In my book, The Cynical Society, published in 1991, I had a simple project. I sought to show that along with the manipulation and cynicism of contemporary politics and political reporting, there was ongoing real principled democratic debate in American society. I criticized one dimensional accounts of American society that saw the debate between Ronald Reagan and his opponents, for example, as being about his personality and theirs, the interests he served and they served, and the manipulative strategies of both sides. They didn’t recognize that fundamental issues in American public life were being debated, specifically about the role of the state in our economy. I worried that people who didn’t like the prevailing order of things confused their cynicism with criticism, and in the process resigned from offering alternatives. My posts this week were extensions of that project to our present circumstances.

I attempted to illuminate the ways in which Barack Obama’s Presidency was and still is about fundamental change in my first post, and I tried to illuminate the terrain of principled political debate in my second post, additionally accounting for Obama’s position. America is a cynical society, but it is also a democratic one. A rosy colored view is naïve, while an exclusively dark one is enervating. I insist on understanding both dimensions.

But as the host of Deliberately Considered, I am learning and expanding my understanding. My two dimensional picture is limited and conceals some important matters, specifically the emotional dimension. We should keep in mind that we don’t only act on principle and reason and pursue our interests with strategies that are sometimes manipulative. We also act out and upon our emotions, as James Jasper explored in his posts a couple of weeks ago, and Gary Alan Fine has analyzed as well. Indeed Richard Dienst’s “bonds of debt,” that Vince Carducci reports on, are more emotional than rational, highlighting the connection between attachment, indebtedness and power, making it so that breaking the bank is a good thing. This is an imaginative act, working on emotions, revealing alternatives. I have my concerns about such thinking, skeptical as I am about utopias, but I understand how they can work reasonably to illuminate and form the basis of criticism.

Vittorio Arrigoni

But there is a much darker side to emotional politics revealed in Benoit Challand’s post and the discussion which followed. Emotions and emotional dispositions are part of the explanation for the assassination of Vittorio Arrigoni and our reaction to it. Chiara questioned Benoit Challand’s account when it came to the assassins. His suggestion that Salafists were responsible was not convincing. She felt that those responsible for killing a pacifist must have an overpowering reason and noted that “as Kant reminds us, human beings are not devils.” Yet we received a reply from Gaza which answered her assertion, poignantly explaining“to kill you do not need a reason you need to lose one,” affirming that the killer may very well have been a Salafist.  Chaira confidently maintained that we will know the identity of the killers if we can discover who could not tolerate what he was saying and who benefited from his silence. And then in a reply quite untypical, for its brevity and certainty, on this blog, Inggaw declared “This is an Israel move.” The ungrammatical sentence suggests that this reply also may be from Gaza or the region.

Although press reports emanating from the Hamas authorities in Gaza do suggest that this was a Salafist operation, gone bad, I don’t think we can know for sure at this distance. What is noteworthy in terms of our theme of the week is that what people “know” is as much a product of their emotional state as a product of their reason, and that this is an important if difficult part of the political situation in Israel – Palestine. To overlook this dimension means to not understand it. This has been revealed in some earlier posts coming from the region and will be explored in the future.

Keiko Fujimori

This dark emotional dimension of politics may play a decisive role in the upcoming second round elections in Peru and was evident in the first round, Rafael Narvaez reported in his post this week. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of a thief, her father, Alberto Fujimori, complicit in a regime of torture, may be elected, with a primary end of freeing her father from prison. She is not a rational choice, but one arising from a deep and dark emotional place. Narvaez speculates: “The Fujimoris of the world fit the almost Jungian image of the obscene, emasculating, and yet seductive father.” To ignore such emotional politics is to ignore the appeal and to turn away from confronting the horrors of authoritarians of all different sorts, archetypically from Hitler to Stalin. But clearly this is an emotional side that must be constrained and answered with alternatives.

Donald Trump

An assassination in Gaza and the possible return of a corrupt and brutal Peruvian regime, or at least the toleration of criminals associated with that regime, seems quite distant from New York, where I write this review. Yet, this dark side of politics clearly plays an important role here as well. How else can I explain Donald Trump’s remarkably high polling among potential Republican Presidential candidates, apparently at the top of the heap as he bizarrely escalates the attacks against Barack Obama, as the worst President in American history, an illegitimate office holder, born in Kenya? It seems to be a joke, but with public support emanating from an irrational emotional place, such jokes can become deadly.

