In previous installments of this column, I’ve written about racial oppression, and about how European racism against Muslim minorities is the primary fuel of modern Islamist terrorism. But now I feel I must explain that violence and extremism in general do not follow from oppression alone. Oppression helps nurture both, but what is important is not so much the reality of oppression as the perception of oppression, and the expectation that violent extremism can usher in a non-oppressive situation. This explains why many of the symptoms of Islamist extremism in Europe also exist among Christian conservatives in the United States, even though they are far from being downtrodden.

First, the narrative of oppression is central to every radical ideology. Almost invariably, every radical of any kind believes he is being suppressed by some abstract enemy: the Jews, the liberals, the West, secularism, science, communism, capitalism, white people. This belief has nothing to do with reality, and even when the group the radical claims to represent is oppressed, the radical will seldom join in more mainstream action to combat oppression, or recognize when things get better. Black nationalists decried Martin Luther King’s marches as displays of obsequity; Christian fundamentalists gloss over the ACLU’s protection of civil liberties in face of sometimes hostile school superintendents; communists refused to cooperate with social democrats even when Hitler was throwing both to concentration camps equally.

So the question of what causes violence is not the question of what causes radical ideologies to appear, but what causes large numbers of people to accept them. Real oppression certainly helps, since there tends to be an inverse correlation between the level of inequality between a country’s majority ethnicity and its minorities, and the level of violence minorities engage in. Put another way, the two countries where there is relatively little socioeconomic discrimination against Muslims by Western standards, the United States and Canada, are the two countries where Muslims are least likely to enlist in Jihadi organizations.

But a theory of what causes violence has to be more complex than that. Atheists and homosexuals, two marginalized minorities in most countries with a strong religiously conservative streak, have never engaged in terrorism, unless one counts communists who also happened to be atheists. African-American riots are an exceedingly rare phenomenon. In forty years, radical feminists have produced exactly one terrorist, mentally unstable Valerie Solanas. Before partition became obvious in India, anti-colonialist activism was non-violent. And in contrast, the KKK was never oppressed.

In all cases where terrorism occurred, there was a strong perception of oppression, even if it was really practiced by a dominant group that considered equality oppressive. Klansmen seriously considered the fact that black people could vote a bad thing for white people. Various factors then pushed many Southern whites toward radicalism, such as being told by Northerners first not to enslave black people and then to desegregate. In similar vein, the Nazis could scapegoat Jews and communists as responsible to the misery of Germany, and thus convince large numbers of Germans that these two marginalized groups were actually oppressing the German people.

In contrast, any form of oppression that does not have an element of socioeconomic inequality or obvious legal marginalization will be glossed over. In the United States, secularist activists usually understand how the government routinely violates separation of church and state, but most nonreligious people can easily live their lives without seeing these violations as a yoke. Even when inequality is glaringly obvious, as in the case of gays and lesbians, without systematic impoverishment people have too much to lose from engaging in violence.

Groups that are not really being oppressed find their most zealous supporters among the lower classes. I’ve already noted that the lower classes are likelier to engage in crude racism against lower-ranked groups than the upper classes; this also applies to terrorism, since not only do they have relatively little to lose from committing terrorist acts, but also they already tend to view their situation as miserable and are susceptible to scapegoating. Upper-class whites in the United States don’t need to vent their anger by committing hate crimes against black people, and upper-class American Christians are comfortable enough with their material situation that they are in no rush to embrace Dominionism. Dominionist leaders are upper-class, but they fall under the rubric of radicals, so the important question is not about them but about their followers.

So at a minimum, the idea that marginalization causes violence and terrorism should be refined to “the perception of marginalization, mediated by socioeconomic inequality, causes violence.” But even that is not enough, because it can’t explain why there has been relatively little black terrorism in the United States, and why Islamic terrorism only flourished in Europe in the aftermath of 9/11.

In my post about Islamism’s watershed moment, I noted that European Jihadism arose after 9/11 because of Bin Laden’s inspiration. The same can be said in the other direction about marginalized groups that elected to resist oppression with civil disobedience. Just as Bin Laden became a role model for disgruntled Muslims, who then started to emulated his terrorist tactics, so did Martin Luther King inspire African-Americans and Gandhi inspire Indians to be non-violent. Neither of the latter two inspirations worked perfectly, but their presence correlate with far below average levels of violence on the part of these two groups.

