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lundi, 29 septembre 2014

Why the Scots Chose To Wear Their Chains With Pride

Yes-campaign.jpg

Why the Scots Chose To Wear Their Chains With Pride

by Seth Ferris

Ex: http://journal-neo.org

We live in an age of decolonisation, in which big empires have broken up and more and more independent states are coming on to the map. It might therefore seem surprising that Scotland has just voted against independence. In fact, it might just have done the opposite.

Unlike Wales and Ireland, Scotland was never actually conquered by the English. It was a fully independent state for many centuries, and usually allied with France against England. It had its own king and a variety of English it regarded as a separate language. Scots Gaelic, which is incomprehensible to English or Scots speakers, also flourished.

The English king often regarded himself as the feudal overlord of the Scottish king, but Scotland retained its independence even in conflict. Despite the great contributions made by many famous Scots to the United Kingdom, it is Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, who fought for Scottish independence from English domination, who remain its national heroes.

This situation changed in 1603, when King James I of Scotland also became King James I of England as he was next in line to the English throne. Logistics dictated that he and his successors were usually in London. A century later the Scottish Parliament abolished itself and the Act of Union created a common country called Great Britain. This became the United Kingdom in 1801, when the Irish Parliament also voted to abolish itself, Ireland having been effectively ruled by England since Norman times.

The United Kingdom went on to become the world’s greatest superpower. In consequence, many of the usual drivers of separatist sentiment weren’t there. There were no such things as national minorities amongst the British, just different sorts of British people. Everyone was entitled to some piece of the attractive pie, however small, provided they knew their place.

The Scots always played a big part in spreading British power across the globe, through making things and being part of government. Not until the 1970s did the Scottish National Party have a consistent presence in the UK parliament, and even then it held a small minority of Scottish seats, the same parties they have in England claiming all the others, on broader UK-wide platforms, as they do today.

So the referendum on Scotland was not about correcting historic injustices, as these do not engage most electors. It was about whether the Scots need to have an independent country to feel Scottish. It was also about how Scottish their own leaders are, and ultimately this has proved the downfall of the independence advocates.

Yes to Scotland but no to you

The Yes campaign was predictably led by the SNP, the Scottish Nationalist Party, and its longtime de facto leader Alex Salmond. Though a popular figure, Salmond is also controversial, and the one depends upon the other.

Although many political leaders have been expelled from their original party and founded a new one Salmond is one of the few who has been expelled from the one he now leads. When consistent SNP gains came to a shuddering halt in 1979, the party then split between the radical faction to the left of Labour and the romantically nationalist “Tartan Tories”, which succeeded in expelling Salmond and friends for being too leftist. Eventually he won his argument, but at a price.

The SNP is a moderate, mainstream political force but has one thing in common with the extreme and excluded nationalists found in every country. It takes it upon itself to define who is and who is not Scottish, what Scottish should and should not do and what Scottish people should and should not think. It isn’t said in as many words, but if you don’t agree with the SNP you are not a real Scot, in SNP thinking.

There are plenty of Scots around who don’t need the SNP to tell them what to do. They don’t think disagreeing with the SNP makes them any less Scottish, particularly when the person telling them they are has got to where he is by sidelining another faction within the same party. People who may like independence in principle don’t want an SNP independence, and this has affected the result of the referendum.

The devil we don’t want to know

One of the historic grievances which might compel Scots to demand independence is that the country has long been taken for granted by the English. Like Wales, it has been treated as a source of raw materials and labour, and somewhere people can go for their holidays. Local cultures and traditions are seen as something out of history, even though the Scots are much more cultured and better educated than the English, appreciating the importance of literature, for example.

However the Scots mourn the departure of the predominantly working-class culture created by English rule. It is a nation of engineers and skilled workers, whose shipbuilding industry once ruled the world and whose major settlements were largely built around mineral exploitation. That world has largely gone now, but the English, and particularly Mrs. Thatcher, are blamed for this.

The Scotland most electors relate to is the one of their forefathers, the one where everyone worked for the English. It wasn’t ideal, but it still gives them a distinct identity – more than anything the SNP were offering. Scottish politics remains dominated by how to return to the glory days of full employment, and these came under the United Kingdom, like it or not. Being independent for its own sake did not prove attractive enough for people who know they are different anyway, and aren’t any less different as part of the UK.

Scotland traditionally votes Labour, even when there are big Conservative majorities in the UK as a whole. A big reason for this is that the “establishment”, which might be considered Conservative, is England, and Scots are defining themselves in relation to the rest of the UK. If Scotland were independent, it would no longer be necessary for the voters to define themselves in terms of the English, and the SNP itself would also be affected by this. Vested interests were not going to let that happen, and the Yes campaign failed to address the consequences of the sea change in perceptions independence would have brought.

Too good to care

Of course Scotland now has its own parliament again, with significant powers and the right to set different tax levels to the rest of the UK, within certain limits. It has also done rather well out of this arrangement. It is widely acknowledged that public services are better in Scotland than in England, and some English people have moved there for this reason. Complaints about corruption in Holyrood, home of the Scottish parliament, are nothing like the expenses and child abuse scandals which have rocked the UK parliament, even though Scots sitting in Westminster have also been involved in these.

All this implies that the Scots are just as capable as the English of governing themselves, but that very comparison hurt the Yes campaign. It adds to the Scottish identity to be better than the English when they are supposed to be the same, or worse. If Scotland becomes independent it will no longer be relevant whether it does things better than in England, there will be no reason for comparison. Scots will have their own virtues but also their own problems, and only they will be responsible for them.

The Scots are not going to give up their bragging rights. Though presented as a “sense versus sentiment” argument, the No campaign was more appealing precisely to those who have a sentimental attachment to what they see as Scotland and Scottishness. Scots always want to score points over their big bad brother. There wouldn’t be the same point in being Scots if they had to treat the English as foreign friends instead of unhealthy domestic rivals, in their estimation.

Who owns what

If Scotland had voted yes, there would have been considerable debates over who owns what. Everything Scottish actually belongs to the United Kingdom, just as everything in England does. But Scots have always maintained that the British facilities they like, such as the oil deposits situated off the Scottish coast, are rightfully theirs, while those they don’t like, like the nuclear submarine bases and power plants, are English impositions, alien to Scottish culture.

British Prime Minister Cameron, whose name is Scottish and means “twisted nose”, has promised much more devolved power to Scotland and other parts of the UK in return for the No vote. It is highly likely that, if Westminster delivers on its promises, Scots will have far greater control over their resources than they would have done in an independent state. The view of a partner government or local authority, whose powers were granted it by the English, will have to be taken into account. The views of a national government imposed after the relevant agreements were made, which people in the rest of the UK had no say in creating, are not likely to be respected if things like defence establishments are being discussed.

The No vote might ironically deliver more of what the Yes supporters actually wanted, even though the legal framework being offered remains unacceptable to them. It might also deliver more power to communities and national groups throughout the UK, thus giving the Scots more bragging rights, and confirming their identity, more than actual independence, and having to pay for it, would have done. If so, the Yes campaign will claim victory too, in true British fashion, but with considerable justification.

Conclusion

Independence is about identity. The Scots know who they are in relation to the English, so they’ve chosen to remain who they know they are. What they would be without the English to blame was less clear, as the actual idea of independence and separateness is understood and accepted anyway, without the need for any vote on the subject.

The Scots have demonstrated their independence by flying in the face of world opinion. They have stated, for the first time in a generation, that being independent doesn’t have to mean actually running your own country. They haven’t done so by much, but they have, and all Scots will respect this result, thus again confirming that they don’t need to be told what Scots should do.

Less secure nations are continually demanding independence because that is the only way they feel they can be part of the family of nations. The Scots don’t have that feeling. Maybe this is the beginning of new models being worked out which suit more people. The only problem is that nobody outside Scotland will think of asking Scottish Yes campaigners to be part of that process, but that is the sort of price Scotland is prepared to pay.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/09/25/why-the-scots-chose-to-wear-their-chains-with-pride/

La National Security Agency dans la guerre

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La National Security Agency dans la guerre

par Jean-Paul Baquiast
 
Le pivot stratégique de Obama vers le Proche et Moyen Orient permettra au complexe militaro-industriel (CMI) américain de capter à son profit des milliards de dollars de budgets de défense. Faut-il s'en plaindre?
 

Dans une brève d'actualité précédente (Un virage à 180° dans la « crise ukrainienne »? ) nous avions indiqué que les Etats-Unis allaient probablement relâcher leur pression diplomatique et militaire sur la Russie, à travers la « crise ukrainienne » qu'ils avaient suscitée, pour se consacrer pleinement à la guerre contre l'Etat islamique (Isis). Cette guerre a été déclarée le 15 septembre par Obama. Il essaye d'entrainer avec lui une trentaine voir une cinquantaine de pays, mais les candidats ne semblent pas enthousiastes. Or, pour mener cette guerre, les USA doivent mobiliser leurs ressources, et ne pas les disperser sur plusieurs fronts. Kiev attendra un peu.

Est-ce uniquement le besoin d'anéantir Isis, compte tenu des exactions diverses et menaces sur des intérêts stratégiques au Proche et Moyen Orient, qui pousse Obama? N'a-t-il pas des raisons disons plus immédiates? La réponse est fournie par un document très intéressant fourni par le site américain d'investigation Salon.com. Celui-ci n'a d'ailleurs pas eu de mal à trouver des informations, elles sont disponibles très libéralement sur les sites de la National Security Agency (NSA) et du département de la défense. Encore fallait-il que Salon les collationne et nous aide à les interpréter.

En fait, le pivot stratégique de Obama vers le Proche et Moyen Orient permettra au complexe militaro-industriel (CMI) américain de capter à son profit des milliards de dollars de budgets de défense. Ceci est d'autant plus intéressant que par ailleurs les budgets de défense étant par ailleurs  menacés de sévères restrictions. Isis devient ainsi un centre de profits, alors que l'Ukraine et la Russie était devenues des centres de coûts.

On apprend ainsi qu'un contrat pour le recueil du renseignement militaire vient d'être signé au profit de la NSA et d'une « armée » de contractants privés (dont Booz Allen Hamilton, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin et Northrop Grumman) afin de documenter et conduire la guerre aérienne engagée par Obama. « No boots on the ground » certes mais beaucoup d'intelligence. L'objectif sera d'informer la flotte de chasseurs, bombardiers, drones et missiles Tomahawk qui ont commencé à intervenir massivement en Irak et en Syrie. Où et comment frapper? La NSA le dira.

