The famed educational establishment is getting all sorts of heat since they’re inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at their campus. Seems he had a hole in his schedule since he wasn’t going to be visiting Ground Zero. (No word yet on whether he’ll be permitted to go to Disneyland. And if you have to ask why I brought that up, you’re too young for me to explain it.)
Naturally the University is being hammered by people who want to see the invitation revoked, because they’re incensed that they’re being forced to come and listen to him express his viewpoints over…
Oh. Wait. That’s right. No one is forcing them to do so, any more than people who are repulsed by certain TV programs or radio shows have had the “off” buttons removed from their TVs and radios.
No, it seems that they are revolted by the very IDEA of the Iranian thug getting up on a stage at Columbia and denying the Holocaust ever existed.
Except…this is America. And at the core of what makes this country great is that, if we find an idea repulsive, we’re supposed to respond to it with more ideas, not the smothering of those ideas. He wants to claim the Holocaust didn’t happen? Fantastic. Have him do so, and then confront him with survivors of concentration camps, or soldiers who were there when the camps were liberated. Let him call each and every individual a liar to their face, if he can.
But who knows what the long-term result could be? There’s no such thing as an instant life-transforming epiphany. Even when it seems that’s what’s happened, odds are that the groundwork was laid for it over the course of years. Someone like the Iranian president (which is easier to type than his name) isn’t going to instantly realize he’s wrong, but perhaps the seeds of doubt can be planted, in him or in other deniers. It’s worth a shot. The dissemination of ideas is ALWAYS worth a shot.
In point of fact, he probably should have been allowed to lay a wreath at Ground Zero. And he should have been met there by an assemblage of family members of victims, standing there with photos of their loved ones staring accusingly, putting a human face on the terrorism that he purportedly supports.
Perhaps he won’t care. Chances are he won’t. But again, you never know. The man, for all his bluster, for all his vituperation, for all his wrongheadedness, clearly has a fascination with this country, almost as if he’s seeking our approval and has absolutely no comprehension how to go about it.
We speak wistfully of world peace. Of everyone getting along. But many people are reluctant to fully get behind the first step to such a goal, which is to understand the views of those in opposition to them. I’m not saying “agree with” or “condone.” I’m saying “understand.” Understanding why people believe what they believe, and–if you disagree with them–doing your dámņëdëšŧ to make them understand YOUR point of view. Understanding one’s enemy on human terms is the only real path to peace, which should be self-evident since thus far dehumanizing the enemy or trying to bomb him into oblivion hasn’t gotten the job done.
The song says, “Give peace a chance.” Won’t ever happen if speech is smothered.
PAD
• 
“Ahhhh… But, Micha, the question is…
Would the person have held that view without his influence on them? Were they looking for something to help form their prejudices or to confirm them?”
The formation of prejudice is a self sustaining process. Ahmadinejad is not the beginning or end of holocaust denial. He is the product of previos propaganda, and he’s helping perpetuate it and strengthen it. Unfortunatly, he appears to be very good at this job. His propaganda succeeds when it falls on fertile soil that is willing to accept it. but this does not mean that he’s not contributing to the problem. Propaganda is very powerful.
Hillary has said she would repeal the “Don’t ask don’t tell” policy, which is only appropriate since her husband was the one who came up with it.
Rudy and McCain seem to be saying they wouldn’t change it during a time of war which gives them some wiggle room but neither seems particularly eager to make a big deal out of it.
If you think changing the policy is wise, as I think it would be, Hillary is your best bet, even with the caveat that there is no reason to believe that she will spend any political capital on gay rights once she gets in.
Watching the Bin Laden episode of South Park just now makes me hope that they’ll have a take on Ahmadinejad. Maybe he’ll end up inside Mr Slave’s butt along with Paris Hilton. And Lemmingworth.
Happy birthday, Micha! 🙂
The US Army still has that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” thing, as far as I know.
I always thought it was pretty bizarre how the policy neatly parallels how many of us gays deal with our families: they doesn’t ask many questions about our romantic lives and relationships, and we don’t tell them anything that directly implicates that we’re gay, but usually everyone in the family knows what is going on.
