Antisemitism, liberal democracy, and a free press

January 26, 2015 //

On a recent episode of KCRW’s Press Play, there was a discussion of Jewish emigration from France. The interviewee, Greg Viscusi of Bloomberg, divided French Jewry between those who have lived in France for generations who tend to be well educated, middle class and integrated. (Dominic Strauss-Kahn, who might now be PM if not for this big mess, is one of these), and poorer more recent arrivals whose communities overlap those of more recent, and also poor, Muslim immigrants. Makes for some tension.

Note: The Strauss-Kahn episode is food for another entry.

The discussion moved on to cover an antisemitic comedian named Dieudonné (Gift of god? Really?). Dieudonné, whose first comedic partner was Jewish, has more recently included a great deal of anti-Zionist material in his acts and worked with Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson. He’s also had his productions banned.

Why mention all this? The question remains: If one believes truly in a right to free speech, (how) does one limit it?

My feeling is that no god and no religion is above ridicule, but when does ridicule become fodder for violence? In the last couple weeks, a Jewish school in Amsterdam closed briefly for fear of terrorism, and threats against Jewish homes and institutions is increasing according to an article that appeared on 16 January in the Dagblad papers (“Weer meer acties tegen Joden” by Silvan Schoonhoven appeared in the Ijmuider Courant and the Leidse Dagblad which are at least tangentially related papers.) The motives identified in the article include the response to the Hebdo (and associated) massacres and last summer’s incursions into Gaza.

Many Jews speak out that the actions of Israel are not those of even the Israeli public, much less of world Jewry, much as Bibi Netanyahu would have us believe otherwise.

My friend Vanessa lived in Europe for many years, primarily in Prague and Brussels and has recently moved back to Los Angeles, her hometown (and mine for that matter). When we met in Prague twelve years ago, she argued that it was the duty of Jews in the diaspora to bring Judaism back to Europe – essentially to reverse the Holocaust. As a very very secular Jew, I didn’t share her enthusiasm, though I hope I appreciated it, at the very least. On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she posted that the antisemitism she experienced in Brussels forced her return “to the only place [she’s] lived where Jews don’t feel like a minority.” Her boss at a large NGO stated that the Holocaust was a long time ago and that Jews should get over it and that “Israel had no right to exist”. This was not an isolated incident in her life in Belgium, and she was advised “to pick a battle you can win” – that Belgium is not the US.

My questions are reinforced: How can we maintain the traditions of liberal democracy including freedom of speech and religion? How can we defend everyone’s right to speak and pray as they choose? How can we tolerate intolerance? Can we truly educate the ignorant on these matters? (Historically no, to the last one – didactic liberals are less popular than most, and possibly for good reason. Food for yet another post.)

I wish I knew, because these things don’t seem compatible anymore, if they ever did.

Tags free press, free speech, Israel

Categories Europe, religion

Taxing, spending, and making things work

January 20, 2015 //

First off: I live in a country where the highest tax bracket is 52% and one reaches it pretty quickly. I’m an experienced technical writer by profession and could probably make USD 75-85,000/year if I returned to the US. I’ve worked in The Netherlands for over seven years and almost the entire time have had the benefit of what’s called the 30% ruling. Under this plan, the first 30% of the income of expats who qualify (based on age and earning capacity, primarily, though the tax authority here can be capricious) is untaxed. For the next 2 1/2 years, I will still benefit from this ruling. After that, half my income goes to the taxman.

When that time comes, I will probably complain a bit, as will my wife who earns a great deal more than I do. That said, we took on a mortgage three years ago and are generally happy to continue living here, even after our taxes go up. When we moved here, there were no austerity measures in place and the euro was a great deal stronger, but the system here mostly works. First responders are responsive, the city is clean, there are very few homeless. While we live in a college town about the size of Cambridge (123,000) and a little larger than Santa Barbara (90,000), even Amsterdam basically works as well – more homeless, more crime, but we’re not talking San Francisco levels of either.

I want to suggest that my tax euros go towards making the place I live a place I want to live. (Yes, I also pay a very small portion of Geert Wilders’ salary. It’s another price one pays to live in a democracy.) I don’t have a hard time saying that I don’t necessarily want those at the next income level above me to take a tax hike so that I can get a break. I don’t know much about the capital gains, inheritance, or corporate tax laws here. I also can’t speak for my family and friends in the US (where the top tax rate is much lower than it is in Nederland). That said, I think most of them aren’t so interested in tax cuts of their own, but would like to see higher taxes on the very wealthy so that the infrastructure of the US might work again.