Thursday, I considered President Obama’s speech, informed by William Milberg’s analysis of Senator Ryan’s budget proposal. My conclusion: the terms of the political debate for the 2012 elections are being set to the President’s strong advantage.  I am pleased, but even more pleased because two serious opposing views of America and its public good will be debated. A rational discussion about this seems likely. There will be smoke and mirrors to be sure, but this is a time for grand politics in the sense of Alexis de Tocqueville and a grand political contest we will get.

This is especially important given the present state of affairs in the United States and abroad. But Presidential leadership will not solve all problems. Indeed, much of the politically significant action occurs off the central political stage, in what I refer to as “the politics of small things.” This dimension of politics has been on our minds this week in the form of three very different cases: the Tea Party in the United States, and The Freedom Theatre and the International Solidarity Committee in occupied Palestine.

The Tea Party is a looming presence in American politics. But it is in a sense “no thing”, as Gary Alan Fine puts it. It is a social movement that emerged in response to major changes associated with the election and early administration of Barack Obama, and a response to the global economic crisis. Fine and I disagree in our judgment of the “Tea Party patriots.” Indeed, I, along with Iris, am not sure how rational they are, but that is actually a political matter. As an objective observer of the human comedy, i.e. as a sociologist, I am particularly intrigued by the no thing qualities of the Tea Party which Fine considers.

A media performance occurs. An agitated announcer denounces policies said to be supporting losers, calling for a new tea party demonstration. People, who can’t take it anymore, come together in small groups all around the country, using the phrase “tea party” to identify themselves with each other and to the general public. An assortment of conservative foundations, institutes, politicians and billionaires associate themselves with this social development, seeing in it what they will, empowered by the movement. It’s certainly not a political party. It’s not one thing. But this configuration of images, gestures, actions and strategies, clearly has energized at least a branch of the Republican Party, which now has a Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives.  This is an example of what I call the politics of small things. Not no thing, not a big thing, but a small one that has added up. That is how I understand the Tea Party.

People meet, speak and act in each other’s presence on the basis of some common concern. They develop a capacity to act in concert and do so. This is a form of political power. In the Tea Party we see how such power can fundamentally change the configuration of political forces in a society. I think that this power is a direct response to a similar power developed in support of the election of Barack Obama, something I analyze in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Political Culture.

Juliano Mer-Khamis

I also analyze in the book the project of reinventing through the politics of small things the militarized political culture of occupation, terrorism and anti-terrorism in Israel Palestine. This week we observed and reflected on the meaning of the assassination of two heroes of this project, Juliano Mer-Khamis, an actor and theater artist, based in Jenin, and Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian peace activist working in Gaza, engaged in non violent political protest and social action. They formed and took part in small endeavors presenting alternatives to occupation and violent resistance. They formed and acted in groups which worked in the shadows of the occupation. They were assassinated by forces of violent resistance in response to the effectiveness and importance of their actions. The limits of non violent resistance are revealed in the stories of their deaths, but the limits of militarized politics were revealed in their life’s actions.

Vittorio Arrigoni

Arrigoni took part in non violent resistance to the Israeli occupation and witnessed the daily struggle for survival and dignity in Gaza. He published a book with the poignant title We Remain Human, apparently challenging not only the Israelis, but as well Salifist radicals, his killers, who emulate the ideology and terror of Al Qaida. In Arrigoni’s life rather than his death, Benoit Challand sees political significance. This supports the democratic struggles of the Arab Spring, honoring the humane Gazan faces Arrigoni presented in his work.

Juliano Mer-Khamis was not only or primarily a victim of radical intolerance from Palestinian and Israeli sources, Irit Dekel emphasizes. The repression he faced and his violent end should not define his life. Rather, his art and the world he created for Palestinian boys and girls and their families and audience in the Freedom Theatre are of greater import. As Dekel put it, he should be remembered for “fighting for the freedom of the everyday” by non violent artistic means.

The freedom of the everyday has limited power. But the power persists thanks to creators and witnesses such as Mer-Khamis and Arrigoni.

