Monday, May 11, 2009
Yesterday
====
Yesterday lyrics
Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Why she
Had to go I don't know, she wouldn't say.
I said,
Something wrong, now I long for yesterday.
Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm-mm.
Monday, May 04, 2009
The roots of fanaticism
By Iqbal Jafar
In this age of turbulence there is much that one would like to wish away, most of all the rise of the irrational in the form of religious fanaticism. It has, over the years, tiptoed into our lives, almost surreptitiously, and has now grown into a full-blown storm raging across the world.
Caught in the eye of this storm is Islam. The creed of militant Islam grew in response to the challenge of western imperialism that began its successful trajectory of dominance in the 17th century and remained in place until the late 20th century.
But there are good reasons to argue that western imperialism did not come to an end when its last outpost in the Muslim world, Brunei, gained independence in 1984. The invasion of Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003, of Afghanistan in 2001, and the presence of western forces in the Gulf states reinforces that argument.
Militant Islam, thus, remains on the warpath against the West and has, in the process of humiliating failures, developed a vengeful creed that has even suspended the Islamic rules of engagement by introducing such horrors as suicide bombings, indiscriminate killing of innocent men, women and children, kidnapping, even drug peddling to finance their struggle (jihad) 'for the glory of Islam'. So much for the believers.
Next, the detractors of Islam. The extent to which Islam has been demonised in the West is unbelievable. Let me pick just a few examples. According to Franklin Graham, son and successor of Billy Graham, Islam is 'a very evil and very wicked religion'. Televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have used epithets for the Prophet (PBUH) that cannot be repeated. Even Pope Benedict XVI jumped into the fray with his oblique criticism of the Prophet in his much-debated address at Regensburg University.
Islamophobia has also been spread by means other than harsh denunciations of Islam. For example, Bernard Lewis, an eminent historian and adviser to many US administrations, took another route to frighten the Europeans and others by making an astonishing claim that Europe would be Islamic by the end of this century 'at the very latest'. He said that in the German daily DieWelt in 2004, and again in the Jerusalem Post in 2007. Maybe it is because of such frightening prospects (for the Europeans) that the Kristiansand Progress Party of Norway, the most liberal and tolerant country in the world, wants Islam banned in Norway.
How inflammable the prejudice against Islam has become is best illustrated by the controversies over the Danish cartoons and the hijab. The blasphemous cartoons published by a Danish newspaper and gleefully reproduced by other newspapers elsewhere in Europe drew huge protests from all over the Muslim world. Those protests were ignored and even ridiculed on grounds of freedom of media, of expression, of faith etc etc. But it so happens that the same Danish newspaper had earlier refused to print a disrespectful cartoon of Jesus Christ because, the editor explained, there would be an 'outcry' from the conservative readers. Now, how say you, members of the jury?
The matter of the hijab is simpler and, one should have thought, inconsequential. But inconsequential though it is, the hijab is seen in Europe as a threat to European values and culture. No less. But has it not occurred to the defenders of the European culture that there is hardly any difference between the hijab and a nun's wimple? I am not in favour of the hijab myself, nor, perhaps, are the vast majority of Muslims, but the Pope, it seems, is.
Now, where do these mutually reinforcing impulses of hate and prejudice between religions spring from? The answer to this question lies in the sustained effort by thousands of authors, reporters, columnists, anchor-persons, priests and politicians to locate the cause of the Muslim militancy in Islam itself. Hence the derogatory views about Islam and its Prophet. And hence the spiralling intensity of hate and prejudice between religions. Buried beneath the swelling mountain of paperwork and angry sound bites is the real cause of the conflict: occupation of Muslim lands by others.
As I argued elsewhere there are seven lands that have been under foreign occupation for some time (Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Mindanao and the Golan Heights) and all seven of them belong to disinherited Muslims of these lands that are occupied by Christians, Jews or Hindus. Such a configuration of the occupiers and the occupied cannot but evolve into a clash of religions.
It is somewhat ironical that terrorism as a political weapon was invented by none other than the Jews themselves more than 2,000 years ago when Judah the Galilean organised a band of fighters, the Zealots, against the Roman forces of occupation. The Zealots had an arm of terrorists called the Sicarri by the Romans because they carried hidden daggers for assassination. The Israeli terrorist gangs, Irgun and Stern, were its modern successors. The Irish Republican Army and Tamil Tigers are the Christian and Hindu versions, respectively, of political terrorists. All of them have also been called freedom fighters.
