On the Shutting Up of Hugo
I feel moved to comment on the latest big story from the Ibero-American summit, featuring a petulant Venezuelan president and perhaps even more petulant Spanish King. The immediate context, to reiterate what's in the BBC story, is that Chavez has just accused the former Spanish Prime Minister (and Iraq War supporter) Jose Maria Aznar of being a fascist for, among other things, supposedly supporting the 2001 coup against Chavez's regime. (Today, Chavez accused the Spanish King of knowing something about it ahead of time.) I've translated this snippit of the exchange:
Does anyone come out of this looking good? I've praised Zapatero before on this blog and I will continue to do so. As much as partisanship may plague our country, Spain is truly far far worse. That Zapatero had the dignity to defend his arch political enemy from a rather serious accusation -- calling modern conservatives in Spain "fascists" is sort of callous given the country's history -- while at the same time calmly dealing with a rabid Hugo Chavez is a testament to the kind of leadership and rhetorical skill rarely seen these days.
Zapatero: President Bachelet, I only want to take an issue with some of the words The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez said in relation to the ex-President of the Spanish Government, Mr. Aznar. I want to express to President Hugo Chavez that in a table in which there are democratic governments that represent our citizens, in an Iberoamerican community that is at its essence about respect, re-spect. You can be diametrically opposed to one ideological position, and I'm certainly not one who claims to share ideas with Aznar, but ex-President Aznar was elected by Spaniards, and I demand ... [interrupted by Chaves]... demand respect.... [Interrupted by Chavez] ... One minute, give me a minute.What's interesting about this exchange is that it brings out all the tensions inherent in such an Ibero-American summit: the idea of the sanctimonious, European "mother" country telling her Latin American "children" how to behave. There's good reason, in my mind, to be furious about an unelected European monarch interrumpting a President to tell him (using the informal "tu") to shut up and listen about democracy. The King's outburst will no doubt give Chavez plenty of new material for his 300-hour (or however long he's now on the air) weekly radio show, and, additionally, new material for his #1 talking point and rhetorical axe: that any opposition=people that tried to kill him=fascists=people that need to be legally prevented from speaking.
King: [To Chavez] Why don't you just shut up!
Does anyone come out of this looking good? I've praised Zapatero before on this blog and I will continue to do so. As much as partisanship may plague our country, Spain is truly far far worse. That Zapatero had the dignity to defend his arch political enemy from a rather serious accusation -- calling modern conservatives in Spain "fascists" is sort of callous given the country's history -- while at the same time calmly dealing with a rabid Hugo Chavez is a testament to the kind of leadership and rhetorical skill rarely seen these days.
posted by Robot at 9:36 PM
5 Comments:
In my amusement (mainly because I was reminded in this piece of news that Spain is, in fact, a constitutional monarchy) I was tempted to post on this, but now I can defer to you with a reverent "experto credite." (Is this easily translatable into Spanish from the Latin?)
You'd think Chavez might have some sympathy with the idea that duly elected leaders shouldn't be called "fascists," since he, a duly elected leader, is often referred to as a "dictator." Zizek seems to think he is the future of the socialist project, though:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/zize01_.html
Maybe you have seen this? Pretty interesting stuff.
It's good that Spain has found a respectable, effective left leader. Aznar, while not a "fascist," has certainly come into a bad light lately with the revelations about his meeting with Bush pre-war. Now the "shoe is on the other food" with Zapatero, so to speak. (Couldn't resist the pun!)
Constitutional monarchs obviously tend to stay out of politics, and with good reason. I suppose one could defend the King's actions by arguing that Chavez's use of "fascist" hurt big-time. Juan Carlos's legacy is and will almost entirely rest on his actions to restore democratic elections during "la transicion." Attacking Spain's democratically elected, second longest-serving Prime Minister as a "fascist" probably struck the wrong chord.
The Zizek piece is interesting if for no other reason that it's the first time I've ever seem him un-ironically endorse any current politician's policies. I think, if you're a socialist, it'd be hard to disagree with his analysis.
Well, actually (and this comes from one who is broadly sympathetic to "socialism," although of course not a member of some of that idea's more radical elements), it is quite easy to disagree with Zizek on several points. The trouble, both for the outside spectator and for those whom Zizek seeks to denounce, is to try to sift through the truth in what he says and some rather obvious reductios, false dilemmas, and mischaracterizations.
I'm willing to accept some of his criticisms in certain respects: certainly, the ideas that capitalism could *never* be altered and that only reform or radical state-exterior subgroupings are possible are bad starting premises for any "socialist" movement, but these are rarely positions adopted tout court. They are, rather, temporary strategies that reflect a knowledge of the "facts on the ground" (more on this later). If radicals simply refused to think outside these boxes and contented themselves with the "quiet pursuit of criticism" this would be a betrayal of principle, methinks, which perhaps some people are guilty of, but which is an unfair charge to be lobbed at academics. This is especially true for, say, America, where, as we have been cataloging on this blog, liberal progressive reform is scarce, much less broad social democratic movements. Zizek displays bad faith and a penchant for cheap point-scoring when he excoriates these sorts of people (certainly he is an academic, even an "apparatchik" of elite European institutions).
