The Gongyang Commentary, just war and realism

Warfare during Spring and Autumn period

After having read the English translation of the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, I came across a very interesting article by Yu Kam-por of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, discussing the treatment of warfare in the Spring and Autumn Annals and the circumstances under which Confucius and his followers believed political violence could be approved (or disapproved to varying degrees).

Dr Yu notes that the Gongyang tradition of hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn is entirely based on degrees. Small injustices are to be preferred to great injustices, and injustices that arise from a proper concern for humanity are to be preferred to injustices that arise from a desire for gain. What this gradated differentiation of justice in war means also, is that even though some uses of force are preferable to states of greater injustice, no use of force can ever be perfectly just. Ironically, this places the Ruist understanding of just war much closer to the Orthodox ethical understanding of warfare than to classical Augustinian just war theory.

Even so, there are some clear dimensions along which the Gongyang Commentary differentiates more ‘just’ military actions from less ‘just’ ones. Here is how Dr Yu sorts the Gongyang Commentary’s jus ad bellum concerns:

1. Proper aims. The Gongyang Commentary condemns wars undertaken offensively for enrichment of the state, even if they are justified externally as punishment of evildoers.


2. Proper agency. The war must be declared by a legitimate authority. In descending order, the proper agents for carrying out a military action are: the Son of Heaven; a league of feudal states; an individual feudal state with a good reputation. Expeditions undertaken by individual states with bad track records are condemned.


3. Proper evidence of wrongdoing. Mere surmises or even intentions (as opposed to wrong actions) are insufficient basis for declaring war on a particular target.


4. Proper procedure. How this is differentiated from ‘proper agency’ is not entirely clear to me from Dr Yu’s paper. The Spring and Autumn Annals prefers punitive actions be taken by a league of allied states (batao 霸討) than unilaterally (zhuantao 專討).


5. Proper declaration of hostilities. Sudden or surprise attacks (zhaji 詐擊) are condemned as ‘barbaric’.


6. Proper timing. It’s considered good form to forbear from attacking a state in mourning, or one which is suffering from a natural disaster.

Pre-emptive strikes are roundly condemned among states which hold – to a greater degree – to the rituals of Zhou. However, there is limited allowance in the Spring and Autumn Annals for pre-emptive attack by a ‘civilised’ Central State against a ‘barbarian’ state that does not observe the ritual proprieties of Zhou, though again it is regarded as a less-than-ideal course of action.

It deserves stressing, again, that the degree to which a state is ‘civilised’ has nothing to do, in classical Chinese thinking, with race or geography, but with the extent to which the state follows the rites of Zhou. Even non-Han states could be considered ‘Chinese’ in this way, and Han states could lose their ‘Chinese’ status through cruel, deceitful or improper conduct. This is related to the reputation of a state related above.

With regard to jus in bello concerns, there are several concerns that are highlighted by the Spring and Autumn Annals:

1. Proper placement. Wars that take place far from established population centres (pianzhan 偏戰) are preferable to wars that take place among civilians (zhazhan 詐戰), though of course non-violent solutions are normally preferable to both.


2. Proper weapons. Fire attacks – and by extension, Dr Yu argues, any kind of weapon that kills indiscriminately or en masse – are condemned as cruel and inhumane because they kill innocents as well as enemies.


3. Proper extent. This is what, in Augustinian just war theory, would be called proportionality: only the minimum amount of force required to achieve victory is sanctioned.


4. Proper concern. The Spring and Autumn Annals praises generals and statesmen who disobey their superiors, even in a just expedition, in order to spare the lives of a defeated enemy, or one afflicted by hunger or disease.

Dr Yu stresses that these standards are not absolute and that they are meant to serve as gradated guidelines in a world ruled by the demands of realpolitik. ‘We can say that the principles expressed in the Spring and Autumn Annals are a reasonable integration of idealism and realism.’ After all, the conception of history in the Spring and Autumn Annals is one of a ‘long defeat’ in which the idyllic ways of the ancients are no longer observed or even respected, and in which libido dominandi among feudal lords, grand officials and servants of states becomes a stronger motivating force for action than ritual propriety. The Spring and Autumn standards, again, are meant to strike a balance between the absolute geopolitical realism of the legalists, and the absolute idealism of the Mohists. What is left in this classical school of thought is a kind of moderate realism, based on historical precedent rather than abstract principles, which understands the tension between the demands of morality and propriety on the one hand, and the preconditions for success on the other.

Gongyang history: cosmology, teleology, eschatology

The Spring and Autumn Annals (or Chunqiu 《春秋》), one of the Five Classics of the Ru canon, is – on the surface – a rather dry, terse chronicle of the reigns of the Dukes of Lu between 722 and 467 BC. Five different commentaries were written after it: Zuo 《左氏傳》, Zou 《鄒氏傳》 (no longer extant), Jia 《夾氏傳》 (no longer extant), Guliang 《穀梁傳》 and Gongyang 《公羊傳》, to explicate the meaning of the main text, supposedly written by Confucius himself. Historian Harry Miller, two years ago, obligingly translated the Gongyang Commentary into English for the first time – a translation I have just read.

