LENIN'S TOMB

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Trayvon Martin and the history of lynching posted by Richard Seymour

What is lynching? In its prevalent forms in American history, it appears as the administration of racial formations through terror. The mutilation, shaming and degrading of black bodies, and also the corpses being retrieved and displayed as trophies, was intended to maintain the symbolic subjection of black people to, in bell hooks' formulation, "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy". I stress the symbolic as a material element in racial oppression, because the problem of etiquette, of racial manners, was invariably central to such violence. Night-riders and lynch mobs were the enforcers of this etiquette. We know it's a peculiar problem in Jim Crow, the thousand and one rules and codes that crowded the field of sociality, exchange, transport, production and so on.

As Howard Winant explains, black people were expected to "remove their hats in the presence of whites, to step off the sidewalk (where one existed) into the muddy street at the passage of a white, and to wait in such shops as would serve blacks until all whites had been served, no matter who had arrived first". One finds this everywhere. Not just in the segregated public accomodations, but in the sites of production, the factories, the textile mills, where black labour was menial and expected to be deferential. If there is a white woman walking down a corridor, you step out of it until she passes. You don't speak to a white person unless they address you. If you need the toilet, you walk out of the building and several hundred yards to the facility marked "colored". So much, we all know. And what does it tell us about the social order? The South's theologians, ideologists and apologists hailed the region as a sort of classical, Athenian structure, a gentle, stable and aristocratic community. Yet the first infringement of one of the region's rituals could result in an explosion of violence, as if the antagonisms pervading the whole formation were suddenly displaced onto one symbolic crux.

But this doesn't capture the whole problem. For the organization of political violence in American history is unusual in some respects, in that the whole history of countersubversive (anti-radical, anti-union, anti-immigrant, anti-black) violence is one in which the state's monopoly on legitimate violence is deputised to sections of the citizenry. The invocation of the 'right to bear arms' has almost always been made in this sort of context, as during the trials of Klansmen in the Reconstruction period. And it is in this sort of area of political violence, where citizens were de facto deputised by states according to illicit hierarchies and instructions, whether it was Klan, minute men, FBI mobs, or Pinkertons, that parapolitics has a peculiar role in American history and politics. Occasionally, the logic has been subverted, as when Black Panthers invoked this right to defend themselves against police criminality - one of the few such invocations of the 'right to bear arms' where the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force has genuinely been challenged. But this violence was precisely not legitimized, whereas lynchings, employer violence, the 'disappearing' of militants, and so on, often has been legitimized. In the shift from Jim Crow to the penal administration of race, which required that the black criminality be identified through increasingly sophisticated classifications, codes and statutes, the 'right to bear arms' has most often been raised in the context of white self-defence. Citizens have often been allowed to wield punitive or capital violence when certain social norms or classifications were tested and defied; their violence has been legitimized because at the very least they have not been sanctioned.

But there is one other facet of this, which is the spatial re-ordering of American cities and towns. The racial aspect of this is familiar enough that I don't need to rehearse it here: the construction of 'the ghetto', 'white flight', the displacement of segregation from county to neighbourhood level. But of course this spatial re-organization is also way of structuring class power, as well as of preserving certain (patriarchal, conservative) social forms. The emergence of 'private towns' signals another twist in the delegation of state power sanctioned by the doctrine of property rights. In a previous post, I mentioned 'Leisure World' of Arizona, where constitutional protections are seemingly suspended, where the board of directors censors published material at will, precisely as one might in one's own household, or one's own company. In these zones, Mexicans and other people of colour may work, but in total silence. If they say anything to the whites who live there, they're out. The so-called 'gated community' is a related phenomenon, not quite as extreme in the internal controls available to its owners, but obviously protected with civilian violence - security guards, neighbourhood watch, armed citizen vigilantes, all do their share. It is in the context of territorial property rights, concerning households especially, but certainly gated communities and private towns, that stand-your-ground laws allowing for killing in 'self-defence' have been most available to legitimize this kind of violence.

