By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 28th, 2012 
When I describe Barack Obama as a principled centrist working to move the center left, I confess, I am seeing in the President’s political orientation my own primary commitments. As a professor, as a participant observer of the opposition to previously existing socialism around the old Soviet bloc, and as an engaged American, this kind of center-left position makes the most sense to me.
I oppose true believers, of the left and the right, and am confused by those who see only their own position as intelligent and insightful, viewing their opposition as, at best, mistaken, and, more likely, as fundamentally mendacious. Working in the academic world, in my daily life, I mostly see this in my leftist colleagues who are certain about the superiority of their own political commitments. On the larger political stage, the fallacy of political certainty seems to be primarily a right-wing disorder, vividly epitomized in the Republican debates and on Fox News. The new direction of MSNBC, I should also note, has become a mirror image of Fox. I find it almost as hard to watch for more than a few minutes.
I look for alternatives to this, and I believe that this is not only a matter of personal taste or my specific political commitments. Hannah Arendt’s essay on truth and politics highlights the depth of the problem, as I have already reflected on here and here. Confusing political opinion with political truth and empowering that truth is a primary cultural characteristic of modern tyranny, and basing politics on factual lies, avoiding factual truth, is another definitive cultural characteristic of the tyranny of our times and of the recent past. For this reason, I am self critical about my own convictions and quite critical of many of my friends on the left, and also for this reason, I am on the look out for opponents on the right worthy of respect, from whom I can learn. Thus, my posts looking for conservatives . . .
Read more: In Review: Between Left and Right
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 21st, 2012 Most studies of the politics of collective memory assume a kind of enlightenment prejudice. Confronting the memory of a collective trauma or accomplishment is seen as being the precondition of some sort of progressive action. Examples I have thought about, both as a scholar and a citizen, include: the Jewish and specifically Israeli confrontation with the Holocaust as a political precondition of “never again.” And in a parallel fashion, the German confrontation with the genocide understood as a requirement for a decent democratic society in the shadows of the Nazi regime. The need to “re-remember” the trauma of slavery in the United States, as Toni Morrison put it in her classic novel, Beloved, as a way of addressing the enduring problems of race and racism in America. The need of Poles to remember their history apart from communist ideology as a way of developing an independent democratic movement in the 70s and 80s, contributing to the great events of 1989.
An example of a memory project left undone: I remember talking to a visiting scholar from China. He was studying the Cultural Revolution with the American journalist and student of recent Chinese history, Judith Shapiro. He admired the Jewish memory work on the Holocaust and wondered why there was no similar work being done in China, confronting the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He asked me once: was there something about the Jewish and the Chinese political culture, or, at least, their distinctive collective experiences that explained these different approaches to collective trauma? The supposition was that to remember was to set one free.
Poland
Then there is Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading intellectual opposition leader in the 70s and 80s, and later after the changes of ’89, the editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. And also importantly for me a personal friend and a friend and colleague of many at my university, the New School for Social Research, a frequent visitor since he received an honorary degree from us at the 50th anniversary of the University in Exile. He is memory worker, although he calls himself a historian. He uses history in . . .
Read more: For and Against Memory: Poland, Israel-Palestine and the United States
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 20th, 2011 
We live in difficult times, but the political capacity to address the difficulties may be emerging in America, none too soon and in the right place.
The Republican presidential nomination debates reveal how far the GOP is from addressing the concerns of the American public. It seems, as a consequence, that President Obama’s re-election is likely, even with the persistent tough economic situation. He makes sense. The Republicans don’t. They offer the 999 plan and other fantasies as economic policy. Obama proposes sensible realistic programs, the jobs bill and the like. The re-election, further, may very well have very significant consequences. The Obama transformation, which I have reflected upon in an earlier post, may proceed and deepen. I have this hope because of Occupy Wall Street.
OWS is already a resounding success, and it has the potential to extend the success for months, indeed, probably for years ahead. We at Deliberately Considered have been discussing the occupation. Scott and Michael Corey, like observers elsewhere, are concerned that the occupiers don’t have a clear program. They seem to be a hodgepodge of disparate misfits, anarchists, druggies, vegans, feminists, trade unionists, environmentalists and veterans of left-wing battles past, with no clear unified goals. The political causes they espouse seem to be as varied as they are as a group. They express a sentiment and sensibility, but they do not propose any policy. Yet, I think it is crucial to note that there is a simple and telling coherence in the protest and that there is a discernable achievement already that is being deepened as the occupation persists.
The occupiers are telling a simple truth. America is becoming an increasingly unequal society. The rich are getting rich and the poor (and working people) are getting poorer, especially the young and people of color. The occupiers call upon the media, the political class and the population at large to take notice, and notice is being taken as the occupations spread around the country and the world.
. . .
Read more: The Republicans, Obama, and Occupy Wall Street
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, October 3rd, 2011 
A new kind of politics is upon us. Many observers have highlighted the technological characteristics of this politics. Cell phones and Facebook and other social media are the heroes in these accounts of the Arab Spring, the Israeli summer, and now of not only the Tea Party but also Occupy Wall Street. Yet, these accounts are unsatisfying, because they don’t take into account the human agency of the new politics, the specific political struggles. We should clearly recognize the importance of the new media, but it seems to me that what is extraordinary is the way a type of power, political power as Hannah Arendt understood it, is becoming increasingly important. People are meeting each other, now virtually and not only face to face, speaking and acting in each other’s presence, developing a capacity to act in concert.
