Why Fear the Arab Revolutionary Spirit?

The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism

By Slavoj Žižek

February 01, 2011 "The Guardian" -- What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia and Egypt is the conspicuous absence of Muslim fundamentalism. In the best secular democratic tradition, people simply revolted against an oppressive regime, its corruption and poverty, and demanded freedom and economic hope. The cynical wisdom of western liberals, according to which, in Arab countries, genuine democratic sense is limited to narrow liberal elites while the vast majority can only be mobilised through religious fundamentalism or nationalism, has been proven wrong. The big question is what will happen next? Who will emerge as the political winner?

When a new provisional government was nominated in Tunis, it excluded Islamists and the more radical left. The reaction of smug liberals was: good, they are the basically same; two totalitarian extremes – but are things as simple as that? Is the true long-term antagonism not precisely between Islamists and the left? Even if they are momentarily united against the regime, once they approach victory, their unity splits, they engage in a deadly fight, often more cruel than against the shared enemy.

Did we not witness precisely such a fight after the last elections in Iran? What the hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters stood for was the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini revolution: freedom and justice. Even if this dream utopian, it did lead to a breathtaking explosion of political and social creativity, organisational experiments and debates among students and ordinary people. This genuine opening that unleashed unheard-of forces for social transformation, a moment in which everything seemed possible, was then gradually stifled through the takeover of political control by the Islamist establishment.

Even in the case of clearly fundamentalist movements, one should be careful not to miss the social component. The Taliban is regularly presented as a fundamentalist Islamist group enforcing its rule with terror. However, when, in the spring of 2009, they took over the Swat valley in Pakistan, The New York Times reported that they engineered "a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants". If, by "taking advantage" of the farmers' plight, the Taliban are creating, in the words of the New York Times "alarm about the risks to Pakistan, which remains largely feudal," what prevented liberal democrats in Pakistan and the US similarly "taking advantage" of this plight and trying to help the landless farmers? Is it that the feudal forces in Pakistan are the natural ally of liberal democracy?

The inevitable conclusion to be drawn is that the rise of radical Islamism was always the other side of the disappearance of the secular left in Muslim countries. When Afghanistan is portrayed as the utmost Islamic fundamentalist country, who still remembers that, 40 years ago, it was a country with a strong secular tradition, including a powerful communist party that took power there independently of the Soviet Union? Where did this secular tradition go?

And it is crucial to read the ongoing events in Tunisia and Egypt (and Yemen and … maybe, hopefully, even Saudi Arabia) against this background. If the situation is eventually stabilised so that the old regime survives but with some liberal cosmetic surgery, this will generate an insurmountable fundamentalist backlash. In order for the key liberal legacy to survive, liberals need the fraternal help of the radical left. Back to Egypt, the most shameful and dangerously opportunistic reaction was that of Tony Blair as reported on CNN: change is necessary, but it should be a stable change. Stable change in Egypt today can mean only a compromise with the Mubarak forces by way of slightly enlarging the ruling circle. This is why to talk about peaceful transition now is an obscenity: by squashing the opposition, Mubarak himself made this impossible. After Mubarak sent the army against the protesters, the choice became clear: either a cosmetic change in which something changes so that everything stays the same, or a true break.

Here, then, is the moment of truth: one cannot claim, as in the case of Algeria a decade ago, that allowing truly free elections equals delivering power to Muslim fundamentalists. Another liberal worry is that there is no organised political power to take over if Mubarak goes. Of course there is not; Mubarak took care of that by reducing all opposition to marginal ornaments, so that the result is like the title of the famous Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. The argument for Mubarak – it's either him or chaos – is an argument against him.

The hypocrisy of western liberals is breathtaking: they publicly supported democracy, and now, when the people revolt against the tyrants on behalf of secular freedom and justice, not on behalf of religion, they are all deeply concerned. Why concern, why not joy that freedom is given a chance? Today, more than ever, Mao Zedong's old motto is pertinent: "There is great chaos under heaven – the situation is excellent."

