Human rights: Food for new avenues of thought  ‘HR and creating a new politics’

Human Rights Reader 589

[TLDR (too long didn’t read): This Reader is about power brokering, power brokers and not-yet brokers and the political conflict that is unavoidable in human rights work. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].

The ideology behind political power brokers

-Elections serve to change governments, not to change regimes, i.e., the left or right ideology… (Alain Peyrefitte)

-With the high percentages of voter abstention, that shows the apathy of the citizenry, very soon those who will vote will be the ‘experts’, the professional politicians, the owner class, the owners of the media (radio, TV,  newspapers), the owners of public opinion polling agencies and the big investors who tell us they are the ones who indeed(?) know what is good for all of us… (Louis Casado)

-What interests the ‘population manipulators’ is not who you and I elect(ed), but what it does to the market. And until new notice …the market we do not vote for… Conscious of and responsible for this, many politicians offer a free market as part of their programmatic platform.. (L. Casado)

1. About ‘the Left’ and ‘the Right’: It is not possible to have a single definition that covers both terms. These are dichotomous concepts encompassing: traditionalism vs reformism; conservatism vs progressivism; liberalism vs socialism; materialism vs idealism, etc. The Right is for free (?) competition; the Left is for social justice. (Oscar Gonzalez) Always true?

2. The parties of the Right try to identify themselves with order and tranquility: But what order? Actually, the order that leads to the daily humiliation of the majorities (deplorable, but order nonetheless). And what tranquility? Actually, the tranquility to know that justice can continue to be unfair and the hungry can be subdued. (Eduardo Galeano)

3. The parties of the Left have a poly-classist make-up and, therefore, have no ideological purity. From outside, we call them ‘populist’; they are for: nationalism and for centralizing the state’s power, on top of, not infrequently, adopting some personality cult and authoritarian traits (similar to ‘real’ socialism…?) Furthermore, they are not: racist, but multicultural; they are open to immigration, are internationally multilateralists, are in favor of external debt cancellation, of the rights of nature, of the rights of women and children, and of the rights of indigenous peoples.  Is all this what being ‘Left’ is about? Technically, no, but it ain’t being ‘Right either’.

4. Social movements, trade unions and global progressive networks have for long left the political parties of the Left. They actually sometimes espouse positions of the Right, both in the North and in the South. All has gotten mixed up in difficult-to-understand-combinations not compatible with our old perceptions of the world. Mostly, these combinations divide and confront people in the popular front. If we do not succeed in clarifying this ideological confusion, we will end up fighting among ourselves when, globally, the need for a strategic alliance is, today, more vital than ever. (Norma Fernandez)

The democratic discourse does not do away with political conflict

-The converted always were more fanatic that the original believers. Today, on the Right, they are more dogmatically neoliberal than their masters. (L. Casado)

5. Democracy becomes an illusion when some interpret tranquility as the possibility to forget that there is conflict. So here comes-in Centrism. Centrism made the non-sense of avoiding conflict the center of its political credo. (Frederic Lordon) But consensus cannot be achieved in a kitchen discussion (i.e., “We are all brothers; the conflict is over”…). A strong dose of cynicism is needed to pretend a) that reaching a middle-of-the-road political consensus resolves the whole load of contradictions including those on human rights (HR) issues; and b) that “we are just trying to avoid conflict and violence”. The bottom question is consensus around what? Once again around the interests of the powerful, that is, going in circles back to the domination claim holders had already been under?

