Obituary Over A Decade (measurements!)

The second decade - not to be mingled with the 2020s, which saw a close still under the ever-potent and yet strangely normal aegis of Trumpdom - since the last centennial (the "zeroth" not being an option) now coming towards a close has indeed, and perhaps since before halftime, been commended, if not lauded, and epitomised as that which saw the break of seeming victories of the great undisputed twentieth century. And if that pessimism is to stand any merit, we must reflex over where we are now as opposed to late 1920, or the early 1920s, just as much as the early 2010s. In the early 2010s (that is, early 2010) I was myself under the tutelage of high school, or gymnasium as we call it (without the Germanic capital "G"), and for all its bondage it was a pleasant time; not so much for the presence of choices made, as the absence of the foolishness of my own, and the very compact presence of my time and my own thoughts on how to use it. But I am a foul man, and full of vice, and just as capable of sniffing out the Zeitgeist as the Geists in human skin doing most of the speaking, and in the worst of times the thinking, for us. 

I say this only to draw parallells, in the plural sense, to the seeming fate of the world, by which we would expect to mean the Western world, or what was previously the "free" world. For in a way not un-akin to I myself discovering myself not very free, compared to my eighteen- or nineteen-year self, I have noted not only the relative freedom and liberty of the non-Occident (if not exactly of the classical Orient) which anybody with eyes had minded, but moreover the bondage, restrictions, real perils and relative authoritarianism of the free world, both in reality and in potentia. Our democracy, and by now I am not exactly alone to say this, rests at a proverbial knife's edge, balanced only by some knives' edges held and reflected in a sense of virtue, and immediately and suddenly imperilled by those wielded by vice, or at least eager self-interest. 

The difference, and thus difference across this decade, is 

In late 1920, we were not so certain of this triumph of democracy, of course. We had, in Sweden, already passed - through an already democratic, at least in the sense of the revolutionaries of 1688, or 1832, assembly assembled mainly from the ideas of 1789 (the American 1789, not the French, mind you) through the most debate-laden and peaceful parliamentary procedure - the vote for women, and just before that for men, including in the electorate for the more, or until now more prestige-cloaked "first" chamber. In Germany, parliamentary liberalism had triumphed over the continent's supposedly premier authoritarian power. 

But in 2010, how sure were we not of all those things? Nobody would in 2010 have come to question the great German democracy, nor the great experiment in how one, far from the Anglo-Saxon waving fists and shouts of procedural trickery and hecklerism, whether parliamentary or congressional, could adjoint a government of red and black into a synthesis of permanent-democratism. This "democratism", or so I believe, hold the key to much of the frustration against it, for as much as representative democracy is not democratic, in the classical sense it would permit the electorate to actually rule themselves - and would never, not even in the very liberal powers which now embody it - 

How then are we to cheer or reckon this 2010s? Well first, through recognising the limitations of this democracy - or at least of this "democratism" and of liberal, representative systems - both in its appeal and security of persistence in the Arab world and elsewhere where it has not ever or seriously broken through, the Chinese-Confucian for instance, 

Obituary over the Undying

King of Clubs, Deputy of the Green Swastika, Commander of the Black Banner. Many titles could have been heaved upon him, and given his long and tumultuous history, he would hardly have eschewed any of them, with a smile already both charming and repugnant. In the long, strangely proud tradition of declaring dead those who still (or already, if we are to countenance actual resurrection) are able to complain about it, perhaps no man have eluded the tendency, or rather the explicit desire to bury in ink as well as dirt more than Izzat Ibrahim. Saddam's Queen regnant, and wise and tacit enough to elude, then as now, his many Henryesque purges.  

