Excerpt: "Seduction always takes something away from the scene – the scene of pleasure. The “Arab Spring” was masterful work, worthy of any Don Juan. Without having any real idea of who or what these “rebels” were, the Western Left became complicit. They were sucked in. Joyfully sucked in. They filled out the missing spaces with their fantasies of democratic protestors, valiantly standing up to the Viagra drugged soldiers of a hated dictator. That a million Libyans came out and filled Green Square, under the threat of NATO bombing, to show their support for Muammar al-Gaddafi was easily overlooked. A seduced person, a person who is loving the thrill of being seduced, no longer has any use for truth or facts.... Though Syria has managed to push back the attack on its integrity and sovereignty, it remains under attack by Western imperialism and its native allies. As mentioned above, the war rhetoric of the Anglo-Saxon and French imperial powers has become more rabid in proportion to the scale of the defeat the Al Qaeda / Al Nusra gangs face in Syria. Iran remains under criminal sanctions, as does the DPRK and Cuba. Russia and China are under constant Western media attack, and face military encirclement by imperialist forces. In effect, we are facing the beginning of WW3, to be fought for exactly the same reason that the first two World Wars were fought, i.e. as an attempt to escape a financial collapse in the Capitalist system. Can we look to the leaders of the Western Left with confidence? Or will we simply repeat the betrayal of 1914? It seems obvious that we need leaderships that are capable of overcoming their catastrophic seduction in 2011. We need to openly admit that the Left was utterly wrong in its analysis, and was outflanked by an enemy with hugely greater skills than the Left now generally possesses. We must begin to weed out the rotten from the good. We need people who are not moved by the hysteria of the majority. We need people who openly admit that the majority are often, if not usually, completely wrong. This will not be easy. Westerners, of all social classes, have a strong belief that if Western domination of the Third World were to end, their already threatened lifestyles would suffer – if not entirely collapse. In effect, there is an unspoken consensus that these imperial wars are the best bet the West has for economic recovery. Not only has the Left failed to challenge this consensus, but, by its words and actions has actually become part of it. It may well be that Western culture no longer has the vitality to produce an active and worthwhile Left. This is a possibility we must consider. The Arabs themselves didn’t call what happened in 2011 an “Arab Spring.” Just like they didn’t call what happened in 1919 an “Arab Spring.” This was always an image that belonged to Western imperialism, and employed to seduce Western populations with the romantic, Laurence of Arabia style, notions the term evokes. The Arab Spring never happened in the Arab world. It happened only in our Western imaginary world."
Posted on: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:40:54 +0000
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