Scapegoaters Scapegoated: the hidden link between Thatcher, Gaddafi and Mintoff

The death of Margaret Thatcher has provoked intense and polarized reactions. Some on the left have been openly celebrating her death, while others have argued that the nil nisi bonum rule should apply even in this case. I find it really interesting that some of the most dedicated supporters of her policies have openly allowed/encouraged her opponents to celebrate her death. An example would be the supporters who urged the BBC to play the so-called Thatcher "death song", echoed locally by Daphne Caruana Galizia. While I am not questioning the commitment of these supporters to freedom or democracy, I suspect that other factors may also have played a role in shaping their apparently quixotic stances. This has to do with what could be called, following the French anthropologist Rene Girard, the politics of scapegoating and Margaret Thatcher's own role in making such politics popular. I would argue that Thatcherism mainly evolved through a series of scapegoating rituals, starting off from the war against Argentina, the attack on the Belgrano, continuing with the needless closure of the mines and the concomitant demonisation of Arthur Scargill (and with him the entire Northern working Classes), the labelling of her own moderate mps as "Wets" and culminating in the attack on the Universities and what used to be called, before her time, the intelligentsia. 

According to Girard an interesting aspect of the political sorcery involved in such scapegoating is that the victim rapidly acquires mythic properties, eventually turning into a Monster and with time may even eventually be remembered as a God (due to the social unity and reconciliation which occurred through his sacrifice, whether voluntary or not). Thus we should not be surprised that Thatcher's own devices are now being employed against her. This is part of the process by which she is becoming a god. 

Apotheosis of Claudius:
A Previous Ruler of the British who was raised to Divine status

Meanwhile her supporters, who are precisely those persons who were most willing to support her political scapegoating of others, are naturally unable to find good reasons to oppose the process, even when turned against their political idol. Moreover they sense obscurely that the scapegoating of Thatcher's memory by her opponents will  only increase her mythic stature and with it the pervasiveness of scapegoating and the conservative politics it underwrites.

Something similar happened with the deaths of Gaddafi and Mintoff, simultaneously mourned, reviled and celebrated as heroes, criminals, demi-gods and monsters, as this article by anthropologist Mark Anspach makes clear:

LYNCHING QADDAFI

The Libyans didn’t get it.

With everyone agreeing Qaddafi was a monster, the outcry over the way he died caught the rebels by surprise. A member of the National Transitional Council shrugged off criticism. “They beat him very harshly and then they killed him,” he said. “This is a war.”¹

When videos showed rebels brutalizing their dazed and bloody prey, Libya’s new rulers bowed to demands for an investigation, but the impression remained that they didn’t really grasp what all the fuss was about.

Call it a cultural misunderstanding. Is it the Libyans’ fault if they don’t see what’s wrong with an old-fashioned lynching? Maybe we should turn the question around and ask why the images of Qaddafi’s final moments makeus so uneasy.

Read the rest of this article here    

A Sea Change in US-Israeli Relations?

Photo of the Mediterranean Sea taken from National Geographic Website

The sea never fails to leave its mark on anything it encounters. Its smell penetrates the most resilient plastic and eventually it must overcome all barriers to its movement. It transforms matter gradually but ineluctably and it works so silently that usually a complete transformation has been effected by the time one realizes that change is under way. These reflections are inspired by the article by Dave Lindorff linked below:

A Sea Change in US-Israeli Relations? Dave Lindorff

Islam: the Untold Story

This documentary recently appeared on British television:

Click HERE to view the documentary 

It argues that the origins of Islam are very different from those which are usually recounted and makes highly controversial claims about Islamic history. Yet unlike the Innocence of Muslims, it seems to me to represent a genuine attempt by a non-Muslim to discover the truth using historical methods. I think it would be a great pity if the backlash against films like the Innocence of Muslims were also to mean that films like this one could not be produced or discussed or were always and only seen as a provocation instead of a spur to dialogue between religious and non-religious people. What do you think? Comments are welcome :)