At 26 years and two weeks, he participated in the "glorious revolution", taking place in the July so prone to revolutions, including the memorable and recent 14 July (not the one you think about) establishing Arab nationalism outside, or alongside its blossom in great Misr, as well as eliminating the British holdfast in the heart of the old Caliphate and far older Mesopotamian cradle. But in fulfilling the promise made by Qasem's 1958 uprising, not only against a flawed and schizophrenic Hashemite monarchy but against disorder and revolution itself, its progeny would carry the promise of Ba'ath to fruition as a perfectly ordered police state, including a throbbing collision with its only twin and neighbour, the Alawite Assad-Ba'athist monarchy. For 35 years it would last, and Izzat Ibrahim would, strangely, follow it from the start to beyond its death throbs, including that very violent one christening itself the Dawlah al-Islamiyyah. Caliph he would never be, nor President, nor would he have wanted either, but in that small embodiment of power in the shadows, the shoulder beckoning between the head and the arm, always faithful, juxtaposing his quiet persona with a formidable presence in the ever-changing inner circle of the burgeoning Hussein dictatorship. After the bloody 1979 takeover, he just as quietly assumed the Vice Presidency the new ruler had left empty, and conjoined his obvious ambitions as Saddam's Dauphin to actual mingling of blood by marrying his daughter, one of an alleged 13, to the infamous Uday. Which of the bride's closest two men would have assumed power, if a third could not be produced and grow to maturity, we shall not know now, that the benefactor fell before his, in Tony Benn's and Jacques Chirac's view and, maybe, god's, time. Izzat would, perhaps the most remarkable (and on a personal level surely exhilerating) feat of the long and brutal dictatorship that took cue from its bloody inauguration - if one counts the takeover of July, yet again, 1979, that is - by compelling a divorce from the dictator in the wings by order of the current one. In this, perhaps, he also demonstrated an affection for his own blood which, typically for the Arab tribalist bonds that survive even the most strident and terroristic institutions of the regime, and perhaps fatherly affections as well. It was a suggestion that few would have dared. And seemed only the more respected and irreplacable for it.  

The steward walking unhesitantly, already moving past the leader.  

 

For the long, painful and glorious years that was liberated Iraq, he presided over a growing economy, a rapid expansion of the military, and eight long - and, again, dangerous not the least to those in positions of command - years of challenging the rivalling beacon, in many ways its supposed antithesis, in Persia, followed by an impossibly even more audacious challenge of its two main benefactors, King Fahd's Saudi Arabia and Bush's United States. And endured, at some point, what had just as likely been a death sentence by means of leukemia. A position in the highest ranks of the green would have allowed professional medical care, but Izzat hedged his bets by travelling to the European Union to ascertain treatments at a clinic in Vienna, avoiding arrest for the many war crimes piled up in the shadow of his master. Yet again, the grim face with the more eye-stealing moustache seemed to endure in its everlasting laughter.  

With the dusk of the Ba'athist regime, his would wait for another two decades, or very nearly so. The invasion of 2003 that toppled the government, Izzat went into hiding like his boss, and fellow Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, both executed in four years' time. And Izzat remained nowhere to be found. Due to his aged and always seemingly frail state, one might have expected him to be dead, or else in exile. But Izzat was not one to run, and his equally undying loyalty to the now very dead and deplored Saddam was expressed in the proclamation of his rise to national secretary of the party endured. As the merger of the Ba'athist regime, now a measly and outlawed party, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's organisation, controversially present before the 2003 invasion (and thus by presidential fiat), soon an approved affiliate with the franchise-prone al-Qa'ida hawk whose shadow had supposedly legitimised the intervention, would soon make its presence known, under the brand of Islamic State of Iraq. Of all the top names testifying of the Ba'athist-Sunni blessing, or reconstitution, of the regime into a radical, populist, openly terroristic (without the prefix "state") organisation bent on establishing an actual Islamic State in Iraq, it was yet again in the shadow of civil infighting between Shi'ah and Sunni factions and the supposedly global Jihadi threat.  

Wrongful death. Of all the obituaries written over the dead, from Robert Graves to Ernest Hemingway to Christopher Hitchens, few have gained such notoriety - domestically, at least - and irony as the carrying to the final rest, a very restless procession, of the body of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri in April 2015. The Vice President of the regime now gone would not rest long before appearing to proclaim the premature nature of his demise.  

