[ Curmie should be familiar to comment readers here as one of EA’s erudite and witty participants in our daily debates. He has a real name, of course, which he is at liberty to reveal when the mood strikes him. Curmie is an experienced blogger; his own site, Curmudgeon Central, has been referenced and linked-to frequently here over the years. The consistent quality and ethical analysis that he always brings to his commentary, as well as the fact that Curmie has a more liberal orientation than many feel your host displays, made his addition to the Ethics Alarms team (see, two is a team!) both logical and wise.  The fact the we share a deep involvement with theater and the performing arts had nothing to do with it. Well, maybe a little.

Curmie has no set schedule for his contributions, and has complete editorial discretion unless he begins babbling incoherently and shows signs of a stroke. And now I’ll get out of the way and leave you in Curmie’s capable hands.-JM ]

Strange Bedfellows: Socialism and Free Expression

by Curmie

Reading Jack’s piece on the Gallup poll that suggested an increase the percentage of Americans who self-identify as conservative, my first thought was, “so where do I fit in this model?” 

There are so many variables: I’m quite liberal on some issues, staunchly conservative on others.  I took a couple of those online quizzes: according to Pew, I’m “Ambivalent Right” (whatever that means); according to politicalpesonality.org, I’m a “Justice Warrior” (erm… no); ISideWith has me as a Green (not really, although I’ve been accused of worse).

Moreover, such things are always relative: there’s no doubt that I’m well to the left of most people in my Congressional district and of most readers of Jack’s blog, but I’m a fair distance to the right of many of my colleagues in academic theatre.  Moreover, times change.  My once-radical position on gay rights, for example, is now rather mainstream: my belief system had remained virtually unchanged, but it’s now no longer “very liberal,” and may even be “moderate.”

Most importantly, distinguishing between left and right isn’t always the appropriate axis.  Sometimes it’s the continuum from authoritarian to libertarian that really matters.  Political Compass places me solidly to the left of center, but even further into libertarianism.  And it is on these issues—of non-interference by powerful forces, be they governmental, corporate, or otherwise—where Jack’s readership is most likely to agree with me (vice versa). 

In other words, my longtime assertion that, to quote the title of a piece I wrote a few months ago, ““The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression—They Just Do It Differently” ought not to surprise us overmuch.  What might is a casual observation I made while doing a little research for my second of my two posts on the Roger Waters controversy.

Something clicked in my mind when I read a denunciation of the US State Department’s weighing in on the subject.  An article entitled “Oppose the State Department’s slanders against Roger Waters!” appeared on… wait for it… The World Socialist Web Site, under the auspices of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). [NOTE: For those who have been in a sensory deprivation tank since the Sixties, Roger Waters is one of the founders of Pink Floyd. JM.]

Given that site’s previous condemnation of “bourgeois politicians and the media” and the “shabby political elite” who denounced Waters’s concerts in Germany, this may be understandable.  From the perspective of the WSWS, the opposition to Waters comes, in fact, from the right, because, as a WSWS review of the Detroit stop on the American tour argues, “Virtually every song is directed toward pressing issues of our time: imperialist war, fascism, the poison of nationalism, the plight of refugees, the victims of state oppression, global poverty, social inequality, the attack on democratic rights and the danger of nuclear annihilation.”

The photo you see above suggests that the socialist defense of Waters may be founded at least in large part on political rather than free speech grounds.  Were one of a cynical disposition, one might also suspect that such displays (this one from the Berlin concert) may also underlie the State Department’s intrusion into the kerfuffle.  To be clear, every US President since Reagan was thus labelled: it’s not just Biden who got this treatment.

So perhaps the socialists are defending Waters because they see him as one of them.  Some of their rationale is, to say the least, rather strained, even to the eyes and ears of someone (like me) more likely than the average person to see their argument in a positive light.  That said, they are very specific that the attempt “to destroy Waters and intimidate other artists, performers and intellectuals from speaking out… is a desperate and systematic attack on freedom of speech and artistic expression.”  I agree.

More to the point, it doesn’t, or, rather, shouldn’t matter if Waters is “right” about the issues.  Do I think he’s absolutely accurate about some issues?  Yes.  About all issues?  Hell, no.  Is he antisemitic?  I don’t think so.  Is there any reason he ought not to be able to perform even if he were?  No.

What really caught my eye in all this was the fact that a Socialist organization was willing to take a stand for freedom of expression, but I can find no evidence that any other government official or political party has been willing to do so.  There are politicians in the US, the UK, and Germany ready to condemn him for what I believe to be utterly imaginary offenses that tell us more about the spectator than the artist.  But to the best of my knowledge, there’s not a single defense by any politician or political organization… except the Socialists.

Anyway, I then recalled the case of Bright Sheng, the University of Michigan professor who got into hot water a couple of years ago for showing his class the Laurence Olivier film version of “Othello”.  (Jack wrote about it here; my take, a week or so later, is here.

In that case, the Censorious Asshats (the usual hat-tip to Ken White of Popehat for the felicitous phrase) were clearly on the left, with the (alas!) usual genuflections to grad students (!) who were “hurt” by the incident.  Eventually, sanctions against Professor Sheng were dropped, but the damage to his reputation was both undeniable and irrevocable.

At the time, I’d either never seen the film in question or seen it so long ago I’d forgotten it.  I watched it a couple of months ago, and no, I wouldn’t show it to students except if it were heavily contextualized… but not for the reasons that got Sheng into trouble.  The casting of a white man in very dark makeup is a little unsettling at first, but what was really appalling was that Olivier himself was furniture-chewingly awful: bad enough that strong performances by Derek Jacobi as Cassio, Maggie Smith as Desdemona, and especially Frank Finlay as Iago weren’t enough to save the film from being, well, bad.

This, of course, is only a matter of opinion and ultimately neither here nor there with respect to the Sheng case.  What matters in the present circumstance pertains to the reaction to the brouhaha.  Whereas commentators on such right-leaning sights as Newsmax and The National Review took up the cause, there was no uproar that I could find from politicians or mainstream parties of any description.

You know who did write a scathing denunciation of the university’s violation of both academic freedom and First Amendment rights?  Ah, you’re ahead of me here, aren’t you!  That would be the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan, whose self-description includes the following: “Equality is a fundamental right of humankind, denied almost universally to the people of this earth under the economic system of capitalism. While our organization encourages various means of promoting equality, our program aspires towards a socialist transformation of society.”

The IYSSE (don’t make me try to pronounce that acronym) posted to (where else?) the WSWS page, arguing that “The actions taken against Professor Sheng… may well rank as the most shameful episode in the University’s history.”  They argue further that the university’s initial capitulation to “poorly read, miseducated and disoriented students,” not Professor Sheng’s showing of the film, is what is helping to sanction “a thoroughly toxic environment on university campuses.” 

Those socialists aren’t pulling any punches!

None of this is to suggest that socialists are universally champions of freedom of expression.  Far from it, in fact.  But at least we might start considering that other axis on Political Compass’s map.  The libertarian streak missing from too many pols on the left and right alike seems not (yet?) to have been abandoned by self-styled socialists. In these two instances, at least, they not only supported someone maligned for imaginary offenses that should have been protected speech under any circumstances, they were the only voices representing a political party (as opposed to being readily identified with such a party) to do so.

That struck me as odd.  Perhaps it shouldn’t have.