Comments | john_b_cannon: It's a European Thang....

john_b_cannon

It's a European Thang....

Feb 01, 2006 09:28

.... but has anyone been following this controversy over this Danish newspaper that published a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad and the response it has created, in terms of boycotts of Danish goods, etc.? Things got a little more interesting today, with several European newspapers reprinting the caricatures "in solidarity" with the Danes ( Read more... )

philosophy of praxis, geopolitics, race and class, news

Comments 6

socialistfarmer February 1 2006, 20:02:02 UTC

That's weird; it shows that the paper is messed up, but that doesn't make Denmark messed up... It's not a state controlled paper, is it?

john_b_cannon February 2 2006, 02:39:25 UTC

No, it's not state-controlled.

On another subject, I noticed this afternoon that the BBC article had been updated, with this:

'But late on Wednesday [France Soir's] owner, Raymond Lakah, said he had removed managing editor Jacques Lefranc "as a powerful sign of respect for the intimate beliefs and convictions of every individual".

'Mr Lakah said: "We express our regrets to the Muslim community and all people who were shocked by the publication." '

Dialectics _rarely_ allow you to predict anything with any accuracy, especially in the future, but even in the present. Following one of my favorite episodes of the Newhart Show, I like to say that they allow you to predict the past with 80% accuracy. So it's important to take credit when you call something right! In this case, what I've called "the conflict between the corporate board and the editorial board" spilled over in an extremely tangible way.

I'm feeling quite satisfied with myself. Smug, even. Ready for a beatdown.

dobrovolets February 2 2006, 19:02:06 UTC

Not sure I follow you in the last paragraph.
I suspect the problem is that we may disagree on when the connection between the Marxist and the "common-sense" ideas of politics come to life. I believe it is possible short of a crisis situation; it requires a lively party life, and with it, a lively press.
For me, a template for this relationship can be found in Lenin's writings of 1906-07, when the revolutionary crisis of the year before was over, yet there were still enough remaining gains that had been ceded by the tsar that certain things were possible: a sizeable Social-Democratic Duma fraction, several daily papers associated with the party, etc. What's unfortunate about the Stalinist canonization is that, in translation, we have the contributions of one comrade to the debate, but little sense of the overall party-political life, but even from that one-sided image one gets a sense that it is possible, even necessary, to remain a consistent revolutionist while training one's attention (and more importantly, training the attention of a ( ... )

john_b_cannon February 3 2006, 10:23:03 UTC

I'm not sure that that's necessarily where we disagree.... I think what you suggest is potentially important. The three problems you mention are all real, but in addition to them, there's the fact that existing Marxist parties and organizations (I don't draw a hard and fast line around what constitutes a party, myself) don't have deep cultural roots in working class communities and communities of color. This makes the question of potential audience quite problematic. In other words, it would be easier for the revolutionary left to produce a press that related to the "common sense" of white left-liberalism than one that went beyond that. (Of course it's not necessarily *obvious* that working-class communities have distinct common sense; what's more clear to me is that white, middle-class left-liberalism has a distinct common sense which tends to permeate and overwhelm the ostensibly revolutionary left, to the point where we can't really separate ourselves from the kinds of questions that that worldview entails ( ... )

john_b_cannon February 6 2006, 05:50:44 UTC

Okay, I realize I'm way out of my depth on this one. But if anyone sees some good left/antiracist/anticolonial analysis on this one, send it my way....

john_b_cannon February 7 2006, 23:14:16 UTC

My favorite two quotes from this whole thing:

"[This] is a very unpleasant situation for Danes, we're not used to this."
--Danish PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen

"They want to know whether Muslims are extremists or not. Death to them and to their newspapers"
--protester Mawli Abdul Qahar Abu Israra, in Afghanistan