Lucy Parsons :: Revolutionary Feminist

By Saswat Pattanayak

No legal case in American history has been more cited than The Scottsboro Trial. Nine young African American men, aged 13 and up, were jailed in Scottsboro, Alabama to await trial over an accusation that they had raped two white women on a train in the Spring of 1931.

The nature of racism in this instance was not the novelty – indeed, American society was witness to countless false charges brought against the black people. However, The Scottsboro Trial became a landmark via the manner in which racism for the first time was fiercely and openly challenged in the United States.

When the entire country was refusing to take side of Scottsboro Nine, it was the Communist Party which came to aid the young men. International Labor Defense – a coalition formed by the communists to defend Scottsboro Nine benefitted from the active involvement of a black woman on their national board – a pioneering champion of labor classes in America – Lucy Parsons (1853-1942).

Class, Race and Gender
Parsons’ commitments towards freedom of the young Black Communist Angelo Herndon in Georgia, Tom Mooney in California, and for the Scottsoboro Nine in Alabama were unflinching. Parsons recognized the class system in America as the prime factor in perpetuating racism. She was the foremost American feminist to declare that race, gender and sexuality are not oppressed identities by themselves. It is the economic class that determines the level of oppression people of minorities have to confront. Notwithstanding her social location of being a black and a woman, Parsons declared that a black person in America is exploited not because she/he is black. “It is because he is poor. It is because he is dependent. Because he is poorer as a class than his white wage-slave brother of the North.”

Lucy Parsons was a relentless defender of working class rights. To contain her popularity, the media portrayed her more as the wife of Albert Parsons – a Haymarket martyr, who was murdered by the state of Illinois, while demanding for eight-hour working day on November 11, 1887. While identifying her with Albert’s causes, history textbooks – both liberal and conservative – seldom mention Parsons as the radical torchbearer of American communist movement.

Communistic Commitments
Parsons’ commitment to the cause of international communism often embarrassed the United States administration. FBI confiscated her library comprising over 1,500 books and progressive works soon after her accidental death – thus preventing the country of having access to her radicalism. But those that witnessed Parsons‘ oratory and benefitted from her skills of organizing labor knew of Parsons‘ disdain towards anarchism which she felt was not capable of leading the masses onto revolutions.

Following Bolshevik Revolution in Soviet Union, IWW would witness several of its main organizers joining the Communist Party. Parsons, along with Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Flynn were among the pioneering American communists. Parsons not only had officially joined the Communist Party of the United States, she was also vocally opposed to distractions within revolutionary movements.

Parsons condemned celebrated anarchist Emma Goldman for “addressing large middle-class audiences”. Whereas Lucy Parsons‘ feminism considered women’s oppression as a function of capitalism, Emma Goldman was clearly not in favor of a vanguard party taking up feminist causes. Parsons in her dedication towards working class liberation movements never lost sight of her goal, never compromised on her principled stands on the side of the working poor, and never aspired for mere social acceptance or glory.

Voice of Dissent
Parsons was among the first women to join the founding convention of IWW. She thundered: “We, the women of this country, have no ballot even if we wished to use it. But we have our labor. Wherever wages are to be reduced, the capitalist class uses women to reduce them.”

In The Agitator, dated November 1, 1912 she referred to Haymarket martyrs thus: “Our comrades were not murdered by the state because they had any connection with the bombthrowing, but because they were active in organizing the wage-slaves. The capitalist class didn’t want to find the bombthrower; this class foolishly believed that by putting to death the active spirits of the labor movement of the time, it could frighten the working class back to slavery.”

She had no illusions about capitalistic world order. Parsons called for armed overthrow of the American ruling class. She refused to buy into an argument that the origin of racist violence was in racism. Instead, Parsons viewed racism as a necessary byproduct of capitalism. In 1886, she called for armed resistance to the working class: “You are not absolutely defenseless. For the torch of the incendiary, which has been known with impunity, cannot be wrested from you!”

For Parsons, her personal losses meant nothing; her oppression as a woman meant less. She was dedicated to usher in changes for the entire humanity – changes that would alter the world order in favor of the working poor class.

Even as a founding member of IWW, she was not willing to let the world’s largest labor union function in a romanticized manner. She radicalized the IWW by demanding that women, Mexican migrant workers and even the unemployed become full and equal members.

With her clarity of vision, lifelong devotion towards communist causes, her strict adherence to radical demands for a societal replacement of class structure, Lucy Parsons remains the most shining example of an American woman who turned her disadvantaged social locations of race and gender, to one of formidable strength – raising herself to bring about emancipated working class consciousness.

