'The Elite Charade of Changing the World'

The modern elites seem to be broken. The fundament of those elites and their reproduction principles seem to be widely rejected. But this rejection means also directing votes towards anti-elites, populist candidates, such Donald Trump of America, who in fact altough a counter-elite is nevertheless also part of the upper - money-fuelled - class. 

Anand Giridharadas' Winners Take All. The Elite Charade of Chaging the World is focused on the American case - with its high concentration of wealth and prestige among the elites - but it can easily serve as a guide for any other developed country. 

The situation, according to Giridharadas: the gap between the upper and lower layers of the society only gets bigger; winners know the problem but want to preserve their status quo; instead of trying to change the system, the member of the elites are trying to rather redistribute their wealth through charities instead of putting more efforts into redesigning the system completely. 

Is it a sign of a failure of participatory democracy? Or rather there is a need to reinvigorate citizenship? Or to improve the level of trust into public intellectuals whose ideas seem to be often subsidized by the same members of the establishment they are supposed to criticize?

The book is very interesting for the detailed landscape offered and the overview of various aspects related to the lack of balance of the system of distribution of wealth and power nowadays. It questions this system by simply displaying its failures. But when thoughts are changed into commodities - part of the ways in which the system reproduces itself at the intellectual elites level - it is hard to hope in a due change.

This book is a warning of how far things are in terms of resistance to genuine change. The fact that the priviledged few are throwing up some crumbles of money to the many unpriviledged is sometimes a simple PR spin that doesn't bring social justice, it rather confirms an inequality status. In the American case, donations for charity involve tax exemptions therefore paying for generous causes is done for a very specific non-charitable reason. 

It is a good start if you want to understand the map of intentions and interests among elites nowadays. How the change may actually occur is a topic for another book, maybe.

Who are 'The Arabists'?

I went familiar with the writings of Robert D. Kaplan through his Balkan travelogue Balkan Ghosts - part of it I translated for a feuilleton published by a newspaper I was working on, in a time when the Balkans were on interest, although deeply misunderstood - which I've largely found relativistic, sensationalist and written in a very simplistic way. It rather has the style of blog posts, at a time when there were no blogs around, written fast, to cater an audience hunger for colourful descriptions and easy explanations of century-long conflicts. Those were the times...

Kaplan is a favorite of many South-Eastern European leaders who happily invited for an insightful chat, especially when they hope to have their name mentioned in his next travelogue, wrote also about South-Eastern Asia and went embedded with US troops in Iraq. He has the knowledge and the right connections for obtaining direct reliable information but don't expect his writings to be academically insightful. You might get the shape of things, but the content must be filled with something different if looking for a solid picture.

About The Arabists, which traces the roots of the Foreign Services elites in the Middle East, I had no idea it exists, until browsing a collection of books about this part of the world. The book was written at the end of the 1980s and republished. What is fantastic about this book is the big number of references and interviews regarding various diplomatic appointees in various positions in the Middle East. Not few of them were children of methodist protestant missionaries sent by their churches to converts Arab populations to Christianism in the 18th-19th century. In some places, like in what used to be called the 'big Syria', which included Lebanon of today, those missionaries clashed with the French representatives represented by the Catholic Church. Children of those missionaries were eventually born in the Middle East, spoke Arabic, returned in the State and were included in the white Protestant elites. They entered the Foreign Service but eventually their interest decreased and went to explore other 'exotic' part of the world, like Africa.

The Protestant religious activism shaped at a great extent the political activism and Arab nationalism, including through the university network created, such as the American Universities - in Lebanon and Cairo, that still remain important institutions of high education in this part of the world. Americans themselves prefer to study there for a full immersion into the elitist version of the local societies and for improving the language. The intellectual life was developed under the Protestant spell. For instance, the first Arabic printing press in Syria was brought by American missionaries to Beirut from Malta in 1834. 