The format is catechetical, taking the form of a question-and-answer between student and teacher. According to Ban Gu, the teacher was Bu Shang 卜商, better known by his courtesy name Zixia 子夏, one of Confucius’ pupils. Bu Shang transmitted his master’s unwritten comments to Gongyang Gao 公羊高, who then passed the scholarly catechesis down along his own family line until it could be committed to writing by Gongyang Shou 公羊壽 and his student, Master Humu 胡母生, who would go on to instruct Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒.

The first thing that struck me on reading the Gongyang Commentary, is that it assigns a value to the history itself that seems – I beg pardon for the anachronism and the cultural conceit – almost Russian in character. Speaking particularly with the monastic authors of the early Russian Chronicles in mind, Russian religious historian Gyorgi Fedotov writes in the first volume of The Russian Religious Mind:

The Russian religious feeling of history has nothing mystical about it. It is lacking in the sense of the dualism of the two worlds which is a necessary premise for every symbolic interpretation. God is immanent in history, as He would be in nature, too. Therefore every historical fact receives its own value. The historical world is as grand and meaningful as the physical world. This explains why the religious interpretation of history did no harm to the concreteness and matter-of-factness of Russian historiography. The Russian chronicler keeps himself free from theological speculations; he keeps his eyes and ears open to the impressions of social realities.

At the same time, the reason that historiography has had such an important sway over the Russian religious mind, in Fedotov’s view, has more to do with the Russian openness to eschatology. Fedotov speaks, in the same work, of ‘the cosmological and historical interests of the Russian readers, confirmed … by original Russian literature. Religious cosmology and history, based upon an eschatological background, were the two theoretical poles of the Russian mind’.

This seems to describe quite well, also, the preoccupations of the Gongyang Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals – particularly when compared to other Chinese works of history and historical commentary. History is never treated as anything ‘more’ or ‘less’ than history; even if it requires some subversion of the usual pieties, the Commentary is scrupulous even when it comes to ‘correcting’ the record or citing some euphemism in the original Spring and Autumn as an ‘official story’ which doesn’t necessarily reflect the whole of the truth. At the same time, even this relatively-brief three-hundred-year history is imbued with an eschatological and cosmological – but not metaphysical – meaning.

The ‘teacher’ in the catechetical dialogues notes that at the beginning of the Spring and Autumn, there is order. The calendar is aligned with the will of the King of Zhou. Duke Yin is a humble and selfless ‘worthy’ following the Way of the ancients, who plans to abdicate to his half-brother Huan when the latter gains his majority. Grand officers keep their places, and the stewards below them keep theirs. Although these portrayals are consistent, as we are given to understand, with the historical record, there is a teleological indication in this portrayal of the kind, caring, humble and gentle ways – the ways of humaneness – that supposedly prevailed in the days of Yao and Shun.

But history enters the picture. Greed and ambition begin to appear, and the Commentary begins to draw attention to the placement of ‘blame’: the subtle demotions, euphemistic understatements and interpolations of sarcasm and ridicule that, in the mind of the ‘teacher’ of the catechesis, indicate wrongdoing on the part of some historical figure. The Earl (actually Duke) of Zheng commits the sin of Cain by killing his brother Duan, and is duly demoted for it. Later, Wuhai invades the state of Ji. Here is the catechetical commentary on the latter case:

Wuhai, commanding an army, invaded the state of Ji.

Who was Wuhai? Wuhai refers to Zhan Wuhai.

Why is his surname not given? To denigrate him.

Why denigrate him? Because he is the one who began the process of destroying other states.

Did the process of destroying other states really begin with him? No, there were earlier cases.

If there were earlier cases, why maintain that the process began with him? The process is simply being represented as having begun with him.

Why is the process being represented as having begun with him? Because it is the first instance of it that falls within the chronological scope of the Annals.

If Ji was destroyed, why does the record say only that Ji was “invaded”? Here, the word “invaded” is a euphemism for the greater evil, designed to lessen the infamy of the state of Lu.

This is actually typical in the early part of the Gongyang Commentary of several crimes which make their first appearance in the reigns of Duke Yin and Duke Huan. They are indicative of a kind of historical decline in ritual propriety and in morals that becomes felt more and more strongly toward the end of the history. Feudal lords begin to usurp powers for themselves that rightfully belong to the Son of Heaven (that is to say, the King of Zhou). Subsequently, the grand officers of the feudal lords begin to usurp power for themselves. And toward the end of the history, even the grand officers find themselves contending with their own stewards and servants who begin showing ambition and manoeuvre for advancement and material gain.

