Spirit Of The Times

The ferociously hostile comments in reply to Peter Hallward's obvious, uncontroversial, unobjectionable remarks on Haiti in the Guardian read like they were all excerpted from Zizek's First as Tragedy, Then as Farce:

Zizz:

...we white Leftist men and women are free to leave behind the politically correct process of endless self-torturing guilt. Although Pascal Bruckner's critique of the contemporary Left often approaches the absurd, this does not prevent him from occasionally generating pertinent insights-one cannot but agree with him when he detects in European politically correct selfflagellation an inverted form of clinging to one's superiority. Whenever the West is attacked, its first reaction is not aggressive defense but selfprobing: what did we do to deserve it? We are ultimately to be blamed for the evils of the world; Third World catastrophes and terrorist violence are merely reactions to our crimes. The positive form of the White Man's Burden (his responsibility for civilizing the colonized barbarians) is thus merely replaced by its negative form (the burden of the white man's guilt) : if we can no longer be the benevolent masters of the Third World, we can at least be the privileged source of evil, patronizingly depriving others of responsibility for their fate (when a Third World country engages in terrible crimes, it is never fully its own responsibility, but always an after-effect of colonization: they are merely imitating what their colonial masters used to do, and so on) :

We need our miserabilist cliches about Africa, Asia, Latin America, in order to confirm the cliche of a predatory, deadly West. Our noisy stigmatizations only serve to mask the wounded self-love: we no longer make the law. Other cultures know it, and they continue to culpabilize us only to escape our judgments on them.

…"The West is not detested for its real faults, but for its attempt to amend them, because it was one of the first to try to tear itself out of its own bestiality, inviting the rest of the world to follow it." The Western legacy is effectively not just that of (post)colonial imperialist domination, but also that of the self-critical examination of the violence and exploitation the West itself
brought to the Third World. The French colonized Haiti, but the French Revolution also provided the ideological foundation for the rebellion which liberated the slaves and established an independent Haiti; the process of decolonization was set in motion when the colonized nations demanded for themselves the same rights that the West took for itself. In short, one should never forget that the West supplied the very standards by which it (and its critics) measures its own criminal past…

…Someone who cannot be accused of softness towards the colonizers is Frantz Fanon: his thoughts on the emancipatory power of violence are an embarrassment for many politically correct postcolonial theorists. However, as a perspicuous thinker trained in psychoanalysis, he also, back in 1952, provided the most poignant expression of the refusal to capitalize on the guilt of the colonizers:

I am a man, and what I have to recapture is the whole past of the world. I am not responsible solely for the slave revolt in Santo Domingo. Every time a man has contributed to the victory of the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to subjugate his fellows, I have felt solidarity with his act. In no way does my basic vocation have to be drawn from the past of peoples of color. In no way do I have to dedicate myself to reviving a black civilization unjustly ignored. I will not make myself the man of any past. . . . My black skin is not a repository for specific values . . . . Haven't I got better things to do on this earth than avenge the Blacks of the seventeenth century? . . . I as a man of color do not have the right to hope that in the white man there will be a crystallization of guilt toward the past of my race. I as a man of color do not have the right to seek ways of stamping down the pride of my former master. I have neither the right nor the duty to demand reparations for my subjugated ancestors.

speedkermit
13 Jan 2010, 10:34PM

If we are serious about helping we need to stop ­trying to control Haiti's government, to pacify its citizens, and to exploit its economy. And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done.

It's the Guardian 'we' again - you don't get it in any other newspaper.

I'm sure many people have seen some of the horrific footage by now and want to contribute something in emergency aid, but is it not enough that they be allowed to do it out of compassion rather than guilt? Why does there always have to be some misery vulture gleefully finger-wagging and apportioning blame before the bodies are even cold? And what do the foreign policy decisions of Western governments in places such as Haiti have to do with their citizens anyway? Did Americans vote to keep them subjugated? Was it anyone's manifesto pledge? If they were all smiley Fairtrade farmers like on the back of your bag of coffee beans, would the earthquake never have happened? Isn't a force 7 quake pretty damn devastating wherever it hits? How will you contrive to make 'us' all responsible when Tokyo finally gets flattened?

isotope
14 Jan 2010, 7:28AM

Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.

