Last week, Human Rights Watch released its annual report, World Report 2008, and its assessment of Russia has few surprises. The police crackdown on the Dissenters’ Marches, the detention and brutalization of protesters, the jailing of Kasparov, the legislative restrictions and government closings of NGOs, the application and extension of the Extremist Law, the efforts to paint Anna Politkovskaya’s murder as organized “from abroad,” the police crackdown on gay rights protests, and the mobilization of Nashi to prevent “destabilization” were all listed as examples of Russia’s deteriorating human rights record. Not much new here.
What is new in the HRW report is its emphasis on despots who masquerade as democrats. These are leaders who have mastered the “art of democratic rhetoric” as a means to gain international legitimacy, but rule their states using despotic means. It’s a category which allows HRW to place Putin alongside Uzbekistan’s Islam Karimov, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi. If you think of democracy as a grand ball, then it’s increasingly becoming a masquerade.
Whether Putin actually belongs in such esteemed company is a matter of debate. I personally think that HRW lessens their important point with such hyperbole. This is not to suggest that Putin is a democrat. It is only to say that he is no Musharraf or Mugabe. The Kremlin, of course, laughed off the report. “We take this with a grain of salt because it proves that the report’s authors don’t know the reality and don’t want to know it,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters in response to Putin being listed alongside such reprehensible Third Worlders.
Still, such couplings shouldn’t take from the report’s larger point that at the moment of democracy’s zenith is at the same time riddled with contradictions. You get this sense in the opening lines of Kenneth Roth’s essay, “Despots Masquerading as Democrats.” “Rarely has democracy been so acclaimed yet so breached, so promoted yet so disrespected, so important yet so disappointing,” he writes. Indeed, democracy has finally become the universally recognized government of choice. Even states that hardly fit its definitional criteria are pressured to give lip service to it through elections, constitutions, and paeans to the virtues of human rights and civil society. It seems every state claims to speak for the “will of people” even when it’s abundantly clear that they don’t.
HRW rightly laments this divide between words and deeds. To its credit, the report doesn’t just place the blame for it on the masqueraders. It also charges the so-called legitimate democratic states with too often treating the democratic mask as the genuine article. Among many states, namely the United States, democracy (and here HRW means these states’ emphasis on elections divorced from human rights) is a tool of foreign policy. “Because of other interests—energy, commerce, counterterrorism—the world’s more established democracies too often find it convenient to appear credulous of these sham democrats.” In the end, democracy has become stripped of its liberatory content. In its place stands “legitimacy” which, as HRW maintains, is easily achieved through “elections.”
While HRW denounces the division between words and deeds, I have to ask at what point does the masquerade become democracy’s true face? It’s interesting that after 200 years, what was once the cry of the dispossessed, the fuel of social revolution, and the hallmark of liberation has become the very means to deny all of these. At the point when democracy has become universal has it begun to serve as its own contradiction (It is also interesting to note that this moment of contradiction has occurred at the same time capitalism has become universal). If this is the case, then perhaps the solution to HRW’s conundrum (democracy in form but not in content) is to abandon it altogether and promote a new ideology of liberation, human rights, and freedom.
