| In Egypt there are those who are trying to reproduce what Hamas did in Gaza… For anyone who has the slightest doubt about this and wants proof, it is sufficient to consider statements by Brotherhood representatives in parliament… They said that Egypt waved the Zionist flag, despite the people's opposition to this. This means that Egypt, like the Palestinian Authority, deserves that a revolution should take place in it. The Brotherhood, like Hamas, does not recognize the legitimacy of the parliament that ratified the peace treaty with Israel, nor the legitimacy of the state that ratified these agreements, since it is a traitorous state that works for foreign interests and that does not represent its people. From these statements we understand that the Hamas problem is not just Gaza, but it is also in Egypt, and that the Brotherhood holds the same positions and uses the same ideas and statements with which Hamas conducted a putsch against the government, and through which it declared Gaza a rebel region under its rule. |
Now of course the Arab Republic of Egypt is General H. Mubárak's country, not mine -- nor M. Táriq Hasan's, for that matter -- so I shall not pronounce about whether the A.R.E. "deserves" régime change or not. Far be that from me, who am no extremist Republican to go about in the earth makin' sure that the lesser breeds without get what they "deserve." That way lies only quagmire.
Fortunately neither the ineffable M. Hasan nor his peerless Leader are in any position to quagmirize anybody but ARE. subjects. If I had anything to do with neo-Gaza, I'd be worried about a rather long list of possible invaders, but "Egypt" is not among them. Picking up that stick by the other end, M. Hasan would appear to have profound affinities with Rancho Crawford. It sounds as if he manages to be as terrorized of neo-Gaza as the cowpokers were of Saddam's WMD. Yet it is internal subversion that he dreads, not external attack with forty-five-minute terror-tipped specials. Mutatis mutandis, then, M. Táriq Hasan is a spiritual McCarthyite rather than a spiritual Crawfordite. The Senator from Wisconsin with his supporters, and George XLIII with what's left of his, are equally courage-challenged and prone to Chicken Little Syndrome, but they disagree which quarter the sky is going to fall from. As between the late Mr. McCarthy and M. Hasan of al-’Ahrám there is a pleasing symmetry: both are in a panic about being undermined from within and both know that that enemies at home have allies elsewhere, but when it comes to exaggeration and distortion, the former specialized in domestic Commies, the latter specializes in international neo-Muslims -- in both cases making the bigger hobgoblin out of the lesser threat. (This gruesome twosome manage to make Little Brother look good by comparison: at least when he was cowerin' under the figurative bed after the Pentagon/WTC attacks, he managed not to suppose that much of the holy Homeland was in league with the box-cutter folks.)
M. Táriq Hasan's personal defects are not without interest, but naturally the main event is rather his polemical Political Science and that he attributes to the Brotherhood of Fiends. It is very risky to take an agitprop artist's word for what his enemies think, but for our present purposes it does not matter whether anybody actually believes the views that M. Hasan attributes to his fiends, our interest is only abstract and centered on the views themselves. So, then, certain allegers have alleged that any régime or neorégime that acts "despite the people's opposition" is eo ipso illegitimate and ought to be replaced.
One has heard talk that resembles that closer to home where it is much easier to put such noises into a context. Some brand-name Populists in the USA have perhaps seriously believed something of the sort, but usually this noise-making is a stance lapsed into rather than a platform conscientiously upheld. We have a sort of Default Populism that is appealed to whenever it seems to do the trick immediately required and nothing better suited to the particular occasion comes to mind. On the same terms, there is a Default Isolationism and a Default Libertarianism. Unsurprisingly, when advocates of some particular end must have recourse to these vague generic products, an inconsistency with whatever system of political ideas they deliberately believe in is likely to result. The perennial fuss about abortion illustrates this admirably: Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh defend their supposed "right to life" mostly with Default Populism; conventional liberals found their countersupposed "right to choose" in Default Libertarianism. In both cases the emergency fall-back position does not agree well with the general tendency of the whole pack. One might go on to guess that neither abortion pack thinks their real reasons are fit to be displayed in the Naked Public Square™ -- but that is getting too deep and too remote from the Levant to be pursued at the moment.
To pursue Default Populism (in America), its great bogey is usually called "elitism" or "elitists." The tone of voice involved in the calling is roughly "Who the Hell are you few to tell Us The People what to do?" We had a splendid display of that syndrome yesterday from the Witch Doctor of Democracy, yet it was a somewhat atypical display as well, because the particular "you few" that Citizen Rush was barkin' and bellowin' at happen to be known as the Senate of the United States. (The occasion was of course that dreadful Amnesty and Open Borders bill.) The same barks and bellows would not have been forthcoming had the question been whether Little Brother's occupation policy in neo-Iraq "despite the people's opposition to this," let alone anything to do with economic regulation of the OnePercenters. Indeed, Dr. Limbaugh valiantly stood up for Home Depot Inc. against "populist" pressures from the ignorant mob and certain local governments the mob had intimidated into compliance with their "improper or wicked project." [1]
The whole flavour of this rather familiar tale dressed up in new words is different from anything the Levantine propagandist's fiends seem likely to have had in mind. M. Táriq Hasan of al-’Ahrám himself may pass for an elitist, I daresay, but the crux of the matter is the General himself, and the E-word falls far short of what the fiends think of Himself. (Was Pharaoh an elitist? Well, yes, no doubt He was, but that's only a small part of what made Him detestable.)