Finally, the last complication to this model is that the perception of change can easily color the perception of oppression. In communist Eastern Europe, the people didn’t revolt at the height of poverty and repression; they revolted when things seemed to be slowly getting better, but then stagnated or improved too slowly. Without the inspiration of a leader who can convince people to undertake direct activism, regardless of whether it’s violent of not, people who are steadily oppressed accept their oppression as a fact of life. They start trying to change things only when they feel that good things go away—that their privilege is evaporating, in case of groups that are not really oppressed, or that equality is proceeding too slowly and politicians’ support for it is duplicitous, in case of groups that are truly oppressed.

This explains why extremism, both violent and nonviolent, arises, even when the group that practices it is far from oppressed. It’s a more accurate rendition of the thesis that religious fundamentalism is merely a reaction to encroaching secularism; in fact it’s not a reaction to encroaching secularism or to the economic failures of modern capitalism, but a consequence of scapegoating certain classes of people. Christian fundamentalism in the United States, Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Hindu fundamentalism in India arise not from the failures of secularism, but from charismatic leaders who cause people to focus on hated outsiders.

On the other hand, the formulation that oppression causes extremism is a fairly good approximation. From a historical perspective, the role of perception is critical. From a policy one, the government can change none of the factors influencing violence, except the actual level of oppression, and, by proxy, the perception that things are improving. By and large, we can take oppression combined with the right inspiration to be the main cause of violence, and then say that some perception-related factors can cause oppressed groups not to commit terrorism and non-oppressed ones to engage in violence.

When I was in college, one of my favorite discoveries was How to Read Donald Duck, a clever, if heavy-handed, cultural critique of Disney´s comic book adventures. According to the authors, Dorfman and Mattelart, writing in 1971, all those wonderful stories where Uncle Scrooge, Donald and the triplets claimed floating islands in the Pacific, rescued golden crowns from Mayan cenotes, and thwarted revolutionary “dogs” that looked suspiciously like Che and Castro were pure American Cold War capitalist propaganda. I’d like to say I’m not so easy now (I’d love the authors to back up their take with an intercepted memo from Disney to his artists reading, “Boys, Kissinger called. How soon can Huey, Dewey and Louie make Chile scream?”), but I have a soft spot for this kind of pop-culture-as-politics criticism.

Which is why I was a little disappointed that no one brought up Indiana Jones earlier this year, when Greece and Italy finally forced the Met and the Getty to admit that their collections contained looted and smuggled artifacts. I couldn’t help but think that that fight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, between Indy and the looter over the Cross of Coronado, might really set us straight on the finer points of the debate over cultural patrimony and museums.

          
Looter: This is the second time I’ve had to reclaim my property from you.

Indy: That belongs in a museum

Looter: So do you.

The thought of a permanent exhibit on Indiana Jones at the American Museum of Natural History is appealing, but who does deserve to keep it? The looter who dug it out of a cave in the U.S.? The archaeologist? (Apparently not Coronado or his ancestors.) Happily, McSweeney’s halfway took on Indy’s credibility on the subject this month with a wry mock letter titled, “Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail and Discovers That His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied”: “Criticisms of Dr. Jones ranged from ‘possessing a perceptible methodological deficiency’ to ‘practicing archaeology with a complete lack of, disregard for, and colossal ignorance of current methodology, theory, and ethics’ to ‘unabashed grave-robbing’. Given such appraisals, perhaps it isn’t surprising to learn that several Central and South American countries recently assembled to enact legislation aimed at permanently prohibiting his entry.”

