http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/28/real-complexities-face-palestine-at-the-icc.html

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/how-to-read-obamas-mideast-trip

Everyone who follows the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace – especially insofar as they have any interest in it succeeding – quickly risks getting sucked into an exaggerated, bipolar discourse. The highs are too high and the lows too low to be justified by the circumstances. These affects inevitably lack what T. S. Eliot called an “objective correlative”: a reality-based source for such extreme emotions. The narrative asserts, but doesn’t justify, them.

 

There are two ways of getting it wrong, even without being hostile to a two-state solution. Some are fixated on being relentlessly rosy or doggedly downbeat. But most, at least to some extent, allow ourselves to be swayed with the pendulum of prevailing wisdom. Neither impulse is fact-based.

 

Right now a great many who are invested in Israeli-Palestinian peace appear to be in a manic phase. Because expectations were so low for President Barack Obama’s trip to the region, his skillful exercise in public diplomacy (especially as directed towards Jewish Israelis) has produced a palpable positive overreaction in many quarters.

 

Some are even speaking as if we had an active, American-led peace process in place, but in fact we don’t. And developing one will be a lengthy, difficult, and risky process.

 

Others, of course, are still entirely depressive. Obama looked like a tourist. He gave the store away to Israel. He kicked the can down the road to his successors. Been there, done that, etc.

 

But the bottom line is, while we are not on the brink of peace, or even renewed negotiations, we are across-the-board better off than we were a week ago. It’s equally unjustified to dismiss those improvements and pretend they didn’t occur or don’t matter as it is to declare the United States has reasserted its leadership and once again made peace a top priority.

 

So, if he didn’t make any actual progress towards a peace agreement, what exactly did Obama achieve? Quite a good deal, actually.

 

Most obvious is his reset with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, more importantly, the Israeli public. A reflexively zero-sum mentality assumes that better relations between the American president and Israel are a bad thing for the Palestinians. But the last two years of such tensions didn’t deliver anything useful to the Palestinians at all. And, in the end, since they want the Americans to help secure Israel’s agreement to end the occupation, Palestinians need a healthy, functional US-Israeli relationship.

 

Obama bent over backwards to tell the Israeli public everything it could want to hear, but he also had some harsh truths for them. And in those harsh truths were acknowledgments of the Palestinian experience that went far beyond anything we’ve heard from top-level American officials in the past. In particular, Obama’s declaration that the Palestinians “deserve justice” can only be read as an acknowledgment that there is something fundamentally unjust about the way the occupation mistreats them as human beings.

 

At least as significantly, Obama’s visit was immediately followed by two important steps that will directly benefit the Palestinian economy.

 

The United States pledged to release $500 million in withheld aid to the Palestinian Authority. And, more importantly, Israel has pledged to resume transferring the Palestinian tax revenues that make up the bulk of the PA monthly budget. Those revenues translate directly into paychecks for public sector employees and their families – about 1 million Palestinians – who have been struggling with delays and other hardships for many months.

 

It’s also striking that Obama personally met twice with embattled Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and repeatedly endorsed the institution-building program that he developed and has led since 2009. Obama made American support for Fayyad and his policies clear to any Israelis or Palestinians who harbored doubts about that.

 

Finally Obama obviously played a major role in initiating the unfolding Israeli-Turkish rapprochement. The two parties were brought together by mutual concerns regarding Syria, which will also provoke anxiety for Iran and Hezbollah. Bringing these two sulking American allies back together may not please everyone in the Middle East, but it’s clearly a substantial achievement for US policy.

 

So Obama’s trip yielded significant benefits to all parties. That said, nothing that took place could be confused for any actual “progress” towards a peace agreement.

 

Carefully cultivated low expectations for Obama’s trip led not just to pleasant surprise, but also to “irrational exuberance” on the part of some when it proved substantive and impressive. The danger, now, is that too large a bubble of hope has been created which, sooner rather than later, will pop, crash, and burn.

