar bust, did not experience similar growth. Nevertheless, Greece’s underlying weakness was visible in a variety of areas, including numerous obstacles to competition in key sectors of the economy such as energy and transportation; persistent difficulties in the ease of doing business; many barriers to entrepreneurship; the relatively poor quality of education as measured by standardized scores in science and mathematics; low levels of spending on research; and rampant corruption in the public sector.

In many ways Greece presented a paradox: it was an advanced European economy with a per capita GDP that placed it among the wealthiest countries, but it also displayed some institutional features resembling those of the emerging economies of the developing world. Greece was a country populated by well-heeled households, featuring high individual consumption, good quality-of-life indicators, and reasonable levels of spending on infrastructure and public services, but also dysfunctional institutions and a lack of a sophisticated and competitive business sector. It looked a bit like a country rich in natural resources. So long as the Greek economy boomed, these problems could be ignored. But then the subprime crisis erupted in the United States, in 2008. Initially, the prevailing feeling was that the crisis would skip Greece. Indeed, Greek banks were not exposed to toxic assets from the United States. As a result, they were able to attract considerable deposit flows in the aftermath of the US crisis, peaking in June 2009. Then all hell broke loose.

Make sure to cast your vote on the shortlist for Place of the Year 2015 by 30 November.

Place of the Year 2015 shortlist

Keep checking back on the OUPblog, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr for regular updates and content on our Place of the Year 2015 contenders.

Headline Image Credit: Pile of Euros. Photo by Images Money. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Social opulence: re-branding Labour

Corbynomics has yet to be unpacked. And when it is, there’s danger it will be branded as a return to the bad old days of tax and spend, when the 1983 Labour manifesto was dismissed by pundits as the longest suicide note in history. To avoid this, what Labour needs are some big and positive ideas; ideas that that resonate with the public and which capture that popular mood of radicalism that has put Jeremy Corbyn where he is.

In that regard ‘Anti-Austerity’ will not hit the mark. Not least because the negative connotations of the ‘anti’ inevitably begs the question of what a Corbyn-led party is for. And if the answer is simply policies such as investment in public services and a living wage, we return to the danger of the tax-and-spend stigma.

So the challenge is how to avoid this and how to present radical policies that may indeed involve increased public expenditure, and a concomitant private restraint, in a manner that will ignite a popular enthusiasm that transcends the community of activists, young and old, who have put Corbyn as leader of the Labour party. Here, the language used is critical. And while it may go against the grain of some on the Left, Labour must learn and exploit the positive potentialities of the language of ‘consumption’ and ‘the consumer.’

Of course most socialist theorists have always been more at ease with the language of work than that of indulgence; more at ease with workers as sons and daughters of toil than as consumers of goods and services, and trundlers of trollies around shopping malls. As workers their position and role has seemed relatively clear: they would be the beneficiaries of a socialist transformation of society and also the agents effecting that historical change. But as consumers they were problematic. For while theorists understood their material desires; while they appreciated the wanting of those who often led a materially impoverished existence, “the curse of the working class”, in the words of John Burns, was, “the fewness of their wants, the poverty of their desires, the overloading of their sensuous tastes, [and] the absence of a varied set of elevated and healthy aspirations.” In effect they could not be trusted to want the right things.

Image credit: Jeremy Corbyn by Gerry Knight. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

But alongside what smacked of paternalistic killjoyism went something more positive in socialist thinking: the notion that consumption, if it assumed a social form, could create an enriching ‘social opulence’. This would of course entail investment in social infrastructure — health, education and welfare services — but also in society’s built, recreational and cultural environment, in its social spaces, in fostering an informed civic engagement, in displaying and celebrating the richness of its cultural diversity (an opportunity here to take a positive attitude to the acceptance of immigrants) and, critically, in cherishing the natural world, whether nationally in terms of our nature reserves and areas of outstanding natural beauty, or locally in treasuring our public parks and gardens.

And it is this concept of social opulence which could use to explicate and sell Corbynomics; for it allows public expenditure to be rendered as consumption, a social consumption, that adds to the pleasures and quality of life; that promotes social interaction, social cohesion and civic engagement, that values the natural world and, critically, with our rapidly growing ageing population, it can be used to send out the message that old age, with all its terrors, is not something that will be faced unsupported. For while the creation of a social opulence entails investing in a society’s future, it will also embrace the obligation to care for those who have contributed to its past.

Moreover there is a considerable body of research that has shown that beyond a relatively modest income level, additional individual consumption adds little or nothing to happiness. But the jaded palate that constitutes a constraint upon the growth of private pleasure does not exist in the case of social consumption.

