AR-News: Political tract for humanitarianism

[סמדר]

Van: Anthony Walker

arthur_cravan at yahoo.com

Aan: pElAgUS; the_raven_journal at yahoogroups.com
Onderwerp: Political tract for humanitarianism

 

Synopsis of attached document- down the messag...:

 

The regional nationalists of southern France support bullfighting. They accuse Paris of "Jacobinism" by ruling them. I say, YES TO JACOBINISM, NO TO NATIONALISM! There follows an analysis of the link between bloodsports and nationalism and tyranny, and the necessity of moral progress and humanitarianism ("Jacobinism").

A.

 

BOYCOTT KOREA AND EAST ASIA! THOUSANDS OF DOGS PER DAY  HAVE THEIR BONES BROKEN WITH HAMMERS & CLUBS WHILST ALIVE, & ARE ALSO BLOWTORCHED TO MAXIMISE THEIR AGONY.  www.koreananimals.org

 A RAVEN PAMPHLET

______  

 

YES TO JACOBINISM !

NO TO NATIONALISM !

 

“JACOBINISM” is a term of abuse used by the Occitan nationalists [of southern France] . To them it means the rule of Paris over the south of France, which they call “Occitania”. But what is “Occitania”? It is a variety of regions within the French Republic. 

  As an Englishman, do I have the right to speak on any of this? I have an absolute right! For, above all, I am a citizen of the world!

  I am not a supporter of the real Jacobins, i.e. the partisans of Robespierre and Saint-Just during the French Revolution. No. As an historian, I consider them to be the “Bolsheviks” of the French Revolution, representatives of the petite-bourgeoisie of the time and the enemies of the proletarian revolutionaries such as my hero Jacques Roux. However, there are some ideas which were expressed by the Jacobins which remain valid today.

  Saint-Just, for example, opens his work The Spirit of the Revolution by speaking of a world commonwealth. Without a doubt, this enemy of federalism possessed ideas very different from mine with regard to such a commonwealth, but, for all that, he was still, like myself, the enemy of nationalism. He was sincere in his view of a world, for instance, where war would no longer be possible. It is only his methods that I find disagreeable.

  Today we see nationalism and an unreasonable regionalism everywhere, as is the habit under capitalism, where most of us are exploited by international and national capitalism, and are also alienated from one another. It is a society in which, everywhere, social and individual problems are often intolerable. The sickness that is nationalism finds perfect ground here in which to take root and poison minds.

  Let us return to the subject of the French Revolution. This was, in effect, the capitalist revolution (politically) in France; but, for the philosophers, thinkers, humanitarians and progressives of England and elsewhere, it was seen as a great dawn for humanity. The Catholic Church, with all its brutality and cruelty, was (it seemed) finished and destroyed. For poets like Shelley and his circle, and for free-thinking women, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, and her companion, the philosopher William Godwin (author of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice), the world commonwealth was about to be born. Immediately, the British Government cracked down on the English Jacobins and, in order to destroy the movement for a new world-view, the government found several methods for diverting the population and brutalising minds.

  The most brutal method was, before its adoption in Catholic lands, the intensification in the practice of bloodsports, such as bull-baiting, bear-baiting, the torturing to death of animals for the entertainment of “good British subjects”. Those opposed to these horrors were condemned as “non-patriotic” and as “Jacobins”, sympathetic to the French Revolution and enemies of King George. This was because the English Jacobins, as a progressive movement, were opposed to such brutality. They declared their opposition to everything connected with barbarism and tyranny.

  Since the time of Henry VIII in England, that country had been infamous for its cruelties. Bull-baiting, bear-baiting and the torture and murder of animals for “sport” accompanied acts of brutality against the human subjects of the king. Under Henry`s daughter, Elisabeth I, atrocities against people and animals intensified still further in their ferocity and brutality. This continued under the Stuarts, up until the English Revolution of the 1640s. Bloodsports were condemned by the Commonwealth (1649-1660) as unworthy of a free people liberated from the chains of autocracy. With the restoration of Charles II, these “sports” were reinstated, together with gladiatorial fights etc. It was not until the 1830s that bull and bear-baiting were abolished in England, finally perceived as acts of barbarism not to be tolerated in a modern state. Finally, the English had come to understand that progress must bring sensibility in its train. (Bloodsports are still practised in England, by the most reactionary among the population: aristocrats and financiers, the enemies of the people, the enemies of progress and of humanity!)

  It was the influence of Jacobinism ~ of the French Revolution ~ overseas and in Great Britain, that assisted moral progress, as Saint-Just himself had hoped, to take its first steps on the Earth. But now, in our time, we see Occitan nationalism in France wishing to return that country to the pre-revolutionary years of brutality, and condemning modernity in the name of regional “liberty”. Whilst resisting Paris, these Occitan nationalists allow themselves to be buggered by Madrid, with its Francoist “culture” of bullfighting! (For it was Franco who championed bullfighting against the republicans, progressives, anarchists, federalists and socialists who were demanding its abolition in the Spanish Republic!)   Tyranny will always embrace cruelty, because cruelty (particularly in the name of tradition) is incompatible with human progress ~ and that progress spells death for tyrants!

  In the period, now, of the European Union, of youth movements for the conservation of the planet, of a new sensibility with regard to life (not just human life, but life in general), of vegetarianism, etc., we know why the reactionaries are trying to sabotage worldwide moral progress. Nationalists, like the Occitanistas, demand the “right” to practise cruelty and to ignore the disdain of the progressive, which they call “Jacobinism”. We, the friends of progress, reply: “YES TO JACOBINISM! NO TO NATIONALISM!” That is to say, yes to modern and worldwide progress in sensibility and morality; and no to the nationalism and regionalism that is supported by the reactionaries (including representatives of the Church and Francoists), the accomplices of cruelty and barbarism!

 

Anthony Walker (arthur_cravan at yahoo.com)

 

     



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business $15K Web Design Giveaway - Enter today
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040407/a023987f/attachment.html