 

To avoid that, Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry will need to move beyond public diplomacy and managing expectations. They will have to develop policies that breathe new life, however gently, into the two-state solution. And that’s when the hard part really begins.

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/03/21/crowdsourcing_peace_obama_israel_speech?page=full

U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in Jerusalem was without question the strongest ever made by a senior American politician on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was plainly designed to speak directly to the Israeli and Palestinian peoples over the heads of their political leaderships. It was an exercise in public diplomacy par excellence, intended to change the tone and atmosphere, and public perceptions of Obama himself, presumably as an adjunct to actual diplomatic efforts to lay the groundwork for eventually resuming negotiations.

The psychological, communication and political skill that was marshaled to give the speech its maximum impact with public opinion was quite extraordinary, and stands in contrast to some miscalculations Obama made about Israeli and Palestinian perceptions during his first term. By systematically downplaying expectations for his trip, Obama made the power of his speech and the boldness of some of the language and positions he staked out — particularly regarding the realities Palestinians face under Israeli occupation — surprising and therefore all the more striking.

Obama made the first day of his trip an extended exercise in telling the Israeli public everything it could possibly want to hear from an American president, ranging from “undying bonds of friendship” to robust reiterations of security commitment and a much yearned-for acknowledgment of the long Jewish history in the land. In retrospect, it’s clear that what looked like public outreach bordering on pandering was, in fact, designed to transform Israeli perceptions of Obama himself in order to prepare them for some of the hard truths he was preparing to deliver the next day.

What Obama has done is to reassure and challenge Israelis and Palestinians alike. To Israelis, he reiterated America’s undying support and commitment to Israel’s security. But he confronted them with the fact that “the only way for Israel to endure and thrive as a Jewish and democratic state is through the realization of an independent and viable Palestine.” He reassured Palestinians that the United States is not walking away from the effort to create an independent Palestinian state. But he told them they must recognize that “Israel will be a Jewish state” and challenged them, and the rest of the Arab world, to begin to normalize their relations with Israel.

From a Palestinian point of view, it was already highly significant that Obama was not just going to Israel but also Ramallah and Bethlehem for significant talks with both President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. This communicated several important messages: that the Palestinians are still an important factor in the equation, and that they have a leadership, including both Abbas and Fayyad, that is to be engaged with seriously. And by specifically and repeatedly citing the Palestinian Authority’s institution-building and security measures led by Fayyad, Obama was sending a clear signal that he wants to continue to deal with the present Palestinian prime minister, who has been under considerable political pressure in recent months.

But the speech itself gave the Palestinians a much deeper recognition, and one they’ve never fully received from American officials in the past. Obama went to enormous lengths to humanize the Palestinians, comparing them to his own daughters and to the young people of Israel. He did not simply reiterate the American commitment to a two-state solution, he spoke of the “Palestinian people’s right to … justice.” This can only be seen as a clear, albeit implicit statement that the status quo of occupation is an ongoing injustice. He challenged his Israeli audience to “look at the world through their [Palestinian] eyes,” which speaks to the Palestinian need to be acknowledged as fully equal human beings by the Israelis. And Obama admonished Israel that “neither occupation nor expulsion is the answer,” directly addressing the two main Palestinian historical traumas and ongoing anxieties.

The effectiveness of Obama’s careful political and psychological preparation for these unprecedented statements with his Israeli audience was demonstrated by the sustained, and otherwise unimaginable, applause he received for almost all these remarks. He clearly went a long way in assuaging Israeli skepticism. Palestinians will be harder to win over, as they require more than words given the onerous conditions of the occupation and their repeated disappointment with successive American governments, and in particular with Obama’s first term.

There is no question that Obama’s extraordinary speech will have a significant impact on how he is perceived by both Israelis and Palestinians, although how long that lasts and what kind of political or diplomatic impact it will have very much remains to be seen.

