On Demand
Artist as Activist
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy discusses the role of artists and intellectuals can play in bringing light to the crisis in Darfur. He participates alongside Mia Farrow in a panel tonight at panel tonight at the PEN World Voices Festival.
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Comments
Looking forward to hearing him on the show...
Good video clip here: http://blog.92y.org/index.php/item/video_bernard_henri_levy/
I am so happy to see a mention of the problems in Darfur finally on this show.
YAY!! BHL!!
I think you need to make it clear the difference between anti-Semitism and anti-unconditional Israeli policy support. Why can the people of Israel criticize their government, and even the US government but we can’t criticize theirs?
It amazes me in this country how white people are quickly able to dismiss racism but talk of anti-Semitism never tires.
Thank you for allowing Levy to speak the truth about this situation. Wonderful interview.
So great to hear a European arguing so passionately against genocide as a human phenomenon. He knows first hand, and hasn't emblazoned one or another in his mind and heart over all the others that continue amongst us all to this day. What are Americans arguing passionately for? or against? Because we know very little first hand!
Somehow his accent adds to the strength of what he is saying. "I made a dream! We have to break this logic of good victims and bad victims, good dead and bad dead"
I don’t hear any sympathy for
Palestinian victims.
In total agreement with post #4.
BTW Chad Harris. As long as that kind of speech is right on your lips, its going to be there in your heart and in your experience, that is as true for all the people living with 'anti-semitism' on their lips, too. That is all they're going to see, they are going to experience behind every tree and in every look from someone else's face, and it will keep their blood pressure up!
Its great to hear about Darfur and how China is fueling the crisis. Its disappointing that no one ever talks about WHY China fuels the crisis. China wants access to oil rich land on which thousands of villages with millions of villagers now sit. The genocide is less about ethnic differences and more about access to cheap resources. Its as ruthless as what Europeans did to Native Americans.
Taher - please listen more carefully before you condem- Palestinian victims were mentioned.
When innocent Palestinians are killed because they are used as human shields by Hamas, Fatha or Hizbollah and other terrorist groups - or because they are killed by an Israeli shell targeting such terrorist - it's a human tragedy and deserving of sympathy that will lead to positive action.
Chad # 4 and # 9 ---
such nonsense....
who said "we" can't criticize Israel?
when?
why can't anti-Semites whining about allegedly being silenced when they "criticize" Israel just admit the truth - anyone in the US or Israel can criticize Israel - but some anti-Semitism is clearly masked as criticism----
Thankfully, we know the difference....
so so agree with Aaron [11]
you are so right, the ethnic slurs and demonization comes second through speech and talk- after someone decides there's some material assets worth grabbing first!
Same is true with land, and territory like here and a lot of other places. The murder comes third, fourth, fifth...Those religions of the book had great narratives to use against other people throughout the Torah and Old Testament and Koran, and we did it, and still do it. I am so with you on this one.
Elena
I will say this. I know plenty of intelligent, smart, caring, internationally minded people, who, because they live in affluent suburbs, and their kids are in schools, and they work in businesses with other people educated like them, blacks, middle easterners, asians, including American or Canadian Jews, they will never ever breathe a word about the challenges we face as an ally of Israel. Just to let you know. You may say we live in a 'democracy', unfortunately the same one that created senator McCarthy. You can say it is masked 'anti-semitism' all you want. Just stay in that trope...
Elena yes, please listen to this, it may help: WNYC - The Brian Lehrer Show: Pushing Peace (March 20, 2008)
Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister under Ehud Barak, argues that negotiating with Hamas is the only way to secure a cease-fire in Gaza. ...
www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/episodes/2008/03/20/segments/95397
Labeled WNYC.org Only WNYC Shows.
Dear AFB,
You anectodal "evidence" fails on a number of levels.
Read any any mainstream media or academia(not leftie, Islamist or white supremacist) - you'll hear plenty of criticism of Israel.
