Clifford D. May makes a few quick points about opposition to the US in Europe and the Middle East in: First and Second Thoughts on...
Excerpt:
MEMRI reports that the Arabic language satellite television station, al Arabiya, covered the 9/11 anniversary, by repeating the charge that the CIA or the Mossad was behind the attacks. Al Jazeera – generally regarded as an even more radical satellite TV station -- tackled the same theme with a debate between American scholar Jonathan Schanzer and Theirry Meyssan, French author of the book: “The Appalling Fraud,” which also claims that the US government carried out the 9/11 attacks. MEMRI reports that a poll conducted at the beginning of the show found that 74% of viewers believed Meyssan. By the end of the show, the number believing Meyssan's charge that the US had committed the atrocities of 9/11 had risen to 87%.
There appears to be something like a virtual consensus within the Arab Middle East that the 9/11 attack was perpetrated by the US in order to justify imperialist ambitions. In my own experience I'd say that a large part of the European population believes this as well. I think we have to take this seriously, but I'm not sure what it means. I don't see how one can carry on a rational dialogue with people amenable to this sort of distortion. What can you say? Whether we like it or not it makes a good deal of sense to simply regard them as enemies. But perhaps there are subclassifications of enemies? Jerrold Post makes the observation, in Political Paranoia that Hitler tapped into a lie that fit into the collective German psyche like a key in a lock. What we are confronted with in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent in Europe, are populations that are open to a certain kind of suggestion, leading to a group psychosis. One might call these populations "enemies in waiting," and the question is: "What sort of response is appropriate?" The mechanism that made Germans open to such an aggressive suggestion was a "status gap," between what they believed ought to be their due (as, for instance, the inventors of the modern university system) and their actual status after their defeat in WWI and the ravages of the hyperinflation and depression of the 1920s and 30s. The Middle East clearly has such a status gap now, which in turn provides an opportunity for exploitation of a group psychosis. Even the French have such a gap, which partly explains their "gambit."
So the question is, how do we deal with such "enemies in waiting?" It seems to me that they require a strategy at least as determined as, but far more sophisticated than, the one employed against active enemies like the Ba'ath or Al Qaeda. And even though engagement seems to fuel the paranoia, I submit that disengagement would allow it to grow like a cancer. I fear that if I attribute an effective strategy to the Bush Administration at this point I may be indulging in wishful thinking... and there's way too much of that already. I don't think Bush has such a strategy. It is something that the Democrats might be better at than the Republicans... but alas we have no mechanism in the US that would allow the establishment of a coalition or "unity" government. And even though I believe the Democrats more capable in this area I see little evidence of such expertise in their various platforms. They appear to be clueless, so far.
Posted by Demosophist at September 24, 2003 10:23 AM | TrackBack