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【英国 Spiked 北京2008系列 之五】成熟政治 付之一炬
【标题】Grown-up politics goes up in flames 成熟政治 付之一炬
【来源】http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4956/
【翻译】dakelv
【声明】本文翻译仅限Anti-CNN使用，转载请注明译者及出处。
【译注】本文是Spike Online 的 “2008北京：挑战对中国的污蔑”系列文章之五。全系列一共有二十篇文章。
【原文】
Grown-up politics goes up in flames
Yesterday’s public grappling with the Olympic torch shone a light on the self-satisfied, cartoonish nature of contemporary China-bashing.
Black and O’Neill
spiked writers Tim Black and Brendan O’Neill report from central London and Chinatown on the protests against the Beijing 2008 Olympic flame.
THE ‘MORAL SUPERPOWER’ OF TIBET, by Tim Black
As part of its 85,000-mile ‘journey of harmony’ through 20 different countries, the Olympic torch passed through London yesterday. The torch relay has already encountered various Tibet-inspired protests, first in Athens and then Istanbul. If the April snow was unexpected in London yesterday, the angry, sometimes violent disruptions were not. Like moths to a propane-fuelled flame, the plight of the Tibetan region of China really look does like the raison d’être for some disillusioned Westerners.
Since the military suppression of the anti-China protests in the Tibetan capital Lhasa last month, the focus on China’s treatment of its Tibetan population has intensified. But while it has been the West doing the focusing, the Beijing Olympics has provided the lens. Everything related to the games, as French president Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent threat to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony shows, has now become an opportunity for moral grandstanding, an opportunity to portray China as everything we in the West are not. The 31-mile journey of the Olympic torch, from Wembley in north-west London to Greenwich in the south-east, was to prove no exception.
Yesterday morning at the British Museum stage of the route – one of the protest points for the campaign organisation Free Tibet – the air was already thick with indignation. ‘Human rights, free Tibet. Human rights, free Tibet’ went the chant, before the megaphone-wielding orchestrator changed tack: ‘Shame on China, stop the killing, shame on China, stop the killing.’ Placards and banners reiterated the point, when you could see them amongst the Tibetan flags. ‘Blood on China’s hands’ read one; ‘Oi, China, get out of Tibet’ read another. As the torch-bearer and a phalanx of blue-and-white suited attendants and police cyclists finally approached, the chants were replaced by the proper response to a pantomime villain: booing.
As one followed the procession down past the British Museum, however, a change in the crowd became noticeable: the placards calling for an end to Chinese brutality were replaced by the official Beijing Olympics logo, the Tibetan flag by the Chinese standard, and the jeering by cheering. Whether or not this lasted over the entire route is doubtful, but it was certainly a pattern throughout the torch’s central London passage. For every stretch of anti-Chinese, pro-Dalai Lama sentiment, there would be an expanse of Chinese defensiveness – each an attempt to out-protest the other.
At one point in Trafalgar Square, this battle of the protests became a little absurd: a group of Chinese students were actually fighting a couple of pro-Tibet protesters, not with their fists, but, literally, with their flags. ‘China just wants everyone to like them’, shouted the thirtysomething Tibetophile in perfect mockney. ‘Asshole’, came the reply.
There was another contingent in the crowd that has been mentioned rarely in the press coverage of Sunday’s events. I mean, of course, those who turned up to see the torch relay itself, perhaps out of some sense of its symbolism, or maybe just to see, for example, Olympic gold medallists Denise Lewis or Steven Redgrave carry the torch. These were the anonymous bystanders, the silent audience for whom the point of being there was not self-affirmation, but quiet appreciation. As a woman rushed up to the barrier in Trafalgar Square to shriek ‘shame on China’ at veteran TV newsreader Sir Trevor McDonald, one such man, visibly shaking, turned round and said ‘you shouldn’t be here - this is not the right place’. She was quick to retort: ‘We’ve all got opinions, and this is mine.’ And with that she scampered off after Trevor and the torch.
