Slavoj Žižek: Kurds Are The Most Progressive, Democratic Nation In The Middle East

http://kurdishquestion.com/article/3079-slavoj-zizek-kurds-are-the-most-progressive-democratic-nation-in-the-middle-east

This interview with well-known philosopher Slavoj Žižek was conducted for Kurdish MedNuçe TV in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. In this, the first part of the interview Žižek talks about the Kurdish question and his views on the Kurdish people. The interview was translated by Kurdish Question.

Interviewer: A photo of you and Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan is being shared on social media. What is the story behind this?

Žižek: Yes. They showed me that photo in Turkey. It’s on the Internet and says that it’s from the 80s. But I must say that unfortunately it’s not real. However I’m definitely not against it being done. Conversely I think there’s a beautiful story behind it.

Öcalan is currently in prison and I think he attaches importance to his identity as an intellectual. I saw the list of books he has asked for in prison. He’s reading Foucault for example. As far as I know there’s a cliché about Kurds: They live in mountains and are a primitive tribe who are in pain. However I have witnessed that Kurds on the contrary are very secular. The Kurds are endeavouring to present themselves to the world as being enlightened and modern. This is the correct method. If I were in your position I’d do the same.

Interviewer: So you never met Öcalan…

Žižek: No unfortunately not. I would like to visit him in prison. But I’ve heard he is in isolation, in fact he can’t even meet his lawyers.

I know that nowadays he is engaging in more modest politics, he even defines himself as a citizen of this country. What he wants is autonomy for Kurds. He should have the opportunity to want more.

Let’s look at history: Kurds are the biggest victims of colonial separation. The approach of Westerners to the Middle East is based on which tribe is going to fight which one. In other words the West decides on this. There’s a tradition of Western intervention in the Middle East.

The biggest catastrophe was following WWI. The Italians, French and English decided on how they were going to divide up the Middle East. Syria was in the hands of Egypt and the other countries were in the hands of others. Due to this all borders are artificial.

Look at Iraq today: Eastern Iraq is Shia and under the influence of Iran, Western Iraq is Sunni. From the perspective of the people a federation would have been reasonable. Look at Afghanistan and Pakistan, it’s the same everywhere.

Interviewer: Do you see the situation changing for Kurds?

Žižek: Historically and in the background one can see a Kurdish map but in the foreground there are artificial borders. The superpowers will not allow it but if you ask me the best solution is for all Kurds to be united; at least the east and southeast of Turkey, the north of Syria and the north of Iraq. They might still be bound to the state in which they find themselves but historically they have the right to unite.

The safest place in Iraq at the moment is the Kurdish region. There are flights there from many places in the world. A legal system and law prevails. There are three groups in Iraq: the Sunni minority, the Shia majority and Kurds. Under Saddam the Sunnis were powerful, now we have the Shia hegemony. It doesn’t look too good. 

Therefore wouldn’t it be good to give the Kurds a chance to govern themselves? We know it is a utopia! Until today the Kurds have settled with defending themselves. They have never had an imperialist, aggressive inclination. They have never killed the others. Giving the Kurds the chance for self-governance means stability for the region. Kurds are the most secular group in the Middle East. To recognise self-governance to Kurds means support for peace. I know this and support the Kurds wholeheartedly.

Interviewer: You were in Istanbul a few days ago. How did you find it?

Žižek: Yes, two days ago. We spoke about love with a friend. We discussed theology and the slogan, “Love thy neighbour as thyself” in Christianity. We can say this to Turks: Love Kurds as thyself. What is happening now is the test of love.

I clarified something else too: Are you aware of the tragedy of the Kurds and Armenians? The massacre of Kurds and Armenians is not due to traditional Turkish barbarism but to the advent of the Young Turks. These things happened with birth of modernism in Turkey. Compared to today’s state the Ottoman Empire was more tolerant to minorities and different groups. Problems began with the Young Turks.

During the Yugoslavian War the largest Jewish minority lived in Sarajevo. Why? Because the Muslim minority had more tolerance for the Jews than the Christians did.

I would like to prevent any misunderstanding: What Erdoğan is doing today is savagery. Instead of building palaces he needs to look back and see which freedoms they had during the Ottoman Empire and what was better than now.