On another level, too, this is both a cosmic history and a history for and with concern with the common people. Regularly recounted are ‘marvels’ and ‘disasters’ which – though they have a direct bearing on the ruler’s character according to classical cosmology – are still material events that affect the lives of common people and the social realities of their lives under rulers whose sense of propriety seems to be getting progressively worse. These marvels and disasters are recounted in a matter-of-fact way, without reference to their cosmological significance.

Several ‘worthies’ make their appearance in the Gongyang Commentary, and the nature of their ‘worthiness’ seems remarkably consistent throughout: when they see an opportunity for political or material advancement, or even an opportunity to spare their own life from an intrigue against their superiors, they refuse to take it – and as often as not, die in acts of heroism trying to save their lieges.

One such act of heroism is heavily foreshadowed – that of Lady Gong, the Eldest Daughter of Duke Cheng. During a fire that breaks out in the Song palace, Lady Gong is repeatedly begged by court officials to flee to safety, but refuses to abandon her children’s nurse to the flames, and so perishes herself. This one act of humane altruism on behalf of her servant makes her worthy of repeated mention by Confucius and even an honorific posthumous title. But this act of heroism comes at a time when grand officers are busily scheming and plotting with each other behind the scenes, and as often as not are running states on their own initiative and according to their own libido dominandi, without reference to loyalty either to their feudal lords or to the Son of Heaven – by this point almost entirely absent from the narrative. The ‘teacher’ in the Commentary even fulminates in exasperation, toward the end of the reign of Duke Zhao: ‘the men of the Central States had recently begun acting like foreigners’, whereas the ‘foreigners’ of the Wu tribe ‘had made some progress’ in becoming more like Zhou, more humane, and thus more Chinese.

Tolkien, with his sharp sense of this kind of meaning within history, would doubtless call the Spring and Autumn Annals a representation of the ‘long defeat’, and I can well imagine Bu Shang (or whomever the authoritative voice of the ‘teacher’ in this catechesis is) would agree. But these acts of worthiness, heroism, altruism and human pity punctuate a history that is awash with examples of intrigue, bribery, backstabbing, cruelty, theft, illicit sex and violence, and afford a certain glimpse of eschatological hope. The final entry of the Spring and Autumn Annals makes mention of a ‘unicorn’ (that is to say, a lin 麟) that was captured in a hunt. This excerpt is from the Gongyang Commentary’s final entry:

It was the year fourteen, in the spring. During a hunt to the west, a unicorn was captured.

Why is this recorded? To make note of a marvel.

What is the marvel? The marvel is that such an animal is not native to the Central States…

Why is it a great thing to capture a unicorn? The unicorn symbolizes humaneness. It appears when there is a true king and does not appear when there is no true king. As someone reported on this occasion, “It’s like a roe but with a horn,” to which Confucius said, “So! He is coming, then. He is coming!” He turned out his sleeves to wipe away his tears, until the front of his robe was dampened. When Yan Yuan died, Confucius said, “Alas! Heaven is destroying me!” When Sir Lu died, Confucius said, “Alas! Heaven is cutting me off!” But when, “during a hunt to the west, a unicorn was captured,” Confucius said, “Now my Way has served its purpose.”

This final entry is pregnant with the hope that ‘he’ (that is, in the words of the Gongyang Commentary, someone who ‘delights in the Way of Yao and Shun’) will soon arrive, and with Confucius’ own assurance that this one great task of his – the task of recounting the history of the past three hundred years, for ‘his’ benefit – has been accomplished.

There is, then, a personalist angle to this history as well. The history of the Spring and Autumn isn’t simply bare facts. The Gongyang Commentary proceeds as though Confucius has a particular audience in mind – and not primarily the Duke of Lu for whom he is officially working. It also proceeds as though the history itself can speak, dialectically, to the attentive student. Unlike in later works of history, or even the Commentaries, the didacticism and moralism are rarely explicit within the Spring and Autumn text itself, but are left to be sussed out by the questioner.

What is interesting as well is the Gongyang Commentary’s treatment of private justice, or revenge – and this treatment brings the text somewhat (though not entirely, and by no means as much as the critics of Gongyang Confucianism would have us believe) into conflict with the Mencian treatment of private justice. In general, the ‘teacher’ in the catechesis takes a fairly dim view of private revenge, and condones it only in cases where all other workings of justice have been exhausted:

If the father is wrongfully executed, then it is quite permissible for the son to avenge him. However, if the father is rightfully executed, and the son chooses to avenge him, then he is foolishly starting down the path of endless vengeance and counter-vengeance. Just revenge is not simply a matter of eliminating one’s enemies or rivals. The important thing is for friends to stand up for each other and to refrain from seeking advantage over each other in the first place. That is the way of the ancients.

Likewise, one of the ‘worthies’ praised by the catechist, Prince Jizha of Wu, says this to Helu, who has just killed Jizha’s older brother and offered him the throne:

You have assassinated my ruler. Were I to accept the state from you, then I will have conspired with you to usurp the throne. Furthermore, if you kill my brother and I kill you, then there will be no end to the killing among fathers, sons, and older and younger brothers.