I analyzed the way this power works in our world in my book, The Politics of Small Things. It points to the way the power of “the politics of small things” was common to both the Solidarity Movement in opposition to the previously existing socialist order in Poland of the 80s and to the anti-war movement and the Dean campaign during the Bush years in America. Recently a Korean translation of the book was published. I wrote a special preface, including some thoughts on how the politics of small things worked in a social movement in South Korea, the Candle Movement. Now, those reflections are helping me understand what I am seeing in lower Manhattan and considering its potential. I think the power of the politics of small things is becoming a significant force throughout the world today in many different contexts, and that it is important to take notice in places far and near.
My general understanding as an outsider and non-expert of the Candle Movement: Using . . .
Read more: A Specter is Haunting the Powers That Be: Thinking about Korea while Looking at Wall Street
By Irit Dekel, August 2nd, 2011 
In Israel, for over three weeks, there have been demonstrations initiated by young people. They were first directed against the high cost of living, but they seem to be developing into something much larger, a movement for a systematic social change, addressing the growing disparities between rich and poor and the difficulty of living well, concerned about issues of social security and the deterioration in the provision of education and health care. What had begun with a consumer uprising against the high prices of cottage cheese over a month ago, leading to a boycott on dairy products (since in Israel they operate as a cartel, not open for competition), appears to be the beginning of what Rosa Luxemburg describes as ”an exercise in democratic action.” I observe the exercise as an Israeli living in Berlin, basing my commentary on newspapers, blog posts and conversations with friends at home.
The “cottage cheese revolt” is no trivial or accidental thing. Israeli dinner tables usually contain this staple, together with a salad. The most popular cottage cheese, Tnuva, has an illustrated home on its package and a well known advertising trope: “the cheese with the home.” Fighting for home is not only for affordable housing or the cost of living. The protesters also talk about the quick decline in the freedom of speech and of the Israeli democratic system under the current government. However, the demonstrators delay, for the time being, what they see as “political demands” for possible negotiation with the government. They fear this would compromise the call for “social justice,” and more immediately, could scare off some of the right-of-center demonstrators. According to Ha’Aretz today (August 2), “a document setting out the demands of the tent protesters in the areas of housing, welfare, education, health and economic policy is being drawn up by the movement’s leaders.”
The tent city in Tel Aviv . . .
Read more: The Tents Movement Uprising in Israel
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, August 1st, 2011 
I am convinced that the mess in Washington, which may still lead to another world economic crisis, and the resolution of the latest conflict over the debt ceiling, which probably won’t have any positive impact on the American economy and could make matters worse, is primarily a matter of political culture, not economics. I think specifically that the relationship between truth and politics is the root of the problem. Truth is both necessary and fatal for politics. It must be handled with care and in proper balance, and we are becoming unbalanced, driving the present crisis.
Factual truth is the necessary grounds for a sound politics, and philosophical truth cannot substitute for political debate. Hannah Arendt investigated this in her elegant collection Between Past and Future. I have already reflected on these two sides of the problem in earlier posts. I showed how factual truth, as it provides the ground upon which a sound political life develops, is under attack in the age of environmental know-nothingism and birther controversies, a politics based on what we, at Deliberately Considered, have been calling fictoids. And I expressed deep concern about a new wave of political correctness about the way the magic of the market and highly idiosyncratic interpretations of the constitution have been dogmatically asserted as the (philosophic) truth of real Americanism.
The posts by Gary Alan Fine and Richard Alba confirm my concerns.
Fine is sympathetic to the Tea Party politicians, specifically the fresh crop of Republican representatives in the House, and he reminds us that they are smarter and more honestly motivated than many of their critics maintain. I tentatively accept this. As a group they have a clear point of view and know the world from their viewpoint. They are likely no dumber, or smarter, than our other public figures. But still I see a fundamental problem, which Fine perhaps inadvertently points out when he . . .
Read more: Truth and Politics and The Crisis in Washington
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 26th, 2011 
I did not have the time to prepare a post while teaching with Daniel Dayan “Media and News in a Time of Crisis” in Wroclaw, Poland. This was unfortunate because there were news events during the period of the course that seemed to be a series of case studies on our topic. As we were examining theoretical material, which illuminates the roles media play in such cases, media were playing important roles, from the Murdoch scandal, to the terrorist attack in Oslo. Today, I will reflect on Murdoch and, more broadly, the tasks of making distinctions and coming to actionable judgments in the media. Oslo will wait for another day. I draw on the ideas of Eviatar Zerubavel, a distinguished sociologist of cognition and student of Erving Goffman, to make sense of our ongoing seminar discussion and the debate between Daniel and me.