What can be inferred from this 2,000-year-old history of political terrorism is that even if fuelled by religious fanaticism, it is motivated by an intensely felt political injustice as in the case of the Zealots, Irish Republican Army, Tamil Tigers, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Robert A. Pape, a leading authority on terrorism, who has compiled a vast database of every suicide attack around the world from 1980 and has analysed the cause and motivation behind each terrorist attack, concludes in his book Dying to Win that those willing to die may have different personal motivations (religion, social prestige, revenge) but 'what cuts across these various personal situations is the common motive to end the threat of a foreign occupation'.
The militants are, thus, fighting on two fronts: against the occupiers of Muslim lands, for political reasons; and against the liberals within Muslim societies, for ideological reasons. The popularity of their struggle against the occupation of Muslim lands gives them an edge over the liberals, and makes their ideological struggle for an orthodox and obscurantist version of Islam politically feasible.
Hence, so long as Muslim lands remain under the occupation of others, militants will be seen as freedom fighters and liberals as collaborators of the West. The West should not, therefore, expect to eliminate the militants while it remains in possession of Muslim lands. As pointed out by Robert Pape, terrorism is 'mainly a demand-driven, not a supply-limited phenomenon'. As for the liberals, they will be lucky if they merely cease to be relevant.
In this age of turbulence there is much that one would like to wish away, most of all the rise of the irrational in the form of religious fanaticism. It has, over the years, tiptoed into our lives, almost surreptitiously, and has now grown into a full-blown storm raging across the world.
Caught in the eye of this storm is Islam. The creed of militant Islam grew in response to the challenge of western imperialism that began its successful trajectory of dominance in the 17th century and remained in place until the late 20th century.
But there are good reasons to argue that western imperialism did not come to an end when its last outpost in the Muslim world, Brunei, gained independence in 1984. The invasion of Iraq in 1991 and again in 2003, of Afghanistan in 2001, and the presence of western forces in the Gulf states reinforces that argument.
Militant Islam, thus, remains on the warpath against the West and has, in the process of humiliating failures, developed a vengeful creed that has even suspended the Islamic rules of engagement by introducing such horrors as suicide bombings, indiscriminate killing of innocent men, women and children, kidnapping, even drug peddling to finance their struggle (jihad) 'for the glory of Islam'. So much for the believers.
Next, the detractors of Islam. The extent to which Islam has been demonised in the West is unbelievable. Let me pick just a few examples. According to Franklin Graham, son and successor of Billy Graham, Islam is 'a very evil and very wicked religion'. Televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have used epithets for the Prophet (PBUH) that cannot be repeated. Even Pope Benedict XVI jumped into the fray with his oblique criticism of the Prophet in his much-debated address at Regensburg University.
Islamophobia has also been spread by means other than harsh denunciations of Islam. For example, Bernard Lewis, an eminent historian and adviser to many US administrations, took another route to frighten the Europeans and others by making an astonishing claim that Europe would be Islamic by the end of this century 'at the very latest'. He said that in the German daily DieWelt in 2004, and again in the Jerusalem Post in 2007. Maybe it is because of such frightening prospects (for the Europeans) that the Kristiansand Progress Party of Norway, the most liberal and tolerant country in the world, wants Islam banned in Norway.
How inflammable the prejudice against Islam has become is best illustrated by the controversies over the Danish cartoons and the hijab. The blasphemous cartoons published by a Danish newspaper and gleefully reproduced by other newspapers elsewhere in Europe drew huge protests from all over the Muslim world. Those protests were ignored and even ridiculed on grounds of freedom of media, of expression, of faith etc etc. But it so happens that the same Danish newspaper had earlier refused to print a disrespectful cartoon of Jesus Christ because, the editor explained, there would be an 'outcry' from the conservative readers. Now, how say you, members of the jury?
The matter of the hijab is simpler and, one should have thought, inconsequential. But inconsequential though it is, the hijab is seen in Europe as a threat to European values and culture. No less. But has it not occurred to the defenders of the European culture that there is hardly any difference between the hijab and a nun's wimple? I am not in favour of the hijab myself, nor, perhaps, are the vast majority of Muslims, but the Pope, it seems, is.
