anti-imperialism or orientalism?

[Sasha]

as an leftist i natuarly oppose all imperialism and its imperialist wars.
but (as the fellow regulars now) i always had an realy strong dislike of the knee-jerk reactions of some of the more hardcore (NB themselfs western/white) anti-imps when a western country critisesed an non western country on human rights isues.
although i reconise the double standarts and the hidden agenda of those western country's i dont think its a whole lot more dispicable than leftists rallying or apolegising for (sometimes even genocidal but almost always at least brutal and non-leftist) regimes.
when now recently i simultatisly had the pleasure of meeting here some maoist 3th worldthist, had an few heated discussion with knee-jerk anti-impies and started to read about orientalism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism) i started to wonder;

Is the atititude of some western anti-imperialist leftists not just an form of (reversed) orientalism?

(ie it sometimes seem that the mere fact that they are non western/non white excludes them from critism, and in their haste to defend people from "imperialism" soem leftist seem to take an extremly condensending attitude towards people from non western country's)

[BobKKKindle$]

but (as the fellow regulars now) i always had an realy strong dislike of the knee-jerk reactions of some of the more hardcore (NB themselfs western/white) anti-imps when a western country critisesed an non western country on human rights isues.It is true that Marxists often defend countries which are criticized for having poor human rights records by imperialist powers*. This is the right thing to do, in most cases. I think that whenever an imperialist country tries to spread lies about another country by claiming that its government is carrying out a genocide against its citizens, or a section of the population, or that the government's policies are solely responsible for starvation and underdevelopment, as is often claimed with regard to North Korea, then Marxists have a duty to confront those lies, and to clarify the situation. This has absolutely nothing to do with us having any kind of ideological affinity with those governments - as revolutionaries who stand for the self-emancipation of the working class and the abolition of capitalism throughout the world, we would welcome the overthrow of the theocracy in Iran in exactly the same way that we would welcome the destruction of the bourgeois state in the UK or any other imperialist country. The reason we find it necessary to fight the propaganda of the imperialists is that discourse does not exist in a vacuum.

By this I mean that when an imperialist government claims that another government is doing something horrendous to its population, they are not making that accusation because they actually care about what the people of the country in question are going through at the hands of their government - rather, it is to create an ideological justification for military intervention, so that the violent acquisition of markets and resources can be presented as a humanitarian gesture, intended to help those who cannot help themselves. In other words, it is to generate a political climate that causes people to believe that intervening is the right thing to do. By showing that the situation is actually more complex than imperialist governments generally convey, and explaining why intervention would actually make the situation worse, Marxists can create a basis for an anti-war movement, and rally opposition against imperialism. If we do not do this then it is easy for the imperialists to maintain their illusion of moral goodwill.

Let's consider Darfur as an example. There is now a popular movement calling for intervention in Darfur on the grounds that the state is carrying out an ethnic and religious genocide against the Sudan's Christian population by means of the Janjaweed militia. This movement commands the support of public figures such as George Clooney, among others. Despite the claims of this movement, a more rational analysis of the situation in the ground shows that there is actually not a genocide going on. This is also the UN's position, and to my knowledge the US is actually the only major country that claims there is a genocide taking place.

What is happening in Darfur is actually closer to a civil war, because there is ongoing fighting between the Janjaweed (who have a complex relationship with the government - they are not simply a proxy force) and militia groups, and many of the latter are actually Islamist in their orientation, or at least made up of recruits drawn from Muslim communities, despite the claim that the conflict can be reduced to a struggle between Muslims and Christians. A major underlying cause of the conflict is actually water shortages and the process of desertification in Darfur and other parts of the Sudan, as these ecological problems have led to different sections of the population turning against east other, and of course we also have to consider the role of the Chinese state in all of this, which, along with other developing states, sees the Sudan as a crucial source of oil and raw materials, which, given the growing tensions between China and the US, increases the strategic importance of the Sudan for the latter, and has the potential to create a proxy-war in sub-Saharan Africa whereby each superpower attempts to reduce the influence of the other and establish their own sphere of hegemony. We can see, based on this, that the situation in Darfur is very complex, far more complex than we have been led to believe, and because of this it is unlikely that intervention will be able to resolve the situation, and even if it is carried out with the best of motives, it is likely to actually make the situation worse, by allowing the government to present itself as a legitimate anti-imperialist force, thereby enhancing its credibility in the eyes of the population and surrounding states.