The criticism of war protesters, meanwhile, cuts to the quick, personally, but this is crude. Ruling elite "tolerance" of the free speech anti-war movement is an old subject (see Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance"), but surely some protest, which will hopefully grow, is better than none at all. Just as Zizek chides purported radicals for failing to encourage Chavismo (largely a straw man, if you ask me; plenty of people along the spectrum he dilineates support Chavez), we might attack him for taking a too-haughty, ultra-left attitude towards the anti-war movement. I hate to say it, but much of his discussion simply boils down to rhetorical sophisms (not the first time he has engaged in this).
(Allow me to recount here my latest experience with the anti-war movement, because I feel the force of some of Zizek's rebuke. The Oct 27 nation-wide protests were somewhat successful, in that they managed to attract somewhere around 100,000 participants. This is far short of the desired number, but it is still good. My biggest problem was that, try as I might, I failed to attract significant numbers of people to the event, despite sending numerous emails, with strict instructions to forward, to about 50 people in the area, Stanford and non. If you ever attempt to attract people to the anti-war movement, never, I repeat never, utilize Facebook. This is the ultimate form of feel-good politics and will only defuse whatever sympathies people might have with the movement; they will gladly sign on to a Facebook group, but this act will only make it less likely that they actually *show up in person*. Despite this failure, I went, and I was glad to do so, but I was conscious of the individual "beautiful soul" criticism. On the other hand, I was at least better than the campus Democrats, who were utterly worthless in promoting the event.)
Again, I return to the facts on the ground and the straw men Zizek attacks re: Chavez. There is, technically, nothing that would prevent anyone from his "leftist anthology" from supporting Chavez, despite their stated positions vis-a-vis their own respective times and places. The argument is really a false one: just because "the left" might find appeal in Chavez, this in no way magically translates to effective action domestically, except perhaps in the form of a "hands off Venezuela" sort of campaign. The whole point about Chavez is that he is an anomaly: a seemingly "progressive" leader in a world where "resistance" to US imperialism is often overrepresented by oppressive, undemocratic, highly unpalatable forces (Iran, Russia, etc). Better to wait and see, perhaps even very enthusiastically, rather than lash out at fellow leftists for their "failures" on this matter. Leftists far more radical than I have commented much more extensively than Zizek bothers to do about the Venezuela situation: see these articles from International Socialist Review:
http://www.isreview.org/issues/54/venezuela.shtml
http://www.isreview.org/issues/54/chirino.shtml
In the latter piece, Venezuela trade unionist Orlando Chirino brings up some very salient criticisms of "Chavismo," such as the obvious point that from a certain perspective, Chavez simply represents the strengthening of the state, to the detriment of, y'know, actual workers. Chirino makes the very same criticism you did about Chavez's conflation of "enemies of the state."
In short, Chavez, despite Zizek's somewhat histrionic gestures to the contrary, is not the pivotal leftist "hinge" on which everything else depends. Chavez is riding out the oil price boom and derives much of his power from this very simple fact. As of yet, there is nothing in his behavior that could escape a typical (negative) liberal analysis of state-power-consolidating dictatorialism and elitist rational choice. If the grass roots projects (trade unions, local councils, etc) he is seemingly developing manage to gain a life of their own, independent of Chavez's government rule, there may be room for a more radical assessment of Venezuela's state of affairs. In the meantime, there is plenty of room for onlookers to be somewhat skeptical, or at least more skeptical than Zizek's hard-line and at times undemocratic Leninist position allows. And again, what can said international leftists actually *do* in this situation? Emigrate to Venezuela?
Coincidentally, I came upon a copy of the Critchley book Zizek criticizes in the bookstore today and lo and behold, it has a positive front cover blurb by...Slavoj Zizek.
Critchley has also translated some Badiou.
Scantron, I want to once again, if not briefly this time, take some issue with the protest problem. Even if the protest movement hopefully grows (which would be fine, just fine), the criticism comes from the failure to accompany protest by direct action. Sure we could maybe "take it to the polls", but even someone who's been paying as little attention to the "parade of horribles" campaigning this year, nobody really wants to get out of Iraq. Like that time when we actually did flex our votes to try and change the situation; a Democratic legislature promised to do that, but they've merely rubber stamped involvement seemingly out of fear of having their masculinity questioned (in a totally unironic way, Hillary Clinton most of all).
Regarding the current state of the left, I think that it may just be time to dissolve the people and elect a new one.
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