Since the ouster of authoritarian leader, Ben Ali, in January 2011, Tunisia, with its vibrant landscape of civil society organizations (CSOs), continues to distinguish itself from other MENA states affected by the Arab Spring. Indeed, since its independence from France in 1956, Tunisia has long been an exception in the region.

The first decades of independence under the stable, albeit single-party leadership of Habib Bourghiba brought profound levels of modernization in public healthcare, education and, for the Arab world, the most far-reaching set of women’s rights. Praised by the World Bank, IMF and UNDP for its rapid, yet sustained development, Tunisia stabilized its future through an expanded tourism and a more diversified economy, coupled with a more efficient and increasingly export-oriented agricultural sector. Bourghiba wisely transitioned economic output, as Tunisia’s limited petroleum resources decreased. After a quiet change of power in 1987, former interior minister, Ben Ali, continued his predecessor’s development legacy and stayed loyal to the country’s secular political culture, which allowed for private expression of religious life, but guaranteed governance that was markedly non-Islamic in its day-to-day business.

Micro-level civil society before the revolution

While more extensive inspection is required, recent field research reveal a small, but unexpectedly vibrant CSO sector before the beginning of the Arab Spring in December 2010. While regimes will often tolerate, contain, control and even co-opt CSOs for their own purposes, exceptions will arise. Pre-Arab Spring Tunisia challenges this assumption: by the mid-2000s, neighborhood-level associations with modest financial development aid from foreign embassies successfully negotiated pockets of “free spaces” outside of the regime-approved, corporatist CSOs. Under Ben Ali, CSO activity and development projects were centralized under the Ministry of the Interior, representative of the “police state” Tunisia had become.

Chema Gargouri, president of the Tunisian Association for Management and Social Stability (TAMSS), was among the first pioneers of civil society. Initially working through standard channels of application, she directly engaged the much-feared Ministry of the Interior to allow for neighborhood-based educational programs for children and gender-based training programs that were not officially sanctioned by the government. Despite regular police surveillance and occasional raids by intelligence officers, Gargouri carved out a space, as she explained to me in an interview this month: “that neither directly challenged Ben Ali’s regime, nor overtly supported the government. We were strictly apolitical; if they asked me to become political or they thought I was becoming political, I would have closed the doors.” Hence, while authority unquestionably rested in regime hands, a tacit agreement based on negotiated response emerged whereby crucial, micro-level civic action, free from direct state co-optation, could be nurtured and nascent ideas and practices of independent social engagement and collective action established.

Civil society during the Arab Spring

In December 2010, the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi in the backwater town of Sidi Bouzid tapped into the deep well of Tunisian youth’s frustration with lack of employment, socio-economic marginalization, police repression and petite and grand corruption. In the immediate phases of the Jasmine Revolution, informal civic networks quickly began to collectively organize, even while mass demonstrations and general strikes took place. Since independence under Bourghiba, Tunisians could rely on state institutions to maintain day-to-day functions, such as administering schools, hospitals, emergency services, traffic regulation and garbage collection. Ahmed Hamza, program coordinator at the Women’s Enterprise for Sustainability (WES) in Tunis, described to me how neighborhood- and even street-level organizations in January 2011 took on the responsibility for issues like transporting children to school, public safety and rubbish removal. Political orientation, religious observance or the absence of religious observation, economic background and level of education were placed aside as neighborhood groups “took on the state’s role, when the state apparatus disappeared.” Hamza recalled the palpable sense of excitement of citizens taking the lead on organizing their society at the most basic level.

In rapid fashion, similar-minded civil society organizations began to bond around common ideas, while simultaneously preventing class, ideological or religious differences from spoiling the common goal of ousting the Ben Ali regime. Under other circumstances, Islamist Tunisians may not have had much in common with secular, Western oriented Tunisians, yet a palpable ‘spirit of solidarity enveloped the country.

Civil society after the first elections

The first free elections in Tunisia took place on 23 October 2011. The Islamist party, Ennaddha, won 41% of the vote, thereafter creating a coalition with two smaller secular parties, the Et-Katatol and Congress for the Republic (CPR). In the face a multitude of political, economic and institutional reforms and the creation of the National Constituent Assembly tasked with formulating a new post-revolution constitution, Tunisia’s transition seems to have ground to a hear halt. In some ways similar to its ideological brother in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, Ennaddha has failed to introduce necessary reforms for foreign investment and commerce and trade. Unemployment remains staggeringly high, despite Ennaddha continued promises for improvement, while tourism, Tunisia’s historical cash cow, has suffered from low bookings due to domestic and regional political instability. The assassination of two leading secular, oppositional leaders within six months, the brutal murder of eight members of the military and a porous border with Libya continue to destabilize the country. With increased calls from the secular opposition, led by the multi-party conglomerate entitled Nidaa Tounes, for the dissolution of the government, civil society has lost much of its initial spirit of collective action for a more durable democratic transition.

As much as civil society can influence politics, so too can political instability affect civil society. This has become evident in the restructuring of Tunisia’s current CSO landscape.

My current research points to three distinguishable categories of CSOs that emerged in recent months: religiously affiliated, secular/oppositional and interest-oriented.

Religiously affiliated CSOs are nothing new to the Arab world, and certainly not a phenomenon in Tunisia. When one speaks of religious CSOs in the Tunisian context, then the automatic reference is to Islamic organizations, a clear reflection of Tunisia’s homogenous religious landscape: nearly 99% of Tunisia are Sunni Muslim. Islamic organizations and make up the vast majority of this first category. They seek to fill in the large socioeconomic gaps that have emerged as a result of the revolution and political gridlock. Religiously affiliated CSOs are comparatively more concentrated in the central, port city of Sfax, followed by formidable activity in Tunis and, finally, in the historically poorer, agricultural regions of the interior. Religiously affiliated groups, even those who claimed to me to be politically neutral or confessionally moderate, tacitly or even overtly support Ennaddha and its religious-conservative agenda. Similar to like-minded groups in Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon, Tunisian Islamic CSOs are largely engaged in neighborhood-level actions, collecting monetary donations and gathering and distributing school books, shoes and clothes and, in some cases, handing out durable goods like refrigerators.

Secular/oppositional CSOs have emerged on the other side of the spectrum. The secular tradition in Tunisia, long influenced by the French tradition of laicite, demonstrates its adaption to and respect for the country’s deep Islamic tradition: their understanding of establishing an Arab democratic tradition does not necessarily exclude religious actors from participating in CSO activities. Indeed, of the varied secular groups I interviewed during the month of Ramadan, many individuals felt compelled to express their religious observance and their commitment to inclusion and openness. Others in this category exemplify markedly less or even no religious observation. However, there are two closely intertwined, overarching elements of the secular/oppositional CSO category.

Firstly, indifferent of personal religiousness, there is a desire to deepen Tunisia’s tradition of Bourghibian secular governance. Since its independence in 1956, Tunisian politics displayed a marked commitment to keeping religious influence out of day-to-day politics. Bourghiba, himself a moderately observant Muslim, embodied the capacity to govern secularly, but practice his personal faith privately. Secular/oppositional CSOs do not seek to aggressively remove or eradicate Islam’s role in society. Rather, as Dr. Salah Bourjini explained in an interview: their goal is to “separate governance from religion. We want complete liberty in religious practice, but let’s keep unnecessary influence out of government.”

In light of Ennaddha’s electoral win and its inability to offer convincing remedies to Tunisia’s growing problems, these CSOs have adopted their current oppositional stance, in part because of perceived threats of a gradual Islamization of society and risks to the rights of women and the small religious minority groups.

Interest-oriented CSOs focus their efforts on achieving specific goals, indifferent of the current political deadlock. This is best exemplified by the increasing number of environmental groups, which see their mission as being located beyond party-based politics. In the southern town of Gabes, the site of a decades-long environmental degradation through the local heavy chemical industry, members of the Association de Sauvegarde de l’Oasis de Chemini (ASOC) demonstratively locate their work outside of party politics. Collaborating with regional Mediterranean and EU member states, ASOC “specifies its focus strictly on improvements in the quality of water and air in and around Gabes.” Improving the state of the regional environment would have positive results for the local economy, local agriculture and tourism, all of which are policy areas still uncontested and, at a minimum, verbally supported by all municipal political parties. In Sfax, similar groups included the Mediterranean Network for the Promotion of Sustainable Development Strategies and the internet-based EcologiePlus organization.

Tunisia’s second post-Arab Spring elections are scheduled for 23 October 2013. The tense political climate will surely become yet more pronounced as Election Day approaches. However, if there is one common element that unites all members of Tunisia’s CSO community, it is an awareness that the success of the Arab Spring has returned to where it began in 2011. While Egypt and Syria are gripped by continued violence and while political stagnation has ground further political development in Yemen, Oman, Bahrain and Libya, Tunisian CSOs realize that the last chance for an Arab democracy rests in their hands.

None of these. The characteristics mentioned by you do not encompass all the complexity of the concept of the contemporary left. For a long time we have had two approaches to building the left, each of which is unfortunately wrong. Still the influential idea is the idea to create the left by making it similar to the right, of course, adding the promise that we will do the same what the right is doing, but simply better and more efficiently. Let’s have regard to the fact that the most drastic moves to disassemble the social state were taken under social democratic ruling. Although the prophet and the missionary of the neo-liberal religion was Margaret Thatcher, it was Tony Blair, a member of the Labour Party, who made that religion a state religion.

The second method of constructing the left was based upon the concept of so-called “rainbow coalition”. This concept assumes that if all the dissatisfied can get together under one umbrella, no matter what troubles them, a strong political power will emerge. But, among the disappointed and the frustrated there are violent conflicts of interest and postulates. To imagine the left as, for example, consisting on one hand of the discriminated promoters of single-sex marriages and on the other hand, of the persecuted Pakistani minority, is a solution for disintegration and powerlessness and not for integration and power for effective acting. The concept of ‘rainbow coalition” must result in dilution of the left identity, dilution of its programme and the disabling of the postulated “political power” as early as at the moment of its birth.

What can the left base its programme on? Jacques Julliard who in his latest book Les gauches françaises 1762-2012,) critically analysed the heritage of the French left, claims that the left can refer only to the idea of fairness. It cannot even talk about progress since it gives a worried look at technology which the progress is identified with, but exhibits friendly attitude towards ecology, which ex difinitione aims at conserving and not at changing.

Certainly, the collapse of communism had a considerable impact on the left potential. For decades “the day order” for the rest of the world was prescribed by the simple fact of the existence of communism propagating the social alternative programme. That rest regardless whether being enthusiastic or not, led by self-preservation instinct, embarked on initiatives described in that programme, such as combating misery, humiliation and human disability, appropriate compensation for the role of working class in the process of accumulating wealth, fighting off inequalities and fighting for social justice, education and health care accessible by all, secure old age, or the security against life misfortune experienced by an individual. Hence, for the social democracy paradoxically having a powerful ally as its fierce enemy, was easier to force a social programme. It shall also be admitted that “the rest of the world” fulfilled the tasks enforced by the communist threat much more successfully than the communism itself! Today there is no communist “scare crow”, so the programmes for improving the quality of human life are in retreat…

Gerhard Schroeder put it straight to the point though laconically, saying: “There isn’t anything like capitalist economy, or socialist economy. There exists either good, or bad economy”. In this sense the rulings of the central right and the central left compete for dignity of the most faithful congregation in GDP Church. Both sides of the political fan when being at the helm are compatible on the status of economic growth as a remedy for all social ailings as well as on the growth of the consumption as a determinant of good ruling. The rest is an election propaganda. In other words, the left practically speaking, does not have a programme in addition to bidding against the right to determine who will speed up the process of withdrawing from life improvement programmes and who will win the coming elections. It is not mentioned at all about the creation of an alternative to the social instruments which are sick and unfriendly to people.

So, we lay the left in the grave?

No way. The left has not lost its capability of preserving and strengthening its identity. Let’s quote just two rules, inseparable with the “left” approach related to human cohabitation. The first is the responsibility of the community for all its members and specifically, securing each member against life misfortune, refusal of dignity and humiliation. The social model which complied with that rule was, at least in its intentions and original form, a model of “welfare state”, which stipulated not that much of income
bringing, but more basing on solid pillars and documenting the co-dependence of the community members, the commonality of the law for social recognition, decent life and resulting from that social solidarity. So, it will be more reasonable to call it a “social state”. The second rule is the valuation of the quality of the society not by the average income, but by the well-being of the weakest of its branches (similarly to the chain loops, of which the resistance is not measured by the average resistance of the loops, but by the resistance of the weakest loop).

Who will be able to implement such programme? The left-wing parties which in previous years referred to the working class interests, practically speaking disappeared from the political scene. On the other hand the new left-wing party attaches bigger importance to culture and custom rather than to economy and redistribution. As for now, an attempt to link a sort of moral liberalism with the economy regulation has not been successful. The old working class seems to be too conservative and backward orientated for the aristocratic left and the left orientated to individual rights is afraid of the collectivism of working classes, nationalism, reluctance to anything what is different and shares other similar worries. How can the Left find its way out from this clinch?

The roots of the phenomenon, as you describe, reach even deeper. These are not the mutual relations between “the left” and “the working class” that have changed, but the subjects of those relations. The number has changed, the social importance and the “morphology” of the basic electorate for the left that was the working class. At the Marx’s times the most brilliant individuals expected that the world is heading for the split into workers and their superiors and for the third category there will be no place in that world. But, the industrial working class is undergoing the same process now as the farm workers in the 19^th century came through, who at the beginning of the century constituted 90 per cent of the population and at the end of the century only 9 per cent. At present it is visible that the class of industrial workers is more of a past. If it still exists anywhere, then it is far from Europe, in so-called developing countries and even there it is for the time being because at the moment when the preliminary accumulation of capital comes to an end and the cheap labour force stops being discouraging for investments into machinery, the working class would shrink quickly. It is said today half humorously, but perhaps more half seriously that in the future industrial plant a man and a dog will be employed. A man will be employed for feeding a dog and the dog will guard the man not to touch anything.

In Jacques Julliard’s opinion one of the first steps on the way out from that situation is the change of the way of thinking about the shape of the societies, advancing from their perception as a number of groups which have their interests to perceiving them as consisting of a few individuals who have not only economic, but also religious and cultural needs. In other words, the left would be supposed to make a bridge between the community requirements and the aspirations of the individuals.

