Further thoughts on Left racism against Syrians

I wrote a piece on Zizek on Muftah and I'm publishing here a few points that didn't make it to the piece: 

There’s a serious crisis on the Left when condemnatory leaflets of Zizek were passed around in the same building where Marxist intellectual Tariq Ali spoke without any noticeable controversy in spite of his putatively anti-war speech in London last November where he argued that the entire Syrian opposition is either Al-Qaeda or ISIS—that is every single Syrian who is opposed to the barbarous regime of Assad is an extremist. Most Far-right groups basically agree. 

Ali went further in suggesting that the United States should “logically" join an alliance with the Russian and Syrian government to “bomb ISIS.” Russian and Syria airforces, incidentally, have overwhelmingly focused on attacking areas under rebel-held control rather than ISIS. As Syrian authors Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami exhaustively document in their book, Burning Country, the Assad regime since the uprising against it has focused on destroying communities where alternative democratic forms of governance have emerged. For instance, in January, when Russia and Syria were fiercely bombing rebel-held areas in Aleppo, Al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Jabhat Al-Nusra, deployed around 1000 troops to the city and within days more than half have left because popular protests have driven them out.

Tariq Ali, meanwhile, doesn’t merely argue that we—on the Left, presumably—should be neutral in a conflict between a defenceless population and a murderous dictator with an airforce, Ali is arguing that we have to stand with and ally with Assad and Russia to crush an uprising. Tariq Ali’s case isn’t an exception. Patrick Cockburn, for example, wrote a column for The Independent in October arguing that we should welcome Russia’s intervention Syria, lied repeatedly in Judith Miller-esque proportions and argued that the “moderate” opposition numbers only a few hundred people, a claim refuted by a leading scholar of Syria's warring factions. Patrick Cockburn is cited by esteemed figures as Noam Chomsky and, curiously, Rand Paul as valuable authorities on Middle-Eastern politics. Cockburn went on to be invited by the leader of the Labour party in Britain in order to brief Jeremy Corbyn and other MPs on Syria.

A far-right candidate (whose former leader party who has praised the Wehrmacht) came extremely close to winning the popular vote for the presidential elections in Austria. No such race has come so unforgivably close to becoming a reality since the Second World War. Thus, it really doesn't bear spelling out that portends such as these ought to compel the Left to reconsider it approach to the politics of intolerance. How so? When the Left—in proving itself to be ‘realistic’ and not naive—concedes the point to the right that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims, the Left is essentially digging its own grave. 

Today, esteemed figures on the Left ranging from Stephen Kinzer, Tariq Ali, Patrick Cockburn, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk and a plethora of liberal/progressive publications have adopted the line that Syrian refugees are “good” and "not terrorists." But when they are in Syria defending their communities against the barbarous Assad regime, they are either fanatical extremists or stooges of western imperialism. In other words, those Syrians are the Muslim baddies. This is the fatal concession to the far-right. Minus the defence of Syrian refugees as being the “good Muslims”, this is the exact position of practically every far-right group in Europe.  

Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that Zizek is genuinely concerned about the rise of the far-right in Europe and elsewhere. Regardless of his wrong-headed approach, it’s arguable that he senses that there’s something profoundly wrong in the way that progressives, liberals and the left talk about refugees and, by proxy, Muslims. It's arguable that the success of the far-right depends largely on the weakness of the Left. Is it the case that Leftists and liberals in Europe and North America are so ensconced in their solipsistic and Eurocentric epistemology that they’re inadvertently providing the far-right with ammunition? Maybe. 

The question is simple: how does one defend someone while robbing them of their voice, agency and history? A defence of minorities deducted from abstract notions of liberal tolerance is a strategy bound to fail those it aims to defend. 

Bernie Sanders, Steven Salaita and the poverty of American internationalism

On Saturday, Steven Salaita published an article on Salon arguing that Bernie Sanders’ record of support and/or acquiescence to Israeli policy is a sufficient enough reason to not vote for Sanders. However, on social media, Salaita clarified that he isn’t aiming to change anyone's decision about voting for Sanders. But if his goal isn’t to convince people to change their minds, then what’s the point of writing?

Salaita assures us that he is not a single-issue fundamentalist, but merely wishes to see Sanders’ position on Israel move towards a progressive, moral and critical discussion of Israel’s occupation.

No such conversation will happen.

Hypothetically, a critical discussion of Israel could very much happen if Sanders decides it should. However, Salaita doesn’t chart how that would come about. For starters, it fails to recognise that Sanders’ campaign has been vilified by every establishment institution to an extent with no precedent. 