Ce contrat de 7,2 milliards de dollars au profit de la NSA et de ses sous-traitants a été conclu sous l'égide d'un commandement nommé INSCOM (U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command ) . Le contrat dit « global intelligence support » charge la NSA et ses correspondants de rassembler les informations permettant de localiser les cibles et les individus à combattre. La NSA utilisera pour cela tous les moyens d'écoute électronique qu'elle connait bien, y ayant recouru depuis des années contre le monde entier. On suppose qu'elle mettra sans doute aussi des espions sur le terrain.

Des milliers d'agents seront regroupés au centre d'écoute de la NSA à Fort Gordon. Ils seront en liaison avec d'autres centres d'écoute, à Fort Bragg, au Moyen Orient, à Hawai, en Allemagne (sic) et en Corée du sud. Des milliers (ou millions) d'information, relevant de ce que le département de la défense nomme ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) seront envoyés en permanence à tous ceux qui opèrent sur le champ de bataille, qu'il s'agisse de pilotes d'avions de combat, de drones ou de forces spéciales.

Que peut-on en penser en France?

C'est aux services spécialisés français d'apprécier. Ils feront certainement valoir, et ils auront raison, que les moyens dont ils disposent en propre sont ridiculement insuffisants. Disons seulement, en tant que simple citoyen, que la France étant engagée elle-aussi dans ce qui devrait être une guerre totale contre Isis, toutes les forces que déploie l'Amérique pour son compte devraient être les bienvenues, même s'il est peu probable que s'établissent des échanges intéressants d'informations entre les différentes partenaires, l'Amérique gardant pour elle le maximum de données intéressantes. Par ailleurs, les milliards de dollars engagés par le contrat donneront lieu, comme il est usuel en ce cas, à un grand gaspillage, vu que le CMI n'oublie pas jamais ses intérêts immédiats. Mais il en restera bien quelque chose pour la lutte se disant commune.

Au delà de cela cependant, plusieurs questions doivent être posées. La première consiste à se demander si le CMI américain n'a pas organisé ou du moins incité les récents attentats et décapitation pour justifier la réentrée en guerre massive des USA. Beaucoup le disent sur les réseaux sociaux et blogs alternatifs. Tout est possible et nous ne préjugerons pas faute de preuves. Disons seulement que le mal est fait et que désormais des tueurs psychopathes sont dans la nature. Il n'est pas possible de les laisser contaminer le monde sans réagir.

Mais précisément, pour réagir, il ne suffit pas, comme la France et la Grande Bretagne, d'envoyer quelques Rafales et Tornados pour montrer une autonomie au regard des Etats-Unis. Il faut s'assurer que l'on ne continue pas à encourager les terroristes. Or il est évident qu'aucune des mesures de fond dont nous avions fait la liste dans notre éditorial de cette semaine ne découleront de cette avalanche de moyens américains. Notamment les centaines de millions ou milliards de dollars versés à Isis et ses homologues par les Etats pétroliers du Golfe et le Koweit, maîtres es-double jeu, continueront à affluer. L'absence de troupes au sol, sous pavillon de l'ONU, ne permettra pas d'éliminer les djihadistes qui ne manquent pas d'abris, dans les montagnes ou la population, pour échapper aux frappes aériennes. Aucune négociation diplomatique, associant l'Iran et la Russie, ne sera entreprise avec l'ensemble des Etats de la région, et au delà....

Par ailleurs, la NSA, déjà omnipotente, comme nous l'avons souvent montré, se trouvera encore renforcée. Or pour la NSA, il n'y a pas d'amis ou d'ennemis, tous doivent être espionnés. Que l'on se le dise en Europe.

Sources:

* Salon.com; Who profits from our new war? Inside NSA and private contractors' secret plans

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/24/heres_who_profits_from_our_new_war_inside_nsa_and_an_army_of_private_contractors_plans/

*INSCOM Wikipedia http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Intelligence_and_Security_Command

* Documents contractuels (accès difficile) https://www.inscom.army.mil/Contracting/254/254_TO_0001_Alpha.pdf

 

La dégradation programmée des conditions d’enseignement

La dégradation programmée des conditions d’enseignement

Auteur : J.C. Barbolosi
 

En France, en 2014, les conditions d’enseignement (dans l’école publique) ont atteint un niveau désastreux, jamais égalé auparavant (dans des sens que nous allons préciser).

Quasiment tous les cycles sont touchés, de l’école maternelle à l’université ainsi que toutes les disciplines. Ce désastre s’orchestre de façon combinée, en allant des programmes inadaptés voire nuisibles à des examens totalement faussés en passant par des effectifs de classes toujours plus élevés et incompatibles avec la nature du public toujours de plus en plus hétérogène et de moins en moins impliqué. Seuls quelques établissements privilégiés (protégés ?) dans les centres des grandes villes sont épargnés…

Ce sabotage commence en général dès les plus jeunes âges avec, pour ne prendre qu’un seul exemple parmi bien d’autres, l’apprentissage de la lecture où l’on a vu (et vécu) l’abandon de plus en plus généralisé de la méthode syllabique au profit de la méthode globale. Pourtant, les acteurs sur le terrain (à l’opposé des pédagogues « de bureau ») ainsi que les neuropsychologues sont formels ; la méthode syllabique reste plus efficace que la globale : Mais l’institution continue de promouvoir la globale…

Certes, en matière de pédagogie, il n’y a jamais une unique méthode universelle qui conviendra à 100 % des individus ; chaque enseignant doit diversifier et adapter ses méthodes mais pour la lecture, on sent comme un entêtement qui va à l’encontre de l’intérêt général… Et ce n’est pas uniquement le cas de la lecture…
Voyons, discipline par discipline, ce qui se passe ensuite, dans l’enseignement secondaire, où les programmes sont sans cesse appauvris. Appauvrissement qui, d’ailleurs, se poursuit encore aujourd’hui avec la politique de la nouvelle ministre (cf. ici les programmes « allégés » de Belkacem)

Les disciplines les plus touchées

L’Histoire

Les spécialistes s’accordent à dire que, désormais, seule une petite partie de notre Histoire véritable est enseignée. Des pans entiers de notre passé sont cachés ou faussés. Des personnages comme Napoléon ou Louis XIV (et bien d’autres) disparaissent progressivement des programmes; par ailleurs, on insiste davantage sur certains faits historiques qui vont ainsi donner l’impression que l’occident œuvre toujours pour la paix dans le monde et on occulte tout ce que nous ne voulons pas entendre ou voir. Concernant les deux dernières grandes guerres mondiales, seuls des clichés sont enseignés mais jamais les causes réelles.
Exemple typique : les jeunes d’aujourd’hui savent-ils encore qui était vraiment le général De Gaulle et quel était son combat pour la souveraineté française ? Connaissent-ils sa réelle opposition à cette construction européenne financée par des fonds américains privés ?

Les Sciences

Elles se transforment, petit à petit, en un enseignement de la technologie et des machines. On manipule, on fait fonctionner tel ou tel logiciel. Mais les fondamentaux s’évanouissent. Certains chapitres de SVT (Sciences et vie de la Terre) se transforment en une vaste promotion du système de santé et des vaccins, d’autres enfoncent le clou sur le soi-disant réchauffement climatique en faisant culpabiliser chacun d’entre nous en nous assimilant à des pollueurs. En sciences physiques, les lois sont énoncées de façon autoritaire, sans être étayées.
Exemple typique : quel bachelier peut aujourd’hui expliquer ce qui provoque la force de gravitation ? Comment des masses distantes peuvent interagir pour s’attirer ?

Les sciences économiques et sociales

Tout comme l’histoire, cet enseignement est tronqué et seuls certains modèles économiques sont étudiés. Idem avec les modèles sociaux. Le modèle capitaliste est valorisé. On entretient le mythe que le droit de vote est le symbole de la démocratie et on assure à tout le monde que notre système est le meilleur même s’il n’est pas parfait. On valorise le modèle européen que l’on présente comme bénéfique à notre économie alors qu’il ne fait que bafouer nos droits, nous appauvrir, nous asservir et nous rendre dépendants sans que nous puissions être acteurs des décisions politiques.
Exemple typique : qui connait Thomas Sankara ? Cet homme a prouvé que d’autres modèles économiques sont viables. Malheureusement au prix de sa vie ; ces alternatives sociales sont combattues et encore moins enseignées.

Les Mathématiques

En analysant l’évolution des programmes sur ces dernières décennies, on constate que le raisonnement géométrique disparait. Il en va de même de l’arithmétique et d’une grande partie de l’algèbre et de l’analyse. La notion de démonstration est devenue obsolète. Des termes comme « appliquer » ou « mettre en œuvre » prennent progressivement sa place. Bref, on habitue l’élève à exécuter des tâches et plus rien n’est fait pour l’inciter à réfléchir sur les fondamentaux.
On voudrait des futurs citoyens exécutants plutôt que des citoyens savants ? Ça alors !

Notons qu’il y a également des disciplines qui pourraient se révéler bien utiles et qui ne sont quasiment plus du tout enseignées comme l’astronomie ou les sciences dites naturelles et qu’il y a aussi de nombreux savoirs-faire vitaux qui sont passés aux oubliettes comme : le bricolage, la culture, l’élevage, les méthodes naturelles de soins, la cuisine. Chacun comprendra facilement qu’étant donné que de grands lobbys se sont emparés de ces domaines (notamment agronomie et pharmacopée), il a été jugé préférable que le citoyen lambda soit le moins autonome possible dans ces compétences là…

Bref, on enseigne l’ignorance et on uniformise les individus. Il ne reste ensuite plus qu’aux médias d’achever cette opération de sabotage amorcée à l’école…

La gestion des établissement scolaires et le désengagement de l’état.

À terme il n’est pas improbable de vivre une privatisation de l’éducation. L’école deviendra alors la proie de certains lobbys, notamment le lobby informatique. D’ailleurs, cela a déjà commencé depuis un moment, voir la conférence de Nico Hirtt sur ce sujet (note de Benji: vidéo disponible sur le site source).