Remembering Howard Zinn (August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010)

(For publication in Radical Notes)

By Saswat Pattanayak

“To be neutral is to collaborate with whatever is going on, and I as a teacher do not want to be a collaborator with whatever is happening in the world today.” (Howard Zinn)

In the grossly unequal world that we inhabit, it is always tempting to remain apolitical, especially if one is an academician materially benefiting from the status quo system of education. It is only logical to separate classroom instructions from political activisms, since teachers are desired by the system to enhance employability of students within the social framework, not to agitate their conscience to challenge the social order. In a world of established, codified and professional knowledge, it is required on part of historians to promulgate official narrations of national heroes and victorious wars; not overthrow ruling class histories to replace them with versions of the oppressed subjects.

Howard Zinn’s aspirations to become a teacher were also founded with similar convictions. But unlike most people in his times, he was fundamentally a radical thinker. When he heard Woody Guthrie’s song on Ludlow Massacre, he wondered why he never read about it in history books. He questioned the omission of labor struggles in historical manuscripts. When for the first time he joined a mass demonstration at the age of 17 to strengthen the Communist Party of the United States of America on Times Square, he questioned the claimed neutrality of barbaric police and brutal government orders. Unlike most people of our times, he decided he must choose a side, and he chose his side early on. A side of the toiling masses, and mine workers, of protesting students and peaceniks, of marginalized sections and conscientious objectors. A side, which he never left, not even in his death. For the world of the oppressed, Zinn shall always remain alive as the working class professor who dedicated his life in challenging the system of education by getting the world to enter the university and letting the university enter into the world.

Howard Zinn's first participation at a political rally - 1939 in Times Square

University was not to be merely wasted in academic pursuits. As a white professor in Atlanta-based predominantly black Spelman College, Zinn organized students around issues of desegregation and racial justice in manners which led FBI to enlist him. Bringing to national attention the remarkable acts of resistance orchestrated by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he redefined nonviolence: “Non-violence does not mean acceptance, it means resistance. Not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive; it involves strikes, boycotts, non cooperation, mass demonstration, and sabotage.” Zinn’s involvement in black liberation struggles cost him his job, led to his arrest and raised questions on his acceptance as a historian. His Vietnam coverage as a journalist to uncover the Operation County Fair – the systematic killings of Vietnamese men and torture of women and children – added to his disrepute for the administrations. For the free American society, he had unbridled rage: “We grow up in a controlled society. When one person kills another person, that is murder. When a government kills a hundred thousand persons, is that patriotism?”

Subjective Historian

When he finally authored A People’s History of the United States, it was boycotted by American Historical Review – the foremost American academic history journal. Zinn was accused of taking sides of the indigenous, in his authoritative and foremost assessment of Columbus as an anti-hero. He silenced the objectivists: “There is no such thing as impartial history. The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lie. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of important of course depends on one’s values.” One’s values often metamorphose with changing times. But Howard Zinn’s never did. He remained a radical throughout, his capacity for moral outrage remaining unparalleled.

He wrote, for instance, “There is no objective way to deal with the Ludlow Massacre. There is the subjective (biased, opinionated) decision to omit it from history, based on a value system which doesn’t consider it important enough. That value system may include a fundamental belief in the beneficence of the American industrial system. Or it may just involve a complacency about class struggle and the intrusion of government on the side of corporations. In any case, it is a certain set of values which dictates the ignoring of that event. It is also a subjective decision to tell the story of the Ludlow Massacre in some detail. My decision was based on my belief that it is important for people to know the extent of class conflict in our history, to know something about how hard working people had to struggle to change their conditions, and to understand the role of the government and the mainstream press in the class struggles of our past.”

Discovery of Columbus

If the world was certain about one American knowledge, it was the discovery of the continent. Columbus had discovered America, until Howard Zinn discovered Columbus through the latter’s diaries. Zinn contended that a people cannot be discovered by their class enemies. They can only be brutally murdered, captured and subjugated. With thoroughly fundamental researches, Zinn proceeded to conclude on Columbus and the foundation of America which was hitherto unknown. “What did Columbus want? In the first two weeks of journal entries, there is one word that recurs seventy-five times: GOLD,” the historian revealed. Zinn’s infusion of people’s history in America inspired similar Marxist interpretations of indigenous histories throughout the globe. In popularizing the possibility of telling history from the lens of the oppressed, Zinn virtually legitimized the subject as a progressive weapon.

Pacifism as a Necessity

Zinn did not oppose wars because doing so was in fashion. In fact, his kind of opposition has never been in fashion. He has been a steadfast pacifist who saw no merit in wars. There was no such thing as a good war in our times, he would conclude after using chemical weapons during the Second World War as a fighter pilot. His was an imagination that has not been fully expanded so far, but its merits are experienced daily as the American power continues its “just wars” on the “axis of evil”. Suffice it to say, if history is a great lesson, Zinn’s pacifist stances are certainly among the greatest ones.