To a certain degree I suspect that it is also true of Muslim countries. Some gays are persecuted. But others get to slide by so long as they don’t draw attention to themselves and they have the right connections.
Propaganda is very powerful, Micha, but it is sometimes only as powerful as the desire to be propagandized. Look at the growth of racial acceptance in the U.S. as an example.
Most of the whites who were marching alongside the blacks for desegregation and equal justice were raised around and in a culture that was full of propaganda that said that blacks were stupid, lazy, worthless, sub-human or just plain old inferior to whites in all ways. They chose not to believe that garbage and learned for themselves what the truth was.
The Birth of a Nation was a despicable film. It’s available on DVD and I suggest you seek it out and view it. The contradictory nature of those two sentences aside, it’s worth looking at to see where we were and where we went while surrounded by garbage like that. That was a popular film for its time. It made heroic figures of the KKK in its story and presented blacks as something far less then human. It was great propaganda, but it only propagandized those who wanted to hate.
Likewise, I’ve posted before about some of my early school years being a white student in a majority black school district. I could have met the racial hate I was the victim of with hate of my own. I chose not to. I’ve met people who hate blacks because they were mugged once by a black person and now claim that all blacks are thugs or just waiting for the excuse to be one. Of course, that’s utter bûllšhìŧ. They don’t hate because they were mugged once (even if they were) by a black man, they hate because they already did and they were looking for an excuse to validate or excuse their race hate.
I mentioned once (and sparked a really weird mini-debate) that I was Christian but my wife was Catholic. It was a slip of the tongue (so to speak) by habit. My wife and I (and, thankfully our families) don’t separate the two as strictly as some, but were both raised in areas that viewed those two things as almost completely and totally separate religions. I was raised around people who hated Catholics and viewed them as the branch of Christianity that “basically destroyed” the faith. She was raised around some Catholics who were almost as strict and unmovable about the idea of allowing their son or daughter to marry outside of the faith as the most fanatical orthodox Jews or Muslims that you could think of. For the life of me, I can’t and could never see the sense in their point of view. They hated because they wanted to and it gave them a reason/excuse to hate somebody. Religion was the tool for enabling that and they propagandized the hëll out of it to excuse their own base natures.
I think it’s almost human nature to hate. We have our family and our tribe. They are the ones we like and belong to. Everyone else is the other. There’s no real reason to mistrust or hate the other, but we’ll find reasons even if we have to make up the most pathetic and half assed reasons to do it. They’re black, yellow or red. The look funny, eat strange foods, talk funny or whatever other excuse.
We can learn though. It’s just that not everybody wants to. Take the gays in the military topic that’s running in the thread now for a strange little story with a point.
Here’s something that aught to strike some of you as funny (and explain some of my posts from the past.) I didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop or a soldier like everybody else in my family tree. I wanted to be a chef. Well, that or Ric Flair. Anywho… My best friend, who I’ve known since just before we started the second grade (or, as my wife like to put it to make us feel old, longer then she’s even been alive,) wanted nothing more then to be a Marine and later go into police work. Now he’s a chef.
Thing is, he went on a journey that created a whole lot more and bigger changes then I did. Part of what made him want to be a Marine was that it was a family thing. Well, a somewhat bigoted nature towards Asians and an absolute hatred of gays went right along with that. He disliked Asians and made fun of the way the talked, smelt, looked and the foods they ate. His hatred didn’t even always make sense. He often made the nastiest comment about the Japanese because of what they did to us at Pearl Harbor in WWII. This was from a guy who studied German and could tell you tons of favorable things about the Germans. He did differentiate between the Germans and the Nazi party however.
But gays? Ohhhh, he hated gays (but oddly, loved lesbians) to the point of stating that they should be beaten to death. Oh, and Pat Buchanan made more sense then any politician who ever lived.
We sorted drifted apart as we grew apart over such issues. I nor my parents had no problem with Asians and had gay family members. A few years before high school graduation, we pretty much stopped talking to each other.