Par ailleurs, de nombreuses écoles fermeront leurs portes, notamment en milieu rural au profit de grands centres régionaux. On vit actuellement cette re-centralisation régionale avec les hôpitaux, demain ce sera le tour des établissement scolaires, notamment les lycées.
Par ailleurs, on dévalorise l’enseignement technologique et professionnel (alors que des demandes existent sur le marché du travail sur ces filières) et on scolarise à tout va dans l’enseignement général où, finalement, on ne fait que « brasser du vent ».

La formation des enseignants

Face à la massification de l’enseignement, il y a finalement de moins en moins de professeurs qualifiés dans le circuit. Des contractuels ou des vacataires viennent à la rescousse. De plus, le salaire des enseignants n’étant plus du tout attractif, les étudiants brillants qui pourraient avoir la fibre ou la vocation préfèrent finalement s’orienter vers d’autres carrières (et vu les conditions, ils ont bien raison !). L’ensemble des intervenants est finalement une sorte de masse formatée et conditionnée par le système et qui finalement enseigne sans se poser trop de questions. Ces enseignants sont souvent, inconsciemment, les premiers vecteurs d’une forme de propagande moderne intolérable.

Un baccalauréat truqué

C’est un secret de polichinelle : il y a un hiatus entre le niveau scolaire des élèves de terminale qui est devenu très faible et le niveau des épreuves du baccalauréat qui se doivent de présenter un minimum d’exigences pour rester politiquement crédibles. Bien sûr, toutes les consignes de bienveillance sont données aux jurys d’examens  pour assurer des taux de réussite toujours de plus en plus élevés afin que les ministres de l’éducation nationale successifs se félicitent d’un tel résultat (qu’ils ne manqueront pas d’attribuer à leurs actions…). Cette course effrénée aux taux de réussite toujours plus élevés a un effet pervers : les élèves comprennent très vite le mécanisme et sont de moins en moins stressés par les épreuves ; ils s’impliquent alors de moins en moins dans leurs révisions et s’y prennent, pour une grande majorité d’entre-eux, au dernier moment. À tort ou à raison ? À tort pour ceux qui envisagent des poursuites d’études ambitieuses car leurs lacunes finiront tôt ou tard par les pénaliser dans leur cursus ; à raison pour ceux qui envisagent des études courtes car, comme on l’a précisé plus haut, les contenus de l’enseignement général sont devenus tellement inadaptés qu’il est inutile de les bachoter outre mesure ; autant consacrer son temps à d’autres activités plus intéressantes et s’instruire par d’autres biais que l’école.
Bref, cet  examen ne représente plus rien et n’a qu’une valeur symbolique (et encore). C’en était tellement risible que, l’année dernière, l’institution a fait une mini marche arrière et on a vu notamment une épreuve de maths en série S un peu plus exigeante, « à l’ancienne »… On verra d’ici le mois de juin si cette tendance se confirme…

Le génocide des classes WIFI…

On marche maintenant sur la tête : dans de nombreux départements, le conseil général a doté les classes de sixièmes de tablettes interconnectées en WIFI. Placez une trentaine d’élèves de 11-12 ans, par ailleurs déjà tous équipés d’un téléphone gsm et d’une tablette WIFI dans une salle de 40 m² sur les murs de laquelle vont rebondir d’innombrables ondes pulsées nocives… N’y a-t-il pas là tous les éléments pour « griller » leur cerveau ?
Comment a-t-on pu en arriver à une telle hérésie ? C’est affligeant que les décisionnaires n’aient pas conscience de ces problèmes de santé qui se posent… Seraient-ils bêtes et ignorants à ce point ? Je ne le crois pas… Mais alors que cherchent-ils à provoquer avec de telles pseudo-innovations technologiques ?

Conclusion

Face à cette dégradation, on voit se développer une marchandisation de l’enseignement avec le développement d’enseignes privées (Acado***, cours Legen*** etc). C’est un marché juteux et bien des familles investissent beaucoup d’argent dans ces cours. C’est, bien sûr, encore et toujours un leurre puisque ces enseignes s’évertuent à suivre les programmes scolaires et on a vu que les connaissances fondamentales avaient disparues de ces programmes.


Alors que faire ?

Se débrouiller par soi-même !  Ne plus gaspiller ses sous ; pour cela, boycotter les grandes enseignes, la grande distribution, les grands réseaux, court-circuiter les intermédiaires. S’entraider entre amis, dans sa famille. Accéder à la connaissance via des lectures et via internet (en faisant le tri !) en fuyant les médias mainstream et la télévision ! Retrouver une hygiène de vie en privilégiant une alimentation simple, saine et naturelle (les additifs alimentaires affectent les facultés cognitives). Et concernant la scolarité, il est vrai qu’il est difficile d’y échapper (mais pas impossible) alors la suivre tout de même (sans la rejeter, ce serait contre-productif) mais en s’instruisant en parallèle via d’autres moyens et en développant son côté artiste (et artisan). Bref, se prendre en main et développer son autonomie !


- Source : JC Barbolosi

Les élections présidentielles en Syrie et l'offensive de l'EIIL en Irak

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Les élections présidentielles en Syrie et l'offensive de l'EIIL en Irak

Interview de Bassam Tahhan, politologue spécialiste du Moyen-Orient

Frédéric Saillot*
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Frédéric Saillot : Vous dites que les Américains sont derrière l'offensive djihadiste en Irak, or Obama dit qu'il est prêt à intervenir.
 
Bassam Tahhan : Commençons par un aperçu historique. Pour moi les Américains ont détruit l'Irak et ce depuis la guerre contre l'Iran en 79-80. Tout l'Occident s'est rangé derrière Saddam Hussein, ainsi que les pays du Golfe qui aujourd'hui détestent l'Irak actuel, dans l'espoir que ce pays d'Irak industrialisé et bien armé puisse balayer la révolution khomeïniste. Mais en même temps il y a eu l'Irangate, les Etats-Unis armaient l'Iran en cachette pour que les forces de Saddam soient épuisées. Cela montre l'hypocrisie des Américains que je soupçonne de vouloir détruire l'islam de l'intérieur. Après cette guerre, Saddam Hussein n'avait plus d'argent et il y a eu un ordre américain au Koweït et aux autres monarchies du Golfe de ne pas aider Saddam Hussein.

Puis les Américains ont fait croire à Saddam, via leur ambassadrice, que s'il envahissait le Koweït ils ne bougeraient pas. C'était en fait un piège dans lequel Saddam est tombé. Et une fois qu'il a envahi le Koweït, les pays arabes qui l'ont aidé pendant huit ans de guerre avaient peur pour eux-mêmes. C'est l'acte deux de la destruction : Bush père réunit le monde entier dans une coalition et décide de libérer le Koweït. Mais il va au-delà et détruit tout l'Irak, sans aller jusqu'à Bagdad. Ceci au service d'Israël sûrement, parce qu'on peut voir que successivement l'Occident à cherché à éliminer tous les Etats forts de la région qui avaient une armée puissante : l'Egypte a été neutralisée par Camp David, il restait l'Irak, l'Irak ils l'ont rasé, il restait la Syrie, et ils ont profité du printemps arabe pour essayer de raser la Syrie mais ils n'ont pas réussi.

Suite à cela, l'acte III de la destruction de l'Irak : pétrole contre nourriture, c'était le projet Clinton. Pendant encore des années l'Irak a été détruit et le peuple affamé. L'acte IV : Bush fils après le 11 septembre, ne pouvant pas s'en prendre à Ben Laden, se met dans la tête que c'est Saddam le coupable du 11 septembre et va mener une guerre tout seul, avec les Britanniques, pas les Français. Il prend évidemment l'Irak et nomme Bremer qui dissout l'Etat irakien : plus d'armée, plus de police, le pays est livré à lui-même. Et pendant toute cette période il formait soi-disant une armée irakienne : là on l'a vu elle a été défaite en quelques heures. Trois légions et une légion de police autour de Mossoul, c'est à dire 50 000 hommes défaits en quelques heures ! Et il faut voir ce qu'ont fait les Américains au niveau de l'armée : il y a six mois, quand les sunnites se sont révoltés à Al Anbar dans l'ouest - l'Irak étant divisé en trois, l'ouest est sunnite, l'est est chiite, le nord est kurde - Maliki a demandé à Obama des hélicoptères blindés tueurs de char, des avions sans pilotes, Obama a refusé, par crainte que cet armement n'aille à la Syrie. Parce que le gouvernement Maliki et Assad sont unis par la fibre chiite, c'est l'axe de la résistance : Syrie, Hezbollah, Téhéran, chiites d'Irak, Maliki, je dis pas ça par confessionnalisme mais en analysant les choses objectivement. Ils ont passé des accords pour des F16, ils n'en ont reçu qu'un seul pour l'entraînement et qui ne fonctionnait pas. Ils leur ont promis des chars Abrahms, ils ne les ont jamais reçus. L'armement sophistiqué électronique, que Saddam de son temps développait, rien du tout. Ils ont fait quoi alors ? Ils ont embauché près d'un million deux-cent mille soldats et policiers qu'ils ont soi disant entraînés, mais c'est des gens avec des armes légères. Parce que les Américains ont toujours peur que cet Irak chiite ne se retourne contre leurs alliés : le royaume saoudite et les monarchies du Golfe. Mais aussi parce qu'il ne veulent pas que cet Etat soit fort, pour qu'il reste toujours dépendant des Etats-Unis. 

Mais la défaite à Mossoul a aussi une autre raison : ceux qui ont attaqué ne sont pas uniquement de l'EIIL, ça c'est juste une étiquette. C'est une coalition : les tribus sunnites qui se sont révoltées à Falluja, les anciens baasistes, parfois alliés à la confrérie des Naqshbandi, comme le "roi de trèfle" dans le jeu de carte de Rumsfeld, le numéro deux du gouvernement de Saddam, qui n'est pas mort, qui est Naqshbandi et qui est dans cette prise de Mossoul. Il faut ajouter à cela le Conseil militaire, c'est à dire tous les gens qui se sont réunis contre Maliqi. Toute cette coalition s'est révoltée à Fallouja il y a six mois et par effet de surprise est allée dans le nord et a pris Mossoul après s'être développée entre la Syrie et l'Iraq, une région sunnite. Parce que les sunnites qui avaient tout au temps de Saddam, se retrouvent marginalisés et n'arrivent pas à s'intégrer à ce nouveau gouvernement. Alors évidemment on peut accuser Maliki de n'avoir pas voulu vraiment les intégrer, d'avoir opposé à l'oligarchie sunnite du passé une oligarchie chiite, ce qui n'est pas faux. Maintenant il faut voir que les chiites sont majoritaires dans le pays. Et comme les Américains veulent la démocratie, et bien les majoritaires gagnent aux élections, et les chiites ont raflé la majorité.

