I Don’t Get The Tibet Bashing
Digg 
Stumble Upon 
Newsvine 
Slashdot 
Mixx 
Diigo 
Delicious 
Reddit 
Facebook
As someone who positively delights in the neocon hysteria over “the abandonment of democracy”, while there is certainly plenty of hypocrisy to go around in the Free Tibet crowd, I must say I find that the eagerness of conservatives like David, Justin Raimondo, and Brendan O’Neill to rail on about the horrors of Tibetan feudalism is bizarre. Whatever happened to secession and revolt against the modern world? And I don’t think one needs to be a jackass like Lou Dobbs and insist on still calling it Communist China, or even to advocate an adversarial relationship with China at all, to maintain a healthy contempt for Chinese totalitarianism.
Full disclosure: I grew up around a lot of Tibetans, and I still get a kick out of completing a transaction with them, overwhelmingly employed by the Farmers’ Markets in New York, by saying “toche che”. I can tell you that in addition to knowing more about the culture than your average hippy-dippy Free Tibet lefty and thus appreciating its positive reactionary attributes, I also know that most Tibetans in America, like my own Jewish ancestors, are eager to become Americans first and foremost.
I suppose, at least in David’s case, that this is also of a piece with his gratuitous Tory Unionism. So let me register a hearty Free Tibet – and Free Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
Filed under: Uncategorized, community
Free Scotland and Wales — and send Ulster back to Ireland!
Jack. Bravo. You wrote a post saying what needed to be said before I could post a comment. Attacks on the Dalai Lama remind me of Hitchens attacks on Mother Theresa.
Not only that, but the talk of how the Chinese have improved Tibetans’ quality of life is akin to how Strom Thurmond went on in the day about how southern blacks had the highest standard of living of any people of African descent in the world, or all those Fox News segments a few years ago about the “good news” coming out of Iraq.
1. China is not totalitarian and has not been anything close since the mid-70s. Authoritarian and totalitarian are not the same. Virtually everyone on the Old Right supports (at least tactically) some authoritarian leaders in certain places and times. So it happens to be ruled by the Communist Party. The American empire is ruled by elitist “Democrats” and imperialist “Republicans”. Britain is ruled by a party called “Labour” (hahaha) and will soon be “Conservative” (hahahahahaha).
2. It is interesting to hear your account of Tibetan-Americans but I don’t think I’ve met more than a small handful (all imported monks). However much they want to be American is besides the (any) point since they are hardly very numerous.
3. While I can understand the paleoconservative sentiment of opposing the progressive imperial power (be it communist or capitalist or – in china’s case – both), I would point out that Tibetan Buddhism, as it has been practised in Tibet, does not resemble its foreign propaganda. I believe the local culture still permitted human sacrifices.
4. The Dalai Lama shares very few qualities with Mother Theresa. David is not the only one who thinks he is out for his own political power and not a particular doer of good works. I am sorry if you buy into the media propaganda.
5. So do you think, Jack, that Southern Blacks were particularly oppressed (oh, but not in Harlem?)?
I don’t think the point is that the Chinese have a manifest destiny over Tibet (or Uighurstan). Simply the Dalai Lama is not some holy figure worthy of our constant *political* attention. He is not terribly relevant, despite a massive foreign media operation in his favour (which, in my opinion, has been withering in recent years).
1. Reasonable people can differ about whether China today is totalitarian or merely authoritarian, but for myself I would submit that any state that still has an official ideology enforced by authoritarian means, notwithstanding how far gone it is today from hardcore Maoism, is totalitarian.
2. The miniscule number of Tibetan-Americans is also beside the point.
3. Human sacrifice has never been a part of Tibetan Buddhism. You probably confuse two things that, however grisly, have nothing to do with murder: disposal of the dead by feeding them to vultures (known as “sky burial’), and the carving of human bone into useful and ornamental objects. I can not reliably say how widespread, or not, these practices are today.
4. Perhaps the Dalai Lama is not Mother Theresa, but if he’s a cynical operator on some level, he is certainly no more so than, say, the Pope.
5. You miss my point entirely about Strom Thurmond’s apologetics for segregation (and, for that matter, those of Fox News for the occupation of Iraq), but political oppression aside, in the 1950s blacks probably did have a better standard of living in the South than in the North.
I had no idea of the level of animus toward the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan traditional culture brooding out there. It’s bizarre and I wish I knew from what quarter it comes. Keeping out of other people’s quarrels is more than understandable, but the regurgitation of Chi-Com propaganda on a Conservative site is distasteful.
