There was a time, forty years ago, when Muammar al-Qadhafi represented the revolutionary aspirations of many of the people of the world. There was a point, though, probably sometime during the 1980s (or was it specifically between 1989 and 1991?), at which Qadhafi and everything that he used to represent went obsolete. He became the most sinister of bygone comedians, but he somehow still managed to hold on for two more decades. Then, finally, the Arab Spring came along to demonstrate once and for all that Qadhafi’s revolution had long since failed. A lot of things are changing in the world right now. Something new is being created. The Libyan rebels have proven — more so than anyone else this year — that in order to build the new, one must negate the old.
Qadhafi is dead. Qadhafi had to be killed! Hillary Clinton has already called for an investigation because — horror of horrors! — the apparent execution of Qadhafi did not follow proper juridical procedure. Who does Clinton think she is to criticize the Libyan rebels? Did anyone involved really want to create another circus sideshow in an international court, another Slobodan Milošević? Was there really any other choice? Would Qadhafi himself have bothered with juridical procedure if he had managed to drag any one of the rebels back to the king’s court in his bedouin tent? “L’état, c’est moi!” Robespierre had to do what Robespierre had to do, too, for a fight to the death is a fight to the death. The rebels had to kill him! And everybody knew that the rebels had to kill him. Nobody cares what some woman in Washington thinks.
Selecting Stones launched back in February with my commentary on the imminent demise of the Qadhafi regime, and of all the dreams and nightmares that it embodied. The first phase of the process in Libya has now been completed, and as the old wisdom goes, the difficult part for the rebels and the National Transitional Council begins here. Let’s wish them the best in the enormous task ahead of them! In the meantime, the year 2011 has gone in a number of different directions. Although the Arab Spring remains the most manifest sign of the motion in which this year finds our world, none of the other episodes of unrest should be discounted, for they all belong together as a whole. The death of Qadhafi is a great achievement. False illusions have been terminated, and the king’s head lies on a platter where it belongs. The only thing left to be built is the future.
The King of Kings of Africa
Prole Center
October 23, 2011
I have to say, I was offended by this blog. Gaddafi may have been no angel, but he was a saint compared to the U.S. and European ruling class thugs who took him down. When you celebrate his death and downfall, you only help the great enemy of all mankind. According to several sources I have come to trust and respect, as well as my own instincts, Gaddafi did do some good things for the Proletariat of that country and helped fund left-wing and insurrectionary movements around the world. Even Harper’s magazine labeled the Libyan rebels as middle class. That’s why I find it so striking that you disparage the Occupy Movement as bourgeois and middle class and give the transnational council riff-raff respect as legitimate revolutionaries. They are pawns of NATO pure and simple. They are middle and upper class trash that want to restore a brutal regime on the people of Libya and sell off all their oil to enrich western capitalists. “Workers World” has also made clear in several articles that the Libyan “uprising” is a creation of NATO. See their most recent article on Gaddafi’s death here: http://www.workers.org/2011/world/imperialists_murder_gadhafi_1027/.
William Blum also spoke up for Gaddafi and the Libyan regime in his September Anti-Empire Report to be found here: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer97.html. With all due respect, comrades, get your facts right before you start spreading hideous lies that only help the U.S. and its other capitalist flunkies sell more wars. By the way, the oil companies were already wheeling and dealing with those transitional fucks before they even finally took Tripoli. As Bill Blum said, “expect an Africom base in Libya very soon”. Those imperialist motherfuckers have been longing for an African base for some time now.
selectingstones
October 23, 2011
You know what; you’re absolutely right, especially on the part about the National Transitional Council. The NTC wants nothing more than to get its grubby hands on that oil wealth: of that I have no doubt, and for that reason, yes, they’re every bit as bourgeois as one could possibly imagine. My intention had been to give a shout-out to the actual rebels themselves, not to the NTC elites who quickly took over their movement, but I made the mistake of giving credit to the NTC itself. Consider this to be my self-criticism: I was absolutely wrong to give the NTC credit it doesn’t deserve, and I shouldn’t have mentioned them in the laudatory way that I did. It’s a blog, so I could go back and edit the text, but, no, I want everyone to see that I made an egregious error.
As I say here, and even more explicitly in an earlier article, Qadhafi was, a long time ago, a true revolutionary leader. He showed the lingering Italian imperialists who was boss. He has long since ceased to be one, and his corrupt regime deserves no sympathy on our part. Why is he such good friends now with Berlusconi? Whatever he may have been in the past, he had long since become yet another stooge of international capital (and oil interests) even if, on the surface, there still seemed to be something “revolutionary” about him. Suppose that the Arab Spring had never happened, and the old man passed away and gave the Jumahiriyya over to his son Saif al-Islam: there are few men in the world more enthusiastic about neo-liberal capitalism than Saif al-Islam. He would have done, anyway, what the NTC is probably about to do.
Remember, my sympathy is not with the NTC, but with the actual working-class Libyan rebels. Since the NTC took over, we are looking at basically a “bourgeois revolution” here, so, presumably, the task now for the overwhelming majority of the Libyan population will be to continue the fight against the NTC itself, which we know damn well is currently preparing to sell out the country (again, specifically the oil). This is basically the fight that’s happening now in Egypt, where there is a large working-class movement that is battling the military “transitional” regime, though Libya lacks that kind of working-class organization (and just simply has a much smaller population), so the exact form this battle will take will likely be much different.
I, of course, have no illusions about NATO or its motivation here, and I, of course, agree with you in your characterization of the U.S. and European ruling classes. Remember, though, from last spring, that the Libyan rebels (and this was prior to the NTC fully taking over) asked for the assistance of NATO only as a very last option. Of course they didn’t want NATO to intervene in their conflict, but they were backed into a corner in Benghazi, and had absolutely no option left except to plead to NATO. It was absolute necessity that drove them to make a pact with the devil, but then the NTC took over and discovered that, in retrospect, they could get along quite well with the devil.
The “Third World revolution” of the era of decolonization showed infinite promise, but it failed. Qadhafi’s revolution failed. That’s all there is to it: it failed. When something has failed, it’s pointless to reminisce about it; it’s better to pick up the pieces, take it as a lesson learned, and move on, try again. This is what, I believe, the Libyan rebels were trying to do, but the NTC (which, as you well know, carries a lot over from the old regime) has, as of now, prevented them from doing so because, well, it serves the interests of international capital. Now the real fight begins for the working-class people of Libya. (I explain my position here much better in the article “The End of the Third World as we know it” … it was an early piece, so the low quality is now a little bit embarrassing, to be honest, but I still stand by the overall point I was making).
And, as one last little final point, if you’ve ever read Qadhafi’s Green Book, you’ll know that there’s nothing really proletarian about it. First of all, it’s dumb. Secondly, it’s not dialectical; it’s not materialist. Basically, it’s a little bit of utopian socialist idealism combined with a whole bunch of nativist chauvinism and “neo-feudal” (if that’s a word?) romanticism. In short: petit bourgeois (again, in spite of whatever Qadhafi’s original intentions may have been, or how he himself saw it). Maybe that’s a controversial position to take, but I’m taking it. Again, I explain this better in my earlier article.
Heba Arafa
October 23, 2011
YES Sir, the only thing left to build is the future. He has created his own end and despite the fact that showing his body is brutal, his brutality has striped the hearts of all sorts sympathies that a sane human can have for fellow human. In fact, he dehumanized himself by assuming he is a super-Supreme-Being on earth. To humans(Libyans), it was like managing to kill Godzilla. It is unfortunate, but it is a fact. And as you pointed out, had he survived , he would have been far more brutal to the rebels.