At present such society seems to be purely a dream… The morphological basis for collective, hence, solidarity acting disappeared in the course of individualisation process. Once the workplaces no matter what they were producing, were also a solidarity plants as Ford plant, or Gdańsk Shipyard. Conversely, at present, they are the factories of competitiveness and mutual distrust. Some observers transferred too jumpily the hopes for solidarity political actions to public squares in line with the rule “one for all, all for one”, once located in big industrial plants, but today being homeless. Those gatherings on public squares, or in public parks taking place often recently, putting up tents there for several days, or weeks to stay in them as long as the goal had been reached, demonstrated attempts to find, or to conjure the alternative ways for effective acting in the situation when the trust to state is withering and the doubts arise about whether it can do a good job. Hope vanishes that the salvation will flow from the top, the salvation may come if we ourselves without any intermediaries would contribute to its fulfilment? Those, however, were the expressions of solidarity, so as to say “explosive”, or “channel” aiming at the burst-out of the accumulated resentment and protest against unbearable course of matters, only for the purpose of sinking into the everyday life which remained unchanged and was as unbearable as before.

But, do such initiatives serve the purpose of building the intrageneration solidarity? Will they not be a prelude to further and better organised movements?

I would warn against drawing as optimistic as too hasty and too premature conclusions from such experiments. As for now the alternative movements only proved that they may lead to (but not always!) removing any one object which all the participants regardless the interests and views which divide them, consider consensually as unacceptable, or unbearable. If they succeed, they will at most clear the site for other construction… But what other construction? No movement has made itself famous of putting up a building on the site that they managed to empty. In fact, very few of them managed to clear the site itself. The New York Stock Exchange occupied only in the minds of the occupants, was the first stock exchange which reached profit exceeding the pre-crisis quotations, not changing the policy condemned by the protesters at all. Probably, it was the only one as opposed the journalists thirsty of sensations and sociologists hungry of historic discoveries, which did not notice that it was under occupation.

So, there is not any group, or institution today which could initiate some serious changes. Additionally, we face a deep crisis of the idea of representation since large number of people do not take part in politics at all.

You see yourself that you describe society and politics which is an absolute opposite of what was before. These days the society gets closer to atomisation, internal discord and dispute rather than to solidarity. Something disintegrates for what our grand and great-grandparents fought for a long time. They were struggling for decades to complete the tasks of stretching the social integration and human solidarity and hence, the co-operation from the local community, parish, commune, or ancestral wealth to considerable bigger fields of “the imaginable whole” state/nation. To do so the conflicts were unavoidable which were not less horrible or painful for the generations exposed to them than the challenges that we face. It took the entire 19 ^th century for the modern state growing in power and ambitions to curb the uncontrollable freedom of business which got out of the family, or local community guardianship and settle down on politically and also ethically undeveloped territory.

Today we live in the epoch of “deregulation”. This neutral word by appearance, of which more expressive (and fairer) equivalent would be “disorganisation”, hide dispersion of responsibility and the replacement of relatively foreseeable and hence structuralized situations by unforeseeable situations, filled with uncertainty, fear of the unknown tomorrow and others alike. “Deregulation” is conducted under the label of making each individual, or coalition of individuals masters of their own fate, but in practice, it made only a few chosen individuals masters of their own fate (and in the same time masters of others’ fate), leaving the rest to the caprices of fortune which none knows how to overcome. Leaving the individuals to themselves makes them be competitors, instead of promoting solidarity, their position gives rise to mutual distrust and competition. In such a situation “closing ranks”, standing shoulder to shoulder ceases to make sense. It is not clear how a bigger chance might emerge for the fulfilment of interests if the individual interests have been merged.

What is the lesson to be learnt by the left?

In the environment unfavourable forcollective work and uninspiring with hope, the left faces a big challenge: to ascend the politics having so far only a local dimension to the level of global issues which our contemporaries are to wrestle with. So, it is not surprising that the left does not dare to say openly to its co-citizens, including its own electors, that they challenge, as the rest of the human race does, a task of remaking the big accomplishment of our ancestors from national and construction era; however, with such difference, that they will have to make it on incomparably bigger scale, a universal human scale. It does not mean that the left should be absolved due to the lack of brevity (and sense of responsibility!). It lacks in virtues of brevity, perseverance and ever-lasting hope, which its ancestors, luckily for them and for the rest of the human kind, had in abundance.

* Zygmunt Bauman, sociologist, philosopher, postmodernism theorist, retired professor of the University of Leeds and University of Warsaw. He is an author of over 40 books. He was awarded the European Amalfi Prize for his work “Modernity and the Holocaust” (1989) in the field of social sciences. In the year 1998 he was awarded the Theodor W. Adorno prize and two years later received the Prince of Asturias Award, called the “Spanish Noble Prize”.

** Adam Puchejda – historian of ideas. His interests range from the sociology of intellectuals to public sphere studies and political philosophy; most recently, he worked at Sciences Po in Paris with Daniel Dayan. Regular contributor at „Kultura Liberalna”.

*** Original text in Polish. Translated by EUROTRAD Wojciech Gilewski.

“Kultura Liberalna” no. 241 (34/2013) of August 20, 2013

Prior to Zygmunt Bauman’s lecture, the event commemorating the 150^th anniversary of German Social Democracy, described in part 1, members of the National Rebirth of Poland had summoned each other via Facebook in order to stage its disruption and formulated negative judgments concerning Zygmunt Bauman’s past. Informed about the imminent danger, Leszek Miller, former prime minister and the chairman of the Polish Social Democratic Party, sent a letter to the Minister of Interior Affairs, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, requesting the protection of the event. The German ambassador to Poland, in an analogous move intervened at the Foreign Ministry. Consequentially, the event was secured by the police, and Bauman and his companion were assigned personal bodyguards at the University’s expense.

Shortly before the meeting, the police officer in charge of the action at the University of Wrocław said that he was obliged to stay within the limits of law and that accordingly, he could not intervene unless there was an immediate danger to life, health and property. To the argument that people who came to the lecture with an evident and announced intention to disrupt it are about to violate academic customs and rules of scholarly debate, he responded that the law does not protect these values. One of the main sources of the audacity of the Polish xenophobic groupings is the helplessness of law and of its execution. Polish law protects all sorts of irrational beliefs and religious feelings, which incidentally are in Poland extremely easily hurt, but it does not protect the principles of free scholarly discourse.

Radicalism at the Academia

After the disruption of Bauman’s lecture, some commentators said that xenophobic graduates of the academies of hatred have now decided to enter the universities. Disruptions of the lectures of the philosophy professor Magdalena Środa and editor Adam Michnik have been invoked in support of such opinions. Attempting to restore some symmetry into the debate, Ryszard Legutko, a professor of philosophy and a current member of the European Parliament, has recalled an event at the University of Warsaw in which he took part together with Norman Podhoretz. It was disrupted by a leftist group, and the police intervened there as well. One may also add that several years back the philosopher Peter Singer from Princeton University was prevented by Catholic activists from speaking at an ethical congress in Warsaw, because of his stance on euthanasia. Desiderio Navarro, a Cuban intellectual, publisher and translator of Polish literature into Spanish, recently fell a victim of a racist attack in Kraków; no such thing happened to him during his frequent visits to Poland over the past 35 years.

The opinion that nationalist xenophobia is only beginning to enter the universities is misleading. If any ideology is nowadays prominent at the otherwise de-politicised academies, it is the xenophobic. In fact, it has been present at Polish universities for a very long time now, and seems to be quite at home there.

Shortly after the disruption Bauman’s lecture, a professor of the University of Wrocław, a representative of the xenophobic, spoke, symbolically, under the monument of the king of Poland, Bolesław Chrobry, Bolesław The Great, 967-1025, the first crowned king of Poland, who waged successful wars against Germany and Russia. The professor described the organizers of Bauman’s lecture as neo-Stalinists [which would include Chmielewski, J.G.] and accordingly called for the de-Stalinisation of the University. Two weeks after the disturbance, this call, eagerly seized on by the NOP, became a pretext and a slogan of a yet another of its demonstration in the public space of Wrocław. The NOP, now charged with a great momentum after its repeated “successes,” and staged it, once again, with impunity.

The call to de-Stalinise the University of Wrocław, formulated by this particular professor, was ironic. First, because he is a convert, having been a member of the Polish communist party who changed his denomination into “nationalist” and is now apparently seeking a place on an electoral list of PiS (the Law and Justice Party, and second, because there are no Stalinists at the university anymore. Most have died out, while those who somehow managed to survive, like this particular professor, changed their views radically because some time ago Stalinism ceased to be profitable. They have adopted the xenophobic outlook as nowadays it has become profitable.

Professors, like priests, are only human. No wonder, then, that some of them are doing and thinking what is expedient. Some members of the Polish professoriate, frustrated by humiliating salaries, are seeking substitute satisfactions in the sphere of historical politics, expertly served to them by PiS. Being unable to enjoy recognition for their work, they are finding a vicarious yet unfailing satisfaction in the public denunciation games against their academic comrades who happen to hold different political views.

Academic Image

Immediately after the incident the Rector of the University of Wrocław was asked the question whether he intends to take any action defending academic integrity of the institution, leading to: (i) bringing to justice the perpetrators of the disruption which violated scholarly discourse and academic customs; (ii) investigation of the behavior of academics of the University who formulated abusive opinions about the invited guest and the organizers of the lecture; (iii) protection of freedom of scholarly investigations and openness of academic discourse through the prevention of similar disruptions taking place in the future; (iv) salvaging the image of the University of Wrocław as a place of scientific work, open toward differing views; and (v) the protection of academic workers undertaking to organize extra-curricular scholarly events. Such steps would seem to be necessary for very practical as well as principled reasons. For, one may now expect that as a result of such incidents, scholars and public figures, as well as student of diverse backgrounds, may in the future decline invitations to take part in events organised by the University of Wrocław, or to enroll in it.

The Rector’s response has been a demonstration of helplessness. He has no legal means at his disposal to do any of these things. Shortly after this exchange, an assembly of rectors of the higher education institutions in Wrocław adopted a resolution against xenophobia, which was both an expression of their determination and of their powerlessness.

On the day of the incident at the University of Wrocław, the Minister of Higher Education, Barbara Kudrycka, called the organizers asking for a private address of Bauman in order to send him a letter of apology. Sending such a letter is certainly a proper thing to do. The question remains whether Minister Kudrycka, before she leaves her office, will take any other action regarding the problem at hand. And if so, what kind of action? Will she bother herself to respond to the same questions, which have been addressed to the Rector of the University of Wrocław?

The present and the future minister of higher education will have to respond to a more general question as well. Suppose anyone within the academia attempts to invite an eminent scholar who, apart from being a recognized professional, happens also to be a Jew, Arab, German, Russian, feminist, gay, lesbian, Muslim, Protestant, Pentecostal, atheist, of a different colour, a social democrat, or a cosmopolitan. Will such a person have to take into account a possible threat from local xenophobes who may happen to perceive the invited guest as persona non grata? Will it be necessary from now on to ask for the police protection of any academic event, of which local racists happen to disapprove? Will the Minister of the Interior place his troops at the rectors’ disposal? Given the present circumstances, will the Ministry be ready to pick up the tab of the increased security costs of deliberations in the humanities and social sciences?

The politics of the present regime towards higher education, which has generated an attitude of extreme asceticism while imposing a demand of innovation, in this context a rather absurd one, suggesting that it will not be willing to cover the increased costs of scholarly research and higher education. This means that the space of free academic discourse, much reduced already by inadequate funding of research and academies, will rapidly shrink even further.

On the other hand, one is justified in suspecting that the present regime will be more willing to cover the cost of police protection of the universities rather than that of their adequate funding. Yet if the regime decides to protect the academies by police, itself heavily under-subsidized, it will have to acquiesce to the fact that scientific deliberations conducted in the shadow of police sticks and their smoothbore rifles may not be able to bring forth particularly bold or innovative results. Democracy and academic freedom are challenged, not only from the ultra-nationalists, but also from the politicians who tolerate and encourage them, and the educational officials with no apparent means for effective response.

German Responsibility

During deafening nationalist protests against Bauman, some demonstrators raised their hands in the Nazi salute. For the Germans present this unashamed public emulation of the Nazi symbolism by the Polish extremists was a shock; the Consul General sat in the first row of the audience with his face ashen from fear.

The spirit of Nazism has not been irrevocably buried in Germany. Symbols of the political culture concocted by Hitler’s spin-doctors turn out to be more lively than anyone expected. With their own neo-Nazism reborn, Germans must now feel as if the package, sent by their grandparents, has been again delivered with several decades delay. Most of them dump this package into the trash bin; some of them bury it, ashamed, in a cellar; some store its contents with nostalgia. But some of them, among them the youngest, open the package with curiosity and set free the noxious elements contained in it. But this Nazi package, against the intention of its sender, is now being received also by descendants of a nation which particularly suffered from Nazis cruelties. In this way the Polish-German reconciliation, usually perceived through the gestures of political correctness, turns out to possess an another surprising dimension, an “incorrect” one, and, as a rule, hidden from the public view.

Bauman is a sharp critic of the present economic and social order. He believes that the present social and economic regime in Poland and in the world is deeply unjust, leads to exclusions, and grows within itself seeds of its own demise. In the lecture, he said that political parties which now pretend to represent the ideals of the Left, like the German SPD and the Polish SLD, should be held accountable for the emergence of this order, for they have betrayed the leftist values and became instead societies of mutual admiration with business bosses. He meant especially what Gerhard Schröder, known as Genosse der Bosse [Comrade of the Bosses], had done to the SPD, of which he was a leader. Bauman expressed this judgement in the same University room in which, precisely ten years earlier, Chancellor Schröder represented Germany during a meeting of the so-called Weimar Triangle, a consultation forum for political leaders of France, Germany and Poland.

The Poles are entitled to expect that Germans, especially from the present SPD, should take a clear stance concerning what is going on in their own country. They should also be aware that the Polish brand of Nazism is today not only an internal problem of Poland; it is also a problem of Germany, as well as of Europe as a whole, a sad outcome of the neo-liberal European political-economic order with Germany at its helm.

Party of Order and the status quo

When I insisted that the authorities of the University of Wrocław summon the police in order to protect an academic event, and then insisted that the commander of the police troops remove the troublemakers, I suddenly remembered Arthur Schopenhauer who pointed out to the police the most convenient place for them to shoot at the revolutionary masses during the Spring of Peoples in 1848. I also remembered Karl Marx’s ironic remarks from his 18th Brumaire: yes, I acted as a representative of the Party of Order who called the police to protect the status quo.

The point is, however, that I am not really convinced that the present political and economic order in Poland deserves to be protected. Bauman ingeniously and critically diagnoses the system whose products and symptoms are precisely those people who came to vilify him. And he seeks for ways to reform it. That is why he was invited to speak.

It may appear that extremist groupings in Poland also demand a change of the social order, as Bauman does; and that the difference between them lies only in the methods advocated. But this is not so. The present Polish radicalism is nationalistic, patriotic, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-feminist, anti-communist, anti-Semitic, anti-German, anti-European, anti-intellectual, etc. In a word, it stands for everything that is officially suppressed by the liberal and tolerant elites, striving to impose upon society their own version of constraints of decency. In this sense the Polish radicalism, in its exhibitionism and pornographic obscenity, may be perceived as a symptom of social revolt.