I should also point out that this film has been dismissed as wildly speculative, biased and badly researched. See for instance this blog here and also this scholarly refutation on youtube:

I am not qualified to decide whether the speculation contained in the documentary is well founded or not. However, I am intrigued by some of the implications that would follow from taking such a historical perspective to the orgins of Islam as is taken in this documentary and also in this other video-clip below:

For example, it is often assumed by non-Muslims that Mohammed intended to found a new and competing religion to Judaism and Christianity. But it seems many sixth century Christians saw Islam as a kind of Judaism. This perspective throws some light on the syncretism of Islam, which acknowledges both Jesus and Mary as important figures and sources of inspiration. Even the Quranic statement that "the natural religion of humanity is Islam" becomes a source of ecumenical unity rather than division once the term Islam is translated. If what Muslims were saying is that "submission to God is the natural religion of humanity", then how different is this from the attitude to God recommended by the central Christian prayer which starts out: "Our Father who art in heaven, Thy will be done"? If, then, Islam is seen as gradually developing its inner core by building and uniting previous religious traditions and developing its theology over time, then surely its validity as a religion would rest not on its originality but on the extent to which it manages to persuasively restate and make relevant central religious themes taken from Judaism and Christianity? And if this is indeed the case, then surely the the Byzantine Emperor quoted by Pope Benedict was making a theological mistake when he asked: "what did Islam bring which is new?" The point about Islam would lie precisely in the fact that its message is not new, which is why, I believe, the Quran emphasises remembering God. 

"Ara x'qala l-bahar! Look, our conquerors are back! And quite eroded too!" or "The sea as a metaphor for memory"

A couple of weeks ago I scribbled a quick entry on how the expression ‘Ara x’qala l-bahar’ has temporal as well as spatial connotations. In Malta, I spammed, this phrase is used to exclaim surprise (often a positive one) at an unexpected encounters with an element from the past (be it a face, and object, a person, a sound, a taste) one hasn’t come across in a long time. It is as if such an element had been lost at sea and (randomly or deliberately, we will soon shortly explore) has been washed again on its original shore.

This blog draws on my first return to Malta to do field-research after a year of lectures in England. It was during this time that it was announced that the old, great rock-opera ‘Gensna’ (our nation/people), an oral official narrative for left-wing national consciousness, was going to be held again... so that ‘older generations could re-live once again their finest moments’ and so that the ‘younger generations would know what their fathers went through’.

(one day I’ll spam something on how, in local politics, the term ‘zaghzugh’ [youth], refers to people who did not live through the great events of the 70s and 80s, they have been denied history, so to speak, and somehow are also innocent and free of the crimes of those years)    

"X’qala l-bahar" indeed! And for loads of people!

These tunes, which for 20 years had been largely forgotten (except for a disembodied tema’ 79, obviously) were to return back again to our stages, our TVs and radios to ensure we still remember... 

but remember what exactly? Through these 20 years, several parts of this musical kind of got, well, modified by the erosive processes of the sea of time, and were washed up back quite changed and sometimes rather unrecognisable. Or well, perhaps some people went down to the shore to look for pieces, and grabbed the wrong ones instead (no that’s not a green pebble, silly, it’s a piece of eroded glass, jeez).

I will explain…and focus on my favourite song of the rock-opera… Il-hakkiema (the conquerors), which shamelessly parades in front of us stereotypes of our best and most influential conquerors. I will quickly explore the main differences between the original depiction of the conquerors and our recent time-eroded ones. 

  

This pebble is not a pebble

For those to don’t know the song, it starts with the choir (representing the Maltese nation) lamenting and complaining that something went quite not as intended, that foreigners have arrived and god knows what awaits us. The conquerors then, one by one, make their pompous statements, outlining all they’d offer our nation. The Maltese are initially impressed, then they become dissatisfied and long for a new (and better) set of conquerors to govern them. 

The arab steps up first but... hey! Wait a second!