The concept of social opulence would allow Labour to project itself positively as a Party that is about increasing pleasure, enjoyment, recreation, happiness and the possibilities of a long, active and socially-engaged life. This is what anti-austerity could be made to mean; an enriching social consumption which allows people to live life to the full, so recognising the truth of John Ruskin’s words that “there is no wealth but life.”

Headline image: Labour Party Scrabble by Jonathan Rolande. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Policing concert hall patriotism: consequences

The Fort Worth Symphony was recently involved in a public spat about opening its concerts with The Star-Spangled Banner. On Tuesday, Douglas W. Shadle discussed the long history of policing patriotism in concert halls. Here he proposes a solution.

If American orchestras want to be more patriotic, they should program more music by American composers. In context, however, the sentiment is deeply ironic. American composers are absent from today’s concert programs precisely because anti-nationalists consistently shackled them.

Typical concert programs of the early nineteenth century included a wide array of genres: symphonies, overtures, opera arias, choral numbers, solo works, and even “popular” tunes. Audiences did not feel ashamed or embarrassed to hear popular music. They frequently requested it from the floor. Steadily, however, programming trends throughout Europe and the United States consolidated into the standard three-part format used today: overture, solo concerto, symphony. With the exception of choral symphonies, vocal music all but disappeared.

As I’ve explained, abstract instrumental music was the alleged domain of German composers. All others became trespassers. The elevation of this music therefore struck a deep blow for Americans who tended toward experimentation. John Knowles Paine’s two abstract symphonies (1876, 1880) fared well in America and Europe but still managed to fall out of the standard repertoire. Pieces with evocative national programs, however, such as Louis Maas’s On the Prairies (1882), remained targets of sharp critical barbs when they were performed at all.

The music of Anthony Philip Heinrich (1781–1861), a Bohemian who immigrated permanently to the United States, was one of the first such targets. Though he was a prolific symphonist who penned colorful works on American subjects, no permanent American orchestra ever performed his music during his lifetime. He was forced to hire his own musicians and hoped that generous benefactors would help him recover costs. He was able to do so a mere three times.

Critic John Sullivan Dwight targeted Heinrich’s compositional patriotism in 1846. “We are sorry to see such circumstances dragged into music as the ‘Indian War Council,’ the ‘Advance of the Americans,’ [etc.] Music composed with no consciousness of anything in the world but music, is sure to tell of greater things than these.” He said very little about the quality of the piece as such. Its patriotic pretenses gave him reason enough to dismiss it.

Critics were not the only figures who summarily dismissed American composers. The original by-laws of the New York Philharmonic, founded in 1842, included a clause mandating the annual performance of American works. (The standard concert season comprised only a handful of performances.) The orchestra first fulfilled the mandate in 1847, when it premiered an overture by one of its violinists, George Frederick Bristow (1825–1898). After ten seasons, however, this overture remained the only American work featured at a Philharmonic concert.

Bristow, meanwhile, had composed a full-length symphony that was wholly devoid of overt patriotism — or programmatic subject matter of any kind. There was no obvious stylistic reason why the Philharmonic would not have chosen to perform it.

The snub irritated Bristow, who eventually took his grievances to the press and urged the Philharmonic’s German contingent to return to Europe: “If all their artistic affections are unalterably German, let them pack back to Germany and enjoy the police and bayonets and aristocratic kicks and cuffs of that land.” Reality indeed.

Why the harsh response? In the aftermath of the failed revolutions of 1848–49, German-speaking immigrants had swelled the Philharmonic’s ranks. With a strong voting majority, they had no particular incentive to enforce the original by-laws. Bristow instead had to turn to Louis Antoine Jullien, a London-based conductor who brought an orchestra of virtuosi to the United States in 1853. Jullien not only championed Bristow’s music on this tour, but he commissioned Bristow to write a second symphony and brought both works back to London. Audiences at home and abroad loved it, while critics felt satisfied that a “good” American composer had finally emerged.

The Philharmonic should have been embarrassed. But as late as 1879, Harvey Dodworth, one of the orchestra’s founders, publicly lamented the fact that Germans had taken power from the charter members and had used this power to thwart the aspirations of local composers. Other leading German musicians, particularly the conductor Theodore Thomas, would continue to steamroll American composers despite such jeremiads.

Banning American patriotism from concert halls became the American way. Had we been more open to it, this discussion would not be taking place. It is all the more remarkable, then, that The Star-Spangled Banner in particular should be standing at the center.

