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Protest the Olympics? The Conundrum for San Francisco Liberals
On the surface, San Franciscans seem poised to approach Wednesday's Olympics torch relay much as thousands of progressive activists did on Monday in France: Paris City Hall unfurled its banner supporting human rights "everywhere in the world;" San Francisco Democrat Chris Daly passed his resolution in the city's Board of Supervisors to accept China's torch "with alarm and protest." Nous sommes toutes gauchistes. Or maybe not. Unfortunately, the similarity between Paris and the "Paris of the West" might have less do with politics right now than the prevalence of decent croissants.
Last week, Daly told me he'd begun to detect intimations of a leftist backlash against the Olympics protests. San Francisco activists wondered if challenging China's human rights record made sense when America was occupying Iraq and stuffing bean holes in Gitmo. As mainstream politicians (and some pundits on the Right) have embraced the the idea of protest, the backlash has grown even louder in the comments sections of progressive blogs, on liberal sites such as OpEdNews, and in the conspicuous silence of typical agitators. While the leftist Paris daily Liberation proclaims, "Liberate the Olympic Games," the homepage of the leftist weekly Bay Guardian currently offers no mention of the protests at all (a top headline: "Metal Mania!").
Tomorrow night in San Francisco, the ANSWER Coalition, a national anti-war group, will hold a meeting aimed at convincing activists to stay home during the torch relay. Organizer Nathalie Hrizi sees in the global outrage over China's human rights record the shadowy hand of Bush, Pelosi, and the CIA. In her view, the Dalai Lama is a "member of a feudal aristocracy that had slaves until 1959" and not worth defending. "There is sort of a hysteria being generated about the torch and China," she said. "And it's similar--very similar--to demonization campaigns that the U.S. government has used as a preface to war--for instance, Iraq."
In the midst of the Mideast quagmire, the skittishness in some quarters of the Left with anything smacking of humanitarian adventures is understandable, but regrettable. What the anti-protesters fail to grasp is that the human rights movement now finding its voice in so many cities around the world is global, peaceful, and grassroots in a way that has little relation to the terrorism-fueled anxiety leading up to the Iraq war. We didn't invade Iraq because people flooded the streets demanding human rights for Iraqis. We invaded because the Bush Administration convinced us Saddam had WMDs. War with China (or even a trade embargo) is not going to happen anytime soon without a gaffe on the level of an accidentally-sunk aircraft carrier. France and Germany know this, which is why their heads of state are talking about boycotting the Olympics' opening ceremonies. Our ties with China's economy are too great for a spat over sports to send us into another Cold War. But those ties are also why we have a responsibility to voice our concerns about China's human rights record. A global economy requires global citizens.
Of course, European politicians have led the charge on the Olympics protests. Bush, after all, would look silly boycotting the Games while supporting waterboarding and extraordinary rendition. But the citizens of San Francisco are not similarly constrained. I'm one of thousands of people living here who opposed the Iraq war from the start. I'd love to see Gitmo shuttered, warrantless wiretaps outlawed, and the nation's war criminals jailed. The Left has moral authority on these issues. There's nothing hypocritical about a city of people who've always stood for human rights speaking out against the abrogation of those rights abroad. It in no way diminishes our voice in America. I'd say it amplifies it.
The real question is not whether to protest but how. A U.S. boycott of the games would accomplish nothing, as we saw in Moscow and Los Angeles in the 1980s. At the same time, the Olympics have always been politicized and activists shouldn't fear using the Games to pressure China. It's widely believed that the PRC wants to use the Games less as an economic booster than to consolidate power among its own people. Protesters should think about how to bring their message to the country's regular citizens (around the filter of censorship), while making clear that they support their history and culture.
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We support the Communist in China. They understand the homosexual situation.Homosexuality went underground after the formation of the People's Republic of China. The Communist regime persecuted homosexuals, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when many homosexuals were punished with long prison terms and sometimes execution. Social tolerance of homosexuality declined.
Since the policy of Reform and Opening Up in 1979, the communist party has been loosening its control over this kind of behavior. But the practice of homosexuality is still labeled as a "moldering life style of capitalism". Our dear Comrade Karl Marx agrees that it is a capitalist vice. He condemned the sexual freedom advocated by Fourier and Saint-Simon as a relapse into a "bestial" state of "universal prostitution". Engels condemned homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two separate passages of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, describing it as "morally deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading". Marx apparently shared Engels' views, writing that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being" and describing the author of a text promoting sexual freedoms as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen"). According to the socialist writers Hekma, Oosterhuis and Steakley, Marx and Engels saw any form of sexuality outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage as a kind of degeneracy fostered by capitalism, which could be cured by socialism. According to Engels, "natural moral principles" would flourish in the socialist future, when (heterosexual) "monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality ? for the man as well, and homosexuality would simply disappear.