The question of a more just distribution of wealth is not addressed by its members. In this sense, Polish radicalism is thoroughly conservative. It does not strive towards a change of the political system, because it draws from it all its strength, and moves within it unperturbed. The whole raison d’être of the Polish radical movements is to excite disorders during which their members can demonstrate their own strength, and subsequently to use it as a bargaining argument, and a political commodity. This is the whole point of politics understood as a spectacle within which to be is to be perceived. The present system is needed by them as a venue or a scene upon which to perform their rituals of brutality and hatred. They will not find any better one. For this reason precisely they need the cosmopolitans, Jews, Arabs, Blacks, agents, communist, Stalinists, Germans, Russians, Europeans and egg-heads in order to stage their rituals of hate. They are employing their inconsistent ideological conglomerate because it guarantees to them an inexhaustible supply of objects for their hatred. Should the objects, per impossible, become in short supply, they would create them without much effort. For the time being their strength is basically the strength of a spectacle; for this reason it is only an appearance of strength. They will become really dangerous when they understand this. And they are just one step from it. One has only to wait to see whether they will summon the courage to make this step.

It has become nowadays a commonplace of political criticism that the contemporary political system has been transformed into a pathetic caricature of democracy. The slogan of democratic participation is only a smokescreen for the growing oligarchisation of societies and despotisation of politics at all its levels. In sphere of the economy, the Civic Platform excels in cultivating this art and elevated it to new levels of sophistication through managing the assets of the country in order to create further inequalities and without bothering about their social costs. The situation of a deep imbalance of social structure thus created cannot be remedied overnight; it has gone way too far. For this reason, the Finance Minister Vincent Rostowski will now have to find a place for a new rubric on the expenditure side of his budget: “the costs of social peace.” The longer he delays this, the more hefty sums he will have to put in this rubric in the future. Such a rubric will have to be filled also by the Minister of Finance in any Law and Justice government.

Cracked Crust

The six post-war decades in Poland have brought disenchantment with the leftist utopia. The past two decades of the transformation have brought disenchantment with conservative liberalism. Radicalism in Poland destroys politics and dispels the hope for social peace. It overwhelms the churches and universities, the last enclaves of relative decency. What, then, has the future in store for us? Bertrand Russell compared civilized life to a dangerous walk on a thin crust of barely cooled lava, which at any moment may break and let the unwary sink into its fiery depths. John Gray has argued that the best that flawed and potentially wicked human creatures can hope for is a commitment to civilized constraints that will prevent the very worst from happening: a politics of the least worst.

The problem is that in Poland the crust of constraints of decency turned out to be very thin, and has cracked again. The lava flowing from below refuses to cool down by itself. Nor will it cool off any time soon, or easily.

The disruption of Zygmunt Bauman’s lecture at the University of Wrocław on June 22, 2013 by the National Rebirth of Poland (Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski or NOP), has been one of many similar events recently to have taken place across Poland, including the case of Adam Michnik earlier this year, reported here. 

The Bauman lecture was rich in symbolic meaning, organized by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, an intellectual branch of the present day German Social Democratic Party, the independent Ferdinand Lasalle Centre of Social Thought, and the Department of Social and Political Philosophy of the University of Wrocław, which I chair. Bauman is the most renowned Polish scholar in the world, a great critical social theorist with a long and creative record of scholarly accomplishment. The other hero of the event, in a sense, was Ferdinand Lassalle, a “Breslauer,” a student of the university in Wrocław in its German times, Karl Marx’s collaborator and the founder of the German Social Democratic Party. His remains rest at the Jewish Cemetery in Wrocław. The occasion was to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first social democratic party in the world, established by Lassalle. The topic of the meeting was the ideals of the left, old and new, and the challenges the leftist movement faces nowadays, in the period of a new stage of capitalism and its crisis.

Through organizing Bauman’s lecture at the University of Wrocław, I was hoping for a scholarly and critical debate about the future of Poland, and the world: a scholarly one, because the debate was to be inspired by an eminent thinker; a critical one, as an opportunity for a renewal of egalitarian thinking about economy and politic. While such combination of critique and scholarship is now eagerly seized upon in many parts of the world, in Poland it is met with disdain from political parties which duplicitously present themselves as leftist, and with ridicule or repression from the remaining political parties.

It was the second visit by Bauman to the Polish city of Wrocław that I had organized. The first one took place in 1996. On that earlier occasion, no one expected any disturbances to occur during a series of academic and public appearances by the author of Postmodern Ethics. There were also no incidents when Bauman spoke in Wrocław to the European Congress of Culture in September 2011, soon after our city had been awarded the title of European Capital of Culture 2016.

The changes that have occurred in the meantime, in both the Wroclaw’s and Polish public space, that made possible the disruption of Bauman’s lecture and many other similar disturbances, cast a sinister, dark brown shadow upon the image of Poland in the world. But there is one benefit to be drawn from the protests: they demand attention.

A “Set-Up”

The Bauman – Lassalle event was a fusion of Polish, Jewish, German and Leftist culture. Since it was also open to the public, it was perceived by the local xenophobes as an invitation for incitement, a set-up. (This seems to be the closest possible translation of the Polish soccer hooligans’ term “ustawka,” which refers to a collective fight taking place in an agreed place and time between two antagonized group of supporters of different soccer teams, resulting usually in many injuries on both sides, and often in fatalities.)

For Bauman is not only a Polish scholar of great stature in the world and an author quoted in many disciplines. He was also, during the Stalinist period, a military officer of the Polish army, and a Jew, just as Ferdinand Lassalle was. And for the past two decades the ideals of the Left have been misconstrued in Poland as an ideological foundation of the violent communist regime, which murdered patriots, and has been presented as a source of a extreme evil and of the enslavement of the nation.

Just before the commencement of the meeting, quite unexpectedly, the mayor of Wrocław arrived. The organizers of the event invited him to welcome the guest as the host of the city. He managed to say only: “I am Rafał Dutkiewicz. To those who do not yet know it, I would like to say that I am the mayor of this city.”

In response, about a hundred members of the NOP rose from their seats, unfolded a huge banner saying “NOP/Śląsk Wrocław” (Śląsk Wrocław is the name of the local soccer club, currently the champions of the Polish National Soccer League), and started howling, yelling, chanting and vilifying the guest speaker, the organizers, and the mayor alike.

It needs to be said that the soccer club of Śląsk Wrocław is being generously supported by the local municipality under this mayor. Among the chants which were thrown into mayor’s face by the extremist soccer hooligans was a slogan about the memory of the “excommunicated soldiers.” Those soldiers were members of the Polish underground who did not become reconciled with the communist take-over of the post-war Poland, were persecuted by the communist regime, and were banned from the collective memory until 1989. They symbolize a moral and political attitude which is rather close to the mayor’s political views: the municipality ruled by him for the past 11 years has recently erected a monument to one of them, a cavalry officer Witold Pilecki. This material expression of the aesthetic politics of the city aligns well with the political aesthetics dominant in the whole country. Despite the official rhetoric of pluralism, the canons of this aesthetics dictate political tastes in Poland in a way which it is rather impossible, and unwise, to ignore. During the Bauman – Lassalle event, the extreme right confronted not only the left, but also the right.

Canonisation and Escalation

The development of radicalism in Wrocław has been documented carefully for some time now. It has been the subject of a disturbing report by the local Nomada Foundation; everyday xenophobic attitudes have been provocatively revealed in an experiment conducted by the pupils of one of the high schools in the city. There is no doubt that radical groupings in the city act ever more boldly and brazenly. About two months ago, on April 24, they achieved a significant success in preventing Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a member of the European Parliament, from lecturing at the University of Wrocław. They have exerted a pressure on the organizers of that event, and Cohn-Bendit himself, by wildly calling upon everyone to protect their children from the paedophile. At the last moment, Cohn-Bendit cancelled his journey to Wrocław.

The so-called nationalists in Wrocław and in Poland have been encouraged especially since the moment of the canonisation of their activities by Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the main opposition party in Poland, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice). After a group of soccer supporters staged a violent brawl following a soccer match in Warsaw and after they were prosecuted by the police as well as criticised by the government officials, Kaczyński extended to them ideological and political protection by calling them genuine patriots. Ever since, undisturbed by law, they have engaged in a series of provocations: picked fights at soccer stadiums, disrupted lectures and political meetings, lit fires at the doors of people whom they consider alien, etc.

More than that: thanks to Kaczyński, they have appointed themselves as both the judges of history, and its executioners. The sentences are being carried out summarily, according to their own interpretation of the dominant canons of the political aesthetics. The leader of Law and Justice has strengthened them in their “truth.” The strength of their conviction and the political protection has given them a power, which cannot be matched by any other political movement in present-day Poland.

Interestingly, however, they are being supported not only by Law and Justice, “the patriotic right.” They have also received very strong material support from the present government of Platforma Obywatelska (Civic Platform), the neo-liberal centre right. The “patriotic right” and the “neo-liberal right” are supporting the extreme neo- fascist right, and this is oddly being facilitated by futbol, soccer.

Soccer and Politics

The rules of ancient democracy are said to have been modeled upon the principles of the Olympic Games. Just as warring Greek tribes temporarily suspended their mutual animosities at the time of the Olympic Games and sent their representatives to Olympic arenas in order to continue their wars in a vicarious form in various sport disciplines, so in democratic Athens each local community sent their representatives to the Assembly to haggle for local interests on their behalf.

In present-day Poland the ties between sports and politics are much more intimate than that. For after one peels off the empty rhetoric and political imagery, it becomes rather difficult to dispel the impression that the Civic Platform’s project of modernization of the country, and the promotion of its interests, exhausted itself, literally, in the organization of the European soccer championship in 2012. Setting subjective impressions aside, however, no one can deny that the Civic Platform, which has been ruling the country for the past seven years, displayed the greatest political energy as long as it was preparing the whole country for this spectacle, and lost it, immediately and completely, after the show was over.

Accordingly, Poland owes to this party more than two thousand (!) small sports playgrounds, located in almost every local community. They are known as Little Eagles and cost 1,233,477 Polish zloty each [373,781 USD]. Their aim is to train the young soccer talents, but also to fill the leisure of the young who now have the opportunity to enjoy it more than ever, as 30 per cent of them have no jobs. We owe to this party also four large cutting-edge stadiums in Gdańsk, Poznań, Warsaw and Wrocław, as well as barely passable roads built in order for us to be able to drive to them, even though, as yet, two years after their near-completion, there is really no good reason to do so.

It is difficult to dispel the impression that Civic Platform never intended to govern the country in a democratic manner, through some kind of a covenant with society. It just wanted to manage and administer society by means of sports. Conceiving politics as a spectacle, the party fused politics with sports in an unprecedented way. Apparently the leadership of the party assumed that the Little Eagles and the stadiums would become centers of sporting rivalry, entertainment and cultural events, venues to excite positive passions, and to discharge them. They seem to have assumed also, apparently judging after themselves (the leadership of the Civic Platform, most especially the prime minister Donald Tusk, are well-known and devout soccer players themselves.), that through holding the EURO 2012 in Poland, they would receive a powerful means of promotion of the country in Europe and in the world. They seem to have thought, too, that in this way they would acquire a powerful instrument to manage human masses, their leisure, emotions, and thoughts.

On all these accounts the Civic Platform suffered major defeats, because their assumptions turned out to be erroneous. It is, moreover, rather surprising to see a conservative party working upon such assumptions for they are reeking with optimism untypical of the conservative attitude, which is an important strand within its ideology. The soccer infrastructure, by far the most important contribution of this party to the growth of Poland, has now become a symbol of the failure of its modernization project.

Managing human masses by means of stadiums, a political technique employed prominently in the ancient Rome, has its known limitations. One of them is that sport creates strong divisions between “us” and “them.” The divisions thus fashioned are focused upon sports rivals and are symbolized by differing colors marking the armies of such substitute wars. Sport as a vicarious war enables the discharge of the passions aroused by rivalries in a controlled manner. This, however, works well only in countries in which their populations, as well as their authorities, are still capable of grasping the difference between sports and politics, not everywhere.

The leaders of Civic Platform have been apparently using outdated textbooks for political marketing. For despite the perfection of the instruments designed to manipulate public passions, they remain unpredictable. Civic Platform has been acting as if they have forgotten about this critical fact. They have apparently forgotten also about the unparalleled wisdom of the great Polish philosopher and the most successful soccer coach ever, Kazimierz Górski, who famously said that in the game of soccer “the ball is round and there are two goals in it.”

As a result of these astounding oversights on the part of the Civic Platform, the passions of the soccer supporters, for whom this party has laboriously built the stadiums, have been effortlessly hijacked by Law and Justice and are now being informed according to a xenophobic ideology rather than the conservative-liberal one. In other words, the political soccer match arranged by the Civic Platform for the whole nation has been easily won by opposition leader Jarosław Kaczyński. An unequaled champion of political acrobatics, Kaczyński has shot a penalty goal against Prime Minister Tusk without even going onto the pitch. It is a wholly different matter, though, whether he will be able to benefit from his victory. Something truly pernicious has been unleashed.

By undertaking the modernization project by means of soccer, Civic Platform has transformed a huge stream of taxpayers’ money into an expensive concrete infrastructure, instead of devoting themselves to building instruments of inclusion of broad segments of the population, which for the past two decades have suffered economic and social exclusion. This project has enriched the bosses – though not the workers – of the Polish construction industry; for, this was in fact one of the main reasons for the Civil Platform to undertake it in the first place. After Civic Platform loses the upcoming elections, the bosses, ever hungry for more, will support the Law and Justice without any qualms.

As a result, the stadiums have become venues of concentration and recruitment of new members of extreme right-wing groupings, and into training areas of the soccer hooliganism. Instead of becoming centers of family entertainment and popularization of culture, Polish stadiums are now functioning as academies of hatred for the young who are just beginning their adult life, but have already lost their hopes for a decent place for themselves in their own country.

The xenophobic radicals, fed from both political hands, are gradually ceasing to be a marginal eccentricity of Polish political aesthetics, and a minor symptom of the psychopathology of Polish political life; they are now becoming an independent and vigorous political power. We do not yet have Budapest in Warsaw (These words have been used by Jarosław Kaczyński to express his admiration for Victor Orban and his authoritarian transformation of Hungary), but we will not have to wait too long for it. The incident at the University of Wrocław and many similar ones demonstrate that Poland is dotted by various local infections of virulent nationalism.

That the promotion of Poland through soccer did not work was due not only to the desperate weakness of the Polish national team. However hard we work in order to organize efficiently the spectacles of the politicized sport, several incidents like the one during Bauman’s lecture, will suffice to annihilate the whole effort to dispel the centuries’ long stereotype of Polnische Wirtschaft.