A short time ago I read the memoirs of a Frenchman who travelled to Istanbul at the beginning of the 19th century. His definition of Istanbul at the time is more tolerant than now. He writes of seeing rabbis and priests on streets. Compared to the nationalist 19thcentury Europe, Istanbul is more tolerant. If they want to return to the Ottoman Sultanate they should return to its laws and traditions!

The Ottoman era certainly had its ugly sides. For example if you were non-Muslim you had to pay extra tax. However there were some laws for minorities that are better than today.

All leftists know that both the empires in the East before WWII, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian, were more progressive on some issues than today’s states.

Kurds have a key role in the Middle East. When the Kurdish question is resolved all the issues in the Middle East will be resolved too. There is an irrational situation in the Balkans at the moment. Albania and Kosovo, two separate states but the same people. The West won’t allow them to unite, because they are afraid of a greater Albania. A Kurdish state in the Middle East conversely isn’t a threat to anyone. In fact it would be a bridge between peoples.

Interviewer: But the current situation shows that the opposite position has been taken. Oppression and violence against Kurds, especially in Turkey, is increasing…

Žižek: Turkey’s stance is disgraceful, scary. Erdoğan’s party isn’t going to win the majority in the upcoming election either. So I think that leftists, Kemalists and Kurds can form a bloc. Of course these latest clashes are serving Erdoğan. They want to present the Kurds as being the aggressors and pull them under the election threshold.

The threshold in Turkey is very high. That’s why this is a dirty game. It’s not just a matter of killing or beating the Kurds either. If the Kurds are left under the threshold what can social democrats do?

I find it positive that the Kurds have changed their approach. They need to work to promote and present themselves to the world rather than just looking for pity. In short the Kurds are not just people fighting in the mountains, but the region’s most progressive and democratic nation, group. This is how they need to present themselves. Every time I visit Istanbul I have many Kurdish listeners. The main aim of the Kurds’ propaganda should be to change the perception of the Western world regarding Kurds.

Interviewer: The international left has not supported or developed solidarity with the Kurdish struggle like it has with Palestine or Latin America. Do you think this is just because the Kurds didn’t present themselves in the right way?

Žižek: This isn’t your problem, but the problem of Western leftists who I am ashamed of. Most of the leftists here have drowned in their own clichés: Anti-fascism, opposition against the Vatican…

An interesting example I heard from Radovan Karadzic (Bosnian-Serbian politician): During the Yugoslavian Civil War Sarajevo was under Serbian siege, a humanitarian corridor could have been opened with very little Western pressure; but the West didn’t request this from the Serbs. Karadzic told me this himself. Again when Slovenia and Croatia separated, leftists opposed it; “It’s time to unite, why are you separating?” they said; but when the Catalans want to break away they support it. In other words there are peoples who have the permission to do this and others who don’t…

I don’t understand. The West supported Kosovo and Chechnya. But no one is saying anything for the Kurds. I think you need to analyse the global geopolitical movements behind the reason for this. As Kurds, and I’m not saying this in terms of violence, you need to play very cruelly. That is to say you need to play the powers against each other and comprehend them well.

Interviewer: But the results of a politics like this in the region is clear for everyone to see… The refugees…

Žižek: Listen, for me the biggest ethical and political scandal is this: Look at the Middle East, even European countries. If we were to generalise there are three types of countries: Very poor, medium-wealth and very wealthy. Where are the refugees? In poor or medium-wealth countries… So countries like Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt. There are more than a million refugees in each of these countries. Europe is quite wealthy in comparison, and there are some refugees here. However the policy of very wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or United Arab Emirates is one of ‘No to Refugees.” These countries don’t even have the right to say, “Sorry but this isn’t our war.” Saudi Arabia supports anti-Assad forces. This is shameful. Everyone is ready to isolate and sanction Israel, but what about pressuring Turkey for what it is doing to Kurds? Or pressuring Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia is without defence, because it is not just a traditional Muslim country, in a way it represents the Western banks. Its subsistence comes from banks. In other words Saudi Arabia is nothing without Western banks and I’m not even counting Dubai and the others! These aren’t just rich but also Sunni countries. They should have been closer to the refugees on a religious and cultural level too.

Interviewer: The Kurds have a vision, a model for an equal life: Democratic Autonomy…

Žižek: For me at this point the Kurds are very important. Now I’m going to say something ironic, which most people will not agree with: I think the Kurds need to be another version of Jews in the Middle East. So, not oppressive or invasive, but dynamic and open… The sensitivity of Kurds could be an example. The autonomy of Kurds is a great hope.

