Long live NATO’s anti-imperialism

There has been a lot to blog about on Afghanistan in recent weeks, but I haven’t had the strength, though I’ve read a lot elsewhere and commented occasionally.

Comment trail: on anti-imperialism at Contested Terrain, and on non-Western imperialism in Afghanistan at Terry Glavin’s joint. My argument in short: as the only powers capable of sustaining imperialist policies in Afghanistan are its neighbors, none of whom are reliable allies of NATO, by necessity NATO’s policy in Afghanistan is on the whole anti-imperialist.

Intersectionality

Comment trail: on feminism and war at Pickled Politics.

There, blogger Earwicga seems of a view similar to that heard from Judith Butler & Co. earlier, that feminism is only valid if it’s also anti-war, and anti-Western anti-imperialist. This seems to mean that making too much noise about Islamist theocratic misogyny is bad as that could be seen as pro-war and Islamophobic. In support of this, Earwigca introduces the word ‘intersectionality’.

Now it seems to me that intersectionality can usefully be used to illustrate precisely the failure in contemporary anti-imperialism. Earwigca gives two references to explain her use of the word: Wikipedia and a PDF from the African American Policy Forum, A Primer on Intersectionality. Here intersectionality is used to describe the problem of individuals or groups focusing on one particular form of discrimination, for example sexism, being unable to fully recognise and understand another form of discrimination, for example racism, causing a blind spot when they are faced with a victim of multiple overlapping forms of discrimination.

Where the focus is on just one form of discrimination, these more complex cases can be obscured as the wrong kind of victim, or the wrong kind of discrimination.

Misapplying intersectionality

The AAPF document takes the argument further and talks of the danger that treating different forms of discrimination separately may lead to different groups of victims seeing themselves as being in competition with each other, and not being aware of the vulnerabilities of their fellows who fall into the overlap between groups. Thus there's a danger that those arguing against one form of discrimination may fall into another. A small example of this I once heard in polite conversation: “The French are very racist,” i.e. xenophobic bigotry in the name of anti-racism.

This argument about one group of victims being set against another forms the centre of Judith Butler’s arguments against mainstream German gay rights campaigners (see her mis-definition of double jeopardy for example) and criticisms of Peter Tatchell by some anti-imperialists (see here and here).

So what happens when this argument is misapplied? The sweeping statement “group X discriminate against group Y” is likely to be discriminatory against group X, but what about an analysis along the lines of “some members of group X discriminate against some members of group Y, or against members in the overlap between X and Y”? If this kind of analysis of discriminatory action by a subset of X is made properly, with examples given and mechanisms demonstrated, it should not be dismissed in the same terms as the earlier sweeping statement about X being bad to Y.

If it becomes impossible to look at individuals and subsets within X discriminating against Y or discriminating against the common membership of X and Y, then another kind of blind spot results, not of the wrong kind of victim, nor the wrong kind of discrimination, but of the wrong kind of perpetrator of discrimination.

Thus Islamist misogynists become the wrong kind of misogynists because they are a subset of Muslims who as a group are the target of religious discrimination, and individual immigrants who are homophobic are the wrong kind of homophobes because they belong to a group that is the target of xenophobia and racism. The consequence is that Muslim victims of misogyny and immigrant victims of homophobia fall under the blind spot of those arguing too narrowly against religious discrimination, or too narrowly against xenophobia and racism: precisely the result that ‘intersectionality’ attempts to avoid.

An example of ‘right and wrong kind of perpetrator’ thinking can be found in Judith Butler’s comments at Bully Bloggers, where she expresses her preference for looking at perpetrators on the German right or in the Catholic Church, rather than in migrant communities. If she argued ‘as well as’ that would be fine, but ‘instead of’ is not good.

An intersectionality of blind spots

Now to return to feminism, war, and anti-imperialism. Back to Earwicga’s post where she raises ‘intersectionality’. Here she labels Gita Sahgal’s criticisms of Amnesty International as Islamophobic, and described the recent Time cover photograph of Aisha, a mutilated young Afghan woman, as “yet another manipulation of feminism supported by feminists ignorant of other power structures”.

