Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Fascism
JUDE FERNANDO-07/13/2018
If they call you a Hitler, then be a Hitler and build this country.—Ven.
Vendaruwe Upali Thero (Anunayaka of the Asgiriya Chapter), advising Lt.
Col. Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, the former Secretary of Defense.
Now we remember how we lived before May 18, 2009. In the present conditions
our main intention is to bring back the LTTE if we want to live, if we want to
walk freely, if we need our children to attend schools and return back.—
Vijayakala Maheswaran, M.P, United National Party.
The timing of these two ill-thought-out and irresponsible statements, and the
stark difference between the public and political responses to them, are
evidence of the harsh and uncomfortable realities of this country. The
statements are an indictment of the current yahapalanaya (“good
governance”) regime for failing to fulfill its promises. Desperation and anxiety
over these failures run deep in a society so morally bankrupt, and
intellectually and politically paralysed, that it sees no other option but to turn
to LTTE or Nazi-type regimes to help solve the country’s social, economic,
ecological and political problems—regardless of the atrocious history of such
institutions. These are symptoms of a morally degenerating society, deprived
of convincing alternative narratives and roadmaps with which to guide its
future.
All ethnic communities, among other issues, are deeply concerned with the
deterioration of the law and order situation in the country. Tamil and Sinhala
communities’ frustration with the prevailing situation in the country is the
context in which Vijayakala and the Ven. Anunayka made their provocative
statements. But the two do not have equal privilege to express their respective
concerns, even after having been given the theoretical benefit of doubt of the
underlying motives for their respective statements, without being ridiculed
and threatened with legal action.
The double standards evident in the legal, popular, and political responses to
Ven. Anunayaka and Vijayakala are indicative of a country sharply polarised
along ethnic lines, as well as of the continuing influence of racist ethno-
nationalism on the politics of the country. Such polarisation creates
communities that are unable to empathise with their counterparts, even if
they are facing similar struggles. After 30 years of war, million-dollar
investments in reconciliation and peace-building have done nothing to move
the country away from reactionary, racist nationalism and towards a more
inclusive nationalism to guide nation-building. Politicians who publicly
condemn racism lack the will and are disempowered to implement non-racist
policies.
The root cause of the country’s vulnerability to fascism is the legitimacy crisis
of neoliberalism masquerading as a legitimacy crisis of State. Neoliberalism,
which is the current phase of capitalism, continues to rely on the state
authority to ensure its survival, and the legitimisation of the State’s authority
and the suppression of dissent against it are closely tied to culture rather than
economic means. Culture, drawing on religion, language, race, and ethnicity
and so on, gives meaning to the identity, behavioral relationships and
patterns, and structural divisions and power inequalities of the society.
The fact that the success of the neoliberal economy is predicated on social and
economic inequalities and injustices and environmental degradation, culture,
without being militarised, progressively loses its ability to be a source of
legitimacy of the neoliberal state. This is because culture is the only means
available to the state to legitimise its power in the face of mounting economic
inequalities and ecological crises. In a multicultural nation state such as Sri
Lanka, where one culture dominates the others in the constitution of the
state’s identity and its social and economic policies, the militarisation of
culture acts as an important means of legitimising the state, the ruling
ideology and hegemony, and as a result instigates its opposition by those
marginalised cultures.
Culture is far more important than the economy for people to make sense of
their identity, social and ecological relationships and dignity. Thus,
militarism, as embodied in LTTE- and Hitler-type regimes, is a cultural
response to the legitimacy crisis of the neoliberal state that results from its
inability to grant social and economic equality to all its subjects.
Commodification, nationalisation and militarisation of culture, deprives the
society of vibrant, critical and democratic public spheres to deliberate action
against culture’s role in social, economic and ecological injustice.
While Fascist regimes around the world have taken different forms and
national variants, they draw their identity and legitimacy from the cultural
context in which they operate. Fascism is broadly defined as “a political
ideology that seeks to organise the government and economy under one
centralized authority, with strict social controls and suppression of all
opposition. Fascist regimes draw on aggressively militarised and often racist
nationalism to legitimise the regimentation of the economic and social policies
and suppression of dissent against them. Fascism glorifies the nation or the
race as an organic community that transcendsall other forms of loyalties and
often, often but not always, it embodies racial superiority doctrines, ethnic
persecution, and geopolitical expansion.
Even the JVP is not a viable option for people to end corruption. Most people
do not vote for the JVP, even if they welcome its persistence in exposing
corruption. People are averse to progressive ideals of JVP, because those
ideals are not being backed up by a credible, practical strategy of
implementation of policies that would be conducive to the realisation of those
ideals, and to make matters even worse their track record of two failed
insurgencies and ethnonationalist past (during the 1971 and 1989
uprisings)are still haunting them. Under these circumstances, people would
even vote for extremely corrupt persons, especially when allegations of
corruption against them remain unproven, so long as their campaign policies
promise to make real change on the ground.