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that even though in antiquity sport was the beginning of Greek democracy, in post-modernity sport has become a beginning of the end of Polish democracy.

There are clearly some good grounds for holding those views (as well as a lot of bad, dishonest, intellectually lazy, and morally evasive ones); and for anyone who supported the war, like me, the past decade has often been a morally harrowing time (or should have been, at least). But I remain convinced that the question was more complicated than that in 2002-2003 and is still more complicated today.

Nor, I would like to believe, do I say that merely to cover my own ass (morally and analytically speaking) with a mealy-mouthed unwillingness to face up honestly to the moral and intellectual issues involved. Back in 2002-2003 I thought (and said quite explicitly) that there were good and bad arguments on both sides of the question (with more bad ones than good ones on both sides), and I think that’s still true now … though any serious discussion would also have to take account of what has actually happened in the past decade. (I could no longer simply repeat all the arguments I made back in 2002-2003 without serious revisions or modifications, but making a full-scale public recantation, as some other one-time supporters of the war have done, wouldn’t be honest in my case either.)

I have been struck, in particular, that the vast bulk of recent discussions expressing the “anti-war” groupthink, which is rarely challenged, are marked by two massive omissions.

=> First, while they properly emphasize the terrible results of the war and its aftermath for Iraqis, for Americans, and for others, they almost never consider the actual and probable costs—human, economic, geopolitical, etc.—of the alternatives to war that were realistically available in 2002-2003.  In fact, now as in 2002-2003, almost none of the people expressing the “anti-war” consensus even try to outline or propose, let alone defend, any serious alternative policies that they think could and should have been followed to deal with the very special problems posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq a decade after the 1991 Gulf War.

I’ve raised those issues in the past from time to time (e.g., here & here), and they still strike me as valid.  For the moment, I will just reiterate some of the relevant points from a post I wrote in 2005.

[…] I did not support the war because I expected rosy outcomes. Instead, I became (and remain) convinced that the war was necessary and justified primarily because I became (and remain) convinced that, by the end of the 1990s, all the realistically (as opposed to wishfully) available alternative options led almost certainly to politically catastrophic and morally appalling consequences.

The key point was that, by the end of the 1990s, the whole sanctions-&-containment system cobbled together in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War was becoming increasingly unsustainable (politically, diplomatically, and also morally), not least because it had been systematically and deliberately undermined by a range of governments acting in loose collusion with the Iraqi Ba’ath regime, and by 2000 or so it was on the verge of terminal disintegration. The perceived economic & political interests of a number of key states, reinforced by a massively successful propaganda campaign which convinced large sectors of public opinion across the world that US-imposed sanctions were starving Iraqi babies, all pushed in that direction. (How many opponents of war in 2002-2003 had previously been urging a policy of tightening up sanctions and continuing them indefinitely?)  [….]

Thus, for these and other reasons, simply doing nothing and assuming that the status quo would automatically continue indefinitely was not a realistically viable option. Inaction would also have been a choice with serious and unpleasant consequences.

(Michael Walzer, who opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was one of the few opponents of the war who recognized this problem and faced it squarely. Walzer proposed a third option—an escalation of the “little war” that the US and its allies had already been waging in Iraq since the 1991 armistice. But it’s not clear that this was really a viable option in 2002-2003; and, at all events, it’s not an option that most opponents of the 2003 Iraq war, in the US or abroad, would actually have been willing to pursue.)

[B]y the middle of 2002, there were really only two realistically available outcomes—military action to overthrow Saddam Hussein & his regime, or a victory for Saddam Hussein & his foreign backers. The latter would have been a prelude to the final disintegration of the sanctions-&-containment system, a disintegration which in practical terms would have been irreversible. In realistic terms (and I mean realistic, not “realist”), those were the genuine options—in my possibly fallible but firm opinion—and any serious discussion of the issues surrounding the 2003 Iraq war has to begin by facing up to this reality.

Now, some people might argue that the collapse of containment would have been no big deal, or at least that the consequences couldn’t possibly have been as bad as the consequences of military action that we’ve actually seen. I believe that’s wrong.  [JW: And the current death throes of the other Ba’athist regime, in Syria, only reinforce the point that we can’t simply take that assumption for granted.]

Most of the discussion of Saddam Hussein’s missing “weapons of mass destruction” have had a certain irrelevance and unreality from the start. The size of his existing stockpiles was never the key question. Most informed analysts (including all the major intelligence services), however much they disagreed on details, generally agreed that Saddam Hussein had active nuclear, biological, & chemical weapons programs. (It was German intelligence, not the CIA, that said in 2001 that Saddam was probably about 3 years away from getting nuclear weapons.) It turned out they were all wrong, and the whole thing was a fantastically successful bluff on Saddam’s part—though the only reason we know this is precisely that the Iraqi Ba’ath regime was overthrown—but, fundamentally, so what? This was just a matter of timing. Once containment had collapsed and Saddam Hussein was out of the box, he would have been ready and eager to resume his NBC weapons programs. (Scott Ritter, for example, explained this all quite cogently in 1998, before he experienced his strange conversion over Iraq.) It would no doubt have taken Saddam Hussein a while to get a nuclear weapon, and perhaps some stroke of luck in the meantime might have prevented this, but otherwise it was just a matter of time. In the medium term, given everything we know about the nature and history of the Iraqi Ba’ath regime and Saddam Hussein’s own history and inclinations, one could expect renewed military adventurism, another of his catastrophic miscalculations, and a bigger and more destructive war down the line.

In the relatively short run, one predictable and almost certain consequence of the collapse of containment would have been another genocidal bloodbath in Iraqi Kurdistan—which, it is quite safe to predict, no one would have lifted a finger to stop. Perhaps I have some kind of strange psychological quirk, since the genocidal mass murder of ethnic minorities seems to upset me more than it does some other people, but I think the prevention of this genocidal bloodbath has to be seen as one argument (among others) in favor of taking serious action against Saddam Hussein & his regime. [….]

And so on. I don’t want to leave the impression that these are the only likely and predictable catastrophic consequences that would have followed the imminent collapse of the sanctions-&-containment system, but it would take a while to lay them all out in detail, and those will do to suggest the key background considerations.

I waited all through the debates of 2002-2003 for opponents of the war to offer any half-way honest and plausible alternative to military action that took these realities seriously, and that offered a plausible likelihood of preventing the consequences I’ve just outlined. I never heard anyone offer any such proposal that struck me as even remotely realistic or convincing—which is part of the reason I decided that, on balance, the war was necessary and justified.

I’m still waiting. Here’s what I said to Sam Rosenfeld & Matthew Yglesias back in 2005 (in response to their American Prospect piece, “The Incompetence Dodge“), and I would offer the same challenge today to readers who subscribe to the now-hegemonic “anti-war” consensus:

Political judgment requires making choices between a range of realistically available options, based in large part on an assessment of the likely consequences of different courses of action. Your piece argues, in effect, that many of the negative consequences of the decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein & his regime in 2003 were readily predictable and, in fact, highly likely. OK, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re right.

That’s not enough. The relevant comparison has to be with the likely consequences of other possible courses of action available at the time (including inaction). So, to reiterate, what do you think would have been a superior alternative back in 2002-2003? Can you identify and defend a realistically available, morally acceptable, politically workable alternative course of action whose likely and predictable consequences would have been less disastrous than the ones we’ve actually seen so far?

This is not a rhetorical question, by the way. If you or anyone else could (hypothetically) present such an alternative scenario that I found at all plausible & convincing, then I might be forced to reconsider whether my support for the war (trepidations and all) was actually intelligent or justifiable. In the absence of such an account, then it seems to me—rightly or wrongly—that your discussion fundamentally begs the question.

=> Second, people who take it for granted that the war and its consequences were an unmitigated disaster for Iraqis tend to focus exclusively on Arab Iraq.  They almost uniformly ignore Iraqi Kurdistan.  It’s understandable why they would do that, and the Arab part of Iraq does account for about three-quarters of Iraqis … but any assessment of the 2003 Iraq war and its consequences that ignores Iraqi Kurds is obviously incomplete, misleading, and less than fully honest.  It’s not just that the actual outcomes in Iraqi Kurdistan have been (on balance, and under the circumstances) remarkably good … but also that the probable consequences of the realistically available alternatives to the 2003 Iraq war (which would almost certainly have included the final disintegration of the whole sanctions-&-containment system, which had been unraveling at a rapidly accelerating rate, followed pretty soon by another genocidal bloodbath in Iraqi Kurdistan, as I noted earlier) would have been especially awful for Iraq’s Kurdish population.

Instead, Iraqi Kurdistan is now autonomous, secure, and thriving.  And depending on the contingencies of regional geopolitics, there are good prospects for that situation to continue.  Iraqi Kurdistan tends to get a lot less attention from the news media than Arab Iraq, but an article in the current issue of the Economist sums up some of the good news.

The relative order, security and wealth enjoyed by the 5m residents of Iraq’s three Kurdish provinces [JW: see the maps at the end of this post] are the envy of the remaining 25m who live in the battered bulk of Iraq, and of others too. Since 2011 some 130,000 Syrian refugees, nearly all of them ethnic Kurds, have been welcomed in as brothers; the UN says that number could reach 350,000 by the year’s end. From the east come Iranian Kurds eager to work on the building sites that bristle across a territory the size of Switzerland. [….] Iraq is now Turkey’s second export market after Germany, with 70% of that trade directed to the Kurdish part; 4,000 trucks cross the border daily.

It was not always like this. Surveying a dusty vista of tents at Domiz, a camp housing more than 50,000 destitute Syrians outside the booming city of Dohuk, an Iraqi Kurd shrugs and says, “Twenty years ago this was us.” He is referring to the aftermath of the Anfal, a campaign in the late 1980s by Iraq’s then-leader Saddam Hussein to crush a Kurdish uprising. It left at least 100,000 dead, destroyed 4,000 villages and created 1m refugees.

Since the American-led invasion in 2003 Iraqi Kurds have rebuilt villages, raised GDP per person tenfold, maintained law and order and turned the peshmerga into a formidable army. Daily blackouts may plague Baghdad, but the KRG exports surplus power to adjacent Iraqi towns. Divided at home, the Kurds have united to deal successfully with the federal government, securing good terms in the 2005 constitution and high office in the capital. [….]

So long as most of Iraq’s oil output came from the south, and so long as it controlled export pipelines, Baghdad held the upper hand. But Kurdistan turns out to have a lot of oil. [JW: Under Saddam Hussein, of course, Kurdistan’s oil reserves were a curse, not a blessing–helping to motivate savage repression by the Ba’athist regime, ethnic cleansing and forced Arabization in the oil-rich area around Kirkuk, etc.] [….] Squabbles with Baghdad have led to repeated shutdowns of the main pipeline to Turkey, but growing volumes go by tanker truck, solidifying a budding Kurdish-Turkish alliance that would have shocked both peoples only a few years ago. [….]

Another straw in the wind:  In March I happened to notice a piece in the Washington Post, written by someone who headed an interdenominational religious delegation visiting Iraqi Kurdistan, which was willing to declare unequivocally that Kurdistan has been “an Iraqi success story“.

There are actually at least two Iraqs. Because it continues to make headlines, most Americans are familiar only with the southern region and its capital city, Baghdad. The northern region is rarely in the news. By every measure, it is a success story.

And—this is significant—not just for the Muslim majority.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been an autonomous region since 1991, when the United States and its allies in the first Gulf War declared the “Northern No-Fly Zone.” The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has used that security shield to create one of the few safe harbors for religious freedom and pluralism in the Middle East. Remarkably, this liberty extends beyond simple freedom of worship. The KRG has rebuilt seminaries and churches, supported church-related schools and welcomed Christian refugees from southern Iraq and Syria.

This is an impressive achievement in a region with a tragic past and an uncertain future. [JW: Elsewhere in the Middle East, the remaining Christian minorities are almost all shrinking or disappearing, and are often subject to violent persecution.]

Of course, there are a lot of things wrong with Iraqi Kurdistan.  By Scandinavian standards it doesn’t measure up very well on a lot of social, economic, or political criteria.  But by Middle Eastern standards, which are more appropriate, it looks pretty good in terms of both present conditions and plausible prospects. And in assessing the overall consequences of the 2003 Iraq war, those outcomes should also count in the balance.

=> Again, this post doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive retrospective assessment of the 2003 Iraq war and its significance.  The relevant issues are sprawling and complex (and the ones I’ve mentioned above are only part of the Big Picture), so I need to reflect on them a bit longer.  But in the meantime, I offer these unfashionable thoughts for people to consider. More on all of this soon, perhaps…

This post, along with descriptive maps, also appears in Jeff Weintraub’s Commentaries and Controversies.

A personal story

At the University of Chicago, I wrote my dissertation on a marginal theater movement on the other side of the iron curtain. I was studying alternative theaters in a polity, The Polish People’s Republic, which officially understood itself to be revolutionary, and that was analyzed by some critics, both internal and external, as being totalitarian. Thus, I read both On Revolution and The Origins of Totalitarianism. From the point of view of Arendt scholarship, the effects of these readings were minimal. From On Revolution, I came to understand her point about the difference between the French and the American revolutionary traditions, giving me insights into the Soviet tradition, but this barely effected my thinking back then. From The Origins, along with other works, I came to an understanding of the totalitarian model of Soviet society, a model that I rejected. My dissertation was formed as an empirical refutation of the model.

But then I went to the New School, and in the spring of 1981, I came to appreciate Arendt in a much more serious way. A student kept on asking odd questions in my course on political sociology. I would use key concepts, and he repeatedly challenged my usage. “Society,” “ideology,” “power,” “politics,” “authority,” “freedom:” I would use the terms in more or less conventional social scientific ways, and he would question me as an Arendt student. From me: society as a unit of human association; for him society as the confusion of the public and the private. I understood ideology as a distinctive metaphoric system that makes an autonomous politics possible (Geertz student that I was). He saw ideology as a specific historical development, a special type of modern thinking and of doing politics that connected past, present and future, and when linked with terror the cultural component of totalitarianism. I understood power, politics and authority, as all involving the interplay between culture and coercion, based in the latter, for him, careful distinctions should be made, showing that political power, based in freedom, is the opposite of coercion. I soon realized what was going on, and although he very much challenged my authority as a young Assistant Professor (31 at the time), teaching in a graduate course in which many of the students were older than me, and quite sophisticated, I was intrigued. What he was talking about suggested a way to understand something I was observing that I knew wasn’t properly appreciated.

That summer I read just about all of Arendt’s major works. I was especially moved by her approach to the problems of the public and her conceptualization of politics as the capacity for people to act in concert. This was an unusual time in my life, an unusual time in contemporary politics. The darkness of the twentieth century was being lightened from the margins, and only a few were able to see it.

