Adel Samara
The current western white capitalist war/s against Arab nation must motivate us to revive, re-activate and deeply adopt the slogan: There is no way to exist unless we make our daily life a war of resistant against Counter Revolution (CR).
Based on this fact, I believe that Arab writers, intellectuals, analysts must be aware of falling into positions or faults that discourage, manipulate and harm Arab masses from launching a war of defense/resistance against the capitalist west’s continuous and varied forms and areas of war as long as they feel inferior to the western capitalist discourse.
The direct reason for writing this article is: Why the street of CR supports its aggression while a large part of Arab street supports the CR as well.
Traditional liberal discourse follows Clausewitz’s saying that “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means”, but historical materialist analysis rightly argues that the decisive factor is the economic and the materialist one. Even when we are not discussing direct class struggle and modes of production, war between nations is genuinely a class war because it is first for interests of a dominant class. It is wealth plundering and monopoly markets which make it imperative for white western capitalism to conquer land, i.e. it is economy in geography.
Their Street
Most of western capitalist/imperialist societies were and still are occupied by “Historical Collusion (HC)”, i.e. most people in western capitalist socio-economic formations accept, agree, and participate with their ruling classes’ colonial wars as long as they directly and indirectly benefit from those wars of plunder. That is why they ‘sacrifice, the blood of their sons for the sake of controlling the wealth of others. Some people might rightly argue: Who cares in the bourgeois circles for the lives of their soldiers who are from the popular classes.
Western racism, Eurocentrism, Forecs of Politicizing Religion (FPR) (such as neo-conservatism) and most of their discourse are in fact mechanisms and tools for the HC, despite of the fact that it looks like independent instances. Moreover, Civil Society (CS) in the west deliberately acts on double standard. It is semi-civil inside and aggressive for people in periphery. In this case, those societies are not civil in real terms unless they transform from passivity or collusion towards colonialism to new societies transcending capitalism.
This form of society which tastes the benefits of historical plundering of periphery, direct colonization, unequal exchange, and trickle-down economic relationship, is accepting and maintaining capitalism in its forms of: colonialism, imperialism and globalism towards the countries of the periphery. Accordingly, it MUST support their ruling classes’ wars against other social formations, especially when those in periphery are unable to defeat the invaders and that the cost of conquest is not that much. I mean here that the invaders never stop unless they are terrified and expect heavy defeat.
What encourages those in core capitalist countries to go ahead with all forms of wars, brutal or “soft”, is the fact that many classes, politicians and intellectuals in periphery, are calling for and attracting colonialism, betraying their nations…etc.
This takes us to the question: Why is our street with them as well?
Our Street
In the following, I will deal in a critical manner, with some points that might enlighten my argument that our street is occupied by our nation’s enemy. Many Arab analysts, writers and intellectuals are colluding with the capitalist western discourse intentionally or mistakenly.
Intentional deformation of Arab mass’ consciousness has a long history. In this context, I will mention here two examples: one is national and the other is academic related to post-colonial discourse:
The first example goes back to the time of Nasser in Egypt. Egyptian media of that time were calling Nasser the hero of peace. I was young at that time but I never accepted that because it was easy to realize that there is no chance for peace because Arab Homeland was colonized and Palestine was occupied by the Zionists. I found it a sign of weakness.
On the other side, the white western capitalist media were calling the same Nasser: “The beast of the Middle East”. It is very racist and ugly description that reflects hatred based on their worry about their interests in Arab Homeland.
The Second is about the author of Orientalism, Edward Said. While he made a profound critical analysis of orientalism, he failed to grasp the deep relationship between orientalism and imperialism. While he amends his position in his book Culture and Imperialism, he did not change his main fall against Arab nation. Said wrote:
“The Arab world today is an intellectual, political and cultural satellite of the United States. This is not in itself something to be lamented; the specific form of the satellite relationship, however, is…” (Orientalism, Pantheon Books, New York, 1978, p 322).
Sadiq Jalal al-Azm, in (Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse, in Khamsin Journal no 8, 1981, pp5-26.) harshly criticizes Said and picks the same above quoted sentence considers Said as compromiser for imperialism. Thirty years later, al-Azm himself supports the CR war against his own country, Syria.