Trayvon Martin was murdered while walking through a gated community in Miami known as Twin Lakes. His killer, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested. In fact, judging from witness statements, the police have taken quite extraordinary steps to avoid arresting him. Zimmerman had a long-standing relationship with local police, inasmuch as he was constantly in contact with them to report disturbances, suspicious sightings, windows left open and so on. It seems likely that they knew who he was, and what a vigilant citizen he was. Indeed, it seems probable that they shared many of his concerns, as their officers were known to have worries about black vagrancy and criminality. Neighbourhood Watch knew Zimmerman well, knew that he was always alert to the possibility of young black men who may be outsiders coming into the gated community. The security guards who defend local properties have displayed similar concerns, in one case shooting a black man while he was in his vehicle. They cited self-defence, claiming that he was driving toward them and about to run them over, although autopsy reports show that he was shot in the back. The judge threw out the case for lack of evidence. Of course, we have abundant examples, of which the execution of Troy Davis is just one, of just how racialised the question of evidence is.

But the point to make here is that while Zimmerman acted alone, he did not act in isolation, at odds with the expectations of police, or with the social norms current in the gated community. He saw a young black man walking around the gated community. To him, as to any officer, or security guard, or citizen vigilante, this was 'suspicious'. His presence was not in keeping with racial etiquette. His behaviour, walking slowly and looking at the houses of the well-off in the rain, suggested a deranged, drugged mind - because it is not done. Not in this neighbourhood, not in this community, and not in this town. Zimmerman acted expeditiously to suppress this symbolic infringement. Perhaps he spoke to Trayvon Martin, perhaps he challenged him about his behaviour, queried his motive for being there, instructed him to move along with more haste. But, whether because cooperation was not forthcoming, or because it was too late for the infringement to be remedied, he resolved the problem finally by putting an end to Martin's life, blasting his chest open.

Geraldo Rivera thinks the murder happened because Trayvon Martin was wearing a hoodie, and thus sending out a signal that he was a gangster. However morally cretinous this suggestion is, give Rivera credit for having some intuition about the politics of racial symbolism. He means that the murder victim is partly to blame for his death, because this symbolic action, wearing a hoodie, identifies one as someone who should be killed. He cannot help partially sharing the point of view of the killer, understanding the anxiety and horror that such sassing, such brazen boldness, such reckless wearing, walking and looking, provokes. He partially shares the point of view of the killer and that's why gets it: hey, if you don't want to get shot, don't go out looking like a punk. If you don't want to get shot, don't loiter, stand up straight, dress properly, show some manners. For there are points in the administration of America's increasingly jittery racial class system, where it seems that everything rides on this symbolic order and its maintenance.

Labels: capitalist state, class, kkk, lynching, racial formation, racism, terror, trayvon martin, united states, vigilantism, violence

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Breivik: Hitler should have been a Zionist posted by Richard Seymour

An interesting insight onto the specific kind of antisemitism prevalent on much of the far right - Tony Karon quotes from the mass murderer's manifesto:

"Were the majority of the German and European Jews disloyal? Yes, at least the so called liberal Jews, similar to the liberal Jews today that opposes nationalism/Zionism and supports multiculturalism. Jews that support multiculturalism today are as much of athreat to Israel and Zionism (Israeli nationalism) as they are to us. So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all culturalMarxists/multiculturalists. Conservative Jews were loyal to Europe and should have been rewarded. Instead, [Hitler] just targeted them all ... He could have easily worked out an agreement with the UK and France to liberate the ancient Jewish Christian lands with the purpose of giving the Jews back their ancestral lands ... The UK and France would perhaps even contribute to such a campaign in an effort to support European reconciliation. The deportation of the Jews from Germany wouldn't be popular but eventually, the Jewish people would regard Hitler as a hero because he returned the Holy land to them."

