Sunken Mythologies

They, speaking the `ills` of the Arab World, are the missiles wrecking Baghdad in March 2003 during the first days of the US led invasion of Iraq. The missiles` interlocutor, delivering and translating their message into Arabic is al-’Afīf al-Akhdar, the Tunisian born (1934) ex-Marxist intellectual who in 1965, three years after Algeria`s independence, took part in the meeting between Che Guevara and Abu Jihad* at a Hotel in Algiers. Forty years separate the victory of Algerians against French colonialism (1962) and the American occupation of Iraq (2003). Forty years also separate the meeting of al-Akhdar with Guevara in Algiers from his celebration of the US missiles on, and invasion of, Iraq. The harsh prose of this veteran of national liberation struggles, Marxist ideologue, and militant alongside the Palestinian resistance from 1962 until he left Beirut for Paris in the first years of the Lebanese civil and regional wars (1975-1990), is not his alone. A significant number of Arab militant intellectuals who were once at the forefront of national liberation struggles have become similarly disenchanted. They have exited from organized political activity, became very critical of anti-imperialist movements, and turned their gaze inwards to subject Arab culture to scathing critique blaming it for all ills that befall Arabs in this day and age. Some of these veterans, as in the case of al-Akhdar, politically aligned themselves with imperial agendas` advancing the hypothesis that an `external` shock (and awe?) of a foreign occupation would shake these societies out of their `slumber.`

The popular uprisings we are witnessing today in the Arab world are erodeing the culturalist mythologies propagated by the likes of al-Akhdar, along with the authoritarian regimes inherited from the national liberation struggles of the mid-twentieth century. Those thinkers and journalists have moved from an idealization of the revolutionary potential of the masses in their youth to a diametrically opposite view in their old age, locating the inherent ‘problems’ plaguing the region in the culture of these same masses. What remained a constant in this interpretive and political inversion is the distance separating the militant then, intellectual now, from the masses adulated then and despised now. What also remained a constant is the dominance of simplistic mono-causal explanations of the histories and societies of this part world. If at one point everything was to be analyzed and blamed on the external political machinations of colonialism and imperialism, the disenchanted militant’s Mea Culpa took the form of locating the root of all-evil in the internal cultural make-up of these societies. ‘Unenlightened religious culture,’ ‘obscurantist,’ and ‘closed societies’ inimical to reason and modernity became the mantras chanted to conjure the specters of geo-political interests, political economy, and other lenses that attempted to connect an understanding of Arab societies with the global circuits of capital and the international balance of power in a post-Cold War world.

The mass popular revolts in Tunisia and Egypt and the uprisings shaking Bahrain and Libya at the moment are contributing to sinking the culturalist mythologies of this intellectually exhausted generation of militants turned into detached, sour commentators. Not all wines age well. One also hopes that these world-historical events will contribute to overcoming the simplistic binary logic of interpretation which have dominated public discourse on opposite sides of the political spectrum for so long: external causes vs. internal ones, imperialism and colonialism vs. Islam, political logics vs. cultural ones. The recent popular uprisings have contributed to the disintegration of what now became the old culturalist myth. That said, the new certainly ought not take the shape of a simple swinging back of the pendulum into the uncritical glorification of the revolutionary Arab masses and the resurrection of the ‘Arab Spirit’ that will propel us directly into that ever-promised, always-deferred, all-encompassing Arab Renaissance. A quick glance at the intertwinement of infra-national – mainly sectarian, but also regional and familial – solidarities, with regional and international political interests in Lebanon, the Trans-Jordanian-Palestinian rift in Jordan, the ethnic and sectarian divisions in post-US invasion Iraq as well as the increasing geo-political weights of Iran and Turkey, are food for thought and brakes to hasty and sweeping generalizations. The good-old ‘Arab Spirit’ of Michel Aflaq and generations of Arab nationalists will not do the trick this time around. If a new ‘Arabism’ is to emerge it will do better to comport with, and not negate, the multiple historical, political, ethnic, sectarian, and gender sedimented layers of these societies.  