But who really are those 'Arabists'. According to Robert D. Kaplan since the early 1950s onwards, there were two definitions that will exist side by side. One, for the use of the Foreign Service and the Protestant missionaries, referred to 'someone who spoke Arabic well and had substantial living experience in the Arab world'. The other one, public and according to the author embraced by the 'Jewish public' was: 'Someone who loved Arabs, often because he hated Jews'. The latter acception prevailed sometimes in the US diplomatic approaches to the Middle East peace process, including through the policies of the American embassy in Tel Aviv - very knowledgeable in Arab affairs, speaking the language, but not Hebrew (which is spoken in only one country, anyway). I might add that the current pathos of the US administration towards Israel is often based also on a religious basis, the neo-evangelical missionarism which is equally toxic and anti-Semitic in its origin.

However, that 'love' for the Arabic speaking realm has some limits, many of them. It did not have the state-building outreach of the Brits - who, like Lawrence of Arabia or Gertrude Bell were genuinely believing that they can change the course of events and the geopolitical configuration of the region. Many were just too desillusioned with their Western bubble and were looking for an exotic connection to the outside world. They pretended not only to 'understand the Arabs' but they assumed that their disgust toward the unreliable political elites and corruption would in fact help the local societies to change. More often those diplomats chose to change their location when apparently things were not following their designs.

Following the end of the Cold War, when the local - especially Republican - American elites lost their grasp of the realities as the binary US/Russia (which generously got involved in the elite building in many places in the Middle East, Syria being one of them) conflict ceased to exist. The life of the Arabists fell the victim of the 'rampant shallowness and careerism and the sterilization of embassy life. The Foreign Service, after all, mirrors the society from which it draws it recruits, and these recruits are consumed with status and advancement and less concerned with the subject of their expertise that their predecessors were'. 

Robert D. Kaplan avoids making any conclusion. But it is enough to read only for one day the flows of news regarding America's adventures in the Middle East to see how low the standards sunk. It can't get any lower. 

'Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum'

Identity is a nightmare. Either you belong to the majority, therefore in a position of power, or to a minority/migration community, identity is self-explanatory. You have to permanently confirm who you are and request others to subscribe to the group narrative. Request by force, if necessary, as often happened in national states in the last decades. 

Germany is a special case within the European context, given the post-war pressure towards 'behaving' in a more inclusive way and the identity split in two states. Did it matter in the end, when it comes to the national identity? Adding the term 'Heimat' - that German country defined by the 19th century philosophy which means more than a geographical determination - to a ministry - 'Ministerium des Innen für Bau und Heimat' - plus the sometimes physical aggressive outburst of the far-right in some parts of the country - Sachsen is a notorius example, but unfortunately not the only one - requests a different answer.

What does it mean to live in the Heimat? Authors with foreign-sounding names, some with a different skin colour, many born in Germany and with a German passport are sharing their so-called 'multicultural' experiences in Germany - and one in Austria - in a remarkable volume edited by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah.

At certain extents there are the experiences of everyone having lived here, with a non-German name, a slight accent, which looks different, doesn't have blonde hair and blue eyes. How many times I had to answer the obsessive 'Where are you from', from people I've met only for a couple of seconds. How my Indian friend, on a train to Leipzig, was stared at by a family whose child asked her mother: 'She can't be German, isn't it?' and answered 'Of course not'.

Indeed, this Heimat is a nightmare. The essays are collected under individual labels: Work, Sex, Identity etc. Although at least since 2001 there are institutional structures created which confirm that Germany is a 'Einwanderungsland' - country of immigration - the institutional racism (in schools,  police, other state structures including Finanzamt or Burgeramt) is growing. How fast the 'integration policies' went and at what extent they failed it is another discussion, but reading those essays makes a 'tour de force' displaying how deep is discrimination and racism thinking into the everyday life and local mentalities.

The answer is not to 'go back from where did you come from' as me and many others 'migrants' in Germany are often told. The answer to be persistent and courageous enough to not let such voices become the majority.

How Independent can a Diplomat Be?

'Who are those diplomats, with their mannerism and void language to ask for money and status, when all they do is to provide vague information, late while asking constantly for non-reaction in the name of undefined diplomatic interests?' I've been faced way too often with this attitude of decision makers during my short but eventful diplomatic career. 