A person needs to be realistic. There is a crisis in the Middle East. From where or who can something new come? I think the Kurds are one of the places where something new is going to come from.

I always test my Arab friends who say, “I support democracy,” with the question: What do you think about the Kurds? You can test them with this. I can say this candidly: I want everything to go well for Kurds and want to visit them (in Rojava); but I don’t know how to do this. I really want to. And then I want to visit Öcalan outside his cell.

Interviewer: As you know there are cantons in Rojava…

Žižek: What is the chance politically of these cantons surviving?

Interviewer: They have made many gains in terms of self-governance until now…

Žižek: Maybe after a certain time there will be peace. However I don’t believe that Syria can be defended for too much longer. I think it’s too late. I don’t think Syria can be saved.

Interviewer: However there is a system being erected in Rojava, lead by Kurds, that includes all the peoples of Syria who were living together until now. 

Žižek: This is the problem. During the Assad rule, even though he is a dictator, there was some sort of ethnic balance. Yes Assad favoured his own group, and this was the problem.

If I were in the position the Kurds find themselves in I would go a little further. I don’t think it’s sufficient that there are cantons in Syria or the southeast of Turkey. There needs to be permission for these to be joined together. Maybe not as a separate state, but there needs to be unity. This would be a great gain.

I really send my best wishes. I want to visit those areas too. Are there universities in these cantons? How does one go there?

Interviewer: Yes, there are universities. You can go from Turkey or South Kurdistan (KRG)…

Žižek: And the Turkish state allows this?

Interviewer: Even though they are not very happy about it, they do…

Žižek: Of course, and then you will find my corpse somewhere nearby. No I’m kidding, I seriously wish to go. Could you tell me something, is there anyone to translate at these universities in Rojava? In other words can I speak English there? How will it work?

Interviewer: I don’t think you will have trouble with language. It is possible to find people who speak Kurdish, Arabic, English, Turkish, Armenian… indeed most languages.

Žižek: Armenian too? Then I’ll go! And do they have universities there too? If they did it would be amazing. OK, I will fly over from Turkey. I’m lazy. I don’t want to travel 10 hours in a car.

Slavoj Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural critic, and Marxistintellectual. He is a senior researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University, and international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. His work is located at the intersection of a range of disciplines, including continental philosophy,political theory, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, film criticism, and theology.

Fukushima Nuclear Disaster - New National Geographic Documentary

What's Inside Hillary Clinton's Pockets

Louis Proyect: Misusing German History to Scare Up Votes for Hillary Clinton

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Yves Smith

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/louis-proyect-misusing-german-history-to-scare-up-votes-for-hillary-clinton.html

Yves here. Among other things, notice how the Democrats have and are working to undermine the Greens, just as they have Black Lives Matter and the left generally. Never forget that the Dems are determined to crush the left, and perfectly happy to conspire with the right.

By Louis Proyect, who has written for Sozialismus (Germany), Science and Society, New Politics, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Organization and Environment, Cultural Logic, Dark Night Field Notes, Revolutionary History (Great Britain), New Interventions (Great Britain), Canadian Dimension, Revolution Magazine (New Zealand), Swans and Green Left Weekly (Australia). Originally published at Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

Over the last week or so, I have read two articles that offer a highly distorted version of events leading up to Hitler’s seizure of power that are put forward in order to help elect Hillary Clinton.

In “Can the Green Party Make a Course Correction?”, Ted Glick equates Jill Stein’s determination to run against both Clinton and Trump in every state with the German Communist Party’s “Third Period” turn. Referring to Jill Stein’s reference to Trump and Clinton on “Democracy Now” as being “equally terrible”, Glick linked her to the German CP’s refusal to unite with the Social Democrats against Hitler:

Jill’s words are an eerie echo of huge mistakes made by the German Communist Party in the 1930’s. Here is how Wikipedia describes what happened:

“The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933. During the Weimar Republic period, the KPD usually polled between 10 and 15 percent of the vote and was represented in the Reichstag and in state parliaments. The party directed most of its attacks on the Social Democratic Party of Germany, which it considered its main opponent. Banned in Nazi Germany one day after Adolf Hitler emerged triumphant in the German elections in 1933, the KPD maintained an underground organization but suffered heavy losses.”