August Bebel's Woman under Socialism (1879), the "single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the SPD," was even more explicit in warning socialists of the dangers of same-sex love. Bebel attributed "this crime against nature" in both men and women to sexual indulgence and excess, describing it as an upper-class, metropolitan and foreign vice.
We support the Communist in China. They understand the homosexual situation.Homosexuality went underground after the formation of the People's Republic of China. The Communist regime persecuted homosexuals, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when many homosexuals were punished with long prison terms and sometimes execution. Social tolerance of homosexuality declined.
Since the policy of Reform and Opening Up in 1979, the communist party has been loosening its control over this kind of behavior. But the practice of homosexuality is still labeled as a "moldering life style of capitalism". Our dear Comrade Karl Marx agrees that it is a capitalist vice. He condemned the sexual freedom advocated by Fourier and Saint-Simon as a relapse into a "bestial" state of "universal prostitution". Engels condemned homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two separate passages of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, describing it as "morally deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading". Marx apparently shared Engels' views, writing that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being" and describing the author of a text promoting sexual freedoms as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen"). According to the socialist writers Hekma, Oosterhuis and Steakley, Marx and Engels saw any form of sexuality outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage as a kind of degeneracy fostered by capitalism, which could be cured by socialism. According to Engels, "natural moral principles" would flourish in the socialist future, when (heterosexual) "monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality ? for the man as well, and homosexuality would simply disappear.
August Bebel's Woman under Socialism (1879), the "single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the SPD," was even more explicit in warning socialists of the dangers of same-sex love. Bebel attributed "this crime against nature" in both men and women to sexual indulgence and excess, describing it as an upper-class, metropolitan and foreign vice.
The most effective thing we as individuals can do is to decline to watch the games. If you need reasons as to why your should do this, look at www.beijingolympicsboycott.com. A vote with our feet would have the added advantage of hurting Coca Cola & McDonalds.
Josh, I am a Democrat, not a Green. Also, I believe that I used the word "murmurings" to describe the concern I was hearing from the left about the torch protests - not "backlash". The core of torch protesters in San Francisco are progressives and lefties.
Instead of the United States bringing RIGHT WING Red China Communists up to United States LEFT WING Liberal Democracy; China has brought the United States government down to being RIGHT WING RED CONSERVATIVE CORPORATE COMMUNISTS; even though the United States denies RIGHT WING COMMUNISM, never the less, it is so.
Boycotting China won't do any good, the governments of China and the United States are now the same type of government, that's why RIGHT WING RED Rupert Murdoch chooses to live in China.
Sooner or later the people, the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION, of the liberal yellow, green and blue United States will come to realize the CONSERVATIVE government of the United States has transitioned to CONSERVATIVE RED; and now EACH AND EVERY MEMBER of the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION will have to choose to correct the situation. When the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States become aware that they alone will have to change our government, if our government gets changed, then corrective measures will be taken; but until the people of the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States take control in mass, the CONSERVATIVE RED China syndrome will stay enacted in the United States.
The people, the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION, really do control -- it is time for the people of the liberal 70% MAJORITY COMMON POPULATION of the United States to become dissatisfied and serious enough about regaining control to rally in mass for "Give me liberty or give me death," as was done against Britain's cruel RED when the likes of Patrick Henry chose to die for liberty in the United States.
We support the Communist in China. They understand the homosexual situation.Homosexuality went underground after the formation of the People's Republic of China. The Communist regime persecuted homosexuals, especially during the Cultural Revolution, when many homosexuals were punished with long prison terms and sometimes execution. Social tolerance of homosexuality declined.