Even if the Tibetan culture and polity were as backward as claimed, that would hardly justify Chinese aggression. We can have relations with China while acknowledging that they are cruel bastards. We do, and did, do business with bastards before and will do so in the future. There is no need to vilify the innocent in order to do this.
I referred to Raimondo earlier, he had the most bizarre column about the Tibetan uprising in early 2008 blaming all the American sympathy on Pelosi and the labor bosses, and going on to justify the Chinese because the Tibetans had been allies of Genghis Khan (I kid you not!)
Brendan O’Neill, frankly, I find to be an unsettling new species of the type who hates the left more than he loves anything he believes in: take his cover piece on the “Green-Industrial Complex”, I don’t doubt it was a largely accurate description of the phenomenon, but the conclusions he draws from it are out of whack. Individually but especially in combination, the militant anti-environmentalism and apologetics for China are disturbingly similar to the line of Lyndon LaRouche.
Jack, if my memory serves, what we now call Tibet was amalgamated into the Mongol empire shortly before the Mongols defeated China. The Tibetans introduced Buddhism to the Mongols and were content to pay tribute to the Great Khan. Eventually the Mongols who went on to subjugate China went native and in turn became the latest iteration of the Chinese Empire. It is on this slender reed that the Chinese claim to have always been overlords of Tibet.
“So let me register a hearty Free Tibet – and Free Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.”
Could a free Tibet prosper on its own? It certainly could thrive under its feudal culture but the left wouldn’t think so. Tibet being so reactionary would be anathema to the internationalist leftists who would immediately insist that Tibetans revel in the merits of modernity. Here would be yet another nation that would fall under “benevolent global hegemony”. This prospect should at least give conservatives pause.
“Free Tibet” may as well be, not just “Free Wales” (like “Free Northern Ireland” not the policy of any notable party, contrary to what is often assumed about Plaid Cymru), but “Free Kent”, “Free Wessex”, “Free Northumbria” and “Free Mercia”. Will banners saying those things be in evidence at the 2012 London Olympics?
Up to 1959, most participants in “the traditional Tibetan culture” were serfs whose life expectancy was half what it is today. They don’t miss it. But they remain as traditionally Tibetan as ever. Within China. As they have been for thousands of years. You can’t get much more traditional than that.
The Confucian and, up to a point, Taoist heritage is far closer to paleoconservatism than Buddhism is.
And the dismemberment of China, in Taiwan and Xinjiang as well as in Tibet (and then where?), is classic neocon stuff, complete with the creation of an Islamist state in Xinjiang as in, for example, Chechnya or Kosovo.
“The Confucian and, up to a point, Taoist heritage is far closer to paleoconservatism than Buddhism is.”
Have you given comprehensive treatment to this elsewhere? I would like to find out more about this thesis.
“And the dismemberment of China, in Taiwan and Xinjiang as well as in Tibet (and then where?), is classic neocon stuff, complete with the creation of an Islamist state in Xinjiang as in, for example, Chechnya or Kosovo.”
If such dismemberment were to come about it should spring from an intrinsic, organic development and not be predicated on Wilsonian self-determination.
David seems to think that Neo-cons, rather than Chiang Kai-shek created the Taiwan regime. And there is this, “….most participants in “the traditional Tibetan culture” were serfs whose life expectancy was half what it is today.” Of course the same could be said about pre-modern Catholic Europe.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that David would know that Taoism was a major influence on Zen (Chan) Buddhism. Confucianism presupposes a large bureaucracy, but,….Oh wait, so does David!
Jack, we disagree on a lot of things, but here I agree with you completely.
“I suppose it’s too much to hope that David would know that Taoism was a major influence on Zen (Chan) Buddhism.”
It does not appear that Chan went on to influence Lamaism in any way.
Pons, The point was that Taoism had an influence on Zen. I didn’t say it had any influence on Tibetan Buddhism did I? David rejects Buddhism but fails to see that the Taoism he likes, is closely related to a species of Zen Buddhism.
“I didn’t say it had any influence on Tibetan Buddhism did I? David rejects Buddhism but fails to see that the Taoism he likes, is closely related to a species of Zen Buddhism.”
At the very least, he does not see Lamaism as consistent with paleoconservatism. With Taoism–which has David’s support–having influenced Chan, I wonder what he would think of that particular school of Buddhism.