 I had seen on VHS (lovingly preserved by my grandparents) the original gensna, and the two depictions of the arab conquerors do not quite fit. 

The original 80s Arab!

 

The new Arabs.

 

In the original, the Arab wears a Saudi-Arabian, white outfit. His face is blackened and he is bearded. He waves his hands around like a souk vendor, salams and performs other religious gestures. In the re-imagined version, the Arab, well looks nothing like an Arab. He sports around a huge decorated hat, flowing red robes. He is unbearded and white skinned. If I didn’t know any better I’d even say he looked…well Ottoman.

"I will conquer that Island, somehow"

 My next shock (in terms of intensity) came with the portrayal of the British. In the original rock-opera, the Englishman walked around in his suit and top-hat. He curled his moustache, smiled beguilingly and looked as if he was channeling the bourgeois imperialist image through a caricature of Gerald Strickland. 

I even wear my military medals on a civilian businessman suit!

 The new Englishman? I don’t know. This conqueror looks like a 18^th century nobleman, and if English nobility ever sported such a look it was well defunct by the time they stumbled onto Maltese shores. 

I took Gibraltar first

The Knight of St.John also sports some differences. They both wear their long monk robes, but while the original knight (Josie Coppini, we love you), presented himself as pompous and arrogant, acting like a noble trying to convince the peasant he has a good deal, the new knight is stern and valiant, he punches the air, warlike and brave. This might say something about the huge knight-merchandise that has taken over our more touristy cities… perhaps.

Brilliant! Gets me every time!

The French…well they are largely the same, except for some cosmetic changes. They both strut around, proud and relaxed. They look down upon the ignorant masses. And both Frenchmen keep their hands tucked firmly into their coats. A bit disappointed here, but then again some pebbles washed up from the sea are not composed of soft franka, but of the harder Coralline limestone…and consequently they would have eroded at different rates.

The precious few reading this might think that I am making a bit too much fuss, and I would agree... but what these characters have in common is that they all, (regardless of them belonging to the original or to the modern version), are intended to be STEREOTYPES…and stereotypes refer to the first, most recognisable image that comes to mind when imagining a group of people. 

In other words, what has changed and eroded by the sea of time is the way we spontaneously imagine such groups to look like. 

So what has happened here? 

Well I will propose two ‘interpretations’, although in the spirit of this blog, this interpretative shore is open to new ideas and perspective 

1.       Hard and proper erosion  - abrasion, corruption, and all the other geographic processes I was thought back at secondary school. During the time when they were forgotten, our ideas of such peoples must have changed slowly and implicitly. It might probably also have to do with the fact that our relationship with such stereotypes has changed as well. The Englishman is no longer an active political conqueror and negotiator. The arab is no longer a central trading partner. Tunisia is not that big a deal of a tourist destination anymore. Let’s not even talk about Libya. The knight? Well we’ve got tourists to worry about.  Our stereotypes, in other words, are now being informed by a different set of processes.

2.       Or perhaps, something even more simple has happened, and in our attempt to re-assemble our cast of conquerors, the producers went down to the shore. They looked for pebbles, but then they found the green, shiny transparent thing. They know it is glass, they know it was the product of some wild barbecue and not a remnant of the sacred rocks that form our island... But hey, it does look pretty. And it does look sufficiently old and well…familiar? 

Yep. Looks like an Arab to me.

Religious People of the World: Unite!

Egyptian Muslims acting as human shields for Christians celebrating Midnight Mass in Alexandria last year.

The news that US Ambassador Chris Stevens has died from smoke inhalation following a rocket attack in Benghazi is worrying and portentous. The most destructive long term consequence of the attack, whoever was truly responsible for planning and carrying it out, is its likely impact on the way ordinary Muslims and Christians see each other. This is occurring in a context where Western Christians are already viewed as godless arrogant aggressors by many Muslims and where Muslims are increasingly labelled as potential terrorists by Christians. This once more opens up the terrifying vista of a world riven by deep cultural chasms, where religion is used as a pretext for murder and genocide...a world many had hoped would have been left behind after Obama's election.