More than once I hated their disregard/arrogant attitude towards anyone outside their 'unaccountable elite', their lack - to be read refuse sometimes - of response to requests coming outside their establishment. I never wanted to be a diplomat myself and was always happy for cutting short a professional intermezzo that was nothing than an impressive line added to my CV.

However, my interest in things regarding international diplomacy remains and I keep reading accounts about diplomatic issues, with the interest of someone that succeeded to be inside, even for a short - but intensive - amount of time. I am particularly interested in independent, eventually critical perspectives though which are realistically outlining the constraints and challenges of diplomacy.

A former diplomat, with experience in both the bilateral and the multilateral field on behalf of the Foreign Service, Carne Ross offers in Independent Diplomat. Disparches from an Unaccountable Elite a realistic - cynical even - overview of what does it mean the diplomatic service.  Founder of the Independent Group, a diplomatic advisory group, the first such nonprofit, Ross spent 15 years in the British Diplomatic Corps. He noticed the disfunctionalities and myopies of the political and diplomatic elites in dramatic situations such as the wars in former Yugoslavia or the case for WMD in Iraq. 

Through personal examples and experiences, he explains how exactly the 'diplomatic mind' operates and why it is so limited in fact when it comes to grasping complex realities - 'we', the countrymen might not have any interested in getting involved in that; it is no time to waste reading about complex geopolitical realities; often diplomats are reporting about realities they acknowledge via the local media; they may just not speak the local language and don't go out of their cubicle. The realities are described in a caricatural simplistic way and tragically, some may take decisions based on such evaluations.

It is nothing to do about it, but at least this book helps to better understand the mechanisms of denial.

However, when it comes to the chances of an 'independent diplomat' to operate outside the system I am sure that more than offering advice and consulting is not possible. The system will exist as long as states will exist. It is important though to keep reminding how diplomacy really works sometimes and offer an alternative to the extremely simplified version of the reality it offers.

On Languages and Academic Expertise

Languages are not my direct field of study, but I am regularly facing decisions that involve a choice of a language or another. The linguistic diversity was part of my everyday life as a child and reached complex levels of development later in the day, once faced with life and professional contexts.

My area of expertise has to do with Central and Eastern Europe and for my PhD I had to refresh and improve my knowledge of Hungarian, a language that I used to speak as a child, but that was relatively neglected once I left the linguistic realm where this language was spoken. Although I had the chance to do interviews and field work in another language than the Hungarian, being able to go directly to the sources and being familiar with a certain mindset helped me tremendously to grasp the chore ideas for my research.

For various professional reasons, once I was extremely interested in a specific geographical area, I realize how important it is to have direct access to sources of the everyday life, such as media but also to be able to communicate with people directly in their mother tongue. 

Time is limited and life priorities might be completely other than to spend your time learning a new language every couple of months or so. However, if you want to succeed in your professional assignments, linguistic knowledge is key.

Once upon a time I had for a short time the experience of the diplomatic service. Unfortunatelly, not all of the diplomats I met were able to set a conversation in the language of the country they were assigned to. Those were the worse and the most inefficient parts of the diplomatic corps. Except the information exchanged over a plate with canapés they were unable to understand too much from the complexity of the countries they were working to. They depended on mediated information, on translators and most of their time was spent in offices, reading second hand information.

For the academic research, such a lack of linguistic knowledge creates serious credibility gaps. Big academic centers such as Georgetown University for instance, require as part of the academic preparadness spending a significant amount of time learning a new language, or even more. As many as you need in order to properly understand your topics. 

True is also that the complex academic and political life require permanent adaptations and switches of topics. During the Cold War, the knowledge of Russian was mandatory for most of the political scientists and diplomats dipatched on the red part of the Iron Curtain. The Balkan Wars and the Balkans in general turned into the mainstream topic of actuality, therefore many of the academics were faced with the challenge of learning the local languages in the area. Since 11/9, learning Arabic in order to understand the Middle East is mandatory, as most of the funding is generally directed for researches pertaining to this area. Chinese or Persian are also top linguistic priorities.