Now, where do these mutually reinforcing impulses of hate and prejudice between religions spring from? The answer to this question lies in the sustained effort by thousands of authors, reporters, columnists, anchor-persons, priests and politicians to locate the cause of the Muslim militancy in Islam itself. Hence the derogatory views about Islam and its Prophet. And hence the spiralling intensity of hate and prejudice between religions. Buried beneath the swelling mountain of paperwork and angry sound bites is the real cause of the conflict: occupation of Muslim lands by others.
As I argued elsewhere there are seven lands that have been under foreign occupation for some time (Palestine, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Mindanao and the Golan Heights) and all seven of them belong to disinherited Muslims of these lands that are occupied by Christians, Jews or Hindus. Such a configuration of the occupiers and the occupied cannot but evolve into a clash of religions.
It is somewhat ironical that terrorism as a political weapon was invented by none other than the Jews themselves more than 2,000 years ago when Judah the Galilean organised a band of fighters, the Zealots, against the Roman forces of occupation. The Zealots had an arm of terrorists called the Sicarri by the Romans because they carried hidden daggers for assassination. The Israeli terrorist gangs, Irgun and Stern, were its modern successors. The Irish Republican Army and Tamil Tigers are the Christian and Hindu versions, respectively, of political terrorists. All of them have also been called freedom fighters.
What can be inferred from this 2,000-year-old history of political terrorism is that even if fuelled by religious fanaticism, it is motivated by an intensely felt political injustice as in the case of the Zealots, Irish Republican Army, Tamil Tigers, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Robert A. Pape, a leading authority on terrorism, who has compiled a vast database of every suicide attack around the world from 1980 and has analysed the cause and motivation behind each terrorist attack, concludes in his book Dying to Win that those willing to die may have different personal motivations (religion, social prestige, revenge) but 'what cuts across these various personal situations is the common motive to end the threat of a foreign occupation'.
The militants are, thus, fighting on two fronts: against the occupiers of Muslim lands, for political reasons; and against the liberals within Muslim societies, for ideological reasons. The popularity of their struggle against the occupation of Muslim lands gives them an edge over the liberals, and makes their ideological struggle for an orthodox and obscurantist version of Islam politically feasible.
Hence, so long as Muslim lands remain under the occupation of others, militants will be seen as freedom fighters and liberals as collaborators of the West. The West should not, therefore, expect to eliminate the militants while it remains in possession of Muslim lands. As pointed out by Robert Pape, terrorism is 'mainly a demand-driven, not a supply-limited phenomenon'. As for the liberals, they will be lucky if they merely cease to be relevant.
Symbolism, ideology and revolution
Symbolism, ideology and revolution
Bourgeosie
Marx used the symbolic word bourgeoisie to describe the capitalist class that existed by exploiting the labor of the working class. In Marxist terms, bourgeoisie plays an essential role in history by its revolutionizing of industry and modernizing of society. By its inevitable exploitation of the workers it creates the tensions necessary to ignite the revolution. Bourgeoisie became a term of abuse on the Left for its enemies-"bourgeois values" and "bourgeois democracy."
Though Lenin like Marx fostered the idea of a bourgeois revolution to precede the proletarian revolution, he detested bourgeois reformists as pusillanimous, a yoke that had to be done away with. Meanwhile however the bourgeoisie was an "ally" of the working class in its revolutionary aspirations. For the working class it was more advantageous if bourgeois democracy came about by way of revolution rather than reformism; it was a question of speed.
Finally, in Europe, the bourgeoisie was guilty of permitting if not creating Fascism in order to preserve its social rule, private property and the capitalist system, threatened by the Revolution. For the European bourgeoisie Fascism was merely an annoyance that saved their system. In that sense, Fascism and Capitalism controlled and protected each other mutually against the working class.
In the USA, middle class refers chiefly to the economic class situated between the poor and the upper rich class, in effect, the capitalists. Today, the increasingly impoverished middle class has sunk to levels nearer that of the poor. The more economically impotent they become, the more politically disenfranchised they feel; yet, surprisingly, one notes little solidarity between middle class and poor, nor real inclination toward revolt of either. The middle class supported capitalism in the creation of neocon America. Listeners to the revolutionary message tend to be on the fringes.