For those who likes comics
Aizek Azimov’s story (soviet style)
http://diafilms.com/v03_robotnetuda/index.html
Fh Been busy thanks to the mighty Kerviel. “Variety of reasons” – Clinton was not too distressed to have a distraction from his Lewinsky troubles. Madeleine Albright, who ironically owed her life to Serbs, who sheltered her from the Nazis during the war, was determined to break the power of Serbia in the Balkans so that the area would come into the western sphere of influence and obediently turn to peace, democracy, debt and consumption like the rest of us. She also wanted to show that the West and the US did not only bomb people with dusky skins. The plan was to finish up with a dependant isolated state dependant on US/Nato support and therefore a secure base. War or a Serbian surrender was necessary for this. Russia at the time was a debt strapped push over. I think also that Serbia was an example to other small states. Do as we say or we bomb you into the Stone Age. On a wider geopolitical scale, the United States, quite logically, favours balkanisation of any potential rival. Certainly this includes Russia and nearly succeeded. I have little doubt that there is a long term general aim to cause the same sort of problems for China and India. So when the Russians say that Kosovo is a dangerous precedent, they know what the US is after. Europe went along with it because they wanted to tidy up their back yard and were particularly worried about illegal immigration and general overspill from the Balkan mini wars. They were also in the usual difficulty that we are seeing now in Afghanistan that if you don’t join the playground bully in beating up his victim he may be nasty to you next. Because of the complete absence of balance of power NATO cut corners and now that the balance of power is re-establishing itself they are stuck with the bad things they did to Serbia. The outrageous unacceptable ultimatum that no country could accept (strangely similar to the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia of 1914 that kicked off the 14-18 war); the justification of the attack by outrageous propaganda and the wild use of the word genocide since quietly dropped; the bombing of the Chinese Embassy, claimed to be a mistake killing four Chinese diplomats and since admitted to have been deliberate and an attempt to assassinate Milosevic; the bombing of Serbian television HQ with 16 staff killed; the setting up a show trial afterwards in the Hague to justify what was done with lamentable disregard for fair trial rules whilst making it quite clear that no American would ever have to suffer such an indignity (and we know why now). Thanks to the resurrection of Russia there is now a very difficult situation in Kosovo with no good solution. We have promised sovereignty to both sides – shades of Palestine and the Balfour Declaration. The Russians are naturally not too upset about this but it would be wrong – in my view – to underestimate their outrage at what was done. The biggest eff-up of all for the West is that, as a result of all this, Putin has just now been able to buy a controlling interest in the Serbian oil and gas industry which was not part of NATO’s plan. That was one of the things Nato was after. The ultimate irony is that United Nations people say that Human Rights have been infinitely worse in Kosovo since the Serbs were kicked out.
Cyrill; sorry about MSM – it just slipped out.
Asimov edited a couple of collections of Soviet science fiction, did he not? He was from Ukraine IIRC.
Have you watched “Lost World”?
I don’t know about Aizek’s editorial work but he was very, very popular in CCCP.
What’s Lost World?
Just to keep records clean – Iraq was not about human rights. It was about WMD…
Iraq has never been about one issue, you are either mistaken or forgetful.
That’s true. It was also about Saddam’s close ties to Al-Qaida. Thanks for reminding us.
Don’t thank me since I did not say that. It was terrorists, not specifically Al Qaeda. Получился маханький метонимический перенос.
Chris – As the Heideggerian amongst us, what would you make of Scott Horton’s current piece on his Harper’s blog: http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002426 (you have to read down a bit to get to your man’s role, but it’s worth the read).
Thanks for the heads up on Horton’s review.
For Goldberg, the “left” finds its genesis in the French Revolution, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the “father of modern fascism.” (p. 38).
Wow. I knew Goldberg was dumb, but this is stupidity on a whole new level.
Chrisius Maximus on February 17, 2008 11:44 am
“What’s Lost World?”
OMG, Chris! (don’t understand me wrong – I don’t mean you my god
)
I missed the link to
“For those who likes comics
Aizek Azimov’s story (soviet style)
http://diafilms.com/v03_robotnetuda/index.html“
One interesting note about “democracy”
From BBC’s “Have you say” about Kosovo “independence”
” Added: Sunday, 17 February, 2008, 09:14 GMT 09:14 UK
Kosovo will undeservedly get its independence; Serbia will be demoralized to go ahead with its democratic reforms while the UN has and is becoming and even bigger farce.
What we in the west fail to realize is that we need Serbia far more than the Greater Albania being established today. This will cost us (Europeans) dearly while our US friends will not blink twice.
First time in my life that I publicly admit that Russia is right this time round.
Ian Martin, Dubai
Recommended by 72 people ”
NOT A SINGLE “Yes” in the list of “Most recommended”…. I’m really surprised
Well hf, I just skimmed it and I’m so sleepy my eyes are falling out of my head, but I think the idea that conservatives — by which he seems to mean AMERICAN conservatives — have no debt to Heidegger is pretty clearly false, insofar as at least the neocon variety is heavily influenced by Strauss, who was Martin’s student and has pretty obvious resonances with him, especially in how he reads texts.
Back when I was in grad school, I thought of writing a book one day on Heidegger’s legacy in Marxist, liberal, and conservative thought, using Marcuse, Arendt, and Strauss as respective examples. My dissertation was actually on the Heideggerian influence on Arendt. Which is intense.