MUSICIANS AS POLITICAL TARGETS

Anthony Tommasini, music critic of The New York Times, recently wrote a long article about political pressure on some leading musicians to protest policies of their respective governments. The focus was on two brilliant conductors, Gustavo Dudamel of Venezuela and Valery Gergiev of Russia.

How artists interact with society is a venerable and complicated question, and Tommasini’s article is certainly timely. I am fond of Tommasini as a music critic, whose judgments are insightful and never insensitive. But in this article, I think conventional (conformist) political narratives limit his objectivity.

Tommasini appreciates Dudamel’s concern and devotion to the young musicians drawn from poverty-stricken areas into the remarkably successful El Sistema, nurtured under successive Venezuelan governments. But he takes for granted the narrative of those pressuring Dudamel to condemn his government. Dudamel has spoken against violence and for the right of protest. I don’t know his views on the huge divide between rich and poor in Venezuela, or on the US State Department’s history of intervention and support for coups against democratically elected governments in Latin America, including in Venezuela. But it’s a disgrace to gang up on him for not going along with “our” side as defined by “our” media. And if his main concern is protecting El Sistema and its thousands of young artists, that establishes him as a real hero to go along with his place among the world’s foremost musicians.

The Gergiev story is not straightforward, but some similarities appear. Human rights issues are necessarily of international concern, whether involving suppression of social protest or repression based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. The Russian government is among those with intolerable restrictions denying Gay rights, and those policies should be protested everywhere. Gergiev’s position on the issue is limited to the assertion that his orchestras don’t discriminate, far from a convincing declaration of conscience and social responsibility. But it’s quite another matter to demand that Gergiev and Anna Netrebko, the celebrated opera singer, denounce their government and take “our” side in the renewed antagonism between the “West” and Russia.

The problem with Tommasini’s version is its conformity to “official” legend. Apparently it's not bothersome to pressure artists from Venezuala and Russia, while ignoring the outcry against repression by regimes considered our "allies". Tommasini does give a passing salute to Zubin Meta, the conductor of the Israeli Philharmonic, for publicly opposing the settlements and occupation policies of the Israeli government. But few of Israel’s outstanding musicians have spoken up against the colonial occupation and suppression of the Palestinians.

Nor in Tommasini’s essay is there a glance in the mirror, no hint that musicians in the United States may have an obligation to speak out on a host of oppressive foreign and domestic policies. Some of our artists have taken stands of dissent, including in periods of repression when it wasn’t easy. That arises from conscience, persuasion and courage when necessary, not from political targeting.

There is something wrong about what Tommasini calls the “Political Cacophony” challenging musicians. Making Dudamel and Gergiev convenient foreign targets is more a matter of political manipulation than of social responsibility. It’s hard to be taken seriously about human rights when selective focus conforms to prevailing political bias.

THEN AND NOW...

After too many years to count, I found myself back in a high school classroom yesterday and again today. Kevin, my grandson, is teaching English literature and two of his classes have read Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and seen a movie about McCarthyism. I was invited to be interviewed about the McCarthy years as I experienced them.

For an hour in each class we talked about “witch hunts” and related issues going back to my parents’ time, starting during World War I, and my own memories from childhood up to the present. As you may imagine, everything was on the table: the struggles and contributions of “reds” to social progress; communism and “red scares”; the FBI’s hounding of civil rights and anti-war activists; present day “surveillance”, deportations and racial profiling — too long a list to fill out here.

There was a warm feeling of connection despite more than seven decades of separation by age. We enjoyed and respected each other. For me, it was a wonderful time. It brightened my day even after the latest 5-4 abomination by the Roberts Court.

HISTORY LESSON?

In every crisis since WW II, those eager for a military response are apt to resurrect their version of history while calling up the old aphorism: ‘Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.’

Almost invariably, there is a villain, be it an individual, a country, or both, that is supposed to remind us of Hitler, Nazi Germany, and failed efforts at appeasing the aggressor. Now the designated villain is Putin; there is hand ringing over the ‘weakness” of the West that supposedly has encouraged his aggression. I even heard someone say, ‘this is the Sudetenland (which Hitler annexed early on) all over again.’

The point though is not whether history is “ignored”, but what lessons we learn. Perhaps we should look at the run-up to WWI and the aftermath of that terrible bloodletting, which had much to do with the rise of fascism. Imperialist competition over “spheres of influence” and control of markets underlay the vying scenarios of nationalist propaganda that fueled the outbreak of WWI. Afterward the crushing price and humiliation imposed by the victors begot the conditions that brought on WWII.