Liberals
Of Liberals, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means, except by getting off his back." Even Mussolini said, "A Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face."
Often intolerant, extremist and sanctimonious in their limited views, Liberals take strong stands on minor community improvements; they can work themselves into a fury and campaign relentlessly and join sit-ins concerning, let's say, how the local school yard is to be used on weekends or about alternate days for trash pick-up, and still ignore the concept of social justice for all. Therefore I am dubious about grassroots activities: naturally they are welcome, but I suspect in the long run harmless. No wonder Power as a rule lets them sit-in, sit-out, march and carry little placards. As Berdyaev showed, Liberals are the opposite of the Russian striving for world brotherhood. In the final analysis, Liberals, at the very most only potentially revolutionary, are Power's ally and stand in the way of drastic social change.
Slogans, symbols and rituals
To read of the Russian Revolution today is to read a continuing story of symbols and signs. The victorious Bolsheviks raised their red flag over the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in October of 1917. In subsequent days workers poured onto Red Square singing the song of the international proletariat, the Internationale. In the Russian language, the word for red, krasny, also means beautiful. When Russian revolutionaries overthrew Tsardom, they raised a red flag, a "beautiful" flag, and named Moscow's famous square Red or Beautiful Square, making red the color of Communism.
Since the price of revolution is marked in blood, the red color has special significance in the international workers' movement. The red flag represents revolutionary aspirations of the oppressed against injustice. The red flag meant battle already two thousand years ago for Rome 's legionnaires. As did the slaves of Rome, also peasants in revolt in south-central Germany in 1525 waved the red flag. Red is a warning to counter-revolutiona ries: danger, fire, stop. The red color, the red star, the red flag came to symbolize the aspirations of people of the world for a new kind of freedom. Each time people rise up somewhere in the world against illegitimate power and oppression, they raise the red flag.
Trotsky, writing of the effects of the revolution in St. Petersburg, noted that revolution had made millions of people spring to their feet. Russians were in a fever to unite, a very Russian feeling. The slogans and manifestos, the names of their press organs, Pravda (Truth) and Vperiod (Forward), proclaimed a new reality, a new era. The slogan, All power to the Soviets, exhorted the passing of power to the people while their red flag soared over the Winter Palace.
One of Russia's major poets, Aleksandr Blok, wrote his greatest poem, Dvenadtsat' (The Twelve, 1918) about the Russian Revolution. In his poem a band of twelve Red guardsmen, apostles of destruction, march in the first winter of Bolshevik Russia through the icy streets of Petrograd. They are led by a Christ figure, "crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, / a flowery diadem of frost," who appears beneath a red flag. The poem sold some two million copies in three years, was on the Vatican index and was long banned in Fascist countries. Change was in the air everyone breathed, in each slogan, in each symbol, in each ritual. Such were the times. Such is the atmosphere of revolution. A revolutionary movement needs its symbols and rituals reflecting its ideology. We need symbols that encourage the vanguard and work wonders on the people. Therefore, Power takes a dimmer view on symbols than on Liberals' demonstrations and manifestations and sit-ins.
The song of Italian partisans in World War II, Bella Ciao, still stirs the hearts of the Left . and irritates the Right. It creates tensions because of its echoes and distinct effects. Any time it sounds, people join in at the top of their voices.
He wakes up one morning and finds an invader in his land and they sing:
Oh partigiano, portami via
Oh bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao ciao
E se io muoio da partigiano
Morto per la libertá."
(Oh, partisan, carry me away, Oh, beautiful girl, ciao, ciao, ciao. And if I die as a partisan, dead for freedom. Oh bella ciao ciao ciao, etc.)
Every society makes some objects sacred-totems, animal images, gods, holy books, flags, or concepts such as freedom or democracy. A society's sense of its identity depends also upon the boundaries between what is sacred and what is profane. The profane world is ordinary. But sacred objects (flags) and times (revolution) and even places (Red Square) are sacred, reinforced by ceremony and ritual. The ceremony and rituals are intended to bond members of the society. Symbols inspire devotion and loyalty among those who identify with them.
