Duly Noted: The Frustrated Immigrant
1. Shocking is that this will not shock. The suppressed ability to show natural outrage is a symptom of the ailment of our culture. Reports have asserted something disturbing about Antonio Samaranch who used to head the International Olympic Committee (1980-2001). Keep in mind that, even if you are probably taught that sport is sport and politics are politics, modern dictatorships use sports to prove the superiority of their system. Now those who had always felt that he was too chummy with the Kremlin are having the facts that confirm their earlier discomfort. The once Franco-man used to be the Minister of Sport. (Did the blemish of his past make him respond to pressure?) Then he became Ambassador to the USSR. Having been involved in a smuggling affair, he is said to have become vulnerable. The predicament led to extortion and that was followed by compliance. The individual case is also a reflection of the fact that Western governments and social institutions, as well as international organizations, were shot through with individuals who, under duress or by conviction, served Communism’s cause.
No Western Assault Rapists in Oslo's Streets
The police in the Norwegian capital Oslo revealed that 2009 set yet another record: compared to 2008, there were twice as many cases of assault rapes. In each and every case, not only in 2008 and 2009 but also in 2007, the offender was a non-Western immigrant. At the same time, in 9 out of 10 cases, the victim was Norwegian, not just by nationality, but also by ethnicity.
Before Camus: Gustave Le Bon on ‘The World in Revolt’
Albert Camus’ L’Homme revolté [Man in Revolt] or The Rebel (1951) is a milestone of postwar philosophical writing, widely admired for its diagnosis of a combat-shattered, God-deprived, ideologically disgruntled world. In The Rebel Camus (1913-1960) was distancing himself from Existentialism – that of Sartre, anyway – in favor of something more like a tradition-rooted perspective. Existentialism had already caricatured itself in the early 1950s so that its slogans might serve undergraduates and taxicab drivers. Camus quoted at length from Friedrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoyevsky; he reiterated that modernity itself was askew and had become bitterly unsatisfying to those caught up in its tenacious grip. Despite his range of reference, however, Camus makes no mention in The Rebel of Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931), author of The Psychology of Revolution (1895) and The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896). Nevertheless Le Bon’s sharp-eyed meditations prefigure Camus’ “Absurdist” critique of society and culture, but from a non-disgruntled and distinctly rightwing point of view. Le Bon’s World in Revolt: A Psychological Study of our Times (1920) even anticipated Camus’ title. Le Bon’s follow-up, Le déséquilibre du monde [The Disequilibrium of the World] (1923) offered a trope – that of vertigo – which the Existentialists, including Camus, would eagerly receive and exploit. Camus’ protagonist inThe Stranger, Mersault, feels such dizziness just before he murders a random Arab on the Algerian beach.
Posts