The key factor for the Gongyang catechist is balance. Human beings are complex, and are considered as both ‘public’ and ‘private’ (to use a somewhat anachronistic phrasing) creatures – the ‘self-institution’ dialectic which I’ve mentioned so often on this blog is explored from both sides. Filiality in children is praised – to a point. The value of filial piety is primary, but not absolute; sometimes, in the catechist’s view, public obligations must take priority over family ones. People who emphasise one relationship to the exclusion of others are chastised.

The teleological approach to history which the Gongyang offers – from a period of order and stability through periods of crisis and disorder, toward an expected messianic renewal under a sage or a lover of the Way – does stand in marked contrast to the cyclical view which came to predominate later, post-classical Chinese history and cosmology. And yes, I am deliberately drawing the comparisons to the Russian apocalyptic and Tolkienian views of history specifically to highlight that contrast. But it does not follow therefore that the Gongyang Commentary’s more linear view of history is less, or less-authentically, Ruist.

China, the Vatican and the Open Church

Catholic Church in Luoyang’s Old City

Those of you who follow my blog with regularity will probably be expecting me to comment on the recent controversial move by the Vatican to make a deal with the People’s Republic of China over the appointment of bishops, which has been a long-standing (and, in the general philosophical sense, I do mean long-standing) point of contention between the Catholic Church and the Chinese government. In addition, retired Bishop Joseph (Zen) of Hong Kong has lashed out at the Curia over the recent agreement; and Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo has weighed in with some unfortunately one-sided remarks about the Chinese government’s de facto implementation of Catholic social teaching.

There’s quite a lot for me to comment on here, that’s true. But first I should probably lay my personal cards on the table. When I was still Anglican, my daughter Eleanore was baptised in the ‘open’ church (that is to say, the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association), the organ of Catholicism in China that is officially recognised by – and, to some extent, controlled by – the government. She was received into Orthodoxy by chrismation after arriving here in the US in 2016. I had done some research prior to that, both on the general situation of both the ‘open’ and the ‘underground’ church, and on the local diocæse. I’d also talked with several Catholics ‘in the know’ about the situation of the clergy and the sacraments in China before making that decision. As part of the ‘tacit accord’ piloted by Pope Benedict XVI, most ‘open’ church priests have received blessings both from an ‘open’ church bishop and from a Vatican-recognised bishop, and thus have valid orders which are recognised both by the Vatican and by the ‘underground’ church. Also, I have done some study on the places of overlap between certain elements of mainland Chinese political theory and practice, and Catholic social teaching. There is a substantive argument to be made there.

So, all that having been said. I give Bishop-Emeritus Joseph two cheers – not a full three – for his stance on the appointment of bishops. The ‘tacit accord’ approach, for all its (from a Catholic view) philosophical flaws, was at least a modus vivendi, and it’s a modus vivendi that could possibly work as well if not better for the Orthodox Church, provided Vladyka Kirill’s ouvertures to the Chinese government for legal recognition bear fruit. Here it behoves Orthodox Christians to listen very carefully to what Cardinal Joseph is saying; I, for one, am watching how the Vatican and the Chinese government come to an agreement here, as – regardless of how it turns out – the ramifications for any Orthodox mission in China will be deep and lasting. The Chinese government will walk away from any deal made with the Vatican with a certain set of expectations which it will then apply to any possible agreement with the Orthodox Church for legal recognition. And – both for current Chinese believers and for future ones – those expectations will have immediate real-life consequences.

Bishop-Emeritus Joseph’s insistence on separating – on an intellectual level – the Chinese government, from the Patriotic Catholic Association leadership, from the people in the ‘open’ church is actually profoundly necessary to any cogent understanding of the situation of the Church in China, and – God willing that day comes swiftly – his approach will be vital and needed when it comes to the relationship between the Orthodox Church and the Chinese state. Why? Because the separation of nation-as-narod from nation-as-natsiya is a hallmark of Orthodox social teaching, which overly-critical Latins (and too many credulous Orthodox, unfortunately) often misinterpret as a kind of ethno-nationalism in the modern sense. Let me just say, then, that on the question of the CPCA, the Vatican would be well-advised to listen to Bishop Joseph, and to act accordingly.

That said, though: Bishop Joseph’s insistence that the government itself simply cannot be reasoned with is, to put it bluntly, wrong; hence, two cheers instead of three. If the government of the People’s Republic of China couldn’t be reasoned with, the changes that have occurred both within that government and at the grassroots over the past four decades, that allow Catholics to practice even at the limited level they currently have, simply could not have happened. Time frames do not advance as quickly in official circles, and the government has a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of continuity even if that continuity comes at a certain price. That’s also something for the Curia to understand.

Now, regarding Bishop Marcelo. However much ‘conservative’ American Catholics may hate it, he does have several good points to make. Neoliberalism is incompatible with Catholic social teaching; American-style atomistic individualism is incompatible with Catholic social teaching; ideological opposition to climate science is incompatible with Catholic social teaching. All three points hold true equally for Orthodox social teaching.