And let’s remember, for better and for worse, this freedom of the everyday is at the root of the Tea Party movement and the movement that led to the election of Barack Hussein Obama, America’s first black President, setting the stage for the great debate about American political culture which the upcoming Presidential election will be.

Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian peace activist, was abducted in Gaza City yesterday, and then killed, apparently by a Salafist group opposed to Hamas. The news already has shaken Italy and Europe, and it will also make for some somber headlines here in the USA.

Arrigoni arrived in Gaza three years ago as part of the International Solidarity Movement, a network of foreign activists who deliberately choose to live in the heart of the occupied territories to bear witness to the continuing harassment of the Palestinian population at the hands of the Israeli occupier (be they military or of the radical settler movements). Some of these activists live in remote villages, some accompany ambulances through checkpoints. Often IDF soldiers let the vehicles through simply because there is a ‘white’ person onboard. Others organize protests around Israel’s Separation Wall or in Palestinian villages, such as Budrus, Ni’lin, non-violently protesting. All confront the apartheid nature of the occupation. For this reason, Israel tries to prevent them from entering its territories, attempting to silence these annoying witnesses.

Arrigoni was such a witness-activist. Choosing Gaza as the place of his activism, he was one of the very few non-diplomat foreigners present during the Operation Cast Lead (Dec. 2008-January 2009). His blogs and reports were published on the Italian leftist daily Il Manifesto for which he kept sending reports.

Gaza has been off limits to most foreigners and at times fully inaccessible to journalists and even ambassadors. Israel controls all of the borders around the Palestinian territories. Based on his experience in the 2008-2009 war, Arrigoni published a poignant book entitled Restiamo Umani, which can be translated in the affirmative as “We Remain Human” or in the imperative form as “Let Us Stay Human.” Giving a human face to the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza was Arrigoni’s mission. His was an urgent sense of witnessing the ordeal of ordinary Palestinians.

But why would a Palestinian group execute him? The official line is that a radical Salafist group, opposed to Hamas, had captured him hoping to exchange his release for the release of one of their leaders arrested by Hamas. It could well be that a small group of Palestinian extremists carried out the operation and lost control, leading to this tragic ending. Yet, the motives and timing of this killing remain unclear and pose many further questions.

Paola Caridi, an Italian journalist-scholar questions the motive of this killing in her latest blog posting. She provides excellent coverage of the Arab Middle East and has written a very detailed book on Hamas (in Italian and now available in English), based on serious fieldwork, which included direct contact with the Islamist movement. Here are some of her questions, coupled with my concerns, as to cui prodest, who profits from the crime.

The fact that Vittorio Arrigoni’s murder comes just a few days after the execution by masked gunmen of another peace activist, Juliano Mer-Khamis, in Jenin, is in itself very disturbing. This strongly contrasts with the pattern of peaceful popular revolts throughout the Arab world (except for what has become a civil war in Libya). Moreover, the name of the Salafist group involved in Arrigoni’s killing (Tawhid and Jihad), though known in the Iraqi context, is literally unheard of in the Gaza Strip, colleagues there tell me. And when previous radical Islamist groups have taken hostages (remember BBC correspondent Alan Johnston abducted for four months back in 2007), the ultimatum has always been respected. Finally, when these peace activists were seen to become too critical of their peers, they received other types of warnings, not death threats. (I cited an episode of intimidation that Juliano Mer-Khamis and his theater faced in 2009 in the introduction of a working paper on civil society and conflict transformation). The hasty execution of Arrigoni, again, does not fit the rather rare pattern of abduction-negotiation that has taken place in the Gaza Strip.

Unfortunately raising such questions will not bring Vittorio back to life. But they must be posed, especially in the light of an ongoing escalation of violence around Gaza. Hamas must investigate why nothing could be done to prevent this tragedy, and why the response to Arrigoni’s abduction was so slow. Certainly, there will be commentators and political actors in the region who will argue that the opponents to Arab autocracy are bloodthirsty and violent murderers and that stability, opposed to democratic change, is in the interest of all influential actors in the region. But this would not do justice to the nature of the Arab revolts nor to Arrigoni’s efforts to show the Gazans under a more humane face. Restiamo umani.