 

Arising as a very concrete and provincial power, and bent on - in some sense - resurrecting the Saddam regime, if not Al-Ba'ath, in its latest and most miserable incarnation, paranoid and prone to incorporate the latest Islamist and openly Jihadi trends in its secular law, formerly praised by zealous Westerners as embodiments of the alternative to repressive colonial and hibernated traditionalist dogma. Where the Ba'athists had proclaimed, more or less piously, lashings and brandings and amputations and beheadings, for the corrupt (not currently in favour), the promiscuous (likewise), the stealing (again...) and so forth, the new Islamist brand would practice its new-old creed through a lense of icily serious theology, killing and otherwise doling out justice before recognised in name as a state. For its breakthrough in Iraq, whereas its rise in Syria had been shielded by an optical pad of civil war, liberation and general chaos, he was instrumental in forging together tribes and veterans and criminals and business interests joined only by a common defiance of an evermore aggressive, near-genocidal Shi'ite-dominated conglomerate in Baghdad. From this common denominator of vindicated and besieged Sunnidom, a common formula was reached, and proved strong enough to vanquish the highly financed, and highly ineffective armed forces of Iraq now left to its own, now mainly proverbial, defences.  

A paragon of times seemingly gone. Yet the two forces he steered, never really recognised but unforgotten, may yet test the turbulent times that reigned before and after him.  

 

In all this, Izzat Ibrahim, the Devil's actual deputy for 40 years, continued for another eighteen summers in his waining twilight years, and grew into a man of his own making long before entering the stage as the chairman of this force which - bar his competitor in Syria, which at that point had died, replaced by a sordid, last-minute Dauphin by now reduced to tragedy and humiliation in his triumph - had once been assumed as the future of the Arab world, a face perhaps further away from Nasser's than any man. Yet, Izzat's face, that of the Undying, would live long after carried in a glass box to cheering crowds, to a quiet and barely even forgotten announcement five years before his already long-expected demise, perhaps represented Babylonia and its British-made current construct of Iraq itself; a cobbled construct, quiet and small, unassuming but able to punch well above his weight; his final years were ultimately as tragic as any of his age in such times, but he refused assuming the cloak of complete obscurity even as the entire world around surmised it. His hand helped guide Iraq throughout the entire Ba'athist epoch and well beyond it, transcending the supposed, equally false and cobbled divide between Ba'athist Islamist hand-and-head-chopping "secularism" in place in the early 2000s and the violent, supposedly Salafi-Jihadi but equally Sunni Arab identitarian movement we yesterday talked about as if it were the prime geopolitical foe of the day. Being a paragon of these two spent forces, he may represent the most pathetic and wasted in a man of supreme intelligence, sublime intrigue for which his tribe was never particularly known, and survival in a world where those who could save the day, it may seem, are already dead.

The Emperor of the Fifth Republic

His life, as the poet said, must not be measured by its worth; for then, it hath no end. This repeated catchphrase may not be one associated with the late, very belated Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the third man to serve as president during the fifth republic and captain of its empire and nuclear arsenal (sorry, Alain Poher, but you would go on to serve as the effectual dauphin in the shadows until 1992). But among the gallery of exciting men (sorry, Ségolène, though by your husband's merits you might not regret losing at the moment) he might be the most impressive, 

He arose to this most supreme office in a very narrow pushback - if yet the last - against the leftist incursion ringing its battle cry over France since the spring of 1968. But this was, as would later be apparent, a mere icing on the cake or a plateau on, or beneath, a series of careers in the service of the French magistracy and political administration emerging out of the revolution. At his birth, in Koblenz in then-occupied Ruhr, the Third Republic was into its second half-century, yet hardly measurably on the ropes. The Pyrrhic victory of the great war was felt, however, thus its 

I am convinced he was the greatest to hold the office, maybe since Adolphe Thiers, 

The Strange (Second) Life of Lech Walesa

"Of Wales", as his surname may be inferred in Russian (though it is, as I notice now, spelled differently) might have posed a good name, had he been half a century before less belated, to become a major - and in his home country perhaps less beloved - figure in the British labour movement instead, and lived up to his image. Rugged, simple and rough, with a brusque attitude and acerbic witticism for dialogue, his was a place seemingly more belated than Victorian Britain.

A republic, not a demo(no)cracy

The great manifestation this weekend, barely two weeks after the election this November the fifth, by which I mean three (in recognition of two of England's great cultural treasures) and about four before the actual election this December, British-born Hungarian (and thus authoritarian to the bone) intellectual hack Sebastian Gorka arose to give perhaps the most acrimonious, and certainly most arousing to the soul of a harshly battered Trumpista - or Kekist, as I have proposed to christen this movement once, if not now then certainly after the next election, it has passed the surly bonds of president Trump's example. In the million MAGA march, matching in sweet acrimony as well as the vitriol many examples set by the recent past of American mass movements, but surely not its most obvious reference in historical signifance. Dare I say it. But nonetheless, we should not dismiss this as a death rattle, no more than the Hundred Days of Napoleon was necessarily that, nor a divinely ordained return of grace. Only speculate whether it is part in the downfall of Kekist moment, or its re-christening under a different man, and not necessarily a presidential ("candidate" or "one", fill in the blank as you please) at that. 