One of the more remarkable aspects of this outreach was how it stood in stark contrast to his diplomacy with political leaders. He explicitly told the Israeli and Palestinian publics that he was directly addressing them, not only over the heads of their political leaders, but in order to challenge them to confront those leaders. If entrenched politicians have become an obstacle to peace — and they may indeed have — why not go around them? “Political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do,” he said, adding, “You must create the change that you want to see.”

Essentially, Obama was saying, “If you like what you’ve heard today, you have to help me because your leaders aren’t going to cooperate without significant pressure from you. I can’t do this alone, as I discovered in my first term. I need your help.”

In his first term, Obama essentially tried dealing with the leaderships directly and barely engaging with the Israeli or Palestinian publics. One subliminal message of his speech might be that he discovered this approach is a dead end, and that to get beyond the present impasse requires more robust public engagement. Whether he’s done enough to promote or sustain that will have to remain to be seen.

Diplomacy without sufficient outreach may have proven to be a failure in Obama’s first term. But this kind of bravura performance of public diplomacy will have to be backed up with significant real diplomacy or it may be remembered as yet another inspiring Obama Middle East speech that ultimately produces more disappointment than tangible achievement. Still, if Obama was primarily trying to change the tone and the atmosphere in the region, and the way he is perceived by ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard to imagine how he could have been more effective than he has been over the past couple of days.

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hussein-ibish-phd/pratik-chougule-iraq-war-debate_b_2914777.html

Not only is there no serious case to be made that, from an American point of view, “the Iraq war was worth it,” the real challenge is evaluating how gigantic a blunder it was. The costs of the war were enormous. The most recent estimates suggest that financially the war has cost the American people $800 billion, and that figure is continuing to grow in spite of the drawdown and end of major military operations. Some economists estimate it may end up costing up to $3 trillion. 4,422 American service personnel were sacrificed in the conflict, and almost 32,000 injured. Estimates of Iraqi fatalities vary wildly, between 100,000 to over 1 million killed during the violence.

The war also cost the United States dearly politically and diplomatically. It revivified a moribund Al Qaeda, and gave the terrorist group a new battle and training ground and rallying point. More broadly, it fed into a paranoid and chauvinistic anti-American narrative that informs far broader swaths of Arab public opinion.

Because the war was seen both at home and abroad by almost everyone as a failed adventure, it undermined American global leadership, particularly as the United States approached the UN Security Council for a resolution permitting the action but did not receive one. It unhelpfully exposed the limitations of American power, and fed an unfair global narrative about American arrogance and even “imperialism.” Indeed, beyond the “coalition of the willing,” there was an international consensus that the action was illegal. The combination of perceived illegality and perceived failure did considerable and lasting damage to American global leadership.

One of the most dramatic and direct consequences, no matter how unintended, of the war was the strengthening of Iran as a regional power. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and its formidable military had been the primary Arab bulwark against a rising Iranian hegemony. Like it or not, we did the regime in Tehran an enormous favor by getting rid of its most potent enemy (after first dispensing with their most hated one: the Taliban of Afghanistan). Iran emerged in the immediate aftermath of the Iraq war as a potential regional hegemon. It is only the complex aftermath of the “Arab Spring” and a new sectarianism in the Middle East that has undone the enormous gains we inadvertently handed the Iranians through the Iraq war.

The immediate goal of the war, the toppling of the foul and brutal dictatorship of Saddam, was successfully accomplished, and in short order. That can only be regarded as a good thing. However, the long-term consequences for Iraqi society remain unclear. The war certainly greatly benefited the Kurdish population in the autonomous regional area in the north, and was, initially at least, welcomed by many Shiites and other Iraqis.

However, it unleashed a process of state disintegration that may or may not have been avoidable but was certainly exacerbated by the way in which the occupation emphasized sectarian, ethnic and communal differences. In particular, the disbanding of the Iraqi military, and an overzealous campaign of “de-Baathification,” created faultlines that continue to reverberate violently in the country. Sixty-five people were killed in bomb attacks in Iraq just yesterday. Yet it is possible, although unlikely, that Iraqis will one day come to a consensus that this war and violence was “worth it” for them, if they emerge in the long run with a free, stable and prosperous society, or set of societies.