FS : Les Américains appuient donc passivement cette offensive ?
 
BT : Les Etats-Unis jouent, ils sont amis avec Maliki, mais en même temps avec son ennemi le royaume saoudite, donc vous allez pas me dire qu'avec leurs awacs et toutes leurs bases militaires dans le Golfe, ils n'ont pas vu ces colonnes dans le nord aller jusqu'à Mossoul ! Et la Syrie a bombardé dans le désert syrien une colonne de bindés légers qui allait vers l'Irak la veille de l'attaque de Mossoul. Donc tout le monde était au courant.

FS : Qui arme l'offensive sunnite ?
 
BT : A mon avis les armes doivent venir de Jordanie. J'avais relevé que la Jordanie avait une forte concentration de combattants, je croyais que l'attaque allait être vers Damas, mais l'attaque est allée dans le sens irakien. Je soupçonne les Saoudiens et les Turcs qui sont très proches et qui n'ont jamais digéré que Mossoul soit rattaché à l'Irak, parce qu'il y a là des Turkmènes et du pétrole. Donc la Turquie joue un jeu trouble là-dedans. Le Kurdistan irakien joue un jeu trouble lui aussi, là ils ont profité de l'offensive sur Bagdad pour prendre Kirkouk. Et là les Américains ont réussi à allumer une guerre de cent ans entre les chiites et les sunnites. Car un beau jour ils ont découvert que les sunnites s'opposaient aux chiites et ils ont provoqué cela, et ça va pas s'arrêter de sitôt. La meilleure preuve en est que l'ayatollah Sistani, qui d'habitude est très sage et qui même les jours les plus noirs de l'invasion américaine n'avait appelé à la guerre sainte, là il a appelé à la guerre sainte. Et chez les chiites il y a une hiérarchie religieuse, un clergé, et un respect des décisions du clergé. Cet appel au djihad est très rare chez les chiites, et c'est pas le djihad à la sunnite, un peu baratin, ou n'importe qui dit "je vais au djihad".

FS : Alors justement, le président iranien à appelé à combattre le terrorisme.
 
BT : Oui, et il a même dit qu'il était prêt à s'engager. Ceci dit, toute cette guerre est peut-être un piège pour l'Iran. Parce que si l'Iran intervenait vraiment, là ça donne un prétexte à l'occident pour bombarder l'Iran. Quant aux Américains je ne pense pas qu'ils vont intervenir, parce que c'est pas dans leur intérêt. Ils ont armé les sunnites, et ils vont armer les chiites peut-être.

FS : Est-ce que l'offensive sur Mossoul et maintenant sur Bagdad n'est pas une réponse à la victoire d'Assad aux élections ?
 
BT : Oui sûrement, et au maintien de Maliki au pouvoir.

FS : Quelle a été la participation à ces élections et qu'est-ce qui permet aux occidentaux d'en contester la légitimité ?
 
BT : Je crois que l'Occident, même si les élections s'étaient déroulées d'une manière parfaite, ils les contesteraient toujours. Preuve en est que nous autres Syriens de France nous n'avons pas pu voter. Parce que les Syriens de France sont beaucoup plus pour Assad que pour la rébellion et Fabius a eu peur que les résultats du vote ici ne soient pas à son goût. Nous avons tout de même voté à Paris, face au mur de la paix, avec les passeports, et Assad a fait 94,6 %. Au Liban, il y a 1 million 200 000 réfugiés : une foule de 200 000 Syriens s'est précipitée vers l'ambassade à Beyrouth pour aller voter, portant les portraits d'Assad et les drapeaux légaux. La Syrie avait ouvert des bureaux de vote sur la frontière syro-libanaise, les Libanais ont menacé les Syriens qui passaient en Syrie pour aller voter de leur ôter le statut de réfugié. La Turquie a empêché ses réfugiés de voter. Il en est de même en Jordanie où ils ont renvoyé l'ambassadeur de Syrie quelques jours avant la date du vote. Et il y a 750.000 Syriens en Jordanie, a peu près pareil, plus ou moins en Turquie. En Syrie, les grands centres urbains, Damas, Homs, Hama, et Alep, sont tenus par Assad ainsi que toute la côte, où il y a près de trois millions de réfugiés de l'intérieur. Il n'y a que Raka et Deir-el-Zor, deux petites villes du nord qui lui échappent. Même dans les provinces les plus éloignées de la Syrie, près de la Turquie et de l'Irak, on a voté. Donc globalement sur 12 ou 13 000 000 de votants, il ya eu à peu près 11 000 000 qui ont voté, il y a donc eu une très forte participation et Assad a fait 88%, c'est-à-dire 16% de plus que les sondages de la CIA.
 
FS : Cette offensive sur Bagdad peut être une réponse à la victoire d'Assad aux présidentielles, qui renforce l'axe de la Résistance ou le croissant chiite. Plus généralement, n'a-t-on pas affaire à la tentative des Américains, par combattants interposés, aussi bien au Moyen-Orient qu'en Ukraine, d'affaiblir le pôle alternatif à leur volonté de domination unipolaire ?
 
BT : Sûrement, d'ailleurs on a vu qu'après la défaite de l'Occident en Syrie, on a fait éclater les événements de Kiev. Mais c'est une erreur, parce que quand on s'attaque à un ennemi, et qu'on n'est pas sûr de l'écraser, il ne faut pas le faire, vous le renforcez. Et finalement, cette guerre de Kiev, elle a permis à la Russie de récupérer la Crimée. Après cela les responsables américains se sont rendus à Kiev pour convaincre le nouveau gouvernement de mater militairement les deux provinces séparatistes. On a ouvert un nouveau front avec la Russie, mais est-ce qu'on est sûr de pouvoir gagner ? Je ne le pense pas. Parce que la Russie défend sa frontière, elle défend des gens qui parlent russe, tandis que, expliquez moi en quoi, les Américains ont un intérêt dans ces deux provinces sinon d'embêter la Russie ? Et là c'est grave, dans la mesure où l'Europe jusqu'à maintenant dans nos medias représente la Russie non comme un partenaire européen, mais comme un ennemi, mais pourquoi ? Je vois pas, la Russie peut faire partie de l'Europe et peut apporter beaucoup de choses à l'Europe. C'est là où il y a la confrontation entre les différentes conceptions de l'Europe. Pour les Américains, l'Europe doit rester vassale des Etats-Unis, car ils savent très bien que si la Russie s'entend avec les Européens, ils seront marginalisés, eux, car ça représente une puissance économique extraordinaire.

Jonathan Bowden: Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

By Jonathan Bowden 

Ex: http://www.counter-currents.com

heidegger-crop Editor’s Note:

The following text is a transcript of Jonathan Bowden’s lecture on Martin Heidegger at the 6th New Right Meeting in London on February 18, 2006. You can listen at YouTube here [2]. If you can make out the passage marked unintelligible, please post a comment below. 

In truth, this is not one of Jonathan’s best lectures, but even Heidegger experts would be hard pressed to deliver a good introduction in one hour. It is, in particular, highly misleading to characterize Heidegger as an “essentialist.” But Jonathan means simply the belief that reality that exists “outside” and “before” the existence of the mind. And indeed, Heidegger so strongly believed this that he rejected even Platonic essentialism as implicitly subjectivist, because it posiys that ultimate reality consists of entities that satisfy our quest for certainty, thus conceiving the world based on the needs of the human subject.  

Martin Heidegger: this talk in some respects is incredibly difficult, because I remember when the elitist Jewish academic George Steiner was asked to do the Fontana Modern Masters on Heidegger, it was because a long series of Oxbridge academics couldn’t do it. They basically couldn’t reduce the extraordinary complexity of, in particular this work, Being and Time, to 100 pages. Because Fontana Modern Masters, as you know, is a students’ sort of “cheat” primer, the sort of thing that people look up on the internet now. And to reduce Heidegger to that is slightly ridiculous. But you also have to provide a sort of middling and upper-middling foregrounding for people to come into the theory anyway, otherwise they’ll be at sea.

Now, what people do when they write Times Literary Supplement, never mind Sunday Times, articles about somebody like Heidegger is they basically talk about his politics; they talk about whether or not he had a mistress; they talk about his early Catholicism; they talk about wraparound and biographical matters, because the theory is amongst the most difficult metaphysical theories written in the last century.

Probably Adorno and Sartre on the ultra-Left—both of whom cross over with certain areas that Heidegger was concerned with, Sartre, biographically never mind anything else—and Heidegger are amongst the most complicated theorists that one can ever imagine. So, before we start on this talk we have to look at what’s happened to Western philosophy in the last hundred years.

Now, for those who read their philosophy at tertiary level in our universities—and tertiary education has been so degraded in many respects through egalitarian discourse that it’s almost meaningless, but for those who do—they know that there are two great clusters in Western academic philosophy: so-called Anglo-American philosophy, and so-called, but essentially actual, European and Continental philosophy.

We grow up, whether we like it or not—because even the Tony Blairs of this world are actually subliminally influenced by these ideas—in an empirical, naturalist, factually-oriented, slightly anti-theoretical current which comes from our alleged and soi-disant Enlightenment. And we come out of essentially an anti-theoretical and an anti-metaphysical discourse which is why something as unbelievably outré as this is literally outside of British and Anglo-concentric thinking in all sorts of ways. For a long time it was said that Being and Time would be untranslatable, and it wasn’t translated until ’62. And don’t forget, the book was written in the ’20s. And it’s translated by two academics, so it’s sort of two-for-one, with Blackwells, a sort of generalized Oxbridge publisher.