During an active academic lifetime, an academic might need nowadays to change more than once his or her area of study. However, if he or she wants really to be considered a reliable academic, taking such a challenge is very important. The capacity of having a direct access to sources, both human and of academic and scientific nature, is a guarantee of credibility. Learning a new language nowadays is so easy, by using various online tools and apps. You can do it at the convenience of your home and with minimal investment. But, if you really want to be considered yourself an expert, you have to do it. It is a guarantee of credibility and respect towards your domain and the people that although they have lesser visibility, might have a much better graps of the reality because they speak the language.

A language means more than the knowlege of a couple of words or grammar structure, but it confers direct access to a mindset and a way  of thinking. No translation could provide this.

Book Review: Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, by Laura Secor

What man can do to man for the sake of ideologies, religion or just because he have been given the power to do so it's inimaginable. I've read about the Gulag experiences, about what happened during the Shoah, about the Chinese Revolution or the Latin American dictatorships. Also, extensively about the fate of individuals sent to Evin prison in Iran, especially during the so-called 'Green Revolution' (I would avoid to use the word 'revolution' without brackets as, actually, nothing really changed after those events). Hobbes' 'Homo homini lupus' sounds like a very elegant description of what fellow man can inflict to another creature.

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran by Laura Secor is a dramatic bloody account of the post-revolutionary intellectual history of Iran. Very often, the stories about intellectual influences - both local and foreign - are interrupted by accounts of terrible beatings and torture. 

The author gathered the information during around ten years of visits in Iran, extensive study of various local sources and contacts with local intellectuals both in the country and abroad. It is not sure if she speaks Farsi as well. Secor is familiar with post-Yugoslavia which was a complex political and ethnic structure, but I don't think it applies to the complexities and intricacies of the Iranian political and religious system.

A great merit of this book is that it traced admirably the sources of knowledge that made the intellectual history of Iran, as well as the genesis of the ideas and the translations of various Western/European contexts into the local ideological web. This is one of the most facinating part of the history of mentalities, because during the 'longue durée' of the adaptation the original ideas can be completely redefined and acquire a completely new sense. In the cases approached in the book, for instance, Heidegger - a chore atheist - was adapted to some local versions of Islam - particulary the concepts of 'truth' and being', while Popper was very popular among those looking to adapt the 'open society concepts' to a mix of Islam and Marxist (Popper was originally a marxist but his major works were a permanent dispute with this ideology). Hannah Arendt considerations about the French Revolution and the role of terror in the revolutionary practice was used as a compedium of understanding the post-revolutionary Iran. The fact that theological seminaries curricula include extensive study of Plato and Aristotle might offer an interesting topic of research for a further mapping of various interpretations in different centers of religious knowledge, in Qom and in other places. 

Intellectual histories and changes of mind among people that played political roles at certain moments are as well interesting. The perceptions are part of specific contexts. For instance Mir Hossein Mousavi considered a 'reformist' used to be a couple of decades ago a strong supporter of exporting the Islamic revolution abroad.

But the intellectual reception and interpretations are taking place in a landscape bordered by extensive violence and secrecy. 

Proeminent intellectuals continue to be the direct victims of various changes and conflicts of power among the layers of the establishment. Critical voices are made redundant after forced to sign and pronounce public denunciations of their works and of their colleagues. The idea of dissent and intellectual uniqueness, so vital to creating ideas are compromised. I witnessed myself such processes and extensively encountered such terrible stories during my communist childhood and post-communist coming of age. It's terrible for the credibility of intellectuals as such, and it only serves long term the pervert aims of the ideologues. They win on the long term because the intellectuals lost their credibility, by the simple fact that they were put to prison and forced to confess. It's part of the horrible destiny of the dictatorships and especially in a country with such a huge intellectual potential as Iran it definitely diminishes the chances of in-depth, long-term democratic change.

