Save Your Kisses For Me(bbc.co.uk)
bbc.co.uk
Save Your Kisses For Me
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/11/save_your_kisses_for_me.html
7 comments
A good read, but this stuck out -
"Liberals in the west look on baffled and horrified. What they thought was a glorious revolution in the Arab world is morphing into something they don't understand."
Really? I'm (pretty) liberal but I watched the revolution with the knowledge that while evil was being ousted, revolutions seldom seem to end well. The developments in Egypt since then have, if anything, been comparatively mild. The Military either stepped aside or were made to step aside, without coups or mass bloodshed, and now there is an elected president that everyone is protesting over because he's given himself insane powers.
This is not a good situation, don't get me wrong, but for (almost) two years after a revolution? We're lucky we're not reading about massacres and mass graves.
"Liberals in the west look on baffled and horrified. What they thought was a glorious revolution in the Arab world is morphing into something they don't understand."
Really? I'm (pretty) liberal but I watched the revolution with the knowledge that while evil was being ousted, revolutions seldom seem to end well. The developments in Egypt since then have, if anything, been comparatively mild. The Military either stepped aside or were made to step aside, without coups or mass bloodshed, and now there is an elected president that everyone is protesting over because he's given himself insane powers.
This is not a good situation, don't get me wrong, but for (almost) two years after a revolution? We're lucky we're not reading about massacres and mass graves.
At the same time, I can understand it was easy to underestimate the weight of the Brotherhood, with medias playing on the name of El Baradei and other secular figures. I agree with your point that it could have been a lot worse.
I get that our propensity for wishful thinking made it easy to underestimate the post-revolution popularity of Islamists, but their rise shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.
In Egypt at least, the Muslim Brotherhood had a number of pretty significant advantages compared to liberals and secularists. Whereas Mubarak basically crushed secularist dissent, he seemed to tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood (on a very short leash) for use as boogeymen. They were also able to organize in mosques, which were more or less untouchable, whereas nobody else had such a safe place to organize. Finally, the Mubarak regime was largely secularist, which tainted other liberals by association.
The end result was that, after the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood had a very well-organized political network ready to go, while everyone else was going, "Hmm ... time to form a political party. How do we do that?"
In Egypt at least, the Muslim Brotherhood had a number of pretty significant advantages compared to liberals and secularists. Whereas Mubarak basically crushed secularist dissent, he seemed to tolerate the Muslim Brotherhood (on a very short leash) for use as boogeymen. They were also able to organize in mosques, which were more or less untouchable, whereas nobody else had such a safe place to organize. Finally, the Mubarak regime was largely secularist, which tainted other liberals by association.
The end result was that, after the revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood had a very well-organized political network ready to go, while everyone else was going, "Hmm ... time to form a political party. How do we do that?"
Oh sure, I agree that the western media was very optimistic about stuff like secularism (when it wasn't scaremongering about the muslim brotherhood).
Maybe I'm just an old cynic, but expecting the best possible outcome from a revolution seems naive. It's what everyone goes in hoping for, maybe what the revolting masses intend, but in the power vacuum that follows then someone or some group will fill it with a 'strong' leader. This leader then proceeds to take the place in his own direction, usually protected by a combination of true believers and self-interested hangers-on. Which then screws over most of the people that got them there. Look at the Iranian revolution - many female students took part in that one, only to find themselves far worse off afterwards.
The fact we only have a potential despot in Egypt so far is actually really positive!
Maybe I'm just an old cynic, but expecting the best possible outcome from a revolution seems naive. It's what everyone goes in hoping for, maybe what the revolting masses intend, but in the power vacuum that follows then someone or some group will fill it with a 'strong' leader. This leader then proceeds to take the place in his own direction, usually protected by a combination of true believers and self-interested hangers-on. Which then screws over most of the people that got them there. Look at the Iranian revolution - many female students took part in that one, only to find themselves far worse off afterwards.
The fact we only have a potential despot in Egypt so far is actually really positive!
He seems to have glossed over the Palestinian support for Nazi Germany during WWII.
And I found this section strange:
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By now Hamas was dominant and its military wing was ordering repeated car bombings of Israeli civilians.
...
But there was a nasty and dark side to what Sheikh Yassin and his fellow Islamists were up to in Gaza in the 1980s. They got a reputation for violently attacking anything that supported the PLO - rather than the Israelis.
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Apparently attacking Israeli civilians doesn't count as "nasty and dark"?
And I found this section strange:
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By now Hamas was dominant and its military wing was ordering repeated car bombings of Israeli civilians.
...
But there was a nasty and dark side to what Sheikh Yassin and his fellow Islamists were up to in Gaza in the 1980s. They got a reputation for violently attacking anything that supported the PLO - rather than the Israelis.
=====
Apparently attacking Israeli civilians doesn't count as "nasty and dark"?
Read the article, your quote is out of context. Hamas military wing wasn't formed until 1992. Therefor attacks on civilians doesn't reflect their reputation in the 1980s, which is what those paragraphs are about.
Although many times provocative and even manipulative I always find Adam Curtis to be thought provoking.
This article is brilliant. As I write this, hundreds of thousands of protestors are protesting outside Morsy's presidential palace, according to Twitter.
His blog is so awesome. Mosts posts are like a mini Adam Curtis documentary / narrative. Now if the embedded BBC videos only worked on my Nexus 7...
Adam Curtis is one of the most important documentary film thinkers of this or any other generation. Seminal.
'The Loving Trap' (2011) is a good place to start exploring this visionaries ground breaking work...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
Why is this on hacker news?
'The Loving Trap' (2011) is a good place to start exploring this visionaries ground breaking work...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg
Why is this on hacker news?
I'm also not sure why it's on hacker news, but his blog post are always wonderfully detailed and fascinating.
Perhaps this is more appropriate for hacker news though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...
Perhaps this is more appropriate for hacker news though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...
I agree, even if you don't agree with Adam Curtis's politics, his documentaries are very thought provoking and well worth watching. Some of my favourites include "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream", "The Century of self", "Pandora's Box", "All watched over by Machines Loving Grace". If you enjoyed this particular blog post, check out "The Power of Nightmares".
He may be important, but that doesn't make him right. He makes interesting programs, but there are plenty of dissenting views.
But:
This is an example of where HN's policy on titles fails. The title is a great title for the article - it's pithy, relevant and captures the sentiment of the writer exactly.
However, on a news aggregator, the title is useless. I don't believe that anyone would have expected to read a treatise on the codependent relationship between the various authorities in the Middle East when reading that title. In this case, a better title could be generated without changing too much - "Save your kisses for me - the codependency of middle eastern authority" - that would accurately prepare the reader (and probably get more interest.)