Читать книгу A Citizen's Democracy in Authoritarian Times - Thomas S. Harrington - Страница 9

The Essential Question of Our Time: “Will We Live as Citizens, or Go Back to Being Subjects?”[19]

AB: How come an American of Irish descent speaks Portuguese, Galician, Spanish and Catalan?

TH: It’s just one of those accidents. I studied Spanish in high school and was thrust into the role of teaching it in an emergency a few years later, though without knowing much about the subject. And by way of reward for my valor, the school where I was teaching sent me to the Iberian Peninsula to actually learn it. It was the beginning of an adventure that continues to this day.

AB: You didn’t know that people spoke Galician and Catalan here.

TH: For most Americans, the idea that there can be nations that aren’t also states is difficult to comprehend.

AB: Well, welcome to a historic moment. Portugal has been bailed out by the EU, on Thursday we’ll be changing from Juan Carlos I to Felipe VI, and Catalonia is engaged the process of planning a referendum on independence.

TH: Well, first of all, it’s been a privilege for me to be a Hispanist for the past 25 years. Yes, there are a number of problems here. In my opinion, it’s because many democratic processes have only gone half-way. The mythology of the Transition was very powerful. I myself, in my classes, always used to speak of Juan Carlos and Spain’s enviable transition to democracy. And now we understand much more clearly that it was an agreement that was forcibly imposed. This was something we kind of perceived but we really didn’t want to know.

AB: So that it wouldn’t turn out to have an unhappy ending.

TH: Right. And let’s not forget that at that time, Europe was going through a period of economic growth, and growth always conceals problems. But nations, just like people, discover who they are at their lowest points.

AB: What effect has Catalonia had on you?

TH: The depth and density of Catalan culture never fails to surprise me. When you think you know a lot about it, you find out that there’s always another group of people quietly doing amazing things, and in a very cosmopolitan fashion. Take for example Prat de la Riba, whose era of prominence is a part of your history that I truly love. Prat de la Riba and his followers created one of the most extraordinary records of civic accomplishment in contemporary history, one which has no comparison in the other parts of the Peninsula. Prat de la Riba and Cambó had a vision of how to create institutions. And I think this is very important for people today to recognize this. We’re in a time of institutional crises, and many people think “All right, we’ll make a new life without institutions, a new and improved post-institutional life.” But the example of the Catalan leaders from a hundred years ago has taught me a lot, and most importantly, that there’s no substitute for good institutions. Catalans have also taught me that there are many different forms of democracy: democracy in the street, and democracy at the table, etc.

AB: The table?

TH: Sundays in my youth were like they are more like here, sitting around the table, talking and talking, all three generations. But now people don’t do that; the stores are open and so we go out shopping. But here, I find that the table, a few beers at the terraza after work, the bar—they’re all elements of a certain kind of democracy. Sometimes there’s a tendency among Iberians—and especially Catalans —to underestimate the importance of these little acts of associacionisme. But they’re very important psychologically. They work against alienation, and help to create new ways for people to organize themselves politically. It’s no coincidence that castellers and democracy are linked together. I visited a group of castellers one Friday evening and I was amazed—all those people, children, the grandparents... In the United States, people would just think building a castell was a waste of time. But it’s not. It’s the basis for lots of conversations; maybe it enables you to escape from your own personal problems. And many other things.

AB: Was it inevitable that sooner or later the Catalans would want to have referendum on independence?

TH: If you examine the historical trajectory of Catalan nationalism, and how it has arrived at these same gates several times before, we can see that it is rather natural and expected. And now that impulse has come again, mainly due to Madrid’s refusal to engage in dialogue. What other way forward is there?

AB: How do you explain Catalonia to the world?

TH: I admire the social fabric of Catalonia. I like to explain in terms of culture and also very often, in terms of freedom. For example, I was in Gràcia yesterday--Carrer Llibertat [Freedom Street]! Carrer Fraternitat [Brotherhood Street]! They must be from the late 19th century. They send out a powerful message about what Catalans’ ideals are. Think about it: now you can hear a boy who looks Chinese speaking in Catalan, something that was unthinkable even 10 years ago. Catalanisme has broken out from the accusations that had it pigeon-holed as a bourgeois movement, an argument that I had once signed on to. But after getting to know Catalonia, I discovered just how transversal catalanisme is, much more so than I’d thought.

AB: Is change the term that defines the period we are currently experiencing?

TH: Extraordinary change. We’re flooded with information. And the big powers know they can use that to mislead us. It’s also a time of a basic restructuring of political thought. Are we citizens or are we to be subjects again? That’s the key question right now. We’ve lost the guiding thread of the public discourse on citizenry. In my country, for example, people think less as citizens than they used to. Now we think in terms of security, of fear, and of what we’ve got to do to avoid angering the authorities, which is a neo-medieval way of thinking.

AB: Finally, Franklin’s old tension has become a reality: we’ve given up our liberty in exchange for security.