NPR suggests, in a blog entitled State of the Union: 5 Things To Watch, that President Obama will introduce a plan to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to provide a tax break to working families. I know that money is tight all over, especially now that the 85 richest people in the world have as much wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest, and I would’t begrudge any working family whatever break they can manage. I would, however, say that tax increases on the wealthy might benefit working families in more ways:

After school programs so that kids have something to do while whatever parentage they have in the home can work until quitting time without worrying about what junior is up to
And on the subject of schools: smaller class size and better supported teachers.
And on that topic: When did public school teachers, who do some of the hardest and most thankless work, become the bogeymen for all that is wrong in America?
Funding for public hospitals
training programs for the unemployed and underemployed
Fully staffed mental health facilities and VA hospitals

For a start.

When I moved to San Francisco in 1985, there were homeless, but they were mostly holdovers from the late 60s and people who followed expecting the city to resemble the parking lot at a Grateful Dead show. (A fine dream, but one that generally only existed at some music festivals.) That’s a bit disparaging, I know, but that was my experience of SF’s street population, such as it was when I was relatively young. The issues in San Francisco become much bigger with successive booms and busts and of course it’s happening again and on a larger scale with the most recent boom. With all the money that city has had for the last three decades, it’s never been able to address its own social issues, or think big enough to tackle them effectively. Higher taxes on business and the wealthy – if put to good use – might help. I use SF as an example I know (not that I know too many people who can still afford to live there – of 70 or so close friends who lived there when I left in 2002, I’m certain of four, two of whom managed to buy their own houses at auspicious times. Cities large and small across the US have impossible tasks of making the infrastructure work for the greatest numbers of people. I’m sure there’s more to say on the matter, but I think NPR’s bloggers, and possibly Obama as well, have it wrong if they think tax cuts are the only possible balance to tax increases on the wealthy. It’s not a zero sum game, either. Do those at the top really feel that a better functioning society isn’t to their benefit too?

ETA: I’ve now skimmed much of the SOTU address and was rather glad to see that Obama addressed these things as well. Of course with the Republicans in charge of both houses, we’re in for a rocky, suicide pill-laden two years, but I’m hopeful.

Tags President Obama, san francisco, State of the Union, taxes

Categories Economics, Journalism, Politics, United States, work

Wahhabism

January 16, 2015 //

My friend Craig, a journalist, world traveller, and scholar, made two interesting points in a recent FB post about Middle East terrorism. The first: While there is “no philosophical connection between Islam and terrorism…there is a very strong connection between Saudi Arabian Wahabist Islam and terrorism.”

Wikipedia offers that Wahhabism is a fundamentalist sect of Sunni Islam. Adherents consider the term Wahhabi derogatory and prefer Salafi. Its 18th century founder, Mohammad bin Abd Al-Wahhab allied himself with Muhammad bin Saud whose name might recall to you the current ruling house of Saudi Arabia. Today Al-Wahhab’s teachings are state-sponsored and the dominant form of Islam in Saudi Arabia.

Today Wahhabism is considered an ultra-conservative Saudi brand of Salafism whose adherents brand non-Wahhabi Muslims apostates. One of the main things to note, however is that while Wahhabis are only about 23% of the Saudi population, they control the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Craig’s second point: That Wahabist extremism and the rise of western Islamaphobia share a root cause: “the utter cowardice of Western powers when it comes to challenging Saudi’s policy of exporting religious extremism.”

As purchasers of Saudi oil, and sellers of Saudi-bought arms (a trade in which France has a disturbingly long history), we are complicit.

Of course this whole discussion is on Facebook and I’m not necessarily privileged to copy it here in full, but in the comments Craig answers a question put to him on the matter: Does religion trump economics? with a resounding Yes. “The codification of a culture’s most cherished values – whether expressed as a concept of God or as a doctrine of Human rights – does, and indeed must, trump economics…If we acknowledge economics as being the repository of our culture’s most important guiding principles, then we have already lost.”

Precisely. There are several directions one could go with this discussion including how our society’s wealth of all kinds is distributed, but this clash of religion and economics raises an interesting question: Is the current state of Saudi oil pricing an attempt to destabilise western economies? From my very non-expert point of view, this could be almost as, if not more, effective than our wars that destabilise Middle East regimes.

Mind you, one of the more seriously affected regimes is that of Mr. Putin in Russia. The governing elites derive most of their power from oil revenue and Putin very early on made the case that Russia would not be sharing the benefits and risks of its natural resources when it blocked attempts by to sell industries to the west. In December, The Independent asserted that this change in fortune might mean that Russia “may not be able to afford to wage her little wars.” (Falling oil price benefits consumers in the West but comes at a high cost to global stability, 20 December 2014) I fear this is not the case – Russia’s resources, ambitions, and economic instability make the country one of many fine starting points for the next big war.

Tags oil, saudi, wahhabi

Categories Economics, Politics, war

More Hebdo

January 14, 2015 //

Some friends are having a pretty vehement discussion over on Facebook about Charlie Hebdo, the Je Suis Charlie movement (if one can call it that), and the nature of privilege when it comes to old straight white males viciously lampooning minority populations.

