“Inglorious Basterds”

The Holocaust. Representations of  the Holocaust, what it’s possible to say about certain things. Jews as natural allies of native Americans and blacks, an ode to miscegenation.  Do people who prostitute art and especially cinema, deserve to live?  An exploding, orgasmic, revenge fantasy. References to dozens of other films. Some excellent jokes. Spoken in English, French, German and Italian. Beautifully shot and great art direction. Very violent and about the redemptive and necessary parts of violence. Against  proportional violence. if violence is necessary only too much is enough and then it’s barely enough.

Gelman and Good Dictatorships

Juan Gelman is a poet, is widely regarded as being a human rights campaigner and when he was younger he was an active participant in revolutionary Peronism. Regular readers of this increasingly neglected blog will know that I don’t have a high opinion of Gelman.

However, even I was surprised by the depths he stoops to in a piece published in Pagina/12 today. It’s an acceptance speech for some bauble awarded to him under the auspices of the Chinese government. Here are some choice quotes:

On the 13th of April last the Chinese government published a national action plan for human rights which guarantees the basic civil rights of the entire population including women, children, the disabled and ethnic minorities…

In the introduction to the action plan the government recognizes that “China has a long way to go with its efforts to improve human rights.” As it proceeds along this path the death penalty will undoubtedly be abolished, the independence of the judiciary will be strengthened, censorship of publishers and the media will be softened, political prisoners who have not committed acts against the security of the state will be released, those responsible for disappearances, especially those of children, will be caught and punished and other relaveant measures will also be adopted…

The USA and western powers support terrorist groups and separitists who are trying to break China up into weak feudal domains and satrapies, the better to dominate them. Tibet and Taiwan form part of China since time immemorial.

Can Gelman possibly believe that the Chinese government is going to abolish the death penalty? And note that he only hopes for a softening of censorship and thinks its fine to hold political prisoners if they have committed acts  against state security. Guess who will be deciding whether they have or not? Yup, the judiciary whose non-existent autonomy he’d like to see augmented.

As anybody who has read a tiny bit of history knows, some of the most infernal regimes have had constitutions bursting with good intentions and have claimed to be passionate defenders of human rights. The Soviet Union was one such and Cuba today is another. Rather than judge the government of China on its decades of repression, torture and mass murder, the sainted Gelman decides to judge it on yet another blast of hot air  from the regime.

So, if you’re Taiwanese and you’d like to continue to enjoy the benefits of living in a liberal democracy, well, screw you. The great panjandrum of the human rights movement in Argentina thinks you should forget about all that nonsense and rejoin the motherland, where you’ll do well to keep your opinions to yourself if you don’t want to end up in a “reeducation” camp.

And if you are a Tibetan or an Uighur who doesn’t regard yourself as part of the Chinese nation,  who doesn’t want your culture and people to be turned into theme park amusements for tourists  and would like to assert your national rights, you are in even worse luck. As  far as Gelman is concerned you can quite literally fuck off and die. All you are is tool of imperialism.

Gelman is a hypocrite and fraud who never saw an anti-American dictatorship – no matter how monstrous – he didn’t like. This article also gives us a fair insight into what Argentina would look like today if he and his comrades and triumphed in the struggles of their  youth.

Sapere Aude!

Por primera vez en la vida siento un poco de simpatía por algo escrito en La Barbarie. Alejandro  se atrevió a escribir un post que cuestiona algunos aspectos del received wisdom de la izquierda peronista sobre los setenta y una jauría de compañeros hinchados de pretensiones de superioridad moral  han descendidos sobre  el.  No se pierdan los comments de MEC acá, acá y acá también

Sarmiento: El Primer Socialista B-52

Sarmiento es un moderno: individualista, antitradicional, poco respetuoso de la compleja temporalidad cultural americana. En el Facundo escribe: “Rosas no plagia Europa” y en ello hace residir el núcleo de su diferencia: la idea de América debe incluirse en un movimiento universal, homogéneo, de civilización, cuyos costos sociales y morales pueden llegar a ser muy altos. Sarmiento no duda sobre la legitimidad de imponer esos costos: por el contrario: sugiere permanentemente que la construcción de una nueva cultura (política y civilización urbana conjugadas) tiene más de violencia que de práctica persuasiva.

Beatriz Sarlo.  Escritos Sobre Literatura Argentina p.19

Peronism: A Brief History

1.

When someone say’s “Oh, I´m C of E.”,   they aren’t really telling you anything about their religious views, if they have any. They might be evangelical, almost RC, or functionally agnostic. There’s no way of knowing without pursuing them further on the matter.

2.

The same goes for Peronism. At a formal level it’s a political party but beyond that it’s a sensibility, a pre-ideological field of cultural belonging, available for appropriation by Christian democrats, Nazis,  socialists and everyone else.

3.

Even gorilas are also Peronists in the sense that opposition to Peronism and all its works is their only political reference point.

4.

In the late 40s and early 50s Perón, who came to power in a coup led by pro-Axis officers, created a corporate state; Mussolini’s Italy with more social protection for the previously despised and excluded working class.

5.

The coup that overthrew him in 1955 led to 18 years of military role, limited experiments with democracy and the proscription and persecution of Peronism. The Peronist welfare state was left largely intact.

6.

With a view to loosening the grip of the military on power, Perón in exile encouraged the growth of revolutionary leftist Peronism. When he returned in 1973 he turned on the leftists and encouraged the Nazi element of the  movement to start slaughtering them. This process speeded up after he died and was systematized and extended by the military after the 1976 coup.

7.

Luder, the Peronist candidate in the first free election after the collapse of the dictatorship in 1983, ran on a “forgive and forget” platform and endorsed the outgoing dictatorship’s amnesty of itself.

8.

Menem was a hugely popular president. He privatized everything he could and destroyed both the Peronist welfare state and the political power of the armed forces.

9.

Néstor Kirchner skillfully accumulated power in difficult circumstances by combining support for the prosecution of the torturers and mass killers of the dictatorship (not something he had shown the slightest interest in before becoming president) with an economic boom produced by the export of raw materials and unprocessed agricultural products. The social benefits of the boom were very limited and arose solely from a modest trickledown effect.

10.

The government did badly in the mid-term elections and if there’s one thing Peronists of all stripes hate it’s a loser. The barons of the party are grumbling and cursing and a re-alignment of forces is taking place. Cristina would want to quickly brush up on her wheeling and dealing skills if she wants to see out her mandate.