From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue 27 May 2003 - 18:45:50 GMT
We, the Traitors
Adam Michnik, Gazeta Wyborcza (liberal), Warsaw, Poland, March 28, 2003
{PRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Adam Michnik"}
Adam Michnik as "Europe's Moral
Authority" in 1981 (Photo: AFP).
A German journalist published an article in the paper Die
Tageszeitung in which he claimed that Vaclav Havel, Adam
Michnik, and George Konrad, Europe™s long-standing moral
authorities, had suddenly become undiscriminating admirers
of America.
I read that article with a twinge of nostalgia. Here we are,
together again. Our three names were grouped to-gether for
the first time by Timothy Garton Ash in his widely acclaimed
essay nearly two decades ago. If I recall correctly, Havel and I
were doing jail time then, and Konrad™s books were banned
from print in Hungary. Even though we did not meet very
often, we maintained a common ground in our reflections on
the worlds of values and of politics. We were united by a
dream of freedom, a dream of a world infused with tolerance,
hope, respect for human dignity, and a refusal of conformist
silence in the face of evil.
We were also united by the specific wisdom of people familiar
with śhistory unleashed,ť the experience of the acute
loneliness of people subject to the pressures of totalitarian
despotism and doomed to the world™s indifference. Every
Hungarian citizen had retained the image of Budapest burning
in November 1956, every citizen of Czechoslovakia was
haunted by the sight of Soviet tanks on the streets of Prague
in 1968, every Pole was to keep in the back of his mind the
memory of Warsaw in the fall of 1944, murdered by Hitler and
deserted by its allies.
We were not fanatics of primitive anticommunism. We saw
communism as a historical phenomenon and communists as
people capable of becoming democrats. Later, too, after 1989,
we”Konrad, Havel, and I”did not like the fundamentalism of
anticommunist radicals, especially those who remained quiet
throughout the years of the dictatorship and were now eager
to string up the communists. I am bringing all of this up to
explain who these three traitors of the new generation are,
those accused of blind, conformist pro-Americanism by the
German journalist.
I do not know whether Havel and Konrad agree, but I will
present my own perspective.
I aim to avoid double standards in thinking about the world. I
thus aim to use the same criteria in assessing the arrogance
of all great powers, not just the Bush administration.
I remember my nation™s experience with totalitarian
dictatorship. This is why I was able to draw the right
conclusions from Sept. 11, 2001. Just as the murder of
Giacomo Matteotti [leader of Italy™s United Socialist Party]
revealed the nature of Italian fascism and Mussolini™s regime;
just as the great Moscow trials showed the world the essence
of the Stalinist system; just as śKristallnachtť exposed the
hidden truth of Hitler™s Nazism, watching the collapsing World
Trade Center towers made me realize that the world was
facing a new totalitarian challenge. Violence, fanaticism, and
lies were challenging democratic values.
This is not the place to analyze the ideology that, while
disfiguring the religion of Islam, creates a crusade against the
democratic world. Saddam Hussein takes part in this just as
Hitler and Stalin did before him. He asserts that in the holy
war with the śgodless Westť all methods are permitted.
Waiting for this sort of regime to obtain weapons of mass
destruction would be plain recklessness.
This logic is accused of leading to the idealization of the
United States, of not leaving room for critical reflection on
American policies. In answer to this, I guarantee that I have
not forgotten about the U.S. intervention in Vietnam or the
American support of despotic, anticommunist regimes in Latin
America”the perpetual argument of the intellectuals of the
Western European left. However, I also have not forgotten
that the American defeat in Vietnam resulted in the North™s
armed conquest of the South and a wave of terrible
repression. I also realize that while condemning the
dictatorships of [Rafael] Trujillo or [Augusto] Pinochet, I
should remember the dictatorship of Fidel Castro. Brutal power
is equally repugnant whether executed under a red banner or
a black one. The belief that there was no rightist or leftist
torture, no progressive or reactionary torture, was a
fundamental principle we lived by. It led us to reject the
hypocrisy of the Western left, which proclaimed that even bad
communism was better than good capitalism because it was
the former and not the latter that led to a bright future.
What, then, is our betrayal? Today we reject the notion of
equality between a regime that belongs to the democratic
world”even if it is conservative and disagreeable”and a
totalitarian dictatorship, whether its colors are black, red, or
green. This is why we will never again say that Chamberlain is
no better than Hitler, Roosevelt no better than Stalin, and
Nixon no better than Mao Zedong, even if we do condemn
Roosevelt for Yalta, Chamberlain for Munich, and Nixon for
Watergate.
