BECTU, the BBC and the BNP: Three acronyms and a political dilemma

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

I am a member of the Broadcast Entertainment and Theatre Union, BECTU. Like most people in this country BECTU understandably finds the BNP’s views abhorrent. Its policy of denying the party airtime is more difficult to understand, as it seems to contradict the union’s values as a democratic organisation committed to freedom of expression. Freedom of expression should be particularly important for a union of media workers, and it ought therefore to think about the meaning of the concept and its translation into policy.

Regardless of the fact that Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time looks like an unmitigated PR disaster for the BNP, was BECTU right in principle to argue for suppression of their views? Does calling for censorship not open up an intractable debate about who else should be censored and the criteria to be applied when making such a decision? And does it not represent a capitulation to the authoritarian values that BECTU sought to oppose? Should we fight fire with fire and thereby sacrifice a central principle? Do the ends justify the means? After some doubts I have come to believe that BECTU’s policy of “no platform for the BNP” is misguided.

In September the BBC decided to invite the BNP leader Nick Griffin to participate in its current affairs programme Question Time. This has been a matter of general political controversy, exposing some of the core contradictions of liberal democratic political theory and practice and posing a dilemma for all who believe in democracy, equality and freedom of expression. This is exemplified in the manner in which the issue has split the Labour Party with Jack Straw agreeing to appear on the programme and his cabinet colleague Peter Hain urging the BBC not to allow Mr. Griffin to appear. The Labour Party has previously had a policy of not sharing media platforms with the BNP. The party’s decision to be represented by the Justice Secretary therefore marks a significant change. The Prime Minister argued for the policy reversal by saying that, “If, on Question Time, they are asked about their racist and bigoted views that are damaging to good community relations, it will be a good opportunity to expose what they are about.”

In response to the BBC’s decision BECTU issued a press release on 28th September announcing the union’s support for members who chose on conscientious grounds “not to work on the broadcast because of the involvement of the BNP.” The day before the broadcast, BECTU announced that general secretary Gerry Morrisey would “speak at the Unite Against Fascism rally outside BBC Television Centre, London, on 22 October.” BECTU argued that “the party’s performance earlier this year in the European elections, does not justify inclusion in the programme, contrary to the BBC’s official view.” The day after the broadcast, BECTU issued another statement saying that “The BNP leader’s weak justifications for his extremist, far-Right beliefs will galvanise the political opposition to him and, most importantly, should encourage those voters who delivered a platform for the party in the European Parliament to think again about the further damage which the BNP would do to UK society.” The union also reiterated its belief that Nick Griffin should not have appeared on Question Time. Gerry Morrissey, general secretary, said, “We stand by our view, which is union policy, in arguing that the BBC should not have granted a platform to the BNP. Time will tell whether the BNP secures any electoral advantage from the broadcast.”

The BBC has justified its decision to include the BNP with reference to the organisation’s obligation “to treat all political parties registered with the Electoral Commission and operating within the law with due impartiality,” and with reference to the fact that the BNP has “demonstrated evidence of electoral support at a national level”. This electoral support should “be reflected in the amount of coverage the party received.” Although the legality of the BNP’s constitution is disputed, the reasoning of the BBC seems logically coherent and in line with its obligations. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the many well-intentioned people, including BECTU’s secretary general, who are, in effect, calling for censorship.

The BNP increased their share of votes in the European Parliament elections on 4th June by 1.3% on their 2004 results, thus winning two seats and representation at a national level for the first time. They won 6% of the vote nationally (943,598 votes) and “close to 10% in some regions”. This is a momentous event in British political history and a disturbing development for all egalitarians. What is heartening, on the other hand, is the general response by the public and the mainstream parties. Unlike in some other European countries, the political ideas of the BNP remain marginal and are consistently opposed by Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. It does not enjoy as widespread support as the Dutch Party for Freedom (14.8%) or the Danish People’s Party (15.3%). And due to the higher thresholds for representation in the British first-past-the-post electoral system, this does not translate into parliamentary representation as directly as in proportional systems. In spite of its relative electoral success, the BNP is still considered beyond the pale by other parties, and unlike in Denmark its core ideas have not been adopted by the social democratic, liberal and conservative mainstream. Nick Griffin’s performance on Question Time clearly showed that his parasitical attempts to co-opt liberal democratic discourse and present a “New BNP” failed. The party cannot run from its fascist roots and is unlikely to have mass appeal or to change the orientations of the mainstream parties. However unpleasant a phenomenon it is, it does not represent as great a threat to pluralism as parties with similar values elsewhere in Europe.
It is right for BECTU to be concerned about the rise of the BNP and to act against it. There can be no doubt about that. But, as Lenin asked in another historical context and from a different perspective and with different objectives than mine, “what is to be done?” This is really one of the “burning questions of our movement.” To answer the tactical question of how to respond appropriately requires some theoretical reflection on a number of dilemmas and possibly irresolvable contradictions of modern politics. These tend to present themselves as paired conceptual oppositions, such as the limits of democracy and authoritarianism, procedural versus substantive democracy, freedom of speech versus harm to society and individuals, universalism versus relativism, and reason versus emotion.
Democracy as a political system has its origins in ancient Athens. It has two semantic components – demos (people) and kratia (rule). It was a system by which the people governed the city state (polis). The people were conceived of as all Athenian citizens, which meant native, male Athenians over the age of 18. Women, descendants of immigrants and slaves were excluded from the citizenry. Citizenship conferred a right to participation in the assembly (ekklesia), which would constitute an executive council (boule) of 500 paid government officials elected for a one-year term. Between 503 to 322 BCE, “Athens lived under a radically democratic government” where “in a very real sense, the People governed themselves, debating and voting individually on issues great and small, from matters of war and peace to the proper qualifications for ferry-boat captains “
After the enlightenment and the French revolution, classical Athenian democracy developed into representative liberal democracy and became the ideal form of government towards which European states strived. Hardly any political movements since Hitler have defined themselves as opposed to democracy. Even Stalinists and Maoists have claimed to be democrats, as terms like “people’s democracy”, the oxymoronic “people’s democratic dictatorship” and names like German Democratic Republic or Democratic People’s Republic of Korea show. What we generally refer to as democracy today is representative liberal democracy. Although it means different things to many people, democracy is so hegemonic that even Nick Griffin appeals to liberal democratic principles.
Liberalism and democracy coexist uneasily, and at times they come into conflict with each other. Unlike classical democracy, which was founded on fundamental gender and class discrimination, liberalism secularised the Christian doctrine that all human beings were equal before God. The principle of fundamental equality made exclusion from political participation based on first class and later gender and ethnicity untenable and resulted in the gradual extension of citizenship rights to more of the population. Today, all adults regardless of class, income, gender and ethnicity have a right to in principle equal participation in the political process. In most contemporary liberal democracies, immigrants do not have the right to vote in national elections, but all citizens do, including BNP members, voters and sympathisers.
As the name implies, liberalism is also centrally concerned with liberty, which is usually understood as the right of individuals and groups to freely live as they choose as long as their choices do not harm others. A distinction is often made between positive and negative freedoms – freedom to and freedom from. One of the questions faced by anti-racists is whether the BNP’s right to democratic participation infringes on the right of others, e.g. ethnic minorities, to live in freedom. If so, how should it be addressed and what should be the balance between positive and negative freedom? The union’s position is that the BNP’s rights should be curtailed because their views are in principle different from those of other political opponents. What distinguishes the BNP from others is, according to Gerry Morrissey, that their “policies are reprehensible, anti-democratic and racist”. Most members will probably agree with this. Many may also agree that the union should therefore support efforts to prevent them from spreading their views in the media. However honourable the intentions, such a policy is problematic because it means relativising and compromising principles, which should be consistently upheld by BECTU. Freedom of expression and the right to political participation applies to all, even to those we fundamentally disagree with. Censorship is fundamentally illiberal and undemocratic, and a consistently democratic position would therefore defend it as an absolute value under all circumstances. By seeking to keep the BNP off the airwaves, BECTU has given in to the authoritarianism that it finds reprehensible about the BNP. It is a self-contradiction to do what we condemn others for trying to do.  As Noam Chomsky once wrote,

“it is a truism, hardly deserving discussion, that the defense of the right of free expression is not restricted to ideas one approves of, and that it is precisely in the case of ideas found most offensive that these rights must be most vigorously defended. Advocacy of the right to express ideas that are generally approved is, quite obviously, a matter of no significance.”

Parties and movements like the BNP should be opposed on the principled grounds that their ideology is irrational and unethical. This opposition should take the form of reasoned debate true to the dialogic nature of democratic politics, not by making concessions to the very authoritarianism we oppose.
A further question raised by BECTU’s decision is which criteria to apply when deciding who should and who should not be censored. In this case, the argument for censorship is the anti-democratic and racist nature of the BNP. How should BECTU then respond to certain strands of Islamism or Zionism? Should it, as the Dutch and Danish far-right politician Geert Wilders and Søren Krarup, argue for the suppression of Islam itself on the grounds that it advocates authoritarianism and sexism? How should contemporary democratic liberal racists like Wilders be treated, and how should we assess historical democratic socialist racists like Sidney and Beatrice Webb? There are no easy answers to these questions, if any answers at all, once censorship and denial of political rights to one’s opponents has been embarked upon. A way of avoiding these questions in the first place is to consistently uphold the rights to freedom of expression and equal participation. This must, of course, be qualified by the harm principle, which John Stuart Mill defined as:

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

This means that the BNP have a right to be heard, but that the exercise of that right is conditional on refraining from inflicting harm on other members of society. It also means that nobody is entitled to limit that right unless it is for the purpose of preventing harm to others.
It seems logically inconsistent for anti-racist democrats to wish to deny a racist party the right to be heard and scrutinised in public. Weyman Bennett of Unite Against Fascism said, Nick Griffin’s appearance on Question Time “will lead to the growth of a fascist party” . According to the BNP, this has been an immediate effect of the programme. The party claims that the BBC has acted as its recruitment agent, thus apparently confirming Peter Hain’s fears. But 9,000 inquiries out of 8 million viewers amounts to very little. Ken Livingstone has argued that it will result “in a surge in violence against people from ethnic minorities”. This remains to be seen. It seems impossible to establish any clear causal relationship even in the (unlikely) case that there is a correlation. Furthermore, it is not necessarily the case that all publicity is good publicity. As Gordon Brown has said, exposing the BNP may “make people see what they are really like.” On the contrary, silencing parties like the BNP may have the opposite of the desired effect by lending legitimacy to their bizarre claims that London has been “ethnically cleansed” and that they speak on behalf of an indigenous ethnic majority threatened by genocide. As with other radical movements, there is a risk that suppression will backfire and strengthen the movement.

What would be truly worrying would be if Jack Straw, like the then Social Democrat (now Liberal) Danish Home Secretary Karen Jespersen, began to speak of the need to keep “illiterate Somalis” out of Britain, promise that the Labour Party would ensure that Britain would “never become a multicultural society” where “Islam was considered equal to Christianity”, or propose building special detention centres for asylum seekers on uninhabited islands. Fortunately, the British political elite and the general public are firmly committed to multiculturalism, and the political poison of the BNP has not infected the mainstream parties like in Denmark. Although the BNP is parasitical on liberal discourse for tactical reasons, e.g. in its appeals to freedom, human rights and democracy, it has clear historical roots in European fascism. The same cannot be said about the Danish and Dutch parties with which it shares many points of view. The historical roots of the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands and the Danish People’s Party are not in pre-1945 fascism, although both parties have attracted members and supporters from more traditional fascist backgrounds. These examples illustrate that liberalism, ultra-nationalism and xenophobia are compatible with liberalism. In the same way, leading early 20th century socialists like Sidney and Beatrice Webb held views that are clearly racist.

Freedom of speech would have no meaning if it applied only to views found acceptable by most members of a polity at a given time in history. One’s commitment to freedom of speech is tested precisely when confronted with despicable views. Rather than following Hitler and Stalin in allowing the “free” expression of views BECTU agrees with, it should have followed Voltaire’s insistence on defending to the death Nick Griffin’s right to speak and be challenged. Freedom of speech has no meaning if it is relativised.

Notes

Of unicorns, rhinoceroses and improbable natives: An essay concerning human misunderstanding

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

[Unicorns are] scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant’s. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead. They have a head like a wild boar’s. They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions.

The Travels of Marco Polo. London: Penguin, 1958, p. 253

It shall suffice to my present purpose, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with. And I shall imagine I have not wholly misemployed myself in the thoughts I shall have on this occasion, if, in this historical, plain method, I can give any account of the ways whereby our understandings come to attain those notions of things we have; and can set down any measures of the certainty of our knowledge; or the grounds of those persuasions which are to be found amongst men, so various, different, and wholly contradictory; and yet asserted somewhere or other with such assurance and confidence, that he that shall take a view of the opinions of mankind, observe their opposition, and at the same time consider the fondness and devotion wherewith they are embraced, the resolution and eagerness wherewith they are maintained, may perhaps have reason to suspect, that either there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it.

John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. [1]

A friend of mine was recently complimented in ungrammatical Spanish for his “nearly perfect” mastery of the language. He is Spanish, or rather a “Spanglishman” – a Spanish-English hybrid. The person congratulating him for almost mastering his mother tongue, and doing it in an eccentrically punctuated e-mail, was Peruvian and thus a fellow member of the Hispanidad. The e-mail began as follows:

Estimado colega XXXX XXXXXXX:

Nos sorprende su excelente escritura del español es casi perfecta, muchas gracias por responder amablemente, le explico brevemente se trata de una investigación que estamos haciendo en Perú sobre la antropología del cerebro

So, one native Spanish-speaker was praising another for almost writing their common language as well as himself, but ironically the text was written in ungrammatical Spanish. He was doing it because he assumed that the other party, unlike himself, was writing Spanish as a foreign language. Like Marco Polo, the Peruvian colleague expected to find a unicorn and interpreted the rhinoceros he saw in light of his expectation, ignoring the signs that the creature before him was something else and previously unimagined. An “improbable native” like my friend is like a Humean black swan and shows us the limits of inductive reasoning that Popper identified. Like in the example with the black swan, it takes one “improbable native” to refute the theoretical proposition that “all native Spanish-speakers have Iberian names”. But in this case, the observer failed to even correctly identify the colour of the swan and kept treating it as white. So with Locke we may suspect that “there is no such thing as truth at all, or that mankind hath no sufficient means to attain a certain knowledge of it.” We can probably never be certain that we have reached the truth because we do not have perfect information. Only an omniscient being can have certain truth.

There is no question that my friend’s written Spanish is fluent, probably more so than most other native Spanish-speakers. He has published academically in both Spanish and English and worked in Spanish journalism before becoming an academic. The e-mail to which the person from Peru was responding did not have any “accent” that would make a native reader think it was the “nearly perfect” work of a foreigner, at least if the text was read “objectively” as text only. The text, however, was read in a context, as is all human linguistic production. We therefore have to turn to this context to understand what caused a Peruvian to praise a Spaniard for writing to him in “nearly perfect” Spanish.

My friend grew up and was educated in the Madrid area, but he has an English-sounding name. He is culturally and legally Spanish, as he spent his formative years in Spain and has Spanish citizenship. He also lives in England and is employed by a British university. This background knowledge is what made the Peruvian draw the false conclusion that he was corresponding with a “pure” British colleague whose Spanish must by necessity be inferior to his own. By his definition of a British academic, Spanish is a foreign language formally learnt in adolescence or adulthood, not a native language “naturally” acquired in childhood from family and the surrounding Spanish-speaking society.

It is a rational extrapolation to assume that a person living and working in Britain and being known by an English name will also be a native of Britain, as my friend also is. The epistemological problem is caused by the fact that he is also simultaneously a native of Spain. His native mastery of Spanish should be empirical proof of that, but this fact was overshadowed by the background assumptions made about him. These assumptions made one native reader of a text classify it as a very good but inferior approximation of “proper” Spanish. It seems that my friend’s Peruvian colleague failed to see what was before his eyes and instead saw what his culturally specific preconceptions about the world made him see. The interpretive scheme that was culturally available to him made him blind to the possibility that a person with a non-Spanish name who lives and works in an English-speaking country could be just as much a native writer of Spanish as he is himself. He saw what he expected to see, not what was. He did not discover through the correspondence that there was some other hybrid identity hiding behind the seemingly English name because the name in itself told him what he would discover. The context of English name and British university led him to interpret the text as that of a foreigner with a “nearly perfect” command of Spanish.

In Shakespeare’s famous tale of “starcross’d lovers” Juliet says:

‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy. Thou art thyself, though not a Montague. What’s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor any other part belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose  by any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d, retain that dear perfection which he owes without that title. Romeo, doff thy name; And for that name, which is no part of thee, take all myself.[2]

Shakespeare’s Juliet is a better ethnographer than our Peruvian anthropologist. She is able to break free from the dictates of convention and the preconceptions of Veronese society. She sees behind and beyond the name Montague and finds Romeo’s true identity in a Habermasian “ideal speech situation. “[3] But because actually existing speech situations are not ideal, the Peruvian “anthropologist of the brain” read the name and saw only difference, not identity. In this case the English name of the author was what channeled the interpretation in a particular direction, not the Spanish words of the text. His hermeneutic skills were less developed than Juliet’s, and like most or all of us he was unable to set aside or bracket (Husserl) what the thought he knew about the bearer of the name. So it would seem that there is a lot in a name that can lead the ethnocentric observer to misunderstandings. The surface appearance makes us mobilise a whole range of meanings that are not there and to ignore empirical evidence to the contrary.

In connection with our friend’s story of how he had been praised for his Spanish, my wife reminded me of an incident in a station in Tokyo in December 1997 or January 1998. Not speaking Japanese, she had asked me to ask where the toilets were. The man started to answer, then became aware of her racial otherness and that I was repeating to her in English what he was telling me. He seized up and said he spoke “no Engrish.”

When I was interpreting in Århus in Denmark some years ago, one of the Danish engineers I was working with asked me in a lunch break how I had learnt to speak Danish so well. It was apparently inconceivable to him that it could be my native language. He made his judgment based on the fact that I do not look like the typical Viking and that my role in the meetings was to interpret between Japanese and Danish. Hybridity was beyond what he considered possible, so rather than the in-between category that I belong to, he classified me as a Japanese who spoke remarkably good Danish, not as a Dane-ish person whose primary language was the same as his own. As an engineer, he was trained to think logically and sequentially. His reasoning was impeccably logical, but the conclusions drawn were wrong because the starting premiss was that a person who visually (racially) conforms to his idea of a foreigner could not be a native Danish-speaker.

Through my childhood, youth and into my 20s when I left Denmark, I have experienced many incidents similar to the one just mentioned, most recently when having drinks with colleagues after a meeting in London in June 2009. The other Danish person present did not explicitly question that my Danish was native, but she assumed from the way I look that I was a Greenland Inuit. This assumption is often made in Denmark and is problematic because of the many colonial and racist connotations that follow with it. Other ethnic categories that I have been pigeonholed into by my compatriots are Turkish and generically Middle Eastern, Vietnamese and Latin American. Very often the people who assign me to one of those categories will hear a faint, but non-existent, foreign accent and compliment me on my excellent Danish. Because of the way Danish nationalist discourse operates and the socio-economic positions of most non-European migrants to the country and their descendants, assumptions about ethnicity automatically carry with them assumptions about class position and even moral character. This is illustrated by another anecdote from my teenage years in a village in South Jutland. My family had recently moved there from Kenya, and I was questioned by a curious neighbour who gave me a lift in her car. She asked about my parents and their occupations. She assumed that because he had married an Asian woman, my father had to have been a sailor. The stereotypical image is that of a Danish sailor marrying a Yokohama or Kobe barmaid or prostitute. I told her vaguely that my mother worked for a company in the area, and the neighbour went on to ask whether she was a cleaner or factory worker. My mother has degrees from Keio and the University of Hamburg and was at the time responsible for all aspects of the company’s relations with its Japanese subsidiary and clients. But it was inconceivable to the neighbour that a non-Western migrant could be in a managerial position; the only jobs that fitted her template of Oriental woman in Denmark were those of cleaner and unskilled assembly line worker. Similarly, late one night in a bar on Gammel Kongevej in Copenhagen in the early 1990s, a stranger complimented my good Danish and went on to assume that because it was so good I must have grown up in the adjacent working class/immigrant district of Vesterbro. Had he listened carefully, or been able to use his sense of hearing rather than relying on vision and being misled by starting assumptions, he would have noticed that I do not speak with a Copenhagen working class with traces of Arabic or Turkish. The regional and class dialect there may be discernible elements of are Jutland and middle class graduate. But in Denmark a person’s racial features lead others to make assumptions about ethnicity, which in turn are assumptions about social class and education. They may be right in most cases, but often they are not. If, like has happened to me sometimes, you are stopped by the Danish police near the Danish-German border and do not look Caucasian they will automatically aggressively address you in English, because they reason that dark hair + border = illegal immigrant.

Danish and Japanese popular notions about their language and the inability of non-natives to master it are remarkably similar. So are their racial/ethnic exclusivist nationalisms. They both take for granted that one of their own can become competent in a foreign language, but many people believe that their language cannot be mastered by outsiders. So literary phenomena like Hideo Levy are much more unsettling than Joseph Conrad, Nabokov or Rushdie are to English-speakers. There was a Turkish-Norwegian novelist at a conference I went to last year. He had written a book in Norwegian set in Istanbul in the 1980s. Many Norwegian readers automatically assumed that it was a beautifully translated book, not that it was written in Norwegian by a man with a Turkish name. Like my friend’s Peruvian colleague, Marco Polo and Columbus, they added two and two together and got five.

In my experience, the more educated Japanese are not so surprised about foreigners who can speak Japanese or that you can be bilingual from childhood. On the other hand, people can have some bizarre pseudo-biological notions of the boundaries between the native and the non-native. I have often been in situations where it was taken for granted that I can speak Japanese without an accent, because their notion of mother tongue is exactly that – the language your mother taught you. Unlike in Denmark, I cannot recall ever having been told that I had a foreign accent. People can be surprised, or rather offended, that there are half-Japanese and racially Japanese children who grew up abroad and cannot speak Japanese properly. Many people expect children of Japanese mothers to speak the language, regardless of where they grew up. There is sometimes incomprehension that Latin American migrants of Japanese descent speak the language badly or not at all. This probably links with biologised, but much older, Shinto notions of blood, descent, purity. Japanese racism has deep indigenous roots that fused with 19th century evolutionism and sociobiogical nonsense to become modern Nihonjinron. People have expressed surprise that I genuinely like ethnicity-marking foods like sashimi and miso. If I show appreciation for good sashimi or well-cooked rice, the response will often be “sasuga Nihonjin”, something like “you are Japanese at heart after all”. Food seems to be as important as language to some people. Similarly, they find it improbable that a foreigner can learn to cook anything but a parody of Japanese food, perhaps with the partial exception of Koreans. It is not strange to them, though, that a Japanese can go to Europe and master French or Italian cuisine.

I have lived in London for almost 15 years. What is remarkably different in my experience here compared with Denmark, Japan and Germany is that the natives I have come across have never seemed to be unsettled by my competence in English. Rather than making assumptions about my ethnic origin before asking or imagining particular or any foreign accents, they have tended to assume that I was “one of them”. Rather than surprise that I was the same, when I am in fact different, they have been surprised when it has emerged in conversation that I am an outsider. It seems that at least people in the social circles I move in do not automatically ascribe a fixed alterity on the basis on racial grounds. Contemporary London is more tolerant of ethnic diversity and less prejudiced. Why is that? How can we account for this difference? I do not pretend to have all the answers, but part of it must be that it is a more diverse society that has taken a radically different approach to handling ethnic diversity than e.g. Denmark. Another reason may be that English is a globally dominant language and that nobody feels threatened by outsiders speaking it well or offended that they have an accent. It is a more confident culture than Japanese or Danish culture and at the same time, or perhaps therefore, also more self-critical and questioning.

William Connolly writes that:

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Then he discovered America. He did not discover a world as it existed in itself; nor could he have. He discovered a world of otherness, a world of promise and danger, utopian bliss and barbaric cruelty, innocence and corruption, simplicity and mystery, all filtered through a late-medieval culture of perceptions, conceptions, faiths, aspirations and demands. His discovery was an encounter that took the form of clashes between his cultural predisposition and unfamiliar beings – strange words, alien acts, surprising appearances, uncanny responses.[4]

Our cultural predispositions or the theories we apply to understand the empirical world inevitably structure how we perceive things. The encounter with the other is always a clash between unfamiliar and the classifications our cultures predispose us towards. We cannot avoid being culturally blinkered like Marco Polo or Columbus, and sometimes the interpretive schemes we apply to the world we exist in lead us to misunderstand it and ignore signals that could correct our preconceived misunderstandings. Cultural hybrids like my Spanish-English friend, myself and increasingly many people disrupt these established ways of understanding and misunderstanding. They “throw a Spaniard into the works” of the meaning-making machinery we use to make sense of the social world. The challenge for intercultural and transcultural understanding is to unlearn what we think we know about others and to see the rhinoceroses in front of us rather than to keep insisting they are unicorns.

Notes

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[1] http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/locke/locke1/Book1a.html#INTRODUCTION

[2] Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet. Act II, Scene II. http://www.enotes.com/romeo-and-juliet-text/act-ii-scene-ii#rom-2-2-45

[3] Habermas, Jürgen. “Discourse Ethics: Notes on Philosophical Justification.” Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Trans. Christian Lenhart and Shierry Weber Nicholson. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990, p. 86

[4] Connolly, William E Identity/Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox. Expanded edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, p. 36

The Danish People’s Party and mosques in Denmark

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

Today’s Guardian reported about a lawsuit by the teacher’s union NASUWT, which may bar members of the BNP from becoming school governors in England.[1] It seems that while the barbarians are at the gates in the UK, on the other side of the North Sea xenophobic radical nationalism has been mainstream politics for several years now.

As part of its campaign for the forthcorming local elections, the Danish People’s Party published a poster with an inflammatory, manipulated image of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul with crossed swords on the roof. This image and the following text are the first thing that greets visitors to the party’s website today:[2]

Danish People's Party campaign poster

DPP demand referendum on grand mosques

GUARANTEE

NO to grand mosques in Danish cities!

As a bolt of lightning from a clear and peaceful Danish summer sky the politicians on the Copenhagen City Council decided the other day to build a grand mosque in the city centre. Only the Danish People’s Party voted against it!

The money is coming from, amongst other sources, the terrorist regime of Iran, but none of the other parties cared about that.

In three years another gigantic mosque – on Amager and financed by the dictatorial state of Saudi Arabia – will be a reality unless the citizens stop it.

There are similar plans in other Danish cities.

We will issue you a guarantee: The more representatives from The Danish People’s Party are elected to your council in the elections on November 17^th, the more resistance there will be against the strongholds of Islamism, in your town too.

Vote Danish – also locally.

Danish People’s Party

www.danskfolkeparti.dk 3337 5199 E-mail: df@ft.dk

Accompanying the poster is a longer press release with the heading “Terrorist nests”, which I may translate and post later. It is a rambling, badly edited text, so for now, I will just provide the first paragraph and the party’s three objections against the building of mosques.

The press release begins with the statement that

Grand mosques are far more than just a random place for the Muslim faithful to meet. Experience shows that many mosques soon become centres of religious fanaticism and terrorist sympathisers.[3]

The party’s arguments against the building of mosques are:

Firstly, there is the issue of the architectural design of the mosque. A mosque built in a traditional style will fit badly into the surroundings in most Danish cities.

Secondly, there is the issue of the grand mosque’s spiritual meaning. Many mosques in Europe are named after Muslim war heroes, they are called conqueror’s mosques or something similar. In the Muslim view the mosques mark that Muslims have taken over power here – the incorporation of an area into dar al-islam, which had previously been a part of dar al-harb or [sentence incomplete]

Thirdly, grand mosques simply incite more Muslims to attend the mosque, and many Muslims will obviously flock to the mosque – this will have a negative impact on the local area, for instance through increased traffic and loud behaviour among those streaming to the mosque. Finally, extremist Muslims often try to exploit the large influx to the grand mosques to recruit new adherents. So even in cases where the imams of the mosques supposedly follow a moderate line, the establishment of a grand mosque will often lead to rising extremism among Muslims.[4]

Like the BNP, the Danish People’s Party are intensely xenophobic and nationalistic. Unlike the BNP, they are no longer a fringe movement, and there is no longer a parliamentary cordon sanitaire and united front against them. They are as close to being in government as is possible in the Danish political system. The ruling Liberal-Conservative coalition depend on them for their parliamentary majority. They are in a position to dictate terms to the government without the responsibility that follows with ministerial posts. The only remaining obstacle to their participation in a coalition cabinet with the Liberals and Conservatives is their opposition to the EU. If, as there are indications might happen, they moderate their stance on Denmark’s membership of the EU, they will be welcomed into a coalition. In the 2007 parliamentary election the party won 13.8% of the votes cast, giving them 25 out of the 179 seats in parliament. So, they are far more successful than the BNP. Their success is not only evidenced by their electoral success and status as the third largest party in the country, but also by the way in which Danish political discourse has been transformed. Most other parties, including the Social Democrats (consistently) and the left-of-centre Socialist People’s Party (occasional statements against the need to resist “Muslim men of darkness” etc.) have responded to the challenge posed by pandering to popular xenophobic sentiment rather than opposing it. The DPP has arguably set the agenda of public discourse and successfully pulled the mainstream in a xenophobic anti-Islamic direction. A British analogy would be if the BNP had 90 seats in Westminster and propped up a Liberal-Conservative coalition where the Liberal Democrats had over 15-20 years moved more or less to where the BNP stand on immigration and ethnic minority rights today. In this future Britain, the Conservatives would get fewer votes than the BNP. It would be a Britain where Labour MPs and government ministers would give words like “multicultural society” and “bilingual children” sinister, negative and dystopian connotations. This is what has happened in Denmark. However, the analogy must be qualified because the DPP has different ideological roots and has taken  different routes than the BNP. Although there are major areas of overlap with parties that grew out of 20^th century fascism, the DPP is not a fascist party. Its political theory is a perverse bastard child of enlightenment liberalism with some of the same roots as National Socialism, but like similar Dutch phenomena it should not be confused with fascism. This is perhaps what makes it even more disturbing to those who believe in pluralism. It is arguably the radically democratic and egalitarian nature of Danish political culture, which has provided the enabling conditions for the rise of a party like the DPP.

Notes

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[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/09/bnp-governor-review

[2] http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk/Forside.asp

[3] ”Stormoskeer er langt mere end bare et tilfældigt mødested for troende muslimer. Erfaringen viser, at mange af moskéerne hurtigt bliver centrum for religiøs fanatisme og terrorsympatisører.”

[4] For det første er der spørgsmålet om den arkitektoniske udformning af moskéen. En moské opført i traditionel byggestil vil passe dårligt ind i omgivelserne i de fleste danske byer.

For det andet er der spørgsmålet om stormoskéens åndelige betydning. Mange moskéer i Europa er opkaldt efter muslimske krigshelt, kaldes erobrermoskéen eller lignende. Moskéerne markerer i muslimsk optik, at her har muslimerne overtaget magten – indlemmelsen af et område i dar al-islam, som tidligere har været en del af dar al-harb eller

For det tredje ansporer stormoskéer ganske enkelt flere muslimer til at gå i moskéen, og mange muslimer vil givetvis valfarte til den nye moské – det fører til at lokalområdet påvirkes i negativ grad eksempelvis via øget trafik og højrøstet adfærdsmønstre blandt de tilstrømmende til moskéen. Endelig forsøger ekstremistiske muslimer ofte at udnytte den store tilstrømning til stormoskéer til at hverve nye tilhængere. Så selv i det tilfælde, at den linje, som stormoskéens imamer, skulle være moderat, så vil etableringen af en stormoské ofte føre til stigende ekstremisme blandt muslimerne.

We have won some kind of award

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

I am pleased but mystified that somebody has placed us among the top 100 blogs on Denmark. How did that happen? The Internet does move in mysterious ways. I have no idea how these choices are made, nor what it means. It may not mean much, but thanks to The Daily Reviewer anyway.

Top 100 Blogs

It seems to have been the translation of Juliane Henningsen’s question to the Prime Minister they picked up on. We wanted to write something more analytical on that and the politics of history/apologies for past deeds, but other things have kept us busy.

Both the particular case of Greenland and the general issues raised by the parliamentary question and the government’s response merit closer attention. It has made me wonder about:

• Why do Inuit Ataqatigiit/Juliane Henningsen choose to reopen the issue first raised and dismissed in 1998 now?
• Why was the reply in 2009 virtually identical to the one in 1998, in spite of major constitutional change in the form of the transition from home rule to self rule?
• Why have the Danish Social Democrats turned around on this issue and now aligned themselves with the North Atlantic nationalists?
• Which crimes committed in colonial history require an official apology, and which ones do not? According to which criteria?
• Does the Danish government’s reasoning not logically imply that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and the like should be forgiven because they had good intentions and different ethical standards?

Hopefully, there will be time to address some or all of these questions soon.

Prime Minister’s question on forced removal and assimilation of Greenlandic children

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

On the 10th August 2009 Juliane Henningsen, one the two Greenlandic members of the Danish parliament, asked a Prime Minister’s question about the forced removal of Greenlandic children in the 1950s. The following is my translation of the question and answer as recorded in the official parliamentary proceedings. The Danish source text is availabe from the parliament’s website at

http://www.folketinget.dk/doc.aspx?/Samling/20081/spoergsmaal/S2770/svar/endeligt/20090818/index.htm

Parliamentary year: 2008-09
Question no. S 2770
To the Prime Minister (Lars Løkke Rasmussen)
10/8 09 by: Juliane Henningsen (IA)

Full text of question:

Does the Prime Minister on behalf of the Danish state intend to issue an official apology and related compensation to the children and their families who as part of the Danification in the 1950s were removed from their families in Greenland and sent to Denmark to subsequently be adopted or placed in orphanages?

Written argumentation:

In the beginning of the 1950s the Danish state wished to Danify the Greenlandic school system and in connection with this create a group of Greenlandic elite pupils who were to become role models for the other children in this new Greenlandic school system. This “experiment” had the purpose of teaching Greenlandic children to be like Danes. In order to achieve this, the Greenlandic children were removed from their families and sent to Denmark. The children had no contact with their families, they were not allowed to speak Greenlandic, and they were generally cut off from Greenlandic society, which resulted in cultural, linguistic and identity alienation and a loss for the children. The experiment has scarred them psychologically and had consequences for the children who were part of the “experiment”, for their families and for Greenlandic society as a whole. The questioner would therefore like to ask the Prime Minister on behalf of these people whether he intends to issue them with an official apology and offer them compensation for their loss and suffering.

Date of reply: 18/8 09

PRIME MINISTER’S OFFICE

Date: 18th August 2009

Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s reply to question no. S 2770 by Juliane Henningsen (IA).

Reply:

Both Greenlandic society and the relationship between Greenland and Denmark have gone through extensive changes and a positive development in the time from the 1950s until today. But there are also events in our common history, which we must now realise have been unfortunate.

The stay in Denmark at the beginning of the 1950s of the Greenlandic children referred to belongs to the latter, unfortunate, category. But at the same time we must realise that the way of thinking in both Greeland and Denmark was significantly different at the time in question. And we must understand that the stay of the children was initiated with good intentions on the part of the involved parties in Greenland and Denmark.

History cannot be changed. The government considers the colonial era a closed part of our common history. We must rejoice in the fact that times are different now. Within the framework of the self rule arrangement we now develop our common history in equality and with mutual respect between Greenland and Denmark.

A British cheerleader for Chinese nationalism: Martin Jacques on “Japan’s resurgent nationalism”

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

Prescript

This was originally written and never published on the day after Martin Jacques’ article appeared in The Guardian. Now that his book When China rules the world (London: Allen Lane, 2009) is out, I felt it was time to air my doubts about his analysis of East Asian international relations. I have not yet read the book, but it has received a lot of media attention – far more than books by serious East Asianist scholars ever get. I was surprised to see John Gray, whose discussions of Japan and China always seem balanced and intelligent, heap praise on When China rules the world in The New Statesman. Having read his ignorant and partisan journalism, I am sceptical of Jacques, at least when it comes to Sino-Japanese relations and East Asian international politics.

Martin Jacques’ comment on “Japan’s resurgent nationalism” in The Guardian on 27^th September 2006 was based more on pro-Chinese and anti-Japanese prejudice than a serious understanding of East Asian history and politics.[1] Jacques seems to implicitly side with the – in name Marxist-Leninist, but in practice authoritarian nationalist – People’s Republic of China. It is doubtful that “the question that should really detain us is Japan’s growing nationalism.” There are other regional issues, and other nationalisms, that deserve attention, as does Jacques’ seeming obsession with one decontextualised aspect of contemporary Japanese politics.

His argument was that the election of Abe Shinzo as Japanese prime minister and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party is symptomatic of a resurgent Japanese nationalism, and that Abe’s election will exacerbate already tense relations between Japan and the PRC and destabilise East Asia. He rhetorically hints that this has “global ramifications”, but fails to be more precise about what those ominous ramifications might be. Jacques both overstates the importance of the individual office holder and the extent to which he differs from his predecessors. Mr. Abe is, after all, Koizumi´s chosen successor and likely to continue Koizumi’s line. His election will not lead to radical changes in Japan or in its foreign relations.

The author identifies himself as a visiting research fellow at the LSE’s Asia Research Centre. This gives the text an aura of academic credibility and suggests a certain expertise in Asian studies, but Martin Jacques is first and foremost a journalist. Visiting research fellows at the Asia Research Centre are provided with desk space and a library ticket to carry out a research project for a limited period. The affiliation with the LSE is unpaid and temporary. In fact, visiting research fellows at the LSE’s Asia Research Centre pay for the privilege of their affiliation.[2] He has a long career as a journalist, for many years as editor of the communist party monthly Marxism Today, later as a columnist and editor at several British newspapers. His track record as a social scientist is limited to co-editing three volumes on British politics and culture. His record in East Asian studies is even more limited, although his forthcoming book will redress that. This does not mean he is not entitled to write and publish about China and Japan or to hold strong opinions, but using the LSE’s name creates a misleading impression of social scientific expertise.

He claims that Japan has failed to apologise sufficiently for its wartime actions and that a “ritualised” apology was first issued in 1995.[3] This is factually wrong. There have been several apologies to China, Korea and other victims of Japanese aggression since 1972. Successive prime ministers, ministers of foreign affairs, ambassadors, the Diet and both emperors have apologised on many occasions.

Jacques also says that “Abe has carefully avoided expressing his opinions on Japan’s wartime record”. He has, in fact, written about the matter and spoken in the Diet and on television. It is strange that Jacques fails to mention this, especially since some of Abe’s public statements and his recent book Towards a beautiful nation (Utsukushii kuni he 美しい国へ) do contain nationalistic passages that are controversial, not only in China and Korea but also in Japan. As for his “casting doubt” on the validity of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Far East, all that Abe has said is that the indicted did not break any Japanese laws of the time. This was also the opinion of the dissenting judge Pal at the tribunal.

Where Jacques’ pro-Chinese sympathies are most apparent is in his mention of the territorial dispute over the “Diaoyu (or, as Japan calls them, Senkaku) islands”, as he puts it. Textually representing the Pescadores/Diaoyu/Senkaku issue in this way shows that in Jacques’ mind, the Japanese position on this territorial dispute is illegitimate: Their “real” name is Diaoyu, but the nasty Japanese call them something else. A more balanced writer would not have defined the dispute in this one-sided way and a priori have sided with one party. Even scholars based in the PRC and employed by the Chinese government use the more neutral Diaoyu/Senkaku. [4]On this matter, Jacques’ support for the Chinese nationalist position is explicit and more partisan than mainstream Chinese academics.

But if silence speaks louder than words, what is more important is his failure to discuss Chinese and Korean nationalism. Unlike the People’s Daily, which has covered it, he is also silent on Abe’s reiteration after becoming prime minister that he sees good relations with China and a summit meeting as a priority.[5] Abe told a plenary session of both houses of the Diet that “relations are now unprecedentedly close in economic and so many other areas. I believe that strengthening bonds of trust with both countries is extremely important for the Asian region and the entire international community, and it is essential to make mutual efforts so that we can have future-oriented, frank discussions with each other.”[6] These are hardly the words of a hardline nationalist bent on provoking conflict with China. We are still only a few days into Abe’s premiership, but indications are that he will seek to repair damaged relations with China and South Korea, take a hardline stance on North Korea and strengthen the US-Japan security relationship while generally developing a more independent and assertive Japanese foreign policy.

To the extent that nationalism causes frictions in relations between Japan and its neighbours, the main sources are Chinese and Korean nationalisms. In China, the party state exercises strong political control over a rapidly changing and increasingly ungovernable society. The Chinese government has manipulated anti-Japanese nationalism and allowed its public manifestation as one of the few permitted forms of popular protest. There are many and complex reasons for this, not least domestic considerations, where nationalism plays an important role in legitimating the government.While Japan is enjoying a “Korea boom” and integrating with the region on more equal terms than in the past, there are anti-Japanese riots in China. If growing nationalist sentiment is posing a threat to bilateral relations, this is not only or primarily on the Japanese side. To claim so in the face of massive evidence to the contrary is to risk straying beyond journalistic opinion into the realm of propaganda. It is certainly not balanced scholarship.

Jacques also writes that “it would appear that Japan is determined to continue with the mindset that has dominated its attitude ever since the Meiji restoration in 1868, namely one of superiority and detachment.” The claim that a single “mindset” has dominated Japanese attitudes to East Asia since 1868 is hard to believe and a gross simplification. Like in all other countries, there is and always has been a broad spectrum of opinion about the state’s external relations and foreign policy. There have been many competing ideas about Japan’s place in the world and East Asia since before the Meiji era. At times particular perspectives have prevailed among foreign policy elites, but there has always been competition between different conceptions of Japan’s international position, both within the foreign policy elite and in society at large.

To claim that Japan is “Far from being persuaded by the growing power and prosperity of East Asia – and in particular China – to turn over a new leaf in its relationship with the region” is quite bizarre when that power and prosperity is to a large extent the intended outcome of long-term Japanese policies. Chalmers Johson and many other specialists on East Asian international relations have argued this for years.[7] These policies are constantly evolving in response to, most of all, the rise of China. Without Japanese foreign aid, investment, technology and diplomacy, East Asia would not be as powerful and prosperous as it has now become. Japan has been the driving force in East Asian economic development, regionalisation and regionalism, but as the volume edited by Katzenstein and Shiraishi argues, the region has now moved beyond national models and a “flying geese” pattern with Japan in an undisputed economic and technological leadership position.[8] Japanese policies, at times in collaboration and at times in competition with other powers like the US and PRC, have unleashed forces, which neither Japan nor any other great power can easily control. Japan is certainly not detaching itself from East Asia, and particularly not from China. The importance of the relationship with China was underlined by Prime Minister Abe in his first press conference and speech to the Diet after his election. The history of Japan’s foreign relations after 1945 is the history of gradual re-attachment to East Asia. The post-war detachment from China until 1972 was imposed by the US, very much against the wishes of most Japanese politicians and diplomats, including Mr. Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobosuke. The Japanese superiority complex is increasingly a thing of the past and was always only a partial truth, because it coexisted with strong currents of Sinophile and Asianist sentiment both on the political right and left. Recent developments in Japanese popular culture also testify to this.

Martin Jacques is not alone in repeating what David Williams calls “the Allied orthodoxy”. This is the ideological notion that Shôwa Japan before August 1945 had the same kind of state and society configuration as Hitler’s Third Reich and that the two therefore had identical ideologies and policies. This argument is used to justify Allied conduct, including firebombing of civilians and nuclear war, against Japan as absolutely virtuous and Japan’s war as absolutely evil. But history is grey rather than black and white. Germany and Japan were allied and both lost wars against the Allied Powers. Pre-1945 Japan was militaristic and tendentially authoritarian, but never made the transition to fascism that Germany and Italy did. Germany under National Socialism had more in common with its enemy, the USSR, while Japan’s political structures and imperialistic foreign policy more closely resembled the Western Allies. There was therefore not one Second World War fought between an alliance of liberal democracies and Stalinism against fascism. There was one war in Europe and two wars in East Asia and the Pacific: One between Japan and China from 1931, and another between Japan and the US, Britain, China and the Netherlands from 1941. In August 1945 the USSR joined the Allied war on Japan. Japan’s regional ambitions in Asia were a complex mix of Asianist emancipation and Japanese imperial domination. The imperialism, however, was not substantially different from Western imperialisms at the same time. It had its particular Japanese features, but it was not genocidal or millenarian like German National Socialism. This does not mean that atrocities were not committed on the Japanese side or that they should be trivialised or denied, like Abe has done about the “comfort women”. Japanese aggression in Asia has certainly brought suffering, but this should not blind us to Allied, specifically US, barbarity in the conduct of war against the Japanese Empire.

It is odd that The Guardian chooses to publish Martin Jacques’ ill-informed and biased opinions on East Asia. By doing so, the newspaper makes itself a mouthpiece for a biased view of East Asian history and contemporary politics. He has valuable contributions to make in areas where he is more knowledgeable, but Japanese politics and foreign relations is not one of them. The Guardian and its readers would be better served by inviting contributions from historians and social scientists with expertise in modern East Asia. There is no shortage of them at the LSE and other British universities. Scholars like Chris Hughes, Chris Goto-Jones, Sue Townsend, Hugo Dobson, David Williams, Glenn Hook, Reinhardt Drifte, Arthur Stockwin, to name just a few, would have something more informed to say on the important topic of Japan’s relations with its continental neighbours.

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Notes

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/sep/27/comment.secondworldwar

[2] The Centre says this about the scheme:

This scheme is available for individuals outside the School wishing to undertake research on a full-time basis on a project which spans more than one social science. The goal is to develop early stage career researchers (pre-major review) working in an interdisciplinary fashion in the social sciences. The duration of an ARC visiting fellowship can be from one month to one year and can be renewed up to three years in total. The position of ARC Visiting Fellowship is normally open to those who have obtained a PhD degree. Resident Visitors are required to pay bench fees of £2500 per academic year (pro-rated for shorter periods). Exemptions to this are allowed only on an exceptional basis. Fellowship applications received by the ARC are recommended once per term on a competitive basis. These are without remuneration however the ARC is able to provide limited desk space. Applicants should be nominated by their home department together with an LSE academic who will act as research mentor.

http://w.lse.ac.uk/collections/asiaResearchCentre/Fellowships.htm

[3] The Murayama Statement of 1995 may have gone further than previous apologies, but it is by no means the first official apology. http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html

[4] For one of many examples, see Zhongqi Pan “Sino-Japanese Dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands: The Pending Controversy from the Chinese Perspective”. Journal of Chinese Political Science Volume 12, Number 1 / April, 2007, pp. 71-92

[5] People’s Daily Online 18^th September 2006. “Abe’s attitude key to ties, expert says”. 202.99.23.198/200609/18/eng20060918_303802.html

[6] “Policy Speech by PM Shinzo Abe to the 165th Session of the Diet”. http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:xhB8I6-vFIYJ:www.pk.emb-japan.go.jp/Prime%2520Minister%2520Shinzo%2520Abe/Speeches/Policy%2520Speech%2520by%2520PM%2520Shinzo%2520Abe%2520to%2520the%2520165th%2520Session%2520of%2520the%2520Diet.htm+%22relations+are+now+unprecedentedly+close+in+economic+and+so+many+other+areas.+I+believe%22%2B%22abe%22&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

[7] See Johnson, Chalmers Japan: Who governs? The rise of the developmental state. New York: Norton, 1996

[8] Katzenstein, Peter J. & Shiraishi, Takashi (eds.) Beyond Japan: The dynamics of East Asian regionalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006

Anglocentrism, Orientalism and not so funny accents on Radio 4

Some thoughts provoked by “Me, Putin and judo”

BBC Radio 4, 11:00 GMT, Friday 9^th January 2009

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West, which elided the Orient’s difference with its weakness. . . .

As a cultural apparatus Orientalism is all aggression, activity, judgment, will-to-truth, and knowledge.” (Edward Said)

The BBC’s use of fake foreign accents in its non-comedic drama and factual radio programmes is more than a mere aesthetic irritant; there are matters of political principle at stake and strong ideological forces at work. As in other areas of contemporary Western culture, there is an “Orientalist double standard” in the way the BBC represents East Asians.[1] The programme “Me, Putin and judo” was worse than most, but the following observations apply in general to the use of non-English accents as a dramaturgical device on radio.

The programme is no longer available online from the BBC, but it can be listened to on another website, which describes it as:

Former world judo champion Neil Adams visits Russia on a quest to meet fellow judo expert and Russian prime minister Vladamir [sic.] Putin, hoping to gain some insight into how judo has influenced his character. He speaks to Putin’s childhood friend, the Duma member Vasily Shestakov, who co-wrote a book with Putin on the philosophy of judo. Neil also meets Putin’s judo coach Anatoly Rakhlin and discovers how the Russia [sic.] are preparing for the next Olympics, especially now that judo has become so popular in the country as a result of Putin’s example.

R4Choice: Me, Putin and Judo 09 Jan 09

The programme featured excerpts from the writings of Kano Jigoro, the founder of judo. These excerpts were read in a distinctly Chinese accent. As the programme makes clear, and as most people know, judo is an originally Japanese martial art and its founder was Japanese.

The impression one gets as a listener is that East Asians are all the same to Radio 4 and that it is therefore not necessary to make distinctions that are otherwise made when representing Westerners or people from the former British Empire. French, Spanish, Russian and German accents would never be lumped together as a generic “European” accent, although these languages are closer relatives than Japanese and Chinese. However, East Asians are treated differently and no account is taken of the significant differences between spoken Chinese and Japanese, which belong to fundamentally dissimilar language groups.[2] In BBC Orientalist discourse, East Asians are treated as collectively different and internally undifferentiated. On the other hand, when it comes to the English language, fine distinctions are made between its many spoken variants in Radio 4 broadcasts. One regularly hears US, Canadian, Australian, South Asian, Caribbean and many varieties of regional accents from the British Isles.

The fact that careful distinctions are made between European languages, with English being treated far more sensitively than others, suggests that there is an implicit hierarchy of languages and cultures and ethnocentric double standards in the way the BBC represents them. Great care is taken to accurately portray nuances of pronunciation within the language at the top of the hierarchy – English. The greater the linguistic distance is from English, the less attention is paid to accurate representation of the language. In this hierarchy, languages and peoples perceived to be geographically and culturally distant and relatively unimportant, like Chinese and Japanese, are lumped together on seemingly racial grounds with no regard for the very real linguistic differences that exist. There are an estimated 500,000 people in the UK of Chinese and Japanese descent. The BBC’s treatment of them as an undifferentiated “Oriental” mass is unacceptable and seems to be incompatible with the BBC’s own policy on representing the ethnic diversity of the UK, which states that:

In a devolved, multi-ethnic and multi-faith UK, the role of the BBC in representing the different nations, regions and communities to each other and to themselves is indispensable. […] The BBC has a duty to ensure that its investment in production plays a crucial part in fostering and developing talent across the UK as well as ensuring that all parts of the UK, and all communities within the UK, are represented both in the production process and on screen. http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/charter/, p. 97

The problem in the broadcast was not so much one of non-representation as of misrepresentation. If accents are used, they should at least be authentic. A generic actors’ Chinese is not an accurate or appropriate way to portray a Japanese historical figure.

The use of non-English accents in broadcasting is an inappropriate device in general. It serves to distance the listener from what is being read and marks it off as alien and often as something not to be taken seriously. Foreign accents in comedy productions clearly serve the purpose of affirming British superiority over Germans, Italians, Spaniards or whoever else is made fun of. Even if Kano’s words had been read by a Japanese actor with a genuine accent, the communicative effect would have been similar to that achieved in comedy. The person and the culture he represents would have come across as exotic and the passages read out would be marked off as something alien and inferior to the authoritative native English voice of the presenter.

Reading quotes from Hegel in a theatrical Spanish, Greek, Arabic, French or any other non-German accent seems inconceivable unless the purpose was comedic. In fact, broadcasters are unlikely to use a German accent when quoting Hegel or a Greek one when quoting Aristotle. Figures from the European canon are appropriated as integral parts of British cultural heritage and therefore represented without accents. This indicates that prominent thinkers from the European tradition are treated more seriously and that non-Western thinkers are almost parodied. There may be good grounds for not considering Kano a thinker of the same stature as Hegel or Aristotle, but the disrespect shown is not to the man’s intellect but to his ethnicity. As the programme was seen through the eyes of a follower of Kano, there can be no question that there was an intention to put him down as a thinker. But putting a faux Chinese accent in his mouth is far worse than saying he was a lesser thinker than Kant. Rational argument and dialogue with a person and the ideas s/he espouses is fair, but to caricature two ethnicities is not. This kind of chinoiserie is irrational and unethical.

The thinking that informs the programme is the same as that of Ernst Glockmann in the 1920s – “They all look alike and they are all called something like Yokohama or Nagasaki.”[3] What is lurking in the background is a militant yet self-doubting Eurocentrism like that of the introduction to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which ironically seems to demonstrate that Weber’s general argument holds. The Eurocentrism we can observe today some hundred years after Weber is relatively autonomous from economic forces. China, Japan and the rest of Asia may be thought of as marginal and insignificant and therefore represented in the Western media as trivial or ridiculous, but this is because ideas are not mechanistically determined by material realities. Asia has an industrial, financial, demographic and military presence in the world to be reckoned with, but Western ideology continues to be relatively unaffected by this. The Kyoto School philosophers in Japan argued for a more pluralistic, multipolar, post-Eurocentric “world of worlds” (Goto-Jones) or “global world” (Arisaka) [Their translations of Nishida’s sekaiteki sekai 世界的世界] in the 1930s, and Okakura Tenshin criticised Eurocentrism along lines remarkably similar to Said’s Orientalism as early as 1903.  But in spite of long and sustained reflection by both Western and non-Western thinkers, “Eurocentrism is a resilient creed. After all the batterings of the old century, Europe retains its philosophic centrality as the new millennium dawns.”[4] So, as Erich Maria Remarque put, “Im Westen nichts Neues”. All quiet on the western front.

PS

The above is based on a much shorter e-mail sent to the BBC in February 2009 to ask:

1. Specifically, why writings by a Japanese author were read in a Chinese accent;
2. Generally, why the device of non-English accents is used at all and according to which criteria, as it seems to be applied in an ethnically stereotyping manner;
3. How the specific use of accent related to the BBC’s Charter and the organisation’s obligation to represent “the different regions and communities to each other and to themselves”

Just like when I asked them about why they showed footage from Korea in a report about Okinawa in Japan, they never replied. On another occasion, when I pointed out factual errors in a report about Denmark, the response was prompt, polite and appreciative. In fact, the journalist responsible asked for my help with future stories. This may be pure chance, or is it another aspect of how the “Orientalist double standard” works in broadcast journalism? There is probably not a Chinaman’s chance that I will ever find out.

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Notes

[1] I am developing some thoughts about what I term the “Orientalist double standard” in the global organisation and production of knowledge, particularly academic knowledge about non-Western societies and cultures. The concept of Orientalism used is therefore both of the Saidian and pre-Saidian kind – Orientalism as a Western ideological discourse about “the rest” and Oriental area studies as practised in Western universities. The literature I critically analyse is mostly on Japanese history and politics. The problem, briefly stated, is that different standards of intellectual competence are demanded of Westerners and Orientals. Many books and articles are published by prestigious presses and journals in the West by scholars with a very weak grasp of the non-Western object of their studies. They are sometimes even dismissive of indigenous scholars whose work they are hardly familiar with because of their lack of linguistic competence. The expectations of East Asian specialists on Europe and North America, on the other hand, are much higher, both in East Asia and the West. No Japanese, Korean or Chinese can get away with writing books on e.g. Germany without being able to read German or knowing past and present debates about the subject matter in European languages. Regrettably, the double standard means that far too much incompetent scholarship is produced in the West and that what determines whether a book or article is published is not so much its intellectual qualities as the status of the author. If s/he is a white, native English-speaker with a rank of senior lecturer/associate professor or above in an Ivy League or Russell Group university, s/he can get away with metaphorical genocide and textual carpet-bombing of the non-West.  I may upload some work in progress on this soon. As Orientalism is resilient and pervades European and North American culture, the broadcast media operate in similar ways

[2] The historical absorption of Chinese culture and writing and lexical items has not made the Japanese language structurally or phonetically similar to Chinese, just like Finland’s geographical and cultural presence in Europe and use of words of Latin and Greek origin has not made Finnish Indo-European.

[3] Hermann Glockner citing Hoffman, cited in Yusa, Michiko “Philosophy and Inflation. Miki Kiyoshi in Weimar Germany, 1922-1924” Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Spring, 1998), pp. 45-71. p. 57

[4] Williams, David “In defence of the Kyoto School: reflections on philosophy, the Pacific War and the making of a post-White world” Japan Forum, 1469-932X, Volume 12, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 143 – 156

Arctic science, Arctic policy and Arctic politics: A tale of different lifeworlds

Kenn Nakata Steffensen

On the 1^st and 2^nd of June 2009 the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science held a discussion meeting entitled “New frontiers in science diplomacy”. On 2^nd June 2009 the first afternoon session was dedicated to environmental security in the Arctic. The title was “Environmental security: Poles apart?” The session was chaired by Dr. Jim McQuaid FREng and the three speakers were Professor Howard Alper of the Canadian Science, Technology and Innovation Council, the British Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, and Professor Paul Berkman of the newly formed Arctic Oceans Geopolitics Group at Cambridge University’s Scott Polar Research Institute. On the same day an historic landslide election was held in Greenland, in which Siumut, the dominant social democratic party for three decades, was swept out of power by the left-wing nationalist Inuit Ataqatigiit on a wave of popular discontent. Much was said about policy at the meeting in London, but no mention was made of the election or of politics, and the inhabitants of the Arctic were only mentioned in passing.

At exactly the time the event in London began, the polling stations in Qaanaq in Northwest Greenland opened. Voting had already been under way for an hour in Nuuk and most of the country and for three and four hours respectively in the two eastern timezones. The two events are closely related yet took place in historically and culturally constituted lifeworlds so distant as to exist almost as parallel discursive universes. The European and North American scientists and the people of Greenland have overlapping concerns and in some cases identical objectives, but their epistemological positions are the “polar” opposites of large-scale structures and processes and small-scale subjective meanings and actions. The discourse of the speakers at the conference in London was one that systematically ignored the lived reality of the human inhabitants of the Arctic, such as the Greenlandic electorate, particularly their historical and political reality.

Policy/natural science discourse on the Arctic may be an extreme case, but it is nevertheless symptomatic of wider Western discourse on the non-West. It is a discourse, which systematically denies non-Westerners historical agency by treating them as “peoples without history” and as parts of nature rather than bearers of culture. In this Eurocentric discourse, the Arctic is constituted as a natural geographical region rather than as a dynamic political construct, as an object of scientific research and policy interventions working in partnership, but the subjectivity of its human inhabitants is left out of the equation. Nothing could be further removed from the world of the Greenlanders exercising their voting rights to make history, motivated by nationalist aspirations, frustration and anger with the political elite of the last 30 years of home rule.

Except for Mrs. Willis, the legally trained politician, the speakers and the chair were distinguished natural scientists actively involved in national and multilateral policy towards the Arctic as advisors to Western governments and intergovernmental organisations like the EU and NATO. The politician’s presentation will not be treated in the following. What the scientists said was characterised by, on the one hand, a number of surprisingly naive statements about science, the policies of state governments and international organisations and, on the other hand, a number of glaring silences about the fact that the Arctic is more than ice, water, rock and biological life. It is both nature and culture, but these natural scientists had almost nothing to say about its sociocultural characteristics or how Arctic human life interacts with the ecology. Like homo sapiens everywhere else on the planet, they live in societies, which engage in politics. Our “metabolism with nature” is culturally mediated.

Both the chair and the speakers seemed to share the same basic epistemological assumptions about the nature of science and its interaction with policymaking. Many social scientists and philosophers will probably find it a somewhat naive view. Science was conceived of as cumulative, progressive and politically neutral. There was no consideration of how scientific discourse is produced and reproduced by power à la Foucault. One might say that was an unstated implicit recognition that power is based on knowledge and that the exercise of political power as policy requires the mobilisation of expert scientific knowledge. But how science exists in sociocultural contexts and how scientific knowledge is itself shaped by power was not addressed. The idea and ideal of science was that of a neutral tool for solving policy problems by “making realistic assessments of prospects, impacts and time horizons”.[i] The role of science in governing international spaces was said to be: “to interpret the dynamics of the Earth system (e.g. phenomena of stratospheric ozone depletion and climate change) and to carry out the monitoring, reporting and verification needed to maintain trust in international cooperation.”[ii] Science is thus believed to play an instrumental role in furthering certain political goals, such as “trust in international cooperation”, which are beyond question, as are “the economic benefits that could come with increased shipping activity and resource development in the Arctic Ocean.”[iii] Underlying these assumptions is the Enlightenment myth of the “international republic of letters”, i.e. that international scientific cooperation has the potential to somehow tame the anarchic self-help system of international political and economic relations and transform it into a more cooperative order or “international sociey” as theorised by Bull & Watson. The hope is that scientists can enlighten the world in order to avoid a “slide into a new era featuring jurisdictional conflicts, increasingly severe clashes over the extraction of natural resources, and the emergence of a new ‘great game’ among the global powers.”[iv] There is a sense of urgency to the task, as environmental change is driving these undesirable political changes: “Before sectoral activities accelerate with the diminishing sea ice, there is a window of opportunity to use science as a tool of diplomacy to establish common interests in the central Arctic Ocen as an international space dedicated to peaceful uses.”[v]

One speaker asked “Where does science fit in – not only in Canada’s but other countries’ foreign policy strategies to affirm leadership, stewardship and ownership?” No satisfying answer was given, but the entire session opened up another question: “Where do human beings and culture fit in?”

Human subjectivity and its collective manifestation as political contestation was passed over completely. The populations of the territories discussed were only mentioned in passing in a remark that “the Inuit and other aboriginal citizens of nations like Canada, The United States, Russia and Denmark” are involved in the implementation of environmental protection measures.

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[i] Alper, Howard “The Canadian Arctic Research Station: International science partnerships to nurture and reinforce diplomacy”. Paper presented at Royal Society and AAAS discussion meeting on new frontiers in science diplomacy. Royal Society: London, 2^nd June 2009.

[ii] Berkman, Paul “Governing international spaces: Negotiating the Antarctic Treaty and the future of the Arctic”, Paper presented at Royal Society and AAAS discussion meeting on new frontiers in science diplomacy. Royal Society: London, 2^nd June 2009.

[iii] Alper, Howard “The Canadian Arctic Research Station: International science partnerships to nurture and reinforce diplomacy”. Paper presented at Royal Society and AAAS discussion meeting on new frontiers in science diplomacy. Royal Society: London, 2^nd June 2009.

[iv] Berkman, Paul “Governing international spaces: Negotiating the Antarctic Treaty and the future of the Arctic”, Paper presented at Royal Society and AAAS discussion meeting on new frontiers in science diplomacy. Royal Society: London, 2^nd June 2009.

[v] Berkman, Paul “Governing international spaces: Negotiating the Antarctic Treaty and the future of the Arctic”, Paper presented at Royal Society and AAAS discussion meeting on new frontiers in science diplomacy. Royal Society: London, 2^nd June 2009.