This movement, echoing again the words of president-elect (without office but already with certainty) Santos, this movement was never about him, nor about Gorka, Jones, Spencer, or any of the profligates that have, independently long since or grabbing onto the coattails or a supremely stupid, ignorant, absent-minded (fill in fully at whim) bulwark that was the Donald, presidential now by definition. It was about, as I wrote in 2016, a rejection or five R:s, or something like it ( Although the media has poignantly asserted that Trump's overtures to overturn must be rejected, it is all but clear that this division away from an Archimedean solid point has affected or been brought about by all parties, with even VOX, that I just linked, asserting in faux-rhetorical format that "the Supreme Court [might] steal the election" for the Republican ticket, something not even stated (if not exactly never implied) in the long aftermath of the sordid and swiftly quickened (or even stillborn) decision of Bush v. Gore of late 2000. Of course, the 2016 narrative of an election stolen, if not outright by Trump or his menace in red, or their nefarious efforts throughout state governments, then by Russians and their collaborators (those who don't denounce the bear in the proud tradition of the watchful senator from Wisconsin, that is) 

All over this hovers the maxim, repeated into the modern period and proper American democracy of the post-1960s - also the era of imperialism and decay of what might have been considered the original American spirit, constitutional and federal in character and to the heart engaged in struggle against itself and its own legitimacy - of "a republic, not a democracy". This statement, preceded by Franklin and repeated by the more bulwark-conservative (and consummated never-Trumper) senator Lee, to Victor Davis Hanson, to "American studies" professor Bernie Dobski, to Gorka this year, of course, and no less in the aftermath of the refusal of democracy's mandate to concede to the GOP ticket (the 2004 election remaining, thus, the only time it has carried a majority or even plurality, if not a majority of states) has the insidious character of potentially denouncing democratic mandate in a subversive way, of which none would be more insidious, or more importantly destructive, than the destruction of the electoral result in the states where the count, and potential recount, is under assault. In this, however, these state governments must - I mean do already - partake a share of blame. For when a court would find the need, or at least ability, for electoral booths to keep open beyond the expected deadline, in particular states, in such a fashion could be expected to favour a certain result, the protest and appeal to have the "surplus" votes suppressed - lest the entire election is to be redone - . (This in turn, of course, is in rebuttal to the Republican, mainly, efforts to shut and limit and circumcise the opportunities to vote in particularly early and in absence, as well as Trump's personal war on the postal department in hope to widen the gap between postal and "real" votes to "normal", and I think desirable, proportions.)

In this new millennium, a decision to maintain - as in this last major decision of the last - may be as acrimonious as to overturn (unquestionably certain to slip loose the dogs of political warfare, even if the law indeed did state clearly the foundation for doing so). And if so happens, it will be not because of the honestly (if yet loudly) argued point, argued on the streets that is, that the Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and so forth electoral codes did indeed at onset favour the exclusion ensuring a Trump re-election, however slim. Rather, it will be because of the over-argued and well-put point that this movement which he has mounted (rather than given birth to) fears downfall, and - I would add - for all the right reasons. The remaking of the electoral map, unlike the sloppy notion of letting votes be cast without identification (something I've always showed, and would expect to be shown, during any election whose result I would consider credible) is a fair shot, however, and it is here up to the Republicans to ensure greater participation as well as favour for the Republican ticket in the conscience of "new" Americans (Anglo-Saxons and forward). In this, they have - without much singing - largely succeeded. African Americans voted in favour of Trump, it seems, to about double the tally of in 2016, if not exactly in Lincolnian or even Eisenhowerian terms, and latinos - rapists or bringing drugs or the dully, jolly unexcited - have shown similar, if not as stark numbers of surge, suggesting either that the joyfully capitalist-wokeist alliance of mainstream Democrats - and the stupid X campaign - have a negative appeal (or, as Swedish politicians would say, have "not been fully appreciated and understood"), or the America First-line not being out of touch with largely traditionalist, overwhelmingly Catholic ex-citizens of Latin America whose desires and expectations of America, bar "north", is aligned with an ostensibly conservative past. If this trend continues, the Democrats continuing their abrasive expectation that the Spanish-speaker and foreigner belongs to them (as they still may believe of the Irish; if they're still undesirable enough to be desirable) the results may, in the future, be astounding for those seeing in Trump, now leaving after his four years, a new Hitler. 