A little over ten years later, we ran into each other again. We talked a bit and the changes were shocking. He left home, became a chef, moved to a different state altogether and started learning about people. Seems there are a whole hëll of a lot of gays and quite a few Asians in the professional catering and restauranting businesses. He met people that he had to work with in real close quarters, opened his mind a little and learned that there wasn’t a whole hëll of a lot there to hate. Hëll, he’s probably one of the most liberal people I know these days.
He was told to hate from a young age. He was hit with the propaganda from family and friends and taught to hate. Life experiences, and his own willingness to learn better, changed him. No amount of new propaganda will change that and all the propaganda that he was raised with and grew up with couldn’t stop it.
He changed. Some people don’t want to. Some people can’t. Those that don’t want to and those that can’t are going to be swayed by Ahmadinejad to hate anymore then you or I could persuade them not to hate. They want to have their hatred validated. If not by Ahmadinejad or some Klan guy, then they’ll point to the most minor act of violence, lawbreaking or cultural difference to justify it. They got mugged, so all blacks are thugs. Jews killed Jesus, so all Jews are evil. They worship an Elephant, they must be retarded.
Ahmadinejad is nothing. Humanity is the disease. Ahmadinejad is simply a symptom. But the good news is that we do seem to be growing up a bit. Hëll, if we’re lucky, humanity will actually be able to reach adulthood before it exterminates itself. hey, we can always hope.
Micha: “The point of this story: propaganda of the style Ahmadinajad provides has clients, many clients, even if you find him to be ridiculous.”
Yes, but I think there is nevertheless value in poking fun at dictators like Ahmadinejad. Michael Palin once observed that it’s difficult to have power over people if they’re laughing at you.
That should read…
Those that don’t want to and those that can’t aren’t going to be swayed by Ahmadinejad to hate anymore then you or I could persuade them not to hate.
“Yes, but I think there is nevertheless value in poking fun at dictators like Ahmadinejad. Michael Palin once observed that it’s difficult to have power over people if they’re laughing at you.”
Well, unless, you know, you’re talking about Billy Connolly, Robin Williams, Eddie Izzard or Jeff Dunham. They want to make you laugh and there’s nothing NOTHING you could do to stop them from making you laugh. All the power in the world over you and, hey, for humor of that level, I’d do whatever they told me to do.
The Birth of a Nation was a despicable film. It’s available on DVD and I suggest you seek it out and view it. The contradictory nature of those two sentences aside, it’s worth looking at to see where we were and where we went while surrounded by garbage like that. That was a popular film for its time. It made heroic figures of the KKK in its story and presented blacks as something far less then human. It was great propaganda, but it only propagandized those who wanted to hate.
What’s funny is that DW Griffith, the director, was absolutely amazed and shocked that people found it racist. Hard to believe but there you are.
I think it’s almost human nature to hate. We have our family and our tribe. They are the ones we like and belong to. Everyone else is the other. There’s no real reason to mistrust or hate the other, but we’ll find reasons even if we have to make up the most pathetic and half assed reasons to do it. They’re black, yellow or red. The look funny, eat strange foods, talk funny or whatever other excuse.
I’m going to slightly disagree; I think it may be human nature to discriminate, an attribute that once had a tremendous upside but has now (as it relates to other humans) caused nothing but trouble. Hate though, that’s a lot of work and not likely to be fruitful. Even the most warlike of cultures usually settled down and became farmers when given the chance.
I didn’t grow up wanting to be a cop or a soldier like everybody else in my family tree. I wanted to be a chef. Well, that or Ric Flair.
The Wrestling Chef. That could work…”I eat danger! I dine on death! Road Warriors! Revenge is a dish best served cold–preferably with an almond encrusted side dish and mandarin orange glaze!”
Well, unless, you know, you’re talking about Billy Connolly
You do know about FIDO, right? Billy Connolly as a boy’s zombie pet in a post zombie apocalypse society? (All conversations come around to zombies. Mulligan’s Rule.)
(Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.)