I was then observing the beginnings of major transformations in the political landscape that were developing in Poland, but yet not broadly recognized. From this century, I can say now that I was observing the forces that ultimately led to the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Empire. When Arendt wrote about dark times, she referred to the era of modern tyranny, of the totalitarianism of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes. This was a time when the illumination of public acts was dimmed. She observed that:

“It is the function of the public realm to throw light on the affairs of men by providing a space of appearances in which they can show in deed and word, for better and worse, who they are and what they can do, then darkness has come when this light is extinguished…”

But, she also noted that:

“even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, that such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time span that was given them on earth….”

She celebrated the acts of great individuals who shed such light in her book Men in Dark Times. In everyday actions, I saw in Poland the constitution of an alternative public space for such appearance in an emerging opposition movement that was then rapidly developing, leading a few months later to the establishment of Solidarnosc, the first independent union, the broad societal movement, constituting a free and open public space in a totalitarian order.

Yes, after my summer reading I gave up on my critique of the totalitarian model, or more precisely, I refined it. I came to understand that although there can be no totalitarian society, that there were totalitarian movements and regimes and their oppositions, and that sometimes the oppositions come in the form of heroic individuals, what Arendt wrote about, but at other times they took on broader public form. Her postscript to The Origins on the Hungary of 1956 (the 50th anniversary of which was celebrated a week ago) was my guide. Hannah and I, then, became very close.

Arendt was with me as I went off to understand what was happening in “the other Europe”, as Philip Roth would name it. In that Europe, in small interactions, big things were happening. People met each other and formed spaces of appearance apart from party-state definition. They spoke and acted freely in each other’s presence, revealing themselves and constituting alternative public spaces. They did so in theaters, in underground publications, in independent unions (first very small, after 1980 nationwide), in unofficial theaters, literary salons, bookstores and clubs. As I observed these developments, Hannah was my guide. With her guidance, I understood that the end of the activities of the opposition was to create a public space. That the question of whether the activities would lead to reform of the system (no one imagined its collapse) was really secondary. The constitution of a free public space was primary. That was the major transformation itself. It made it possible for people to be free. It provided dignity. And it created power that clearly would be consequential, although the exact consequences were unknown.

I even took part a bit; Adam Michnik and I created a semi clandestine democracy seminar based at the New School in New York with branches in Warsaw and Budapest. Our first reading was The Origins. The three groups each read the book and discussed it. The discussions were recorded and the proceedings exchanged. We functioned as an opposition activity from 1985 to 1989, and for about five years after, we functioned around the old bloc as an open activity. I will be happy to describe this in detail after my presentation, if any one is interested.

At the time, there was an everyday mundane feeling about these activities. But after the fact, it is clear to me that they were truly revolutionary. They were little gems of the lost revolutionary tradition that Arendt wrote about, and they speak to our present circumstances. This is what I am working on these days. Her guidance endures.

So let’s fast forward for a moment, to the new configuration of dark times, remembering Arendt’s counsel, “Dark times…are not only not new, they are not a rarity in history, although they were perhaps unknown in American history…”. From the point of view of New York, the U.S. is an exception no longer. “Darkness has come when this light [of the public] is extinguished by ‘credibility gaps’ and ‘invisible government,’ by speech that does not disclose what is, but sweeps it under the carpet, by exhortations, moral and otherwise, that, under the pretext of upholding old truths, degrade all truth to meaningless triviality.”

I have been thinking about this since the days immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, thinking that led to the publication of my most recent book: The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times. I try to accomplish a number of different things in my small book, things I attempted to very compactly express in its title. I have already explained quite a bit in this presentation. I have a feeling that in Arendt’s sense we do again live in dark times, but that they are different from the ones she knew. There are again struggles between gigantic forces of good and evil, in which both sides, moving both between East and West (think the war on terrorism), or North and South (think Chavez and Bush), darken the spaces of appearance. But, I also think that to appear, speak to each other, develop a capacity to act together, as theorized by Arendt, but also as described by the former Czech dissident and President, in his greatest work “The Power of the Powerless,” presents an alternative, a still significant “politics of small things.” And that its power can be formed in every day interactions, both face to face interactions and virtual ones using the new media.

Mine is an attempt to find the men and women in dark times who present alternatives. I do this by using the work of Arendt and Erving Goffman to explain how the grand narratives of terror and anti terror are not the only or even the most effective ways to address the pressing problems of our times. Terrorism is not the only weapon available to the oppressed, and militarized anti terrorism is not the only or even the most rational way to fight the very real dangers of global terrorism. I can obviously not make the case here. What I would like to do is to look at some details of the argument, as Hannah is with me. In that I am looking at mico interactions as the location for alternatives to the oppressions of the new grand narratives, the key theoretical issue is how can we tell when micropolitics is really an alternative, and when it is a sort of enactment of disciplinary powers of one larger regime or another. In my book, this problem presented itself as I attempted to show that the micropolitics of the Christian right and the anti-war left and the Dean campaign in the United States were not just presenting competing partisan positions in 2004 during the Presidential elections. The alternative was between a new and efficient authoritarian unfreedom and a new and promising free democratic politics. To get at the issue and to the theoretical center of my presentation today, I propose we look at the way Arendt explains the relation between truth and politics, and the way Michel Foucault postulates the relationship between truth and power. Let me be forthcoming, I do not think that they present competing positions accounting for the same thing, but complimentary accounts of two very different, even opposite phenomena.

Alternative Frameworks: Michel Foucault and Hannah Arendt

Foucault analyzes the problem of knowledge and power as the problem of the truth regime. Truth is a production of social practices and their discourses. It produces power and is controlled by it. There is no distance between truth and the powers. There are alternative powers with alternative truths. Foucault explains: “It is not a matter of emancipating truth from every system of power (which would be a chimera, for truth is already power) but of detaching truth from the forms of hegemony, social, economic, and cultural, within which it operates at the present time.” The analytic task is to explore truth regimes. The critical task is to do the “detaching.” The people developing the alternative publics around the old Soviet bloc, thus, can be understood as engaging in this sort of bodily detachment. But what is the value of it? Why choose one truth regime over another? Foucault does not explain. Arendt is critically suggestive in answering just these questions, as was my experience in the 80s. Now I will try to explain the crucial reason why she was such a help back then and how she provides a guide now.

Arendt maintains that there are two fundamentally different types of truth, factual versus philosophical truth, which have two very different relationships to political power. Factual truth (which is not part of Foucault’s scheme) must be the grounds upon which a free politics (which is also not part of Foucault’s scheme) is based. Philosophical truth must be radically separated from politics, the possibility of which Foucault denies. Her distinctions are made to facilitate an understanding of the nature of totalitarianism and its alternatives. This is crucial for the present inquiry, both for scholarly and for normative reasons. It centers on the constitution of public freedom and the possibilities of a democratic culture. Such constitution and possibility exist in and through the domain of a free public. While Foucault cannot distinguish between totalitarianism and liberalism, Arendt reveals how in the relationship between truth and power this crucial distinction is made. And we can thus recognize dark times and places, and also recognize the sources of light as alternatives.

In order to make the contrast between the two different types of truth clear, Arendt reflects upon the beginning of WWI. The causes of the war are open to interpretation. The aggressive intentions of Axis or the Allies can be emphasized, as can the intentional or the unanticipated consequences of political alliances. The state of capitalism and imperialism in crisis may be understood as being central. Yet, when it comes to the border of Belgium, it is factually the case that Germany invaded Belgium and not the other way around. A free politics cannot be based on an imposed interpretation. There must be an openness to opposing views. But a free politics also cannot be based on a factual lie, such as the proposition that Belgium’s invasion of Germany opened WWI. Modern liberal democracy requires a separation of politics from philosophical truth, but it must be based upon factual truths, in order for those who meet in public to share a common world in which they can interact politically. In modern tyranny, factual truth is expendable as a matter of principle, while the tyranny is based on a kind of philosophical truth, an ideology, an official interpretation of the facts. When Arendt highlights Trotsky as a kind of totalitarian everyman in The Origins, she observes that he expresses his fealty to the truth of the Communist Party. But that he could be air brushed out of the history of the Bolshevik revolution, contrary to the factual truth that he was a key figure, commander of the Red Army, second only to Lenin, also is definitive of totalitarianism. This is the real cultural ground of political correctness, of official truth. The purported scientific understanding of history of the Party substitutes for the political confrontation, debate and deliberation. It is enforced by terror. As Hannah and I travel around the old bloc and as we spoke and acted with our opposition colleagues, we were involved in attempts by social actors to free themselves of the official truth and to ground themselves in the factual truth.

From the point of view of Foucault, or, for that matter, from the point of view of the sociology of knowledge and culture, there is much that is unsatisfying about Arendt’s position. The distinction between fact and interpretation, which she insists upon, is in practice hard to maintain, and empirically it is hard to discern. But, this is not the telling point from Arendt’s point of view. Rather, it is that the distinction needs to be pursued, so that a free public life can be constituted. A democratic public cannot be constituted if political questions are answered philosophically, nor can its citizens interact freely, speak and act in the presence of each other, if the grounds of their interactions is based upon state imposed lies.

The politics of race in America cannot proceed democratically if a politically correct standard of racial interaction were actually imposed. (This is of course far from the case, given the popularity of critics of political correctness) But, just as well, a democratic confrontation of the legacies of racial injustice in the U.S. could not proceed if the school texts instructed the young that blacks owned whites, rather than the other way around. For a free public life to exist, there needs to be space for speech and actions based upon different opinions, then the people, and not the theorists, philosophers, historians or scientists, can rule. And their rule can proceed on solid grounds if they share a political world together, which has some factual solidity.

The politics of truth is in the interaction. Factual truth is the bedrock of a free politics. Difference of interpretation and opinion is its process. That the factual sometimes fades into the interpretive does not mitigate against the requirement that an interpretive scheme or doctrine cannot substitute for politics. That the interpretive sometimes seems to the convinced to be the factual does not mitigate against the requirement that for people to meet and interact in a free public, they must share a sense of a factual world. That fact and interpretation get mixed up, is very much a part of the messiness of politics, a messiness, which is confronted in concrete interactive situations. This points us in Goffman’s direction, a direction I can’t go into here. For now, we need to consider a bit more closely Arendt’s position so that the historical context of our inquiry can be understood.

When Arendt first presented her diagnosis, the central critical thrust of her work involved her identification of the National Socialism of Germany with Soviet Communism. Although using traditional political categories, these regimes appeared to be opposites, one of the right and the other of the left, she underscored that in their use of ideology and terror, in their mode of governance, in their projects of total control, their similarities were much more important than their differences. They were regimes systematically organized to eliminate a free public life (her central normative concern). While The Origins can be read as a “dialectic of the enlightenment” with the teleology taken out, it is also an account of the destruction of free public space in political life. Arendt presents a sort of decline and fall of public life or as Richard Sennett has put it, a story of “the fall of public man.” Her story of decline and fall takes the reader from the heights of antiquity to the depths of totalitarianism.

She starts with her classical ideal. Pre-Socratic Greece represents for her the time when freedom beyond necessity flourished in the polis:

The Greek polis once was precisely that “form of government” which provided men with a space of appearances where they could act, with a kind of theater where freedom could appear…. If, then, we understand the political in the sense of the polis, its end or raison d’ etre would be to establish and keep in existence a space where freedom as virtuosity can appear. This is the realm where freedom is a worldly reality, tangible in words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which can be talked about, remembered, and turned into stories before they are finally incorporated into the great storybook of human history.

The history of Western thought, for Arendt, is the history of the decline of the appreciation of this ideal situation, with catastrophic consequences in modernity. The Greek turn to political philosophy meant that the philosopher, the intellectual in contemporary language, sought to substitute the truth for political governance. The Christian identification of freedom with free will turned freedom into a private and not a public matter. This confusion of public and private, from Arendt’s point of view, explains the identification of freedom with sovereignty as articulated by such thinkers as Hobbes and Rousseau. Structurally this is manifest with the rise of society, as the place where she sees the public and the private confused as a matter of principle. Modernity intensified this loss of a distinctively political capacity, even as independent democratic and republican political forms were invented. Arendt notes, with approval, the Anglo-American conception of political party, especially as defended by Edmund Burke. Competing parties presented alternative notions of the common good. Continental parties serving the interests of particular classes, she understands, as movements that confuse the particular interests with the public good, the interests of property, real and capital, and the interests of labor, rural and urban, with the interests of the public. Anti-Semitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism, the three parts of the Origins, each involve developments that destroy political capacity, as they are central to the history of European civilization. Totalitarian movements and regimes are the culmination of this story of radical de-politicization.

Arendt argues that what is distinctive about totalitarianism is its unique conflation of culture and coercion, ideology and terror. The problem with her position is that it requires what appear to be utopian beliefs about the relationship between truth and politics: that interpretive truth and politics can be radically separated and that the factual truth can be the basis of politics. While her critique of the substitution of philosophy for politics may be cogent, and while it may be crucial for intellectuals and artists not to confuse their insights and imaginations for democratic deliberation and decision, her ideas about the separation of politics from truth may still seem unrealistic. Every political movement after all has its ideology, it can be observed. Further, it is quite unclear how to maintain this separation while maintaining a commitment to factual truth. In these postmodern times, we are very much aware that one person’s interpretation is another’s factual truth. Indeed, the sociology of knowledge, at least since Mannheim, points in the same direction. It would seem that Foucault with his ideas about truth regimes is on the empirical mark. Yet, as I have already tried to demonstrate, there is a normative problem with Foucault’s position. He cannot distinguish between Trotsky and Wilson, between a totalitarian and a liberal. Further, there are also empirical grounds for rejecting the Foucaultian position.

This is where small things matter. It is a question of appearances, working to sustain realities. Truth and politics, knowledge and power, do not have a general relationship in modernity, as Foucault maintains. Rather, as we have already noted, social agents constitute the relationship in concrete interactive situations. The authorities of the old bloc tried to maintain an ideological definition of the situation. They did conflate knowledge and power. They presented an official truth and demanded that people appeared to follow its edicts. But in the alternative publics in the Soviet order, the imposed relationship was questioned. In official space people pretended to believe the official ideology, but they found places where it could be questioned.

Around the kitchen table people, something I explore intensively in my book, in small gatherings of close friends and relatives, the pretense was dropped. People presented themselves to each other in a different guise. They constituted a clandestine public space where they could speak and act together, free of the demands of officialdom. A real escalation of the struggle against the official order was evident when this hidden space of free interaction came out into the open. Foucault would explain this development in a sort of value neutral way. One truth regime, that of dissidents, was emerging from another. Perhaps, we would even want to go so far as saying that the regime of the new hegemonic order of globalization could be observed in the detaching of embodied practices from the truths, that is the ideology, of the old regimes. Note how much more we observe using Arendt as our guide.