Labels: bnp, edl, fascism, hitler, islamophobia, multiculturalism, nazism, racism, terror, third reich

After Oslo: Europe, Islam and the mainstreaming of racism posted by Richard Seymour

Miriyam Aouragh and yours truly:

An hour before Anders Breivik embarked on his massacre of the innocents, he distributed his manifesto online. In 1500 pages, this urgent message identified “cultural Marxists”, “multiculturalists”, anti-Zionists and leftists as “traitors” allowing Christian Europe to be overtaken by Muslims. He subsequently murdered dozens of these ‘traitors’, the majority of them children, at a Labour Party youth camp. His inspiration, according to this manifesto, were those pathfinders of the Islamophobic right who have profited immensely from the framing and prosecution of the “war on terror,” including Melanie Phillips, Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer and Bat Ye’or.
Yet, almost before the attacks were concluded, a ‘line’ was developing in the mass media: it was jihadists and certainly an ‘Al Qaeda style’ attack. Peter Beaumont of The Guardian was among the first to develop this narrative, but it was rapidly taken up across the media. Glenn Greenwald describes how on the day of the attack “the featured headline on The New York Times online front page strongly suggested that Muslims were responsible for the attacks on Oslo; that led to definitive statements on the BBC and elsewhere that Muslims were the culprits.” Meanwhile, “the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin wrote a whole column based on the assertion that Muslims were responsible”. A hoax claim of ‘responsibility’ for the attack from an unknown group, disseminated by a dubious ‘expert’, was used to spin this line well beyond the point of credibility...

Labels: anti-fascism, europe, fascism, islam, islamophobia, norway, racism, terror

Saturday, July 23, 2011

That Viking Jihad, again posted by Richard Seymour

So, it turns out that the Norwegian terror suspect who murdered an estimated 91 people, most of whom were kids, was in contact with the EDL, whom he admired and wished to emulate:

The man arrested for yesterday’s murderous attacks in Norway admires Britain’s far right English Defence League and claimed to have held discussions with it.

More than 80 people attending a Labour Youth gathering were shot dead near the Norwegian capital Oslo when a man dressed in a police uniform opened fire.
A car bomb killed seven people earlier the same day outside Norway’s main government building in central Oslo.
Members of the ruling Labour Party were the targets in both cases. The killings have sent shockwaves around the world.
The media and “security experts” rushed to blame Islamic terrorists. But Norwegian police have arrested a Norwegian man, Anders Behring Breivik.
Breivik posted messages on a Norwegian website expressing his admiration for the English Defence League.
Among rants about Islam and Communism is the following (roughly translated from Norwegian):
“I have on some occasions discussed with SIOE [Stop Islamification Of Europe] and EDL and recommended them to use conscious strategies.
The tactics of the EDL is now out to "entice" an overreaction from Jihad Youth / Extreme-Marxists something they have succeeded several times already. Over The reaction has been repeatedly shown on the news which has booster EDLs ranks high.
This has also benefited BNP. WinWin for both.
But I must say I am very impressed with how quickly they have grown but this has to do with smart tactical choice by management.
EDL is an example and a Norwegian version is the only way to prevent Flash / SOS to harass Norwegian cultural conservatives from other fronts. Creating a Norwegian EDL should be No. 3 on the agenda after we have started up a cultural conservative newspaper with national distribution.
The agenda of the Norwegian cultural conservative movement over the next 5 years are therefore:
1 Newspaper with national distribution
2 Working for the control of several NGOs
3 Norwegian EDL”

There has been a lengthy queue of ostensible experts filing into broadcasting suites and newsrooms - and no doubt policy chambers and intelligence briefing rooms as well - who have maintained until the last hour that this was definitely jihadism. The basis for this was feeble from the beginning. They said it must be the cartoons controversy, or Afghanistan (though Norway is a secondary player in that crusade). They said it must be Mullah Krekar, the small-time Kurdish Islamist, taking revenge for actions taken against him by the Norwegian state. (Ironically, even the meshuggeneh Harry's Place has done better on average than most of the papers.) I don't mind telling you that I think this was wish fulfilment. That is, I think that these pundits and their employers largely would have liked nothing better than for it to be an Islamist attack, because then they have a set of responses that they can energetically put into motion, and a pre-determined narrative around which they can cohere those responses. Far right racists murdering young leftists, on the other hand, is not a subject on which they can rapidly form plausible responses.

