“Neither to weep, nor to laugh, but to understand” (Spinoza)
“Nothing human is alien to me” (Marx, from Aristotle)
I have always been rather fond of both these maxims, especially when confronted with what might be called extreme phenomenon. Anyway, both came to mind y’day after reading two lamentable if not unpredictable utterances.
The first was a pure bead of inanity from Linda Grant, in response to a discussion on suicide bombers. The Eagleton article that triggered this discussion has received much attention, and I won’t add anything, other than saying his comments seem rather too coloured by his thoughts on hunger strikers, which he’s talked about elsewhere. Anyway, Grant’s two pence worth (initially via here) was:
1. In April 2003 two public school educated British men travelled to Israel via Jordan, declared themselves as tourists, wandered around the occupied territories for a few days, then went to Tel Aviv and one of them, in such despair at his miserable life, blew himself up inside Mike's Bar, killing three others.
2. Some research has been done on the motives of suicide bombers, by interviewing those who failed to pull it off. Amazingly, they reported that they did it because it was cool. Now in prison, their principal request is for hair gel. I kid you not.
The callous nonchalance, the sniggering derision is repellent. That young men and women, children even, through extremities of desperation, indoctrination or whatever, are driven to destroy themselves and others surely both defies and urgently demands comprehension.
There is a cliché, a default response, that ‘understanding’ is a kind of ‘wet liberal’ attitude. Understanding only in order to exonerate (if anyone actually does this) may well be. But Spinoza was of course no 'liberal' and the default response (as with so many default responses) is gibberish. Understanding is simply the precondition of intelligent action. Grant seems instead to have chosen laughter, proffering an ‘explanation’ so glib that it flaunts its cynical indifference to the phenomenon ‘explained’. Such actions, it is implied, have no real meaning, or deserve no more attention than a random anecdote or a half-remembered newspaper article. One suspects that what prevents people allowing such actions the dignity of ‘meaning’ is fear of being thought weak or ‘liberal’. But the desire to be thought 'tough' is of course itself the real weakness, and the lazy conflation of meaning and justification is simply foolish.
The tough ones in Northern Ireland were precisely those who were prepared to appear ‘weak’ in recognising that terrorist activity ultimately arose from genuine grievances and that these had to be addressed. If it takes ‘Weakness’ and ‘compromise’ to get some results, so be it.
The second utterance was Ariel Sharon, featured in the Independent commenting on the Auschwitz commemoration.
The Allies knew of the annihilation of the Jews and did nothing. Israel learnt that we can trust no one but ourselves. This phenomenon - of Jews defending themselves and fighting back - is an anathema [to] the new anti-Semites. Legitimate steps of self-defence which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - actions which any sovereign state is obligated to undertake - are presented by those who hate Israel as aggressive, Nazi-like steps.
Sharon, like the MCB, is unable to address himself to Auschwitz without also bringing in the actions of the Israeli state and telescoping the past through the pragmatic optic of the present. As so often, ostensible ideological opposites, like two great colliding trains, nonetheless run on the same rails.
update: Grant's comments appear more reprehensible after reading the article she seemingly had in mind, which she has clearly and carelessly travestied. The number of failed suicide bombers interviewed is three ("research"?). And the conclusions expressed seem, well, slightly at variance with Grant's synopsis:
"Their [suicide bombers] sense of there being no point to life was not personal, but existential, representing the entirety of the society. Their lack of interest in life and the sense that their future is totally blocked are shared by all [...] Thirty-five years of foreign occupation, sophisticated and undefeated, has not made the people living under it used to it, nor has it brought them to accept the ever narrower horizons the occupation dictates to its subjects. [...] Therefore, chances are Palestinian society will continue producing youngsters who see no point in living"
(Grant's reply was extracted by the dogged 'Lenin')