I asked a young Chinese couple what they made of all this. Their response was understandably weary: ‘I don’t want to talk about politics anymore – Olympics is for the Olympics.’ Unfortunately, as the Beijing torch relay has shown, such a plea is likely to be ignored.
While many have complained that the Chinese politburo is using the Olympics to promote a positive image of itself, which is no doubt true, the protests against China seem to be a no less spectacular self-advertisement. This was apparent in their theatrical nature – that is, the protesters’ self-dramatisation of moral virtue. Nowhere was this more evident than in the protests that seemed to be aimed at the TV cameras, and in the seeming determination to get arrested (there were 37 arrests in total). All you had to do was try to leap the security barrier, and make for the torch, whereupon you would be pounced upon by the police. So pleased was one grinning bloke, who had leapt the cordon at the British Museum, that he seemed to be taking the Chinese jeering as the police waltzed him past as some sort of personal vindication.
Labour MP Kate Hoey’s incredulity as to why Gordon Brown refused to condemn China evinced a similar emphasis on the importance of acting righteously. ‘He’s not even coming out publicly and saying “I think what China has done inside Tibet is abhorrent”. He has got to do that. I am absolutely appalled by this’, she said (1). Speaking at the Free Tibet rally on Sunday afternoon, she went further by expressing a similar sentiment in reverse when attacking Chinese ambassador Fu Ying’s decision to carry the torch through ‘our streets’. ‘How dare she do that?’ Hoey shouted. Cue much hollering and whooping.
The Western pro-Tibet network’s tendency to posture has been duly noted by no less an authority than Patrick French, the ex-leader of the Free Tibet campaign group. While retaining admiration for the Dalai Lama’s moral rectitude, French is less than impressed with his political programme: the Hollywood strategy. In an article for the New York Times, French argued that the support the Dalai Lama has spawned in the West, which the Chinese government now calls the ‘Dalai Lama clique’, is less interested in practically helping the Tibetans gain political autonomy than it is in appearing to believe in a good cause (2).
Even the reasons why Tibet is the recipient of Western largesse testifies less to a solidarity with the Tibetans than to a particular idea of Tibet. When the actress Joanna Lumley, a Free Tibet supporter, stood up on stage yesterday and decried the ‘cultural genocide’ in Tibet, she betrayed what the lobby groups actually value – not the struggles of real people but a reified notion of Tibet as a ‘culture’, a ‘way of life’. In this sense, imagined as a static set of social practices, rural and in thrall to superstition, Tibet acts as the enchanted counterpoint to the soulless materialism of the West (see Why Tibetophilia won’t set Tibet free, by Brendan O’Neill). Or as one placard put it ‘China is a superpower, The Dalai Lama is a moral superpower’.
Quite. Just about the only thing burning brightly yesterday was a sense of moral superiority.
Tim Black is senior writer at spiked.
CHINA-BASHING: A CARTOON PURSUIT, by Brendan O’Neill
There was a flag-waving, camera-clicking party atmosphere in Chinatown yesterday. Once you negotiated your way past the rows of bag-searching police officers posted at both entrances to Gerrard Street - ‘What’s this?’ asked a 12-year-old cop as he spotted a book about China inside my bag; ‘It’s a book about China’, I replied - you found yourself in a glittering Mini-Beijing.
There were dancing red-and-gold dragons, Chinese drummers, beautiful young women handing out Beijing 2008 flags for everyone to wave when the torch finally arrived. ‘It will be here in 20 minutes or so’, a policewoman assured an impatient Chinese boy. ‘That’s what she said 20 minutes ago’, the boy complained to his father. Kitchen workers in crisp white jackets, fags hanging from the corners of their mouths, stood precariously on the railings outside restaurants. The staff of Everwell, a Chinese medicine store, held up a small, makeshift placard saying: ‘Everwell supports the Beijing 2008 Olympics.’ That’s a radical political statement these days.