Now, readers of this blog will be aware that there have been many, many foiled terror plots by far right activists in the UK alone. This has failed to receive the sort of attention that similar attempts by Islamists would generate. With the spread of fascism across Europe, these people are beginning to receive a degree of ideological and organisational sustenance that they might previously have lacked. It's no good looking to security measures or intelligence-led operations to deal with this problem. It is a political problem, and it has to be combatted politically through the assembly of anti-fascist coalitions capable of frustrating and isolating the organisational bases of fascism in the continent. This is a task that becomes all the more urgent in the high stakes battles over austerity.

Labels: anti-fascism, austerity, fascism, islamism, islamophobia, racism, terror

Friday, July 22, 2011

Norway posted by Richard Seymour

Don't, by any means, allow me to tell you what to think. But I would strongly advise the commentariat, especially the media belligerati, against prematurely attributing these attacks to 'jihadis'. Yes, I'm talking to the wised up chin-strokers on Al Jazeera, BBC, Peter Beaumont, and the usual crowd. I especially enjoy the headline: 'suspicion falls on Islamist militants'. Oh does it? And whose suspicion, may we be allowed to know, falls thus? No one specifically, it seems. They are just suspected - they are, if you like, suspect. My own premature speculation on this would be thus: the first guy arrested in connection with this is (say eyewitnesses - police don't appear to be willing to confirm) a tall, blonde, white Norwegian dressed in a policeman's outfit. (For some reason, it is assumed that he is not actually a policeman). He is probably not an Islamist 'militant'. The attack on a Labour camp and a Labour PM who was due to speak at the camp seems quite unlike a typical jihadi target. If this was Islamists motivated by Norway's participation in the imperialist conquest of Afghanistan, one would expect the target to be either security or state apparatuses, or soft targets with no specific party connotation. There is a tiny Islamist presence in Norway, in contrast to the large far right presence. On the basis of this, if I were called upon for instapunditry at this point, I would hypothesise, just off the cuff, and with considerable reservations, that this is the far right in action.

Update: I did warn you. All signs now are that the claim of 'responsibility' from some alleged 'jihadi' group that no one has ever heard of is a hoax. Norwegian police now say they don't believe this attack is 'international' terrorism, but is a 'local' attack on the political system - euphemism, I think, for a fascist attack on democracy and the left. At least The Sun doesn't bother with the euphemisms since, as you can see above, they completely ignore the facts. Who needs phone hacking when you can just make it up?

Labels: 'terrorism', far right, fascism, islamism, labour, norway, terror

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Mumbai posted by Richard Seymour

The shocking and depressing news from India would seem to defy any glib conclusions or slogans beyond the patently obvious - namely, that this grotesque hunting and killing of innocents is likely to succeed in (what appears to be) its principle aim of generating both a repressive response from the Indian state and a communal reaction. The facts so far reported do point to some general conclusions about the likely aims, and possible culprits. There has been a claim of responsibility from the 'Deccan Mujahideen', which could be related to the 'Indian Mujahideen' (IM), who in turn are alleged to be the latest incarnation of banned right-wing Islamist groups, the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). The former originated in Uttar Pradesh in 1977, inspired by the Iranian revolution, championing a Deobandi strain of Muslim revivalism. The latter originated in Kashmir in 1990 and is, alongside the Jaish-e Mohammed, one of the larger Islamist groups operating in Pakistan. It has been associated with figures belonging to 'Al Qaeda'. This is presumably the basis for Indian intelligence claims that the violence of the IM is the result of ISI subventions across the subcontinent. Whatever the ratio of truth and falsehood in those claims, two other dimensions are probably far more important: one is the domestic aspect of communal violence, and the other is the global politics of the jihadis presumed to be involved. The choice of targets suggests that the emphasis must be on the latter. One analysis in the Telegraph explains that the symbolic significance of the attack on the Taj Mahal hotel is that it was built to give the Indian upper class somewhere decent to stay in an age of colonial racism and segregation. The hotel is now "a symbol of Western decadence", because of the rich tourists it attracts. Similarly, the train station attacked was a terminus busy with tourists. Unlike the attacks in 2006, which were designed to exact maximum casualties among Hindu civilians, this attack seems to have been designed to kill foreigners.