Our present conjuncture also invites a remembering and a re-thinking of the significance of the July 2006 Israeli, US-backed, war on Lebanon and its failure to achieve its military and political aims in the face of the staunch resistance put out by the guerrilla forces of Hizballah. What the fighters holding their ground in the Lebanese southern villages despite the brutal Israeli aerial bombardments and ground assaults declared in the summer of 2006 was the end of the myth of absolute Israeli military supremacy. The string of Arab military defeats beginning with the loss of Palestine in 1948 to the invasion of Lebanon and the defeat of the Palestinian Resistance as well as its Lebanese allies in the summer of 1982, no longer had in 2006 the solidity of an imposed, immovable fate; one that is there only to be suffered. The failure of the 2006 Israeli war, and the current popular uprisings constitute multiple landmark events on one chain of signification that is eroding the intellectual and political doxas that served as nursery rhymes for generations of Arabs: ‘The Israeli army will always win’, ‘Arab soldiers cannot fight’, ‘Arab dictatorships are here to stay’, ‘Their intelligence services are omnipotent,’ ‘Better stay out of politics, There is no use!’ and many more on that same choking rhythm of despair. It may be too early to predict what tomorrow will bring, but one thing is certain, military defeat against Israel is not a fate and Arab authoritarian regimes are not eternal. That macabre dance is over.

Meanwhile, on the northern shores of the Mediterranean the picture is bleaker. The revolts in the Arab world have deepened the crises of these democracies already exacerbated by the leaks provided by Julian Assange and his collaborators. To point to the growing gap between the ideals of liberty and democracy championed by the US and European governments and their full-fledged military, political and economic support of authoritarian Arab regimes is, of course, an obvious point.  One can also mention the tight relationships linking members of the ruling elites on both sides, as evidenced lately by the Tunisian vacations of Michèle Alliot-Marie, the current French foreign minister via the private jets of the ex-clan in power. "Quand je suis en vacances, je ne suis pas ministre des affaires étrangères" was her very convincing answer in which she draws clear lines between her day-time functions supposed to embody the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, and the after-hours drink she may have with Ben Ali’s court in her private capacity.

In addition to the embarrassment and confusion of Western foreign policy caused by the Arab popular revolts that may threaten their economic and political interests, Europe is also witnessing a more subterranean counter-revolution to the right. Last October, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, announced the absolute failure of founding a multi-cultural society as debates about immigration, integration and national identity occupy the German media. The death of multi-culturalism was echoed a couple of weeks ago, also in Germany, by the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, who called for the end of “passive tolerance” and for a “muscular liberalism” to integrate immigrants into the nation. One wonders, and not without a big dose of dread, how the ‘muscular’ part of the equation will be translated into policy and how its effects will be felt on the day-to-day-life of these immigrants. Meanwhile, Nicholas Sarkozy expulsed the Roma minorities from France this past summer, linked French national identity and the French soil together, and proposed a law that strips some foreign-born naturalized criminals of their French nationality. The law was approved by the National Assembly last year and rejected by the French Senate by 182 votes to 156 on February 3^rd, 2011. On top of that, Marine Le Pen has become this past January the president of the right wing, xenophobic French party ‘Le Front National’ succeeding Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father and founder of the party. The presidency of the young Le Pen daughter is expected to invigorate the party and push it from the margins of political life towards occupying a weightier presence on the French political checker.

In this deeply inter-connected world we live in, and while the Arab revolts are opening up new horizons for their citizens, Europe’s futures seem to be delimited by France’s recent ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-development (2007), Britain’s “muscular liberalism” to come and the repeated arson attacks against Berlin mosques in Germany. The old continent’s identity crisis, the ruling elites’ nationalist right-wing responses as well as the European street’s apathy may well point to something more than the usual discrepancy between the European founding myths – tolerance, equality, liberty – and its political practices. Is something else sinking besides Arab culturalist mythology?