In honor of Harrison Ford’s recent boast that he’s fit enough for a planned fourth Indiana Jones movie, maybe it’s time to take a stab at “How to Watch Indiana Jones.” Unless I’m mistaken, no one’s really tackled the narrative of archaeological collection and patrimony politics in the Indiana Jones movies. That’s a shame, as I believe that what’s most salient about Indy—and what prompts lazy reporters to dub people everything from “the Indiana Jones of Tomatoes” to “the Indiana Jones of Finance” (I just Goggled “Indiana Jones of” and got 40,800 hits)—is that he makes archaeology look like the perfect mix of scientific brain and globe-trotting brawn. Indy can take back one kaddam from the Staff of Ra “to honor the Hebrew God whose Ark this is”, and lay a smack-down on the Nazis.

Except that, as the McSweeney’s satire suggests, his archaeological ethics and skills leave a lot to be desired. As an archaeologist, he makes Heinrich Schliemann look good. Take that justly famous first scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indiana Jones is in the jungle of the eastern slopes of the Andes, searching for a hidden temple. After getting abandoned by his native guides (the Indy movies’ portrayal of native peoples is a rabbit-hole of its own), and betrayed by a young Alfred Molina, Indy literally brings down the house—the entire trap-laden death temple—to get that horrific golden fertility idol. He apparently left his plumb-bob and dentist’s brush at home.

Thankfully, his French nemesis Belloq  is waiting outside, with a coterie of armed “Hovitos” natives to help set Indy straight on why “Finders Keepers” just isn’t going to cut it this time.

Jones: Too bad the Hovitos don’t know you the way I do, Belloq.

Belloq: Yes, too bad. You could warn them… if only you spoke Hovitos.

So the American archaeologist destroys a temple and loses the artifact—to a French archaeologist, no less—because he failed to enlist the local peoples in the protection of their patrimony. Right? Had Indy gotten an advance copy of Patrick Tierney’s controversial Darkness in El Dorado he might have pointed out that Belloq’s presence would likely destroy the Hovitos’ traditional political and economic organization (and give them measles, natch). We should cut Indy a little slack, though. As Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade made abundantly clear, everyone else in archaeology in the 1930s was a murderous Nazi! In the face of this obviously irrefutable fact, can we really get mad at American museums’ collecting practices?

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ditches the Nazi angle, but sharpens the specious critique—very much implied in “pro-museum” arguments this year—that “culture-rich” countries´ laws and protests are disingenuous political pander, and don’t represent the countries´actual will, or ability, to protect their monuments and artifacts. Granted, Temple of Doom makes our great American hero a little seedier from the start, when Indy trades the ashes of a Chinese emperor to a Hong Kong gangster for a diamond. The real critique, however, starts when Indy gets to “India”. (I put “India” in quotes because when the Indian government read Temple of Doom’s script, it supposedly wanted to remove the word “Maharajah” and asked that their citizens not all be cast as, well, members of a Thuggee Death Cult. Thankfully, Lucas and Spielberg stayed true to their artistic vision and filmed in Sri Lanka instead.) Indy, his wince-worthy Chinese sidekick and whining girlfriend discover that an Indian village has lost not only its ancient “Shankara” stone, but also all its children to the predations of a great nearby palace. It turns out that the English-educated Mola Ram’s Thuggee Death Cult has brainwashed the boy maharajah, and co-opted the Shankara stone for bloody rituals!

As always, Indy is victorious, and returns the children and the stone to the Indian village.  What does it all mean? Sadly, I can’t meet my own aforementioned standards and produce a letter from Lucas to Spielberg reading, “Steve, what if in the next Indiana Jones movie, he intervened in another country’s struggle over the meaning of the past (some sort of stone thing) for the sake of the future (some starving kids) and rescued both from a hypocritical anti-imperial cultural elite (I´m thinking Thuggees)?” That letter does not exist.

But Secret of the Incas does. In 1953 Paramount Pictures flew Charlton Heston to Cuzco, Peru to play the Ur/Indy, AKA Harry Steele, a square-jawed, unshaven explorer, complete with fedora and bomber jacket. As a few movie buffs have pointed out on-line, Paramount may never release Secret of the Incas on DVD, given the physical similarities shared by Steele and Indy, and a few lifted gimmicks. (Spielberg and Lucas’s explorer cannibalism was hardly unique: Secret of the Incas itself came from a producer who had read about explorer Hiram Bingham’s rediscovery of Machu Picchu, and Bingham’s right-hand man in Peru was the movie’s technical adviser). Which is really too bad, as Secret of the Incas is quite the mash-up of pulp exploring and archaeological ethics.