But the benefits to the United States are almost impossible to identify. What American policy goal was actually achieved, other than overthrowing a nasty and hostile, but strategically contained, dictator? The answer must be none.

One of the reasons for this total failure to achieve any benefits from such a massive and costly adventure is that its principal proponents in the policymaking and policy-framing communities agreed that the war was necessary, but they never agreed on precisely why. There was an extraordinary range of incongruous, disconnected and sometimes incoherent arguments in favor of the war circulating before the invasion. But it was almost impossible to find any group of advocates of the invasion that had precisely the same hierarchy of priorities. So it was virtually impossible that we would have “succeeded,” beyond the toppling of Saddam, because this was one of those rare major wars in which there was no consensus at all about its primary goal.

Weapons of mass destruction, of course, were most frequently cited, but it was clear at the time that there was every reason to doubt the administration’s claims. And, we quickly discovered, these claims were as false as many of us were convinced they must have been. Given the way that intelligence information was processed and presented to the public, there is every reason for the American people to feel that they were deliberately misled by some key elements of the Bush administration regarding Iraqi WMDs.

There were numerous, and patently ridiculous, attempts, including by Vice-President Dick Cheney, to link Iraq to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Others argued that even though Iraq was obviously not involved in the attacks, the United States needed to make a show of strength in the region in response and this was a perfect opportunity to do that. Some endorsed the war as a human rights measure, and as a debt owed to both Kurds and Shiites from previous American engagements with Iraq. Others suggested it was necessary to secure American dominance in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region. Some even argued that overthrowing Saddam would be the key to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A further central claim was that the United States could establish a democracy in Iraq that would transform the political culture of the region. Some have even tried to suggest that the “Arab Spring” uprisings against Arab dictatorships are some kind of delayed reaction or long-term impact of the transformation in Iraq. Almost no Arabs believe this, because almost no one in the Arab world looks to Iraq as a success story to be emulated.

Indeed, the main impact of the Iraq war on the crucial turning point in the birth of the “Arab Spring” was the training and experience that many of the most important young activists in the uprising against Hosni Mubarak got during their protests against the Iraq war. So, if there is any correlation between the Iraq war and the democratic uprisings, it has its origins in opposition to the war rather than inspiration from it.

Ten years on, it’s clear that the Iraq war was enormously costly to the United States at almost every conceivable register and produced virtually no benefits. It now appears to have been such a colossal miscalculation that it is a very plausible candidate for the worst major strategic blunder in the history of the Republic.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/20/david-in-wonderland.html

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/brotherhoods-assault-of-womens-rights-is-just-the-start

No more illusions. No further evasions. Tolerate not a single additional apologetic explanation. Admit no further concessions to a false moral and cultural relativism. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has now fully exposed itself as what many of us have been trying to explain it is: paranoid, chauvinistic, reactionary, retrograde, and, above all, misogynistic.

 

The Brotherhood has reminded us, in a bizarre rant against the UN Commission on the Status of Women, that Islamism in practice invariably prioritizesmisogyny (and homophobia). But this is merely the vanguard of a much broader set of intended and inevitable repressions against minorities, individuals and, eventually, all opposition.

 

Islamism doesn’t have the intellectual depth of a systematic political ideology. It has no specific economic theory or program beyond mercantilism, with some (apparently malleable) suspicions about interest. It doesn’t have an analysis of class or other key social structures. Its ‘theory’ of the relationship of the individual and society simply empowers those claiming religious authority and ‘authenticity’. It has no distinctive defense strategy, foreign policy, developmental program, or anything like that.

 

Instead, it boils down to a set of extremely reactionary social attitudes that don’t have any real implications for such key issues of governance.

