Farewell to illusions

When I was seventeen, I had little respect for Western liberals. I lived in the USSR back then and was a member of an anti-government underground organization established by my friends that at its peak numbered a couple of dozen people. “Those little fucks,” I thought, using, of course, Russian expletives, “would come to Moscow to protest nuclear arms race without giving a second thought that whoever protests against the very same things in Soviet Union has a very good chance to end up never being capable to protest against anything. They would give interviews to ‘Pravda’ about the Native Americans imprisoned after the Pine Ridge incident, and not even cringe that this issue of ‘Pravda’ will be read by Ukrainians and Jews, Latvians and Estonians who were put in a close proximity with polar bears’ habitat for ‘offences’ that don’t come even close to what was done at Pine Ridge. Those liberal souls would be oh so outraged that Angela Davis did not get a proper shower in prison – well, how about a closed psychiatric ward of the USSR’s Ministry of the Interior?” I was far from being alone in this sentiment – it was shared by many back then and is still shared by some nowdays.

Yet then the wheels of history turned in a rather peculiar way, and I got a chance to become acquainted quite closely with the Western left. In 1990 I landed in Israel, and within two years found myself involved with what they call there a Zionist Left, something roughly analogous with the US progressives of today. I acquired deep respect for those people. I stood in awe watching them go against not only the government – this requires little, if any, courage in a democratic country – but against the mainstream opinions, facing harsh criticism and downright abuse at times. One should be brave and hold fast to her principles in order to recognize and proclaim the humanity of the enemy, to fight for enemy’s rights – especially when a bus has exploded few days ago right after she got off at her stop. I also became acquainted with the Western leftist lore more closely, without the filter of the Soviet censorship. I came to think that I was a little fuck rather than Sartre. That the American imperialism was a real issue, not an invention of the KGB propaganda ward. That in opposing the Vietnam war, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, the Pinochet dictatorship the good people of the left were honest and followed their deeply help convictions, held as honestly as mine and my friends’ back in Siberia. I got to the point of looking at the red flag flying high above an Israeli kibbutz and feeling but a slight contempt. Later, in the US, the more I experienced the Western society, the deeper went the roots of these newly acquired convictions. In fact, I saw them merely as an adjustment of my older ones: freedom, democracy, humanism (which in Russian means sort of humane treatment of humans), exactly as the Declaration of the Siberian Union of Democratic Youth spelled it out (yes, I took part in writing it). The worldwide Occupy movement filled me with excitement; I saw it as the new, different sort of history being born (Hegel and Fukuyama are saying Hi), the new level of struggle where the notion of human dignity takes central stage. The US elections in 2008 seemed to me a quantum leap. The Arab Spring; the magnificent, even though failed, uprising in Iran few years ago; the protest movements in Israel and Turkey; even the abdication of the old Pope and the ascension of the new one – I saw all that with the great optimism.

I was wrong.

There were troubling signs, of course. The abandonment of Rwanda, which contrasted so profoundly with the concerted attack on Yugoslavia, served a painful – eight hundred thousand lives painful –reminder that things were far from being rosy. Yet still, the progress was obvious.

When on August 21 Assad’s junta gassed hundreds of people in Damascus’ suburb, I was quite certain that the world would get involved and put an end to its ability to slaughter Syrian people. After all, it was not even that hard: the army in question was once defeated within three days in a literally uphill battle by a much smaller enemy. I thought we did learn something not only from the Holocaust but also from Rwanda. My first shock came within a day or so, when I saw a tidal wave of protests against the military action coming from the very same people who put human rights and helping the needy at the top of their and others’ priorities – and I certainly support this idea. From the very same people who would get outraged for days over every Palestinian teenager detained by the Israeli military – and rightfully so. From people who would watch “Hotel Rwanda” and weep, for whom ‘Holocaust’ and ‘never again’ naturally come together. From people who think themselves to be smart, kind, caring… And what a tidal wave it was! Any attempt to go against it was met with the barrage that included arguments that would not shame a Tea Party or Newt Gingrich and with utterly hysterical accusations. People who laughed at the argument against evolution based on the claim that is cannot have direct evidence stubbornly insisted that all the reports, including the UN one, did not provide sufficient evidence to establish that it was the ruling junta that organized this gas chamber in the open. People who should know enough chemistry and physics insisted with a straight face that Sarin could have been synthesized and weaponized by any chemistry graduate student. An alternative evidence in the form of grandpa stories (literally!) about an explosion in a tunnel that the said had not actually witnessed  would be quoted as counter-evidence time and again, by websites and newspapers. People would claim that white phosphorous grenades and Agent Orange are chemical weapons too, again with straight face, and even share some official-looking links. Yet there is another aspect of the debate that is even more disturbing. I’m routinely being accused of serving the interests of radical Islam or world communists every time I as much as raise my voice against some uglier features of our times, e.g., islamophobia, which became the new anti-semitism, corporate abuses, etc. I’m used to it. However, I had been under impression that these accusations were a prerogative of the lunatic right. This impression got shattered to pieces. The left is no better. In the last few weeks I learned that I’m actually a loudspeaker for Washington, a warmonger, that I have “some sort of mania about Assad,” and many more things of this nature. I encountered people who would generate literally dozens or comments, posts, etc. per day to protest the burning of Palestinian olive trees by the Israeli settlers – yet who responded to my shock about gassing children with “ooooh, so sensitive” (yes, this is a quotation). I was told that comparing the murder of children in Syria with the murder of Jews in the forties is “trivializing the Holocaust.” If you have been looking for a little window into the abyss of human depravity, I believe that the last sentence provides one; call me pathetic, if you wish. I was also told that this comparison is invalid, since Hitler had an extermination program, and Assad does not; I wonder if being sloppier would have gotten Nazis off the hook. I was also deeply disturbed that a whole lot of words were spilled talking about strategy, cost and benefit analysis, etc., as if the issue in question was closing newspapers or unnecessary roadblocks rather that mass murder. People who were ready to talk to Al Qaeda and Hamas mounted a campaign of besmirching Syrian opposition in terms that would make Rush Limbaugh or even the Israeli Ministry of Propaganda blush. Putin suddenly became a peacemaker, a darling of the liberal left that had considered him an arch-monster just a week before his aids published a compilation of banalities and lies in the New-York Times. Some even suggested nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Noam Chomsky, whose war cries about Syria have been rather loud once, turned around as soon as he sensed that the winds started to blow the other way.