In Harold Meyerson’s “Bernie, Hillary, and the Ghost of Ernst Thalmann”, the same historical analogy is used to get out the vote for Clinton but this time directed more at disaffected Sanderistas than Green Party activists who Meyerson likely views as beyond hope:

In the last years of the Weimar Republic, the real menace to Germany, Thälmann argued, wasn’t the Nazis but the Communists’ center-left, and more successful, rival for the backing of German workers: the Social Democrats. The SDs, he said, were actually “social fascists,” never mind that they were a deeply democratic party without so much as a tinge of fascism in their theory and practice. But as the Communists’ rival for the support of the German working class, the SDs became the chief target of the Communists’ campaigns.

Thälmannism, then, is the inability (be it duplicitous, willful, fanatical, or just plain stupid) to distinguish between, on the one hand, a rival political tendency that has made the compromises inherent to governance and, on the other hand, fascism. And dispelling that inability is precisely what Bernie Sanders will be doing between now and November.

I’m neither equating Donald Trump with Hitler nor saying he’s fascist in the classic sense. Trump has no organized private army of thugs to attack and intimidate his rivals, as both Hitler and Mussolini did. But Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and nationalist appeals; his division of the nation into valorous and victimized native-born whites and menacing non-white interlopers; his constant employment of some Big Lies and many Little ones; and his scant regard for civil liberties make him the closest thing to a fascist of any major party presidential nominee in our history.

Yet a minority of Sanders’s supporters fail to grasp the threat that a Trump presidency poses to the nation—to immigrants, to minorities, to workers, and even to the left and to themselves. I doubt more than a handful will actually vote for Trump, but Jill Stein and even Gary Johnson will win some of the Sanders diehards’ votes (though for voters, moving from Medicare-for-All Sanders to Medicare-for-None Johnson requires either extraordinary ideological footwork or simple brain death). In states where the race between Clinton and Trump is close, however, a Sanders diehard’s vote for Stein or Johnson, or a refusal to vote at all, is in effect a vote for Trump.

Both Glick and Meyerson have long-standing ties to the left. Glick has been a member of the Green Party for 16 years and before that worked with a small group promoting an “inside-out” electoral strategy. In many ways, that is much worse than being strictly “inside” the Democratic Party because the brownie points Glick has accumulated over the years as some kind of “outsider” gives him the leverage he needs to subvert the genuine radicalism of a third party on the left. In 2004 Glick was part of a group of “Demogreens” who engineered the nomination of David Cobb as Green Party presidential candidate instead of Ralph Nader, who they feared would siphon votes away from John Kerry. Basically this is the same strategy Glick is pursuing today with Jill Stein being demonized as the equivalent of the berserk Stalinists of the “Third Period”.

Meyerson was active in the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in the 1970s, a group better known as DSOC that would later on fuse with other groups to become the DSA. He is currently the vice-chair of the National Political Committee of the DSA and a contributor to liberal magazines both online and print.

Like Glick, Meyerson saw Ralph Nader’s campaign in 2004 as inimical to the interests of the Democratic Party although formulated in terms of defeating the horrible Republicans. Just as Glick argued in his article, Meyerson took Nader to task for not recognizing the differences between the two parties in “The American Prospect”, a liberal magazine he publishes. Referring to Nader’s appearance on “Meet the Press”, Meyerson took issue with his claim that the system was rigged:

He did, of course, assert that there were no very serious differences between the two parties, though host Tim Russert got him to concede that there were distinctions on such ephemera as judicial nominations, tax cuts, and environmental enforcement. The American government, Nader reiterated, was still a two-party duopoly.

So what does all this have to do with the rise of Adolph Hitler? The answer is nothing at all. Hitler is invoked as a kind of bogeyman to frighten liberals. He serves the same purpose as a warning from your parents when you were six years old. If you don’t brush your teeth, the bogeyman will get you. Now it is if you don’t vote for Hillary Clinton, der Führer Donald Trump will get you.

Unpacking and refuting such nonsense is dirty work but someone has to do it. To start with, it is necessary to put the German Socialists under the microscope to understand the historical context. If the German CP’s ultra-left position was a disaster, how else would you describe the social democracy’s failure to resist the Nazis? While there is no point in making an exact equation between the Democrats and the German social democracy (we should only be so lucky), it would have been incumbent on Meyerson and Glick to review its strategy especially since they are the American version of Weimar Republic reformists today.