 

The Muslim Brotherhood was formed in the 1920s in order to exploit and manipulate religious sentiment to seize political power. They seek to use that power to ‘Islamize’ Egypt and other Arab societies along ultraconservative lines that purport to be ‘traditional’ but are often in fact modern innovations or new interpretations of past practices.

 

Their stock in trade is a paranoid jeremiad that holds that Muslim and Arab societies are under assault by modernity in general and the West in particular. They pose as defenders of an Arab and Islamic ‘moral specificity’ and ‘cultural particularity’ that are supposedly under siege. As a solution to these and all other challenges, they proclaim ‘Islam is the answer’, as interpreted and enforced by them, of course.

 

In practice that generally means oppressing women and reversing the rights that they have gained even under the highly flawed postcolonial Arab state system. In the crudest patriarchal worldview, protecting the country means defending the home and family, and, especially, ‘protecting’ women. And that, in turn, means men and male-dominated society have to control and repress women, especially when it comes to sexual and domestic rights.

 

The Brotherhood’s statement drips with this trademark paranoid cultural chauvinism and siege mentality, warning that the UN Declaration “would lead to complete disintegration of society, and would certainly be the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries.”

 

How? Because, the Brotherhood statement claims, the UN Commission would allow “girls full sexual freedom,” allow the reproductive rights of contraception and abortion, grant equal rights to children born outside of marriage, grant equal rights to homosexuals and “protect prostitutes,” allow wives to sue husbands for rape, provide equal inheritance for women, make men partners rather than “guardians” of women, provide for equality in marriage legislation, allow judges rather than husbands to decide on divorces, and remove the requirement of a husband’s consent for a woman to travel, work or otherwise function normally in society.

 

The most telling element of this breathtakingly misogynistic rant is the assertion of ‘guardianship’ of men over women, rather than the apparently horrifying notion of equal partnership. The Brotherhood statement time and again asserts male privilege and male primacy. It casts gender equality as a mortal threat to Islamic values and Arab culture.

 

To this mentality, female sexuality – above and beyond social, political, and economic freedom and equality – is the primary threat to be contained and controlled. This is the howl of a male hysteria in full-blown panic mode, but also a calculated political tool.

 

So, Egyptians can expect the Brotherhood in the long run to do its utmost to reverse the modest gains that women have made in Egypt over the past century. Even in Saudi Arabia, the trend is towards granting women greater rights, not rolling the clock back.

 

Although the Brotherhood has the presidency, it still has neither full control of Egypt’s politics nor has it transformed Egyptian society. Contrast its statement with that of Egypt’s official representative to the Commission.

 

So much for the notion of the Brotherhood as moderate, open-minded, equitable, or pluralistic, or the idea that power will moderate them, at least as an organization. By releasing this document now, to the surprise, dismay, and astonishment of many, the Brotherhood has proudly reconfirmed its core orientation as authoritarian, intolerant, oppressive, and, above all, viciously misogynistic.

 

No one in Egypt or abroad will be able to claim “we had no idea” about the Brotherhood’s actual ideology, because they just gleefully shoved their unrepentant extremism down our throats. Their rule is not just a threat to Egyptian women, but to everybody.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/15/of-course-settlements-are-illegal.html

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/libyas-political-isolation-law-purge

The proposed “political isolation law” in Libya is not only a monument to effrontery and audacity. It’s a betrayal of the principles and strategy central to the revolution’s success. Political dynamics in Libya are complex and rapidly shifting. But this proposed bill is a particularly crude and straightforward power-play.

 

It boils down to this: Islamist parties were trounced by a nationalist coalition led by Mahmoud Jibril in the party section of the recent parliamentary elections. After failing to form an alliance with the majority independents in parliament, Islamist factions were unable to prevent the non-Islamists from steering their own candidate, Ali Zeidan, into the Prime Minister’s office. Libyan Islamists were stunned by how disadvantaged they were compared to their ideological comrades in Egypt and Tunisia. And they’ve decided to try to do something about it: purge the revolution and the new system.