Now, what is Continental philosophy trying to do, and why does Anglo-American philosophy think it’s meaningless? Because these are questions that can’t be answered and therefore shouldn’t even be asked, in a Bertrand Russell and Wittgensteinian way of looking at things. Basically, Heidegger is trying, through semi-atheistic and allegedly secular discourse, to arrive at certain ultimate spiritual truths grounded in pure philosophy, and in pure thinking about thinking, even thinking about the thinking of thinking. And he is trying to prove certain cardinal things that, in many ways, gifted adolescents ask, but often as they atrophy into adulthood and early maturity they fall away from. Most people ask, “What’s life for?,” “Is there a God?,” “Is there ultimate purpose?,” “What is death about?,” “Will anything happen to me that can be acknowledged as existing before I die that impinges upon this cardinal event?,” “Why are most people completely oblivious to these issues and are terrified and often in a state of mild anxiety if they come up in general discourse?”

Now, Heidegger is trying to reach real conclusions, grounded philosophical conclusions, about these cardinal matters. Because he believed that Western metaphysics—and this is an incredibly arrogant statement really—that Western metaphysics had gone wrong for 2500 years of falsity and inauthenticity in relation to the primal nature of Being, which he believed is even a category within the notion of being which he calls Being-in-being.

Now, what’s “Being”? The “science” of Being in abstract philosophy is called ontology, and all of his work is about ontology. Now, this slogan behind me which Troy has kindly put up is, in part, a conceit because it says, “Martin Heidegger and Death’s Ontology.” Well you can’t really have an ontology of death, but you can have an ontology of life. But his whole point is to place life, as understood as concrete Being and as phenomenon, before death.

Heidegger is essentially a religious thinker, but he wants to route theoretical and theological energies through pure intellectuality. Why so? Because it is a way into intellectual understanding in the 20th century. Most of the cardinal ideas of the 20th century impinge upon him. And he was taught phenomenology at university by Edmund Husserl, to whom Being and Time is dedicated. In the sort of epigraph/frontal page he says, “Dedicated to Edmund Husserl in friendship and admiration. Black Forest 8th of April 1926.”

Now, many people, sort of undergraduates, people who go on Channel 4 documentaries, say that Martin Heidegger is an existentialist. And he influenced enormously that school, but in actual fact he is not an existentialist, hence the endless intellectual complication. He is as far removed as that, whilst being tangential to it, as one can possibly imagine. Now, he is a radical essentialist of the most primary and foundational form.

Most of the contemporary theory that’s influenced Western university professors and other intellectuals in the last 30 years is based on a particular type of existentialism which is designed, in a way, to get rid of this sort of material even before they start thinking. The idea is that existence is all there is, and existence foregrounds essence. There is no prior essence, there are no ontological variants which could be said to be true before us. Essentially, there is—put crudely and in Sun editorial terms if you can even describe Heidegger in such cultural proximities—they’re saying that God is not just dead, but was always dead and was always a mistake and even the admission of his existence or partial existence was based on a question that shouldn’t be asked, because it was epistemologically false even in the asking of it.

Epistemology is the science, or way, of understanding how one should think: thinking about thinking, if you like. Because in this type of thinking, before you have a thought you must, rather like a surgeon, make sure your tools are all right in order to operate. So you have to think about the thinking you’re going to initiate before you even start thinking.

Now, most Left-wing ideas are based upon the idea that we’re a tabula rasa, that we’re a sheet of paper, that you can write upon it as you want and as you will; that we’re the product of economics, or that we’re the product of social forces or interconnections of the two; there might be a bit of biology but it’s so mediated through socio-economic concerns that it’s lost sight of. Certainly, there are no prior truths to us and our existence. Hence Sartre’s famous essay which was designed to bring Leftist students, and a whole generation of them, many of whom are prominent in the media now and so on, in the Western world into a particular type of thinking. He wrote an essay called Existentialism is a Humanism because ultimately, in a sense, it is, although paradoxically there have been plenty of Right-wing existentialists.

They believe that existence precedes essence; essence is just an idea, is a ghost, is a spook in the machine, is that which is prior, is that which all modern theory rejected when the modern world replaced the medieval world. And in some respects, although it’s a very crude analysis, Heidegger is a super-charged modern who was a return of radically medieval ways of looking at the world; at meaning; at purpose; at will; and at existence in existence as clarified essence. So, in a way he is trying—scribbling away at this chalet he had, made of wood in the Black Forest— to confirm the existence of God, basically. That’s what he’s trying to do with this enormous amount of theory.

When post-structuralism, so-called, became the cardinal intellectual discourse of our universities, pretty much in the 1980s/1990s and subsequently, those theories are based upon the idea which radicalizes even the existentialist project of the ’50s and ’60s. And this is that there is no essential foundation to meaning. I remember a Marxist university professor I know quite well—he teaches at some upgraded poly which is now called a university in London—Malcolm Evans, who wrote a book about Shakespeare called Signifying Nothing, which is a quote from Macbeth of course, so there’s a clever interweaving of texts going on here. But he basically believes that essentialism is dangerous. Because of course, although your average Socialist Worker Party activist, and there’s few of them left, would even think in these terms, it is a totally rival and totally discontinuous and totally oppositional way of thinking. They believe, they begin with man in his predicament and the only way to get out of that predicament is to change one’s environment which creates the nature of that predicament.

Heidegger’s view is that everything is prior, everything is prior, and death is before you. And death, in accordance with essentially his religious nature, is what life is about. In other words, life is about preparing yourself for inexistence.

Now, one of the sort of comets that goes across this constellation which could be said to be Heidegger is Jean-Paul Sartre who did his thesis in Germany, partly during the Nazi period. Sartre, this rather sort of short-sighted ugly man, stooping around, running about, didn’t seem to know what was going on in Germany at this period. Indeed, there were circles of the Left in post-war France who held it against Sartre that he actually studied in Germany during this period, influenced by these sorts of ideas.

Now, Sartre takes these ideas in another direction. So, he doesn’t have a prior essence; that there are things like Beauty with a big “B,” Justice with a big “J,” Truth with a big “T,” and so on, that exist prior to man. He believes that everything is unknown prior to specific consciousness. But you authenticate yourself and the possibility of Being by confronting nothingness and filling the emptiness with volition, in his case by choosing to be an extreme Leftist. Life is utterly meaningless. But one chooses a course for one’s life and for one’s discourse.

And this led him to myopic apoliticism and moping around in German libraries in the 1930s through to Maoism, essentially, because he basically ended up in a sort of Maoist sect before he died in the 1970s. Something which, because Pol Pot of all people passed through some of those Parisian Salons in the 1970s, listening to people like Kristeva and these other post-structuralist theorists, has rather doomed Sartre in post-war and after his death terms, because you can’t claim existentialism as a humanism when one of your moral pupils turns out to be Pol Pot! That’s been a bit difficult, you see.

But you have this extraordinary radicalism in the examples of these two men: Sartre ends up with Mao (put crudely), and Heidegger ends up with Hitler. Because both of them, if you like, begin thinking cardinally about the values of our civilization which, when you think about it logically, would lead them to some of the most radical conclusions, socially, politically, and ideologically, which are possible.

Because this type of intellectuality—and I’m going to read certain sections of it because there is a pretension always to talking about people like Heidegger without dealing with what we’ll call the hard core; you’ve actually got to look at the material which is written in a sedentary way but is written, in a sense, in accordance with the notion of intellectual fury. It’s a belief that all of life and all of meaning can be revealed through mental processes, which I don’t believe is true, but it’s a heroic attempt to do this.

And this sort of language is virtually a system of thinking which has more relationship with artistic ways of describing things, actually. Because Heidegger’s theory is something that you have to experience. Here is a man dwelling upon ultimate questions of whether there is an essence in an essence, of what it means to be you, or this table, or anything that phenomenologically exists. Or, are there realms above us or beneath us or around us? And, how can you answer a moral question with an affirmative statement?

Wittgenstein’s point in Tractatus and after is that ultimately you can’t answer a morally affirmative statement because to do so is meaningless outside language, and language is all that exists, and language is given even only a partial meaning through context. There’s a famous and funny story of Wittgenstein where he’s ferociously berating an American visiting professor at Cambridge and he says, “You can’t make affirmative moral statements,” and he’s waving a poker in his face. And the university professor replies, “Here’s an affirmative moral statement: don’t wave pokers in the faces of visiting professors.” And Wittgenstein hurls the poker into the fire and storms out of the room in a rant.

But these attempts, abstract and very radical though they are, always, like Icarus in a sense, go up and then come down again. Because, mark my words, every politician and every pundit, no matter how low-level, no matter how 200 times beneath this sort of discourse they are, is actually replicating ideas that have come from somewhere and are going somewhere. The reason why—you know, you walk around London today—the world is as it is, is ideological in the broadest of senses. Because a man who has any sort of belief becomes the equivalent of 50 men in action. And Heidegger was a man whose action was theory in this purely Germanic way.

I met a German intellectual once and he said, “Ah, you’re an intellectual,” and he sits down and he looks right into your eyes and you begin the theory. This is a totally un-British sort of way of behaving because there’s no concept of irony in a way, but this idea that you achieve truth through almost a violence of intellectuality, which in a way Heidegger evinces.

Now let’s read something from Being and Time. Now, Being and Time is divided into two books, essentially. The first one is “An Explanation of the Question of the Meaning of Being; The Necessity, Structure and Priority of the Question of Being.”This is whether we can even talk about the nature of talking about the book. We have, “The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being,” we have “The Formal Structure of the Question of Being,” we have “The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being,” and we have “The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being.” That takes him 32 pages before he’s even started. You’ve got to clear away all the refuse in your garden before you start, basically.

Part One is “The Interpretation of Dasein in Terms of Temporality,” that means the interpretations of Being in terms of time, andThe Explication of Time as the Transcendental Horizon for the Question of Being.” Then there’s another section about “Being-in-the-world in General as the Basic State of Dasein.” Then there’s a section on “The Worldhood of the World,” by which he means, “Is the world as we appear?” Can we prove that you are actually there? Because it’s actually very difficult from first principles to prove common sense: that I’m speaking to you, that I’m not speaking to myself, that it’s a vision, that I’m talking about things that are endlessly solipsistic, in pure mental processes without being empirical, because this type of theory believes that empiricism distorts because you go down to matter, and so you must keep it totally at a theoretical level. It’s actually quite difficult to prove the idea that everything isn’t an idea, and that even addressing you in this way is an idea, and so on.