Such are the reasons for the commotion about the Pledge of Allegiance in the USA and prayers in public schools in Italy or Islamic girls wearing veils in France. The flag arouses passions because it underlines identity and purpose, successes and failures as a people. For Socialists, the red flag arouses the same emotions as the stars and stripes for most Americans. For Socialists it symbolizes brotherhood and social justice; for many Americans, the flag symbolizes ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice for all.
In theory to pledge allegiance to the flag was to honor those ideals as well as the American institutions that upheld them. However, today, for other Americans, the flag evokes awareness of the gap between those ideals and the realities of Americanism such as racism, imperialism and war. For those people to pledge loyalty to the symbol of today's America smacks of hypocrisy and chauvinism.
The Russian Revolution is a symbol itself, the symbol of revolutions to come. It reinforced the Leninist image and idea of the power of the working class. The heart of Leninism was that only the masses can make a revolution. Yet, as he outlined in his famous pamphlet, What Is To Be Done, it had to be led by a small group of professional revolutionaries like himself. Other revolutionary icons such as Rosa Luxemburg and also Karl Marx adhered to the same theory. Lenin believed that the proletariat included the entire working class. It would form the Soviets, which in turn would provide the necessary administration of society.
Leninism was only gradually supplanted by insistence on the role of the Party. Its role was to educate the working class. Abroad, Lenin pushed toward United Fronts with other Left parties in Europe to gain that mass support. Decades later, the combination of such policies morphed into European Communism, of which Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, became associated.
Antonio Gramsci
The Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and a major Marxist thinker, took a distance from Leninism and its emphasis on the revolutionary vanguard party. Leninism was only one ingredient in Gramsci's theory for social change. Though Leninism is now largely history, Gramsci's contributions to Socialist thought are intact.
In Gramscian thinking, revolutionary violence is not the only way to change things. He supported political action to challenge the hegemony of the capitalist class. Though a revolutionary, Gramsci did not advocate a totalitarian Weltanschauung. He amended Marx's conviction that social development originates only from the economic structure; Gramsci's distinction of culture was a major advance for radical thought, and it still holds today.
The Italian Marxist recognized that political freedom is a requisite for culture; if religious or political fanaticism suppresses the society, art will not flower. To write propaganda or paint conformist art is to succumb to the allures and/or the coercion of the reigning system. For that reason, most artists are countercurrent. That is also why artists should stay far away from the White House or the Elysées Palace.
Though the Stalinist brand of Communism in East Europe failed and those states disappeared, the European Right-in Italy, France, Spain, Greece - continues to raise the specter of the "Communist" threat to "family" and "our values." In the minds of many non-Communists, Communism is still associated with the former USSR. Yet, Communistic ideas are as old as man: a social system characterized by the community of goods and the absence of private property. Such ideas marked the organization of the first Christian communities. In the Nineteenth century Communistic ideas inspired reformists all over Europe, ideas of equality and the abolition of private property. Today, many Communist slogans sound more utopian than threatening. Communism is nearly a myth, abstract even in countries that call themselves Communist, like China.
Gaither Stewart, Senior Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal/tantmieux, is a novelist and journalist based in Italy. His stories, essays and dispatches are read widely throughout the Internet on many leading venues. His collections of fiction, Icy Current Compulsive Course, To Be A Stranger and Once In Berlin are published by Wind River Press. (www.windriverpress .com). His recent novel, Asheville, is published by Wastelandrunes, (www.wastelandrunes .com).
Bourgeosie
Marx used the symbolic word bourgeoisie to describe the capitalist class that existed by exploiting the labor of the working class. In Marxist terms, bourgeoisie plays an essential role in history by its revolutionizing of industry and modernizing of society. By its inevitable exploitation of the workers it creates the tensions necessary to ignite the revolution. Bourgeoisie became a term of abuse on the Left for its enemies-"bourgeois values" and "bourgeois democracy."
Though Lenin like Marx fostered the idea of a bourgeois revolution to precede the proletarian revolution, he detested bourgeois reformists as pusillanimous, a yoke that had to be done away with. Meanwhile however the bourgeoisie was an "ally" of the working class in its revolutionary aspirations. For the working class it was more advantageous if bourgeois democracy came about by way of revolution rather than reformism; it was a question of speed.
