Link and addendum. posted by Richard Seymour

Direland has the story:

THE FORGOTTEN CHILDREN OF ABU GHRAIB: Children were held at the Abu Ghraib torture prison, where some of them were abused--both physically and sexually--according to government documents and testimony obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act and released on Thursday. Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky, the prison's former commander, was among those who testified to investigators that children were held, including one who was only eight years old. The Associated Press reported the story, but the TV news channels were too busy discussing how Michael Jackson showed up at his trial in pajamas to mention it. If child abuse is committed in the name of national security, I suppose it just isn't all that newsworthy. The Washington Post did run a Friday story about the documents' revelations of a list of over 100 "ghost prisoners" hidden without any official record at the torture prison by the CIA with the connivance of military intelligence. Of course, in the very first 'graph of that story, signed by Josh White, the paper cited "documents obtained by The Washington Post," giving the impression that the paper had an exclusive and had actually done some digging; but the ACLU -- which had really obtained the incendiary documents and released them to the entire press corps -- wasn't mentioned until the last paragraph. Honorable journalism, that. And the abused children jailed at Abu Ghraib weren't mentioned by the Post story at all...

Linking to my last post, Jodi Dean at I Cite rightly notes that "the way that rationalism was brought into the service of the local in eugenics and medicalized racism" complicates the picture of fascism as purely irrationalist. I merely lift my reply from her comments box:

[A] crucial distinction needs to be made between different levels of rationality, one which I ought to have made in the post.

Adorno and Horkheimer's immanent critique of Enlightenment bears some relevance here. The objectification and instrumentalisation of nature has proved to be deadly in some hands. And goals that derive from irrationalist impulses can be implemented in rational ways. The internal picture of the Nazis was one of being compelled to wipe out a threat and of having to find the most unsentimental means of doing so. Similarly, during Reichskristallnacht, although people were encouraged to smash up Jewish shops and attack their homes, there were penalties for anyone who was perceived to have done so for selfish (pathological) reasons.

Conversely, and picking a more or less random example, the Azandes as studied by Evans-Pritchard engaged in practises which would be deemed scientifically unsound, irrational etc, yet it would be perfectly rational for an individual growing up in such a society to internalise these as norms, simply for the sake of survival.

So it makes sense to deconstruct the perceived divide between rationality and ideology (Blair's Third Way, "doing what works" etc), which is itself pure ideology. Like Lenin, we should ask "cui bono"? For whom are you rational, to what end, and in what circumstances?

Pity I failed to mention Zizek on political jouissance yesterday - for fascists, the Other 'steals' enjoyment in the nation-state and its mythos, while the fascist regime says "You May!" - you may oppress, vilify, rob, abuse etc. In this way, the supporters of fascism are libidinally bound to its order. Nah, needs more thinking about. I'll come back to you on that.

Finally, two calamities struck yesterday. Gary Kasparov retired from the chess game, and Dave Allen retired from life. Allen was a socialist by conviction and funny by virtue of his seriousness. Curiously, but commendably, although he packed his shows with anti-religious humour (he loved that Pope hat), he always ended with the phrase "may your God go with you".