Like the Democratic Party, the German Socialists cut deals with the opposition rightwing parties to stay in power. In effect, they were the Clinton and Obamas of their day. In 1928, the Socialists were part of a coalition government that allowed the SP Chancellor Hermann Müller to carry out what amounted to the same kind of sell-out policies that characterized Tony Blair and Bernard Hollande’s nominally working-class governments.

To give just one example, the SP’s campaign program included free school meals but when Müller’s rightwing coalition partners demanded that the free meals be abandoned in order to fund rearmament, Müller caved in.

Another example was his failure to tackle the horrible impact of the worldwide depression. When there was a crying need to pay benefits to the unemployed, whose numbers had reached 3 million, Müller was unable to persuade his rightwing partners to provide the necessary funding. Their answer was to cut taxes. If this sounds like exactly the nonsense we have been going through with the Clinton and Obama administrations (and a new go-round with Mrs. Clinton), you are exactly right. The German SP had zero interest in confronting the capitalist class. That task logically belonged to the Communists but the ultra-left lunacy mandated by Joseph Stalin made the party ineffective—or worse. When workers grew increasingly angry at SP ineptitude, it is no surprise that the most backward layers gravitated to Hitler.

The ineffectiveness of the Müller government led to a political crisis and its replacement by Heinrich Brüning’s Center Party. Brüning then rolled back all wage and salary increases as part of a Herbert Hoover type economic strategy. Needless to say, this led to only a deepening of the economic crisis and political turmoil. Eventually Brüning stepped down and allowed President Paul von Hindenburg to take over. And not long after he took over, he succumbed to Nazi pressure (like knocking down an open door) and allowed Hitler to become Chancellor.

Within the two years of Brüning and von Hindenburg rule, what was the role of the German SP? It should have been obvious that Nazi rule would have been a disaster for the German working class. Unlike the Salon.com clickbait articles about Trump the fascist, this was a genuine mass movement that had been at war with trade unionists and the left for the better part of a decade. Stormtroopers broke up meetings, attacked striking trade unionists and generally made it clear that if their party took over, the left would be annihilated. Indecisiveness in the face of such a mortal threat would be just as much of a failure as the “Third Period” but that is exactly what happened with the SP as Leon Trotsky pointed out in “What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat”, written in January 1932 on the eve of Hitler’s assumption of power.

In its New Year’s issue, the theoretical organ of the Social Democracy, Das Freie Wort (what a wretched sheet!), prints an article in which the policy of “toleration” is expounded in its highest sense. Hitler, it appears, can never come into power against the police and the Reichswehr. Now, according to the Constitution, the Reichswehr is under the command of the president of the Republic. Therefore fascism, it follows, is not dangerous so long as a president faithful to the Constitution remains at the head of the government. Brüning’s regime must be supported until the presidential elections, so that a constitutional president may then be elected through an alliance with the parliamentary bourgeoisie; and thus Hitler’s road to power will be blocked for another seven years. The above is, as given, the literal content of the article. A mass party, leading millions (toward socialism!) holds that the question as to which class will come to power in present-day Germany, which is shaken to its very foundations, depends not on the fighting strength of the German proletariat, not on the shock troops of fascism, not even on the personnel of the Reichswehr, but on whether the pure spirit of the Weimar Constitution (along with the required quantity of camphor and naphthalene) shall be installed in the presidential palace. But suppose the spirit of Weimar, in a certain situation, recognizes together with Bethmann-Hollweg, that “necessity knows no law”; what then? Or suppose the perishable substance of the spirit of Weimar falls asunder at the most untoward moment, despite the camphor and naphthalene, what then? And what if … but there is no end to such questions.

Now of course we are in a period hardly resembling the final days of the Weimar Republic. The good news is that a fascist takeover is highly unlikely since parliamentary democracy is more than adequate to keep the working class under control. The bad news, on the other hand, is that the left is so inconsequential and the trade unions so weak that there is no need for fascism.

But who knows? Another decade or so of declining wages and cop killings of Black people might precipitate the rise of a left party that has learned to avoid the reformist stupidity of the German SP and the suicidal ultra-leftism of the Stalinists. It is highly likely that people like Harold Meyerson and Ted Glick will be as hostile to it as they are to Jill Stein’s campaign today. Despite their foolishness, we should soldier on to final victory. The fate of humanity rests on it.

Ukraine's brutal war is still raging on after a failed ceasefire