- 17 Mar 2003 08:15
#3189
Socialism over Allah, and down with the empire
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/ ... 19612.html
By Tony Parkinson
June 6 2002
We are sitting in the lobby of the Stanford Plaza Hotel, in Little Collins Street. In keeping with the genteel surroundings, Tariq Ali is charming and mellifluous as he fires his bullets.
How is it, he asks, that Australians have become unthinking servants and courtiers to one of the most fearsome empires known to history?
The prominent author and left-wing intellectual is one of the world's best-known voices of grievance against American cultural, military and economic power. Visiting Melbourne to promote his latest book on the clash between Islamic fundamentalism and what he calls the market fundamentalism of the American superpower, he seems bemused when asked to define how and where the "American empire" begins and ends.
"Their empire is the world," he says. "They rule it and they get their own way. They don't control places directly, like the old empires did. They do it indirectly."
As an example, Ali cites what he sees as Britain and Australia's unquestioning support for the war on terror. "The British and Australian governments have yet to clash with the US on any single issue. Obviously, there is some opposition and resistance, including in Britain. But the governments and the business elites are very much part and parcel of this empire.
"The fact both Britain and Australia are upping their military spending is not related to local needs, in my opinion, but to the needs of the empire."
For Ali, there has never been much room for shades of grey on America's role in the world. His book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, provides an unforgiving critique of American society as a "parochial culture that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a cult of stupidity and extols the present as a process without an alternative, implying that we all live in a consumerist paradise".
Born to a middle-class Pakistani family, Tariq Ali chose socialism over Allah. He went on to study in Oxford, and these days lives in London.
He laments the poisonous impact of religious fanaticism on the politics of his homeland but is less pessimistic than many others about the dangers of the current crisis on the subcontinent escalating into open warfare between India and Pakistan, much less the nightmare of a nuclear exchange. "What we have seen is sabre-rattling as both sides put their demands forward, hoping that some outside powers will intervene to sort the mess out."
Ultimately, he believes the only durable solution to the crisis in Kashmir is the emergence of a South Asian economic union along the European model, where sovereignty is not challenged but the borders are "softened".
But, he admits, it is a forlorn hope at present. Hindu nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism rule the politics of the region.
Tariq Ali concedes the American presence in Afghanistan, and the basing of some US troops in Pakistan, may prevent India and Pakistan attacking each other in the short term. "They are not crazy," he says.
But in the longer term, he believes the US military operation will add merely another layer of complication. The US forces and their allies will not stay forever. What will be left behind?
Tariq Ali appears to have no time for the "great idea" of the American revolution. He did not share in the celebration of Western democratic ideals prevailing over communism.
Although he is equally dismissive of militant Islamic fundamentalism - or "the beards" as he calls them - Ali sees America's ascendancy as the lone remaining superpower as more pervasive, and just as pernicious.
Tariq Ali is one of the leading lights in a polemic tradition that includes the likes of Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. In seeking to explain the September 11 violence directed at the US, they cite the phenomenon of "blowback" - claiming America's support for dodgy regimes and dubious causes in the Cold War years has alienated an impoverished Third World, and given life to radical movements ready to turn their anger on the towering symbol of Western dominance. "Despair breeds fanaticism," says Ali.
Ali argues the CIA's support for the Afghanistan's mujihadeen in the war against the Soviet Union, and Washington's indulgence of authoritarian regimes, such as the House of Saud in Riyadh, has come back to haunt America.
He is particularly derisory about Washington's strategic entanglement with Saudi Arabia, heartland of the ultra-puritanical Wahhabi sect and homeland to 12 of the 19 September 11 hijackers: "The expedition force dispatched to Afghanistan to cut off the tentacles of the Wahhabi octopus may or may not succeed, but the head is safe and sound in Saudi Arabia.
"These religious nutters are people I've been criticising and fighting against for the best part of my life. But these are also people the US created and trained and funded.
"It was not the Vietnamese, or the Chileans, or the central Americans who carried out these hits. It was their own people, servants of the empire who were angry with the empire. One would hope the Americans would learn lessons from this. But I have to say it doesn't look like it."
As ever, Ali is at his most passionate when discussing the Palestinian cause. He is at his most unrelenting in condemning the actions of Israel's Ariel Sharon. In his book, he describes Israel luridly as "a permanent dagger in the heart of the Arab world" and portrays America's pro-Israel "bias" as Washington's most profound miscalculation.
"Personally, I don't like suicide bombing as a tactic," he confesses. "But I do support the Palestinian cause and I suspect it is their way of saying 'come and do something for us'.
"They have turned to it as a response to Israeli state terror. Having tried everything else in the world, what else are they to do?"
Not that he thinks the Islamic and Arabic worlds are not in desperate need of reform and renewal. He speaks despairingly of the "shrunken and backward looking perspective" of modern Islam.