If you believe criticising the Dalai Lama is “bizarre”, you yourself are the one beholden to propaganda.
Independent feudal states are not my geopolitical fantasy. Even if there be some charm to them, they are not viable entities, for the same reason you are not going to revert to having a government/national defence (even in its true meaning) funded entirely from tariffs and duties.
Those of you who chant free Scotland and Wales … you understand that those politicians advocating independence are either rabidly pro-EU or are Trotskyites awaiting the mythical simultaneous World Revolution? All states without nuclear warheads and large centralised concentrations of capital need rely on some geopolitical leader or alliance for its security.
I will add also that there is no doubt that the CIA is provoking some disturbances in Uighurstan. I recall right after the “War on Terror” began, funding was made for teaching and studying Uighur language (alongside Pashtu). This was not for beatniks to fascinate themselves with its poor literary tradition and join the PeaceCorps!
Mr Ross: I do not want to say that Buddhist philosophy permits human sacrifice, but rather Tibetan Buddhism, as locally practised, is a mixture of pre-Buddhist barbaric traditions and more acceptable Buddhist philosophy (itself partly akin to Eastern Christianity). I am not attacking Buddhism but only stating that Chinese modernisation may overall be intellectually and spiritually beneficial just as European Christianisation and modernisations were to Africa.
Mr Meehan: you were lecturing David that Kai-shek was no neocon…no, he was just a con. You say pre-modern Catholic Europe can be compared to Old Tibet … no, Old Tibet was more barbaric and there is less excuse to have such a low life expectancy … you attack Taoist and David(-ist) bureaucratism … but the conservative traditions of Europe are also steeped in bureaucracy (France, Prussia, Russia…) since this arose from long-existing, highly evolved organic States.
But I guess they are supposed to be laughable and inferior because they ain’t Amuhrican. The Constitution of the USA, which an ancestor of mine signed, was not granted by God Almighty in unquestionable perfection, with no need for evolution.
Jack(and whomsoever than concerns), as the campagn drags on for lengthy years, it is a bit hard to Appear to be informed.
“1. Reasonable people can differ about whether China today is totalitarian or merely authoritarian, but for myself I would submit that any state that still has an official ideology enforced by authoritarian means, notwithstanding how far gone it is today from hardcore Maoism, is totalitarian.”
Be it the western love (under of blessings of monothetic traditions) of distinguishing ideologies or whatever, it is better to know an ideology in China has been regarded and is always a PRETEXT for political struggles. i.e. the Chinese don’t really care that much about it. Sometimes debates go astray quite easily when criteria are different.
“2. The miniscule number of Tibetan-Americans is also beside the point.”
Tibetan or American, that is also a question, isn’t it? Does this really help with ur discussion here? By the way, in English “Chinese” weighs on the Han people while in Chinese, “Chinese” mean citizens of China. Teorritory issue is the question of relation to Beijing, which many in China will consider in a less ethnical manner. But, why should Americans care about this? If do then the communication becomes a bit easier.
“3. Human sacrifice has never been a part of Tibetan Buddhism. You probably confuse two things that, however grisly, have nothing to do with murder: disposal of the dead by feeding them to vultures (known as “sky burial’), and the carving of human bone into useful and ornamental objects. I can not reliably say how widespread, or not, these practices are today.”
What can I say about this? Call you a liar? Or just ignorant? Don’t tell me you never come across the “tribute vessels” (literally) from slave skulls or skinned kids. Surely somebody can argue it isn’t in the sutras or not the ones from their cults. That didn’t stop the lamas doing it in the old days. DL is an outstanding PR expert. Himself peaceful? Maybe. His religion peaceful? Hell no.
“4. Perhaps the Dalai Lama is not Mother Theresa, but if he’s a cynical operator on some level, he is certainly no more so than, say, the Pope.”
I don’t know M. Theresa. No comment on that.
“5. You miss my point entirely about Strom Thurmond’s apologetics for segregation (and, for that matter, those of Fox News for the occupation of Iraq), but political oppression aside, in the 1950s blacks probably did have a better standard of living in the South than in the North”
Same as above.
For your info, b/c of the Confucian traditions there isn’t a well defined line between religion and superstitution in the Han mind-set. That means, they believe money/development can persuade people out of the OLD WAYS and embrace modernity, just like the Han massage themselves out the imperial universe. The confidence in this attitude is just as strong as the Anglo-sphere’s bet on “democracy follows wealth”.