Finally, in Europe, the bourgeoisie was guilty of permitting if not creating Fascism in order to preserve its social rule, private property and the capitalist system, threatened by the Revolution. For the European bourgeoisie Fascism was merely an annoyance that saved their system. In that sense, Fascism and Capitalism controlled and protected each other mutually against the working class.
In the USA, middle class refers chiefly to the economic class situated between the poor and the upper rich class, in effect, the capitalists. Today, the increasingly impoverished middle class has sunk to levels nearer that of the poor. The more economically impotent they become, the more politically disenfranchised they feel; yet, surprisingly, one notes little solidarity between middle class and poor, nor real inclination toward revolt of either. The middle class supported capitalism in the creation of neocon America. Listeners to the revolutionary message tend to be on the fringes.
Liberals
Of Liberals, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means, except by getting off his back." Even Mussolini said, "A Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face."
Often intolerant, extremist and sanctimonious in their limited views, Liberals take strong stands on minor community improvements; they can work themselves into a fury and campaign relentlessly and join sit-ins concerning, let's say, how the local school yard is to be used on weekends or about alternate days for trash pick-up, and still ignore the concept of social justice for all. Therefore I am dubious about grassroots activities: naturally they are welcome, but I suspect in the long run harmless. No wonder Power as a rule lets them sit-in, sit-out, march and carry little placards. As Berdyaev showed, Liberals are the opposite of the Russian striving for world brotherhood. In the final analysis, Liberals, at the very most only potentially revolutionary, are Power's ally and stand in the way of drastic social change.
Slogans, symbols and rituals
To read of the Russian Revolution today is to read a continuing story of symbols and signs. The victorious Bolsheviks raised their red flag over the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in October of 1917. In subsequent days workers poured onto Red Square singing the song of the international proletariat, the Internationale. In the Russian language, the word for red, krasny, also means beautiful. When Russian revolutionaries overthrew Tsardom, they raised a red flag, a "beautiful" flag, and named Moscow's famous square Red or Beautiful Square, making red the color of Communism.
Since the price of revolution is marked in blood, the red color has special significance in the international workers' movement. The red flag represents revolutionary aspirations of the oppressed against injustice. The red flag meant battle already two thousand years ago for Rome 's legionnaires. As did the slaves of Rome, also peasants in revolt in south-central Germany in 1525 waved the red flag. Red is a warning to counter-revolutiona ries: danger, fire, stop. The red color, the red star, the red flag came to symbolize the aspirations of people of the world for a new kind of freedom. Each time people rise up somewhere in the world against illegitimate power and oppression, they raise the red flag.
Trotsky, writing of the effects of the revolution in St. Petersburg, noted that revolution had made millions of people spring to their feet. Russians were in a fever to unite, a very Russian feeling. The slogans and manifestos, the names of their press organs, Pravda (Truth) and Vperiod (Forward), proclaimed a new reality, a new era. The slogan, All power to the Soviets, exhorted the passing of power to the people while their red flag soared over the Winter Palace.
One of Russia's major poets, Aleksandr Blok, wrote his greatest poem, Dvenadtsat' (The Twelve, 1918) about the Russian Revolution. In his poem a band of twelve Red guardsmen, apostles of destruction, march in the first winter of Bolshevik Russia through the icy streets of Petrograd. They are led by a Christ figure, "crowned with a crown of snowflake pearls, / a flowery diadem of frost," who appears beneath a red flag. The poem sold some two million copies in three years, was on the Vatican index and was long banned in Fascist countries. Change was in the air everyone breathed, in each slogan, in each symbol, in each ritual. Such were the times. Such is the atmosphere of revolution. A revolutionary movement needs its symbols and rituals reflecting its ideology. We need symbols that encourage the vanguard and work wonders on the people. Therefore, Power takes a dimmer view on symbols than on Liberals' demonstrations and manifestations and sit-ins.
The song of Italian partisans in World War II, Bella Ciao, still stirs the hearts of the Left . and irritates the Right. It creates tensions because of its echoes and distinct effects. Any time it sounds, people join in at the top of their voices.
He wakes up one morning and finds an invader in his land and they sing:
Oh partigiano, portami via
Oh bella ciao, bella ciao Bella ciao, ciao ciao
E se io muoio da partigiano
Morto per la libertá."