Let's suppose that the 'Deccan Mujahideen' is indeed a name chosen by members of the IM based in the Deccan plain of Maharashtra. According to the Indian government, the IM is a front for members of the banned SIMI and LeT groups. But these are very different organisations - if not doctrinally, then certainly in origin and manner of organising. SIMI was originally the student wing of the Jama'at-i-Islami Hind (JIH), who expelled it on the basis of its ultra-radicalism (the JIH today work alongside the Indian communist parties against the BJP and Congress Party). It was a tiny sect for years. But the accelerating trends in communal violence over the last two decades of the twentieth century saw it gain members beyond its areas of strength in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, into some areas of the south. It has been banned several times, the first time shortly after 9/11 on the basis of claims of involvement in terrorist activities. Human rights advocates among others noted that Hinduta groups promoting racist violence, with close ties to the government, were not banned. They argued that the ban was a pretext for harrassing and terrorising Muslims in general, and indeed subsequent events bore this assessment out. The police slaughtered protesters supporting SIMI's legalisation in Lucknow shortly after the first ban was imposed. The subsequent massacre of 2,000 Muslims in the state of Gujarat, with the involvement of state officials including Narendra Modi, demonstrated that the Indian state was indeed on the war path against Muslims. The recent finding by the Justice Navati commission, exculpating Modi and pinning the blame for the violence on a 'Muslim mob' who are held responsible for the burning to death of 58 Hindu passengers on a train, rather suggests that the war is not over. Actually, a number of armed Hindutva groups were reportedly able to train and operate with impunity under the BJP.

At any rate, the bans on SIMI appear to have been based on insubstantial evidence of involvement in terrorism. In August this year, for example, a Delhi High Court tribunal lifted the ban, stating that evidence from the home ministry was inadequate to maintain it, although the Supreme Court threw this ruling out. The bans would certainly have seriously impacted on the organisation's size and ability to act, given that its members must retire from the organisation after thirty while new recruitment would have been impossible under conditions of illegality. This weakened organisation was held responsible by the Indian authorities for the Mumbai bombings in 2006 as well as attacks against Hindus in Malegaon the same year, both of which were communal attacks (subsequent attacks in Malegaon this year appear to have been carried out by Hindu nationalists seeking to re-create the fabled 'Aryan' state of old, the 'Hindu Rashtra' ideology of the BJP). It is possible that the SIMI, or elements of it, have engaged in some attacks. Eight years of repression, scapegoating, and some of the worst anti-Muslim violence for years, might have radicalised layers within it. However, the Indian state has too much of an interest in demonising all Islamist groups as a means toward repressing Muslims in general for its claims to be taken at face value.

LeT supposedly has connections with SIMI, but to the extent that these are reported they seem tenuous, and LeT is a very different kind of organisation. It was funded from the start by the Pakistani state to facilitate its control over the Kashmiri struggle for independence, which emerged through years of torture and murder by the Indian state (the Indian government's widespread practise of torture has led to the formation of a people's tribunal to combat it). This is part of the Pakistani state's general strategy of promoting various groups to create a pro-Pakistan consensus across central and southern Asia. Even under the conditions of the 'war on terror', the ISI has been able to redeploy these groups, including LeT, moving their camps to avoid detection by US bombers and so on. Unlike SIMI in India, LeT has some real social weight in Pakistan - after the US bombing of Afghanistan in 1998, it mobilised 50,000 youths at a religious gathering near Lahore at which attendees vowed to avenge the attacks. It also undoubtedly has a willingness and an ability to plan and execute highly sophisticated attacks. This doesn't mean any accusations against them are reliable, or that the ISI in any sense co-ordinated it. The Indian government is already more or less explicitly blaming Pakistan, which is one reason to be wary of such claims.