Much has changed and history can never really be replicated. But the themes of “spheres of influence” and the hubris of  “winners over losers” echo eerily in what’s going on now. So do the counter claims of strident nationalism.

Since the end of the Cold War, US presidents and their European allies have pushed military (NATO) and economic (European Union) fronts further to the East with no limits in sight. We are committed, as George H. W. Bush announced, to setting up a “new world order.” Its benefits to the people of European countries have been questionable, with austerity aggravating extreme inequality between and within nations. What is without question is the essential “leadership” of the US within the alliance, its expansive military presence, and the dominance of Western banking and monetary institutions over economic policy.

Russia for its part has developed its own oligarchy in the wake of the collapse of the USSR. Not surprisingly, it is unwilling to surrender its own national interests and pride by accepting the “new world order” on our terms.

Given conditions in much of Europe, unrest and popular protest are not unique to the Ukraine. When it occurs in Greece, or Cyprus, or Spain, or Italy, the powers that be in Europe simply say “live with it” and no Congressman demands US intervention. But big powers are not unwilling to play with fire when it serves their ambitions. The fuel for the fire is the appeal to nationalist antagonisms, but the underlying conflict is over “spheres of influence” and control. That, and the ultimate folly of imperialist war (cold or hot), are lessons I see in history.

SISYFUS AGAIN?

We hardly made it up the lowest reaches of the hill. Is it possible to slide back down into the Bush/Cheney abyss, or even lower?

In the NY Times (3/17/14), David Sanger musters the arguments of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Condoleezza Rice and the neocon pundits in and around the Administration itself: ‘we have a foreign policy disaster because Obama has made the US look weak, because of the reluctance to throw American military power into Syria, against Iran, and now into Ukraine against Russia.’

Echoes of the “news” stories by Times reporters Michael Gordon and Judith Miller leading up to the Iraq War — the neocons never quit pushing confrontation rather than diplomacy, promoting force and conflict, disrupting all efforts to find common grounds on any difficult problem. For them, the Cold War can’t be put to rest because the impossible dream remains: a US constructed “world order”, an “American Century”.

The fact is that every world power — Russia under Putin, or Britain under Thatcher, or the USA whether under Reagan or Obama — acts without anyone’s permission when it deems its “vital interests” directly challenged. Extreme nationalism is a plague whether it presents itself under Russian or Ukrainian banners or as the conceit of “American Exceptionalism”.

Neocons to the contrary, repeated failures at terrible cost have convinced most people that war, cold as well as hot, only makes matters more impossible. What a tragedy if barely begun efforts at negotiating some of the most difficult international problems were to be sabotaged in favor of a renewed Cold War!

I try not to let the voice of Cassandra take over my expectations. But there it is. Unbelievable. The wreckers who presided over economic collapse and disastrous wars have succeeded in making a shambles of even meager efforts at reform. Now the havoc they have wrought actually gives them the hope that they may soon take over the Senate as well as the House…. and what comes next?

DO YOU REMEMBER….

Granada? Panama? Nicaragua? Cuba? Guatemala? Chile? Iraq? Pakistan? Somalia? and how many more?

What country has staked out the world’s largest “sphere of influence”?  Which claims its “vital interests” are threatened to justify military intervention within sovereign nations in every part of the globe?

Putin claims a “vital interest” in Crimea. WE’RE SHOCKED!

Will imperial intrigues ever give way to the urgent need for cooperative attention to the problems that plague humanity? The last thing we need is a replay of the Cold War.

SAME OLD…SAME OLD

Somehow I don’t feel the urge any longer to say my 2 cents every time a new storm erupts in international power relations. It’s not that there isn’t a great deal to be said concerning all the important actors — their conflicting motives and the dangerous possibilities. But while things are always changing, so much is sickeningly the same. So much intrigue, posturing, and recklessness in the corridors of power…. all camouflaged as virtue on each side as against evil on the other.

The standoff in the Ukraine is reminiscent of crises that were once prelude to the monumentally tragic imperialist World War I. Hopefully, there is enough experience with the futility of war, enough hatred of war, so that today’s multiple crises may be contained politically and diplomatically. For that we’ll have to depend on the will and power of people everywhere. But an end to the games imperial powers play is not on the horizon, not mine anyway.