Although the author doesn't discuss extensively the repercursions of the mixture between religious interpretations and political pressure as such, there are a lot of ideas to think about such aspects too, especially from the point of view of the dangers of theocracies. What happened in Iran - and can easily happen everywhere where religious leaders were given the right to decide in political and social matters - is that the everyday relationships and interactions are defined and punished based on a religious code. 'Under the Islamic Republic draconian moral code, nearly every Iranian was guilty of something that could carry a prison  sentence: extramarital sex, drinking, even shaking hands with members of the opposite sex. What had begun as a religious imperative had become little more than a system of universal blackmail. The right information could afford an interrogator a good deal of leverage over a political prisoner'. Therefore, not only the trust in the intellectuals is eroded, but also the normal trust between humans is for ever compromised. 

Change is hard to endeavour and cannot be long-term without the contributions of those people who loved so much the country but were forced to go out. But once those people will be in, most probably they will live the drama of being rejected or the facts that were associated with various episodes of their lives will compromise an eventual political destiny in a new context. 

Children of Paradise. The Struggle for the Soul of Iran is a good start for understanding intellectual journeys as well as some terrible personal histories of both intellectuals and everyday Iranians (after many years when I've read about it from accounts of some of the people mentioned in the book, the stories about stoning continue to haunt me deeply). It has the merit of creating a different level of discussion that doesn't focus on political and international frictions but goes into the deep roots of the post-revolutionary Iran. It is a welcomed spin that requires though more and more discussion and reflection. 

Rating: 4 stars  

On Academic Arrogance (again)

It is such an awesome thing that nowadays, academics are using in an increase number social media. In just a couple of words, they can share their latest researches, connect with researchers and aspiring academics interested in their line of work and eventually start substantial collaborations in real life.

But clearly, social media in the academic field has, as in the case of many other circumstances, a two-edge: if used wisely it can be a very useful tool advancing knowledge - regardless the domain, but it can also be a self-reproducing tool of stereotypes, intolerance and non-sense.

A couple of hours ago, someone tweeted on a topic I am not academically qualified - although it pertains to my area of study, which is about ethnic minorities and intellectual representations in Central and Eastern Europe, but that happens to know as a fact of life. It was about the Yiddish culture and language. The respective tweet was complaining that as the number of Yiddish native speakers is diminishing, the language itself is entering a threatening stage. The quoted article was referring though to a very intellectual version of Yiddish, promoted by YIVO, which mostly relies to the intellectual works done in this language, like the works of Shalom Aleihem or other known Yiddishists.

However, I have a good news and a bad news. Although the literary, intellectual production in the Yiddish language decreases, the language is not dying at all. Rather the opposite. There are thousands of children born in the US, Europe - Belgium and France mostly - and Israel whose first language it Yiddish. Part of very strict religious groups - like for instance the Satmer - they are using the language in a very active way, in their specific variants - Hungarian, Lithuanian etc.. They do not write literature - yet, but think about those children who once growing up will probably decide to not be religious anymore but they keep the language and might want to write first in their mother tongue. 

I bet - and I hope I am wrong - the academics involved in the discussion about the dying status of Yiddish are not familiar -in a direct, non-academic way - to those realities, never actually spoke with someone belonging to this group and if there are not some academic references about the topic, they will never actually figure out such people really exist.

I am often faced with such discrepancies between the realities of the academic worlds and life. The arrogance and self-referential attitude which ignores anything coming from 'non-expert' - probably a bunch of 5 people spending their time reading everything on the topic but with a very narrow interest in checking the facts - as such an approach is depreciativelly qualified as 'journalistic' creates the premises of false projections. When you are talking about a language in danger, the measures that might come to mind, if not connected to a reality on the ground, will not help in any respect.

Personally, I will not cease to balance the intensive academic research and reading with direct contact with the 'subjects' I am about to study. For the preparation of my PhD I've spent an impressive amount of time talking with people, learning and speaking their languages, understanding their education system and their mindset, instead of relying exclusively on academic approaches. It helped me to understand the conundrum of the mentality, the eventual evolutions as well as the patterns. Such an attitude keeps me busy enough to avoid both in real life and through social media self-sufficient academics.