To me as a Christian, one of the few hopeful signs in this tragic episode is the fact that the Coptic Christian church is condemning the disgusting film which is provoking Muslim outrage and also that some Copts are planning to demonstrate against it. In a way this helps to repay those Egyptian Muslims who last year, when Coptic churches were being bombed, decided to hold vigils outside churches where midnight mass was being celebrated; offering their lives as human shields for their Christian brothers and sisters. To my mind this was one of the most beautiful expressions of true religion, showing for a moment, its power in constructing a universal human solidarity which transcends the stupid artificial boundaries between believers.

I wish that we Maltese Christians, who are so close to the Christians of the Middle East and who also have significant traces of Islamic heritage in our culture, could take the lead in promoting such actions of solidarity with Muslims, paving the way for genuine peace and unity in God.

Looking through the Eyes of the Departed

My favourite ghost story writer is M.R. James (1862-1936) . His stories have the ability to inject sinister significance into ordinary objects and he draws upon real magical and folkloric traditions in a masterly way. One of his stories concerns a certain historian called Mr Fanshawe who, while staying as a guest at a country house, is lent a pair of binoculars which, unknown to him, have been filled with a fluid obtained by boiling the bones of hanged convicts. Whenever he uses these binoculars, he is able to view buildings and other scenes from the past, which he is unable to see with his ordinary eyes. This is a source of insight and fascination until a series of grisly encounters make him aware of quite what he is playing with...

This story is a good metaphor for anthropology, which always aims to see the world through the eyes of the other. Like Mr Fanshawe our curiosity may lead us to try to use powerful vantage points without asking too many questions about the ethics of doing so...unless we are  forced to confront them by our subjects.

However there is another way of looking through the eyes of those who have left, which has nothing to do with appropriating their world and is about re-experiencing, through love, the world one shared with the other who is no longer here. In one of his short stories, based on a dialogue with the ghost of his dead mother, Pirandello observes that such conversations are marked by the pain of knowing that while the loved dead person will always be remembered as alive by the living, the living will never again be thought about or reflected upon by the dead. Thus participating in such conversations means confronting the fact that part of you, the part which sprang into life under the loving gaze of the other, is gone forever.

The story was made into a moving episode of the film Kaos by the Taviani brothers a few years ago and the relevant part is reproduced below.

Hi mother's contribution is worth quoting in full: "Learn to see the world through the eyes of those who are no longer here. You will surely feel pain. But this pain will make the things you see more beautiful and sacred." These words appear to have inspired the marvelous closing scene of this episode where the young Pirandello and his sisters are depicted jumping off the pumice slopes of a small island when they are on their way to join their father in exile in Malta. This scene always leaves me with goosebumps; perhaps because the children in their innocent purity and Mozart's music combine to evoke in a powerful way the life of the soul:

Les Tres Riches Heures du Tony Blair

If you want to know what Tony Blair has been up to lately, click below:

Joking apart, this comedy clip really analyses the mechanisms of power through which symbolic domination is exercised in a masterly way; showing how post-modern financial capitalism divested charismatic political leaders of real power and also created new invisible, flexible but also impenetrable barriers of taste and disposition through which elites could control and dominate. These elites are post-national, liberal, moderate and determinedly gender and race-neutral. Yet at the same time their intolerance of any other claim to power or indeed dignity which is not built on brutal Darwinian and imperial capital accumulation shines through. A sad foretaste of the Obama years, which were also foreseen and denounced by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu:

David Harvey, the social geographer and the author of "The Condition of Postmodernity" has brilliantly analysed the structural basis of financial capitalism and claims that the crash of 2008 was quite predictable from this (Marxist) Perspective:

Finally here is my favourite comic take on what used to be called "the subprime crisis" before it mutated into the "Great Recession." Once again comedians seem to make the best social analysts: