The news and images out of Egypt are so discouraging that I took refuge in some old songs. The process of political change is fraught with all sorts of emotions: the exhilaration of believing that a better world can be created; the sense of betrayal when reality diverges so blatantly from rhetoric; the sadness of misdirected and uncontrolled violence. Most of the time, however, the violence of political change leaves us speechless. For me, music is often a road out of places where words fail. These last few days, words have really felt empty.
In 2011, the protests were against the dictator Mubarak. The husband of a former student had an apartment in Tahrir Square when the protests were going on. When I asked him how the historical moment unfolded for him, he said he was humbled by the magnitude of the event. Then he said that there was one unfortunate aspect of the protests: a small group of protesters played this song over and over again. The song was a fixture during the anti-war movement in the 1970s. I immediately felt a connection with the student protesters.
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Vinnie, Do you know the film Kuhle Wampe, and censorship history of it? UMass DEFA Archives issued a digitized remastered copy of this 1932 Brecht/Dudow/Eisler film that has been called the politically most radical and aesthetically most innovative film of the Weimar era. The Nazis, of course, damned it immediately. It was only permitted to be shown briefly, in a much cut version anyway.
At any rate, this is the kind of film, with lots of music as well (Eisler), that can promote hope. Its key song is the “solidarity” song. Of course, to someone like me, this term is not as one-dimensional as perhaps to people from other cultures. I was brought up believing that “solidarity” is an essential part of (Western) democratic thinking and the social market economy of West Germany. (Even conservatives like Angela Merkel say they believe in it, which shows the spectrum of political ideology the term has embraced since the 1920s.)
By the way, a German political press debate today was arguing that what was lacking in the Middle East, and Egypt specifically, is an understanding that democracy can only function based on compromise. And even Mursi never acted accordingly. Instead, he governed autocratically. Do you think that they are right?
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Gabriele, I am not familiar with the film, but would love to see it. I’ll track it down from UMass. Most societies have done a much better job of integrating the arts into their political discourse than the American society.
The term solidarity is completely unfamiliar to contemporary America with its nostalgic history of “rugged individualism.” That history conveniently ignores much of what actually happened in the US (think about the collective efforts in building barns in the colonial period), but is an integral part of the development of American politics. There cannot be any politics in a society without a sense of solidarity because a sense of mutual commitment is essential to compromise. Without compromise, politics becomes nothing more than a contest in which power, not the commonweal, determines outcomes. The reliance on power almost invariably leads to exclusion, and, in the worst case, extermination.
I agree that all civic societies depend on the belief that all its parts should be considered when policies are made. Morsi failed in this respect, but his failure was simply the lesson he and his supporters had learned from Mubarak. He was never given the chance to “learn” a different lesson–one which usually takes about three generations to learn after a long period of dictatorship (think how quickly Russia went from Gorbachev to Putin). I think the “lesson” of Egypt is that we all have to learn how to behave when elections “fail.” Intriguingly, the US offers an interesting insight in such lessons: many endured the Administrations of George W. Bush even though they believed his policies were catastrophic. Similarly, those who adamantly opposed Barack Obama (and their passion is deep) have yet to call for a coup.
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