A little rant
Josh Kutchinsky presents a humanist historical perspective on human rights.
I feel scared. Frightened not just for myself but for others too, others like me; hands, eyes, brains, that sort of thing, but younger, maybe even not yet born. I don’t know if history repeats itself because I am not quite sure what that means. But I have lived long enough and more importantly read enough, which is to say shared the thinking of others, to detect some patterns.
I fear that people, including good people, are doing it again. They are believing that the other, as an individual is a threat and, in large numbers, agents of calamity, like disease to a healthy body.
At night I see Greek Colonels and a silhouetted soldier with fixed bayonet and flames. I watch as tanks silently, persuasively, roll into the Athenian streets, the birthplace of democracy. A radio beats out a military march interrupted by proclamations “We decide, we order” and the freedom to think evaporates. And the torture begins.
There is a woven copy of Picasso’s Guernica at the UN. Did I dream that they covered up this tapestry of terror so as not to disturb the diplomat’s weaving of half truths to persuade the world of the necessity of invading Iraq? I did not.
Today the original, and even more powerful, Guernica is at home in Madrid. Next year it will be the twentieth anniversary of its move to Spain. The artist’s wishes had been respected. The painting was not in Spain when Franco’s torturers were hard at work (and the Greek militia were busy pulling toenails).
Where else in this Europe of the Convention of Human Rights were tears being torn from people’s eyes? Portugal, for example, with Franco’s friend Salazar whitewashing language, as they all do, in this old ‘new state’ of horrors. These were Mussolini’s children, like Hitler, playing their power games over broken bodies.
Whilst governments in other countries did not succumb, do not believe that they were not at risk. There were even colonels plotting in the English shires. Harold Wilson’s paranoia was well founded.
Of course half of Europe was in shackles chained, more or less, to the Soviet empire: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. These were the lands of the invisible hand of terror, of the unheard scream, the disappeared, of the silenced. Millions were tortured and millions died.
In the 1960s I was in England, in the UK, in a backwater of this sea of suffering and witnessing some progress. I was not fully aware of the cruel hand which pressed down on those desperate for the lack of a divorce, the need for an abortion, the need to hide their sexual orientation, the need to breathe air free of the stench of sexual repression, of militaristic, hierarchical, class-ridden restrictions, racism and sexism. Suddenly there was a confluence of liberality and reform within a surge of youthful optimism.
Google a little if you are not familiar with the reforms that took place in the 1960s. Try and imagine the time before and what it must have been like for those who were oppressed.
Do not believe, for one moment, the claptrap spoken about this period as having gone too far. It never went far enough. By what measure? By the measure of individual suffering at the hands of others.
“Is there no need for rules, for discipline? Should people just be allowed to satisfy their immediate lusts and desires without any check?”
What else do people say, as they have always said, to impose their will on others?
“The young are out of control. The frightening events in society are caused not by us, but by them, by their freedom, their saying things which we wouldn’t dare to say and doing things we wouldn’t dare to do. They call it art but what is it? Self indulgent rubbish and we pay for it. Where’s the respect? They do drugs and drink and smoke even though we tell them not to. We tell them that some of us did some of these things and it wasn’t good. But will they listen? And then quietly to ourselves, whilst biting our lip we admit the very worst of it. Which is … that they are young and we, we are old and they will take what we have and they will outlive us.“
Am I so clever that I know what should be allowed and what should not? Well, first of all banning or forbidding something is not the same as putting a stop to it, but it does indicate an intention to punish those who disobey. Allowing something will also not necessarily make it happen. For it will not happen unless people wish it. Recently I was asked whether it might not be a good idea to make young people swear some sort of allegiance to human rights as what they described as “a last ditch effort to shore up respect for the UN’s Universal Declaration”. Well, maybe, but better still would be to educate young people about human rights and the benefits to them, their family, friends and others. Engage them in the development and improvement of these human rights globally, for the world will soon be theirs.