The Murdoch presence in America has long concerned me, particularly Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. While Fox is a strange mix of opinionated journalism and political mobilization instrument, as I have already examined here in an earlier post, the Journal has been a distinguished business newspaper with a conservative slant on the news, with the slant increasingly prevailing over the news in recent years with Murdoch’s ownership. I was struck by Joe Nocerra’s analysis in The New York Times. Concern with factual reality has diminished. Editors went beyond improving reporter’s copy from the stylistic point of view to ideological “improvement.” Political and business news reported was re-worked to confirm the political positions promoted on the editorial page. Note the problem in these cases is that strong distinctions between journalism as a vocation and other vocations are ignored became fuzzy, in the terms of Zerubavel.
Such willful ignorance is also present in The New York Post, another Murdoch enterprise that I see in my daily life. I read it only late at night, picking up a discarded copy on the train when I have . . .
Read more: Making Distinctions: Murdoch, WikiLeaks, and DSK
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, July 6th, 2011 
I recently read a student paper which I found to be quite inspiring. The author, who wishes to remain anonymous, uses Hannah Arendt to make sense of the oscillations between hope and despair in Iran. The interpretation of Arendt and its application to an ongoing political struggle remind me of my response to the democratic movement in Poland in the 80s and 90s, also informed by a fresh reading of Arendt. The author sensitively explores the potential and limitations of free public action in an authoritarian political order, highlighting the resiliency of free politics. Here are some interesting excerpts from the study. -Jeff
 The streets of Tehran had turned into free public spaces days before the 2009 Presidential Elections. The vibrant scene of groups of people with antagonistic political ideals arguing and debating with one another was truly amazing and unique. After the elections, in a spontaneous concerted act, three million people walked in silence, protesting the results of the election. Those who walked up from Enghelab (Revolution) Square to Azadi Square experienced a sacred time and space. They experienced for a few hours a power that has been engrained forever in their minds. The actors involved created a story and have “started a chain of events,” as Arendt put it in The Human Condition. While they did not walk the path of revolution to freedom, they did experience freedom when they were debating in public corners.
On the days prior to and after the elections, Iranians experienced the extraordinary, because they challenged the “commonly accepted.” They “acted in concert” and owned the streets of Tehran from which they had always felt alienated. The streets of Tehran, ever since, have gained a different meaning. They are a reminder of a moment of “greatness” that will never lose its new acquired significance. It is “greatness” because it breaks through the commonly accepted and reaches into the extraordinary. Whatever is true in common and everyday life no longer applies because everything that exists in the extraordinary is . . .
Read more: Iran: The Meaning of Free Politics
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, June 10th, 2011 
As I reported last week, Daniel Dayan and I had a nice lunch in Paris on the terrace of a little restaurant at the Palais Royal. He ate blood sausage. My wife, Naomi, and I had couscous with chicken. I followed Daniel’s recommendation and ordered mine with olives, a dish that was his grandmother’s specialty back in Morocco. We discussed what proved to be the theme of last week, looking at North Africa and the Middle East from the point of view of Europe. But of course, we couldn’t and didn’t ignore the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal, then raging in Paris. The following evening, he extended his side of the conversation in a crisp essay, which we posted on Monday. Here I continue my side of the conversation.
My first response came in the form of an email I wrote him upon receiving his piece:
I don’t agree with you on all points, centered on two issues: the way the distinction between private and public moves (the most general issue), and how the presumption of innocence necessarily varies from one institutional sphere to the next, from the judiciary to the police to the press, for example. Consider the case of a child molester and how the presumption is enacted or not by different people placed differently in the society. This is an empirical and normative issue. More soon. Again it was great seeing you and great receiving the post.
In the case of a child molester, the police look for a suspect and attempt to confirm guilt, while in court there must be a presumption of innocence. Before, during and after a trial, the press and the general public judges, independently of formal legalities, and explores whether they think justice is done by the police and the courts, sometimes in a sensational way. The spheres of public activity and the press are different from the professional activities of the police and the courts. And quite clearly, when the issue is child molestation, the public and the press are predisposed, often without regard to the solidity of the evidence, to believe the police, given the nature of the crime . . .
Read more: DC Week in Review: DSK and the Presumption of Guilt
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, December 21st, 2010 
When we substitute a philosophic truth for politics, as I observed in yesterday’s post on the new political correctness, both truth and politics are compromised, and in extreme form, totalitarian culture prevails. On the other hand, factual truth is the ground upon which a sound politics is based. As Hannah Arendt underscores, “the politically most relevant truths are factual.” That Trotsky 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, is definitive of the totalitarian condition. I know we haven’t gotten to this point, but there are worrying tendencies.
Fact denial seems to be the order of the day, from fictoids of varying degrees of absurdity (Obama the Kenyan post-colonial philosopher and the like), to denial of scientific findings: including evolution, climate change and basic economics. (I can’t get over the fact that it seems to be official Republican Party policy that cutting taxes doesn’t increase deficits.)
The political consequences of denying the truth of facts are linked with the substitution of truth for politics. In order to make the contrast between the two different types of truth and their relationship with politics 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.
Arendt observes how Trotsky expressed his fealty to the truth of the Communist Party, in The Origins of Totalitarianism. . . .
Read more: Time to Face Facts
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