None in these discussions felt that violence was justified, but a couple have pointed to what might be called the bullying of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. It’s more nuanced than taht, to be sure, but they acknowledge the power differential between, for example, the French muslim population and the white majority. The host of this discussion included this in her analysis of the situation:

Imagine you have a neighbour, living next door. Imagine that every morning, you leave for work at the same time. Your neighbour greets you, compliments you on your outfit, says something nice about the weather and wishes you a good day. Assuming that these sentiments are genuine, and that your neighbour is not simultaneously inflicting wild all-night parties or boundary disputes on you, then I would assume that you are living at peace with your neighbour.

But what if, every morning, you and your neighbour leave for work, and instead of compliments, your neighbour always finds something about you to laugh at. Maybe you choose not to wear makeup, or your job requires you to wear jeans rather than a suit, or your uniform is specified by your employer. Every morning, your neighbour points and laughs, because he or she fundamentally does not understand your situation, finds it threatening, and tries to rid you of your perceived power and difference by poking fun.

Are you living at peace with this neighbour?

So in light of this discussion, I asked my French muslim colleague, a young woman from northwestern France, “What do you make of the Charlie Hebdo situation?” to which she asked me to be more specific. “What do you think of the Je Suis Charlie response to the massacre of the Charlie Hebdo journalists?” Her reply was essentially one of support for Charlie Hebdo – “Listen, they attack everyone. No group escapes them – Catholics, Jews, liberals, conservatives.”
It may make a difference that she’s university educated, middle class, and liberal. I’m not sure.

Mehdi Hasan, a journalist for the Al Jazeera and the Huffington Post, on the other hand, shares
As a Muslim, I’m Fed Up With the Hypocrisy of the Free Speech Fundamentalists, in which he takes on the politicians, journalists, and celebrities embracing Je Suis Charlie. Money quote:

Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic. Also, as the former Charlie Hebdo journalist Olivier Cyran argued in 2013, an “Islamophobic neurosis gradually took over” the magazine after 9/11, which then effectively endorsed attacks on “members of a minority religion with no influence in the corridors of power”.

Good point, that. This discussion will continue, but I had a few points to add.

Categories Europe, religion, Social media, UK

Faith and Decorum

January 11, 2015 //

I was listening the other day to the 5 January podcast episode of The Young Turks, a left-wing political chat show. In this (pre-Charlie Hebdo massacre) episode, the hosts were discussing the reaction to a celebrity posting photos of herself taken in an Abu Dhabi mosque. Cenk Uyger and Ana Kasparian both came down pretty hard on the Islamic response to the photos Selena Gomez posted. Cenk reported that Muslims found her levity and the display of her lower leg in holy place disrespectful. Their feeling was that the Muslims were being too hard line about it and that they should lighten up. Ana agreed and went on to recount her own experience being turned away from the Sagrada Familia in Spain for not having her shoulders covered. She noted that the requirement seemed to be more about sending business to the scarf seller across the street than about respect. She continued that she’d rather not visit a place that required more clothing than she was willing to wear, but was disappointed because she was a fan of Gaudi, the designer of the church.

Fair enough, I suppose.

As noted previously, I’m an atheist. I also have beefs with most of the organised religions of the world as long as my arm. That said, I have also visited holy places in many countries. The big ones let you know outside the rules for entering. Some ask you to leave your shoes at the door, some ask you to cover your head. Others kindly request that you not take pictures. The decorum requested is not secret and is generally included in any tour guide for for the region you are visiting.

At 28, Kasparian is young, but old enough to respect the rules of another person’s house without denigrating the person, the rules, or the house. According to her Wikipedia entry, she holds a bachelor’s in journalism and an MA in political science. Surely somewhere in all that education something like this must have come up, atheist or not.

Those with political axes to grind on all sides point to the disrespect shown by members of the other side. During the Bush years, I recall a photo of Dick Cheney at a service commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz in a green parka, surrounded by folks in black. We had a field day with that, as (IIRC) it wasn’t long after the hunting incident in which he accidentally shot a buddy in the face. To wear what was basically hunting gear was seen as massively disrespectful. (I err: The hunting incident was in 2006, the other was in 2005.)

In a similar vein, we on the left had words for World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz when he, very respectfully, removed his shoes before entering a Turkish mosque and displayed the large holes in his socks. Interesting clothing for a man earning almost 400 grand US. At the time, I felt he also didn’t do his heritage any favours by so obviously living up to the caricature of a miserly Jewish banker.

How you dress and how you behave as a representative of your culture, your country, and yourself says a great deal. Gomez didn’t necessarily ask to be a role model, but having been in the public eye since she was 15, I think she has. It’s not much to ask, perhaps, that she show the same respect in a foreign house of worship that she would in her own. And that our journalists demand the same.

Categories Uncategorized