TH: Yes. And it happened without any social debate. After 9/11, the government created a discourse using the power of images that that declared, in effect, that Americans are subjects rather than citizens.

AB: When, thanks to Snowden, we discovered the existence of a massive spying program focused on emails and mobile phones, I heard Americans say: “I don’t care, I’ve got nothing to hide.”

TH: Here, you understand how dangerous such thinking is because of the social memory of the dictatorship. In the United States, the powers-that-be have been very smart in building a vision of totalitarianism that’s very much focused on images from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. And so people think: “OK, so if a dictatorship ever arrives, it would look like that.” It’s brilliant, of course; people don’t realize that, in fact, we’ve already entered into a period of very harsh authoritarianism, but one that looks very different from what they expect it to look like.

AB: And that was after you all wanted to become Americans because you didn’t want to be subjects of the English Crown.

TH: Yes, but if we don’t know our own history, then we can’t stand up for our rights. I look at the United States through the prism of 16th and 17th-century Spanish Baroque. Then, Spain was fighting a “War on Terror” Germany against Protestantism and in the Mediterranean against Islam. The United States are fighting, they say, against Islamism. It’s an ideological war, and that means the scope of what we’re allowed to think about it has to be made narrower. We hear incessantly about the heroism of soldiers, which is a Baroque ornamentation designed conceal the harshest realities of the present time: the fact that we’re an empire (killing and robbing foreigners), and repressing our own population.

AB: But weren’t you brought up to believe in the same idea: that America is an exceptional nation?

TH: Yes, but now the strength and institutionalized repetition of this idea is much stronger. I was a teenager when the Vietnam War finished, and I remember when and my friends and I used to say, quite openly: “I don’t want to be a soldier!” and “If you’re a soldier you’re an idiot!” If you say that nowadays, you can provoke a violent reaction, and accusations of disloyalty. And that makes many people internalize feelings of helplessness before the state...

AB: If that’s happened in a society where you have the freedom of expression, then what has failed? The Left? The media?

TH: All of it! A new way of being left-wing has been created, one based on identity and appearance. Like the idea of thinking that now we have a black man in the White House, that just because he’s black, he’s the solution, or that he cannot be a friend of big business or the goals of empire. Or that we’ve entered into a post-racial era. It’s not true. Obama is weighed down by structures. When he entered office, he had enormous support. The Democratic Party had an overwhelming majority of voters who wanted a health service like you have here in Europe. But instead of creating it, he and the party have devoted themselves to pacifying the insurance companies with their plan.

AB: Is that why you’ve referred to him as the ‘placebo president’?

TH: Yes, the consumer society has trained us to seek sensations instead of realities. Bauman has a great quote that goes something like this: “Modern man seeks sensations, and once he’s achieved the sensation, he goes off looking for new ones.” Voting for a black man makes you feel good. It’ll be the same with Hillary Clinton. When she wins they’ll be a party of self-congratulation: “Oh, a female president! When I think about my late mother, she could never...” These are very legitimate sentiments, which I share. But sentiment shouldn’t be a substitute for sensible thinking, which requires the construction of real alternatives for a society that’s changing rapidly. But they’ve done a very good job of pushing critical voices into the background. We can talk about anything, but only in places that are outside the public sphere. People are more interested in Snowden here in Europe than they are in the United States.

AB: You seem to be stuck in a debate over whether he’s a hero or a traitor.

TH: These are the type of binary questions journalists love, a way of evading the substance of the matter. Snowden’s revelations prove the existence of massively criminal and anti-constitutional acts, and yet were talking about whether or not he’s vain. Once again, there’s that tendency toward the Baroque: the fixation on ornamentation that diverts our attention from the heart of the matter.

AB: Where is politics going? Will it remain in the institutions or will it all move out into the street? And what form will it take ‘in the street’?

TH: I’m a little traditional in the sense that I thought Occupy Wall Street was an admirable movement, but that it didn’t have an ideological base or a set of organizing principles with which to sustain its anger. Talking is good, but after that you have to construct alternatives which involve institutions in some way. For example, what’s happening here with the CUP and, in a different way, with Ada Colau. It won’t be the socialism of the past, but if they’re smart and develop structures, they’ll be able to adapt socialism and turn it into a real praxis for the future.

AB: Are we the last generation who will have enjoyed a better standard of living than their parents?

TH: That will depend a lot on the drive shown by our sons and daughters. But I must admit that we are a generation who had it all, and we haven’t left much behind. Life has treated us pretty well, and I’m not sure whether we’ve lived up to our obligations. I believe in people’s capacity for self-renewal, but the alternatives aren’t very clearly drawn. We’re in a kind of zombie state, just like the Spanish Empire was in for a long time. And though it’s not fair, the drive to abolish this zombieism will have to come from young people.

[19] This is a translated version of Antoni Bassas. “Thomas S. Harrington: ‘La qüestió essencial del moment és: som ciutadans o tornem a ser súbdits?” Ara 15 June 2014.