 

The law they are attempting to bully the rest of the country into accepting is virtually insane. After more than four decades of rule by Muammar al-Qaddafi, anyone who played almost any role in the former regime at any stage would be precluded from holding any significant public office. This includes minor bureaucrats, low-level diplomats, and the overwhelming majority of Libyans with technical expertise or government experience.

 

The bullying isn’t just political. On March 5, hundreds of violent protesters disrupted Congress demanding passage of the bill, holding lawmakers hostage and opening fire on vehicles. On March 7 another gang of thugs attacked Al-Assema TV after it broadcasted debate on the law, abducting several key figures, some of whom remain missing. And there have been at least two major assassination attempts against Congress President Mohammad Magarief, at least one associated with this campaign of intimidation.

 

Last week I was involved in a lengthy TV debate with three Libyans, one of whom was a passionate supporter of this unspeakable bill. In defense of this proposed legislative coup d’état, all he could do was keep listing the crimes of the former regime. No one, of course, disputes this.

 

I bluntly called this a betrayal of the basic principle of the revolution which created a relative unity – of a kind that has eluded, for example, both political and armed opposition groups in Syria – the ‘big tent’ principle. It didn’t matter if you had spent decades outside the country, years in prison, or recently defected from the government. If you are willing to take up activism and arms against Qaddafi, you were welcome into the fold.

 

He dismissed all of this, denouncing everyone who ever served the former regime in any capacity. I asked him again and again if it were not true that this law would ban political participation by key figures in the revolution and the new system: National Transitional Council leader Moustapha Abdul Jalil, the late revolutionary commander Abdel Fatah Younis, Prime Minister Zeidan, Congress President Magariaf, and, of course, Jibril. I fired these names at him time and again and he categorically refused to deny that any of them would be exempt from exclusion, because, as he put it, “all defectors were rats leaving a sinking ship.”

 

I pointed out this would be nothing less than a purge, and that the motivation for this was that they lost the election rather badly and, as things stand, have little hope of improving their position. His only answer was that he was in Libya while I was in Washington, which, I noted, meant he had no arguments at all.

 

But, I continued, I didn’t think he was really as crazy as he was pretending. The proposed law has all the hallmarks of a red herring. There is no doubt that at its core is an effort by Libyan Islamists to rejigger the political system in their favor, having been utterly crushed in the last election. And they are cynically using populist politician Abdurrahman Sewehli of the Union for Homeland party – who takes the strongest line in favor of the proposed law and ‘credit’ for the storming of Parliament – as their front man and cat’s paw. And since Zeidan and Magariaf have been at each other’s throats for months on several issues, their task is all the easier.

 

What may really be at work is a more subtle agenda pushed by the Qatar-backed and highly influential Libyan Islamist Ali Sallabi. He is appealing for a less draconian exclusion law on a virtually daily basis. By over-bidding so wildly at this point, and having Sallabi pose as a “moderating force” suggesting a “more reasonable” set of exclusions, the Islamists may hope that everyone breathes a sigh of relief at a less draconian measure that nonetheless seeks to force a change in the balance of power in the country. In fact, they ought to be profoundly alarmed at what, in almost any form, can only serve as a ruthless power grab and attack on democracy and pluralism.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/11/hamas-s-desenga-o-with-morsi.html

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/whos-really-exploited-in-django-unchained

Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is a clever and insidious cipher. Through its ambiguities, contradictions, evasions, and doubled-consciousness, its dense imagery counterintuitively constructs a blank screen onto which various audiences can project their own fantasies. But these fantasies themselves are split between politically correct and socially determined responses, and far deeper, atavistic, and darker impulses the film deliberately pricks but does not resolve.

 

Tarantino is obsessed with film history and specializes in the generic mash-up. His are films about being films, deliberately derivative collages.