Whoever the 'Deccan Mujahideen' turn out to be, Jason Burke argues that the signs point to them being a home-grown movement. This means that any attempt to comprehend what is happening has to start with the Indian social structure, and particularly the position of Muslims in Indian society. So, let's stick with the obvious. Indian Muslims, comprising 13.5% of the population of India, are poor and disenfranchised: under-represented in most official organs, among the most exploited layers of society, and vulnerable to chauvanistic attack by Hindu nationalists. Their status as an insecure minority within a Hindu-majority state is one of the deadliest issues in Indian politics. The rise of atrocious Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) throughout the 1990s reflected the growth of communal politics that was due to a number of factors. Demographically, Muslims were a faster growing group than any other, a fact that right-wing politicians sometimes ascribed to illegal migration by refugees from Bangladesh (many of these were actually Hindus). The rise of Islamist politics amid the disintegration of Congress hegemony (the Congress Party had failed to alleviate the extreme polarities of wealth or fulfil its pledges on poverty as outlined in Ghandi's Garibi Hatao programme was accompanied by the rise of other forms of politics rooted in caste or regional interests - so, for example, the Dalit party sought to build a coalition between Muslims and low caste blocs. Hindutva politicians and activists successfully exploited these changes to argue that the Muslim population was a surging menace, and that it would become a threat to the security of the Hindu population. The BJP's rapid ascent helped to accelerate the rise of communal violence. The party, which had at its core another organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, known for its fascistic tendencies, began its most illustrious phase with bouts of vicious sectarianism. One of these was the demolition of the Babar mosque in Ayodhya, in 1992. The demolition was not really an attack on a religious symbol so much as an attack on a symbol representing the integration and acceptance of Muslims. It was an attack on the very idea that Muslims were a part of Indian society, which the BJP explicitly rejected in their literature and speeches. And it duly prompted one of the worst riots in recent Indian history. Subsequently, it incited pogroms against Muslims in Bombay/Mumbai in 1993. (Just in passing, it was the far right BJP ally Shiv Sena, whose candidate threatened the extermination of the city's Muslims, which changed Bombay's name to its Marathi name, Mumbai, in 1995). The BJP are the most vicious exponents of communal politics, and it is no exaggeration to say that they came close to fascism at times, albeit the Indian ruling class wasn't ready for that level of repression and instability. It is now quite possible that they will sweep back to power, and the Gujarat massacre may be multiplied many times over.

All of this bodes extremely ominiously for the future of the world's largest democracy. Every filthy reactionary and pogromist will be strengthened, while the more violent jihadi groups will probably expand under a wave of state terror and communal violence. The only hope is in the Left organising a coalition to stop this horrible political logic in its tracks, and to my mind that entails defending Muslims from the inevitable resurgence of anti-Muslim hatred, while opposing the politics of the jihadis. The hypocritical policy of banning Islamist groups over allegations of terrorism while tolerating and even encouraging violent Hindutva groups has to be opposed. Those who try to mount pogroms have to be fought in the streets. Any escalation of the struggle with Pakistan also has to be opposed. Even if Manmohan Singh's government doesn't treat Pakistani intelligence as the ultimate culprit, there are other ways in which escalation can take place. Given that the largest concentration of India's Muslims is based in Jammu and the Indian-occupied area of Kashmir, any generalised repression by the Indian state will inevitably intensify the Kashmir conflict - and provoke further set-piece atrocities such as we have seen over the last day or so.

Labels: communism, india, islamism, mumbai, racism, terror

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Men in Full. posted by Richard Seymour

Who's the Daddy? It's a question we have all had to ask ourselves at some point in our lives. Is that the sweet looking old man on the television? The next-door neighbour with ungainly muscles and a shaven head? Is it the man who cleans the windows and offers reassuring winks as he wipes away the soapy liquid? The question is more urgent than ever when catastrophe strikes. The American empire's assertion of manly virtues, barbarian virtues, the values of the Rough Rider, the frontier man, the Teddy Roosevelt civilised beast, has been a minor obsession of mine for a while. In this connection, Susan Faludi's latest, The Terror Dream, is a brilliant analysis of the post-9/11 culture in America. I've always liked Faludi's work: she deals effectively both with the American assault on women (especially African American women), and with the reasons why men are made to feel small, and cheated in light of the decline of meaningful work. This one draws on the work of the eminent psychosocial theorist Richard Slotkin to examine the animating myths of American culture that were so readily (re)activated in light of the conflagrations in New York and Washington.