Now, how does this relate to the issue of whether we should defend non-imperialist states like the Sudan? The justification for intervention is built on a series of simplistic assumptions that make it seem as if intervention is common sense - namely, the big assumption that there is a genocide, and the only thing "we" need to do to stop it is to deploy peacekeepers, and maybe implement regime change, and all will be well and good. In order to defeat this argument and accumulate opposition to intervention, Marxists need to argue that there is no genocide, and show the complexity of the situation. This is especially true in the case of Darfur, because the common understanding of the conflict - that Muslims are ruthlessly persecuting Christians - is closely linked to the prevailing climate of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism in Europe. On the face of it, this might seem like trying to cover up the crimes of the Sudanese government - but there is no reason why this should be the case, as long as, in addition to disproving the genocide myth, we criticize the regime on anti-capitalist grounds, by pointing to the enrichment of the government elite at the expense of the working class and peasantry, and calling for anti-imperialist, socialist revolution, as part of a global revolution directed against capitalism.

In sum, I don't think we should be uncritical of states that are faced with the threat of intervention, like the Sudan. But we should criticize them on our own political grounds, from the perspective of the international and Sudanese working class, and seek to refute arguments that are being used to justify imperialist intervention. That's the Marxist position.

*Incidentally, I don't think it's a care of "western" and "non-western" powers. Japan has always been a key critic of North Korea's human rights policy and high levels of military expenditure, and could potentially be a major supporter of intervention in the future, in which case we would seek to refute Japan's excuses despite it being a "non-western" power.

[AvanteRedGarde]

Per usual, I agree with Bob.

We are not Chirstians or liberals chasing after wrong-doers; we are trying to take down a system. Our target should be capitalist-imperialism.

[Sasha]

But i dont see much difrence between george clooney ralying for dafur as the leftists ralying for iran or serbia. They both use the topic to fight an fight wich is difrent of or at least an simplification of the actual situation.
and sometimes (!) leftist have the same condesending atitude to the actual people living there, an knight in shining armor complex and "save the baby seals" attitude not much difrent than that of the goodworks liberals.

by the way; is capitalist-imperialism not just an consequence of the real problem? white male supramisicism...

[BobKKKindle$]

But i dont see much difrence between george clooney ralying for dafur as the leftists ralying for iran or serbia. They both use the topic to fight an fight wich is difrent of or at least an simplification of the actual situation.I don't know what you mean by leftists "rallying" for Iran or Serbia. All good leftists oppossed or oppose the invasion of these countries because we recognize that it would lead to pointless loss of life, and allow capitalism to sustain itself by creating new outlets for surplus capital and undermining revolutionary consciousness in all the countries concerned. This is fundamentally different from what Clooney et al. are doing because we are not calling on any country to intervene militarily, whereas they are. Again, I don't know what you're trying to get at, you need to explain it more thoroughly.


and sometimes (!) leftist have the same condesending atitude to the actual people living there, an knight in shining armor complex and "save the baby seals" attitude not much difrent than that of the goodworks liberals.Again, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think using analogies and metaphors conveys the point that you're trying to make very well.


by the way; is capitalist-imperialism not just an consequence of the real problem? white male supramisicism... No, that's quite clearly not the case, because there are several imperialist countries that are not populated by "white males" and therefore cannot be driven by the existence of that set of prejudices, most notably Japan and Israel. Imperialism is a stage in the development of capitalism that is characterized by the emergence of powerful monopoly corporations, the merger of finance and industrial capital to create firms that encompass multiple sectors of the economy (and cannot be allowed to fail by governments, as we've seen recently) and an increase in the importance of the export of capital relative to the export of commodities. All of these features result from capitalism's laws of motion, most importantly the tendency for the means of production to become more and more concentrated throughout the economy as time goes on, and they drive the states in which these features are present to the greatest extent to use military force to capture markets and resources, thereby providing an outlet for surplus capital. This gives rise to military confrontations, both between imperialist and non-imperialist states, and, once the world has been carved up between the rival imperialist powers, conflicts within the imperialist bloc itself, with devastating consequences, as demonstrated by WW1 and WW2. The ideology of white-supremacy, especially when it comes in the form of the "white man's burden", and "scientific racism", was created, both consciously and unconsciously, in order to justify the annexation of colonies so as to obscure the real motives and forces that drove and continue to drive imperial expansion. It was not, once again, the cause of imperialism.

[khad]

But i dont see much difrence between george clooney ralying for dafur as the leftists ralying for iran or serbia.
So you support the organ harvesting narco-thugs of the KLA and the Crypto-Ustasche nationalist movement of Croatia?

Come back when your head isn't so full of propaganda.

[Sasha]

thanks for your reply's, their intresting/valuable even when i dont agree iwth you.