Saturday, January 10, 2015

The Complexities of Satire - Are you Punching Up or Punching Down?


If you engage in satire you should always ask yourself: am I mocking the powerful or am I mocking the weak? Am I punching up or punching down? If you are laughing at those who are weaker than you then that means you are a contemptible coward; if you are laughing at those more powerful than you then that is more admirable. Mocking your own group is also generally fine. So context is everything. Where you are standing is everything.

With this in mind let's consider some examples:

(1) a physically non-handicapped person mocking a physically handicapped person is punching down and that is contemptible cowardice. Similarly, a mentally normal person mocking a mentally handicapped person is punching down and is also a coward.

(2) rich people mocking poor people is contemptible, but poor people mocking the wealthy and the privileged is not. Mocking unemployed people is wrong, mocking bankers is fine.

(3) mocking powerful politicians, tyrants, dictators and other such authorities is generally fine. Mocking their victims is not. Mocking bigoted journalists who serve the powerful is fine.

(4) Historically the English had power over the Irish, so an English person mocking the Irish was punching down, but Irish people mocking the English was punching up - this no longer really applies any more, but it did in the past.

(5) homosexuals have traditionally been a bullied and marginalised minority, so a heterosexual mocking homosexuals is as a rule punching down, but a homosexual mocking heterosexuals is punching up.

(6) White people have oppressed black people and black people mostly have less power and wealth than white people, so as a rule a white person mocking black people is most definitely punching down. But a black person mocking white people is punching up.

(7) men have mostly had more power than women so men making cruel jokes about women is as a rule punching down, whereas women mocking men is punching up.

(8) Within Ireland travellers are a marginalised minority, so a non-traveller Irish person mocking Irish travellers is most certainly punching down. Travellers poking fun at non-travellers is punching up.

(9) within Ireland the Catholic Church traditionally had excessive power and they abused that power, so mocking the priests and the Catholic Church was punching up - if you were a Catholic Irish person. But what about British people mocking the backward, superstitious, impoverished Catholic Irish? Well, that's where it got a little more complicated didn't it? As a rule, that was punching down even when the substance of the criticism was correct. But this is where things start to get a bit difficult - a British person might just have wanted to help Irish people who were resisting the dominance of the Catholic Church, so they mocked Irish priests and the mockery was well-intentioned. But because they were British it was different than when an Irish person mocked Irish priests. The British person more than likely just ended up strengthening anti-Irish stereotypes in Britain, helping people who wanted to do down the Irish. In that situation, the British person needed to thread carefully.

THE BIG HARD DIFFICULT ONE!

(10) and now we come to the issue of the day. In Europe Muslims are a marginalised minority, relatively poor and mostly excluded from positions of power. Anti-Muslim bigotry is widespread. Anti-Arab racism is common, So a non-Muslim European mocking Muslims and Islam is generally punching down. A Muslim mocking Islam is fine - it's brave. But a non-Muslim European doing it in the context of the current position of Muslims within Europe - that is a lot more problematic. It's legal, and no one should be forced not to do it, but it's still punching down. Yes, people need to accept such mockery as part of a free society - but it is still punching down.

The complexity of the Muslim problem is this: within many Muslim communities religious leaders are oppressing women, homosexuals and others. So for Muslims to mock their own religious leaders is punching up. But for a Westerner to mock Muslims and Islam is mostly punching down. If a Westerner really feels the need to mock here then the mockery should be focused specifically on powerful and corrupt Muslim authorities - Saudi sheiks, Imams and so on. But in general, for a Westerner there are probably more effective and worthy targets for his mockery, such as the Western leaders who keep on invading and occupying Muslim countries.

Some might say that Islam is a religion, so mocking Muslims is not like mocking someone's sex, race, sexual orientation or nationality. But for nearly all Muslims, Islam as an inherited identity. You may not like that fact that it is an inherited identity, but the reality is that at the moment that is what it is. So mocking someone for being a Muslim is actually not that different from mocking their race or their nationality.

(12) Satire is complex and problematic. For example, not all white male heterosexuals have power - a lot of them are poor with no employment or no decent employment. They have no stable role in society. So mocking them is not really that brave either. In general, satirise powerful living individuals and satirise groups with authority - but beyond that, be careful about mocking broad groups.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Why I support the creation of an Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East


1 - The Greater Middle East should attempt to recreate most of the Islamic Caliphate that existed between the 8th and 12th centuries, the Golden Age of Islam when the Muslim Middle East was the centre of world civilisation and culture.

2 - This new Islamic Caliphate would at a minimum create a contemporary version of the Ottoman Empire, which stretched across most of the Middle East and provided hundreds of years of relative stability in the region - a situation that was preferable to the current fragmentation and chaos.


3 - This new Middle Eastern Union (MEU) would be more effectively able to defend the interests of the region and its inhabitants - it would not be at the mercy of external powers such as Russia, the U.S., Europe and China. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed subsequent to WWI, Europe deliberately fragmented the Middle Eastern region so that the West could control and dominate it. The only effective response for Middle Easterners is to reverse this fragmentation.

4 - The MEU would be similar in organisational structure and scope to the European Union - based on cooperation and not overly dominated by any one state. The EU's capital is in Brussels, not Paris, London, Berlin or Rome. Similarly, the capital of the MEU would not be in Cairo, Riyadh, Teheran or Istanbul, but rather somewhere like Amman in Jordan - this would symbolise the fact that the MEU cannot be dominated by any of the major regional states - neither Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran or Turkey is on its own powerful enough to control the Middle East.

5 - Extremism and fundamentalism are responses to weakness and humiliation - if the Middle East could regain its strength, stability and pride through an MEU, it would be able to develop on its own terms and provide better lives for the people who live there. The result would over time be less extremism and fundamentalism. If the region was more prosperous and stable then there would be less reason for people to emigrate from it to other regions.

6 - You wouldn't know it from the hysterical media coverage, but even over the last decades much of the Middle East has actually been modernising rapidly beneath the surface - life-expectancy has increased, literacy has increased, female literacy has increased, high fertility rates have declined and gleaming hyper-modern cities have sprung up out of nowhere in places like Doha and Dubai. Much of the current extremism and religious fundamentalism is a hysterical, desperate and ultimately futile response to this underlying fact of modernisation. If population increase continues to decline, then the number of angry young men with nothing to do will also decline, and that will also reduce violent extremism.

7 - Given the proliferation of education and communication technologies all over the Middle East, there is every reason to think this process of modernisation will continue, especially if an MEU can be created. But the modernisation will take place on terms decided by the people who live in the region – it will not and cannot be imposed externally.

8 - A Palestinian State in the West Bank and Gaza would be a member of the MEU. The MEU would recognise the state of Israel in return for Israeli recognition of a Palestinian State. Israel would then have full diplomatic relations with the MEU, and even eventually become an associate member, perhaps even becoming a full member over time.

9 - The West should give up any fantasies it has about controlling and dominating the Middle East. The West does not have the power to do this, as was demonstrated in the fiasco of the recent Iraq War. If the West stopped invading and militarily occupying Muslim countries then tensions between the West and Islam would decrease. The principal reason many Muslims resent the West is that the West keeps invading and occupying their countries.

10 - I am not arguing that the above is necessarily going to happen – just that it should happen and could happen.