Earwigca’s problem here is the same as Judith Butler’s. Islamists are the wrong kind of misogynists because they are a subset of Muslims who are a target of religious discrimination. It doesn’t matter that the victims of Islamist mysogyny are also members of that same group of victims of religious discrimination; they fall into the ‘wrong perpetrator’ blind spot.

Looking at it further, there is an intersectionality of ‘wrong perpetrator’ blind spots at work here. Not only are the Taliban the wrong kind of misogynists, but as Muslims discriminating against Christians, Buddhists, and versions of Islam other than their own, they are the wrong kind of religious bigots. As agents of Pakistani and Iranian imperialism fighting against a popular Afghan government allied with Western powers, they are the wrong kind of imperialists.

For those viewing the world with these intersecting blind spots, the only way the abuse of women like Aisha becomes visible is if the cause is traced through a game of degrees of separation to Western policies in Afghanistan decades ago, though not back as far as the Soviet invasion, as that would lead to another blind spot. Having found the only acceptable cause of the abuse, the remedy offered is of course the withdrawal of exactly those Western forces standing in the way of a return to power by the actual, immediate perpetrators of the abuse.

How do anti-imperialists maintain this degree of blindness without poking their own eyes out?

REWIND << ERASE

Last month’s post on Prof. Judith Butler concerned her view of feminism as only valid when tied to a narrowly anti-Western form of anti-imperialism. For her, feminists in places like Afghanistan must be hobbled like an entry for a three-legged race, while running against a murderous opposition burdened with no such restrictions.

Amongst other utterances, the post pointed to her statement on Hamas and Hezbollah in 2006. From the Radical Archives blog, a long extract with video:

This is Judith Butler’s reply to a bundle of four questions asked in Q&A during a 2006 teach-in at UC Berkeley about the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Audience members asked:

1. Since Israel is an imperialist, colonial project, should resistance be based on social movements or the nation-state?

2. What is the power of the Israel Lobby and is questioning it antisemitic?

3. Since the Left hesitates to support Hamas and Hezbollah “just” because of their use of violence, does this hurt Palestinian solidarity?

4. Do Hamas and Hezbollah actually threaten Israel’s existence, as portrayed in some media?

Judith Butler:

“Ok, well, I would just briefly say: I think its imperative to figure out what the mechanisms are of the various lobbies in the US – the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League – how they work to help to formulate US foreign policy toward Israel. I think there’s no question we need an honest, rigorous appraisal. I think there are some versions of it that strike me as perhaps a little too easily subscribing to conspiracy theories, and I think that there can be an antisemitic version, and there can be a really useful, critical version as well. I have no doubt it’s a very powerful lobby – I actually think of it as multifaceted – and I think we need more careful, rigorous analyses of it.

So you know the short answer is: one neither has to dispute the existence of such a lobby, or its power, to prove that one is not antisemitic; but neither does one have to accept every version of that, given that some versions are, I think, problematically bound up with conspiracy theories.

Similarly, I think: Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left. I similarly think boycotts and divestment procedures are, again, an essential component of any resistance movement.”

[[ audience claps]]

= = =

Thanks to Camila Bassi for pointing out this video in her essay “The Anti-Imperialism of Fools’: A Cautionary Story on the Revolutionary Socialist Vanguard of England’s Post-9/11 Anti-War Movement”

NOTE: The questions start at 10:30 and Butler starts her answer at 14:55.

Today I read (via here and here) that Prof. Butler is claiming that she has been misrepresented. The following is from an interview this month with AVIVA-Berlin:

AVIVA-Berlin: How do you feel about the accusation that you have perhaps taken an anti-Semitic position concerning your statement about the Hamas and the Hezbollah as progressive social movements? Does that bother you more as a philosopher or on a personal level?

Judith Butler: Unfortunately, that clip was cut short and did not include all of my response. What I actually said was that although groups like Hamas and Hezbollah should be described as left movements, that like all left movements, one has to choose which ones one supports and which ones one refuses. They are "left" in the sense that they oppose colonialism and imperialism, but their tactics are not ones that I would ever condone. I have never supported either group, and my very public affiliation with a politics of non-violence would make it impossible for me to support them. The editing of my response was obviously an effort to distort my view, and I am very sorry that the distortion has been able to circulate as it has. Thank you for giving me the chance to clarify what I actually said and what I have always thought.