Clearly, most young people are not out of control, they are, in the main, if anything too much under control. Most of the frightening things in our society are of our making. Who else can be to blame? Creativity is the only hope for a better future and bad art is only a step on the road to good. If somebody is doing something of which we disapprove maybe we should ask ourselves whether it is doing us any harm. Then we could ask whether we are being made to do it ourselves. If we are being harmed maybe we could try and engage with them and help them see our problem? Try to find a way for them to be able to do what clearly they wish to do without it harming us. We should support reasonable controls to prevent harm to others. Of course, it may be necessary to sanction those who harm others but surely it is better still to educate and prevent the harm in the first place.
But this is all well and good in a well ordered society, but it is this very notion that I fear is at risk. It is at risk because those who spread rumours of terror and discontent do so because they wish to accrete more power to themselves and their clique or to prevent its diminishment. It has always been so. Europe is not just a common market, not just a political union, not just a common currency, it is a creation of its time and its time was the Europe shortly after World War Two , when fascist , and the equally repressive and totalitarian, communist ideologies were still at play, everywhere. I don’t know what other options might work to ensure that Greece, Portugal, Spain and the new Europe, all of us, are safeguarded from jackboot militarism. How are we to be gently encouraged to stroll peacefully arm in arm?
Human rights were conceived as a defence against tyranny, democratic or otherwise. Rights are decided by us, human beings, and may need improvement. However we must be sensitive to ignorant blustering (and even more to concerted, clever and assiduously contrived attacks) Resist those who would undermine the fundamental principles on which our safety, our peace and our security rests.
When we hear a platitude:
“Rights? What about responsibilities?”
or:
“Why should Europe/Brussels/Strasbourg tell us what to do?”
or:
“Who ever thought the Euro was a good idea?”
We should ask: who is saying this and why? Are they blustering or conniving or are they offering serious arguments backed up with evidence and maybe even suggesting a way forward?
We must resist,and protest on behalf of those people who are suffering (or will suffer) and we must do so as if they were our own, for in truth, they are.
Josh Kutchinsky is an organiser of the Central London Humanist Group and founder and co-ordinator of Hummay a humanist support group. He was a director in a publishing company and co-editor of Merely a Matter of Colour – The Ugandan Asian Anthology. He was also director of a laser show company and produced the first comprehensive exhibition of lasers and their applications at the Science Museum. He writes prose and poetry as well as about science and technology.
A little rant,
Excellent piece, Josh. Will I see you in Oslo?
Thanks Bob.
Yes I will be in Oslo.
Josh, I’m not sure what point you are trying to make in the above article. Are you saying there shouild be no rules? Are you saying there should be no government? Whilst I agree that young people everywhere should be allowed to express their points of view and their idealism, surely if we had no rules at all, there would be anarchy. I believe, in Britain at least, that this freedom exists for all. Lets not forget how Nazism came to the fore – it came to the fore because the German Government were not giving the people what they wanted (eradicating poverty) , so the people decided to elect a fundamentalist government. Once erected, that state regime was very very difficult to dismantle.
Any party can promise the world to the electorate – what the electorate needs to bear in mind is “Is it deliverable?”
Josh,
Post-riots, I can fully understand your concerns. The appeal to a restoration of full authority, increased police numbers and powers, etc. are all predictable responses to the anti-social activities that have recently occurred.
However, the usual holders of authority positions have a problem in this day and age. They are all largely discredited. Why should anyone listen to politicans, particularly when their parents use private fee paying schools like Eton to take over the role of caring for and educating their children? What lessons can former members of the Bullingdon Club possibly have to draw upon when anti-social rioting behaviour is under scrutiny? How many MPs and Lords are currently still in gaol after illicitly fiddling their expenses? Can religious organisations – like the Church of Rome – really believe they can lecture the rest of us about morals with their widely revealed record of child abuse and financial dishonesty? Does anyone really believe that the media in this country is totally honest and reliable, post News of the World? Even the police, due to their involvement in the NOTW scandal and their apparent inability to contain looting activities, are now seen as being rather less than perfect.