“Being-in-the-World as Being-within and Bringing-one’s-Self to the ‘They’.” This is the idea that one approaches the possibility of semi-existence in another, theoretically, before one gets there. Then we have “Being-in as Such.” Intellectual Germans love these little “as suches” and so on. “Care as the Being of Dasein,” now this is the self-reflexiveness of the possibility of Being in being. What does he mean by “Being in being”? He really means the presence of God in life. Really, deep down, in my view, he never left the Jesuits who trained him intellectually, and his thesis was on Duns Scotus; the idea that everything is, essentially, foregrounded before one gets there, theoretically.

 

heidegger-hut-2.jpg

 

Here’s the second book, Division two. “Dasein and Temporality; Dasein’s Possibility of Being-a-Whole and Being-Towards-Death,” which is the real point, to place man in full understanding of it before death.

Now, there’s always with this sort of theory, possibly a sort of alienation effect. But the way to look at it is there are few moments of profundity in most individual’s lives, but one of them is that period when one is probably pretty conscious that one is waiting for death. And it’s going to happen to all of us, you and me, and in some ways the way to overcome the sort of innate philistinism that exists about this pure, pure theory is to put yourself in that position. Because Heidegger’s work is a man in early life in full consciousness of radical mental gifts, thinking about what it means to die before you get there, and not responding at the level of emotion. Although I believe personally that all theory is physically based and comes out of the emotions as part of one’s physicality, but let’s not intrude my ideas too much.

Another section is “Dasein’s Attestation of an Authentic Potentiality-for-Being, and Resoluteness.” Another section is “Dasein’s Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole, and Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care.” Then there’s a section on “Temporality and Everydayness.” By this time we’ve got up to page 421, by the way. Then there’s a section on “Temporality and Historicality,” and then there’s a section on “Temporality and Within-Time-ness as the Source of the Ordinary Conception of Time.” Then there’s some dealings with other theorists who are rather brushed away at the end, Hegel in particular.

The last section of all, which is Section 83, around pages 436–486, is “The existential-temporal analysis of Dasein, and the question of fundamental ontology as to the meaning of Being in general.” This is the moment when he wants to place man before death, self-aware of the nature of authentic existence.

As a critique of all this sort of material Adorno—in some respects his chief ideological nemesis on the other side—wrote a book called The Jargon of Authenticity which is an attack upon this type of thinking. Adorno is one of the key thinkers in what’s called Western Marxism and the Frankfurt School.

Now, here is a section on death, because it’s all essentially about death. “Underlying this biological-ontical exploration of death,” that just means the biological exploration of death, “is a problematic that is ontological.” That concerns the science of Being. “We still have to ask how the ontological essence of death is defined in terms of that of life. In a certain way, this has always been decided already in the ontical investigation of death. Such investigations operate with preliminary conceptions of life and death, which have been more or less clarified.” That’s in the last 290 pages which I’ll forebear from reading out. “These preliminary conceptions need to be sketched out by the ontology of Dasein.” Which is Being in being. “Within the ontology of Dasein, which is superordinate to an ontology of life, the existential analysis of death is, in turn, subordinate to a characterization of Dasein’s basic state. The ending of that which lives we have called ‘perishing.’ Dasein too ‘has’ its death, of the kind appropriate to anything that lives.” Basically he’s asking here, does what traditionalist orders have called the soul survive death? “And it has it, not in ontical isolation, but as codetermined by its primordial kind of Being. In so far as this is the case, Dasein too can end without authentically dying, though on the other hand, qua Dasein, it does not simply perish. We designate this intermediate phenomenon as its ‘demise.’” Then there’s a large footnote which I’ll forebear from going into because it’s printed in point 6, I think. “Let the term ‘dying’ stand for that way of Being in which Dasein is towards its death.” Auxiliary footnote. “Accordingly we must say that Dasein never perishes. Dasein, however, can demise only as long as it is dying.” So, he’s talking about the death of the concept of the soul which is self-aware of the possibility of that moment. “Medical and biological investigation into “demising” can obtain results which may even become significant ontologically if the basic orientation for an existential interpretation of death has been made secure.” Ah ha! “Or must sickness and death in general—even from a medical point of view,” Notice: “medical point of view.” Physical stuff which we keep out of sight. “Be primarily conceived as existential phenomena?”

The first thing that strikes you about this is his attitude towards death. You walk round a death ward in a hospital—you know they’re all about to give out—most people’s response is physical and emotional, the one and the other. He regards that as bourgeois deviation; even as filth. Always keep your theory before you because that’s how you apprise the nature of that which is real as against that which is mere appearance, and that which is governed by dread.

In the 1960s the counter-culture, that had many tendencies which ultimately tended overwhelmingly to the Left regardless of this, had the notion that life was not as it should be or could be. That there needed to be a spiritual dimension to human beings that had been lost sight of given the collapse of the Christian religion. And I take it as unarguable that in our civilization in the last hundred years, in accordance with what it once was, in the West largely, with the odd exception, individual and group, the Christian religion has collapsed. And it’s collapsed amongst the most advanced thinkers of our civilization and racial or ethnic group from early in the 19th century. Or at least they were aware of the possibility of its mass collapse long before it became a sociological phenomenon. This is why this theory, which ultimately has had much more impact in theology than it has in philosophy, has been put in this particular way.

When the Renaissance occurred in our thinking one of the great criticisms of the philosophical schools that preceded it, of which Duns Scotus was an accredited master, was that they were dealing with things that could never be proved at this level of reality, even theoretically. And the slogan that’s used is that they were debating the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. And it was all utterly pointless, and we had to get away from all that.

Now, Heidegger wants to go back there, up to a point, but in actual fact he wants to go even further back. He wants to go back to the pre-Socratics, he wants to go back to the Sophists, he wants to go back to the original and primary Greek thinkers that begin the process two-and-a-half thousand years ago, which is why Nietzsche obsessed him. Because, if you like, Nietzsche stands half way between this radical essentialist/quasi-religious thinking, that there is before you nothing but God, and God in all and God for all, and you’re part of Him. Which, if you sacralize this language, begins to make sense of what Being is, what Being-in-being is, what Being-in-being before all being is, and so on. It’s, if you like, a re-rooted theological language use. There’s that position. And prior traditionalists who have Right-wing views largely accord philosophically and psychologically with this area.

Nietzsche, who’s a figure who obsessed Heidegger of course, and who has this enormous theoretical explosion at the end of the 19th century, just preceding the emergence of people like Husserl, Jaspers and Heidegger, in early 20th century Germanic thinking at a high philosophical level. Don’t forget, Anglo-American philosophy almost denies the possibility of metaphysics. Bertrand Russell would say, if he were sat at the back, which is a bit difficult considering he’s been a corpse for about thirty years, “It’s all meaningless. It’s an interesting talk but it’s about things that can’t be proved at any level and is therefore pointless. Because your view is as good as his, as good as so and so’s. The only difference is people can put it better, or worse. But there can be no grounded truth that I can grasp and put social practice and purpose to.”

 

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Now, Nietzsche stands halfway between the Left existentialist view, that there’s nothing prior, that, put very simply, we make it up as we go along.

Baudrillard, a French intellectual, wrote a book in the 1990s saying that the first Gulf war was just a computer game; it didn’t happen. Didn’t happen, it was just a discourse. All those cluster bombs and stealth bombs and so on, it was just a fantasy in a televisual age: one man’s discourse, you see?

In an age of extreme relativism, which is the almost opposite of this absolutist theory, totalitarian theory, which is actually, mentally what it is, we see the division between what exists now and the reasons for some of the very controversial, certainly in the mainstream, political choices that Heidegger made in the middle of his life in Germany in the thirties.

Now, Nietzsche’s position is that there is a prior, there is an essence, but Nietzsche is a partial to semi-absolute existential thinker. Because Nietzsche’s contribution to modernity and to modern intellectual thinking is there may be things which may be prior, but we don’t know what they are, and we have to test them through struggle, through life, through will and purposiveness, and various levels of what he called Will to Power which he believed was the basis of all lived existence.

So, Nietzsche says God is dead partly to say he’s a militant atheist but partly to say that the idea of God in the minds of men has died, which means that theoretically it may not have completely died but is in a point of collapse. Because the point is to test and to rearrange, and you put up a view and I will attack it because life is struggle. And in that struggle comes out the possibility of meaning. Nietzsche would say, “There is a truth but I don’t know it yet.” There is a degree to which ontological circumstances cannot be proved but are not rendered prior meaningless, which is why Nietzsche approaches nihilism, the belief that there is no purpose and no values and no constraints and no morals that aren’t purely human, and that there is nothing outside. Which, of course, makes it very difficult to run any sort of a civilization because there are no lines.

And Nietzsche stands halfway between what you might call this existential Leftist praxis and Heidegger. Nietzsche’s become extremely fashionable on the Left in the last thirty years and there’s lots of post-modernist books by people like Deleuze and Guattari, and these sorts of people, who love the element of Nietzsche that tears down—“I come as a destroyer!”—because in order to create you’ve got to destroy first, you’ve got to level off a bit. There’s ruins around you, so you give them a bit of a push.

All of Nietzsche’s thinking before Zarathustra, when he begins to vouchsafe his own view, if you like, is largely a tearing down: a tearing down of the normative nature of ethics in The Genealogy of Morals; tearing down of the idea of truth itself; an erection of science in works like The Dawn or The Joyful Wisdom/The Gay Science; and then a tearing down of the idea of science; a playing up of certain Darwinian and evolutionary ideas which Nietzsche’s actually quite suspicious of because, he doesn’t think that life and circumstances are linear at all, he believes they’re circular and everything that was comes back again. He thinks that Darwinists are cretinous materialists and shallow optimists. Look at people around you. Are they progressing and moving upwards or are they just dullards led by a few people at the top who manipulate them?

Now, Heidegger made a radical, possibly the most radical, choice philosophically and politically in the century that’s just passed. Admittedly, he was living in Germany at a time when, if the Left-liberal consensus would have it, the most controversial regime in the 20th century came to power. Now, if you were in other races or in other societies you would actually refute that, you’d say that Stalin’s or Lenin’s or Mao’s or various other regimes were more important. You could argue that the most important regime in the 20th century is the American one. But put all that on another table for today.

