Vital Clarification

Today’s email brought the following:

My reply: The only remarkable thing about any of this is the anger that animates Mr. Deane. It is rather restrained here but on full display at his web site. A simple Google search reveals some of its breadth. He is a contemporary composer (who once studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen, noted celebrant of 9/11 as high art), who complains that Ireland’s “traditional music is being absorbed into a mid-Atlantic mush that ultimately derives its flavour from US-American cultural imperialism,” and who has bitterly opposed the participation of Israelis wherever he finds them, including lately in the “Dublin Fringe Festival.” As usual he signs petitions, such as this one DEMANDING that Ariel Sharon be forbidden to speak at the UN, and DEMANDING the “right of refugees to return” apply to Palestinians, just as it was exercised “in Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor, Rwanda, Guatemala and many other places.” Usually after Western military intervention. But never mind.

Deane seems typical, in his fixation on the US and Israel (the Great and Little Satan, you might say), and with a monocausal and monotonous view of the world (expiation of post-colonial guilt anyone?), of what might be called deracinated Europeans. Beyond religion, beyond nationalism, beyond pretty much everything, they search for meaning and find it in superficial advocacy of certain causes but to the greatest measure in anti-modern hatreds. Are the hatreds of Israel and the US - avatars of modernism - simply masks which, if removed, would reveal either vast emptiness or boundless self-loathing? Without knowing the man or his music, I cannot say for certain.

Nowhere does Deane give any indication that he has thought deeply about Palestinians as more than superficial beings, scourged by the terrible Jews, nor about the realities of a Palestinian state of any dimensions. How would a Palestinian democracy work? How would the Palestinian economy be run? How would religion be squared with democracy, not to mention questions of clans and tribes and women’s rights and voting and the endless list of what goes into making a modern state and society successful. None of this apparently matters, it will all be sorted out once the heavy burden of Israel is lifted from us all.

I fear Mr. Deane’s life will not be uncomplicated any time soon.