And what will come of this? Well, bar the expected delivery of a verdict, so long sung and (bar Bush v. Gore yet) unaddressed in reality, 

The Other Dylan

 

This day, last year, I commemorated the violent and - perhaps insufficiently - vitriolic end of the experiment to bargain a more open, democratic society through student protest at the Tiananmen square, with a somber and less melancholic-optimistic emphasis on the future, on two systems not so much destined as already clashing, and with the current events in the beacon of the West, we would do well to emphasise, in increasingly exhaustive contemplation, the fate of the East, their likely and our desired. But this day I would point to a fate and loss of less remembrance marked with this irredeemable date of November 9. 

He was never rewarded with the Peace Price, or even that for Literature issued in Nobel's actual hometown of Stockholm (there, I got you) but his work is still vibrant and living, in this second, and often quite extensive, lifespan of a poet. He was beloved, both by kin and foes - if one could say that of the English colonial-power turned nearly a subject by the emergence of the Liberal party, the working men, of Lloyd George at the turn of the 20th century - to such extent that his person or work was hardly ever denounced and could not be denied even in the turbulent landscape in which he walked and wrote. While American fantasy writer George R. R. Martin's first seminal work, just like his efforts to bring science fiction into modernity, may never be as known as even the ever-next suite of his magnum opus, quotations from having passed into extensive and equally never-ending use, that immortalised in his very first published title (or a novel, that is) is that of a truly immortal poem by the Welshman, and while "true" Welshman Richard Burton, born Ffyon Jenkins, made sure to make note both his love of the English verse during his moment in the light at Dick Cavett's show, as to his preferences to be buried in red when that moment - prophesised, if one can call it thus - during said exchange. 

Steadfastly Welsh, never an object of self-made hagiography. 

He was larger than that, however. Due to his inability to accomplish financial security from his talent, he was a man of real life and labour, of which he had time to go through 

The first paragraph was, only last year, immortalised to me yet again when fellow East coaster Bruce Springsteen noted he thought it would not apply to the now encumbered, then only so cumbersome, president. Well, we shall see. 

Do not go easy into the Night

Rage, rage against the dying of the Light... 

The Writer and the Roots

 

Had anyone asked me, say, ten years past, my likelihood of answering how I would describe Jan Myrdal's (now very recent, and having occurred almost unexpected) passing I would unlikely have found myself replying in the nostalgic, or even the most tedious, shambolic exercise of mourning. For decades he was a divisive figure of Joker-esque proportions, the first troll if you like (and if you've never heard of Socrates, or any of his more likely followers), a contrarian of majesty comparable to his parents or brother-in-law in their own respective careers, or even the Internet, was an issue for less divisive, though seldom as prolific, authors to consider. And in this sovereignty, if not always consistent, was his greatness. (And yes, I will return to Connery, the fitting antagonist to pass the same weekend, shortly. Image below, considering this, is very deliberate.) 

Always, without apology, without overt irony, the villain. The Devil of Folkhemmet.

Born to a womb and penile rapture - as he might have put it - then not yet in their prime, he might have been destined for greatness. But in his youth, Jan - Ian as he might have been known had he followed his instincts to stay and become an American, non-hyphenated - to purchase the great liberal struggles, as we may know them, for the First Amendment and a Marxist feminism in recognition of economic rights and labour and in opposition to the second and particularly third wave denounced by his follower, last millennium's inhabitant Björn Afzelius. Above all he possessed a desire for the contrarian, the provocateur without a cause (or rather as one who didn't need an explicit cause) for truth in all its forms. He became a man of the left, as his background may both suggest and disconcert, but certainly one his father would have, and did, disown as such, and ultimately a man who could only stick to - and sometimes alter - his own convictions. Like his detractor Per Ahlmark, who he preceded by one decade and outlived into another, he had issues with ever recognising this fact, but in his always-opposition nature and refusal to actually hold the reins he so dastardly endorsed, from time to time, in their most excruciating and destructive endeavours, and stubborn to foolhardy maintenance of the Enlightenment and revolutionary principles so contemporaneously discarded by "his" left (including, in many cases, his followers). 