The revellers didn’t seem to have much time for the protesters planning to disrupt the Olympic procession. Word arrives that two pro-Tibetan, or possibly pro-Darfurian, activists in leafy, well-to-do Holland Park tried to put out the flame with a fire extinguisher. ‘That’s plain wrong. The flame represents the Olympic spirit’, says Rui Chen, a second-generation Chinese. Indeed, the flame has Promethean origins. In the Ancient Greek Games, the always-burning torch commemorated Prometheus, the Titan who dared to steal fire from the god Zeus and hand it over to we mere mortals. It seems strangely fitting that those freaked out by the onward march of Chinese modernity would wish to snuff out Prometheus’ fire, to extinguish mankind’s cocky command of this most unpredictable element. Zeus would be proud.
There were only a handful of protesters in Chinatown, ranging from the mad to the maddeningly earnest. One elderly white gentleman got bemused looks from the Chinese cheerers: he was wearing a placard around his neck that said ‘Gang of Three State Terrorists crashed Twin Towers to justify launching Global War of TERROR’. I’ve seen that placard before. I think it refers to Bush, Blair and Sharon (the three ‘state terrorists’) and their behind-the-scenes puppeteering of 9/11. Quite what this deranged conspiracy theory has to do with Beijing 2008 is anyone’s guess, though I suppose ‘Gang of Three’ sounds a bit like ‘Gang of Four’ (the four Chinese Communist leaders who, following Mao’s death in 1976, were held responsible for the excesses of the Cultural Revolution).
Near the Shaftesbury Avenue entrance to Chinatown a man held up a piece of paper saying ‘DON’T FORGET DARFUR: CHINA FUNDS GENOCIDE’. A British-Chinese woman was angry. ‘This isn’t about Darfur, it’s about the Olympic Games’, she said, standing in front of a restaurant window that had a spectacularly lit-up Mickey Mouse and the words ‘Year of the Mouse’. ‘Everyone says Gordon Brown shouldn’t have anything to do with the torch. Why don’t they tell Gordon Brown about Iraq instead?’, she asked. ‘He wrote the cheques for that war, not the Chinese.’
She has a point. There are plenty of things for Brits to get angry about here in Britain – and there are plenty of things on which we might line up, in proper solidarity, with Chinese people. For example, Britain still has stringent immigration controls, and our rulers are forever passing laws or codes that limit freedom of thought and speech. How might we hook up and share ideas with people in China who are fighting for more rights and respect for migrant workers, and for that most important liberty of all: free speech?
No such questions were raised or answered yesterday. Instead, protesters along the torch procession indulged in simple (in both meanings of that word) displays of moral sanctimony, in which they played the part of brave and good slayers against the evil, crazed, polluting, tyrannical beast in the East: China.
It was cartoon politics; it was about avoiding serious debate and instead taking refuge in the warm and moist-feeling arena of super-simplistic moral condemnation. The author and professor Mahmood Mamdani has tried to explain trendy New Yorkers’ preference for campaigning on Darfur over campaigning on Iraq: ‘Iraq is a messy place in the American imagination, a place with messy politics… In contrast, there is nothing messy about Darfur. It is a place without history and without politics – simply a site where perpetrators clearly identifiable as “Arabs” confront victims clearly identifiable as “Africans”.’ Or as George Clooney has seriously said of Darfur: ‘It’s not a political issue. There is only right and wrong.’ The end result, says Mamdani, is the ‘reduction of a complex political context to a morality tale unfolding in a world populated by villains and victims who never trade places and so can always and easily be told apart’ (3).
Throw China into the mix, as the alleged evil funders of the genocide in Darfur, and you have the ideal campaigning issue for lazy liberals looking for an escape route from the complications of everyday life and politics. The depoliticised ‘morality tale’ of Darfur has both victim foreigners (the black sufferers of genocide) and evil foreigners (the strange, unfeeling Chinese officials who do business with Khartoum). Perfect! Activists on the apparently non-political issue of Darfur, where there is only right and wrong, can pose as the saviours of little black babies from the gun-wielding Yellow Peril, and not have to worry their pretty little heads about anything too taxingly political.