(And our first full length movie THE FOREVER DEAD just won Best Narrative Feature at the Ava Gardner Film Festival. Booyah! They were expecting The Barefoot Contessa and they got us…)
I either read somewhere or heard somewhere or got this idea somewhere that propaganda works best in a society with deep needs. One of the reasons the Nazi party came to power so quickly was Germany was falling apart. Tell people whose world is collapsing around them you’ll make it better, they’ll listen. Follow that up with a few successes, they’ll believe. The problem comes when people, a bunch of individuals, get comfortable. If there is no Great Enemy To All We Hold Dear That Must Be Eradicated Or Else Bobby Brown Will Be On Every Channel, people go back to being comfy. If people are comfortable, it’s hard to get them to move or go where you want them to. If people are on edge, they’ll move on their own, jumping at the least little noise and pounding it into submission with a large Roger Rabbit mallet. When was the last time someone in a zombie movie put their feet up with a Manhattan in a glass watching as the world fell down around them? (Bill–that could be a cool scene, actually, if someone thought they had control over the zombies and was using them to eat all his or her enemies.) So I don’t think propaganda so much relies on hate as fear. Granted, the arguement could be made that hate is just fear with a stick and some ‘tude. Leaders rely on propaganda because they have to lead, or they won’t be leaders. People rely on propaganda because it makes them feel like their leaders are doing something.
Congrats, Bill. I have to get that DVD. Remind me to do that.
I think the bear whose food you approach is likely to disagree on the absolute uselessness of aggression. The only difference between the bear and people is that the bear doesn’t have the capacity to think of such an encounter afterwards.
That doesn’t sound very different than claiming that because we allow them to extinguish, we don’t need fire.
The capacity to hate also indicates the subject’s capacity to love. As Joseph Campbell pointed out in the Muslim version of the fall from heaven, Satan didn’t rebel against bowing to man because he was too good to, but because he didn’t want to split his single-minded devotion to God.
If we make repression the first solution to the authentic reactions to our environment we don’t like, we only allow them to fester out of sight of the very reason whose influence we are trying to extend. This goes back to the fallacy of trying to fulfill all the needs of the individual by reason alone — it’s much like the danger of propaganda that contradicts reality.
And given no indication that we aren’t speaking literally, the fact that we make a discrimination every second of everyday belies the idea of that it causes nothing but trouble.
If we choose a vanilla ice cream over a chocolate ice cream, we’ve made a discrimination. If we change our mind that we should have chosen chocolate, we’ve made a discrimination. If we don’t change our mind, we confirm our original discrimination. What are our lives if not the sum of all our discriminations?
Jerry, in principal I don’t have an argument with you. Things did change for the better in some instances of prejudice and hatred, in the past and I would like to believe that over time the same thing will happen with the problems of the present. I am not completely pessimistic althoughat present I’m not very optimistic either.
But, the change from a more prejudiced to a less prejudiced society is not simply an act of will, or of seperating those who want to hate from those who don’t. It is a uphill battle, a conflict of ideas, and often more, in which propaganda is one of the tools. In a way this justifies free speech and listening to Ahmadinejad so that we can combat his bad ideas with good ones. I have no argument here. I’m just saying that we must recognize that propaganda is a tool, a weapon in fact, in this process of society change, and an effectuve weapon at that.
Also we must recognize that there is no guarentee that the changes will always go in the direction we want. When you look at the past it seems that society moved unerringly to a more tolerant present. But how did it seem for the people who were going through the process? How much hard work it took to get there? How many setbacks? Since Ahmadinajad is part of our stage in the history, we must recognize and understand how he works in order to push history in a direction we wish to avoid, and to figure out how we can counter his effect. By the way, Bush and the Neo-Cons were wrong when they thought they can bring the change they desired by invading Iraq. Figuring the next step in this very difficult game is not easy, to say the least.
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“Yes, but I think there is nevertheless value in poking fun at dictators like Ahmadinejad. Michael Palin once observed that it’s difficult to have power over people if they’re laughing at you.”
I agree. During the first gulf war Israel had some really good comedy — although mostly focused on us. I’m les atuned to Israeli comedy at present, so I’m not as aware of its role in society today.
