Written by Karima Hamdan
“At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them”
The implicit tragedy of young men sent out to war, who fought, died and were buried, often under skies much bluer than their own is well appreciated. They are lionised in poetry, literature and more recently in film. They were famously described as lions led by donkeys. They are often characterised as the uncomplaining, valiant youth who stoically gritted their teeth and went to war in order to protect our liberty and freedoms.
One can only imagine what this ‘band of brothers’ must think of us in 2011. We, the politically enfranchised population of a liberal democracy, are by definition the masters of our elected officials. I wonder how many of those who wear a poppy on their lapel have truly considered that if they are to utter the words ‘We will remember them’ with any glimmer of sincerity, then they must first demonstrate that they have remembered them and remembered what they fought and died for. Have we held power to account? Do our elected officials fear the populace, which Thomas Jefferson said indicated liberty, or is it otherwise – where the people fear the government, a situation Jefferson postulated would lead to tyranny?
We are the generation that have presided over the European economic crisis. We have witnessed the birthplace of democracy – Greece – have its elected leader mugged in public at the G20 conference in Munich and instructed to deny his people the right to a referendum, and then be deposed from office and replaced by the former vice-president of the European Central Bank.
Adding to this are the large numbers of EU advisers who have descended on Greece. They are, as former UK ambassador Craig Murray put it, “372 foreign “advisers” moved in to take over Greek ministries, in some cases even sequestering ministers’ offices. They have absolute financial control of budgets and have to approve and sign off spending before money is paid out. In effect, these advisers are now the government of Greece. 28% of these “advisers” are civil servants from other Euro states. The majority are bankers, and executives of private financial institutions, accountancy and consultancy firms.”
Similarly, Italy’s embarrassment of a leader – multi-billionaire media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi – has gone. Happily tolerated by his EU colleagues throughout years of mismanagement, corruption and media manipulation that effectively made him an unaccountable Caesar in modern day Rome, he was efficiently and rapidly replaced by a former EU commissioner once it became clear that as Berlusconi fiddled (and fiddle he did), not just Rome but much of Europe was going to burn.
When these events are viewed alongside pre-election pledges (now in tatters) of an in-out EU referendum that were thundered up and down this green and pleasant land by all three political parties at one time or another in the last five years, democracy appears to be a commodity we forcibly export to other countries rather than an asset destined for domestic use.
The purpose of democratically-elected officials is to represent the will of the people and to be leaders that advocate on behalf of the electorate. One wonders how many measures instituted by the Brussels yes-men will be for the betterment of Greeks and Italians or for the betterment of a wider Europe of which Greece and Italy are treated like regional vassal states whose only function is to provide Europe with olives, pasta and an historical narrative.
I very much doubt that history will remember this generation of British yeomanry as ‘lions led by donkeys’; we would more likely be immortalised as ‘sheep led by wolves’.
This Remembrance Day, a great effort is being made to remember the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given the reverence which the British populace has for the armed forces, it is sometimes difficult to state that the pain and suffering of war is not limited to those friends and families of dead soldiers. It is pertinent to remember that there is no prescribed day dedicated to the remembrance of those innocent people who died in conflict. In fact, these civilians are ignored twice over. Firstly, by their own puppet governments who are usually too supine to make much of a fuss when those, whose names appear on the cheques, happen to blow up a village or strafe a wedding party. Then they are ignored again and are dismissed as ‘collateral damage’, not even worthy of an official record by those very nations sent to ‘liberate’ them because, as General Tommy Franks said, ‘We don’t do body counts’. As the educated populace of a liberal democracy, whose leaders purport to be our representatives, that ‘we’ of General Franks’ infamous statement includes both you and I in it.
A wider question remains: how did these young men get sent to war in the first place and who was responsible for sending them there? Whilst politicians may wax lyrical about their deep and abiding love for the armed forces, they ultimately are the ones whose cynical political machinations are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of troops as well as thousands of civilians. Just take Hillary Clinton’s recent announcement that Washington was willing to negotiate with Mullah Omar and the Haqqani network. After nine long, bloody years, 2,722 coalition deaths and the 20,000-40,000 civilian deaths that have occurred since Operation Enduring Freedom (quelle ironie!) began, one may well ask why the US could not initially ‘jaw jaw’ instead of being so eager to ‘war war’.
With such shaky logic exposed, one cannot possibly imagine that anyone could believe that it is patriotic to support this government’s war, especially in light of such highlights of government humanity as the sacking of wounded soldiers and the clawing back of a £400 overpayment from a dead soldier’s family. I wonder if Halliburton was ever asked to repay any of the $1 billion it allegedly overcharged for work in Iraq? This sort of illogical reaction must have led to the EDL’s plans to attack the Occupy London protest camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral, resulting in over 170 arrests. The bitter irony is that the inhumane decisions that those multimillionaires against whom Occupy London are protesting have the biggest impact on the working classes whose members constitute most of the EDL. Then again, logic, reason and understanding have never been the EDL’s forte.
Those who trot out the old chestnut, that wealth begets wealth and this system of enmeshed banks, governments and big business is just the way the world naturally runs, need a primer on neoliberalism. Neoliberalism should not be confused with liberalism, which is an ideology that promotes liberty and equal rights and, in Nick Clegg’s case, an inability to adhere to election promises.
Neoliberalism was promoted heavily in the Regan/Thatcher years and Margaret Thatcher’s famous TINA acronym suggested that There Is No Alternative to it. It is also the primary strut to the economic policies of the World Bank and the IMF. It principally revolves around five key ideas:
- The rule of the market: this maximises the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the country. The logic runs that a happy and free market will generate wealth that will ‘trickle-down’ to the rest of the populace. After 25 years of rampant neoliberalism, Britain’s ‘squeezed middle’ is still waiting for the trickle but is coming to realise that the mythical trickle-down should be renamed the ‘siphon-away’.