Would you please refrain from voicing these ridiculous Chomsyite conspiracy theories, at least until this present crisis has been resolved?

I notice there's not a single mention of Papa Doc Duvalier or his equally charming son in your article... do you think that maybe, just maybe, having a pair of violent, corrupt dictatorial thugs in power for a period of 30 straight years might have something to do with Hati's current wretched state? Oh, of course you don't. According to the Marxist school of international relations, the problems suffered by the developing world are exclusively attributable to the wicked west- poor countries don't have any responsibility whatsoever for the state they're in.

Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform", and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster.

But not from famine caused by their economic system. That's why Castro had to introduce rationing of food after the USSR collapsed.

If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board.

Yes, by emulating the Cuban model, the Haitians may be able to advance from being the poorest country in the Western hemisphere to being like Cuba ... which is the second poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done.

"We" didn't do the damage. The earthquake did. "We're" trying to provide aid. Even in the "black is white" world of the radical left, that should be obvious.

martinusher
13 Jan 2010, 8:43PM

There may be a problem with neoconservative economics but you have to ask yourself what we're getting for it. The people are oppressed and exploited, that's true. What's less clear is how we're doing it -- that's we, the ordinary people.

It would be more constructive to not try to pin blame on us, to try to make us feel guilty just because we have food and they don't. We should recognize that this is an extreme example of the kind of society unbridled capitalism brings. Its a total free-for-all economy with the government powerless and the people voiceless. The vision we're sold is of an idealistic state where everyone's free to be prosperous but Haiti is the reality.

Rustigjongens
13 Jan 2010, 8:52PM

This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history,

Total rubbish. In fact yesterday Mr Monboit was accusing the Spanish of the most brutal colonial exploitation using dubious figures in relation to the Spanish exploitation of South America.

I would also suggest that you look at the disgraceful behaviour of the Belgians in the Congo as the yardstick for brutal colonial exploitation.

As for Cuba, get a bloody grip man.

The only thing true about your article is that nearly all Western nations have blood on there hands due to colonial expansion policies, but the same is true of countries from Africa, Asia, Americas and the Middle East.

Tip: try for balance when attempting to use awful natural disasters as a smokescreen for attacking nations that you obviously do not like.

MimpleSigned
13 Jan 2010, 9:00PM

Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.

You can't bring history into this. That was then, this is now. I stayed up half the night watching the news about this, and I'm not interested in what the US government of yesteryear did. I want to know what I can do to help now, even if it's a small and relatively insignificant contribution to a disaster fund.

I have to add, I was sickened at the way the Sky News presenter (the woman on at around 11pm last night) asked the most stupid and inane questions in her attempt to keep the audience engaged ("this is apocalyptic... what can be done for the people who are now screaming under the rubble?", or words to that effect).

Sometimes, I hate these so-called news channels. The BBC, to give them credit, presented the facts in a sober and measured manner.

TheShermanator
13 Jan 2010, 9:23PM

Haiti has been a basket case for years.

Nobody is exploiting Haiti because there is nothing in Haiti worth exploiting.

To blame 100% of Haiti's problems on outside ( i.e. US) interference, as Mr Hallword suggests, is a ridiculous oversimplication of the situation.

Having said that, Haitians desperately need foreign assistance following this tragedy. Let's all hope that corruption in Haiti does not result in this foreign aid being wasted.

Armedleftist
13 Jan 2010, 10:03PM

Haiti has been independent since 1804.
It's problems are not our fault.
Now, can we get them some emergency aid, please.

Gangoffour
13 Jan 2010, 9:31PM

I look forward to pasty white boy Hallward telling the 45,000 American citizens that live their, most vastly darker than he, that they are no longer needed or wanted.