It is very strange, but I find it impossible to find any evidence in that clip of the Professor’s comments being edited in any way. What do you think?

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Added: The comments of the Professor’s that kicked off my first post were made when she refused a prize at the 2010 Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin, declaring that the organisers were complicit in racism. It seems difficult to find specifics on what is at the centre of this allegation. In her statement she said that “Some of the organizers explicitly made racist statements or did not dissociate themselves from them,” but I haven’t seen any examples given of these racist statements. In a comment at Bully Bloggers she goes into a little more detail, but without giving sources or references:

I was asked by the organizers to supply evidence for my charge of racism, so I showed them several sites where their members and sponsors referred to the archaic and pre-modern character of “arab cultures” as a way of explaining putatively high rates of attacks on gay people on the part of arab youth. Groups like Maneo have actively sought to institute racial profiling as a police practice. They see this as part of “self-defense” rather than as explicit racism. Their framework assumes that there are queers and there are migrants, which means that they efface migrant queers in their very way of thinking. I suggested in one interview that maybe they should do some studies on the rise of right-wing racism in Germany, its links with homophobia, or indeed concentrate on homophobia in the Catholic Church.

Without knowing what sites and comments she’s talking about, it’s hard to know what to make of it all, other than to note that she isn’t as worried about anti-Catholic sectarianism as she is about racism and anti-Muslim bigotry.

I haven’t yet found any other references online to Maneo advocating racial profiling, so don’t know the truth of it. Maneo did contribute comments to this 2008 Spiegel Online story on migration and homophobia in Germany, and without sounding to my ears like a gang of racist nationalists. I’d be interested in hearing other views, particularly with sources.

Related, via Bob: Gay Imperialism, and Israeli Pinkwashing., and in Gay City News, Berlin based journalist Benjamin Weinthal writes What Drives Gays and Lesbians to Bash Israel?

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Added: Meanwhile in Afghanistan . . .

Anti-imperialism über alles

Via Harry’s Place, read philosophy prof Judith Butler on how war-waging types are instrumentalising people, specifically gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans and queer people. (My spell-checker doesn’t dig that coinage, let’s try it in American: instrumentalizing? Nope. Guess this machine is out of date.)

The context for this was the 2010 Christopher Street Day Parade in Berlin, which Judith Butler felt was not cool, at least not as cool as the alt. edition, Transgenialer CSD. On that I have no opinion. But on the instrumentalificationising business? Ah yes. First, here’s the relevant paragraph from her Berlin speech, refusing a prize on Christopher Street Day:

We all have noticed that gay, bisexual, lesbian, trans and queer people can be instrumentalized by those who want to wage wars, i.e. cultural wars against migrants by means of forced islamophobia and military wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. In these times and by these means, we are recruited for nationalism and militarism. Currently, many European governments claim that our gay, lesbian, queer rights must be protected and we are made to believe that the new hatred of immigrants is necessary to protect us. Therefore we must say no to such a deal.

And from last year, here’s Judith Butler talking to Nina Power:

NP: To the horror of many on the left, feminism and (to a lesser extent) gay rights were invoked as democratic values in the case for war in Afghanistan and Iraq (‘freeing’ women from the burka, for example). How do you understand the contemporary relationship between feminism (and gay rights) and war?

JB: There are at least two problems here. The one has to do with the sudden instrumentalization of “gay rights” or “women’s rights” to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a move that suggests that we are actually fighting a culture, a religion, or an entire social structure rather than a particular state or its government. The notions of emancipation instrumentalized for such purposes are clearly imperialist, and assume that liberation means adopting certain kinds of cultural norms as the most valuable. But this argument is really treacherous in my view, since it overrides the actual political movements already underway in such countries that are working out specific political vocabularies and claims for rethinking gender, sexuality, and domination.

The second problem is that lesbian/gay rights, and the rights of sexual minorities, need to join with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-war movements and are, in many instances, already joined together. There is no bona fide feminism, for instance, that is not also anti-racist. Similarly, there is no struggle for the rights of sexual minorities that is worthy of the name that does not affirm the cultural diversity of sexual minorities. Further, it is important to understand “minoritization” strategies as effecting both sexual and religious minorities - another reason why complex alliances are crucial.