Zinn wrote in his Just and Unjust Wars: “What war does, even if it starts with an injustice, is multiply the injustice. If it starts on the basis of violence, it multiplies the violence. If it starts on the basis of defending yourself against brutality, then you end up becoming a brute.”

Disobedience to Law

Ruling class always uses ‘national security’ as the potent excuse to suppress mass rebellion. Zinn instigated students and young people to question such tactics, especially during the times of wars. In his essay, Second Thoughts on the First Amendment, Zinn wrote: “The First Amendment has always been shoved aside in times of war or near war. 1798 was near war, 1917 was war. In 1940 when the Smith Act was passed the country was near war. In those trials against the Communist and Socialist Workers Party the courtroom was full with stuff the prosecution had brought in. What had they brought in? Guns, bombs, dynamite fuses? No, they brought in the works of Marx, Lenin, Engels, Stalin. That’s like a bomb. So people went to jail. For national security.”

Throughout his academic and journalistic career, Zinn maintained that progress of the society depended not on the premise of abiding the law of the land, or to uphold “national security”, but through demonstration of mass disobedience towards unjust laws. He would enlighten students and readers on how Supreme Court never changed the course of American freedom path. No well-meaning jury ever changed any law for the better. People on the streets have always forced the judiciary system to reform itself. Even to the last days, he wrote how President Obama was incapable of bringing fundamental changes, unless mass participations against his power status quo forces him to radically different directions. Zinn’s capacity to comprehend potentials within the masses as opposed to within the leaders is what distinguished him from many progressive thinkers.

Progressive Storyteller

One remarkable aspect of Howard Zinn was his lack of professionalism. Zinn, despite belonging to the world of academics, was an anti-academician. He never waited for academic peer reviews or approvals by purist committees. He was not a historian with any astute sense of proportion or dignified scholastic languages. He was never one to claim for fame or stick to major publications glorifying inaccessible texts. About his greatest work, A People’s History, he once said, “I wanted to tell the story of the nation’s industrial progress from the standpoint not of Rockefeller and Carnegie and Vanderbilt, but of the people who worked in their mines, their oil fields, who lost their limbs or their lives building the railroads. I wanted to tell the story of wars, not from the standpoint of generals and presidents, not from the standpoints of those military heroes whose statues you see all over this country, but through the eyes of the G.I.’s, or through the eyes of “the enemy.” Yes, why not look at the Mexican War, that great military triumph of the United States, from the viewpoint of the Mexicans?”

If Zinn wrote, he did so in order to reach out to the masses that had no inkling of theoretical underpinnings or paradoxical paradigms. Zinn wrote in order to tell the lesser told stories. He wrote biographies of unknown strugglers of the past. He made accessible the speeches of the striking miners. He edited books that were entirely collections of radical writings. As though an enthusiast, a sucker for historical trivia, Zinn became the greatest medium for radical messages for people of all ages and walks of life.

Reclaiming Marx

Zinn was never afraid of being labeled a Marxist in the world of hypocritical academia, but he wondered if Marx would have been pleased with such an epithet reserved for a genuine activist. Many of his contemporaries immensely borrowed from the works of Marx and Lenin, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge. Zinn brought Marx alive within historical realm, not just through the framework with which he studied history, but also by penning down Marx in Soho. Not just was it a satirical take on the current pseudo-Marxists, it was also a grave reminder on how Marx was possibly the most relevant text in contemporary times.

Class analysis formed the core of every historical research Zinn conducted. He had an impeccable ability to discern illusions. Zinn vehemently opposed the capitalistic propaganda around freedom of speech as a moral injunction to gain respectability in contemporary world order. He turned the question on its head for American freedom: “Freedom of speech is not just a quality. It’s a quantity. It’s not a matter of do you have free speech, like in America we have free speech. Just like, in America we have money. How much do you have? How much freedom of speech do you have? Do you have as much freedom of speech as Exxon?”

Critical questions alone have guided the world to progressive historical interpretations. Employing radical perspectives, Howard Zinn has not only left behind issues that have legacies of progressivism, but also equally powerful tools for future reinventions of the current world. “We the people” are stricken by the grief of his passage, but enriched by his enduring imaginings.