 

Django misleadingly announces itself in its opening sequence as a “spaghetti western,” exemplified by director Sergio Leone and composer Ennio Morricone. Tarantino has aped some of Leone’s sequences and lifted Morricone passages before. His new film derives its name directly from Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 Django, perhaps the most violent of all spaghetti westerns.

 

But actually, Django Unchained is a reinvention of 1970s “blaxploitation.” Tarantino has tapped into this genre before in several films, most notably Jackie Brown. His last film, Inglourious Basterds, is named after Quel maledetto treno blindato, a 1978 World War II flick that included Fred Williamson in a classic blaxploitation role.

 

Django owes most to the 1975 potboiler Mandingo. Not only are primary themes and tropes lifted directly from Mandingo, entire scenes and settings are virtually replicated. Django comes very close to being a remake of Mandingo, with spaghetti westerns, Clint Eastwood’sUnforgiven, and other sources added in.

 

But Django operates in a radically different cultural environment thanMandingo did in 1975. With Barack Obama in the White House, there’s no need to have a runaway slave declare, “This is much our land as it is your’n. And after you hang me, kiss my ass!” That much has been established.

 

Django isn’t a particularly violent film by Tarantino or Hollywood standards. And it pales in comparison to Cormac McCarthy’s blood-soaked masterpiece novel Blood Meridian. But it is a highly sadistic one.

 

Django is a revenge fantasy. Along with love stories, these are the oldest, most ubiquitous human narratives. In Western culture, the thread runs from The Iliad to Hamlet, from Rambo to gangsta rap.

 

Inglourious Basterds was a revenge fantasy about the pleasure of killing Nazi Germans. And Dr. Schultz — the bounty hunting German dentist in Django who is metaphorically extracting the putrefaction from America’s rotten maw — functions as a kind of apology. Nonetheless, in the terms of a mercifully passé school of criticism, the only good white man in the film is, indeed, a dead one.

 

Everyone with a sense of justice roots for the revenge of the underdog. And there must always be a kind of catharsis in seeing violent retribution exacted on the likes of slavers.

 

But there is a more insidious dynamic at work in Django, just as there was in Mandingo and contemporaneous Holocaust films of the 70s. The elaborate and lingering depiction of sadistic white power over black bodies invokes not only indulgence in the vicarious pleasures of cruelty, but more specifically provokes a liminal nostalgia for the deep brutality of America’s racial past.

 

Might, for instance, the scene where Django is about to be castrated, trigger an irresistible impulse in some to want to relive such an order of total power – even when packaged as justification for an equally brutal revenge? Do we read this as sublimated racist sadism because Djangois written and directed by a white man? Would we see it as sublimated masochism had it been by a black director? And what about audience response: white, black, and other?

 

Perhaps the coldest moment of revenge in Django is the sudden killing of the young white lady of the plantation. There’s no space in the moral economy of Django for pausing to consider its ethical implications. And, indeed, all women in the film are mere objects, without the least agency or personalities. This means its dubious racial politics are compounded with terrible gender sensibilities.

 

And, unlike Mandingo, which foregrounds it, white women’s desire for black men is ostentatiously and quite unconvincingly avoided in Django, the film’s most telling blind spot. This is unquestionably a male fantasy, and a fairly disgraceful one at that.

 

The “exploitation” in 1970s blaxploitation was that of a white-driven entertainment industry marketing to a theretofore ignored constituency by shamelessly playing on its fantasies, fears, and aspirations. Tarantino’s Django is clearly aimed at broader audiences, but may be repeating similarly exploitative, manipulative gestures at multiple registers simultaneously.

 

In spite of everything, it was almost impossible most white and black American audiences would respond to Django similarly, particularly at the visceral and liminal levels, and commentary since its release strongly suggest this is indeed the case. Tarantino knows that and is playing on everyone’s neuroses quite ruthlessly. Familiar blaxploitation meets conscious white-guiltsploitation and liminal whitepower-nostalgia-sploitation. Sadism, masochism, and that witches’ brew of American racial anxieties just made Tarantino yet another fistful of dollars.