- Cutting or ‘redirecting’ public expenditure for social services: all in the name of shrinking ‘big government’. Of course, big government makes a sudden return when it comes to bank bailouts and tax subsidies for big business.
- Deregulation: which often results in a concurrent decrease in worker’s wages, environmental protection and that much-maligned but very necessary area, health and safety.
- Privatisation: involving a car boot sale of state-owned enterprises, goods and services to private investors. From railways to utilities, the postal system and, increasingly, schools and the NHS. Although always carried out in the name of greater efficiency, it usually ends up in a muddle of unaccountability while concentrating more wealth in fewer hands and making the public pay even more for its needs.
- Eliminating the concept of ‘community’ and replacing it with ‘individual responsibility’: as Margaret Thatcher famously put it, ‘There is no such thing as society’. 25 years on, she is now right.
One can see how everything from the debt crisis to the London riots has a rootlet that springs from the tree of neoliberalism. What makes today’s situation more acute than in the past, especially as far as Muslims are concerned, is the shackling-on of another ‘ism’ starting with ‘neo’ and that is neoconservativism, which sees a great deal of American, British and European foreign policy directed, not by the needs of their respective interests, but rather by the needs or wants of “The Only Democracy in the Middle East”. This was beautifully highlighted by Sarkozy and Obama’s recent microphone gaffe which saw the Frenchman declaring Netanyahu to be “a liar” whom he couldn’t stand. Obama replied, “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day.” Most people don’t even call their mothers every day. It certainly leaves no doubt as to where American policy goals originate, as demonstrated by the US reaction to Palestine’s membership of UNESCO.
The recent Al Jazeera interview with internationally-acclaimed intellectual and philosopher Slavoj Zizek should be compulsory viewing for everyone. He offers up a tightly-argued proposition that is as compelling as it is worrisome. He suggests that the system of neoliberalism died more or less in 2008, with any legislative tweaking of the banking system being merely skin deep. As neoliberalism and democracy have been cosy bedfellows for the better half of a century, democracy finds itself at a crossroads for the first time since World War II:
“The system has lost its self-evidence, its automatic legitimacy, and now the field is open.”
The only other option on the table is the type of authoritarian capitalism that is so effective in China, Singapore and increasingly in India. The inhabitants of Europe have replaced their ideologies, which in the past would have caused them to offer themselves up for a greater good, with what he describes as ‘spiritualised hedonism’. The call to sacrifice oneself for everyone else has been replaced with ‘be true to yourself’ and ‘live a full life’.
For the last fifty years there has been a fine counterbalance between capitalism and nationalism. This balance has broken down and nationalist feeling is now on the rise. This feeling is specifically anti-immigration and, even more specifically, anti-Muslim. Zizek’s massively important and startling point, which in my view should be posted on billboards up and down the UK (let alone Europe), is this:
“Yes I agree with right-wingers [that] European Judeo-Christian legacy is in danger, but they, the false protectors of Europe against Islam, they are the danger. I don’t fear Muslims in Europe, I fear [the] protectors of Europe.”
It is important to note that Zizek is not some kurta-wearing, curry-eating, ‘gone native’ Muslim-apologist who refuses to acknowledge the ‘Islam-isation’ of Europe with sharia laws, burkas and bearded men. Any reader of his previous attempts to deconstruct Islam will see that he has no inherent respect for our religion and, as a staunch atheist, feels that Muslims are basically wasting their time with strange rituals and beliefs. It is therefore very important that he comes to this not as a friend of Islam but rather as a critical observer who has cast his dispassionate eye over our alleged threat to Europe and is entirely unimpressed by the far right rhetoric on the matter.
Zizek’s main point is that the last time Europe was at a crossroads like the was in the 1930s, when fascism filled the political vacuum. At that time, there were many who were willing to make the personal sacrifice for a greater good in order to defeat fascism. He feels that the marriage between democracy and capitalism is dead and wonders who or what will rise to fill this current vacuum.
Zizek also heralded the rise of a new type of ‘ism’ – anti-Semetic Zionism – whereby individuals or organisations on the far right express their admiration for ‘The Only Democracy in the Middle East’ whilst simultaneously holding anti-Semitic views. He quotes from the manifesto of Anders Brevik, who displayed this strange paradox. We here in the UK can also see it manifested in the seig-heiling EDL who, despite waving the blue and white Star of David flags with gusto at their demonstrations, are at their core deeply anti-Semitic (not to mention anti-Muslim). Zizek summarises it thus:
“Jews are a great nation. The narrow Zionist politics are turning them into another land-grabbing nation. The true victims of this catastrophic politics will be the Jews themselves”.
Muslims are being scapegoated throughout Europe as the real and present danger to the shared European Judeo-Christian culture. A narrative has been set up that dictates that the average citizen has to be protected from this threat, usually by curtailing everyone’s freedom and running a perpetual ‘war economy’. We are corralled by adverse media stories into accepting the only ‘logical’ way out presented to us by them: that the only way for Muslims to be acceptable in Europe is by reworking the usul al-fiqh of our religion in order to accommodate it into western existential liberal philosophy.
The Last Post has sounded on the marriage between democracy and neoliberal economics. A new form of far right nationalism, fed on a steady diet of anti-Muslim rhetoric, appears to be taking its place. One wonders if there remain some people like those mentioned in Binyon’s famous poem ‘For the Fallen’:
Or is the time now ripe for the fruition of this statement by Bertrand de Jouvenel?