Militarist Obama and Corporate Nobel: Peaceful Partnership

By Saswat Pattanayak
(Written for publication in Radical Notes and VoxUnion)

There simply need not be any elements of surprise or shock at Barack Obama receiving Nobel Peace Prize. Almost every year, this award has been granted to neoliberal policy brokers otherwise known as liberals, social democrats, or simply the firm believers in Eurocentric democratic ethos that can be ruthlessly applied on lesser countries via doublespeaks. Obama joins Ahtisaari, Gore, Dae-jung, Trimble, Belo, Walesa, Robles, Esquivel, Begin, Sakharov, Sato, Cassin, Kissinger, Wilson, etc., as the latest torchbearer of the most overrated award in the human history.

Liberal media are attributing his win to moments in anticipation, while conservatives are yet to get over the shock. However, Obama is absolutely worthy of winning the prize and he must be congratulated for the same as a regular recipient of this insipid achievement. Even a cursory look at past few winners should indicate that Obama’s prize perfectly fits.

Last year’s winner, Martti Ahtisaari was almost a NATO agent who worked tirelessly as an anti-communist and aspired to end Finland’s neutrality through his fetishized versions of a corporate Finland as a prosperous Finland.

The year before, Al Gore – a dubious champion of environmental hanky-panky that has no pragmatic basis but plenty of populist boasts with an ability to marry corporate america with Zionist media lobby received the award. Gore’s multi-billion dollar campaigners have been chiefly free market champions who “reformed” Soviet Union and infamous money launderers such as Howard Glicken, Nate Landow and terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

When Kim Dae-jung won the award, he was known as a firmly indoctrinated champion of capitalism, and a tireless communicator in the process of introducing “democracy” in North Korea, the kind of diplomatic talks which can bring down socialistic systems rather smoothly.

David Trimble, a Protestant leader from Ireland hell bent to punish Sinn Fein, the left-wing political wing of the IRA has also been an obvious choice. Comparable to him was a previous winner Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, a Roman Catholic bishop appointed to rid East Timor of the last of its radical strands. As though Portuguese occupation was not enough, an illegal encroachment of the country via NATO-backed Indonesia was to be done to eliminate the communists. After its successful atrocities, Belo and Jose Ramos-Horta have become the human face to the “peaceful” interventions in the lives of indigenous peoples through religious pacifications. The peoples can no more demand for reparations in a religious colony.

Lech Walesa, a pronounced reactionary leader in Poland organizing trade unions against the communists, received Nobel merely for such attempts. Alfonso García Robles collaborated with the nuclear powers in order to promote a non-nuclear zone for Latin America without demanding nuclear dismantling of the West. Nobel Peace Prize has traditionally been conferred upon non-agitating peaceniks who like much of social democrats, do not wish to alter the equation of the privileged while ensuring limitations for the oppressed. Dangerous tools are safe in the hands of the mafia, and very dangerous in the hands of the commoners. Nobel prize committees have year after year acknowledged this colonial notion.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, another product of Christian missionary position of effecting changes without revolutions- changes as feeble as conversion to a dogmatic religion, was an illustrious winner. Even as vocally opposed to wars and policies led down by the kinds of Bush, the Nobel Peace winners are not the ones who even address the root causes of wars – class conflicts – and have acutely selective memories when it comes to linking the Church with perpetuation of bourgeois wars.

Menachem Begin, a zionist militarist who launched massive attacks against Iraq and Lebanon even before anyone witnessed Gulf Wars was another perfect winner. One of the biggest war maniacs in recent history, he was the architect of Begin Doctrine, way more vicious than any unofficial Bush doctrines the peaceniks have resented.

Andrei Sakharov, an exaggerated dissident who in the peak of cold war was perhaps so oblivious of American expansions that he created a stir through his advocacy in support of the imperialistic intentions; and immediately was conferred Nobel Peace Prize.

Yet another winner was Eisaku Sato, a reactionary conservative collaborator of Japanese-American interests, the principal opponent to Communist China’s recognition as a UN member, and a prime donor to Taiwanese causes. Here was another classic example of a liberal crony of the routine violators of international sovereign policies.

In previous years, René Cassin, chief legal advisor to Charles de Gaulle has won this coveted award, as has George Marshall. Marshall, the post-war propagandist was instrumental in implanting market economies in communist Europe through bribing, investing and coercing.

Albert Schweitzer’s racist stances on African peoples were well known when he won the Nobel Peace for his White Man’s burdens. So was Woodrow Wilson, a racist, segregationist president whose life was marked by pursuance of the American doctrine of imperialism and global hegemony.

Lesser said the better it is about Henry Kissinger, his pronounced hatred for Third World solidarity movements and his war-mongering. If Cold War achieved demise of Communistic alliances globally, it was done through the only weapons the capitalists know of: money, diplomacy and religion. The role of Nobel Peace Committee in converting the interventionists to heroes and legitimizing their methods of covert propaganda operations is unparalleled.