In a nutshell, Steele is a handsome rogue who’s been holed up in Cuzco, Peru for a few years, playing gigolo for visiting female tourists for money (“It’s the best kind,” he tells one. “It’s the hardest to get. It always smells sooo good.”), and waiting for “a line on that Incan treasure” everyone keeps talking about. He finally gets a clue, and with a beautiful Romanian blonde in tow (Indy, cover your heart, indeed!), he steals a plane, and flies to that famous lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu. Once there, however, he gets a rude surprise in the ruins. There’s a joint American-Peruvian-Mexican excavation going on, and local Andeans—along with the 1950s exotica singing sensation Yma Sumac—are dancing in the temples. Steele sneers. “Nobody comes here without a reason,” he growls. “The only reason is to dig. I don’t like the competition.”

Steele wants to find and steal the “Golden sunburst” of the Incan emperor Manco. His resolve falters, however, when he meets “Pachacutec,” a graduate of the University of Cuzco fluent in English, Spanish and Quechua. Pachacutec tells Steele they are hoping to find “the tomb of our last Incan chief.” When the sunburst “is taken back to the Temple of the Sun, only then will the people of the Inca be great again.” Steele finds the sunburst, of course, but he guiltily returns it to the archaeologists and Pachacutec, admitting “I guess finding it meant more to me than keeping it.”

Incredibly, the film is loaded with asides on cultural patrimony (an American archaeologist on his Peruvian military escort: “His job is to see that we don’t appropriate any souvenirs.”) and references to what we might call “archaeological self-determination.” By the film’s logic, Steele doesn’t suffer a crisis of conscience because he realizes stealing is wrong; he gives the sunburst back because the treasure’s cultural value to the Andean peoples outweighs its monetary and scientific value.

If it sounds a little preachy, that’s because it is, as any argument over the idea of cultural patrimony must be. But in a “funny” last twist that shines a mirror on America’s ambivalence about those sorts of arguments, the producers show that our Ur-Indy is still the bad-boy explorer we want to root for. In the movie’s final minute, Pachacutec restores the sunburst to the Temple of the Sun and Yma Sumac caterwauls in the background. Steele turns to go. Before he does, though, he hands his Romanian blonde girlfriend a golden Inca shawl pin. “Must have fallen into my pocket while I was in the tomb,” he says with a wink. 

The music swells, ‘The End’ flashes on the screen, and we’re remindend once again that our favorite guy in a hat and his big-picture archaeological ethics are just fiction. Right?

George Bush, in his last year of office, finally got the comprehensive immigration reform law passed. He signed the law in a ceremony in the White House on 10 Oct 08.  Two events compelled a bipartisan approach: the looming election fiasco and the intense lobbying by Arnold Schwarznegger

With election only a few weeks away, no one wanted to be the president to clean up the global Bush mess. No Republican. No democrat. No candidate. Period.

Iraq was the dilemma; while the republicans simply had no desire to withdraw, the democrats did not know how.

Arnold, aware, this was his only chance to be the president, garnered the support of democrats, republicans, free lancers, independents, dependents, deal makers, fence sitters, border crossers and lobbied successfully to change the law. The new immigration law said:

“In the absence of any candidates for the post of the president, the congress and the senate may appoint a person — including a foreigner – as the president of the USA, but on a temporary work permit, named POS-4: presidency outsourced for four years.”

The congress considered many candidates and finally selected The Dalai Lama because he had traveled through the USA more than he had done in Tibet and in a recent Nobel peace prize winners rally he was not critical of the US.

Next morning a benign smile replaced a silly smirk on TV screens while emasculated Arnold sulked in his gym.

In his inaugural speech president Dalai Lama declared, “We will launch novel initiatives in foreign, domestic and economic fronts; we will follow the doctrine of TLC: terrorism, liberation and consumption.