6. In sum, Centrists* have to understand that we are not in the middle of a change of direction --neither social nor political. The program of Center politics is like: do not do much of anything that provokes conflict with the powers-that-be; be ‘reasonable’, be ‘moderate’; just ask for that that the haves can give without their power being questioned. (L. Casado)

*: One would have to remind the backers-of-the-political-Center-that-confess-they-are-Christians that the moment always comes when the mass is over and they have to leave the church to return to the social world as it really is, i.e., painful and full of conflict. (F. Lordon)

7. Addendum: The Extreme Right uses democracy with the main intention of destroying it given its inherent, sui-generis logic of popular participation. “The focus ought not be society and democracy, but nation, race, ethnic background, caste”, they say. “We do not choose between, but against”. The objective is to seek power using the rules of democracy to then exert it in a non-democratic way. Nevertheless, the traditional Right remains confident it can domesticate the Extreme Right as the latter actively tries to subvert the former… The tactic of the Extreme Right importantly focuses on a hate discourse directed at those that “don’t belong” (Jew, gipsy, black, gay, communist, democrat…). It also glorifies and tries to reinvent the past as it tries to convert old defeats into purported victories. Furthermore, it infiltrates the mass media, substitutes politics with ‘morals’ as it tries to seduce the growing disenchanted groups in society.

The de-facto political power brokers: politicians

8. Some truisms here:

• Politicians who control others to feel more secure ignore the immense power they are granting those others. (Albino Gomez)
• It is time to upgrade our politicians’ mental software and bring the HR debate into the present. (Hazel Henderson)
• If the current power structure prevails, politicians’ prejudice will not disappear; it will only express itself in another form, perhaps with new justifications. (Boaventura de Sousa y Santos)

9. And here some trivia:

• “The opposition hated the king. But not the monarchy.” Today as before, conservative politicians play the game: “Get out of there and let me step in. I’ll make sure the system is preserved.” (L. Casado)
• A general never surrenders, not even to evidence…(Jean Cocteau) Applies to politicians too…?
• To talk to Sarkozy about a deep sociopolitical topic was like talking about movies to a surveillance camera. (Laurent Fabius)

The aspiring political movers or the seldom-have-a-chance-to-be-political-power-brokers

10. Social movements that today take so many initiatives, that take to the streets to fight for their demand for social, economic and environmental justice, must also learn to organize themselves locally, nationally, continentally and globally. Without organization, without structure, nothing can ever change sustainably. The transition may begin in your street, but it will be of no avail without a simultaneous national and global approach. Social movements are very weak, among other things, because of their lack of coordination. They are clinging to hopeless silo strategies that only make the wedge deeper. The Trumps, Bolsonaros, Erdowans, Orbans and Dutertes love what they see. With the lockdowns of the corona crisis, movements are not even allowed to take to the streets anymore. (Francine Mestrum) [A roadblock closes the road, but opens away. (Grafitti, May 68, Paris)].

11. I am aware it is still very difficult for some of us in these social movements to maintain our political agility in a hostile environment. But the role of an avant-garde is to cause fermentation. We cannot fall in the trap of believing someone else is going to take care of these things for us; we have to get active. A strategic overhaul of our actions requires nothing less than a crisis in our thinking and, if by now there is no such a crisis in the horizon, we have to perhaps create one. This is not a call to get involved in unrepresentative politics; This is a call to help create a new politics.

12. Yesterday as today, the question remains open as to to what extent the various racial/ethnic groups with their different colors of skin can come together in the struggle against an ever more savage Capitalism, the eternal colonialism, and the as eternal patriarchy, as well as against racism and sexism. This, so as to increase the chances of success in the struggles for a more just, HR respecting society. Racism is not anchored in the color of the skin itself, but in the politics of color centered around power inequalities and in the excluding concentration of privileges. (B. de Sousa y Santos)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com

Postscript/Marginalia

-Society is said to evolve as a (bloody) pendulum: a conservative cycle/a liberal cycle; action and reaction; back and forth like the tides, always taking a toll of death (some of it from HR violations including hunger and preventable diseases). As long as we are trapped in these cycles and do not actively try to break their passive succession, we cannot expect much in the way of liberation; we cannot even expect fundamental change, except the awful slow variety where each step takes two generations or more. (T. Robbins)

-Power requires sad bodies. Power needs sadness, because it can then dominate it. Happiness thus represents resistance, because it does not surrender. Happiness, as a vital force, takes us to places where sadness would never take us. (Gilles Deleuze)