In the positions of Foucault and Arendt, we observe two distinct understandings of political culture, two different ways of understanding the relationships between power and knowledge, truth and politics. While both get us beyond the lazy use of stereotype, e.g., all Russians seek a strong central authority, Americans are flexible, the British are more formal, the French more rational, (Brazilians are not quite modern?) etc., they do so with very different formulations. Where Foucault sees an identity, Arendt sees a variable relationship. For Foucault, political culture is about truth regimes, about the particular way that power and knowledge are united. For Arendt, political culture is about how and how far power and culture are distinguished and related. I think both analytic approaches provide insights into important aspects of political experience.

In fact, I am not sure that we could decide which one is more accurate. Foucault reveals an important part of the story, generally not sufficiently appreciated. The powers are revealed and operating in the activities of daily life and there is a form of knowledge that both accounts for this and makes it difficult to inspect critically. Knowledge and truth discipline. But there are different kinds of truth and they have different relationships with power, politics, Arendt forcefully maintains. This is a critique of Foucault’s position, but more significantly, it highlights a domain that Foucault ignores. The political implication of this is great. It means that there is a domain for freedom which Foucault does not recognize. This provides the grounds for normative judgment, making it possible to contrast tyranny with freedom. It makes it possible to discern real alternatives in dark times.

Seeking Light in Dark Times

In conclusion, I would like to summarize what I have learned in my political travels with Hannah Arendt and point to some implications as they have shaped my most recent and future research:

1. After being confronted by my student, I learned to think about politics differently and appreciate the significance of the democratic opposition in Central Europe as it was developing. It then became possible to understand that there was developing a major political power emerging in opposition to totalitarianism, that this power was based on simple interactions of people set apart from the official order. A small example is the democracy seminar I took part in. The large and historically significant example was Solidarnosc. There was back then the confrontation between the totalitarian and the free world, between socialist and progressive forces and the forces of capitalism, between the geopolitical forces of good and the Evil Empire, but the political transformation from within the old order came from a political force not recognized in the grand clash however it was depicted. It was a political force in Arendt’s sense.

2. This suggests a different way to think about our present darkness, about the world of the war on terrorism and the world of globalization. It suggests that we need to look at what I call a politics of small things as it presents alternatives to terrorism and anti-terrorism, to globalization and anti-globalization. Terrorism is not the only way for the weak to resist. And militarized anti terrorism is not the way to meet the threat of the terrors of fundamentalism (of all sorts). Politics in Arendt’s sense stands as an alternative.

3. This led me to analyze how the internet, as a domain for politics in Arendt’s sense, has been used by opposition forces to the war on terror in American politics. I analyze this in my book in an ethnography of the virtual politics of the Dean campaign and the anti war movement.

4. And it is now leading me to continue my journeys in darkness with Hannah. We are spending time in the Middle East, trying to identify alternative political forces, in the Palestinian territories and Israel, in special places where Palestinians and Israelis meet as equals, speak and act in the presence of each other, revealing themselves, and creating the capacity to act together, doing politics in dark times, at the heart of darkness.

I am looking forward to talking to you further about these travels, if you have any questions.

The massive vote for Lapid, riding on a general discontent with politics, made it painfully clear how sectorial the “social justice” protest in the summer of 2011 was after all, which drew primarily on middle-class frustrations with dwindling economic prospects for future generations. The amazing creativity and energy of many young and more radicalized 2011 protestors dissipated much too soon. Difficult yet promising alliances forged at the time between Mizrahi neighborhoods in Tel Aviv and Palestinian activists in Jaffa found no political expression. The summer of 2011 was a moment when hundreds of thousands poured to the streets to demonstrate against the rule of the so-called “tycoons,” Israel’s business oligarchy. This seemed to have the potential to lead to an even broader, more threatening mobilization against the existing order. It didn’t happen. No serious opposition to the reign of the neoliberal hawkish right emerged from this outburst. The 2011 protest did not generate any visible crack in the tectonic structures of Israeli politics. The main players on the Israeli political map remain Netanyahu-Liberman, a spineless, inflated center, and a disproportionately strong settler-dominated extreme right. Together, and with the ultra- orthodox parties in opposition for the first time in decades, they form the next coalition government. The so-called capital-rule [Hon-Shilton] nexus is under no serious threat, at least for the time being.

What remains to be seen is whether Yesh Atid, with its newcomers plucked from the media, cultural and business elite will manage to prevent this Knesset session from finishing off the attack on the liberal foundations of the state. In the past four years, the Israeli parliament has orchestrated a legislative blitz, introducing dozens of anti-democratic bills undermining basic rights, attacking minorities and civil society organizations in particular. The anti-Zionist left was the focus of concerted persecution. The vicious campaign was utterly disproportionate, considering how tiny, fragmented and largely politically disorganized the anti-Zionist left is. The new MKs of Yair Lapid, although a significant block, are inexperienced in dealing with the extreme-right legislators’ tactical use of the law as a tool for political persecution and will have a difficult time matching their political cunning. Yair Lapid himself, in a gesture complacent with the extreme-right agenda, mocked Palestinian Member of Knesset Hanin Zoabi immediately after the elections, denouncing her as a political pariah. And so the question remains: will this patriotic center save the Israeli liberal order by pushing back racist legislation? Will it cooperate with political persecution or choose to protect the Palestinian minority against its own ethnocentric inclinations, merely for the sake of maintaining some semblance of the rule of law?

If the de-democratization trend continues, it would be interesting to see what impact it will have on the twin pillars of the Israeli system of rule, namely, the Israeli dictatorship. I am referring here to the political system that the ‘average Israeli’ perceives as something external to themselves, existing in the twilight zone of the occupation, when in fact it is integral to the political order in Israel/Palestine as a whole. The 45-year-old denial of voting rights and rule over the Palestinian population was of course irrelevant to the Israeli media covering the elections. Mainstream US and international media, devoting pages towards the Jewish-Israeli ‘left’, ‘center’ and ‘right’, also completely ignored it. The irrelevance of the occupation to the Israeli voter in these free and democratic elections must be understood as being painstakingly manufactured. The occupation grinds on as if taking place in an unrelated, autonomous universe. During the week of the elections several so-called ‘shooting incidents’ occurred, in which four innocent civilians were killed in the West Bank. One of them was a 16-year-old boy, who was shot point-blank by soldiers near the separation wall south of Hebron. And just before the elections the army violently evacuated hundreds of Palestinian activists from the so-called ‘E1 zone’ in the West Bank, where they had erected a makeshift settlement to protest Netanyahu’s plan to build more illegal Jewish settlements.

This new non-violent method of resistance in the occupied territories not only gave rise to a new social category – the Palestinian ‘settler’ – but more profoundly tore the mask of hypocrisy off the Israeli regime of separation, with its rigidly separate mechanisms of ruling over citizens (Jews and the Palestinian citizen minority) and disenfranchised out-groups (Palestinians in the occupied territories). The methodology employed by the Bab Al Shams activists draws attention to this dual system of rule specifically and makes its existence impossible to deny. The few times the state orchestrated an evacuation of Jewish settlers from “illegal outposts,” these were media spectacles showing soldiers shedding tears (rather than shooting tear gas) and hugging settlers in broad daylight. The violent beatings and mass arrests of the Palestinian settlers in the Bab Al Shams outpost, conversely, were conducted in the dead of night, and not before the army had first removed all Israeli and foreign journalists from the area in the usual dictatorial fashion.

Israel’s regime of separation must continuously separate the democratic from the dictatorial and conceal their relations of dependence, and ultimately their systemic unity. What would happen, however, if the gradual erosion of the liberal order continues, and the democratic space for both Jews and Palestinians, who are luckily still somewhat protected by the democratic order, continues to shrink? Will it take its course until there is no liberal order to speak of? What would happen to a regime, whose entire edifice leans on the two pillars of democracy and dictatorship, if the democratic pillar collapses? Ironically, the de-democratization process, which is marked by anti-democratic legislation, a sustained attack on basic civil liberties, the repression of dissent, the denial of cultural autonomy for minorities and the decimation of organized opposition, is a serious threat to the stability of the regime. It is threatening because it logically leads to a regime collapse, but what exactly would this regime collapse scenario entail?

Critics of the Israeli regime argue that the occupation, combined with the ethnic cleansing ideologies and the racist agendas touted by candidates in the Israeli elections, make it difficult to call the Israeli “democracy” anything but a façade for an apartheid system. Skeptics of Israeli democracy rightfully point out that a democracy for Jews only cannot be seriously called a democracy. But, what this perspective fails to appreciate is exactly how critical it is to the Israeli system of rule to maintain both democracy and dictatorship in tandem. What is lost is how democratic legitimization enables the permanent dictatorship, not as a mere façade but as a fundamental logic of the state, a raison d’état. What follows then from the fact that liberal institutions and above all the parliament and elections are being turned into mere instruments of brute force is some sort of a totalitarian fascist mobilization. In such a scenario there is no room for disagreement, no vaguely centrist middle ground, and only one shade of extreme right. We are then faced with a sovereign that declares itself to be beyond the law, representing directly the “will of the people.” Israel indeed puts the demos above the law often enough to deserve the label of crypto-fascist state. But my idea is that what this analysis ultimately entails is different from what defines the current regime of separation, operating within the logic of inclusive exclusion, the logic of control and containment. For, when Israel becomes a truly fascist state, it is likely to transform itself into a regime operating with a totally different logic: the logic of cleansing, and taken to its most logical extreme – of genocide. In my careful estimation, notwithstanding the indiscriminate shooting of civilians and the killing of 140 civilians in Gaza this October, we are not quite there yet.

Sure enough, the scenario of mass fascist mobilization (perhaps as a backlash of the progressive mobilization of the summer of 2011) is not entirely implausible. Yet, it seems remotely likely also because the white middle-class Yair Lapid voters, the everyday type of “salt of the earth” patriots, are all major beneficiaries of the status quo. Any change to the status quo is going to be perceived as unfairly aggravating their “share of the burden” to use a Yesh Atid-like slogan. It will be resisted as unnecessarily steering the country away from what this rather homogenous group covets for securing a Western OECD-level quality of life. So there is reason to believe that with their 17 seats in the Knesset, Yesh Atid will be compelled to put up a strong fight for maintaining the status quo if only to block the deterioration of the liberal order and the collapse of the regime of separation. More than anything, this election proved that Israeli society is not yet ready for the alternative scenario, one in which society enters the permanent crisis that Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci identified as “terminal,” a trigger for “crossing a regime threshold.” Mass mobilization in 2011 did not generate such a political crisis. It did not lead to the emergence of new resistance to the powers that be or to new power blocs. In fact, the recent elections buried the existing chance of hegemonic change, though hopefully not for good.

For the majority of Jewish-Israelis the recognition that the current regime of separation is evil and unsustainable and that a more just and inclusive democratic order must come about is beyond the pale, not something that in Gramsci’s terms they can “identify” with. Instead, in this election, despite strong undercurrents of criticism directed at the current socio-economic order, perhaps the most radical to date, many more chose to passively accept the existing political order as fait accompli.

This is not to say that there is no alternative reading of the political reality. It does exist, and is largely shared within the milieu of Israeli civil society organizations, but it is not widely shared beyond its narrow confines. This alternative reading demands that Jewish-Israelis give up their special privileges as Jewish citizens of the Jewish state. Most Israelis cannot identify with this, not simply because they are too racist, crudely put, but because they do not consider themselves as particularly privileged. As Israeli sociologist Nissim Mizrahi succinctly put it, for many, the only card they can play to better their situation is the claim that the state is theirs. We have to ask why: why is Israeli civil society perceived as representing nothing but itself, and the socio-economic privilege of its members? Why are the critical perspective and the democratic alternative it promotes so vehemently rejected? Why has civil society played such a minor role in the summer of 2011 protests, and why have we not managed to connect the popular struggle for social justice to the struggle to end the occupation? Why have we not been able to produce entrepreneurs of hegemonic change with an agenda that can actually convince the majority that dismantling the dictatorship and truly democratizing Israel/Palestine is the way forward?

I have no clear answer to these questions, only some painful realizations. Firstly, that progressive forces in Israel need to find a more authentic language for political opposition than the lofty language of universalisms and human rights, which rings hollow to so many ears. Secondly, that Israeli civil society must look critically at its own usefulness and contribution to the separation regime and the maintenance of the status quo. Finally, and most devastatingly, we must consider that even while undergoing this process of self-reflection, a future scenario of a terminal crisis leading to a process of genuine democratization may not involve Israeli civil society in any meaningful way.

I do not wish to paint here a picture of Israeli society and its civil society as immune to change and under the firm grasp of the current regime. One should always consider the opposite: that the regime is relatively stable but that there are already social undercurrents strong enough to constantly threaten its stability from within. I believe that we can speak of a movement in the direction of “terminal crisis” in the Gramcian sense only if and when opposition from within Israeli society joins that from out-groups in the occupied territories. Moreover, it is imperative that we look at the state of the Israeli liberal democracy as a sort of seismographic indication for the stability of the regime. At the moment, it seems that the incurable contradictions of democracy and dictatorship have not matured yet into a full- blown crisis, a political earthquake.

To end on a more hopeful note, in case the process of elimination of Israel’s liberal democracy continues after the elections, this process will inevitably bring us closer to the moment of truth. If the extreme right in power successfully completes its mission, it will unwittingly bring down the separation regime. This will be a clear wake-up call for mass mobilization. This time for a whole new order, fascist or not.

– Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

Over the course of my career as a practitioner and researcher in the field known as “peacebuilding,” I have worked alongside thousands of people in conflicted societies, including in Iraq, Burma, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, the Balkans, and elsewhere. In this article, I explore a dilemma I see in the field, namely the increasingly singular emphasis on grand narratives of peace, known as “Peace Writ Large.” I fear that this frame, while valuable in many ways, may have the unintended consequence of actually undermining inquiry into and support for the powerful micro interactions that occur in even the most polarized conflicts. I argue that we must not lose sight of the power embodied in “peace writ small.”

Since the mid-1990s, approaches to theory-building, policy-making and intervention in conflict have increasingly emphasized macro, long-term societal changes, first under the rubric of “conflict transformation” and now “peacebuilding”.

Building on Johann Galtung’s fundamental concept of positive peace (meant to contrast with “negative peace,” meaning the cessation of violence), “Peace Writ Large” articulates an expansive vision, embracing human rights, environmental sensitivity, sustainable development, gender equity, and other normative and structural transformations. (Chigas & Woodrow, 2009). Anderson and Olsen (2003:12) define Peace Writ Large as comprising change “at the broader level of society as a whole,” which addresses “political, economic, and social grievances that may be driving conflict.” Lederach (1997:84), integrates Peace Writ Large into his definition of peacebuilding, which is:

“…a comprehensive concept that encompasses, generates and sustains the full array of processes, approaches and stages needed to transform conflict toward more sustainable, peaceful relationships…Metaphorically, peace is seen not merely as a stage in time or a condition.  It is seen as a dynamic social construct.”