TERRORISM shall be our foreign policy. (Hillary’s jaw dropped, Kerry’s eyes popped, Kennedy’s heart stopped.) But we will give a new definition to TERRORISM: To Engage Rivals in Redirecting Our Resources In Serving Mankind (Hillary-Kerry-Kennedy body parts relaxed.)

On the domestic front, we will not only ensure life and liberty but seek liberation of the intellect from the clutches of the ego. Then and only then we will achieve true freedom. (Richard Gere smiled)

Our constitution ensures separation of religion and state. As a natural evolution of this cherished principle, I propose, we now separate religion from God because religion has lately become a major impediment in understanding God.” (Buchanan and Gingrich cringed)

Our economic policy shall be to cut our consumption. Our avarice for plundering the earth has exceeded its ability to sustain us.”(Cheney got pensive)

The Dalai Lama received inaudible applause in the house but thunderous appreciation in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Iran.

Next day he appointed three eminent persons as his close advisers. Donald Rumsfeld, Joseph Stiglitz and Arundathi Roy.

He chose Donald Rumsfeld as the chief adviser. When the nation protested, he calmed the fear. ”He is the single most valuable asset in my administration. If we do exactly the opposite of what he recommends, we will not go wrong.”

He invited the Nobel laureate economist, Joseph Stiglitz and said,” You have an image of a person who opposes globalization.”

“But I don’t” Joseph protested, “I am only against the machinations of the world bank and IMF. I have written about it in my book — Globalization and its Discontent”.

Dalai Lama winked,” It doesn’t matter what you write. The street protestors don’t read. They follow the slogans. Look here, we can pursue the globalization of non violence with you leading it. With your image no one will suspect.”

  He selected Arundhati Roy – a writer gifted by her small god – with talent to oppose anything: dams, nukes, dictators, democracy, judges, foreign policies, wars, Saddam, Bush, corporations, globalization, free markets, long hair – almost anything. She could write expert opinions simultaneously with both hands; the left hand hurling invectives to the right and the right splashing sarcasm on the right. Her stunning looks, incisive intellect and strident criticism of the USA gave her credibility with its enemies. She had thundered in Turkey, “We are here to examine a vast spectrum of evidence about the motivations and consequences of the US invasion and occupation, evidence that has been deliberately marginalized or suppressed. Every aspect of the war will be examined – its legality, the role of international institutions and major corporations in the occupation, the role of the media, the impact of weapons such as depleted uranium munitions, napalm, and cluster bombs, the use of and legitimation of torture, the ecological impacts of the war, the responsibility of Arab governments, the impact of Iraq’s occupation on Palestine, and the history of US and British military interventions in Iraq.”

At their first cabinet meeting, Joseph Stiglitz gave an overview of the state of the economy. He told that our priorities were skewed and we could easily afford to improve the condition of the world. He cited from the Human Development Report, 1998, the comparison between the total cost for health and education of the world and other frivolous expenditure the world was indulging in:

Cost of basic education for all $6 billion (Cosmetics in the USA $8 billion)

Cost of water and sanitation for all $9 billion (Ice Cream in Europe $11 billion)

Reproductive health for all women $12 billion (Perfumes in Europe and the USA $12 billion)

Basic health and nutrition $13 billion for all (Pet foods in Europe and USA $17 billion)

Business entertainment in Japan $35 billion

Cigarettes in Europe $50 billion

Alcohol in Europe $105 billion

Narcotics in the world $400 billion

Military spending in the world $780 billion

It was not any better in 2005 Human development Report:

Annual income of the richest 500 people exceeded that of the poorest 416 million

Cost of ending extreme poverty – $300 billion – less than 2% of the income of the richest 10% of the world’s population

Joseph also quoted from a report on health by Jeffrey Sachs and associates:

“8 million lives could be saved per year in low income countries by intervention in nutritional and infectious diseases. These countries need additional grants of 22 to 31 billion dollars per year by 2015 from donor countries. The USA gave only 0.012 percent of its GNP, an average of 920 million dollars between 1997 and 1999 as development assistance for health and population programs.

The Dalai Lama asked Joseph Stiglitz, “How much will the Iraq war cost?” Joseph replied,” I estimate, it will be at least 1.1 trillion dollars by 2016.”

