Dissidents of the International Left. Andy Heintz
the Iraq War, Guantánamo Bay, and so on. But there are people who think those things are OK.
Many in the US think that the conditions in Guantánamo Bay are fine, and the Iraq War was a mistake strategically, but not morally. A lot of people who think our assassination by drones is unlawful and the wrong way to deal with terrorism – they believe it shows a lack of respect for national sovereignty, and it causes a lot of collateral damage, killing innocent men, women and children. But most Americans are not going to repudiate drone strikes because they don’t think they are wrong. And even when Americans are forced to accept that we did something wrong, we’re not very good at repudiating it. We haven’t managed to get an American president to apologize for slavery, which ended in the 1860s.
Do you think some of the world’s problems derive from an assault on the autonomy of the individual? Could you comment on the attempts to place people into cultural boxes by claiming Asians have Asian values, Africans have African values, Westerners have Western values, etc?
In general, when you have politicized identities, people demand that members of their group agree with certain things they care about. But while some people do have things in common, if you take large categories like Asia, Africa, or the West, there is a huge amount of in-group disagreement. There are people who think Christianity is the truth and people who believe atheism is largely correct. But they are all Westerners, and you can’t say Westerners believe in something, say gay marriage, when there are anti-gay movements in America and France.
These large categories tend to be much more heterogeneous within than people recognize. Even if I am Asian, and even if there were such a thing as Asian values, it’s not obvious why I should be obliged to go along with them. I could think that maybe there are not many democratic traditions in Asia but I’m an Asian, and a Democrat. I don’t decide whether I should back abortion rights by taking a poll of my neighbors and trying to think about what the American view is, I think about the issue itself. It’s best to ask what’s right, not what’s traditional. In the conversations about what’s right we have a lot to learn, not just from our neighbors with whom we share an identity, but from everybody.
You have referred to Africa as a European concept. One of your criticisms of the Pan-African movement is that it was race-oriented and that it failed to recognize the multiple identities that all human beings have and the many differences between the societies that were located in the geographic space that Europe monolithically referred to as Africa. Can you expound on this subject?
Just as most Europeans were not aware of themselves as Europeans until a certain point, most of the population in continental Africa didn’t see themselves as part of continental Africa because they were unaware there was such a thing as continental Africa until sometime in the 19th century. They certainly didn’t know about what was going on in the rest of continent. They didn’t know about the traditions, customs and histories of the other people, in much the same way that Romanians didn’t know anything about the history of Denmark. So the term African became an important identity during the slave trade, especially during the 18th century. People discovered that this category was going to be used to determine their treatment. So by some time in the 18th century it became permissible in the Western world to only enslave people who were Africans.
Part of what happened is that Europeans started to think of Africans as one united person – as Negroes who had a sort of shared debt of properties and a shared essence. That idea made its way into African thoughts about politics in the 20th century largely through the thinking of New World Pan-Africanists, like WEB Dubois, who took these 19th-century American racial ideas into their account of how they thought about black identity everywhere. Now there is a debate about when Dubois became less racial in his thinking, but that’s just a question about one intellectual. The movement as a whole continued to make these assumptions about the natural uniformity of Africa because they assumed that all black Africans had something deep in common and that was a mistake. The deep thing they had in common was that they had all been victims of European imperialism and racism. ■
PETER BEINART
Peter Beinart writes for The Atlantic, a US-based magazine, and is a senior fellow for the New America Foundation. He also writes for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The Week named Beinart columnist of the year in 2004 and he was the editor of The New Republic magazine from 2007 to 2009. He has authored three books: The Crisis of Zionism; The Icarus Syndrome: A history of American hubris and The Good Fight: Why liberals – and only liberals – can win the War on Terror and make America great again.
You are a Zionist who has been highly critical of Israeli foreign policy. Can you explain where you think Zionism has taken a wrong turn, and what needs to happen for the Zionist movement to get back on the right track?
There have always been different species of Zionism. In Israel, everyone enjoyed citizenship and the right to vote until the 1967 Israeli-Arab War. However, because of Israel’s victory, it suddenly had millions of people living under military rule. This is the core of what is wrong with Israel and Zionism today.
What are your thoughts on the notion of American exceptionalism and its impact on US foreign policy?
The definition of American exceptionalism has changed over time. There was a time when the term represented the idea that an ordinary person could succeed in America despite his or her class. Today, American exceptionalism is the idea that America has a special mission in the world. This isn’t a problem, but the tendency to view America as unequivocally on the side of the angels is dangerous.
Has this view made it hard for the public to understand why many people in the Middle East and Latin America have negative opinions about US foreign policy?
Americans are not well educated about US foreign policy or the history of American foreign policy. The media doesn’t cover America’s more nefarious actions overseas very well.
You have criticized this idea that the Islamic State is at war with America because of our freedoms. While there is no doubt that ISIS hates what most Americans would consider to be freedom, how important is it for Americans to understand this is not the reason they are launching terrorist attacks on our country?
It’s very problematic because this notion that they are attacking us because of our freedoms blinds us to what is really going on. We are trying to maintain influence in the region. It is our military involvement that is leading to these terrorist attacks. They are at war with us, but we are also at war with them.
Did you feel the same way when President George W Bush claimed that al-Qaeda had attacked America on 9/11 because of our freedoms?
People who know more about al-Qaeda never bought that argument. ■
MICHAEL BERUBE
Michael Berube is a professor of literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of eight books to date, including Public Access: literary theory and American cultural politics, The Left at War and Life As We Know It, the last of which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Why hasn’t there been an international progressive socialist movement against neoliberalism and religious fundamentalism?
It’s not clear what kind of coherent vision the international Left would flock to. The Occupy Movement in the United States did try to create a movement that opposed growing inequality and neoliberalism, and that flourished for a while; in 2015-16 it made itself felt in Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign for president. When it comes to deciding whether to organize around freedom or equality, it seems much more plausible and viable for an international