Critics, including Cantrell, often take swipes at “creative” renditions of the The Star-Spangled Banner. These attacks reflect outdated conceptions of music. Like the cast of forgotten American composers mentioned above, however, our national anthem resists this perspective.

As an eminently mobile song, The Star-Spangled Banner changes shape as it is performed in various places. And like other songs of its type, it accrues new layers of meaning over time. There is in fact no official version of the national anthem — no Urtext for us to consult. Some performers sing it in a lazy quadruple time, as opposed to a statelier three. Some don’t sing it in English. Some don’t sing it at all. And we may wince at one version or another. But the song’s very malleability and democratic openness to novel forms of expression are authentic manifestations of an American national identity. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s inviolate Beethoven could not be more different.

Perhaps, in the end, the Fort Worth Symphony should stop playing The Star-Spangled Banner before every concert. On the one hand, frequent performances lead to banality. (We should have learned that lesson about Beethoven long ago.) On the other, we shouldn’t let the sterile concert hall debase the peculiarly American transcendence of the national anthem.

Featured image: Carnival Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. Photo by Alex de Carvalho. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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We must try harder to stop the drug cheats

Reports of a Russian state doping programme are jarring reminders of times when victorious athletes were offered as evidence for the superiority of political ideologies. The allegations have certainly complicated aspirations to keep drugs out of the Olympics. If your state colludes in your doping then you have only to arrange to be clean around the dates of competition.

Is a drug-free Olympics worth all the fuss? It seems obvious that the dopers will always be ahead of the bureaucrats tasked with exposing them. A more permissive attitude toward drugs seems to draw support from Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s Olympic motto “Faster, Higher, Stronger.” We should expect a more exciting version of elite sport, one with faster sprinters, higher jumpers, and stronger weightlifters. Imagine the marketing possibilities of “Muscles by GlaxoSmithKline.”

An interest in what we get out of the Olympics reveals to this to be a big mistake. Olympic events are performances by human beings for human audiences. Faster, higher, or stronger isn’t always better. An actor can be very energetic in all the fight scenes but a rubbish Hamlet if he doesn’t convey the Prince of Denmark’s very human predicament. So too, doped athletes may be faster, higher, and stronger but be worse because what they do is less relevant to human spectators.

We watch the Olympics to see what beings who have the same basic biological equipment as us can do. If you’ve ever entertained Usain Bolt fantasies as you race to catch a bus or focused your mind during the final stages of an evening jog by imagining yourself as Paula Radcliffe then this ideal of sport works for you.

Image: “On Your Marks”, 100m Final, 2012 Olympics, by Darren Wilkinson. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Bolt and Radcliffe are, athletically speaking, better versions of us. It matters to us that Radcliffe pushes up against the same human limits as those we encounter when we go running. This is why we care about her achievements. Radcliffe’s performances are, in objective terms, quite mediocre. My beat-up Toyota covers the marathon’s 42.195 kilometres faster. But no human observer seeks to imaginatively identify with my car. We have a special interest in how fast beings like us can cover that distance.

Elite sport is a fragile compromise between the extraordinary and the familiar. We enjoy imaginatively identifying with Bolt because his performances are so exceptional. Our capacity to do this depends on his being sufficiently like us. We exclude drugs simply because these are not the conditions under which almost all of us run, swim, lift, or cycle. Amateur cyclists accept that Tour de France competitors benefit from better equipment, better training programs, and better genes. The very keen among them envied Lance Armstrong his kit, but not his drugs. Here the instincts of the amateurs, the lovers of sport, should count for more than what Armstrong’s lust for glory and money motivated him to to. If EPO injection kits were routine features of amateur cycling then we would have no complaint about Armstrong. But his confessional interview with Oprah was not greeted with cheers and editorials expressing the sentiment that the law against doping is an ass. We recognize Armstrong’s performances as counterfeit quite apart from the rules of competition.

What we want matters so much because the revenues that flow into elite sport come ultimately from us. In a version of elite sport in which independently wealthy athletes compete behind closed doors they can take as many anabolic steroids and as much synthetic EPO as they like. But most athletes prefer an arrangement in which they perform for us and receive the financial rewards generated by our passion for elite sports.

The recent suspension of Russia by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) is appropriate. The ban could extend to the 2016 Rio Olympics and should do so unless there are significant changes to Russian athletics. Russia’s absence would a sad loss to the Olympics as a meeting place for the athletes of all nations. But this international aspect of the event is secondary to its role as a place where elite athletes seek to be faster, higher, stronger under the same conditions that its spectators contemplate doing so.

Featured image credit: Russian flag and Olympic logo, via the President of the Russian Federation. CC-BY-4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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