The Dalai Lama said, “If we stop the war now and spend some money instead on health and education, do you think that will be a better foreign policy? Do you think we will make more friends? Do you think that is the right action?”  Rumsfeld disagreed,” First we need democracy in Iraq to ensure our national security. We can not cut our defense expenditure and our war effort”.

Dalai Lama had chosen the right path instinctively and Rumsfeld’s objection validated it. He asked Rumsfeld,” When should we withdraw from Iraq?”

Rumsfeld said,” Not for five years or may be ten.”

Taking Rumsfeld’s advice seriously he ordered the US army to withdraw immediately.

He asked Arundhati to go Iraq, publicize the new US foreign policy, convince them of our sincerity and embrace them with friendship and love. She hesitated,” Since I can not be guaranteed security I would rather not travel. Instead I would just write angry articles and persuasive letters.” 
Rumsfeld chuckled,” In New York she needed only a podium but in Baghdad she also needs courage.” Arundhati, livid and challenged, defied Rumsfeld and left for Iraq.

Dalai Lama blessed her with parting advice,” Mr. Bush had used WMD – words of mass deception — to fabricate excuses to attack Iraq but now it is your responsibility to use the right speech. And don’t practice in Iraq what you may have picked up from the communists in Kerala. Freedom of speech does not legitimize the freedom to shriek.”

Arundhati was a big hit in Iraq with her passionate persuasion.

The Dalai Lama then set out on an earnest campaign to convince Americans to cut consumption.

He cited from a report, that 20% of the world population living in the highest-income countries indulges in 86% of total private consumption. They also:

Eat 45% of all meat and fish

Use 58% of total energy

Own74% of all telephones

Use 84% of all paper

Own 87% of the world’s vehicles

The president pleaded,” We in the USA are the profligate market for the world. The whole world sells to us and we buy a disproportionate share of world’s production of goods and services. That makes us vulnerable and insecure. We should cut our consumption and lead simpler lives.”
When Americans finally decided to live without compulsive shopping, the imports decreased, trade deficit narrowed, national debt plummeted, credit card debts vanished, inflation leveled off and the need for Valium and Prozac abated.

The shopping outlet of the world, the USA, had pulled its shutters down. Main mart of the world was closed!

The experiment seemed to be work for two years.

But, by the third year of his presidency global effects of this policy sprouted. The Chinese had lost their outlet store for manufactured trinkets, the Indians who had facilitated the lives of Americans with their software (while neglecting their own poor people) had no users, the French and Italians had to keep their luxury frills at home, the Japanese inventory of cars escalated, the Korean electronics had no buyers.

In the US, as sales plunged, government revenues plummeted, unemployment escalated, bankruptcies multiplied, discontent simmered. And the Mexicans stopped crossing the border.

But Cuba insulated and hardened by decades of US blockade, was the only country unaffected by the global depression. Cuba had also recently hosted the Non Aligned Movement summit where they had decided to drop the word “Aligned” from the title and call it (appropriately) ‘Non Movement’ and Fidel Castro, whose guts had been surgically removed, became the president.

Fidel rose from the hospital bed and startled the comrades, who seduced by the promise of free markets had slumbered for half a century. The ‘Non Movement’, they figured, was a hint from Fidel to revolt.

The workers of the world united and threatened, “Either the US reopen its free market or now face the terrorist wrath of the Cubans, Chinese, Indians, South Americans, East Europeans, Koreans, Africans – all combined.”

The Dalai Lama was sad. The magnitude of global depression was worse than the world had seen before. That night, Dalai Lama had a dream —– Cubans had invaded the USA. He advisers told him to flee the country. He groaned, “Oh not again.” And then he reluctantly encouraged his followers to trek to Canada. “It is a flat land, an easier trek compared to my first one.”

In the background he heard Rumsfeld taunt, “Ha, Communists need free markets to feed them and pacifists need an army to protect them.”

Bush sniggered from his ranch and praised Rumsfeld with Bushism, “What a clever and apt simile!” Arundhati swiftly opposed the Bush metaphor and retorted, “No, it is called an irony.”