If Dalai Lama through soothing words of peace and spirituality attempted to undermine a peoples’ republic and won the awards through relegating Tibet into ancient conservative times, then it should not surprise anyone why F.W. de Klerk also won on behalf of South Africa. “Non-violence” in our times of global capitalism translates to unconditional surrender on part of the agitating masses to a reformed society. The reforms must take place within the overarching designs of the former colonial masters. Aung San Suu Kyi is another instance of a revolutionary whose limits have been set by Washington DC.

Since the inception of Nobel Peace Prize, an overwhelming majority of the awards have gone to pronounced anti-communists, masquerading as “reformers”. Mikhail Gorbachev is the brightest instance. Second largest category is the Christian religious saints, bishops and preachers. Goes without saying, their roles have been exemplarily complimenting the “pacifist” reformers. Wherever there was communistic presence, the Christian values needed to be imported there to sabotage peoples’ movements. West Bengal in India is a case in point, where Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had to deserve Nobel Peace Prize through its covert operations of religious conversion, selective care and influence upon CIA-backed dictators in Africa. Communists are bound to agitate the hungry against their class exploiters, but the Saints pacify the hungry through capitalistic charity funds. Who wins the Nobel Peace is anyone’s guess.

Around the time when revolutionary spirits in Latin America was sky-high and Che’s dreams of unifying the region was slowly gaining grounds, Nobel Committee chose Oscar Arias Sánchez who through smooth means, implemented neoliberal economic policies in Costa Rica.

The last category of Nobel Peace Prize winners have great affinity with Zionist causes. The brightest scholar here is Elie Wiesel – the man with the irresponsible claims on the “uniqueness of Holocaust” and one infamous for downplaying or flatly refusing to acknowledge that other genocides caused by the Nazis have any comparable significance. Speaking of Israelis, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were certainly not the exceptions.

Deconstruction of “Peace” in Nobel Prize and Lenin Prize:

With so many hardcore militarists (Wilson, Kissinger, Begin, Sato, etc.,) winning Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention scores of illustrious supporters of the aggressive Euro-American bloc during Cold War, how exactly is “Peace” defined by the wise committee?

Nobel jurists further the Eurocentric views of the world and they should not be blamed for it. After all, the people of color, the oppressed people in majority of the world did not have the financial means to combat the advertorial impacts of the aura surrounding this prize. For instance, Lenin Peace Prizes have been awarded to freedom fighters against colonial masters in many African and Asian countries, but the relevance of that great award has never been highlighted as part of collective historical knowledge.
Lenin Peace Prize, that truly revolutionary recognition of the people who strived to bring peace among nations has been relegated to obscurity through sheer exhibitionism on part of the European capitalists disguising themselves under the banner of Nobel. The sheer magnitude of diversity among the winners of Lenin Peace Prize, their roles in dismantling of colonial powers, and their relentless struggles on the sides of the oppressed are testimony to the true acknowledgment of what constitutes peace.

There is a rejoice among people of color upon the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Barack Obama. That is just and proper. But what escapes media attention is the fact that Nobel Prizes have been racist awards ever since their inceptions. Not a single black person has won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Physics or Medicine. Out of a total of 789 Nobel Prizes conferred thus far, only 11 have been awarded to black people. Out of these 11, one was an economist, three were laureates, and as many as 8 were pacifists!
How does it so happen that whereas black accomplishments are overlooked in every field of life by the colonial powers, they happen to be so useful when it comes to recognizing their peaceful conducts? How is it that the oppressed are awarded not for their agitations, but for their accommodations?

Quite naturally so. Nobel Prizes have been Eurocentric mechanisms to brand those people as the greatest human beings on the planet, that dutifully submit to the whims of colonial and imperial powers. Those people who have put their acts together to intervene in revolutionary situations with their negotiating skills to prevent escalation of class wars. These are the people who have pronounced that the exploiters and the exploited can and must live together in harmony with the class divisions remaining intact. Nobel Prizes are granted to those chosen few among the minorities that have a greater impact over the masses compared to their revolutionary counterparts.