Out of the whole liberal milieu only few people had enough courage and decency to raise their voices in protest. Christiane Amanpoure. Bernard-Henri Lévy. And… that’s it. Only the Israeli left, my good old friend, protested. As one of its representatives said, “I cannot fight for the rights of Palestinians and ignore the murder that is happening next door.” Alas, her voice has drowned in the worldwide chorus of peace-loving citizens. The same sort of chorus that in 1938 welcomed Chamberlain at the airport when he returned waving a peace agreement with Hitler, few printed pages for which he and his French colleague sold Czechoslovakia to Hitler.

The result? Assad’s junta is at large, laughing the world in the face together with their Russian friends. The slaughter continues. The UN is preparing to beg Assad to give up his chemical weapons, and he is scheming to get some money for it. Can a miracle happen, can he give up peacefully? I sincerely hope it will happen. Yet the lessons I learned from the Syrian gas chamber will stay with me forever. And here they are.

I used to think that all those people around the world who talk so much about the Palestinian case do it out of care for the oppressed. I was wrong. The vast majority of them could not care less for the Palestinians. What they care for are their pre-conceptions about American imperialism. If Israel were sort of Middle Eastern Venezuela, they would cheer every bombing of Gaza. How do I know that? Syria. People who do not care for Syrian children cannot care for the Palestinian ones. Dear Palestinians (a couple of you might be reading it), I really pity you. All those “friends” of yours around the world are fake. You think they will punish Israel for stealing your land? They are not even ready to punish Assad for murdering hundreds of people with nerve gas. Your only chance is to talk to Israel. You will have to give up your dreams about Yaffo and Haifa; it should be a consolation that Israel will be giving up a whole lot more than dreams. There is no other way. Don’t believe me? Remember Syria.

I used to think that the military buildup program that Israel carries from one year to another, with submarines and missiles and what not, is unnecessary and harmful. I was wrong. Quite a few Israelis might be reading this, so here is the New Michael Yudanin telling you: keep it up! Submarines, stealth jet fighters, mechanical izzards, whatever else – keep it up! When the push comes to shove, nobody will be there for you. While the US Congress will be debating what to do, you well might be gone. I know that some Israeli politicians use to keep a picture from Warsaw ghetto, that of a Jewish child with his hands raised and his eyes full of fear, sort of a reminder of what needs to be avoided at any cost. Well, it is time to add something. Print, frame, and hang next to it the photo of Syrian children wrapped in white cloth and being prepared for burial. A reminder that the world has changed little.

Same applies to India. I used to think that it makes no sense for a country that still fights illiteracy to build air carriers, nuclear bombs, and long-range missiles. Especially that its army has performed rather well in the past. Now I say: build more of them. If your big neighbor decides that it needs access to the Indian Ocean or goes nuts otherwise, nobody will be there to help you. And, frankly, you will not be able to cry foul: you decided to step aside and not get involved with Syria, despite being one of the largest and most important countries in the world today.

I used to think that the world has changed, qualitatively changed. That it learned something from the Holocaust, for example. Now I know: it learned nothing, and Holocaust can be repeated again. Just like in Rwanda. Just like in Syria. And the world will be watching and inventing excuses, one more idiotic than the other.

I used to think that the left in the US is much smarter than the right. That its arguments are better, its knowledge more expansive. I still think that it is smarter, yet not much smarter. Just like the right, it is not ready to get beyond the first paragraph of what it reads. Just like the right it holds its pre-conceptions so dear that it is ready to forget its principles. I know now that when it feels threatened, when it is facing the risk of changing its ideas about the world in light of the new information, it is ready to do the dumbest things in order to avoid change.

Yet the most painful illusion to part with is that of the morality of the liberal left. These are people with whom I share so many convictions, convictions that for me were a result of a long and at times uneasy journey. Now I’ve discovered that it’s all fake, that for a great many people all those nice principles are no conviction but rather elements of ideology, part of a rigid structure that has mostly linguistic significance, a sort of chant to repeat from time to time. As hard as it is, I have to admit that I was closer to the truth when I was seventeen than I was a month ago.

So here I am, back to 1988. Человек рождается свободным, и нет ни одной идеологии и ни одного социального идеала, которые возместили бы ему утрату этой свободы.  Man is born free, and there is no ideology and no social ideal that would compensate him for the loss of this freedom. The first lines of the Declaration of the Democratic Union, the first opposition party in the USSR – illegal, of course; with an obvious nod to Rousseau. The lines that so much excited me back then. I always considered them to mean not only freedom but also conscience. And this is one thing I’m not ready to part with, even at the cost of standing alone.

Good buy, my dear illusions! I will miss you.