Where, then, should Mubarak go? Here, the answer is also clear: to the Hague. If there is a leader who deserves to sit there, it is him.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
COMMENT:
Geltmeister · 2 days agoAlmost everything people in the West know about Islam, the Middle East and the Arabs is Zionist propaganda. No one has done more to promote the notion of radical Islam than the Zionists. Why are people shocked to find that the Arab street is the same as the European street or the Asian street? Next they'll be saying Arabs feel pain and grief when they are attacked and killed in their millions by the 'democratic' countries.

At least the Arabs know that Western democracy is a sham and that those governments do not act in the name of their people. Which will exlpain the massive amount of scepticism surrounding the arrival of Western stooge ElBaradei. As one Egyptian said on TV today - 'We do not wish to replace one American puppet for another'.

Blue · 2 days ago

The left in the West and around the world was coopted by the right. Tony(Blair) Labour government was neo-liberal in economic philosophy - profits first, "people" - who cares. Thus the secular left globally swung right, leaving the poor and dispossessed to fend for themselves. The vacuum was filled in the middle east by groups like Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, Lebanon's Hisbollah. They operated the soup kitchens assisted the poor, provided the social conscience and service that the coopted secular left abandoned. In fact, it is not the fundamental religion that the West fears, it is the social responsibility that these groups demonstrate that Western capitalism fears.

bjo

When Zizek talks about "the left," he is talking about the radical left, something that is virtually non-existant in the US and barely in Western Europe these days. Zizek is a philosopher from the former Yugoslavia and his idea of radical left is not what got co-opted by the right in countries like the US and Britain. Just thought I'd set that straight after reading some of the posts on here.

 

imti2010 76p ·

2011 seems to be quite different then the last decade what i see that there is now mutual agreement between the people of the west and east and they are hopefully uniting against tyrant rulers rulers who have decieved us for a long time it is a new dawn . i really feel happy that the americans are supporting the people of egypt aginst a puppet set up by American leaders . i even can see that the americans want the revolution to win so that they also get enough motivation for their own .last decade was the worst the Western leaders were hell bent on creating hatred and enimity between the east and the west and we all so the affect 2 wars millions killed in Iraq Millions left homeless in US now we all know the common enemy. unchecked power.let us all hope and pray that this decade will be peacefull and productive for all of us .

Follow the Facts · 1 day ago

....and another utterly worthless piece ........

..everybody wants to be a prophet now...and fails completely...everybody re-arranges their analysis to fit the outcome or the apparent outcome – only to re-arrange at some later point when things have changed again...

...americans talking about "freedom"....gimme a break...if there is one "country" that hates and fears "freedom" it's the US...
What's happening now, may not seem directly linked to the events of September 11, 2001.....but indirectly, everything is the result of the fact that those events remain unresolved...

That helps the US militarists in forging events to their liking and that generates the ripples that spread...not to mention the rot and decay of the entire existing world order these last ten years, which was the undeclared purpose of the Bush regime...tearing apart existing structures, that were seen as obstacles to the advance of US Hyper-Militarism....

quotations from an interview with Mr. Žižek: What makes you depressed? Seeing stupid people happy. What do you most dislike about your appearance? That it makes me appear the way I really am. What would be your fancy dress costume of choice? A mask of myself on my face, so people would think I am not myself but someone pretending to be me. What or who is the love of your life? Philosophy. I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it. Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?All the time. When I really love someone, I can only show it by making aggressive and bad-taste remarks. What is the worst job you’ve done? Teaching. I hate students, they are (as all people) mostly stupid and boring. What has been your biggest disappointment? What Alain Badiou calls the 'obscure disaster' of the 20th century: the catastrophic failure of communism. What is the closest you’ve come to death? When I had a mild heart attack. I started to hate my body: it refused to do its duty to serve me blindly. Tell us a secret. Communism will win.