Try imagining for a second a new benchmark of cynicism the liberal journalism establishment will set the moment the slightest expression of anti-semitism from a Sanders supporter emerges. The "Berniebro" has been damaging enough as Sanders himself acknowledged, think of what the "Bernienazi" will do. 

In this respect, Salaita's piece comes off as an odd exercise in apolitical critique when you consider the fact that he presents no empirical and analytically sound argument indicating that if Sanders begins to be critical of Israel, his campaign will continue to enjoy its momentum.

Given what’s at stake, it’s not too much to ask of Salaita to acknowledge the political dynamics of the moment. And, if one insists it is “wrong” to place such a demand, perhaps one would be well-advised to join a church where moral absolutism reigns above all practical considerations.

Rania Khalek’s recent article attempts to fulfil such a pressing demand. In making the case that Sanders has been the most critical politician of Israeli crimes and U.S. complicity, Khalek argues that he’s the ideal candidate to bring up Palestinians’ rights on a national platform. As Khalek points out, Democrats have been growing critical of Israel and this could be Bernie’s shot. What’s not to disagree with, right?

Well, there is one analytical error with that ties such presumptions. The polls she cites do point out that Democrats have grown more critical of Israel. But of what aspects exactly of Israeli policy? Well, 75% of Democrats believe that Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are counterproductive and 76% of Democrats believe that Israel has “too much influence” on U.S. politics. These are increasingly standard Democratic Party positions, largely a result of Netanyahu’s well-known dirty tactics in Washington and the Democratic establishment’s cold response. 

There’s a good case to be made that partisanship—American as apple pie—has played the leading role in forming those views when one considers that, in the same poll, 51% of Democrats said they’ll stand with Israel over Palestinians if they had to choose a side, 31% chose to be neutral, and a mere 18% said they're supportive of Palestinians. A Gallup poll from the same year indicates Democrat support for Israel has fallen from 74% to 60% from 2014, 10 points lower than the national average of support for Israel. 

Americans, especially Democrats, are nonetheless tired of having to defend and arm Israel with so many problems at home. But, the elective affinities of the two nations overwhelm those frustrations in any potential event where one has to choose a side.

Unless someone could suggest a way to get a firm majority of Democrats (and indeed Americans in the general election) to begin supporting Palestinians’ rights, there’s little apparent reason to think that if Sanders, and his movement, could pull it off and survive.

Such a reading of course may sound defeatist, perhaps even cynical. But it is a liberating, though difficult, fact that would propel those concerned to work on fixing the systematic problem animating those attitudes: the poverty of the American internationalist imagination and the looming tradition of American isolationism that ails the Left, and Sanders, to this day.

This obstacle is both parallel to Salaita's critique but also indicative of his problematic scope. In correctly identifying Palestinians as “dispensable abstractions American election drama.” he merely inverts the logic of his object of critique by offering nothing short of an abstract protest.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwich understood the paradoxes of this abstraction much more acutely.

"Do you know why we Palestinians are famous?", Darwich explained to Israel journalist Judith Lerner, "Because you are our enemy. The interest in us stems from the interest in the Jewish issue. The interest is in you, not in me.”

Darwich would feel his words vindicated today to learn that a segment of Pro-Palestine and Left writers recycled Israel’s ethnic cleansing logic to argue that it was justifiable for an Arab dictator to starve a city where Palestinian refugees resided for the simple reason that anti-government rebels were embedded there and were indeed welcomed. Why? Because Syrian-Palestinians (and Syrians indeed) under Assad’s yoke aren’t the perfect victims. 

Dispensable abstractions, indeed! 

Darwich, a Communist himself, had no illusions about how fickle Left sympathies were in regards to non-Westerners. Salaita, on the other hand, maintains these illusions when he demands Bernie Sanders come out in support of Palestinian rights at a point when it would be disastrous for his election campaign. Contrary to what Salaita and others thinks, this issue cannot be solved merely by demanding Politicians to declare their support for the oppressed against the oppressor.  Just as the problem of the lack of solidarity from the Pro-Palestinian movement with revolting Syrians can't be solved by demanding figures like Salaita express condemnation of Bashar al-Assad's bombing and starvation campaign against the Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Damascus, Al-Yarmouk. As far as the author is aware, Salaita hasn't been forthcoming on this issue.

What ails Salaita is what ails Sanders and the American progressive movement at large.