His private life, so often intertwined with the public, the political, almost deliberately so, was no less publicised or, lacking a more precise phrase, discouraged. He grew quickly into a man but always remained the steadfast, stubborn boy at Central Station, eloping from school and family - with which he would break, still quite young, forever - into cohabitation and first marriage, the bourgeois institution with which he never managed to break. In one of the latter, equally entertaining and miserable, articles about his personal situation, he meekly and self-debasingly remarked that no woman would ever express interest at a 91-year old at Tinder, a fact he may have found misproven had he ever put it to the test. Jan remained a icon with the young and "revolutionary" bourgeoisie long after his heyday, and crowned his aging, if not ailing, career with successive, increasingly Hefner-like marriages with followers following the death of his impossibly long-lasting wife, Gun. Many came to lament, as they never outrightly condemned him, their fates, but the magnetic quality he must have possessed, yet never imbuing it with those qualities that mark a cult leader; the sarcastic, insulting, even self-abasing always taking heyday over the charismatic. Even as he praised the Cambodian known as Saloth Sar long after his death, one was left with little imagination of what would have been Jan's fate, had he joined that fateful struggle and bothered, as he always did, with speaking his mind. This watching from the barricades - and in the Cambodian excursion, very much near the genocide - of a new society forming well beyond the barricades and gates of his own cluttered-to-comfortable home, was typical and a focal point of admonishing critique; yet he never relented, preferring to speak his mind to a room, and develop his theory form the perspective and strategy of the strictly long term. 

Consistantly annoying, in constant review of the past. Leaving him into a legacy of public ownership is a library of Gladstonian proportions. How many - even of his contemporaries - have even beheld as many volumes, let alone fondled them?

Expelled from the PEN Society in the late 1980s after defending the crushing of the Tiananmen uprising, a tone characteristically taken by near-octogenarian autocrats in the Eastern Bloc (who he generally resented, or brushed off) and adding to the humiliation - if not his own - by defending the clerical death sentence against Rushdie as ecclesiastically (if not morally) upright, he both saluted the coming tide of left-wing neurotic self-abasement over the higher and less surrepticious tide of challenges to the Enlightenment, and particularly what fellow detractor Christopher Hitchens christened "fascism with an Islamic face". He never joined that train, or even came to praise it as fellow post-colonial scholars merrily did, but certainly angered - rightly - his fellows on the broader New Left and the Enlightenment-Americanophiles of liberal strands alike. His was, ultimately and strangely for a man of the progressive, ofttimes regressive (such as on the issue of Rushdie, and his Scandinavian descendents) left, a defender of the rights of small nations, of the sovereignty principle, of the plurality and difference in social and cultural customs, on whom he spent substantial chronological, intellectual and physical resources, which a non-imperialist world order would endure and toil under. While there would be little certainty for the principles of individual autonomy and free speech, above all, which he lauded in such an order, he was nevertheless vindicated again and again, and in the end - having alienated nearly everyone not of near-masochistically held views - refused to die. If the Sweden of the age of Folkhemmet and bureaucratic, intrusive, rights-denouncing (still a prevalent feature of our illiberal constitution; the one he denounced as well for cementing and centralising power with its elimination of the liberal elements inherent in its 1809 predecessor) state had indeed been a Soviet Union, as many of his detractors thought and as he might have implied in the lesser sense, he might have been a martyr of Solzhenitsyn's proportions. Whether his Churchill-like or Poirot-esque arrogance and consistently annoying relativism, and focus on the subjective and personalised, almost "yellow"-y autobiographical would have befitted such a character, or indeed made it more endearing, and branded a soul of courage and actual accomplishment, is a fact minted for the everlasting question of unconsummated opportunity. 

Solidarity is not the concern for the other, but concern for those things that are common. 

Jan Myrdal, 1927-2020, however he would describe himself