Friday, April 14, 2006

Bending Over to Fascist Types — Literally

Qu'en est-il du militant des années 1960 et 1970 ? Jean Genet, et c'est son droit, a défendu les Palestiniens d'une manière originale. Il a loué la beauté de leur errance, il a laissé planer l'équivoque sur l'opportunité de leur succès, il a ouvertement désapprouvé leurs revendications. Si Genet défend les Palestiniens (ainsi que les indépendantistes algériens et les Noirs américains), ce n'est pas parce qu'il adhère pleinement à leur combat ou que leur cause serait intrinsèquement "juste" ; c'est avant tout parce qu'il hait l'Occident, sa placide démocratie, l'ordre des Blancs et des juifs. La dimension érotique est elle aussi capitale : Genet chante en des termes presque identiques les caïds de Mettray au verbe haut, les SS tout feu tout flamme, les miliciens de 16 ans à la mitraillette en bandoulière, les Black Panthers insolents et les fedayins "si jeunes et si beaux".
It turns out one that one of the élite's favorite literary phenomenons of the post-war period secretly (and not so secretly) admired the Nazis — even if they would have forced him to wear a pink triangle and likely gassed him. His "enrollment in causes led to his defending the Third World, pederasts, Proletarians, prisoners, Palestinians, and (black) Panthers, although it seems the "cursed man at the margins" did so mainly because he thought they were …cute (the Fedayeen were "so young and so beautiful"), a "view" he even holds about about SS officers.

In fact, Genet — whose work is "gangrened by fascism and yet touching" — was "the apostle of evil and its servants, from informers to terrorists, through trators, child killers, kamikazes, and Nazis." Even the man who exposed Jean Genet, Ivan Jablonka, seems in the final analysis (and the final paragraph), to be taken in by him. Come to think about it, Genet's attitude hardly seems that unusual, does it? It begs the question: is this the type of European that Washington should listen to before taking international decisions?

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