To distinguish the Default Populism of the ARE from that of the USA it may be of use to examine the phrase I have already borrowed from Mr. Madison & Co.: "we the people." Regardless of what was originally intended in 1787, in the holy Homeland of 2007 that phrase signifies "we many, the people" and thus invites the antithesis with "you few, the elitists." Though no doubt the Brotherhood of Fiends consider that they vastly outnumber the minions of Mubárak and the elitists of al-’Ahrám, that fact or mistake is comparatively peripheral to their Default Populism, which is rather qualitative than quantitative. It is of the essential essence of The Egyptian People to be piously Muslim, and what damns General Pharaoh is that he is not.
That is what our Goebbels wannabe is really up against on the Pol. Sci. front. How does he counterattack?
| Here in Egypt the Brotherhood brought out the masked militias in Al-Azhar University, and there in Gaza Hamas put them to use. Here they changed the Egyptian flag and removed the eagle of the Republic from it, and there they took down the Palestinian flag and waved the green flag of Hamas. What can we expect?... In light of this severe threat, it is not enough for us to say to people "look at what Hamas did in Gaza" in order to warn them about the Brotherhood in Egypt. We must learn the lessons without delay. Hamas won the game it was playing, and the Brotherhood is doing the [same] thing. There, there was a government that allowed them to take part in elections without their recognizing the legitimacy of that Authority and without their being made to accept the state's constitution and its laws. Hamas used the elections and democracy as an instrument, and then they turned the matter over to the armed militias in order to conduct a putsch against everyone. Here, there are Brothers who do not recognize the legitimacy of the state and oppose the constitution and the law, and despite this, we find people who say that [the Brotherhood] represents them and speaks in their name in parliament… Whoever ignores this will bring us into the gates of hell that we have seen in Gaza…" |
Not very impressive. The main active ingredient is guilt by association, and M. Táriq Hasan doesn't even try to demonstrate the association, he only presupposes it. The account of how neo-Gaza was established is tendentious bordering on dotty. Are we to suppose that the Zealots were craftily plotting all along to grab Gaza and ditch East Palestine? Still, none of that twistification is up to the dignity of Pol. Sci.
On the scientific front proper, M. Táriq Hasan's trump card is "legitimacy," just as that of M. de Tallerand was after Napoléon's neorégime had been forcibly changed out from under him. [2] Never so grotesque an impar congressus as that one! Yet after all there is a little bit of warrant for it. True, the French aristocrat had "the forty kings that made France" and all the rest of the Old Order in Europe, whereas the Mubárikite hack has only what's left of Oslo in half of half of one province, but still, they do both conceive of "legitimacy" as a status quo ante, do they not?
The trouble is that M. Hasan talleyrandizes only as regards Gentile Palestine. When it comes to his General's status quo in the Arab Republic of Egypt, which must of course be far closer to his heart, the analogy evaporates. For all I can see to the contrary, Pharaoh's régime is "legitimate" purely and solely because that's what they think at al-’Ahrám. The Fiends of the Brotherhood wouldn't be the least bit impressed by that mere table-pounding, nor should they be.
M. Hasan will doubtless be more interested in his applied Pol. Sci. than in the pure substance, that is to say, in his nifty attempts to delegitimize the fiends. Unfortunately he has not quite thought things through and commits an incoherence. If the Mubárak Pharaohate is legitimate, why, then so must Pharaoh's parliament be, and all those who sit in it. "[T]he legitimacy of the state" can't be left hinging on whether the fiends' handful of deputies are pleased to "recognize" it or not. What a sloppiness were that!
A more competent westoxicated OnePercenter would go about the business differently, it seems to me. She would perhaps try to maintain that the fiends once did recognize Gen. Pharaoh's legitimacy and now attempt to prosecute them either for past bad faith or present breach of promise. Or both. That plan would, incidentally, be talleyrandian, since a status quo ante, genuine or feigned, would reappear.
The trouble everybody in Westistan runs into with that sort of ploy, "conservative" "intellectuals" included, is that the said faith or promise must be taken to be tacit rather than expressed. ARE voters might be supposed to legitimate the Pharaohate by participating in its elections, and ARE pols by running for office under it. Perhaps just paying Pharaoh's taxes and not emigrating to someplace better suffice to afford occult legitimation? Arguments of that sort turn up in the USA often enough, but whether they have much bearing on the political darkness of Egypt is not clear. With us, such exercises in Pol. Sci. are conducted in a context where nobody except a few loons recently flown in from Planet Dilbert seriously questions the general legitimacy of our established system, the occasional Floridagate 2000 notwithstanding. In the Arab Republic of Egypt, where the general legitimacy of Pharaoh is a live question, the support of Pol. Sci. for the existing racket might really come in handy, but is it available? Whatever learnèd clerks may decide, ordinary lay sheep are only too likely to respond to all that "tacit" jazz with contempt, "We never promised you that, Massa Husní, and you are a goddam liar if you or your miserable official fishwrap claim otherwise."
The imaginary expostulation may not fit the ARE context perfectly, however. It is perhaps a bit too individualistic -- too quantitative, even, for is not one (1.0) a quantity? Even the OnePercenters at al-’Ahrám, the actual beneficaries of the Mubárak Racket, may not be yet quite so globalised as that. To judge from that mere table-pounding on the part of M. Táriq Hasan, they may think more qualitatively, more like Huntin'ton of Harvard with his ever-glorious Clashism™ product. Stipulating the existence of an Essential Egyptian, does the essence of the creature consist more in pious ’Islám or more in European statism? That may be a better way to frame the question, even for those of us who don't much hold with essences. But God knows best.
_____
[1] Mr. Madison in Federalist X, of course.
[2] That is Ms. Conventional Wisdom's view, which will do for now since we are not really talking about M. de Talleyrand at Vienna.
No comments:
Post a Comment