But, sadly – because I agree with the basic point – there’s no other way to describe Bishop Marcelo’s positive comments about China than ‘naïve’. We can have a decent conversation about mainland China’s getihu small business culture; about the successes of the PSBC in bringing credit to rural areas; about the working-class origins and radical potentials of the hanfu subculture; about the slow food villages; about the traditionalist potentials of ‘red memory’; about the tenacity of traditional gender rôles and natalism even under an official culture that has tried to stifle both. We could also talk about the efforts of people like Kang Xiaoguang and Thomas Han Hong-Soon to find conceptual spaces where China’s native intellectual traditions can be actively informed by the partial implementation of Catholic social teaching in Europe.

But even in listing the above you begin to notice a troubling pattern. Many (but not all) of these really interesting developments in mainland China, the ones that have the strongest consonance with Catholic (and Orthodox) values, have happened alongside or even in spite of government policy – with the PSBC, the state sponsorship of slow food and the repeal of the one-child policy being the noteworthy and laudable exceptions. I say I have ‘one foot in the big red circle’, and that for good reason, but it’s still only one foot: ‘official’ ideological discussions are still hidebound in the language of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and all the interesting discussions are happening among the (more-)independent intelligentsia and at the grassroots. To be sure, some intriguing and potentially-humanising projects are also happening at higher levels. But these are also the ones that I tend to look at with a bit more scepticism.

Bishop Marcelo unfortunately relies on nods to China’s drug policy and housing policies (with which, by the way, there are a number of outstanding problems), and a stereotypical portrayal of China’s work ethic and sober living that made me wince a bit. That’s not to say Bishop Marcelo’s argument can’t be made; it’s just that he didn’t make it very well.

More Jimmy Yen there, please, and less Jiang Zemin.

The understated brilliance of Theeb

I just watched the award-winning (and -deserving) 2015 Jordanian film Theeb.

Briefly: it’s both a Western film and a bildungsroman. The film recounts the story of the younger son, Theeb, of a Bedouin chief of al-Hijâz, during the Arab Revolt and the Ottoman theatre of World War I. His brother, Husayn, is tasked with guiding a British officer on a secret mission, through dangerous bandit-filled routes formerly used by pilgrims en route to Mecca. The fearless Theeb accompanies them – and is forced by a series of bandit attacks to fend for himself in a desert where trustworthiness is something scarcer than drinkable water.

Just from an artistic viewpoint, Theeb is a truly amazing work of cinema, and it was done on a shoestring budget. But the cinematography is utterly gorgeous, with sweeping landscapes of the rocky barrier desert lovingly rendered and dwelt on. (Also the ubiquitous flies at oases.) The dialogue is spare, and therefore effective. The characters are deep and their relationships touchingly portrayed. Even through the terse, brusque dialogue between Theeb and his brother Husayn as the latter teaches the younger boy the survival skills he will need (how to use a gun and a knife, how to slaughter a sheep), you can feel the brotherly affection there. The story of Theeb’s fight for survival in the desert, and the dangerous game he has to play when he depends on one of the bandits who attacked him to escape the desert alive, is simple but gripping.

But boy, I tell you: if I hadn’t been reading up on the history of the Arab Revolt in WWI, there’s an entire dimension of the film and its deeper intellectual, historical and thematic meaning that I would have straight-up missed.

Typically of films in the Western genre, it foregrounds a confrontation between modern technology and traditional lifestyles in marginal environments. You’ve got the Ottoman railway, which is every bit as symbolic of modern progress as it would be in an American Western: destroying the careers of the old Bedouin pilgrim guides, who then turn to banditry. But at a deeper level, Theeb shows the main character – the eponymous Bedouin boy – being torn between two very different moral visions.

The traditional demands of hospitality, brotherhood, debt, honour and vengeance stand on the one side. These demands are all very concrete, very immediate. Even for a ‘foreign’ viewer like me, the touching relationship between the two brothers, and the natural ethic of hospitality of the Bedouins (even for a British outsider) are rendered in a very easy-to-understand cinematic language. They’re visceral. They can make themselves felt in a ruffle of the hair, in a proffered coffee cup, in a handshake, in the placement of a tombstone or in a narrowed gaze filled with personal hatred and desire for revenge. These are all values that make themselves felt on the merely-human level.

On the other hand stands the very ‘modern’, very abstract demand of Arab solidarity and patriotism. The irony was clearly not lost on the screenwriters, because the only time this demand is given explicit voice in Theeb, is when the English soldier Theeb and Husayn are supposed to escort gets into an argument with his Arab translator about ‘king and country’ being things worth dying for. He does it in English, a language that Theeb and Husayn can’t understand. And even his translator finds himself seemingly at pains to explain what would drive an Englishman to undertake such a crazy and seemingly-suicidal mission in a corner of the world that isn’t his own.