Heidegger decided in 1933 to join the Nazi Party, to join the National Socialist German Workers Party and gave lectures for a year in his university in full Nazi uniform;[1] and was involved with all of the party Gauleiters and other figures in his area to the shock and horror and consternation of much of the academic elite that he was associated with. And don’t forget that Heidegger did this for purely speculative and theoretical reasons. Heidegger had no concern with doctrines of race, no concerns with doctrines of conspiracy, no concerns with politics at all. Politics was irrelevant in relation to placing man before death, which is what life was about. And what he loved about this movement was that he thought it was a primordial movement that was bringing back, almost in an occultistic way, the partiality towards death, and in some ways it was bringing back the ancient world with modern technology. That’s why he reached out to it.

Now, he regarded democracy, just like middle-brow secular humanism, as a deviation. Because in a sense his nature is so primordially prior and religious that he considers almost all normal life to be irrelevant: family, having a good time, pleasure, pleasure as a principle for life, which in liberal theory is cardinal. The American constitution talks about liberty, talks about property, talks about happiness. Heidegger doesn’t think the purpose of life is happiness; the purpose of life is death and facing ontology. But he doesn’t put it in the vocabulary that you must fall before the one who is on the cross and who bleeds for us because, in a sense, Heidegger just increasingly sees those as forms of metaphysics for metaphysics, stuff that needs to be put out of the way so that one can concentrate on the cardinal things of life, death, spirituality, and the possible existence of God.

“God”, as he told Paul Celan when they met in ’67, “has always been with me.” Celan is interesting of course, a Jewish poet who wrote in German for which he was condemned by his own group and converted to Catholicism because of Heidegger’s influence. And that was not a sectarian influence, because Heidegger was totally uninterested in what sect people were in, and so on. These were all forms that have no importance.

And in some ways there’s a great paradox, because Heidegger’s thinking is so purely, transcendently extreme that he’s one of the few figures where the pagan/Christian split in our civility doesn’t really mean anything to him. This is one of the things that interests me very much about him. With this Right-wing group, for example, a few Christians turned up early, they went, and it’s largely pagan in orientation. In the New Right in Europe, and so on, you have this very great split between the two. Heidegger’s almost totally unconcerned with those things because the forms that people worship Being in being through are incidental to placing man before ontological prerequisites.

His view is that you base life and society upon the profound thinking that will impinge upon a man of full consciousness, not [unintelligible] debilitated, before his moment of death. And that’s why he joined the Nazi Party. That’s why virtually no one could understand why he’d joined it, because he was totally sort of unorthodox in ideological terms because he had very little interest in that.

After a year he realized that: 1. Put crudely, they didn’t understand what he was on about. 2. That he was having to make political decisions in the university, the library, its use and so on that he didn’t agree with. And he fell away. He left the Party then[2] and continued to teach in the university until 1945. In ’45 he was proscribed by the de-nazification tribunals that were set up in the Western Allied zones. Now, he was forbidden from teaching in post-war Germany even though all sorts of people had him as a guest lecturer, so they used to get round it that way. And you have this strange situation where he became a sort of moral and spiritual leper in post-war Germany, and yet he was extremely respected. So Dr. Heidegger, Professor Heidegger, was everywhere. But at the same time he didn’t even have a university post.

And there’s all sorts of interesting things because Husserl taught him, and because Husserl was a Jew he was banned from the university library, but after the war Heidegger was banned from the library. And Jaspers wrote to educational authorities in Germany saying he shouldn’t be given a post. So you have all of this as well.

There was a play a couple of weeks ago on the BBC by John Banville, an Irish writer, about Heidegger that was very interesting. And it’s a dramatization, because all dramatists are interested in dialectic. They’re interested in two minds if it’s a theoretical play of any sort, two minds coming together that disagree, and the tension and the charge and the flow of energy that occurs between those two minds, and whether you can make a narrative out of it that can be listened to from beginning to end. And it’s this talk in his hut in the Black Forest.

Because, very interestingly, there is almost inevitably a monastic element to Heidegger. Heidegger is into the woods in primal inner Germany. To sit there in the middle of this forest and dwell upon death. And write a book of 450 pages of—to certain Anglo-Saxon minds—sheer intellectual torture, virtually, in order to get nearer to the truth that is the truth that is the truth, that will not set you free but release you to die with some dignity. Because that’s the only truth that matters. And there’s a sort of divine element to it in a way because it’s so near to the inexpressible.

Artistically, of course in a blowback sense, it’s had an enormous influence on novelists in Germany like Hermann Broch, who wrote The Death of Virgil, and wrote a book called The Sleepwalkers, and so on. And this extraordinary capacity for intellectual abstraction that many German writers have, that begin with a relatively straightforward narrative and then lurch off into ultimate speculative questions, is very much influenced by this type of theory.

But I don’t think people who are illiberal can understand the shock in liberal intellectual elitist circles of a man like Heidegger joining the Nazi party. It is actually emotionally slightly difficult to describe it. From a sort of BBC view of culture it is the worst thing, and not just the worst thing but beyond the worst, that one could do. This man of supreme intellectual gifts dwelling alone in his Shavian hut in the woods dwelling on the ontology of death in life in death in life in death in life—do you see what I mean?—joins, what they considered to be, a barbarous wrecking crew. And they’re appalled, they’re utterly morally appalled. And since the war people have not really known what to do with Heidegger at all.

 

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And because, in a sense, his theory is an attempt to bring back a different version of the West’s civilization, most people who were on the side politically that he associated with, albeit only for a period, didn’t know how to make use of him either, in a strange sort of way. That’s why he’s this sort of illisible figure. It’s noticeable in Tomislav Sunic’s book on the New Right, for instance, Heidegger in a way can’t be integrated. It’s a sort of cigarette on the paper that burns through to the other side. He really is in a zone on his own.

And what’s he trying to do? He’s trying to see whether human beings can live authentically. There’s a moment in Nietzsche’s letters early on in his theoretical course/development/prognosis after the first text, Birth of Tragedy, when he describes seeing a goatherd killing a goat on a hill—I think it’s in Italy—and it’s what James Joyce would call an epiphany. It’s a moment of total, in his terms, authentication and realization. It’s a poetic moment. It’s what certain natures call a perfect moment. A moment that certain consciousnesses will look at before they die as the one moment that was perfect: the sky, and the goat, and the man, and the soil, and the sun. And, essentially, it’s a religious moment; it’s a sort of cosmotheist moment, in a way.

And Heidegger’s point is to get people to experience such moments, which is why he writes this enormous theory to try and intellectually prepare people for the possibility of having such moments. Which is why, of course, when people try and stimulate themselves to have such moments. They chant; they sing; they starve themselves; they go without; they live ascetically; they do things to alter consciousness. In a sense he just deals with pure consciousness because he doesn’t, almost, relate to the physical level at all.

But it is an attempt to go back to what many Western and Indo-European theorists have believed was cardinal at the beginning of Greek culture. It’s Nietzsche’s view and it’s other people’s view that the Greek tragedians—the great three, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides—that there is a “decadence,” in a sense.

Aeschylus is the most hieratic, the most removed from everyday, the most transcendental, the most ur-ascending.

Sophocles is not a humanist by any means—there’s the matter of the Theban plays, of course—but it’s a step down from that sense of mystery, that sense of sheer awe. We now live in a society without any sense of the sacred at all, as de Benoist has pointed out. It’s virtually void.

And a level down in this trajectory involving the Greek tragic writers is Euripides. He’s hardly writing soap opera, but the gods and the goddesses are seen almost, if not level with human beings, then as superhumans who are just a couple of levels up. But they relate to each other, they fight with each other, they make love to each other, and all this sort of thing, in a way which is recognizably humanesque.

And, in a way, you could metaphoracizse it, because with theory like this that’s all you really can do, certainly in a talk of this nature. Those prior moments when Aeschylus looks at the divine—because don’t forget Western theatre begins with religious ritual and gradually separates itself out—it begins with a monologue, and then Aeschylus has the idea this is going on a bit too long, so we’ll split it and we’ll have a duologue, and the two consciousnesses talk to each other. And in that you have the tension with which you can sustain drama in our culture, in any culture.

Now, in this theatricalization of this meeting in the hut in the woods where he wrote Being and Time and where he wrote other books on Greek tragedy and on Nietzsche, Celan and Heidegger have this talk. And this is Banville dreaming. But this type of theory is actually quite close to forms of artistic creation; forms of higher, non-entertainment based spiritual creation in art forms. And Celan says, “Why did you join the Nazi Party?” And Heidegger replies, “Because they were the one movement of the 20th century that, in my terms, had a tragic view of life. That had a view of life which is actually the motif and the inner essence—Dasein—of the Greek tragedians taken up to date two and a half thousand years later.” And I think that’s essentially a truthful statement.

He gave an interview to the Spiegel magazine after his death, in the sense that it was recorded before his death but could only be published as part of his will and settlement after his demise. I think it was published about three, four weeks after he died. And they ask him, because it was a very adversarial interview while he was alive, post-dated as I say, about why he’d joined, why he did this, why he did that, and so on. And in actual fact there’s lots of evasion and attempts at exculpation and bringing in all the usual things, and even though political correctness wasn’t a buzzword then, he’s in some ways playing games. He’s like a politician on the defensive.

But in actual fact, as often with art in my view, you’ve got to cut to the truth suddenly through all sorts of layers, even if the person never said it, it can actually illuminate because it crystallizes in a form the value of something. And when he says to Celan, with no one there, in this fantasy. Because Celan didn’t go and see him in that hut for nothing, just so he could put his name in Heidegger’s signature book, “I’ve been up to the professor’s lodge.” People at this sort of level don’t do those sorts of things. He wanted to know why, as George Steiner said, one of, if not the most, advanced theoretical minds of the Western civilization in the 20th century adopted this particular course.

And he did it because he believed that you cannot have a society where death has no meaning, because life has no meaning. And you cannot have a society which bases itself upon the absence of the religious urge, however you define that urge and whatever system you use. Because if you do the reverse you will end up with a society which has two values beyond subsistence. And that could be seen in the title of a grubby play produced in London a couple of years ago called Shopping and Fornication. But that is all that life is, if you do not have spiritual levels based upon that.

People will always be completely divided about the forms and the language that they use to talk about cardinal matters. But in a way, in a quite moving way really, Heidegger is attempting to get people to face in early modernity what it means to have a civilization and, not to be human, but to live with profound and real meaning. There’s no doubt that this theoretical postulation and this extreme abstraction is quite alien to certain elements of the Western civilization, certainly our own quadrant of it during the last couple of hundred years. But it is an attempt, not to aestheticize life, but to place life, ultimately, at the service of God, even and most especially for people who either don’t believe in him or can only approach such numinence through endless tiers of theory.