And it's just as easy to say:
I know plenty of intelligent, smart, caring, internationally minded people, who, because they live in affluent suburbs, and their kids are in schools, and they work in businesses with other people educated like them, blacks, middle easterners, asians, including American or Canadian Muslims, they will never ever breathe a word about the challenges we face as an ally of Saudi Arabia and other Islamist tyrannies. Just to let you know. You may say we live in a 'democracy', unfortunately the same one that created senator McCarthy. You can say it is masked 'anti-Islamism' or "anti-Arabism' all you want. Just stay in that trope...
Elena,
I doubt you know ONE person who refrains from criticism of Saudi Arabia. We depend on them for oil but there is no penalty to be paid for decrying the Arab tyrannies. As for our leaders, they are restrained to some extent because we are dependent on Saudi oil and have been staunch allies of them due to said dependency.
Elena, You can make your point but not try to mirror someone else's where it does not apply. Your statement about citizens reluctant to criticize Arab governments is complete nonsense, with no basis in reality, and obviously just a knee-jerk reaction to AFB's comment.
Chris O - no need to attemot to censor me --
Mirror someone else to make a point is my right --- even if you don't like the point
Fortunately, we are not Saudi Arabia - or some other Arab/Islamist tyranny where voices - espeically women's, but all minorities, are muzzled...
with all the anti-Israel blather in your comments -- there zero hard evidence that anyone in America, let alone the rest of the world is being somehow stopped from criticizing Israel and arguing otherwise is complete nonsense.
I'm sorry for you that some people criticize untrue criticism of Israel - but that's the beauty of freedom of speech.
Chris O -
Sorry you don't like my point - lol - and you couldn't contain your own knee-jerk reaction.
Luckily, we're not the kind of tyrranical Islamist/Arab society where minorities - especially women - can't make any point -- even one's that you don't like.
The fact is whether you like it or not - that no one in America has been censored from criticizing any country - espcially Israel - even though whining about such phantom censorhsip makes good press and will put one in the good graces of all the oil/cash-soaked forces who use Israel as a scapegoat to deflect from their own tyrannies.
Criticizing Islam is much harder to do. Criticizing Christianity is much easier to do.
Try arguing that -- honestly.
Agree w Elena
The difference is that we are all paying taxes and contributing to something that we cannot utter a word about because of 'social' censorship, yes not yet official government censorship.
I hear people in public all the time railing about arabs, and chinese, and lots of other places without any compunction that there will somehow be a backlash in their job, their ability to raise money for their business, or their kids in schools. Sorry, I don't think my 'anecdotal' evidence falls down at all.
Bear in mind, in AZ they are working on legislation to ban "anti-american" talk and discourse in public schools and universities. Just what is anti-american speech? where does this begin and end? You are living in a 'liberation theology' dream world. Please continue there...
Dear AFB,
"we cannot utter a word about"
well you seem to babbling about it here - whatever it is ----
will you be whining next that you can't utter a word about how inferior blacks/white/hispanics/eskimos/gays are because of 'social' censorship?
what exactly is your point?
I thought the nazis were allowed to march in skokie? and it was jews and the aclu that defended them....
as far as I know - even NMABLA has a website and is not outlawed in America
so what is it that you have to say that is so controversial and who the hell is stopping you?
any comment about the Israeli situation, our involvement, and how the Israeli government is handling the whole process
Yeah, maybe racist organizations are allowed to have their websites,
but there is no discourse started among common citizens without getting rankles up, which I kind of detect are up in both You and Elena.
Does that answer your question?
It's wonderful to have heard writer/philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and his passion and compassion for all victims of China, and all victims of genocide and repression. He is correct in saying that compassion for one victim does not prevent compassion for another. Yet he then mentions Darfur,while somewhat down-playing the suffering that Tibetans have gone through under the China occupation.
In the 1950s the newly formed China under Mao undertook a great purge within he mainland against many its traditional peoples, such as, Buddhist monks, Taoist hermits, poets, painters, calligraphers, itinerant entertainers, and so forth. Tens of millions were killed.