We do not like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon because of
his brutality and his primitive demagogy, but we would not
equate him with the Hamas leaders who openly call for
barbarian suicide attacks. George W. Bush may not be our
hero, but he is the one we will support in the war with Bin
Laden, Al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein.
Many of us participated in the anti-American protests of 1968,
which is why we were horrified and guilt-stricken at the image
of so many Vietnamese escaping the regime after the
communist victory in tiny boats, risking their own lives and
those of their families. We also remember the Manichaeism of
the supporters of the Viet Cong who burned the American flag
but later failed to denounce the regime. We want to avoid
this. Today we are not burning the Iraqi flag; we just do not
understand those protesting under Saddam Hussein™s
portraits.
The hatred felt toward America becomes absurd when it
ceases to be a critical stance that is normal within democratic
discourse and takes up the defense of brutal, totalitarian
dictatorships. The so-called peace movements of the Cold War
burned effigies of American presidents and genuflected before
Stalin™s portraits. We will not repeat such a masquerade today.
In other words, we understand the complexity of the world
and we understand the complicated relationship between
desire and possibility. We understand the drama of the war in
Chechnya; that is why we do not call Putin śthe next Stalin.ť
For the same reasons, we are not enthusiastic about America™s
relations with the dictatorial regime in Saudi Arabia, though
we believe that the democratization of Iraq can have a
positive influence on the other nations of the Middle East.
Do we like the internal politics of the Bush administration, its
projects to spy on citizens, or the rightist rhetoric of the
Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party? No, we do
not, though we do believe that the American democracy, the
wiser for the lessons of McCarthyism and Watergate, will be
capable of protecting itself from the self-poisoning of the
śopen society.ť
The German journalist accuses us of not being concerned
about the Bush policies that lead to the suppression of
humanitarian principles in international relations. Certainly we
are unsettled, but we believe that what leads to the
destruction of humanitarian principles is rather the tolerance
of totalitar-ian regimes and the cowardly silence about the
crimes of the dictatorships in Iraq, North Korea, Libya, and
Cuba. We perceive real moral values in the people who take to
the streets of the democratic world to protest against the war.
These mass protests arouse the public™s criticism of the elites
in power. Every war presents an excellent opportunity to stifle
criticism and gag the critics. The climate of war promotes the
violation of democratic procedures and the militarization of
public life. It creates the belief that there is only one patriotic
way of thinking while all other views amount to betrayal.
Still, we are all the wiser for our history. We remember
Munich in 1938, which paved the way for Hitler while enjoying
the enthusiastic approval of the war™s opponents. We
remember Yalta, whose original goal was to prevent war but
which led Stalin into our countries. After all, the reasoning of
the proponents of the 1938 Munich agreement seemed sound.
People wanted peace, not war. They were happy when
Chamberlain read the declaration he signed with Hitler and
said: śFor the second time in our history, a British prime
minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with
honor. I believe it is peace for our time.ť It was Sept. 30,
1938. A year later World War II broke out.
This is why we are at odds with today™s pacifists: We will not
peacefully pave the way for those who committed the crimes
of Sept. 11 and their allies.
Finally, have we also lost the fear that democratic systems
can become totalitarian, as suggested by the German
journalist? We have often gone against the grain of public
opinion and, before the German publication did, we were
accused of betraying our countries. We have spoken about
xenophobia and intolerance, about corruption, about the spirit
of revenge, about a market devoid of humanity, about the
taking over of nations by interest groups or even by mafias. I
do not think that Havel™s, Konrad™s, or my own speeches
suggest that we have stopped criticizing what is happening in
our democratic countries or that we have failed to perceive the
temptations and threats of totalitarian regimes.
Today, however, the primary threat is terrorism by Islamist
fundamentalists. War has been declared against the
democratic world. It is this world, whose sins and mistakes we
know all too well, that we want to defend.
These are the reasons behind our absolute war on the
terrorist, corrupt, intolerant regime of the despot from
Baghdad. One cannot perceive totalitarian threats in George
W. Bush™s policies and at the same time defend Saddam
Hussein. There are limits to absurdity, which should not be
exceeded recklessly.
Adam Michnik is a prominent Polish essayist, former dissident,
and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza. This article was reprinted in El
País in Madrid, Profil in Vienna, Libération in Paris, and Tages-
Anzeiger in Zurich.
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