(Oh, partisan, carry me away, Oh, beautiful girl, ciao, ciao, ciao. And if I die as a partisan, dead for freedom. Oh bella ciao ciao ciao, etc.)
Every society makes some objects sacred-totems, animal images, gods, holy books, flags, or concepts such as freedom or democracy. A society's sense of its identity depends also upon the boundaries between what is sacred and what is profane. The profane world is ordinary. But sacred objects (flags) and times (revolution) and even places (Red Square) are sacred, reinforced by ceremony and ritual. The ceremony and rituals are intended to bond members of the society. Symbols inspire devotion and loyalty among those who identify with them.
Such are the reasons for the commotion about the Pledge of Allegiance in the USA and prayers in public schools in Italy or Islamic girls wearing veils in France. The flag arouses passions because it underlines identity and purpose, successes and failures as a people. For Socialists, the red flag arouses the same emotions as the stars and stripes for most Americans. For Socialists it symbolizes brotherhood and social justice; for many Americans, the flag symbolizes ideals such as liberty, equality, and justice for all.
In theory to pledge allegiance to the flag was to honor those ideals as well as the American institutions that upheld them. However, today, for other Americans, the flag evokes awareness of the gap between those ideals and the realities of Americanism such as racism, imperialism and war. For those people to pledge loyalty to the symbol of today's America smacks of hypocrisy and chauvinism.
The Russian Revolution is a symbol itself, the symbol of revolutions to come. It reinforced the Leninist image and idea of the power of the working class. The heart of Leninism was that only the masses can make a revolution. Yet, as he outlined in his famous pamphlet, What Is To Be Done, it had to be led by a small group of professional revolutionaries like himself. Other revolutionary icons such as Rosa Luxemburg and also Karl Marx adhered to the same theory. Lenin believed that the proletariat included the entire working class. It would form the Soviets, which in turn would provide the necessary administration of society.
Leninism was only gradually supplanted by insistence on the role of the Party. Its role was to educate the working class. Abroad, Lenin pushed toward United Fronts with other Left parties in Europe to gain that mass support. Decades later, the combination of such policies morphed into European Communism, of which Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Italian Communist Party in 1921, became associated.
Antonio Gramsci
The Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and a major Marxist thinker, took a distance from Leninism and its emphasis on the revolutionary vanguard party. Leninism was only one ingredient in Gramsci's theory for social change. Though Leninism is now largely history, Gramsci's contributions to Socialist thought are intact.
In Gramscian thinking, revolutionary violence is not the only way to change things. He supported political action to challenge the hegemony of the capitalist class. Though a revolutionary, Gramsci did not advocate a totalitarian Weltanschauung. He amended Marx's conviction that social development originates only from the economic structure; Gramsci's distinction of culture was a major advance for radical thought, and it still holds today.
The Italian Marxist recognized that political freedom is a requisite for culture; if religious or political fanaticism suppresses the society, art will not flower. To write propaganda or paint conformist art is to succumb to the allures and/or the coercion of the reigning system. For that reason, most artists are countercurrent. That is also why artists should stay far away from the White House or the Elysées Palace.
Though the Stalinist brand of Communism in East Europe failed and those states disappeared, the European Right-in Italy, France, Spain, Greece - continues to raise the specter of the "Communist" threat to "family" and "our values." In the minds of many non-Communists, Communism is still associated with the former USSR. Yet, Communistic ideas are as old as man: a social system characterized by the community of goods and the absence of private property. Such ideas marked the organization of the first Christian communities. In the Nineteenth century Communistic ideas inspired reformists all over Europe, ideas of equality and the abolition of private property. Today, many Communist slogans sound more utopian than threatening. Communism is nearly a myth, abstract even in countries that call themselves Communist, like China.
Gaither Stewart, Senior Contributing Editor for Cyrano's Journal/tantmieux, is a novelist and journalist based in Italy. His stories, essays and dispatches are read widely throughout the Internet on many leading venues. His collections of fiction, Icy Current Compulsive Course, To Be A Stranger and Once In Berlin are published by Wind River Press. (www.windriverpress .com). His recent novel, Asheville, is published by Wastelandrunes, (www.wastelandrunes .com).
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