There should not be any surprises. Nobel Prizes are offered by the Royalists, the status quo upholders, the deniers of class society. Their construction of “peace” is determined through their worldview, which comprises the refusal for a replacement of unjust world order, and strong resentment at revolutionary forces. Barack Obama’s win is the most natural continuation of Nobel Peace Prize tradition. Peace in Nobel Prize tradition is capitalistic utopia. In the realist world, peace can prevail only through equitable redistribution of privileges. Capitalism simply cannot accept that. Hence, peace itself has to be redefined.
Contrasted to that, majority of Lenin Peace Prizes were granted to people of color, and a huge majority of them were agitators. These were true proponents of peace for the peoples in the world. Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana), Angela Davis (USA), Samora Machel (Mozambique), Agostinho Neto (Angola), Paul Robeson (USA), Ahmed Sékou Touré (Guinea), Julius Nyerere (Tanzania), W. E. B. Du Bois (USA) were some of the leading freedom fighters against colonialism. Lenin Peace Prizes were also awarded to Pablo Picasso (Spain), Brazil’s Jorge Amado, Saifuddin Kitchlew (India), Pablo Neruda (Chile), Bertolt Brecht (East Germany), Thakin Kodaw Hmaing of Burma, Nicolás Guillén of Cuba, Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico, Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Modibo Keïta of Mali, Aruna Asaf Ali (India), Kamal Jumblatt of Lebanon, Salvador Allende of Chile, Lê Duẩn of Vietnam, Miguel Otero Silva of Venezuela, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Mikis Theodorakis of Greece, and Abdul Sattar Edhi of Pakistan, among many other undisputed champions of human liberty. When Nelson Mandela was awarded Lenin Peace Prize in 1990, his legacy was not insulted by getting him to share the stage with F.W. de Clark.

In the world revolutionary histories, there are heroes, and there are sycophants. There are radical activists who march on without awaiting an award, and there are naive moderates that fall into grander schemes of manipulated dictums. In its truest sense, Nobel Peace Prize has never been awarded to peace activists barring on a couple of occasions. One worthy winner was Linus Pauling of the United States. The second one was Le Duc Tho of Vietnam. Like another radical Jean-Paul Sartre, Le Duc Tho too, had refused to accept Nobel Prize. Sartre refused to bring glory to racist France, and Le Duc refused to accept the prize at the same terms as Kissinger and to share the stage with him.

Nobel Peace Prize, in reality is an apologist for, and celebration of continued Eurocentric imperialism. Obama is the latest one to have been “humbled”. Amidst his militarist interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, through his announcements for larger US troops for invasions and bigger budget to feed the military-industrial complex, the Nobel committees have yet again perpetuated a reactionary definition of peace. In their world of successes and achievements, they have merely crowned their King.

David Letterman: Privileges produce Consensus

By Saswat Pattanayak

(Written for publication in Women’s Rights NY)

Contrary to mainstream media depictions, David Letterman did not have any affairs with his staff members. And contrary to liberal media apprehensions, the world does not need to be bothered about whether the incidents took place before or after his marriage. Letterman’s apologies to his wife on air are ridiculously unnecessary, and his failure to step down from his job after admission of guilt is soaked in implicit privileges.

What Letterman has done is sheer abuse of his economic power and gender privilege. His unabashed claim that any disclosure of the details would embarrass his women employees he had sex with, evidences blatant sexism. Its a great irony of our times that women continue to not only put up with sexual advances at workplaces, but also are expected to maintain silence in fear of their career prospects. And here is a liberal intellectual who advances this regressive theory in an effort to “protect” his victims.

If Letterman feels his acts with the female employees are not unethical, the same must hold true for the women too. Hence, he needs to announce the names of the staffers, and the judiciary system must ensure that nothing harms the women simply because they had a relationship with Letterman. If Letterman’s job is not being taken away despite his being the perpetrator, there is no reason why the women’s will be.

If, however, Letterman feels he has violated ethics and possibly laws, by acting unworthy of his stature by means of either sexually exploiting the employees or by indulging in “consensual” sex with employees with full knowledge of their otherwise social commitments, then Letterman should have already resigned long time back, and having failed to do so, he must set an example now.

However, as it turns out, the world came to know about Letterman’s abuse of power only following the blackmailing tactics, indicating Letterman had something to hide, and this something was clearly unethical.

Letterman’s statement is wrong at so many levels: “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. Now, my response to that is, yes I have. I have had sex with women who work on this show. And would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Perhaps it would, perhaps it would. Especially for the women. But that’s a decision for them to make–if they want to come public and talk about the relationships, if I want to go public and talk about the relationships.”

First, Letterman’s dismissal of the employees as just “women” without names who “work for” him on the show clearly smacks of disrespect. Secondly, to assume that the onus must lie with the women to protect their character from being tarnished is the age-old excuse under which men have sexually exploited women all along. Letterman’s reasonings might be proper considering his tradition of making disparaging remarks about women (Sarah Palin and her daughter were verbally humiliated by Letterman solely based on their gender), but they are no grounds for escaping critical scrutiny. Thirdly, the race and gender blindness of powerful men have always assumed that it is entirely possible for the women victims to become public and talk about their relationships with the perpetrators, and that, in doing so, they just might be believed. Letterman assumes he and his victims are on the equal level, without taking into consideration the disparate social locations they belong to, the unequal power relationships they share, the economic class barriers among them and the gender equations prevailing in today’s sexist world.