Since the policy of Reform and Opening Up in 1979, the communist party has been loosening its control over this kind of behavior. But the practice of homosexuality is still labeled as a "moldering life style of capitalism". Our dear Comrade Karl Marx agrees that it is a capitalist vice. He condemned the sexual freedom advocated by Fourier and Saint-Simon as a relapse into a "bestial" state of "universal prostitution". Engels condemned homosexuality among men of ancient Greece in two separate passages of The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, describing it as "morally deteriorated", "abominable", "loathsome" and "degrading". Marx apparently shared Engels' views, writing that "the relation of man to woman is the most natural relation of human being to human being" and describing the author of a text promoting sexual freedoms as "that queer prick" ("Schwanzschwulen"). According to the socialist writers Hekma, Oosterhuis and Steakley, Marx and Engels saw any form of sexuality outside of a monogamous heterosexual marriage as a kind of degeneracy fostered by capitalism, which could be cured by socialism. According to Engels, "natural moral principles" would flourish in the socialist future, when (heterosexual) "monogamy, instead of declining, finally becomes a reality for the man as well, and homosexuality would simply disappear.
August Bebel's Woman under Socialism (1879), the "single work dealing with sexuality most widely read by rank-and-file members of the SPD," was even more explicit in warning socialists of the dangers of same-sex love. Bebel attributed "this crime against nature" in both men and women to sexual indulgence and excess, describing it as an upper-class, metropolitan and foreign vice.
Fixed the Green Party reference. Sorry about the slip-up.
Organizer Nathalie Hrizi is a slave of maoism till that day. that is her problem. it is not very intelligent rather violent as we can see in nepal. she should stay home and start reading a different more intelligent literature.
doris kunz from berlin germany
Nice post, Josh.
I'd like to know why the author thinks a front group for the Maoist Worker's World Party has ever had anything to do with supporting freedom and human rights or opposing dictatorship and oppression.
YINever, you must be part of the radical right to talk this way. You are certainly not a progressive. May be you are just trolling.
The Olympics are a toxic mime of excellence in war.
Hence this video
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Fw36bxwQ2I
Oddly, it is only when a so-called "Communist" country hosts an Olympics that all of a sudden a boycott is in order.
Why is that? If the U.S. had an Olympics again in LA, many of these people would be quiet. At that Olympics, in 1984, we were waging war on Nicaragua and El Salvador. Where's the 'outrage'?
Elydog, Steinberg is right about China. We really know how to handle the decadence that comes from your capitalist society.
As much as one might want to separate China's citizens and its government, they appear to be at one on the issue of Tibet. Of course, one might argue that this holds only because the government controls the flow of information, but that's pretty much true of the American government and its media. If Americans and Europeans protest in Beijing at the Olympics, both the Chinese government and the Chinese people will respond by feeling that a national insult was aimed at China by the West. The distinction stated between Bush, whose war places him in a position in which he cannot point a finger at others, and Europe and the American left, who largely opposed the war in Iraq, will be lost on the Chinese. They will see only hypocritical outsiders whose behavior is worse than theirs and who are showing disrespect to China. Indeed, most Chinese seem to think that the Chinese are the good guys in Tibet, and the Tibetans are attacking innocent Chinese shopkeepers. If we want to minister to China's ills, we need first to attend to ours. We have little credibility with the Chinese public.
You right, "out of the loop". We thin Chinese look at you fat farting Americans who consumes so much of the world's resources. If you want us to take you global warming CO2 producers more seriously, try consuming less and producing less CO2 by keeping you mouth shut more. Go vegetarian.
"[M]ost Chinese seem to think that . . . the Tibetans are attacking innocent Chinese shopkeepers."
D'oh! They did, on March 14. Yes, I know that the government in China is being terribly stupid in its heavy-handed censorship end PR. However, the only confirmed deaths in all the protests so far are Han Chinese shopkeepers (and one Tibetan girl working in a Chinese shop) - burned and stabbed by Tibetan rioters.
One thing I find particularly bemusing as the Pope and the Dalai Lama visit the USA, is how much both our progressive and conservative "elites" kiss the butts of theocratic despots who believe they either speak for a "god" or are themselves a living "god." Aren't we past that crap yet?
so no one else cares that the Dalai Lama admits to owning slaves?
Sure, China's records on human rights isn't perfect (neither is the US for that matter!) but at least Hu Jintao never owned slaves!
Seriously, I cannot in any way see how any ethical being can enslave another. I don't care about the historical context, it's wrong. Christianity was used to justify slavery also, and I'm sure the SOB's that did that are burning in hell right now.
I read another good Op-Ed on this topic. It asked why noone protested the Sydney Olympics despite the deplorable treatment of aborigines in Australia for the past 100 years!
Maybe, just maybe, these protests (and the media coverage they garner) are indicative of xenophobia and hatred of China because of their different culture and the fact that their economy is on course to STEAMROLL ours.
"Splendid one", seems to me you have an ego as big as the sea, like the typical fat farting American that you are.
Talk less and less CO2 will come out.