Having brutally conquered the remote plateau region of Tibet in 1950, in 1959 China transferred the full force of its purge campaign there. Within the next ten years at least seven thousand monasteries were bombed and destroyed and over a million people, one out of seven, would die. This was the genocide of the gentle Buddhist country of Tibet.
The current president of China, Hu Jintao, was in charge of the brutal crackdown in 1988. Tibetans now live as a despised minority within their own land, while transplanted Chinese Han majority run and control its lucrative businesses. Were a Tibetan to mutter the national prayer of Tibet, the mantra of compassion, AUM MANI PADME HUM, he or she would be instantly imprisoned and tortured.
Indeed, is this not the summer of the Genocide Olympics?
Elena, It is funny that you accuse me of attempting to censor you when I say your point is complete nonsense. That is called criticism, not censorship. You also accuse me, of course, of "all the anti-Israel blather in your comments". I did not even mention Israel. I just thought you were crazy for saying that Americans are hesitant to criticize countries like Saudi Arabia. Are you serious? That just seems completely made up. Whereas the point about Israel - you can point to many examples like Carter and what he suffered for his book, and FInkelstein and Mearsheimer and Walt. Yes they are free to raise the issue but they paid a big price...
oh elena
I haven't heard many people talk about 'masked anti-Islamism' or 'masked anti-arabism'
It doesn't appear to be very masked to me at all. We can find it in CSPAN tapes from speeches made in the senate and congress.
Maybe someday American Arabs and Muslims will have enough clout and power in this country that that kind of racism too will have to be 'masked'. I also find in some circles 'anti-gay' or 'anti-black', or 'anti-white' discussion to be less than masked.
Anyway, keep trying Elena! It is your right, but cognitively you aren't there yet.
Chris O you're great!
Right back at you AFB. And I think we maybe agree that there is a lot of criticism of Israel in this country, it is certainly allowed but really at the fringes. No mainstream or powerful institutions will touch this issue with a million foot pole, unless of course to preach devotion and fealty to Israel.
And this is not just any country - if it was, I would leave them alone because my concern is with US gov't and policies. This is our closest ally in the world that gains the lion's share of our financial aid, and it is not a poor country. We basically pay for the occupation. Aid to Egypt is second but I consider that aid to Israel since it comes out of the Camp David peace deal and their aid is formulaically(?) tied to Israel's. (I am against aid to both of these repressive governments, Egypt for what it does to its own people, and Israel for what it does to its conquered ones.)
Mr Guberman
Interesting the remarks about Tibet and I have been very glad to hear remarks in the press representing the 'Chinese' side, including the feelings of the Chinese public. These remarks by the way, seemed begrudgingly given by our press only after diplomatic rankles went up and demanded equal airtime.
It seems to me that 'nation building' of any kind is a dirty dirty business, and one and all have to have a strong stomach for it for generations. Even the Nation Building invented in the Western world and undertaken by Isabella the Catholic in Spain is not totally complete today, since Basques and Catalans continue to this day to argue and get violent about the 'legitimacy of the Spanish state'. The same thing is true about the Scottish Protestants installed by Elizabeth Tudor in her national building project in the late 1500s which we know only recently resolved itself (hopefully longer than temporarily) because of the extreme nearly universal economic prosperity of the region now. The Yugoslavian national project fell apart in genocide. Greater Kurdistan and the Armenian holocaust are wacking at the edges at one of the last newly built nations on earth. East Timur in Indonesia. When is a nation built? And for how long for? In this day of video, film, photos, Internet and people movements, can we really expect to undertake these nation building movements which took place in near secrecy in the past, and still 500 years later aren't resolved?
Chris O
I agree. Mainstream and little stream. It is the little stream I am in the middle of and feel. So, regular folks who pay taxes and should be getting pissed off about their government's policies when they don't agree. But, on this one issue, there can be no discussion without getting all kinds of people mad. On the fringe you are right, there are all kinds of lunatic fringes who are free to do say because they have few stakes in the economic game. I wasn't even thinking about mainstream as in media, because I am frankly not a customer of theirs and I don't expect much from them with that system the way the FCC and Congress run it today!
This thread is closed.
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