Whether Letterman invites legal troubles or not is unimportant. At the crux of the issue are his responses and responsibilities as a media personality who has been accorded viewership. An abuse of power coupled with racial privileges cost Don Imus his job. Letterman’s is an instance of abuse of power coupled with gender privileges. Sexual harassment at workplaces are so rampant and complex in their stratifications that it is implicitly required for the employers and employees not to engage in sexual relationships. This is necessary not because it may or may not cost the employer a reputation or the lack of it, but because, more often than not, the women employees will be victimized to suffer as silent subjects without alternative recourses. The women employees usually have lesser choices to explore avenues when they are confronted with hostile or demanding employer. Not only as being men, but also as being economically superior, the male employers need to enforce codes of conduct where the assumed disadvantages of female employees are not violated by anyone at the office, least of all, by the bosses themselves.

Letterman has violated the workplace ethics by involving in sexual relationships – not just with one woman, but with several, while being an employer. He has also displayed disgusting attitudes towards women in understanding their limits and potential. And his making references to his “affairs” in jocular fashion only adds to his already established sexist image.

When legality follows, Letterman may face charges, or like another privileged creative professional brought to recent limelight, Polanski, may gather enough media support for his case so as to have himself pictured as the victim. But for now, American media do not need Letterman’s jokes and judgments, considering his sense of “creepy” is beyond reproach, and judge he must never again. Privileges produce consensus. Letterman is the brightest instance who abused his privileges.

Roman Polanski and Euro-American Privileges

By Saswat Pattanayak

It’s a deceitful media circulation which suggests that the American judiciary is going after Roman Polanski. The truth is it never has. Polanski is a filthy criminal who had raped a child and yet was allowed to let go by the American justice system for over three decades. And this time, he is merely a bone which Switzerland threw at the United States over its UBS catastrophe. As for Polanski, who has visited Zurich several times and never been arrested before, its going to be few wordplays around extradition treaties that will ensure his freedom while, corporate media, hollywood biggies, and opportunist feminists rally in his support.

Roman Polanski is not merely mentally sick, physically brutal, and powerfully abusive, but he is also a rapist of a minor without a sense of repentance. Had he any iota of regrets, he would have surrendered to the legal system on his own, not continued to evade arrests, and make movies, no matter how many awards they win. It is in the content of character, not in the counts of awards, that a person is to be judged. His affairs with his leading ladies should not have bothered us, but his brutal rape of a minor is not an act worthy of kind reviews, let alone of a solidarity march.

But precisely, drawing from his old boys networks, from the euro-centric privileges, from the elite film industries, from the corporate media friends, and from the liberal feminists, Polanski has succeeded in generating unprecedented solidarity today. His support base glorious and powerful beyond any recent recollections. And in it, lies the greatest irony of our times: the justice system in capitalistic societies.
Each country’s administration that let Polanski work on its land is guilty of abetting this criminal. Mainstream media’s claim that European countries are harboring him while American judicial system is seeking him is utterly misleading. Polanski was to be sentenced not only for rape of a minor, but also on charges of sodomy with drugs. During the 70’s when police dogs were being unleashed upon innocent black workers on the streets, when educated youths were being mercilessly shot at for their demands for racial equality, and poor people were being arrested for jaywalking in rich neighborhoods, Polanski was allowed to go shoot in foreign lands even after he pleaded guilty to the rape charges (in order to avoid harsher sentences associated with sodomy with drugs, he just preferred being sentenced as a rapist and as an European-American, get a bail for the rest of his celebrity life).

For more than three decades (32 years, to be precise), this man was not arrested by the American judiciary. He did not even have to abscond, or flee, as the media reports suggest. He remained in public limelight, continued making movies in Britain, France and Poland. The Oscar jury even shamelessly awarded him with the highest prizes. He could easily have been arrested within three weeks of his departure from the United States. Three decades made him mere immortal.

Disproportionately high number of poor people in America are imprisoned for crimes that are not remotely as heinous as Polanski’s. There is scarcely any demand for their unconditional release. And yet, the American elites have all the hearts for this scum of a man – a filmmaker powerful enough to evade law for such long periods. The man who could not have the courage to surrender before due processes of law, but always had the audacity to attend award ceremonies. Now that he is finally being held in Zurich, all kinds of extradition laws are being reviewed to have him released. What is even more interesting are his lawyers’ claims to their Zurich counterparts that they have evidence to suggest the California police were not very keen on his arrest. Following that, the efficient police department of Los Angeles immediately responds by saying they have been looking for Polanski for over thirty years now, and his arrest has nothing to do with diplomatic faux pas over UBS scandal!