As for Osama bin Laden: "He is not a great thinker, he is not a great strategist. I think his impact is largely psychological and theatrical. In terms of world history, it is not profound. In 20 years, he will be a footnote."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/ ... 19612.html
By Tony Parkinson
June 6 2002
We are sitting in the lobby of the Stanford Plaza Hotel, in Little Collins Street. In keeping with the genteel surroundings, Tariq Ali is charming and mellifluous as he fires his bullets.
How is it, he asks, that Australians have become unthinking servants and courtiers to one of the most fearsome empires known to history?
The prominent author and left-wing intellectual is one of the world's best-known voices of grievance against American cultural, military and economic power. Visiting Melbourne to promote his latest book on the clash between Islamic fundamentalism and what he calls the market fundamentalism of the American superpower, he seems bemused when asked to define how and where the "American empire" begins and ends.
"Their empire is the world," he says. "They rule it and they get their own way. They don't control places directly, like the old empires did. They do it indirectly."
As an example, Ali cites what he sees as Britain and Australia's unquestioning support for the war on terror. "The British and Australian governments have yet to clash with the US on any single issue. Obviously, there is some opposition and resistance, including in Britain. But the governments and the business elites are very much part and parcel of this empire.
"The fact both Britain and Australia are upping their military spending is not related to local needs, in my opinion, but to the needs of the empire."
For Ali, there has never been much room for shades of grey on America's role in the world. His book, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, provides an unforgiving critique of American society as a "parochial culture that celebrates the virtues of ignorance, promotes a cult of stupidity and extols the present as a process without an alternative, implying that we all live in a consumerist paradise".
Born to a middle-class Pakistani family, Tariq Ali chose socialism over Allah. He went on to study in Oxford, and these days lives in London.
He laments the poisonous impact of religious fanaticism on the politics of his homeland but is less pessimistic than many others about the dangers of the current crisis on the subcontinent escalating into open warfare between India and Pakistan, much less the nightmare of a nuclear exchange. "What we have seen is sabre-rattling as both sides put their demands forward, hoping that some outside powers will intervene to sort the mess out."
Ultimately, he believes the only durable solution to the crisis in Kashmir is the emergence of a South Asian economic union along the European model, where sovereignty is not challenged but the borders are "softened".
But, he admits, it is a forlorn hope at present. Hindu nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism rule the politics of the region.
Tariq Ali concedes the American presence in Afghanistan, and the basing of some US troops in Pakistan, may prevent India and Pakistan attacking each other in the short term. "They are not crazy," he says.
But in the longer term, he believes the US military operation will add merely another layer of complication. The US forces and their allies will not stay forever. What will be left behind?
Tariq Ali appears to have no time for the "great idea" of the American revolution. He did not share in the celebration of Western democratic ideals prevailing over communism.
Although he is equally dismissive of militant Islamic fundamentalism - or "the beards" as he calls them - Ali sees America's ascendancy as the lone remaining superpower as more pervasive, and just as pernicious.
Tariq Ali is one of the leading lights in a polemic tradition that includes the likes of Robert Fisk, Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. In seeking to explain the September 11 violence directed at the US, they cite the phenomenon of "blowback" - claiming America's support for dodgy regimes and dubious causes in the Cold War years has alienated an impoverished Third World, and given life to radical movements ready to turn their anger on the towering symbol of Western dominance. "Despair breeds fanaticism," says Ali.
Ali argues the CIA's support for the Afghanistan's mujihadeen in the war against the Soviet Union, and Washington's indulgence of authoritarian regimes, such as the House of Saud in Riyadh, has come back to haunt America.
He is particularly derisory about Washington's strategic entanglement with Saudi Arabia, heartland of the ultra-puritanical Wahhabi sect and homeland to 12 of the 19 September 11 hijackers: "The expedition force dispatched to Afghanistan to cut off the tentacles of the Wahhabi octopus may or may not succeed, but the head is safe and sound in Saudi Arabia.
"These religious nutters are people I've been criticising and fighting against for the best part of my life. But these are also people the US created and trained and funded.
"It was not the Vietnamese, or the Chileans, or the central Americans who carried out these hits. It was their own people, servants of the empire who were angry with the empire. One would hope the Americans would learn lessons from this. But I have to say it doesn't look like it."
As ever, Ali is at his most passionate when discussing the Palestinian cause. He is at his most unrelenting in condemning the actions of Israel's Ariel Sharon. In his book, he describes Israel luridly as "a permanent dagger in the heart of the Arab world" and portrays America's pro-Israel "bias" as Washington's most profound miscalculation.
"Personally, I don't like suicide bombing as a tactic," he confesses. "But I do support the Palestinian cause and I suspect it is their way of saying 'come and do something for us'.
"They have turned to it as a response to Israeli state terror. Having tried everything else in the world, what else are they to do?"
Not that he thinks the Islamic and Arabic worlds are not in desperate need of reform and renewal. He speaks despairingly of the "shrunken and backward looking perspective" of modern Islam.
As for Osama bin Laden: "He is not a great thinker, he is not a great strategist. I think his impact is largely psychological and theatrical. In terms of world history, it is not profound. In 20 years, he will be a footnote."
- By Pants-of-dog
- By FiveofSwords
- By Rancid