To try and understand what is meant here, I’m going to start with the sentence “There is no bona fide feminism, for instance, that is not also anti-racist.” This seems clear enough. Feminism, the struggle for women’s rights, must be a struggle for universal women’s rights unlimited by race. But this is presented as a “for instance” in relation to the preceding sentence, declaring “lesbian/gay rights, and the rights of sexual minorities, need to join with feminist, anti-racist, and anti-war movements.” The implication then would seem to be that those not joined with anti-war movements are not bona fide lesbian/gay rights campaigners, are not bona fide feminists, not bona fide anti-racists.

So Judith Butler’s answer to the question on the contemporary relationship between feminism and gay rights and war is that there are no real feminists who are not part of the anti-war movement.

And continuing to work backwards to the previous paragraph, where arguments on women’s rights are deployed in relation to the war in Afghanistan, then “the notions of emancipation instrumentalized for such purposes are clearly imperialist, and assume that liberation means adopting certain kinds of cultural norms as the most valuable.” Let’s be clear what notions these are: the struggle for women’s education, for the right to vote, the struggle to stop forced marriages of young girls, in short the struggle for equal political and economic rights. These notions, because they have been deployed in support of the war against the Taliban, they are now regarded by Judith Butler as imperialist. They are no longer bona fide feminist notions, because they are not anti-war.

Forget that the Taliban are a deadly repressive misogynist organisation created, nay instrumentalised, by little imperialists in Pakistan’s military, because the only imperialism Judith Butler recognises is Western Imperialism: worse than the lash, worse than acid in the face, worse than public execution in the football stadium.

In her Berlin speech, Judith Butler says, “In these times and by these means, we are recruited for nationalism and militarism.” Hum. On nationalism and militarism then . . .

First on nationalism:

In his essay, Notes on Nationalism, George Orwell presented a view of nationalism as something other than just allegiance to one’s country of birth or residence. He defined it as, “the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” He pointed out that “nationalist feeling can be purely negative. There are, for example, Trotskyists who have become simply enemies of the USSR without developing a corresponding loyalty to any other unit.” And further, “transferred nationalism has been a common phenomenon among literary intellectuals. With Lafcadio Hearne the transference was to Japan, with Carlyle and many others of his time to Germany, and in our own age it is usually to Russia.”

I think all this clearly applies to contemporary anti-imperialism. It is a Western phenomenon that is overwhelmingly anti-Western, with little or no interest in any imperialism that can’t be blamed on the US, with no coherent positive alternative to promote, and to its adherents all other arguments are secondary. Judith Butler adheres to this negative transferred nationalism of anti-Western anti-imperialism.

And now on militarism:

Here, via the Radical Archives, is Judith Butler on Hamas and Hezbollah:

Similarly, I think: Yes, understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important. That does not stop us from being critical of certain dimensions of both movements. It doesn’t stop those of us who are interested in non-violent politics from raising the question of whether there are other options besides violence. So again, a critical, important engagement. I mean, I certainly think it should be entered into the conversation on the Left.

So, Hamas and Hezbollah, two military organisations backed by a murderous and extremely misogynist authoritarian theocratic state; these she can be just a little bit critical of while embracing them as part of a global left. But a military that helps the Afghan government in a struggle against murderous misogynist thugs operating across their southern border, a struggle that is backed by the overwhelming majority of the population of Afghanistan; for such a military the only word she has is ‘imperialist’.

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To learn about some of the feminists of Afghanistan that Judith Butler regards as not bona fide, read Terry Glavin’s articles on the women of Parwan, Shamsia Sharifi, Yasameen and Raziea, Afghan Soccer Heroes, and Sitara Achakzai.

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Earlier on this blog: interviews with helpless Afghan women instrumentalised by Western Imperialism here.

More on how Western anti-war feminists can’t deal honestly with Afghanistan here.

More on post-modern anti-imperialists unable to think straight here and here and here and here.

An old favourite: an anti-imperialist on fluffy issues in Afghanistan.

UPDATE: The prof says she didn’t say what she said. As they say in our house, “Ha ha, very funny, my name’s Bugs Bunny.”