In the Northeast it's been a hot summer, but apparently this winter is going to be a rough one as well so enjoy the sun while we have it. Fall will be here soon, and if the almanacs know anything then the next few months will start to get chilly.
Today's "This Day in History" will set the tone for this digest, so as always, happy Wednesday and happy reading!!
This Day in History
1953 – A CIA-backed coup overthrows the government of Iran and restores the power of the Shah. Seems somewhat pertinent to what's going on in that part of the world today, no? Now here we are 62 years later on the brink of something with Iran: war, diplomacy? I don't know what will happen next, but I did see an opinion recently that the best thing to come out of a potential Iran deal would be that the US and Iran would be forced to speak with each other. Moving forward, I think these kinds of international adventures might best be avoided. Picking foreign leaders isn't our forte.
Antisemitism in 2015
When talking about race we generally view the problems of racism within the American, black/white context. But of course racism is not just an American problem. It exists all over the world in many different forms. Today's first piece (below) is a reader rec from Andrew in Michigan, but first I need to share a book I just finished reading because it fits well with today's theme: Antisemitism by Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a brilliant political philosopher who studied totalitarianism, and her insights are still relevant today.
Arendt focused her studies on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, but sadly antisemitism has not disappeared. In "Antisemitism" Arendt focuses on the Western European evolution of religious judaism into social and political Jewishness. Viewing identity through these lenses provides an interesting contrast to today's antisemitism which, in France, is driven by Muslim immigrants (from Vanity Fair).
Despite being Jewish, Arendt at times almost seems anti-Semitic herself, and has been accused of such by a few of her critics. Her analyses peel away many layers of complex political phenomena, but ultimately her attempts to explain racism are tied to a specific time and place, and while there is so much we can learn from her conclusions, racism anywhere needs to be examined in context to be best understood. As the Vanity Fair article shows, antisemitism - although it has manifested many different ways over the century - is sadly still alive and well in 2015.
Ships in the Night
Over the last decade there has been a growing movement to put pressure on Israel to remove settlements from the West Bank. The Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement attempts to exert financial pressure on Israel by boycotting companies that work in the West Bank. So at the same time that French Jews are contemplating whether or not to leave France, Israeli Jews are dealing with their own set of problems related to the occupation of the West Bank.
Recently, Congress held hearings on the BDS movement without inviting any Palestinians (from the Hill). It's pretty alarming to imagine that our government is making judgements on complex issues without considering one side of the argument at all, but I suppose that's not a new phenomenon. It's also worth pointing out that this article covering the hearing is just as biased as the hearing itself; both are indicative of one of the biggest problems we face we it comes to race: talking about it. On the one hand we have hearings about a Palestinian-led movement that doesn't involve any Palestinians, and on the other we have an article bashing those hearings, but also without offering a competing perspective. Just two people talking past each other like very loud and angry ships in the night.
Viva la Revolucion!
Speaking of historically-maligned ethnic groups, can the Kurds catch a break? Since ISIS began its advance through Syria and into Iraq last year the Kurds have been the most effective ground force opposing them. Given that no other ground troops have been anywhere near as effective as the Kurdish military - the peshmerga - it begs the question why we're not supporting them even more, especially since ISIS recently began turning on the Kurds still living in ISIS controlled territory (from the Economist).
But as we can see from "This Day in History," America's track record of strategic thinking in the Middle East generally hasn't been too on point. Given that it is unlikely that the country of Syria as it looked on a 2010 map will ever exist again, it seems reasonable that we would be thinking about what or who will fill that political void if and when we dispose of ISIS. Because of their history, political and military unity and efficiency, and ongoing collaboration with American forces against ISIS the Kurds would be a great choice, perhaps the ideal choice (from the NYTimes).
Alas, this seems lost on our politicians, who apparently haven't learned from some of our previous misadventures. As far as I can tell there has been no serious thought about who will replace ISIS, and the best bet, the Kurds, now seem like a less likely choice given Turkey's recent entry into the fray (from European Council on Foreign Relation). It may not seem important now, but whoever fills the political void left after we (hopefully) annihilate ISIS will loom large in our foreign policy future. Ignoring the question now does not serve our future interests. I've been on the Kurdistan train for some time now (and have published a piece calling for the creation of a Kurdistan), but recent actions make this outcome seem less likely.
While We're on ISIS
If you were doing roll-call for the worst people on the planet, your list would have to start with ISIS, and Vladimir Putin couldn't be further down than like #3-4, but if you needed further proof of why ISIS is the runaway #1 most evil group of people on the planet (you didn't there's an over-abundance of evidence), here's an expose on how the group has legalized and institutionalized sexual slavery (from the NYTimes). The group attempts to justify this behavior since the women in question are not Muslim, and are therefore lacking immunity to some of the protections of Islamic law.
Reading this article the first thoughts that came to me were Kurtz's dying words from Conrad's Heart of Darkness: "The horror, the horror." In his death throes, Kurtz is reflecting upon his own treatment of Africans in the Congo, but his actions aren't too far away from what is being perpetrated by ISIS. Namely, when we first meet Kurtz the character, he is in a shack surrounded by decapitated heads on sticks, and has created a harem for himself by violently subjugating the men and taking advantage of the women. Seems like Kurtz was just a white, European incarnation of ISIS 120ish years before ISIS.
So Now What?
All of today's pieces, while focusing on the Middle East, hit on themes of power, race, religion, etc, and the overplay among these different identities. Whether we're talking about the historical evolution of antisemitism, the shortsightedness of American foreign policy, the brutality of ISIS, or the plight of the Kurds, we can see at least fragments of our own modern social issues in each paradigm. Just as Hannah Arendt's reflections on 200 years of European antisemitism are still pertinent, so too, unfortunately is Conrad's critique of King Leopold's Congo. As many things as have changed since the early 1800s when Arendt begins her examination of European Jewry, the themes of race, class, and power are still everywhere, and the power dynamics have not changed nearly as much as say...communications technology. A cellphone would be a wonder to a human being from the 1820s, but our modern political structures and how they oppress some in order to benefit others would seem quite normal indeed.
This leaves us - or at least me - asking how we can make fundamental changes to a world that has on the one hand made so much progress, and yet on the other hand is still dealing with the same types of violence and injustices as we have been for centuries, if not even longer.
I can't give a great answer to my own question: now what? What I can say is keep at it, because if we don't we are certain to fail. And what I mean by keep at it is to expose ourselves to the issues, even when they're scary, to engage with people who disagree with us, and through those endeavors to try to find the common humanity that inevitably exists among us whether we are 18th century French Jews, 19th century Congolese, 20th century Palestinian refugees, or 21st century Yazidi Kurds.
Zoey II
Those of you who have been getting the digest for long enough will remember a previous dog named Zoey, and since there is no relation between the two, it's not quite accurate to call this week's pup, Zoey #2, but I have to differentiate somehow, right?
Today's Zoey lives with her humans Liz and Jerome and their two awesome kids in Boston. As you can tell from her swag and her glare, Zoey is an NYC pup at heart, and isn't digging the Boston sports scene. She much prefers the G-Men and the fact that bars in NYC stay open way later than those in Boston, not because she's a fan of the bar scene, but just because it's hard to watch some of those west coast games from the couch, and Zoey is a huge sports fan. When she's not disgruntled about her city's pro sports teams, Zoey spends her time with her loving family including her new younger siblings whom she delights in drooling over (literally). Big thanks to Liz and Jerome for sharing Zoey!
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