The focus in this article does not allow space for a full discussion of the rich dialogues and debates relevant to peacebuilding or Peace Writ Large. That said, I note that in my own work I have found that this meta approach expands our tools of engagement and pushes us to move beyond official “Track I” diplomacy and state-based mechanisms, to involve civil society, youth, women, faith leaders and others left out of traditional approaches to violent conflict.  I have worked with university educators in Iraq, police in Northern Ireland, resistance leaders in Burma, human rights defenders in Maldives, Lebanese youth, international observers in the West Bank, development practitioners in Timor-Leste, and others, to support them in articulating and strengthening their own roles in relation to peace. I have seen how a broad view of peacebuilding is critical for deeply transforming intractable conflicts.

However, I see that this trend also presents serious problems for theory and practice. Fundamentally, the problem comes down to what is being noticed and privileged in research and practice. As the lens widens to embrace a grander narrative of peace, dynamics of conflict and violence appear even more monolithic and without solutions. The fragile seams and small spaces, in which people and institutions do take enormous risks to engage across conflict lines, are overlooked or disregarded. They are obscured like hairline cracks in a massive obelisk.  These cracks represent micro peace capacities that must be noticed, analyzed, and strengthened. In fact, a recent report by a leading institution in the field explicitly prescribes this approach: “Rather than focusing on micro-level interventions, a systems approach to peace allows for macro-level planning and cumulative impact.” (Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2012:6)  My concern is that the increasing focus on Peace Writ Large actually leads us away from the very sites that offer some of the most innovative and powerful opportunities to change the dynamics of intractable conflict. I suggest that this could be one of many reasons that observers write increasingly of “incomplete” and “unconsolidated” peace (Daadler & Froman, 1999).

Therefore, I suggest we explore the power of the small in the context of the monolithic. Important preliminary research has already been done on the impacts of “peace writ little,” defined as “a local or community level of sustainable peace…coming from work on more effective mechanisms for resolving interpersonal disputes, land conflicts…or political, cultural and/or ethnic tensions at a local level.” (CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program, 2012:2)  However, I am here arguing for the need to look at an even more granular level of interaction, at what might be termed “peace writ small”.

Several social theorists have worked to illuminate the intrinsic power of the very small. In Violence, his epic exploration of the dynamics of social violence, Randall Collins focuses on micro interactions and face-to-face encounters, from muggings to the 9/11 cockpit fights. In explaining the importance of interaction, versus structures or institutions, Collins argues that, “…everything we have hitherto referred to as ‘structure’…can be found in the real behavior of everyday life, primarily in repetitive encounters. (Collins, 2008:17)

Social psychologist Peter Coleman’s groundbreaking work on intractable conflict focuses primarily on broad systemic and structural concerns.  However, some key concepts in his “Attractor Landscape Model” shed light on the power of micro interactions. For instance, “latent attractors”, are small but important anomalies in the conflict narrative. Individuals who transgress conflict norms to do business with enemies, serendipitous encounters, and mundane, (if hidden) interactions go against the script of the hegemonic conflict narrative. He calls these “latent attractors” because they may have the power to begin coaxing conflict out of its intractability. Coleman argues that, “These cracks in the foundation of our understanding of the conflict and of the other parties are often important sources of different information.  These latent attractors may prove to be avenues for escaping the conflict.” (Coleman, 2011:101)

Jeffrey Goldfarb’s work has influenced my own thinking and practice. Goldfarb describes the often hidden political power of everyday social interaction (Goldfarb, 2006). This power is particularly important in contexts of total institutions, authoritarian regimes, and intractable conflicts.

Goldfarb describes the overall framework as “the politics of small things.” He theorizes that everyday life is a significant domain for politics. Concurring with Foucault’s analysis, he notes that control, discipline and subversion are present and observable in everyday life. (Goldfarb, 2008).  However, Goldfarb sees something that Foucault missed: in such interactions, there are also possibilities for change. Goldfarb (2009) explains that

The politics of small things happens when people meet, speak and develop a capacity to act together on the basis of shared commitments, principles or ideals. Through these contacts, they develop political power. This power is constituted in social interaction. It has its basis in the definition of the situation, the power of people to define their social reality. In the power of definition, alternatives are constituted to the existing order of things.

He further asserts that when this power involves the “meeting of equals, respectful of factual truth and open to alternative interpretations of the problems they face,” it has the capacity to democratize relations and the social order. In my work, I have seen that these are precisely the conditions for building peace.

In illustrating the politics of small things, Goldfarb offers the example of a small group of people in an oppressive society sitting around a kitchen table, sharing frustrations, identifying “seams” in the smothering fabric of the regime, and discussing coping strategies. Alternative interactions, not condoned within the intractable conflict, are acted out at these tables. Therefore, these apparently mundane interactions become extraordinary sites in which people can reach outside of the constraints of repression and conflict. If we peer into markets, theaters, hospitals, pubs, schools, and even military checkpoints, Goldfarb asserts that we may see that “…people make history in their social interactions…democracy is in the details.” (Goldfarb, 2006:1) I have repeatedly found this to be the case in some of the world’s worst conflicts.

Microscopes in Action

I conclude my discussion with an example of “peace writ small” and the politics of small things in action. In 2005, I led a training and dialogue on peacebuilding with a group of Iraqis involved in economic development. The participants shared some goals, but the stratifications within the group were also significant, and the group was reflective of Iraq’s demographic diversity.

The event focused on increasing community participation in economic and political development.  One hallmark of the facilitating methodology I used in this initiative is allowing participants a great deal of freedom during the process.[1] Small groups engaged, discussed, and planned action. Participants moved freely from group to group, often appearing to exit the formal process altogether. People drank tea, smoked in the garden, and shared food. To a great degree, they met as equals.

Much of the interaction appeared totally unrelated to the task. At one point, one of my Iraqi colleagues suggested I should bring order back to the apparently chaotic process. I chose to not intervene.

In the closing plenary, participants each reflected on the experience, as they passed a symbolic item (a branch from an olive tree) around the circle. When the olive branch reached a young woman from the minority Turkoman community, she began speaking in the Turkoman language, rather than in Arabic or Kurdish, the two official (and dominant) languages of the country.

Suddenly, an older Sunni Arab man interrupted loudly, scolding her for not speaking in Arabic. He shouted, “Iraqis speak Arabic! Why are you here if you are not a real Iraqi? Speak in Arabic!” This man came from Baquba, a city that had seen intense violence. As we had agreed to allow people to conclude in any language, I reminded him not to interrupt. The woman quietly finished her comments.

When the olive branch reached the man who had interrupted, he started to say the foundational Muslim blessing, often invoked at important moments: “Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim – In the name of God, most Gracious, Most Compassionate…” After several words, he faltered and stopped. People prompted him with the next words of the blessing, but he held up his hand for silence. Then he started to weep, unable to complete his thoughts. He passed the olive branch to the next participant.

At the conclusion of the event, a participant complained that I had not really “taught” the group about democracy (one of their objectives). Suddenly, the elderly man who had interrupted earlier spoke up again, disagreeing strongly with the criticism. He insisted that the group had, in fact, “truly practiced democracy…because we were allowed to speak in our Mother Tongue and say what we needed to!” Others agreed, and the mood shifted to joyous celebration, unity and optimism, and away from tension and polarization.[2]

I maintain that this interaction was an example of the transformative power of the politics of small things and peace writ small. In this experience, the group transgressed the stultifying intractable conflict narratives. The historical pluralism in Iraq was re-embraced, and the ethnically divisive and anti-minority narrative of the Baath party (and of the current sectarian violence) was actively resisted. This group had met and spoken as equals, had developed a capacity to act, and ultimately had redefined the situation. This group engaged alternatives, which is miraculous in the context of intractable conflict. The man’s angry ethnocentrism, rooted in the intractable conflict narrative, had given way to tears and a renewed sense of freedom and possibility. A new narrative was enacted in that room, which, I believe, has long-ranging and important consequences for peace.

Conclusion

While I remain passionately committed to the optimistic vision of Peace Writ Large, I increasingly also believe in the power of the small to help guide the practice and study of peace building. A recent report by the Alliance for Peacebuilding (2012) argues that “Peacebuilding is on the cusp of a true revolution”. I concur, and I believe that the real revolution for the field will be in the details.

References

Peacebuilding 2.0: Mapping the Boundaries of an Expanding Field, Alliance for Peacebuilding, Fall 2012

Anderson, Mary B., Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1999

Anderson, Mary B. & Olson, Laura, Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners. Cambridge, MA: The Collaborative for Development Action, Inc., 2003

CDA Reflecting on Peace Practice Program. Issue Paper: “CLAIMS AND REALITY OF LINKAGES BETWEEN PEACE WRIT LARGE AND peace writ little”, 12 March 2012

Chigas, Diana and Woodrow, Peter, “Envisioning and Pursuing Peace Writ Large”, Berghof Handbook Dialogue No. 7, Peacebuilding at a Crossroads? Dilemmas and Paths for Another Generation, Berghof Research Center for Constructive Conflict Management, (2009), accessed at this Web address.

Coleman, P.T., Vallacher, R., Nowak, A. and Bue Ngoc, L., Intractable Conflict as an Attractor: Presenting a Dynamical Model of Conflict, Escalation, and Intractability (June 1, 2005). IACM 18th Annual Conference.

Coleman, Peter T., The Five Percent: finding solutions for seemingly impossible conflicts, New York: Public Affairs, 2011

—- “Polarized Collective Identities: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature”, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Teachers College Columbia University, p.3

Collins, Randall, Violence: a micro-sociological theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008

Daalder, Ivo & Froman, Michael, “Dayton’s Incomplete Peace”, Foreign Affairs

Vol. 78, No. 6 (Nov. – Dec., 1999), pp. 106-113, Council on Foreign Relations

Foucault, Michel, Power/Knowledge, New York: Pantheon Books, 1980

—-Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Random House, 1995

Goffman, Erving, The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959

Galtung, Johann, True worlds: a transitional perspective. New York: Free Press, 1981

Goldfarb, Jeffrey, the politics of small things. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006

—- “The Sociology of Micro-politics: An Examination of a Neglected Field of Political Action in the Middle East and Beyond”, Sociology Compass, Vol. 2, Issue 6, Nov. 2008, 1816-2008

—-“Resistance and Creativity in Social Interaction: For and Against Memory in Poland, Israel–Palestine, and the United States”, International Journal of Politics Culture and Society, Springer, Vol. 22 No 2, June 2009

—-Reinventing Political Culture: The Power of Culture versus the Culture of Power, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012

Lederach, John Paul, Building peace. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 1997

—-Preparing for Peace: Conflict Transformation Across Cultures, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1996

Ross, Marc Howard, Cultural contestation in ethnic conflilct. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Vallacher, R. R., Coleman, P. T., & Nowak, A. (in press).  “When do conflicts become intractable? The dynamical perspective on malignant social relations.”  In L. Trop (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Intergroup Conflict.  New York: Oxford University Press.

[2] From ZM personal field notes.

Obama’s Peace Prize was exciting, strange and provocative. There was political poetry and hope in it: the better part of America and its relationship with Europe and the world were being celebrated, as there was the hope that the dark side of American hegemony had passed. But there was also confusion: exactly why did Obama win the prize?

Obama’s critics saw in the prize confirmation that Obama was a cult figure, an eloquent player, but with no substance, winning the Nobel Prize for Peace before he accomplished anything on the global stage. Even his supporters were not sure exactly what to make of it. I was more convinced than most, but I understood my argument approving of his winning the Nobel Prize, published in Poland’s leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, as a provocation. Clearly, even Obama understood that there was a problem. As he noted in the opening of his lecture:

“I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who’ve received this prize – Schweitzer and King; Marshall and Mandela – my accomplishments are slight.”

But he turned this to his advantage, at least in giving his speech. The speech became an exploration of the complex relationship between war and peace, as he put it: “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace. And yet this truth must coexist with another – that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy.” He further reflected upon the role of political leadership, particularly his. It was a speech about the social condition and peace and his confrontation with this.

Obama understood the larger issue. Although rightly appreciated for his dissent from the geo-political and military policies of his predecessor, and clearly more reluctant to engage in military aggression, less unilateral in his orientation and deeply critical of the war in Iraq from the beginning, all good reasons to identify him with peace, he was still the leader of the premier military power in the world.

“But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars.”

The leader of the global hegemon as the Nobel Peace Laureate – he understood that there is a problem and made this the topic of his lecture.

The dilemmas as he saw them in his lecture:

“I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict – filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.”

He reviewed arguments for just wars, as he recognized that the need for such justification has been ignored for much of human history. Central values he identified were the fight for human rights and the struggle against human degradation, and also the need to minimize civilian causalities. But problems result. He observed:

“And while it’s hard to conceive of a cause more just than the defeat of the Third Reich and the Axis powers, World War II was a conflict in which the total number of civilians who died exceeded the number of soldiers who perished.”

He noted that real enemies continue, even with the demise of the totalitarian threats of the twentieth century:

“The world may no longer shudder at the prospect of war between two nuclear superpowers, but proliferation may increase the risk of catastrophe. Terrorism has long been a tactic, but modern technology allows a few small men with outsized rage to murder innocents on a horrific scale.”

And he drew the tragic observation:

“We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.”

Obama’s opponents accused him of making vacuous promises in his first Presidential campaign. We hear in his lecture quite the opposite. He was confronting the central difficulty. The pursuit of peace often includes the willingness to engage in military struggle, but that means peace, as an ideal, will, therefore, not be realized.

Note: this paradox, in his cogent account, is not the result of some fundamental innate aggressive drive, and there is no need to posit evil or sin as the cause of the paradox. Obama shows that we are locked into a dilemma. Peace includes the fight for rights and dignity, but in engaging in the fight, peace can and often is undermined. Aggressive and sinful drives do not explain this. It is woven into the fabric of social interaction. But Obama’s response to this suggests why his Nobel Prize may have had justification.

Meeting the Challenge

He started with humility, trying to stand on the shoulders of giants:

“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago [referring here to the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights]. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.”

The humility is based on his sense of who he is and how he came to be delivering his lecture:

“I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: ‘Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.’ As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak – nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.”

Yet, he also knows this is in tension with his present responsibilities:

“But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.”

Informed by President John F. Kennedy, he explored the possibilities for achieving peace not through a radical reform of human nature, but “a gradual evolution of human institutions.”

“To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I – like any head of state – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do, and isolates and weakens those who don’t.”

