Right-wing (Zionist) arguments with Leftist footnotes: the case of Ken Seigneurie

There is a downside to reading as a vocation; you get to read lousy books and articles. From some you may learn (I read much of the Zionist literature in order to understand the enemy), and from other you learn not. Such is the case of an article by Ken Seigneurie (I don't know who he is) titled "The Wrench and the Ratchet: Cultural Mediation in a Contemporary Liberation Struggle" in Public Culture, 21:2. Don't be fooled with the title: there is nothing trendy or interesting or sophisticated in an article that could have been penned by one of the writers on the op-ed pages of the Daily Star or NowHariri website, where I strongly recommend that he be hired ASAP. The author hopes to camouflage his right-wing (and Zionist) arguments by hiding behind footnotes of leftist authors (who I happen to know) like Lara Deeb, Lisa Wedeen, Joseph Massad, and Fawwaz Traboulsi none of whom would affiliate with his blatantly right-wing, sectarian and classist arguments that don't deviate from the opinion piece of the Hariri scribes in NowHariri. In fact, he should have confined himself to the Hariri scribes that he cites among his "sources", and to Tod Gitlin. The latter--our author does not know--does not count as a leftist anymore and he has been affiliated with the most rabid Zionist trends in the US, and has joined the bigoted anti-Islam camp especially after Sep. 11. He is a former leftist, just like Rupert Murdoch who used to keep a bust of Lenin in his room in college, is a former leftist. Where do I begin: with the laughable parts: like having a picture of a Shekh and a nun praying near Hariri tomb to "prove" that the Hariri sectarian movement in Lebanon (he bizarrely calls March 14 a liberation struggle) is non-sectarian or anti-Sectarian? On page 380, he explains his stance vis-a-vis Hizbullah: and he so mimics the press releases of the Hariri family that forgot that he tried to show that he is vaguely supportive of the Palestinians and yet he informs us that one of the items on the lists of his complaints against Hizbullah is that Nasrallah urged that the Nahr Al-Barid camp not be destroyed. So according to this guy--and I don't know who he is, as I said--the progressive "liberation" struggle argument should insists on the destruction of Nahr Al-Barid camp. How original: but the Gemayyel family says the same things, so why bother with writing this tedious and non-interesting piece? He also blames Israel's war on Lebanon...not on Israel, but on the capturing of Israeli occupation soldiers although he does not consider the Israeli kidnapping of Lebanese civilians from the Tyre region to be worthy of mention. Just as he treats the Syrian control of Lebanon a form of colonial occupation, and yet he has not one word about the long decades of Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Surely, no occupation of Lebanon can match the Israeli record of occupation if measured by the 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian killed in the few months that followed the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. He is alarmed that Israeli occupation soldiers should be targeted. This "liberation struggle" dude also objects to laying a siege on the Lebanese right-wing pro-Saudi government because "liberation struggle" should insist that the Saudi-American puppet government of Lebanon should be preserved and protected. He also argues that if you complain about fragmentation and division of the Arab world is an indication of support of Ba`thist crimes. I kid you not.(p. 380). Why? Because he said that Arab nationalism belongs to ideologies that are "empirically discredited ideologies". As for "empirical" the author presumably runs a lab where he empirically tests ideologies to verify their success or failures. But the dude of "liberation struggle" writes with the poetic skills of Sa`d Hariri and the eloquence of Carlos Iddi: "To say that Hariri’s murderers killed hope for interfaith reconciliation was an instanceof the transformation of pain into tragedy that has marked modern Lebanese cultural history." So Hariri who more than anybody else in modern Lebanese history instigated sectarian hatred and conflict was planning "interfaith reconciliation" but no one seems to have known of these plans except this "liberation struggle" dude. (p. 383) And why does he not mention that his beloved Rafiq Hariri was an ally of Syrian mukhabrat in Lebanon, and was installed as prime minister by none other than Hafidh Al-Asad? He also talked about the Hariri funeral as a spontaneous event without talking about the (acknowledged) role of Saatchi and Saatchi and other PR firms that were funded by the Hariri family and Saudi intelligence, not ot mention the role of the US ambassador in Lebanon. He argues without supplying evidence, but he does not supply any evidence anywhere unless you count his references to a Lebanese song as evidence, that no Western institutions or organizations funded or supported the Hariri-Prince Muqrin sectarian intifada. But in the entire article which I don't recommend that you read since I am summarizing it fairly to you, the most comical line is without a doubt this one: " The United States favored the uprising, but its interests in Lebanon pale by comparison to its interests in Israel, and since no element of the uprising displayed any warmth toward Israel, American support would remain perforce limited. Even France’s support for the uprising had to remain within the parameters set by the U.S.