But these ‘modern’ values are making their impression on Theeb all the same. They come with the changing landscape. Theeb comes into successive contact with the railway, with the Arab revolutionaries and with the Ottomans, and is forced to keep company with a pilgrim-guide turned bandit. Without spoiling the plot, there is one critical moment where Theeb has to choose between the traditional mores he knows, and the modern ‘national’ feeling which he’s only just begun to sense and understand. He chooses the latter – but when confronted about it, he justifies it in the ‘traditional’ language of brotherly honour and vengeance. Whether this is out of self-preservation or because Theeb himself finds his own actions easier to explain in this direct and visceral way, is left ambiguous. It’s not an accident that as Theeb rides his camel off back home, he crosses the ‘iron donkey trail’ where a train has just departed.

Keep in mind, too, that all of this action takes place in a few sparse-lined, understated scenes. But along with the grandiose desert vistas, it has all the tension and focus that make for truly great film. The film says a lot by speaking but little.

I can’t help but love Theeb; even with such a bleak story, it’s just so exquisitely done. I can’t possibly recommend it enough. And it makes me want to go back to exploring some of the old traditional films in the Western genre here.

An old and ugly tale

German soldiers and Polish police collaborators, 1943

For those of you who are surprised by the recent legislation banning criticism of Nazi collaboration and anti-Semitism in Poland, and the subsequent and predictable wave of anti-Semitic sentiment there: don’t be. The lack of any historical reckoning for Eastern Europe in the wake of the Second World War has long been a festering wound, and we shouldn’t be surprised when that infection starts to get angry again.

Lev Golinkin has a revealing and sobering op-ed on the topic at the New York Times. ‘Three times cursed are the dead Jews of the old Communist bloc,’ Golinkin writes. ‘Gunned down outside their towns and villages, ignored and whitewashed by the Soviet Union, and now, their killers glorified by the resurging nationalism of today’s Eastern European governments.’ The Soviet Union’s official atheism rendered the Jews and their sufferings at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators invisible. The victims of ha-Shoah were genericised, coöpted, turned into vague ‘Soviet martyrs’ of the Great Patriotic War. Their distinctiveness and the reasons they were murdered were conveniently airbrushed. In a similar way, now, the descendants and sympathisers of those same Nazi collaborators are rendering the peculiar nature of anti-Semitic hatred and violence invisible. As Golinkin writes:

The Nazis did not act alone. The Holocaust, especially in Eastern Europe, was made possible with the aid of local governments and paramilitaries, which rounded up and massacred Jews, sometimes in the service of the Nazis, sometimes on their own volition.

Today, these collaborators – groups and individuals responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews – are being glorified and rehabilitated as part of the ultranationalism surging across Eastern Europe. Nationalists seek to rally around men who fought for independence against both Russia and Germany; unfortunately, the World War II-era figures being chosen had expressed their vision for independence by murdering Jews.

But why is this happening? How comes it that all these right-wing nationalist figures in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and Croatia – who were complicit in heinous, murderous mass crimes against their Jewish neighbours – are now being rehabilitated in public memory? Lithuanian-Jewish academic Dr Dovid Katz has the beginnings of an explanation here:

One major symptom of the revisionism underway in Eastern Europe is the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators as “national heroes” on the grounds that they were anti-Soviet. Here we see direct parallels with the current American debate on Confederate statues and memorials, but in Eastern Europe it is commission of genocide rather than the defense of slavery that is being honored.

It is fair to say that nearly all the local killers in Eastern Europe were, at the time of their crimes, reliably anti-Soviet. From the Nazi invasion of June 22, 1941 onward, when the actual genocidal phase of the Holocaust got underway, each and every murderer was anti-Soviet and yearned for a Nazi victory. By contrast, every victim of the Nazis, and all the Righteous among the Nations who risked all to just do the right thing and save a neighbor, prayed for a Soviet victory – not because they were all Communists, but because the Soviet Union was the only force seriously fighting the Nazis on ground zero of the Holocaust from the onset of the genocide and right through to liberation.

At its theoretical apex – and moral nadir – among scholars, politicians, and prosecutors in the Baltics and Ukraine, bogus moral equivalence has also involved unstinting efforts to smear Holocaust victims and survivors. This reached its low point with a campaign by Lithuanian prosecutors to open “pre-trial investigations” of Holocaust survivors – particularly those who survived by joining groups of Soviet-sponsored partisans in the forests, or who in recent years supposedly committed “libel” against Baltic “heroes” who had collaborated with the Nazis. The campaign started in 2006, and it goes on indefinitely (one of the five primary victims of these “investigations,” Dr. Rachel Margolis, passed away in 2015), although charges or specific allegations have never been proffered – nor have any state apologies ever been forthcoming.

United States policy regarding the Double Genocide theory began to change markedly around 2009 (I have written about this in considerable detail at the Jewish Currents website.) As one American diplomat put it to me some years ago, off the record: “Look, these guys will stand up to the Russians, not like England, France and Germany. And if all they want is some changes in the history, and it’s changes that hit Putin in the face, then why the hell not?!”

