Demonizing North Korea (exchange on LBO-Talk)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jacob:
I find it odd that criticism of certain countries is now limited to
inhabitants of those countries, or, as Wojtek Sokolowski claimed a while
ago that you have to speak German in order to critize state socialism in
the former East Germany. Of course one should speak with knowledge, but
knowledge is not restricted to certain groups.

Is it possible to hold multiple thoughts at once? that Yoshie is correct,
if uncharitable in her expression, to insist on reparations to North Korea
and to insist on acknowledgement of the terrible damgage done to NK during
the war by the US, that North Korean development has been damaged by US
militarization of Korea, AND that North Korea has been ruled by a
self-serving and self-sustaining bueracratic elite that restricts
political, civic, and social freedoms that have value in a human life.

Interesting too for Yoshie to compare the cult of personality in North
Korea to the cult of the Founding Fathers in the US, but I do think that
the cult in North Korea is of a seriously greater intensity and allow for
no dissent at all.

----

Yoshie:
I can live happily with what you said in the second paragraph, as long as
criticism is made concrete by empirical facts & offered in solidarity with
North Koreans for their benefit.

As to the first paragraph, see my post titled "Just Logos." What's been
said in this thread, I don't really consider to be real criticism -- it's
just labeling & branding. Anti-Stalinism as a marketable intellectual
commodity, as in Zizek's comparison of Stalinism with Courtly Love (see
Doug's Sat, 22 Apr 2000 17:59:38 post), which gives one a reading pleasure
of sorts, since he's a clever writer with clever conceits, but which
doesn't say anything about how North Koreans thought and think about Kim Il
Sung, Kim Jong Il, & North Korean political economy in general, for
instance. One may enjoy Zizek's brand of anti-Stalinism, but one remains
ignorant of North Korea (its past, present, and possible future directions)
after reading it.

Also, I don't like ignorant American, French, and other European persons
yucking about an Asian country without bothering to learn anything about
it. What they say about North Korea, they have in fact said about, for
instance, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, etc. I believe that,
according to the Western media, all Asian countries "isolate themselves
from the world and for _no_ reason"; we are represented as "secretive,
impenetrable, etc.," constitutional "liars" whose words can never be
trusted on any subject.

Now, combine Orientalism & anti-Stalinism as an intellectual commodity, and
what you'll get is doxa, not scientific discourse, much less solidarity
with the people in North Korea.

Now, the cult of personality. The cult of the Founding Fathers isn't the
only cult of personality in America, however, as I noted in my post to
which you refer. In America, the cult of personality lives a fluid &
decentered existence, and it's all the more powerful because of its
capillary nature, as Foucault might say. The American cults of personality
are mirror images of the multi-layered & decentralized nature of
Federalism, which however doesn't contradict, but in fact supplement, the
centralization of economic & military power.

Finally, in modern capitalist culture, we even live and enjoy the cult of
personality *without* persons. It seems to me that it is much bizarre to
kowtow to Nike's Swoosh, MacDonald's Golden Arch, etc. (which are nothing
but signs of monopoly power) than to bow before Kim Il Sung (who, whatever
criticisms one may have of him, actually led a revolutionary movement which
kicked Japanese & American asses a bit). In North Korea, it is human
persons who have become objects of respect & admiration; in America &
elsewhere, we worship dollar signs. Am I the only one who thinks the latter
is more pathetic than the former?

no logo, please,


Louis Proyect
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