(artistwww.festomuvesz.hu)
Blair the Camera
Man
By Gilad Atzmon
no photos please!?
In case you missed them, here are
the words of wisdom Tony Blair uttered yesterday:
Until we get rid of this complete nonsense of
trying to build some equivalence between what we are
doing helping Iraqis and Afghans build their democracy
and these people going and deliberately killing people
for the sake of it, we are not going to confront this
ideology in the way that it needs to be confronted. - Tony Blair
(Guardian article).
Tony Blair is an
advanced political thinker. Following his articulate
analysis, terrorists are killing people for the
sake of it. The soldiers that he made certain
the Great Britain sent to far off lands, on the other
hand, kill only because Blair and Britain want to help
Arabs and Afghanis to build their democracy.
Come on Tony, do we look that stupid?
Determining what the political message of Blair is all
about leaves us with two options. He either is an
intellectually limited being or alternatively, he
deliberately produces the most idiotic simplistic
messages under the assumption that the British public is
stupid enough to accept everything he says. He probably
thinks to himself: if it works for Bush in America it
very well may work for me in Britain.
Blair repeatedly speaks about the evil ideology behind
terrorist acts, but he fails to share with us what that
ideology is. In fact, he tells us that those evil beings
deliberately kill people for the sake of it.
But then, if this is the case, it isnt ideology but
rather sheer bloodthirstiness. Let me assure you, Blair
isnt very innovative here. Anglo-Americans
traditionally have presented their enemy as being savage,
barbarian, and bloodthirsty primitives. They did it with
the Native American Indians, they did it with Germans
already since WWI and now they are doing it with Arab
nationalists. This is very much a general common tactic
used by colonialists and supremacist polemicists. But
then one would expect that at the dawn of the 21st
century, a prominent liberal democrat leader
would leave this old rhetorical formula behind.
Lets face it; Blair is neither a democrat nor a
liberal. In fact he is a devoted servant of hard
capitalism and brutal colonialism.
Blair is determined to be victorious over terror. His
philosophy is simple: if terror is bad all we have to do
is to kill the terrorists Apparently, it is the Israelis
who invented this kindergarten philosophy. At the time it
had a catchy name; they called it War Against
Terror. For the Israelis it was a local war with a
conflicting nationalist movement. Thanks to the fully
Zionised Blair and Bush, this local conflict is now
expanding rapidly into a global crisis or even a world
war.
But then, we may want to review the tactics Blair is
there to offer. How can we really fight a faceless,
anonymous enemy? It is very simple, we merely attach a
face to the faceless.
In terms of CCTV (closed circuit TV), Britain is a
leading European nation. No country in the continent has
more CCTV cameras per capita. If the data are to be
believed, apparently every British inhabitant just in the
course of going about his business, is captured around
300 times a day by the many cameras around.
Unsurprisingly, the Metropolitan Police was very quick to
release the photos of the alleged suicide
terrorists. Three days after the 7/7 attack we saw
them entering Luton station carrying massive rucksacks.
Less than 24 hours after the second London attack the
Metropolitan Police released the photos of the four
suspected bombers.
No doubt, modernity and technology are a great advantage.
But we should not stop there; we must capitalise on our
technological superiority and put it to the use of
society at large. We must place many more cameras. They
should be in every home, in every bedroom, in every
restaurant, in every public toilet. We can then, just
minutes after the next attack, be able to see the
suspected terrorists eating, shitting, fucking, picking
their noses or even picking other peoples noses. It
will look great on TV and it will even look better on a
tabloid newspaper. This must be Blairs prophecy for
the Western world: more cameras, more identity cards, in
short, more control.
Apparently, we love
photographic images. Living in the scientific and
technological society we call our own, we are obsessed
with evidence. We love terror to be
pornographic. We can sit for days watching Boeing
airplanes getting chewed by the Twin Towers. We love
explicit images and we want more of them. We want to see
the body, the face, and the eyes of evil.
But surely we do miss something. We cant read the
minds. Those alleged suicidal demons remain a mystery. We
have more and more evidence but we have less and less
comprehension. In fact, Blairs empty rhetoric
proves how little some of us do understand. Twenty days
after 7/7 London attack we still dont have a clue
what really happened there. Who was behind it and why did
it happen? All we get from Blair is empty rhetoric
coupled with pictures of olive skinned faces.
Wed better
accept it once and for all; photos or any other positive
evidence wont get us anywhere. Surely,
it is not going to prevent the next attack from
happening. Religiously motivated terror is ideological, a
term completely foreign to Blair and his followers.
Millions of sporadic bits of fragmented evidence
wont bring us any closer to an ideological
understanding. Ideology and evidence are two different
and distinct categories.
To quote Mark Jurgesmeyer: one persons
suicide terrorist is another persons
freedom fighter. For those who fail to
realise, suicidal war is the ultimate form of freedom
fighting. The martyr is never alone. He is always
supported by a community. Jacques Lacan, the
legendary French psychoanalyst, taught us that
unconsciousness is the discourse of the
other. He is probably right. Suicidal attack is
better grasped in terms of a fatal exchange between a
protagonist and more than a few discourses. In other
words, the suicide bomber leaves behind an image of
sacrifice. This image is planted forever within the
discourse of his supportive community as well as within
the community of the victims. In a word, suicidal terror
is a form of communication. Clearly, Blair fails
miserably in understanding this form of communication,
but as it seems, the majority of British people are more
than willing to listen, and hopefully to comprehend.
According to several UK polls, most Britons do realise
that the recent London attacks are the outcome of
Blairs grave policies in the Middle East.
Seemingly, they understand better than their Prime
Minister what the message of terror is all about.
Martyrdom is the outcome of a community which has been
humiliated and oppressed. Unfortunately, and it is hard
to admit, we are the oppressors in this story. In fact,
martyrdom is a message addressed to each of us. It is
about time we try to confront this message. If we want to
confront suicidal terror, we are obligated to attempt to
understand it. We must learn what really motivates young
people to sacrifice their lives. If we want to challenge
it, first we must recognise and respect it. As long as we
have locked ourselves within a scientific technological
discourse we will never be able to get to the bottom of
this emerging problem. Millions
of CCTV cameras wont let us into other
peoples minds. Three million cameras wont
help us to grasp the extent of the humiliation that leads
human beings to take other peoples lives as well as
their own. If we want to tackle those who are determined
to kill us, we must look in the mirror first.
Blairs rhetoric is all about stopping us from doing
just that.
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