Thank you very much!

Notes

[1] Heidegger was not a member of the SA or SS. Therefore, he did not have a “Nazi uniform.”—Ed.

[2] Heidegger resigned from the Rectorate but did not resign from the party. He remained a member until the end in 1945.

 

 


 

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La contracultura como ideología capitalista

La contracultura como ideología capitalista

Sobre La revolución divertida de Ramón González Ferriz

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por José Andrés Fernández Leost 

La contracultura es la cultura de los ricos y bien formados. La rebelión es una tradición del sistema capitalista a la que se premia. Estas dos frases, extraídas de su libro, podrían resumir las conclusiones a las que llega Ramón González Ferriz en La revolución divertida, expresión que emplea para referirse a Mayo del 68 y, por extensión, a todas las «revoluciones culturales» que se ha producido desde entonces en Occidente.

La tesis de fondo no es inédita: apela a la capacidad de adaptación del capitalismo democrático ante las transformaciones socio–morales –encauzadas por los medios de comunicación masivos– deslizando de paso una leve crítica a la generación de los años sesenta{1}. El autor no olvida referirse a las «guerras culturales» que desde hace casi medio siglo enmarcan el debate público, sin cuestionar –y esto es clave– las instituciones políticas. En este sentido, subraya la eclosión de un conservadurismo renovado que, al igual que la izquierda libertaria, construye mitos (los dorados y tranquilos cincuenta) para competir en el mercado de las ideas y venderse mejor. A su vez, el libro tiene la virtud de analizar el caso español, cuyas tendencias tras el fin del franquismo no hacen sino replicar las pautas de transgresión sistémica propias de la cultura pop (verdadero marco ideológico del capitalismo), llegando hasta el 15M.

Pero volvamos al principio, esto es, al 68. Fue entonces cuando alcanzaron visibilidad social temas que en gran parte continúan definiendo la agenda político–mediática del presente (feminismo, ecologismo, homosexualidad…). También cuando se rompió el consenso cristiano–socialdemócrata de postguerra, pero solo para generar otro nuevo, en el que convergen la liberación de las costumbres y la economía de mercado. Así, pese a su fracaso político, el 68 triunfó en la calle puesto que, en lugar de una revolución a la antigua usanza –de asalto al poder–, fue un movimiento de ascendencia artística, más pegado a los beatniks y Dylan que a los tratados de Althusser o Adorno. Los «niños de papa tocados por la gracia» que la protagonizaron (de acuerdo con Raymond Aron) constituían la generación mejor tratada de la historia, legatarios de las políticas bienestaristas implantadas por los De Gaulle, Attlee, Roosevelt, etc., en un contexto de boom demográfico. En vez de tumbar al sistema, la revolución divertida tan solo exigió al cabo, en sintonía con la canción de los Beatles, una apertura («interior») de la mente, un ensanche del consumo de experiencias voluptuosas que no hizo sino expandir el capitalismo. Y actualizar su percepción, que pasó de una imagen conformista a otra bohemia, diferente, cool, gradualmente acomodada a la del «genio informático». Entretanto, las reivindicaciones clásicas de la izquierda se fragmentaron al punto de abandonar la lucha de clases y desplazar el núcleo del debate a un terreno de juego estético, identitario. De puro marketing. En consecuencia, la izquierda quedó varada en el callejón sin salida en el que se metió, defendiendo modelos de vida libertarios al tiempo que reclamaba más Estado. Ello no impidió una reacción –asimismo decorativa– de una derecha puritana que, envalentonada por los medios, ha desembocado en el Tea Party. De este modo, mientras el mainstream ha consolidado una hegemonía cultural sincrética, lúdica, tolerante e individualista, se ha abierto un espacio en los márgenes destinado a la retórica radical, intelectualmente confortable y sin mayor repercusión que la que le concede la moda.

La tardía incorporación de España al sistema de democracias representativas apenas retrasó la adhesión de su sociedad al mismo imaginario. Retrotrayéndose al inicio de la transición, el autor subraya la prevalencia que acaparó la Nueva Ola –corriente postpunk antecesora de la Movida madrileña, sin mayores ambiciones políticas– frente a la izquierda ácrata afincada en Barcelona, más «sesuda» (ciertamente, ni la dimensión hedónica que cultivaba esta corriente casaba con el viejo espíritu cenetista –reflejo de una clara ruptura generacional– ni su maximalismo utópico implicaba efectos institucionales). Sea como fuere, el ajuste de los valores postmodernos a las nuevas estructuras de decisión terminó cuajando con la creación del Ministerio de Cultura, el cual –poniendo en ejercicio el concepto de simulacro de Baudrillard– se convirtió en el mayor patrocinador del anti–establishment toda vez que, al amparo del radicalismo estético, la agitación política quedó desactivada. Es lo que algunos etiquetan como «Cultura de la Transición» que en los ochenta encarnaron mejor que nadie los «intelectuales pop»: un conjunto de personajes vinculados a la socialdemocracia procedentes de la esfera universitaria, literaria o periodística (Tierno, Aranguren, Vázquez Montalbán…) a la que se incorporaron figuras del ámbito artístico, siguiendo la estela del resto de Occidente (Bob Marley, Bono, Manu Chao, etc.). Un fenómeno que –también al igual de lo que sucedió fuera de nuestras fronteras– tendrá su contrapunto ideológico, cuando a mediados de los años noventa el partido conservador alcance el poder en España y los intelectuales de derechas, esgrimiendo asimismo un discurso transgresor («políticamente incorrecto») reciban su cuota de apoyo estatal.

Bajo el signo de una conflictividad ideológico–cultural normalizada, en gran parte abolida, el tramo final del libro repasa los últimos ecos del 68 que resuenan en los albores del siglo XXI, al compás de la antiglobalización, la revolución de las nuevas tecnologías y la crisis financiera. La proximidad de estos acontecimientos no ocultan su «lógica divertida», inofensiva en términos políticos y diáfana a poco que se examinen sus características. De hecho, en el caso del movimiento antiglobalización –que alcanzó su mayor cota de popularidad en las manifestaciones de Seattle y Génova de 1999 y 2001– nos encontramos ante un ideario amorfo e inconsistente, rápidamente fagocitado por el capitalismo cultural, vía productos «indies». Pese a su vocación purista por recuperar la esencia mística del 68 –frente a quienes la traicionaron– la multitud de causas que acumulaba (etnicismo, antiliberalismo, animalismo, etc.) acabó por diluir su congruencia. Tanto más por cuanto la única reivindicación de peso, más o menos compartida, solicitaba una mayor presencia estatal, en detrimento del libertarismo genuino. Quizá más coherencia guarden las batallas abiertas por la revolución cibernética, siempre que se acentúe su naturaleza apolítica. Según subraya González Ferriz, la juventud de los líderes y emprendedores del universo digital{2} se plasma en el entorno laboral que han construido: informal, desprofesionalizado y flexible. Ajeno a la agenda política. Y aunque es verdad que internet ha posibilitado la creación de un espacio capaz de impulsar cambios sociales e incluso intensificar los grados de participación (Democracia 2.0), lo cierto es que los fundamentos del régimen representativo permanecen indemnes, escasamente erosionados por la actividad de plataformas «hacktivistas» como Anonymous o WikiLeaks. En cambio, el impacto de internet se ha dejado notar en el circuito de las industrias culturales, cuestionando el alcance de la propiedad intelectual, fracturando los filtros de autoridad y desarbolando el modelo de negocio establecido. Esta brecha ha introducido una cierta mutación ideológica, en el sentido de que los antiguos progresistas se han convertido en los nuevos conservadores, nostálgicos del viejo orden, mientras que muchos partidarios del libre intercambio de contenidos simpatizan con el libertarismo individualista. Con todo, cabe matizar la magnitud de este fenómeno, en tanto no ha alumbrado un sistema alternativo y el rol de las empresas culturales (editoriales, productoras, etc.) sigue vigente.

Por fin, la última estación del trayecto nos lleva a las manifestaciones del 15M español y al movimiento Occupy, en las que confluyen rasgos de la antiglobalización con el empleo eficaz de tácticas digitales, a través de redes como twitter o facebook. Su instantánea instrumentalización mediática amortiguó la carga de su ideario más auténtico, ligado a la corriente «okupa» y al libertarismo de izquierda de los setenta, aunque también colocó en un primer plano de interés sus planteamientos de base (autogestión, asamblearismo…). No obstante, la heterogeneidad de sus integrantes y la fragilidad de sus referentes teóricos (encarnados en el endeble panfleto de Stéphane Hessel) han acabado por desinflar un fenómeno que tampoco estaba exento de contradicciones. Y es que en su trasfondo –debajo del agotamiento provocado por la crisis económica– nos topamos con una nueva quiebra generacional, protagonizada por una juventud que no busca sino vivir en las mismas condiciones de desahogo y estabilidad que sus padres. Estaríamos por tanto ante una suerte de revolución conservadora, presumible nicho de futuros políticos y empresarios de éxito, llamada a perpetuar en una nueva vuelta de tuerca el «entretenimiento–marco» en el que se desenvuelve la dinámica política occidental. El teatro de su mundo. Quizá el desencanto y la desafección social expresada en las encuestas hacia las principales instituciones (dicho de otro modo: la atracción por la anti–política o el populismo) represente su indicio actual más evidente, síntoma de la enfermedad que supone desconocer la reconfiguración de un mundo emergente más complejo, más rico, con más clases medias y, en consecuencia, más sometido a la presión, al riesgo y a la competencia global por los recursos materiales y energéticos. Pero este otro debate carece de diversión.

Notas

{1} Dicho razonamiento encuentra soporte en una creciente bibliografía desmitificadora en la que destacan títulos como Rebelarse vende, de Joseph Heath y Andrew Potter (2004) o La conquista de lo cool (1997), donde su autor, Thomas Frank, ubica en las reconversiones de la industria publicitaria de los años cincuenta–sesenta el germen de la contracultura, detonante del consumismo individualista posterior.

{2} Sus máximos exponentes apenas superaban los 30 años en el momento en el que fundaron sus proyectos.

Fuente: El Espía Digital