[Reader-list] Zizek on Egypt

[TaraPrakash]

I wonder why the author is selectively attacking the liberals. George Bush 
attacked Iraq and defended with the D word. As far as I know Bush is not was 
not will not ever be considered a liberal.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "SJabbar" <sonia.jabbar at gmail.com>
To: "Sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2011 9:31 AM
Subject: [Reader-list] Zizek on Egypt


>
>      Slavoj Žižek in The Guardian
>
>
> Why fear the Arab revolutionary spirit?
> The western liberal reaction to the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia
> frequently shows hypocrisy and cynicism
>
>
> What cannot but strike the eye in the revolts in Tunisia
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/tunisia-government-protests>
> and Egypt
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2011/jan/31/egypt-protests-live-updates
>>  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
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/02/iran-mousavi-dictatorship-khame
> ini-protests>  stood for was the popular dream that sustained the Khomeini
> revolution
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/feb/03/iranian-revolution-archive>
> : 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 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17pstan.html>
> 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.
>
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