I have my criticisms of the EU but I am aware – as a former politics lecturer – that our membership of the EU conferred the status of EU citizen on all of us, where previously we were all just subjects of the UK crown.
It is a fact that the European Convention on Human Rights is a corner stone of membership of the EU and as long as this country remains in membership of the EU then all ECHR rights will continue to accrue to all of us individually and collectively. No amount of media spin and hysteria can change that.
Like you, I see the familiar economic storm clouds of the 1920s and 1930s reappearing but I do not believe we will be so foolish as to abandon democracy as they did in those days and embrace totalitarianism.
You are right to be concerned to want to disprove the old adage that we learn from history that we learn nothing from history but – on this occasion, at least – I believe we will all remember the lessons of history.
“It was ever thus” would be too defeatist. We can escape bemusement by promises and threats (aka heaven and hell), by lies and rhetoric. We can focus objectively on the effects of leaders and policies.
Consider such pairs as Mandela-Amin, Attlee-Thatcher, Lenin-Stalin, Carter-Nixon, Sun-Mao… It should not be beyond psychology to identify the more damaging type and so help us to exclude them from power. Equally education could better accustom us to assess outcomes in real life matters (not just within the peculiarities of ‘school subjects’).
It’s worth noting that the basis of values in a concept of ‘human rights’ is both recent and debateable. History also warns that even persuasive ideological claims – we might want to impose democracy and secularism for example – are not always effective in particular contexts. To the Delphic maxims of Know Thyself and Nothing In Excess, humanists would probably add Weigh The Evidence.
Golden Dawn in the news
Press release
Budapest, March 13th,
EGAM vigorously condemns the recent Nazi comments from Golden Dawn activists and leaders and calls for the European Commission to start an infringement procedure against Greece for its deficient legal system.
The documentary by Konstantinos Georgousis, student in audiovisual, broadcasted on the UK channel, Channel 4, shows a Golden Dawn candidate at the former elections declaring:
“ The financial crisis will be solved once we will have get rid of this 3 million of immigrants. These parasites drink our water, eat our bred and breathe our Greek air. They are killing us! Once they will be gone, we will have money to increase salaries and put an end to unemployment. They are excrements, sub-humans. We don’t care about them. We are ready to reopen ovens! We will turn them into soap, but as it might be soap that irritates skin, we will only use it to clean cars and streets.”
EGAM vigorously denounces these Nazi statements that are deeply inscribed in the logic of recent racist and antisemitic declarations by Golden Dawns leaders in the last months and of racist crimes for which the party is responsible.
If a complaint was registered after the broadcasting of these statements, there are no doubts that it will never lead to any condemnation with aggravating circumstances of racism. Indeed, not a single condemnation has been sentenced with aggravating circumstances since 2008.
The European Commission has the power and the duty to act, to defend the founding values of the EU against Greek neo-Nazis.
EGAM asks the European Commission to start an infringement procedure against Greece for its deficient legal system.
This procedure should not be taken as a new hit for Greece, already strongly pressured by the Troika. However, it will allow protecting victims of racism in Greece, thus defending democracy and putting an end to the impunity with which Golden Dawn is acting. This impunity is a direct consequence of the lack of mobilization of democrats or the European Commission till now.
Besides, EGAM denounces the continuous support of New Democracy and Prime Minister Samaras to maintain Golden Dawn as a representative of Greece at the Council of Europe regardless of its public promises and these recent Nazi declarations.
Press & Communication Officer :
Aline Le Bail-Kremer
Cell : +33 6 73 06 99 74
@ : alinekremer@hotmail.com
Below is an article about to appear in the next few days in numerous leading European newspapers in Portugal (Publico), Turkey (Hurriyet), Switzerland (la Tribune de Genève), Greece (Protagon, TVXS,…), Macedonia (Dnevnik), France, Hungary, Germany,…
It was sent to me by Benjamin Abtan
President of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement – EGAM
benjamin_abtan@yahoo.fr
Hungary: to safeguard democracy, Europe must use Article 7 !
by Benjamin Abtan, President of the European Grassroots Antiracist Movement (EGAM)
It is now a fact: Hungary is no longer a democracy.