How would have been an ordinary man treated while in position of Polanski is an easy guess. California court would not have taken so long to find a rapist, especially one who is visibly present everywhere, giving out interviews, and receiving awards. In place of an European like Polanski, what would have happened to an African-American celebrity had he been convicted of raping a minor, not to talk of drug possession charges accompanying it. It is worth noting that Michael Jackson was acquitted of all charges by the court, and yet he was damned as a pedophile by the media even after his death. No Hollywood elites signed petitions to attack the press or to convince President Obama that Jackson was a true American hero who deserved a tribute. But here is a man already confessed to have raped a child after drugging her and the media are all quoting his famous friends about his deeply troubled personal life!

Not just United States, even United Kingdom could have taken an action on Polanski. It could have easily handed over the criminal to California. But that did not take place. And the French, the self-proclaimed civilized, those that taught the Algerians how to behave as decent law-abiding citizens, of course preferred to twist their own laws when it came to treat a self-confessed rapist. French judicial system, instead of imprisoning a convicted and at-large criminal, decided to play word games of extradition treaties and harbored a pedophile rapist into emerging as a filmmaker of some repute. Not just that, this abominable piece of trash was even heralded as the pride of France, as one of the greatest of its sons! How does a rapist cease becoming one after crossing geographical borders is beyond amazement of human intellect of this century.

The Hollywood, the corporate media as well as renowned feminists have all come together to support Polanski and to demand his immediate release. Such hollow and reactionary are our current progressive movements that the world of films – that imaginative, creative society of free thinking professionals, has lost every sense of self-respect in their unquestioned support lent to a child predator.

Whoopi Goldberg claims she “does not believe, it was a rape-rape”. In her feminist sit-com show, “The View”, she thinks, “he’s sorry. I think he knows it was wrong. I don’t think he’s a danger to society.” Instead of using the opportunity to appeal to women of Hollywood and television industry to come out about the sexual exploitations women have continuously faced in film societies, resulting in phrases such as “casting couch”, and worse, rapes and humiliations by the veteran directors, producers and actors, Ms Goldberg decided to defend a child rapist and assumed he must be feeling sorry!

Debra Winger is also feeling sorry, apparently because according to her, the whole art world is going to suffer in the arrest of Polanski! Even as she knows, Polanski might at the most get a probation, or in the least likelihood, the highest of 16 months in prison. Which world will suffer for one year detention of a convicted rapist can only be left to Winger’s imagination.

Now comes, Peg Yorkin, the renowned feminist and chair of Feminist Majority Foundation, which she co-founded with Eleanor Smeal. Yorkin not only does clearly absolve Polanski, she even reverses the foundations of progressive feminism with her statements to LA Times: “My personal thoughts are let the guy go. It’s bad a person was raped. But that was so many years ago. The guy has been through so much in his life. It’s crazy to arrest him now. Let it go. The government could spend its money on other things.”
Its sad, but a true reflection of comfortable feminists throwing around millions of dollars in charitable causes meant to address issues concerning women, but in reality, sympathize with the perpetrator as a victim. Yorkin parrots, what the mainstream media does: Polanski has been through a lot in his personal life. But they do not ponder over for a bit as to how does that anyway relate to the specific criminal act? When no one objected to his winning awards despite his personal life, why would the law not apply to Polanski because of it? The logic of Yorkin, Winger and Goldberg, our contemporary women champions of feminism are victimized by the same sexist structural overarching they are trying to contest.

Not to mention of the powerful males in Hollywood who are busy drafting petitions in support of the rapist claiming that “filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision.” Someone needs to tell them that France is already in Europe, so that mention is redundant, and secondly, “around the world” has no empirical basis. The whole world is not as perverted and manipulative as these signatories: Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Neil Jordan, Harvey Weinstein, Pedro Almodóvar and Ethan Coen.

The final defense is in the assumption that raping of minors was commonplace in those days and Polanski being a man of his times, his arrest is an unfortunate exception. Such arguments lack validity since in those days, so many black men were being routinely arrested on entirely false charges of rapes. It is true that Hollywood was perhaps the place for the Anglo-American playboys. Woody Allen immediately comes to mind – a privileged liberal who exploited his adopted children and married his stepdaughter, without his image being tarnished in any manner.

What is more distressing is that this trend of relegating the invisibly exploited women by the powerful filmmakers of Hollywood to irrelevance continues to this day. The fact that over a hundred legendary filmmakers come together to suppress the significance of combating sexual exploitation in the world’s wealthiest film industries, speaks of their own contributions in silencing the victims to this day. Be their films be declared hollow, their messages sexist, and their positions unworthy.