The cartoonish nature of the Evil-China-Genocide-Darfur bandwagon was unwittingly revealed in an article about the new campaign group Dream for Darfur (DfD), published in the New York Times Magazine last weekend. It revealed that Ben Cohen of the ice-cream maker Ben and Jerry’s has been recruited by DfD to come up with some sleek, easy-to-get campaign slogans. He was told to ‘keep his message short’ because ‘the message here isn’t hard’. It should be something like ‘Genocide bad; China helping’, said the people at DfD. So Cohen has decided to launch a ‘jihad’ (his words) against China’s cute, cartoonish Olympic mascots: Beibei the fish, Jingjing the giant panda, and other big-haired symbols of the Games. The message of Cohen’s anti-mascot campaign is: ‘Looks cute – supports genocide.’ (4)
Darfur activists are literally taking action against Chinese cartoons! In Chinatown yesterday, massive blow-up versions of Beibei, Jingjing and the other mascots danced in the streets, causing great excitement amongst the scores of Chinese kids waiting for the torch. They didn’t look genocidal to me.
Tibet, too, has been robbed of its political complexities and turned into a cartoon issue for the benefit of Western campaigners. This is best captured in a British Free Tibet poster, which shows smiling, serene Tibetans on one side of a mountain, and heavily-armed, smog-emitting Chinese men with notably slitty eyes and a sickly yellow pallor on the other. It asks: ‘Whose side are you on?’ Well? Are you with the happy child-like Tibetans or the strange-faced, trigger-happy modernisers of evil China? Come on! Make your minds up.
Today’s campaigning against China is motivated more by events in the West than by a proper analysis of what is happening in the East. At a time of political flux and uncertainty, Western activists wrap up in the comfort blanket of China-bashing, kidding themselves that they are pure and morally righteous and that China is simply and always dirty and violent. Not surprisingly, having China turned into a whipping boy, a cartoon Jerry that the brave Toms of Western activism can beat up on, irritates Chinese people. ‘If you say China shouldn’t be allowed to have the Games, then you are saying China is second-class’, says Rui Chen. ‘And what does that say about people like us?’, he asks, looking around Gerrard Street. ‘Second-class, too?’
He seems especially upset when the torch finally arrives in Chinatown, because it is being carried by Fu Ying, the Chinese ambassador to Britain. She was supposed to carry the flame through Bloomsbury and past the British Museum. But following a storm of controversy it was thought best to relegate her to carrying the torch amongst her ‘own people’ in Chinatown – safer that way, you see. A Communist official she may be, but as she passes by, an elderly woman in a Beijing 2008 tracksuit surrounded by a veritable army of jogging Chinese officials and Metropolitan police officers, you can’t help feeling that she is a pantomime villain in the day’s cartoon proceedings. That’s all, folks.