The frustrations of the Tamil minority with the government run as high as the
frustrations of the majority Sinhalese. The progress the government has made
in relation to certain minority issues—progress that has been acknowledged
by Vijayakala herself—is not reason enough for minorities to be complacent
about the status quo. The much-anticipated constitutional changes allowing
for devolution of power are unlikely in the near future if supposed fears of
resurgence of the LTTE and of anti-minority sentiments occupy a central
place in the coming election campaigns.
If our consciousness is formed in the image of these two projects, our ability to
think critically and independently is taken away, and our humanity is robbed
from us. Only by unraveling the economic, political and cultural
underpinnings of these projects can we regain our intellectual freedom and
our humanity, and make proper sense of Vijayakala’s and Ven. Anunayaka’s
statements and of the public response to them.
Economic hegemony offers only two options to any government. The first is to
be aggressive in implementing neoliberal policies, using ideological consensus
and coercion to suppress and distract any form of protest against the
inequalities and injustices that inevitably arise from such policies.
Governments find it easy to adhere to such doctrines when the society itself
has internalised the promise of prosperity and when there is no critical
thinking or opposition to that myth encouraged by the education system, by
the religious establishment, or by civil society. Such manufactured gullibility
is reinforced when people are made so naïve as to believe that changes in the
political leadership will result in a new determination to combat injustice and
inequalities of neoliberal economic policies.
The public and political responses to the two statements are indicative of
continuing polarisation along ethno-religious lines and also of a lack of will
among mainstream political parties to move beyond narrow identity politics
that legitimise their political agendas. In these responses Vijyakala’s
statement received a literal interpretation, whereas Ven. Anunayaka’s
statement received a metaphorical interpretation.
At the time she made the controversial statement, Vijayakala, a Tamil female
State Minister of the Government of Sri Lanka, had worked closely with the
government on various projects on post-war reconciliation and peace-
building. Her husband was assassinated by the LTTE and she had witnessed
decades of failure of all governments to fulfill their promises to minority
Tamils. Her controversial statement was obviously an ill-thought out
statement made in a context of increasing reports on sexual violence in the
North and East. Why did she make the statement now?
The parliament and the media did not get animated about Ven. Anunayaka’s
statement, in the same way they did about Vijayakala’s. Not many raised
doubts about his clarification of his statement, that “he did not advocate a
Hitler-like military rule”, rather he meant “the need for someone who can
make strong decisions.” It was accepted by many without raising any doubts
about it or raising questions about the consequences of such a statement on
inter-ethnic relations. Obviously, Vijayakala cannot in good conscience defend
the LTTE, with its record of forcibly recruiting women and children to the
war, as a protector of women and children, but she could certainly say that
there was no rape and sexual abuse during its regime. If we equally treat both
Vijayakala’s and the Ven. Anunayaka’s statements, then we should give the
benefit of the doubt to Vijayakala that she did not endorse the violent past of
the LTTE; rather she, as the Ven. Anunayaka did, meant the need for a
regime that would make firm decisions to prevent further sexual assaults.
The UNP did the right thing in appointing a committee of inquiry and letting
the legal process handle Vijayakala’s statement, rather than immediately
arresting her. However, the UNP is not going to challenge the racism that
underlies the hypocrisies of Vijayakala’s critics. The reaction of some UNP
members to Vijayakala’s statement implies that its intention was to prove to
the public that it was far more proactive in condemning Vijayakala than were
the opposition politicians.
People are so busy looking after their own welfare that they lack the time,
resources, and moral inclination to become responsible citizens. Instead, they
expect politicians to work for the common good. Even some religious leaders
see the LTTE and fascist movements as role models for our political leaders
because those religious leaders themselves draw their popularity, legitimacy,
and economic substance from ethno-religious nationalism and the
neoliberalism that underpins it.
As long as the government is committed to neoliberal policies and maintains
ethno-nationalism as the ideological basis for nation-building, it will fail to
restore and maintain law and order, to end corruption, to create a viable path
toward transitional justice for communities affected by war and to address
increasing economic inequality, the dispossession of the country’s land and
resources, and to prevent the subjugation of the country to the demands of
neoliberal institutions. Those who vilify Vijayakala and brand Gotabhaya as
Hitler to create fear in the society themselves are complicit with the same
economic and nation-building projects.
Editor’s Note: “Sri Lanka: Where free market wouldn’t sell reform and
reconciliation” and “Racism in Education, Religion and Neoliberalism:
Empowering the anti-minority extremists?“
Posted by Thavam