The arrival of the 'barbarians' (the term widely used, without irony, after 9/11) not only gave masculinism a fresh lease of life against what are perceived as the decadent, feminising years of the Clinton administration; it gave a floundering Bush the chance to foster paternal projection by feeding us with baby talk, in the manner of Reagan. This is the significance of 'The Hug', the stage-managed encounter between Bush and Ashley Faulkner, photographed by her Republican father and sent to some people who rapidly dispersed it among 'close friends, whereupon it found its way through all the usual right-wing outlets and then the mainstream media. Bush, it transpired, was the Daddy of the nation, and his hugs would become legendary, even after he had presided over the contrived destruction by neglect (and then seige) of New Orleans. I have written before about how nationalism relies on familial (patriarchal) metaphors, and anyone who wants to understand the regressive tendencies of nationalism need only consult Peter Blickle and Uli Linke. American nationalism has emphasised these trends, despite the occasional nod to diversity. It is instructive to see Faludi's discussion of Bush going through his reassuringly fatherly routines: he discusses his favourite gun, stages photoshoots while swinging axes and chainsaws, catches big fat fish. "Protection fantasies," Faludi says, have become ubiquitous. Thus, Kerry repeatedly poses with a rifle (not unlike this man in a way), and photograghs of this are used on electioneering leaflets with the slogan 'Kerry Will Protect Ohio'. Pollsters and PR men seemed to decide that venturing into the wild and killing animals proved manhood: and Americans wanted nothing more than a big fat manhood hovering over them.

As the Rough Riders were sent forth to tame the Islamic 'wildnerness' with its bloody frontiers, pundits celebrated the re-emergence of the John Wayne style in American life. A wave of mass violence and terror was favoured. NYT columnist enthused: "We will destroy innocent villages by accident, shrug our shoulders and continue fighting." It would be like the Indian Wars again, except with much more efficient killing machines. This was the Last Stand (that fictitious episode that survived in mythology, like the heroic defiance of the Berlin Blockade and the Cuban Missile Crisis, long after the correct empirical data had been established), and this time Custer would win. Faludi comments that "the dreamscape in which Americans dwelled since the disaster" was a sortie into the past, especially into the references of the 1950s. Now, it so happens that the 1950s is a hot-button cultural space for the American right - that glorious decade of lynching, repression of commies, union-busting, genocidal war in Korea with barely a whiff of dissent, before the sexual deviants and wimmin and blacks and commies ganged up to ruin the place. You can't prise Newt Gingrich's frigid fingers off those Norman Rockwell illustrations. Reagan would be parted with his Fiftiana kitsch only over his cold dead body. It is a symbol of moral clarity in a land of confusion and turmoil. And so, once again, the white male, with a suitably racialised Tonto in tow, is the future of humanity.

What happens to women in this story? They can return to domestic docility, or they can take up decoy roles in the military. They can be like the precious Jessica Lynch, for example, whose story has been written and rewritten on her behalf and without her input several times. The helpless white girl roughed up by savages, rescued by the Rough Riders: a damsel in distress and danger, in need of humanitarian intervention. They can be weeping widows and mothers (unless their sons have been killed as a result of an unpopular war - intriguingly, there is no mention of Cindy Sheehan in Faludi's book). They can be "Let's Roll" widows, provided they stick with the media script provided in advance (one of the strengths of Faludi's account is to show how the voices of ordinary women are always pre-scripted by the corporate media). They can be virginal brides too. The dramatic resurgence of puritanical family values did not begin in 2001, and was never as popular as pretended in some quarters, but it did come to decisively shape the spectacle. Serious efforts to discover the full range of real public reactions to 9/11 found that they did not conform to the stale categories imposed on them. Quite the contrary: the sudden sense of vulnerability humanised people, and erased the distinction between (masculine) heroes and (feminine) victims. But these were not the stories told by Hollywood, or by Fox News, or by CNN or the New York Times. And that means that the stories that were told about men and women in the last six years have been important to the selling of the 'war on terror'. The truth was too toxic.

You can read an interview with Faludi here.

Labels: 9/11, manly virtues, rough riders, terror