【截图】
成熟政治 付之一炬
昨天在公共场所发生的抢奥运火炬的行为凸显了当代污蔑中国运动的自我陶醉的可笑本质。
作者：Black 和 O'Neil
Spiked撰稿人Tim Black和 BrendanO'Neill从伦敦市中心和中国城为我们报道针对2008年北京奥运圣火的抗议活动。
【译注：此文大标题下有两篇报道。】
（一）西藏的“道德超级大国”
作者： Tim Black
作为一万公里“和谐之旅”的一部分，奥运火炬昨天经过伦敦。火炬传递已经遭到各种与西藏有关的抗议，先是在雅典，然后在伊斯坦布尔。如果昨天伦敦的四月飞雪来的有点突然的话，那么火炬传递过程中遭到的愤怒和暴力的阻挠早已是预料之中的事。就像扑火的飞蛾一样，心灰意冷的西方人把中国西藏地区的困窘状况当作他们自己存在的理由。
自从上月西藏首府拉萨的反政府抗议遭到军事镇压后，中国对其西藏人的态度越来越成为人们关注的焦点。虽然关注此事的是西方人，提供关注渠道的是北京奥运会。正如最近的法国总理尼古拉·萨科齐威胁抵制奥运开幕式一事所显示的一样，任何和奥运有关联的事件现在都成为一个卖弄道德观的机会，一个把中国描述得和我们西方截然不同的机会。奥运火炬从伦敦西北部的温布利到东南部的格林威治长达31英里的传递也证明不是例外。
昨天早晨在大英博物馆火炬传递站--这也是自由西藏运动组织的抗议点之一 --空气中早已经充满了紧张气氛。抗议者喊着“人权，自由西藏，人权，自由西藏”，然后手拿扩音器的领头人又把口号改成了“中国无耻，停止杀戮，中国无耻，停止杀戮”。点缀在西藏旗中的标语牌和横幅重复着上述这些口号的内容。有一个上面写着“中国的双手沾满鲜血”，另外一个写着“嘿中国，滚出西藏”。当火炬手在穿着蓝白相间制服的护卫队和骑单车的警察的簇拥下走近时，喊口号的声音变成了舞台上反面角色出场时观众喝倒彩的声音。
当火炬传递队伍经过大英博物馆时，人群发生了明显的变化：呼吁中国停止野蛮行径的标语牌不见了，取而代之的是北京奥运的官方标志。西藏雪山狮子旗被中国国旗所代替，喝倒彩声也变成了欢呼声。虽然不知道这种变化是否一直持续到火炬传递路线的尽头，但是在火炬经过的伦敦中心路线却一直是这样。每一个反中国、亲西藏的呼声总是伴随着为中国辩解的声音，双方都试图在抗议的声势上压过对方。在Trafalgar广场上，这种抗议者之间的斗争一度变得很奇怪：一群中国学生和几个亲西藏的抗议者打作一团，他们不是用拳头打架，而使用他们手中的旗帜。一个看起来三十多岁的亲西藏者用典型的英国工人口音喊道：“中国就想让所有人都喜欢它”。人群对他的回答是“蠢驴。”
人群里还有一些人，在星期天火炬传递的报道中很少被媒体提及。我说的当然是那些出来看火炬传递活动本身的，或许是出于火炬传递本身的象征意义，又或许仅仅是为了看奥林匹克金牌获得者、火炬手Denise Lewis 或者 StevenRedgrave。他们是无名的旁观者和沉默的观众，对于他们来说，观看火炬传递不是为了证实什么，而是为了默默地欣赏。当一个女人冲破Trafalgar广场的障碍对着资深新闻播音员 Trevor McDonald爵士大喊“无耻的中国”时，就有一个这样的观众，他回过头来说，“你不应该在这里，你来错地方了。”那女人快速地反驳道：“我们都有自己的看法，这是我的看法。”说完他就跟在Trevor 爵士和火炬后面匆匆离开了。
我问一对中国夫妇他们有什么想法，他们的回答显得很疲惫，我对此也能理解：“我不想再谈政治了。奥运就是奥运。”遗憾的是，从北京奥运火炬传递可以看出，这样的恳求十有八九会被忽略。