I’m afraid I’m guilty of prejudice because I’ve allowed my self to think that american jokes about Ahmadinajad 9and his name) reflect ignorance or lack of awareness of the situation. This might be true in some cases, but certainly not in all of them. And Israeli humor can certainly reflect ignorance, lack of awareness and prejudice at times too.
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Sean, I don’t know what causes propaganda to work, or what causes people to be more or less prejudiced. It feeds on human nature as well as on actual problems. Both the Indians and the American immigrants had good reasons to fear each other. They also carried with them a natural inclination to be prejudiced, to fear the other, to suppport their own people. This mixture fed on itself to spin more prejudice more fear more violence and so on. It appears that we have been able to eventually overcome that, but only after many problematic events occured.
Boy, is this a depressing subject. So what about them zombies?
“I’m going to slightly disagree; I think it may be human nature to discriminate, an attribute that once had a tremendous upside but has now (as it relates to other humans) caused nothing but trouble. Hate though, that’s a lot of work and not likely to be fruitful. Even the most warlike of cultures usually settled down and became farmers when given the chance.”
Yeah, I may have over stated that a bit. I’ll agree on the thing beingt more the nature to discriminate rather then hate. Hate just comes when reason is lacking from the nature to discriminate or when emotion is added in to strange a way.
“The Wrestling Chef. That could work…”
Hey, why not. We’ve had a plumber, garbage man, repo man, teacher, cop, convict, dentist, golfer, baseball player, rock & roll player, race car driver and lumberjack to name a few. And, to be honest with you, I’m not entirely sure we haven’t had a promotion use that idea as well.
Congrats on the movie, Bill.
Micha,
I agree. It’s a crapshoot as to which way a society is going to go, but I think that the overall progress of mankind tends to show things going in the right direction. It may take 1000 years, but we seem to start acting like we may actually think about looking into going to the starting line to go in the right direction one day at some point or another. We may get there. We might not. But we have to accept that there are things we don’t like in freedom as well as all the good things. I think that is one of the things that gives us the strength to nudge stuff in the right direction.
“I’m afraid I’m guilty of prejudice because I’ve allowed my self to think that american jokes about Ahmadinajad 9and his name) reflect ignorance or lack of awareness of the situation”
Sometimes it is. At other times, it’s a way of dealing with the size and scope of the situation.
No less then one month after 9/11, our local morning DJ did a skit to rip on the poor service at a local super market. He put out an FBI warning to be on the lookout for several terrorist subjects spotted in the Richmond area. They were:
Bin Loafin
Bin Slackin
Bin Sleepin
Bin Shirkin
Not seen in the area was their brother, Bin Workin.
They then gave the name of the place were these “terrorist” were last seen.
Obviously, they were making fun of… what was that guy’s name… You know…. wanted dead or alive until I stopped thinking about him all that much….
Anyhow… They knew the nature of the threat and what we had just been through, but their humor kept them, and some of us, sane. I think it’s the same with IJustDidARod’s name. We know what he is, but that name just begs for comedy usage.
When was the last time someone in a zombie movie put their feet up with a Manhattan in a glass watching as the world fell down around them? (Bill–that could be a cool scene, actually, if someone thought they had control over the zombies and was using them to eat all his or her enemies.)
A scene very much like that appears in the sequel, if we ever make it…which would be more likely if I ever finish writing it…anyway, you’re on the list to be among the first to get the script once finished. I expect brutally honest criticism not at all mitigated by the fact that I will jump off a water tower if the reviews are bad.
Congrats on the movie, Bill.
Thanks. In all honesty, I’m not sure the competition had very many viewers, while, once again, we proved that zombies = box office, which no doubt boosted the votes.
I think it’s the same with IJustDidARod’s name.
I seem to remember an Iranian official from the time of the hostages named Ghotbzadeh (pronounced goats by day). had some fun with that, yessiree:
THE AMAZING CARNAC: “Goats by Day.”
ED: “Goats by Day!”
CARNAC: “Yes, that’s what Carnac said.”
ED: “WAW haw haw! And what is the QUESTION, O Mighty All-knowing One?”
(Carnac slits envelope…blows open…removes Question…unfolds…)
CARNAC: “What does Ayatollah Khomeini do when he gets no Women at Night?”