A couple of observations.
This happens all the time , not just this article. But reporters sometimes
do not bother to find out the reasons for events and then interpret them
in whatever way is most convenient, accurate or not. Like the unison
chanting
at the protests. The explanation is simple and has, in fact, been discussed
on network news. Zucotti Park does not allow amplification for speakers,
no microphones, in other words, and not even megaphones. So, the crowd
decided on an alternative, unison chanting to give selected points
emphasis.
The article suggests that this is some kind of Maoist device !
Also, people like Zizek, once living under Communist rule, have an
unfortunate
tendency to falsely interpret American gvt policies the way they once
interpreted
official policies under Soviet domination. It is reflexive; it is what they
best know
from many years --formulative years for them-- under Communism, which
they reject completely and viscerally. Alas, the many nuances of American
politics
simply don't register, or don't "take" all that well.
You get a lot of this with people from India, BTW, nothing sinister about
it,
just the fact that they may simply "not get" the nuances of American ways
of speaking,
and take sarcasm or irony literally and, in the process, completely
misconstrue meaning.
I think Ernie would agree about this, and maybe could add a few words to
further illuminate the phenomenon.
This said, and more could be spelled out, the article is interesting for
how a Left wing
journal views the OWS movement, not altogether favorably despite basic
sympathy.
Billy
------------------------------------
New Republic
Protests and Power
Should liberals support Occupy Wall Street?
*
(http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/96062/occupy-wall-street-zizek-lewis?passthru=NWJhNDIyNzAzNmU5MWExYzI1ZmM0ZGU0MDJiZTU2MTk&utm_source=Edit
ors+and+Bloggers&utm_campaign=4e29fdf4cc-Edit_and_Blogs&utm_medium=email#)
Editorial
_-Outs_ (http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/96134/sell-outs)
October 12, 2011
How should liberals feel about Occupy Wall Street? If you follow politics
and you think of yourself as a liberal, then you have undoubtedly been
grappling with that question in recent weeks. At first blush, it would be
difficult not to cheer the protesters who have descended on lower
Manhattan—and
are massing in other cities across the United States—because they have
chosen a deserving target. Wall Street should be protested. Its resistance to
needed regulations that would stabilize the U.S. economy is shameful. And,
insofar as it has long opposed appropriate levels of government spending and
taxation, it has helped to create a society that does a deeply flawed job
of providing for its most vulnerable, educating its young, and guaranteeing
economic opportunity for all.
But, to draw on the old cliché, the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my
friend. Just because liberals are frustrated with Wall Street does not
mean that we should automatically find common cause with a group of people who
are protesting Wall Street. Indeed, one of the first obligations of
liberalism is skepticism—of governments, of arguments, and of movements. And
so
it is important to look at what Occupy Wall Street actually believes and
then to ask two, related questions: Is their rhetoric liberal, or at least a
close cousin of liberalism? And is this movement helpful to the achievement
of liberal aims?
This task is made especially difficult by the fact that there is no single
leader who is speaking for the crowds, no book of demands that has been put
forward by the movement. Like all such gatherings, it undoubtedly includes
a broad range of views. But the volume of interviews, speeches, and online
declarations associated with the protests does make it possible to arrive
at some broad generalizations about what Occupy Wall Street stands for. And
these, in turn, suggest a few reasons for liberals to be nervous about the
movement.
One of the core differences between liberals and radicals is that liberals
are capitalists. They believe in a capitalism that is democratically
regulated—that seeks to level an unfair economic playing field so that all
citizens have the freedom to make what they want of their lives. But these are
not the principles we are hearing from the protesters. Instead, we are
hearing calls for the upending of capitalism entirely. American capitalism may
be
flawed, but it is not, as Slavoj Zizek implied in a speech to the
protesters, the equivalent of Chinese suppression. “[In] 2011, the Chinese
government prohibited on TV and films and in novels all stories that contain
alternate reality or time travel,” Zizek declared. “This is a good sign for
China. It means that people still dream about alternatives, so you have to
prohibit this dream. Here, we don’t think of prohibition. Because the ruling
system has even oppressed our capacity to dream. Look at the movies that we
see all the time. It’s easy to imagine the end of the world. An asteroid
destroying all life and so on. But you cannot imagine the end of capitalism.”
This is not a statement of liberal values; moreover, it is a statement that
should be deeply offensive to liberals, who do not in any way seek the end
of capitalism.
Zizek is not alone. His statement is typical of the anti-capitalist, almost
utopian arguments that one hears coming from these protesters. A recent
debate about whether to allow Congressman John Lewis, a civil rights icon, to
speak to Occupy Atlanta was captured on video and ended up on YouTube. As
Lewis looked on, arguments on both sides were bandied about. “The point of
this general assembly is to kick-start a democratic process in which no
singular human being is inherently more valuable than any other human being,”
argued one protester. Ultimately, because no “consensus” could be reached,
Lewis was turned away. Yes, like the Zizek speech, this was just one data
point. But surely it was an indication that liberal skepticism about this
movement is not unwarranted.
And it is just not the protesters’ apparent allergy to capitalism and
suspicion of normal democratic politics that should raise concerns. It is also
their temperament. The protests have made a big deal of the fact that they
arrive at their decisions through a deliberative process. But all their talk
of “general assemblies” and “communiqués” and “consensus” has an air of
group-think about it that is, or should be, troubling to liberals. “We
speak as one,” Occupy Wall Street stated in its first communiqué, from
September 19. “All of our decisions, from our choices to march on Wall Street
to
our decision to camp at One Liberty Plaza were decided through a consensus
process by the group, for the group.” The air of group-think is only
heightened by a technique called the “human microphone” that has become
something
of a signature for the protesters. When someone speaks, he or she pauses
every few words and the crowd repeats what the person has just said in
unison. The idea was apparently logistical—to project speeches across a wide
area
—but the effect when captured on video is genuinely creepy.
These are not just substantive complaints. They also beg the strategic
question of whether the protesters will help or hurt the cause of liberalism.
After all, even if the protesters are not liberals themselves, isn’t it
possible that they could play a constructive role in forcing Americans to pay
attention to important issues such as inequality and crony capitalism?
Perhaps. But we are hard-pressed to believe that most Americans will look at
these protests, with their extreme anti-capitalist rhetoric, and conclude that
the fate of the Dodd-Frank legislation—currently the best liberal hope for
improving democratically regulated capitalism—is more crucial than they
had previously thought.
In the face of the current challenge from Tea Party conservatism, it is
more important than ever that liberals make a compelling case for our vision
of America. But we will not make this case stronger by allying with a
movement that is out of sync with our values. And so, on the question of how
liberals should feel about Occupy Wall Street, count us as deeply skeptical.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