很多人抱怨中共政治局利用奥运来宣传自己的正面形象，这个本身是毋庸置疑的，但是那些反华的抗议活动在自我宣传上面也是有过之而无不及。这从这些抗议者的表演本质 --即他们自演自唱地表现自己的道德美德 --就可以看出来。最明显的就是抗议者似乎都瞄准电视摄像机，而且看起来下决心被逮捕（警察共逮捕了37人)。你只要冲破安全路障，然后朝火炬跑去，那时你就会被警察扑住。有一个人冲破了大英博物馆的路障，被警察带走，中国人都向他发出咻声，但是这家伙看起来很受用的样子，好像这种咻声是对他自身价值的证明似的。
工党议员KateHoey发出的高登·布朗为何拒绝谴责中国的疑问说明了摆出正直姿态的重要性。“他甚至都不站出来公开说‘我认为中国在西藏的所作所为是令人憎恶的’，他应该那样做。我对此感到非常震惊，”她说（1）。在星期天下午自由西藏集会上，当她攻击中国大使傅莹手持火炬经过“我们的街道时”，她表达的是同样一种情绪，只不过观点是相反的 -- “她怎么敢这样做？”Hoey叫喊到。观众爆发出一片欢呼声。
即使像自由西藏运动组织的前领导人 Patrick French这样的权威人士也认为西方亲西藏组织有装腔作势的倾向。他虽然景仰达赖喇嘛的道德上的正直，French对他的政治纲领却不以为然 -他认为那是好莱坞式的策略。在一篇为《纽约时报》撰写的文章里，French说达赖喇嘛在西方得到了支持，这个被中国政府称为“达赖集团”的势力，本身对如何实际性地帮助西藏人获得政治自治不感兴趣，他们更感兴趣的是如何从外表上让人们看起来他们从事的是正直的事业。（2）
西藏得到西方如此慷慨的赠予，这本身并不说明西方对西藏的支持，而是体现了西方对西藏怀有的某种成见。昨天，当自由西藏运动支持者，演员 JoannaLumley占到台上公开谴责中国对西藏的“文化灭绝”时，她的话也表达出自由西藏运动组织真正所重视的东西 --这个东西不是真实的人们的抗争，而是自以为是地把西藏看成是一种“文化”和“生活方式”。从这点来说，西藏被想象成一套静止的、田园般的，甚至有些迷信气息的社会习俗，被当成西方无灵魂的物质主义的充满魔力的对应物（见Brendan O'Neill所撰“为什么亲西藏事务者不会给西藏自由”一文【译注：此文已翻译并已在AC发表】）。或者正如一个标语牌上所写，“中国是超级大国，达赖喇嘛是道德上超级大国的代表。”
确实。昨天空气中炽烈燃烧的就是这种道德上的优越感。
Black是Spiked的高级撰稿人。
（二）污蔑中国: 幼稚的追求[/url]
[url=]作者：Brenda O'Neill
昨天的中国城，旗帜飞舞，相机咔咔作响，充满了喜庆的气氛。 警察在Gerrard路两端设了哨卡，经过时都要开包检查。当我通过哨卡时，一个12岁的警察【译注：原文如此。】看到我包里有本有关中国的书，便问道，“这是什么？”“这是本有关中国的书”，我回答到。顺利通过哨卡之后，你[/url][url=]会发现自己来到了一个闪亮的小北京。
这里有人在舞动红黄两色的狮子，有中国鼓手，还有漂亮的女孩在向人们散发北京2008奥运旗，以供人们在火炬最后到达时挥舞。“火炬在有二十分钟就到了”一个女警官对一个等得有点不耐烦的中国男孩说。“她二十分钟以前也是这么说的，”男孩向他的父亲抱怨道。饭店里的帮厨穿着闪亮的白色夹克，嘴角里叼着小旗，摇摇晃晃地站在饭店外面的护栏上。一家名叫Everwell的中药店的职工手里举着临时做的标语牌，上面写着，“Everwell支持北京2008奥运会。” 这几天里，这句话是一个激进的政治宣言。
欢乐的人们好像没有时间顾及那些计划阻挠奥运火炬专递队伍的人。有传言说两个亲西藏，抑或是亲达尔富尔的活跃人士在枝叶茂盛、位于富人区的Holland公园试图用灭火器扑灭奥运火炬。“这是完全错误的。火炬象征着奥运精神”，一个名叫陈瑞【译注：音译】的中国第二代移民说。的确，火炬的来源是与普罗米修斯有关的。在古代希腊运动会，永不熄灭的火炬是用来纪念普罗米修斯，一个胆敢从宙斯那里偷来火种给我们这些凡人的人。看起来很可笑，那些被中国现代化进程弄得有点恐惧的人，会希望熄灭普罗米修斯之火 -- 这个人类骄傲地掌握在手的最不确定的元素。宙斯一定也会对此感到非常骄傲的。
