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Thursday, June 26, 2008
The Independent/UK
Our Infantile Search for Heroic Leaders
by Johann Hari
Do you find yourself staring at the television and pining for a good
leader — a person who will rise and make the world right again? Do you
long for a Mandela, a Churchill, a Gandhi? Then grow up. Our political
debate — what p***** for it — increasingly focuses on a search for an
elusive Messianic leader who will show us the way. This is the opposite
of rational politics.
This search for leaders is based on a desire to return to childhood — to
snuggle into the political cot and close our eyes, knowing daddy is
outside watching over us. The highest compliment we pay to a politician
is to call him “father of the nation”. I feel this urge too. It is
difficult and disturbing to try to figure out what is wrong in the
world, and how to put it right. How much more tempting to simply snuffle
out somebody who you think is good and decent and kind, elect them, and
assume they will sort it all out.
But this discourages us from doing the one thing that might actually
solve these problems — figuring out solutions for ourselves then going
out and campaigning to make them happen. Every civilising advance in
history — from workers’ rights to women’s rights to gay rights — was won
because ordinary people banded together and agitated for it. If we had
waited for a good leader to hand it down from above, we would still be
waiting today.
There is a bigger danger still. It is that, in finding a “good” leader,
we then blindly follow them into dark and fetid places. Let’s look first
at a leader whose ninetieth birthday we are celebrating this week:
Nelson Mandela. Nobody needs to be reminded of his stunning heroism in
the fight against apartheid. But because they were so awed by that, most
South Africans followed him unquestioningly as he perpetuated economic
apartheid - and worsened the most extreme economic inequality on earth.
Apartheid was not just a system of laws; it was an economic system where
a tiny white elite owned almost everything. By 1990, the elite realised
they could no longer maintain the laws — but they fought desperately to
maintain economic control. They demanded that the land and resources
they had stolen from poor blacks be recognised in the constitution as
theirs, and never redistributed. They demanded that the new democracy
pick up all of apartheid’s debts, making spending to lift up the poor
majority impossible. They demanded the recognition of “intellectual
property rights”, making the distribution of cheap Aids drugs
unaffordable. They demanded their apartheid finance minister and head of
the Central Bank continue in position. Western governments, the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank piled in behind them in
sup****t.
Mandela agreed to it all. He discreetly buried the ANC’s Freedom
Charter, with its commitments to clean water, free healthcare and land
for all. The result is that today whites own 70 per cent of the South
African economy, despite being only 10 per cent of the population.
Mandela believed this deal was the only way to prevent white flight and
increase poverty. But he was wrong. Since the fall of apartheid, average
life expectancy has fallen by 13 years. The black unemployment rate has
doubled. This isn’t because white ruled ceased; it is because it
continues today, with a new black cor****ate logo.
People who are heroic in one respect can be fools or monsters in
another. If we look at two of the most admired leaders of the twentieth
century, this becomes even clearer. Mahatma Gandhi’s ****mmering
qualities don’t need to be rehearsed here — but who now remembers that
he killed his wife, and told Europeans to allow the Nazis to conquer our
continent?
The British occupiers of India jailed Gandhi and his wife Kasturba in
1942, and she soon developed bronchial pneumonia. Their son Devadas
turned to the obvious solution: penicillin. But because of his Hindu
fundamentalism, Gandhi believed “Western” medicine — medicine that had
been tested in clinical trials to make sure it works — was immoral. He
said she should drink muddy water from the “Holy” Ganges instead.
Whenever Kasturba flickered into consciousness, he told her she would
“bankrupt [his] faith” and hers if she took penicillin. So she died. Six
weeks later, Gandhi himself got ill with malaria - and glugged down the
“Western” medicine happily. For the rest of his life, he continued to
condemn the medicines that had saved his life, and told his followers to
eschew them.
Gandhi’s response to Nazism was even worse. He said the peoples of
Europe should let Hitler and Mussolini conquer and “allow yourselves,
man, woman and child to be slaughtered”. And the Jews? They “should have
offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown
themselves into the sea from cliffs … Collective suicide would have been
heroism.” It would be “immoral”, he said, to fight back. Again, this was
a result of his absurd superstitious beliefs.
What about Gandhi’s nemesis, Winston Churchill? Today we only remember
his heroic opposition to Nazism. But while he was against gassing and
tyranny in Europe, he was passionately in favour of it for “uncivilised”
human beings whose riches he wanted to seize. In the 1920s, Iraqis rose
up against British imperial rule, and Churchill as Colonial Secretary
thought of a good solution: gas them. He wrote: “I do not understand
this squeamishness… I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas
against uncivilised tribes.” It would “spread a lively terror”. He was
quite clear about why Britain should do this. He explained: “We have
engrossed to ourselves an altogether dispro****tionate share of the
wealth and traffic of the world… mainly acquired by violence, largely
maintained by force.”
Don’t misunderstand me. There are no perfect leaders, but there are
always better and worse ones. I would have backed Gandhi against
Churchill, and Churchill against Hitler - while always condemning their
flaws.
You can see this principle in the current US election. Barack Obama is
considerably better than John McCain — but he too has his dreadful
drawbacks we will have to oppose. He has pledged, if he wins, “Jerusalem
will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided” — a
pledge that would make any proper two-state solution impossible. He has
defended the right of Colombia’s hard-right government to invade its
neighbours. Faced with this, you can’t give up: sup****t the great parts
of his programme — like expanding healthcare in the US — and oppose the
bad. Be a political adult.
Human beings are invariably flawed. Every person who is capable of
moments of greatness is also capable of cruelty or stupidity. The only
way to check this is for us to be constantly watching each other — even
the best amongst us — and to never be blinded by admirable acts. We will
never reach a point where we find the good leader and can sigh, sit
back, and relax. If you care about the state of the world, you have to
keep watching and pressuring and fighting, forever.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction: _The Unspeakable and Others_
http://tinyurl.com/2gcoqt
Lord Weÿrdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
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Skipper: Professor, will you tell these people who is
in charge on this island?
Professor: Why, no one.
Skipper: No one?
Thurston Howell III: No one? Good heavens, this is anarchy!
-- _Gilligan's Island_, episode #6, "President Gilligan"
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