Another aspect is many Arab TV programs invite analysts to ask them the classical vicious question: “Do you think that there will be a war”?
The linguistic structure of the question is collusion with the western discourse and politics. It looks as if it is the first or even a new war might be launched against our nation. Asking the question this way means that we were and we are in peace with the West. It ignores history which is saturated with facts that we were and still are under a continuous aggression from the West, and it ignores the current wars and planning of new one from the West against us.
It makes a big difference to ask: Do you think that a new wave of war is coming? Or, will the West escalate its current wars against us. The second alternative reminds the people that the capitalist West is an enemy from the past, present and in the future. The structure of the question explains to people or helps them stand on a solid ground against the enemy and to have a position of conscious hatred against colonialists as a main lever for resistance.
Reminding people that we are in war and even under occupation, several forms of occupations, it means that there is no independence in Arab Homeland and we must fight for achieving that. Reminding ourselves that we are not independent contains a position that Post-Colonial discourse is only abstract but not real. It is in the range of looking for acceptance and recognition in academic circles. Colonialism, in the current era of Arab Homeland, is more than ever before. And what made it worse is the fact that many Arab regimes, comprador classes, liberal intellectuals, renegade Marxists are in the camp of CR.
While US/EU and the rest of CR are preparing now for a new wave of aggression, many Arab analysts, commentators, intellectuals are using the enemy’s language or term “strike”. Strike means that the lord decides to punish his slave or the teacher decides to punish the student which is a legal decision! It means as well that we must accept the pretence that the enemy is in a strong position. Using this language is a pre-emptive tactic to hold and paralyze people’s resistance and to absorb the aggression as if it is legal.
Arab politicians still believe in the false western propaganda that the West is against fundamentalism. Based on this false propaganda they blame the US for supporting al-Qaida arguing that the US and EU for their support of al-Qaida are contradicting their morals, and/or adventuring their own security because those al-Qaida armed people will sooner or later re-orientate their rifles against western societies.
The capitalist West is not naive and not waiting for advice, it needs agents. They created al-Qaida and are able to control it. They are able to absorb some accidents which are not being the norm. The hierarchy structure in this level is that:
The leadership and political commissaries of Forces Politicizing Religion (FPR) have joint interest and are in harmony with imperialism.
The lower ranks never knew that, what they want to know is Wahhabi ideology and no more.
Liberal Arabs are blaming the capitalist West for its intrusion of Human Rights in Iraq, Libya, and Syria…etc. This form of blame is an indirect maneuver to be accepted by the West, the capitalist West conducts all those crime deliberately. That is why, blaming the West might be understood from our people that this West is nice and it is strange that it made some mistakes. Those who bombed Hiroshima will never change at least because they were never punished.
Some Arab leftists were pleased when some of the so-called socialists succeed in elections, i.e. the socialist party in France. This affects the cultural politics of our societies in both levels of:
Their image about France’s expected politics
And their image about socialism
Socialist party of France initiated 1956 war against Egypt, most of French Marxists were against Algeria’s independence war, and the socialist party is now leading the war against Syria.
The last but not least was the comfortable feelings of many Arab analysts who said when Kerry was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the US. They said that there is a family friendship between him and President Assad.
Suppose that there is some relationship like this, does it change US foreign policy towards Syria? US foreign policy is a pure and complete policy of war and plunder.
Two related points, old and new need to be tackled.
First: The defeat of nationalists and communists of Arab liberation movement since 1960s, left the stage open and empty for the regimes of politicized religion and the of FPR which deformed the consciousness of the masses and pushed them back into sectarianism and fundamentalism.
Second: What currently made Arab masses mixed is the hesitation of Syrian regime to refer to all Arab clientele regimes – which are against Arab nation, and which recognized the Zionist Ashkenazi Regime, thus “donating” their land to Western armies and military bases…etc. The Syrian regime held on criticizing the regime of Saudi Arabia until the latter declared open war against Syria.
This is not the proper way to challenge those who betray the nation on the one hand, and what was discussed above does not forgive any Arab citizen from doing something to harm the enemy because the enemy is here and clear: It is targeting our Homeland. There is no meaning to sit paralyzed and blame the shortcomings of political parties.