中国城里只有几个抗议者，他们中有的人看起来很疯狂，而有的人看起来令人发狂地镇定。一个上了年纪的白人看到那些为火炬传递加油的中国人，脸上露出困惑的表情。他的脖子上套着一个标语牌，上面写着“来自三个国家的恐怖分子三人帮用飞机撞双子塔以便为发动全球恐怖战争找到合理借口。”我以前看到过这个标语牌。我认为“来自三个州的恐怖分子”指的是布什，布莱尔和沙龙，和他们对9/11时间的幕后操纵。这种使人疯狂的阴谋论和北京2008有何关系真是有点匪夷所思，虽然我知道“三人帮”听起来和“四人帮”（四个共产党领导人，在1976年毛去世后，被认为对文化革命的泛滥负责任。）
接近Shaftesbury路到中国城的入口处，一个人举起一张纸，上面写着，“不要忘记达尔富尔：中国支持种族灭绝”。一个英籍华裔妇女很生气。“这和达尔富尔没有关系，这是关于奥运会的。”她说。她的身后饭店的窗户上点亮的米奇老鼠的灯显得非常壮观，旁边写着“鼠年”。“每个人都说高登·布朗不应和奥运火炬掺和在一起。他们为什么不跟他提起伊拉克的事？”她问道。“是他，而不是中国人，为那场战争付了账单。”
她说的有道理。在英国很多事情都让英国人生气 --而且也有很多事情我们是和中国人站在一起的。比如说，英国仍然后非常严格的移民控制政策，我们的统治者永远都在通过法律和法规来限制思想和言论自由。我们如何能和正在为外地民工争取更多权利、争取所有自由里最重要的自由 -- 言论自由 -- 的中国人民沟通并分享观点呢？
这种问题在昨天既没人问，也没人回答。火炬传递沿途的抗议者都沉溺于天真的（这个词的两个意思都适用【译注：即：（1）天真，（2）傻】）道德秀。在这场道德秀中，他们扮演着猎杀中国 -- 这个东方的邪恶、疯狂、制造污染的独裁猛兽 -- 的勇士。
这是卡通式的政治 --避免一切严肃的辩论，却在超级简单化的道德非难这个温暖、湿润的舞台上找到自己的避难所。作者、教授穆罕默德·马达尼试图解释为什么和抗议伊拉克战争相比，追求时髦的纽约人更喜欢为达尔富尔问题而奔走。“在美国人的想象里，伊拉克是一个一团糟的地方，一个由于政治而变得一团糟的地方。相比之下，达尔富尔却没有什么糟糕的。这是一个没有历史没有政治的地方 --它仅仅是一个一群可以确认为“阿拉伯人”的罪犯和一群可以确认为“非洲人”的无辜者对抗的地方。或者正向乔治·克鲁尼【译注：美国好莱坞影星】在谈到达尔富尔时非常认真地说道，“这不是一个政治问题。在这个问题上只有对于错。”马达尼教授说，最终的结果就是，“一个非常复杂的政治问题被简化成一个在坏蛋和无辜者居住的国度里慢慢展开的道德故事。在这个故事里，坏蛋和好人一眼就能被区分开，因为他们住的地方从来都是界限分明的。（3）
如果把中国牵扯进来，并指控它是达尔富尔地区种族灭绝行为的邪恶的资助人，那么你就为那些寻找一个脱离复杂的日常生活和政治之路的懒惰的自由主义者找到了一个理想的运动话题。一个被非政治化以后的达尔富尔的“道德故事”里面既有无辜的外国人（深受种族灭绝之害的黑人），也有邪恶的外国人（那些奇怪的、毫无感情的和苏丹做生意的中国官员）。这真是太好了！热心于这很明显地不牵扯任何政治的非黑即白的达尔富尔问题的活跃人士，现在可以把自己装扮成从手持利刃的黄祸们手中救出黑人小孩的救主，这样，他们就完全没有必要用自己容量很小的脑袋去思考任何过于政治化的问题了。