Note that Dr Katz is no apologist for Putin, and indeed spends much of the rest of his essay talking about the need for a resistance to Putin not to be built on lies. But two points brought up here are worth dwelling on for a moment.

The first is that the ‘hero-worship’ in Eastern Europe is very closely allied to the growth of anti-Semitism there. For example: (certain individual exceptions notwithstanding) the close alliance between the Uniate clergy and the Nazi-collaborationist UPA, responsible for committing monstrous obscenities and cruelties upon the Jews on their own initiative, is the dirty little secret that can no longer legally be mentioned there. If you object to this new state of affairs, of course, then you are either a ‘moskal’’ or a filthy ‘zhid’. It is not an accident nor a coincidence that the number of anti-Semitic incidents has exploded there in the last three years, since the Maidan.

This is a pattern that is repeating itself now, as we speak, in Poland. The new law which criminalises discussion of anti-Semitic violence committed by Poles was followed up by a ‘wave’ and a ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitic outbursts directed at high-profile targets like the Israeli embassy there, which in turn builds on a growth of anti-Semitic sentiment that has been taking place for rather longer than that.

The second point is this: American neocons are remarkably selective in ‘whose Jews’ they will support. Their vaunted philo-Semitism is thus revealed as a sham, a veneer whiting over much uglier sentiments. They are more than willing to downplay and turn a blind eye to this kind of Holocaust obfuscation in Eastern Europe, if it serves their geopolitical ends. They are not true friends of the Jews of Europe, or the Jews of anywhere else, really, besides Israel. People like my great-grandparents and their relatives are, to the neocons and their allied ‘hero-worshippers’ in Eastern Europe, at best a distraction and at worst a pesky annoyance to be removed from the history books – with everything that implies.

What it comes down to is this: the Holocaust was particular and unique. The mass murder perpetrated against the Jews of Europe were of a uniquely heinous kind, and it is needful to remember that. It’s also needful not to voice a selective or partial view of the Holocaust, or one which equates it to Soviet atrocities in Eastern Europe. The modern ‘double genocide’ theory itself airbrushes Jews out of the picture in a worse way than Golinkin argues the genericisation of Soviet Jewish suffering did. The ‘double genocide’ is a partial-truth that, in too many places, puts the perpetrator in the place of the victim.

As Golinkin aptly puts it:

Breaking that silence is imperative, especially given the current global rise of anti-Semitism and the disturbing correlation between Holocaust revisionism and violence against living Jews.

On Christianity and Arab socialism

Shiblî Shumayyil

It’s a true pity that John at EifD isn’t blogging anymore. His brief biographical sketch of Shiblî Shumayyil, a Syrian Christian and one of the first Arab socialists, is thankfully still up on David Lindsay’s blog. Christians were heavily overrepresented in the reform and revolutionary movements in the Arab world, and with good reason. It’s my hope to pick up where Mr John sadly left off and do a bit more profiling of the Arab Christian leadership in culture and politics, particularly on the ‘left’.

Shiblî Shumayyil was not alone; his Arab Christian contemporaries Salâma Mûsâ, Yaʻqûb Sarruf, Labiba Hashim, Farah Antûn and his brother-in-law Niqula Haddâd also advocated religious and œconomic egalitarianism. Later figures on the Arab Christian left include not only Sir George Antonius (not explicitly a socialist, but certainly narodnik in his political intuition), but also Qustantîn Zurayq, Michel ‘Aflaq, and a number of Palestinian radicals such as the al-‘Isa family which ran the Filastin newspaper. In addition, I hope to expand to some of the early Arab Muslim leftists, like al-Kawâkibî, who were the most friendly to Christian, Jewish and other minority interests in the Middle East.

This will very likely be an ambitious project for my blog, given that – unlike those of China and of Russia – I have not previously had much education in Arabic and Middle Eastern affairs. Much of the scholarly reading I will be doing on this subject will be on my own direction. Hopefully I can get a good handle on the subject and explore it in some degree of depth here.

Hodža in his own words…

In the interests of giving a clearer understanding of the man whom I briefly introduced in my last blog post, I am here presenting some direct quotes from the Slovak distributist journalist and statesman. Most of these (not all) come from the Slovak Academy of Sciences volume edited by Miroslav Pekník.