In light of recent events, specifically: the failure to close the prison at Guantanamo, the drone program, secret operations and the like, these words seem to stand as an indictment of Obama’s own policies. I think the remainder of the speech confirms this. Obama’s words stand as the basis of criticism of his own deeds, as his deeds suggests possible answers to the criticism informed by his words.

“Furthermore, America – in fact, no nation – can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary and undercut the legitimacy of future interventions, no matter how justified.”

He understands that there have to be rules governing the conduct of military force in order for that force to have any chance to provide the basis of peace. Yet, he oversees and expands the unilateral use of drone warfare without clearly articulated and generally agreed upon rules of this deadly military game.

The Nobel Laureate Obama as critic of President Obama:

“Where force is necessary, we have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct. And even as we confront a vicious adversary that abides by no rules, I believe the United States of America must remain a standard bearer in the conduct of war. That is what makes us different from those whom we fight. That is a source of our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America’s commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor – we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it’s easy, but when it is hard.”

But the Nobel Laureate would not be surprised by the President’s actions as he observed: “Even those of us with the best of intentions will at times fail to right the wrongs before us.” He presents guidance about how he should proceed, suggesting specific ways that we can build a just and lasting peace, with the different ways built upon a single vision. He explained in detail his position but then summarized:

“Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. All these are vital ingredients in bringing about the evolution that President Kennedy spoke about. And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more – and that’s the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there’s something irreducible that we all share.”

… if we lose that faith – if we dismiss it as silly or naïve; if we divorce it from the decisions that we make on issues of war and peace – then we lose what’s best about humanity. We lose our sense of possibility. We lose our moral compass.

Like generations have before us, we must reject that future. As Dr. King said at this occasion so many years ago, “I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the ‘isness’ of man’s present condition makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ‘oughtness’ that forever confronts him.”

Obama’s position is nuanced, thoughtful and political (in both the good and the bad sense). He identifies with radical peace advocates, those who present a principled opposition to violence, but as a responsible politician he cannot live by their principles alone. Thus, the tension between his stated ideals and his policies.

There are two ways of interpreting this. Either he is a hypocrite or a statesman. He is able to depict ideals in his speech, and to declare commitment to their pursuit, but he is also committed to dealing with difficult realities in consequential ways in his actions.  How we judge the relationship between the ideal and the reality is a matter of political opinion, more or less informed.

Some are sure that Obama’s Peace Prize was undeserved and that his subsequent actions confirmed this. Not only did he do little before he won the prize. Subsequently, he has not acted as a Nobel Peace Laureate should. He escalated the war in Afghanistan. The U.S. drone program has been greatly expanding during his watch, without clear justification and without a public specification of its limits. And under his leadership the U.S. played a key role in the war in Libya. In many ways, he has continued Bush’s policies and directions.

Others will counter that Obama actually has helped de-militarize American foreign policy, winding down two wars. He has publicly and clearly affirmed U.S. commitments to respect the Geneva Agreements and ended the American use of torture, so called “enhanced interrogation.” And under Obama’s leadership, American military engagements have been multilateral and debated in and supported by the United Nations. This was noteworthy Libya, and is being repeated right now in Mali. His policy of “leadership from behind” which is much ridiculed by his militaristic critics, certainly appears as a step in the direction of a more peaceful world order. The term refers to a change in the use of American force in the world. It suggests that the U.S. will not use military force on its own without international support.  Rather than imposing American will with America’s overwhelming power, he seeks to embed American power within internationally legitimate concerted actions.

I actually appreciate both this support and criticism of Obama. Both are consistent with Obama’s lecture. On the positive side, in a threatening world, he has somehow managed to work for the ideal of peace, but he has also fallen short of the very ideals that he has publicly embraced. His lecture illuminates both the criticism and the appreciation, worthy of careful consideration by those concerned with the issue of peace in our times. The commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military force struggling with the dilemmas of the power at his disposal, an intriguing exercise, worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, as he confronts the social condition.

Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., December 3, 2012, “Lincoln:Art and Politics,” Deliberately Considered.

Goldfarb, Jeffrey C., December 13, 2012, “The Social Condition,” Deliberately Considered.

Makiya,, Kanan, 1998, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, University of California Press.

Michels, Robert, 2008, Political Parties, A Sociological Study of The Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Kessinger Publishing, LLC (originally 1915).

Obama, Barack, 2009, “A Just and Lasting Peace,” Nobel Lecture.

I was once invited to speak at a conference in Sigtuna, near Uppsala, in Sweden. The conference dealt with religious sociology and a few clerics were present. One of them was a famous Danish Imam, Abu Laban. He had ignited what came to be known as the Danish scandal of the Mohammed Cartoons (Favret-Saada 2007). I had exchanged a few words with him and was being interviewed by a Swedish newspaper. Abu Laban was seated nearby. In fact, he listened to the interview. Sometimes he nodded. Sometimes he smiled. I could hardly object to his presence without being rude. But then, the Imam started answering the questions that were put to me.

Although I do not remember how I reacted, what happened on that day illustrated a fundamental distinction established by Erving Goffman, between the “ratified” listeners of a verbal exchange and those who just happen to be there.

Being present and technically able to hear everything that is said does not make you a partner in a conversation. Unless “ratified” as a listener, you are just “overhearing.” An implicit protocol expects overhearers not to listen, since listening would amount to a form of eavesdropping. As to intervening, it clearly establishes that you have been overhearing and constitutes an additional transgression. Intervening takes overhearing one step further. It is, and was in the case of the Imam and me, an intrusion.

I believe that Goffman’s distinction between ratified participants and overhearers can be transposed on a larger scale, concerning those conversations societies hold with themselves under the name of “public sphere.”

2. Destabilized public spheres

Our vision of the public sphere is predicated on the implicit model of a conversation between a given nation- state and the corresponding civil society, with central media connecting centers and peripheries. This geography of centers and peripheries has been submitted to many waves of destabilization. After having been structured for a long time in national terms and dominated by central television organizations, public spheres have grown in a number of directions, most of which involve a post-national dimension. Three such directions are particularly significant.

First, mega television networks offer world audiences vantage points that are, in fact, nationally or regionally inflected (Al Jazeera, BBC World, TV5 Monde, CNN International etc.), but aim at publics much larger than nations. In this case the model of national television is relativized from above. It is challenged by supranational television.

A second challenge emanates from the new media.  Digital public spheres subvert national space through decentered interactions often described in terms of rhizomes, networks or capillarity. In this case, the national model is relativized from below.

A third challenge comes from television broadcasts that cater to immigrant populations and help in constructing or reconstructing spectral communities, disappeared nations, forgotten empires, actual diasporas. These “transnational” televisions broadcast their programs across national borders. The national model is challenged here by the multiplicity of centers catering to the same peripheries. It is challenged sideways (Dayan 2009). Together these three challenges have resulted in a profoundly transformed situation.

The displays offered in the mediated public sphere were meant to be part of a conversation between state and civil society. The partners of this conversation keep changing. Some partners disappear. New ones emerge. Digital media allow debates within civil society. Simultaneously, the combination of supranational and transnational media is no longer addressing what Goffman would call a “ratified” partner (Goffman I981).

A concerned public was cast in the role of that “ratified” partner. But what circulates today on television screens is available to publics that are not concerned at all. These publics belong to countless societies. They cannot possibly be the “ratified” partners of all the conversations they routinely witness. In such a context, world spectators willy-nilly occupy a position that used to be that of eavesdroppers. New media configurations have placed them in a position of overhearing the deliberations of others.

This does not mean that public spheres are no longer providing an arena for debate. In fact one could speak of two spheres imbricated in each other. The first is the classical public sphere, the site of a conversation of a society with itself, the site of a critical interaction between civil society and the state. The second is incredibly larger. But is it devoted to any conversation at all? Would I be correct in characterizing it as a public sphere of overhearing? Of eavesdropping? Of spectacle?

3. Breaking into a public sphere, Putin speaks to the French

Take the case of Gerard Depardieu. He is a famous actor who belongs to the small group of the very rich Frenchmen whom the present government expects to pay 75% of their income in taxes. Depardieu could escape this enormous taxation by doing what other French millionaires do: fleeing to England, Belgium, or Switzerland. But Depardieu does not simply wish to escape taxation. He wants to protest it. In an open letter to President Hollande, he announced his decision of returning his French passport. This theatrical gesture is very much in line with some of his most famous parts (“Jean Valjean,” “Cyrano de Bergerac”). An expert at bravado antics, Depardieu recently urinated in public when denied access to an aircraft’s toilet. Returning his passport is a gesture meant to influence the French public opinion.

But Depardieu is “overheard.” Russian President Putin has scores to settle with the French government (support given to the Syrian opposition; visa requirements for Russian nationals; protests after his violent silencing of the “Pussy Riot” singers). Putin grants Depardieu a Russian passport, which he ceremonially hands over to the actor during a much-publicized encounter in Sochi on January 7^th, 2013. Putin’s gesture is of course meant to impress the Russian public sphere. But it is also directed towards the French public sphere. In other terms: A French debate is overheard by a foreign politician, and this foreign politician invites himself into the debate.

Knowledge gathered by “overhearing” a national conversation is used by an outsider to break into that conversation. Terrorist leaders excel at this. Bin Laden made a point of addressing the American nation over the head of its leaders, and the attacks on Madrid’s Atocha station took place just before the Spanish national elections. As in the case of my Swedish interview, uninvited participants are forcing their way into an ongoing conversation. They are not ratified participants. Do they need to be?

4. Is it absurd to speak of overhearing and intruding?

“No,” says Habermas’ disciple Jean Marc Ferry (Ferry I989). Concerning ourselves with events that are likely to have no impact on our lives could illustrate the philosophical norm of a rational, impartial and potentially infinite public, a public that is large enough to encompass the whole of humanity. Why should a “public” sphere stop being public as soon as one crosses the boundaries of a nation state?

“The notion of ‘public’ is part and parcel of the definition of a public sphere. Note that the public in question in no way limits itself to one nations’ electoral body. It rather includes all those who are susceptible of receiving and understanding messages that are circulated throughout the world. Virtually, this public amounts to the whole of humanity … One could describe the public sphere as the medium in which Humanity offers itself in spectacle to itself.”

And Ferry adds:

“This means that the ‘social public sphere‘ in no way conforms to the national borders of each civil society … It is not merely the site of a communication between each society and itself, but rather the site where different societies communicate with each other.”

Ferry’s point consists in reiterating a philosophical postulate. The public of the public sphere encompasses the whole of humanity. This is true if one sees the global public sphere as embodiment of universalism. Yet the reality seems more prosaic. Of course civil societies that are politically “contained within the confines of nation states,” can “easily penetrate each other.” Is such interpenetration a sign of universalism? Is it devoid of antagonism between nations or groups of nations? Does it involve the sense of a common good? Is Putin’s splashy gesture a contribution to a debate? Or is it just a blow? Is the universal public invoked by Ferry gathered around a boxing ring?

5. Is it equally absurd to speak of spectacle?

Once again Ferry disagrees. When he describes the public sphere as “the medium in which humanity offers itself in spectacle to itself,” he adds:

“The word ‘spectacle’ might … lead to a misunderstanding. The public sphere is not to be reduced to a mere spectacle, be it of images or words. It also calls on discourse, on commentary, on discussion. It aims for a ‘rational’ purpose of elucidation.”

Ferry sees the supranational public sphere as one that promotes ‘rational’ elucidation. I would suggest that speaking of spectacle is the result of no misunderstanding. Of course, some events have international consequences. Some societies are so central that whatever happens in their midst might influence all other societies. Yet there are cases in which chances of a local event having relevance to the life of other societies are indeed very slim. Why then would the media of these other societies report on this event? When the media invites you to look at “the life of others,” are they always performing a ‘rational’ exercise?

Strictly speaking their reporting is not a matter of overhearing, since the media explicitly calls for your attention as a member of a given society. Yet if this attention leads to no relevant debate, wouldn’t it be correct to define the display that calls for it as a spectacle?

Boltanski notes that those you see taking part in distant events are routinely cast as victims, perpetrators, saviors, rescuers (Boltanski 1999). In this way, the watched world becomes a succession of moral fables. Watching them is justified in the name of information (the “public’s right to know”), but also in terms of a moral endeavor (each fable provides a villain). The main issue at hand is not: Why should I watch this?’ (Does it concern me?). But: Who is the villain? A Manichean grammar transforms a public sphere of “overhearing” into a “moral” public sphere; one which does not call for debate, but for applause or booing. Is applauding or booing a matter of rational elucidation?

Remember WikiLeaks? WikiLeaks celebrated itself as a victory of democratic transparency, a tribute to the “public’s right to know.” But what was made visible was often unsubstantial. The exchanges revealed in the divulged diplomatic cables were moderately “devious.” Like most conversations, they were based on trust and confidentiality, and thus vulnerable to exposure (Brooks, 2010). Many of the alleged scandals involved no more than the dubious thrill of eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation. Without much to condemn, “surveillance” was simply another name for bad manners. Yet WikiLeaks was promising a spectacle of moral turpitude. Is the accumulation of such spectacles the instrument of “elucidation” that Ferry describes? Or is it an instrument of obfuscation?

I admire Ferry and like the type of public sphere he advocates. But saying it is desirable is not the same as saying it exists. For the time being the choice seems one between the Charybdis of overhearing and the Scylla of spectacle. The question is: With what sorts of media could we bring Ferry’s desirable public sphere into existence?

6. Robert Merton and butterflies

The exploitation of overhearing by determined intruders, as well as its “mise–en scene” by those who want to present it as an ethical endeavor are conspicuous, yet less important than the phenomenon of overhearing itself. I would like to conclude on one last point.

By reaching unexpected viewers and listeners, any conversation in any public sphere is doomed to entail consequences that are not only unintended (what the French call “perverse effects”), but also unpredictable (what we now know as “butterfly effects”). “Overhearing” is no longer one of those quirky objects that met Goffman’s insatiable curiosity. Whether it is exploited by the virtuous or the ruthless, it has become a structuring factor in the interaction of public spheres. Merton’s study of unintended consequences was prophetic.

References

—Goffman, E. (1981). Footing. In Forms of Talk. Phila, U of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 124-159

— Ferry, JM.  « les Transformations de la publicité politique ») in Ferry, Dayan & Wolton, eds. le Nouvel Espace Public. Hermes 4  I989 ; I5 :27

–Favret Saada, Jeanne  (2007) Comment provoquer une crise mondiale avec 12 petits dessins. Paris. Les Prairies Ordinaires

–Dayan, Daniel (2009). « Sharing and Showing: Television and monstration »The Annals  of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2009 vol. 625 no. 1 19-31

–Brooks David (2010) « The Fragile Community » The NY Times

–Boltanski, Luc (1999) Distant Suffering, N Y – Cambridge University Press