邪恶-中国-种族灭绝-达尔富尔。这个把达尔富尔问题过分简单化的流行趋势在上周《纽约时报杂志》发表的一篇有关一个名叫“达尔富尔之梦”的运动组织的文章里暴露无遗。这篇文章显示，【美国著名冰淇淋制造商】Ben 和 Jerry公司的Ben Cohen被“达尔富尔之梦”组织雇用来为他们想出一个通顺而又朗朗上口的运动口号。Ben被告知要“使口号尽可能地短”，因为“这里要表达的意思并不是多么难懂”。“达尔富尔之梦”的人说，这个口号应该和“种族灭绝坏；中国为虎作伥”这样的口号类似。所以Ben就决定发起一场对中国那些可爱的、卡通人物般的奥运吉祥物 -- 小鱼贝贝，大熊猫京京，以及其他长着长长毛发的奥运象征物 -- 发起一场“讨伐”行动（这是Ben的原话）。Cohen的反吉祥物运动的口号是：“看起来很可爱，但是支持种族灭绝。”（4）
这样达尔富尔问题上的活跃人士事实上是在向中国的卡通人物发难了！昨天在中国城，巨大的充气贝贝、京京和其他吉祥物在街上跳舞，让一些等待火炬的中国儿童非常兴奋。它们看起来和种族灭绝一点也扯不上边。
同样，西藏问题也被从其复杂的政治语境中分离开来，而且为了西方运动活跃人士的缘故，被变成了一个卡通式的简单问题。这在一个名叫自由西藏的英国组织的一张海报里表现的淋漓尽致。在这张海报上【译注：链接已被删除】，山的一边是表情平和的西藏人，另一边是身边满是现代化武器， 向周围喷出灰色的烟雾的，有很明显的黄色皮肤，滑稽可笑的牙齿和眯缝眼的中国人。海报上有一个问题，“你站在哪一边?" 你是站在长着娃娃脸的高兴的西藏人一边，还是站在长相奇怪、好用武力的邪恶中国的现代化者一边？来啊，赶紧拿定主意！
当今的反华运动是受在西方发生的事件的驱使，而不是对东方所发生的一切进行严密分析的结果。在当今政治变换不定的时代，西方活跃人士把自己舒服地裹在污蔑中国这张毯子里，并自欺欺人地认为他们是纯洁的、在道德上是高尚的，而中国就是，而且永远是肮脏的和野蛮的。”如果你说中国不应该举办奥运，那么就是说你认为中国是二等国家。“陈瑞说。他环顾Gerrard路，接着又问到，”那么这又说明我们是什么呢？也是二等的国家？”
当火炬最后到达中国城时，他看起来特别不高兴，因为火炬手是傅莹 --中国驻英国大使。她本应该把火炬从Bloomsbury传到大英博物馆，但是由于如潮的争议，组织方认为让她在中国城“自己人”中间传递火炬是最好的--也就是说，更安全。也许她是一个共产党的官员，但是当她经过人群时，她是一个身着北京2008运动服、由中国官员和伦敦城市警察护卫的上了年纪的女人。这不禁不令人感觉她就像今天卡通式游行里的一个哑剧里的反面角色。今天就到这里吧，朋友们。
(1) London Olympic procession disrupted by protests, Bloomberg, 6 April 2008
(2) He may be a god, but he’s no politcian, New York Times, 22 March 2008
(3) The Politics of Naming, Mahmood Mamdani, London Review of Books, 8 March 2007
(4) Changing the rules of the Games, New York Times Magazine, 30 March 2008
reprinted from: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4956/ |
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狗仔卡
发表于 2008-9-13 18:13
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