-Israeli axis. Thus, excepting Iran, for which Lebanon has been a high foreign policy priority since the 1979 Islamic revolution, great power support for the uprising was primarily diplomatic and symbolic." (p. 386). Now how funny is that one? So your "liberation struggle" dude--and the liberation struggle is here referring to Saudi foreign policy in Lebanon as exemplified by the Hariri family which the author considers to be the rightful inheritor of Che and his legacy--discounts the role of the money that the US and Saudi Arabia has dumped on their clients in Lebanon, and he would have easily checked a graph of US military aid to Lebanon before and after the Hariri movement to see how much military aid the Hariri militias in Lebanon (the Internal Security Forces, Intelligence Apparatus, and the various security firms that were dismantled and defeated on May 7th by Hizbullah and its allies), and UAE, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia have also given military aid to Lebanon especially as the Lebanese government was busy destroying the Nahr Al-Barid camp. But wait: this guy believes that supporters of "liberation struggle" should support the destruction of the Nahr Al-Barid camp. But there are parts of the article that I can't comment on because they mean absolutely nothing, especially when the author waxes poetic or philosophical--only in his own mind--, like in this: "The Hariri slaying triggered a return of the long-repressed moral impulse." (386) Now what on earth does that mean? And to provide "evidence" he cites--KID YOU NOT--a song by Walid Tawfiq. He then digresses to tell you about Lebanese musician Ahmad Qa`bur without telling you that this former communist now works for HARIRI TV. But working for Hariri TV, according to this guy, is part of the liberation, anti-colonial struggle. But the classism and sectarianism of this guy shows loud and clear--just as it does in the propaganda of the Hariri family--when he compares and contrasts the two sides in their demonstration methods and styles. He argues that the March 8 demonstrations always feature the chant "with spirit, with blood, we shall sacrifice ourselves for you, o X", but does not admit--no, he specifically denies--that the chant in fact also appears in demonstrations by the other sides, and is in fact avoided in Hizbullah demonstrations where chants for Nasrallah are largely along the lines of "Abu Hadi, Abu Hadi, etc". He also adds that women don't appear in demonstrations by March 8, implying that the Lebanese Forces, the Phalanges Party, Al-Jama`ah Al-Islamiyyah, the Salafites, and the Hariri Movement, the PSP all of which constitute the March 14, are a feminist movement, while March 8 is not. (Of course, neither is leftist and neither is feminist). Here, he is not deviating from the coverage of the Western press who looked for mimics of the Western White Man among Lebanon's demonstrators to find them only among the March 14 demonstrators who looked "tele-genic" to quote that piece by Nicholas Blanford in MERIP. Beware of those Middle East men with beards, especially if they are not dressed in Seven jeans, and especially if they don't chant for Saudi-US plans for the region. And then the "liberation struggle" dude resorts to lies and fabrications: "Demonstrators brandished no Grim Reaper personifications of villains, burned no Syrian flags or effigies, and chanted no “Death to Syria” slogans." Of course, this is not true, and chants of death to Syria and its leaders (and signs to that effect) were common, and Bashshar was referred to as "akrut" in the most common chants, and the media of the March 14 factions were blatantly racist against ALL Syrians. He ignores that the most famous and common chant of March 14 was: "badna at-Tar" (we want revenge). He also forgot that March 14 was not only series of demonstrations it also included chasing and beating poor "Ka`k" vendors merely because they are mostly Syrians: and many were mercilessly beaten and stabbed. March 14 is not only demonstrations: it also included chasing and lynching of Syrian workers all over Lebanon. But that does not surprise me: the author, trying to sound cute, quotes a chant by March 14 demonstrators at the every end of the article without commenting it was clearly racist against the Syrian people, and was and is used to denigrate and insult the Syrian people as a whole. And when he refers to the "martyrs" of his Hariri-Prince Muqrin movement, notice that he only names the two (former) leftist members of the group while most of the assassinated victims were avowed (racist) right-wingers. This is not to endorse their killing but to point out the deception on the part of the author as he tries to prove to himself or to the reader that the March 14 movement was a leftist movement. (p. 392). And notice that March 14 demonstrators are called "demonstrators" while demonstrators of March 8 are called "rioters" (p. 393). They are in the eyes of the author uncouth and inelegant. He also flatly distorts Augustus Richard Norton's nuanced analysis of Hizbullah, and deceptively--again--wants to conflate his right-wing views with those of Norton. The fellow needs to be put back in the classroom: he badly needs an elementary course in logic. As for honesty and integrity: that is a matter of personal ethics and can't be taught. You either have it or you don't.