… on the need for self-respect among the peasantry. There’s something a little rich about this, of course. Hodža was not a peasant himself, but a gymnasium-educated journalist and publicist who gravitated to his similarly-educated fellows. But regardless of his personal proclivities, Hodža has a solid point to make. The coöperatives and farmers’ unions he championed were meant, as much for the self-respect and political agency of the peasants who joined them, as they were for direct material advancement:

Why do the higher-class gentlemen regard the peasant farmer as something lower or baser? The peasant farmer is oppressed because he can be oppressed. This is not the case elsewhere. In Bohemia? In Moravia? There, the peasant farmer is master! You see, politics for the people begins with the peasant smock. In this, only in this is our fault, that we are unable to respect ourselves and that we are unable to win respect from others. (1905)

… on the shortcomings of Slovak nationalist politics, and their shameful collusion with capitalism and profiteering, industrial agriculture:

The previous programmes of the national party were excessively one-sided. The national questions are their alpha and omega. Church and school only here and there. Our programmes treat the essential ingredients of public life with lordly indifference. It is entirely natural that none of them has been viable… To capitalism and to those in power everything was and is free, but nobody gave a helping hand to the poor and weak. Our people are free from serfdom, but find themselves in the claws of capitalism. [Our populace] has barely come to life and now the latifundia and loss-making factories are beginning to stifle it! (1905)

… and again. Here he is, undoubtedly thinking of the Rusins and other smaller minorities inside the first Czechoslovak Republic:

Recognition of national individualities led to undervaluing or wiping out of [other] national individualities. Chauvinism, self-deception and suppression of others arose. The nationality idea as a means to a higher aim became an aim in itself. National egoism suppressed humanitarian ideals: and behold, nationalism. Since nationality already became the aim, all other aims vanished, as did the principles of social equality and social justice desired by all humanity… (1930)

… at the same time, though, he was no advocate of globalism or any kind of fan of artificial schemes to unite people under an artificial bureaucratic higher authority. As ill-disposed as he was to ‘aggressive’ nationalism and ‘chauvinism’ that saw no ends beyond themselves, he was even less well-disposed to schemes that would rob smaller nations, like the Slovaks, of their hard-won dignity. As he put it:

Nationality cannot be drowned in humanism, because precisely this way, the treasure of humanity would vanish. (1930)

… on the impossibility of political and œconomic ‘free-market’ liberalism among the Slovaks:

Political liberalism is actually a mere opposition against the ruling conservatism, since as soon as it achieves power, it conserves itself. Economic liberalism, based on arbitrary trade and industry in our country, has no conditions whatsoever among us! (1930)

… on the Uniate clergy. For a bit of context, the kobłyna was an in-kind tax which entitled the Uniate priest to a certain percentage of the peasant’s agricultural produce like grain or wood; and the rokowyna was essentially a corvée. The peasant was obligated to labour, unpaid, for the Uniate priest, either in the fields or transporting goods. The Uniate clergy, first with the blessings of the Polish and later with those of the Austro-Hungarian government, had taken full advantage of these privileges, gorging themselves on the lifeblood of the poor. Here is Hodža, speaking on the occasion of the Maramoroš-Siget Process that unjustly imprisoned and imposed crushing fines on Fr Alexis Kabalyuk and 93 of his flock:

There, in Transcarpathia, the Greek Catholic Church is completely subordinated to the government; nearly all Greek Catholic priests have been Magyarised and cooperate with the government officials. For long years, the people have patiently tolerated it all (the kobłyna and rokowyna levies)… (1913)

… on the Rusin peasantry in general:

The Rusins are a starving nation. They suffer hunger as they have nothing to eat; they starve mentally, and suffer as no other nation in Europe. As soon as they are born, they are sucked dry by the [Uniate] priest and the likhvar [loan shark], both of whom are supported by the [Austro-Hungarian] government. They have the worst land to cultivate. Out of a hundred people, five or maybe ten can read… (1916)

Keep in mind that Hodža was not a Russophile. Being as he was a critic of national chauvinism, he was not an ally of Kramář’s national-conservatives; nor did he believe as Beneš did that the Czechoslovak nation had proximate interests in common with the Soviet Union. As he himself put it:

We are situated between millstones (Germany and Russia) and if we do not hasten to become millstones ourselves, we will be ground into powder! (1934)

His sympathy with the Rusins, and his distaste for the Uniate clergy and their feudal abuses of the peasantry, had nothing to do with the cultural politics of the time – and everything to do with his agrarian-distributist sympathy (however distant and professional in nature) for the impoverished and indebted. Hodža, though allowing that Russian Orthodox priests did not treat the Rusins with such cruelty, was even slightly sceptical of the pro-Russian sentiments which were, at that time, understandably growing among the Rusins:

[Such sentiments] may strengthen the Rusins in religion, but can give them no strength in the struggle for their daily bread or in the struggle against usury, pro-Magyar [Uniate] priests, notaries, officials or the whole lordly clique. (1914)

Hodža’s own attitudes toward religion generally were… flexible. He himself was a Lutheran, a pastor’s son, but he spoke highly of the ‘Christian idea’, the ‘altruistic’ and ‘humanitarian’ impulse that gravitated toward the goals of meeting people in their most ‘vital needs’ in ways which were seemingly filtered through Hegel and Feuerbach. This rather attenuated understanding of Christianity led him to consider the churches – in most cases – as needed bulwarks against the dehumanising and distorting effects of the various ideologies.