President János Áder has just signed the implementation decrees for new constitutional reforms that wipe out what was left of opposition forces against the government.
More particularly, the Constitutional Court is no longer allowed to give its opinion about the content of the laws and to refer to its own case-law – which results in the loss of almost all monitoring power on the legislature and the executive.
This meticulous destruction of democracy and its values – whose starting point was the tidal wave election of Fidesz in 2010 – has taken place for months and months under everybody’s eyes.
The attack was clear and continuous: crippling restriction of the freedom of the press, political tutelage of the Central Bank, inclusion in the Constitution of Christian religious references and of the “social utility” of individuals as a necessary condition for the enforcement of social rights, deletion of the word “Republic” in the same Constitution to define the country’s political system, condemnation of homosexuality, criminalization of the homeless, attacks against women’s rights, impunity afforded to perpetrators of racist murders, strengthening of a virulent anti-Semitism…
Only a few days ago, Orban officially decorated three extreme right-wing leading figures: journalist Ferenc Szaniszlo, known for his diatribes against the Jews and the Romani people, that he compares to “monkeys”; anti-Semitic archaeologist Kornel Bakav, who blames the Jews for having organized the slave trade in the Middle-Age; finally, “artist” Petras Janos, who proudly claims his proximity to the Jobbik and its paramilitary militia, responsible for several racist murders of Romani people and heiress of the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, that organized the extermination of Jews and Gypsies during the Second World War.
This political degradation gives us a gruesome history and political lesson. Throughout the twentieth century, representative democracy suffered the attacks of the two major totalitarian systems of the century – Nazism and Communism. Nowadays, in the twenty-first century, it is under the blows of an anti-European, nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic populism that democracy has fallen, at the heart of Europe, amidst the indifference of the European Union and of too many of its citizens and leaders.
Obsessed by the economic and financial issues, too indifferent to its fundamental values ??of freedom, equality, peace and justice, the EU has abandoned the fight to promote or even maintain democracy as the political system of its member States.
Unlike Putin’s Russia, for example, Hungary does not have instruments of power, and realpolitik cannot be invoked as a reason for this desertion. Since Hungary is strongly dependent on European subsidies and assistance, and since the EU has ominously shown in Greece how its financial support could be politicized to the extreme, a supposed lack of room for maneuver of the EU cannot be invoked either.
The fundamental reason for this desertion of Europe is unfortunately as simple as it is worrying: it is a lack of commitment of the citizens and European leaders towards representative democracy as a political system.
This is the reason why, since his re-election in 2010, Orbán has received the unfailing support of many European leaders, notably from his own political family; this is also why the European Commission does not use any of the instruments available – though it does have many – to enforce the EU’s fundamental values.
For example, the Commission, the Parliament and the European Council, where the states are represented, can act in concert to pursue actions under Article 7 of the EU Treaty, introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997 in order to avoid any backward step on democracy for any EU member state. Article 7 intends to suspend the voting rights of a country within the Council in case of a “potential violation of common values?”.
In Hungary, however, the stage of risk was overstepped a long time ago. Actions under Article 7 should therefore be urgently taken, as a first step towards a strong EU commitment to defend democracy and its values.
Similarly, the European civil society must continue to commit itself strongly to support Hungarian democrats who bravely fight within the country itself.
If the EU and the civil society were not to commit themselves with the determination required by the gravity of the situation, we would be doomed to witness its rapid decay, in Hungary and soon elsewhere, if the European commitment turned out to be insufficient.
Let there be no mistake: what is at stake here is the nature of the European project and the ability of Europe to preserve our common and most precious commodity: democracy. For several decades, the choice between barbarism and democracy has never been so obvious.
Resolutely, we have to choose Europe and democracy.