Gaza-Los Angeles: The banality of evil

Artwork by Tarek Chemaly

Well, a lot of people are talking about schadenfreude, or about karma, or whatever all else. The idea is that the fires came back to where they started from. This, however, is no time to laugh. The full effects of environmental factors is being felt in Los Angeles, oddly, so is climate denialism. Apparently, major networks are not even mentioning how climate change is a major factor of the fires. How all the decisions we, as humans, have made and which compounded into this disaster.

Of course, there is also Gaza, which is still being bombed - and this is not the time for Palestinian tragedies, is it? - by, well, what turned out to be American weapons which brings us back to schadenfreude and karma. 

But all of this is leading me to Hannah Arendt and her book "The banality of evil" (fun fact, the words "banality of evil" do not appear inside the book). We are, at this point sanitized. There is a fatigue, not just setting in, but one already set in long ago. With the coverage of all these international (and in our case national - because, "Lebanon") being non-stop, and yes, biased and unfair, there is little left in terms of sympathy in us. 

All evil becomes banal.

What was once deemed evil, is now filed under, "what else is on TV". I have not watched television since 2012 - yes, not even the times I appeared on television myself - but the result is the same. Just images upon images, of purely horrific acts, with little or no feelings from viewers.

The 2006 war in Lebanon was eclipsed by another news - a man confessing (wrongly) to being the killer of JonBenet Ramsey (you know the child beauty queen) as he was on his way to Thailand for a sex-change operation. Suddenly, everything happening in Lebanon was no longer worthy of news.

And by the way, the image above? Well that is a mix between Gaza and Los Angeles, but you wouldn't know, would you?

And make no mistake, as people will try to rebuild their lives in Los Angeles, or Gaza, well, that's old news.

Old evil.

Old banal evil. 

Dear Hannah Arendt, the right to have rights means to not be a citizen in Lebanon.

Photo by Tarek Chemaly of a graffiti on a Beirut wall as part of ArcheWALLogy project

Hannah Arendt said citizenship is the "right to have rights" - when you think about it, it totally makes sense. As a citizen, you have the right to this and that - formulated differently from one country to another - but still existent. Think of public goods, which are nonrival (the quantity of breathable air should not diminish because one citizen breathes more or less) and nonexcludable (example, if the army defends a country, it cannot stop from defending you because you defaulted on a tax - you are the citizen of the land and it is your right to be defended).

But, try importing this to Lebanon and suddenly it gets very very confusing.

To begin with, the army defending the land is already very odd as a concept. Whereas Hezbollah engaging in a fight with Israel is technically something that should not involve the whole country (because, as that girl sitting in a pub in Gemmayze said during the 2006 war: "je m'en fous", when asked about what was happening in literally a few kilometers away in the Southern suburb of Beirut), believe it or not - it actually does. And truth be told, many "citizens" do not approve of it because, say should the airport be bombed (as it was in 1968, or in 2006), the airport is technically not a Shiite landmark but a "Lebanese" one.

Think of health issues. Yes, I know, even the United States does not have a universal health care (Cuba does!), in Lebanon being a government employee entitles you (and your spouse) to be a member of the "daman" (a magic word about state-sponsored insurance). Which brings us to the many "fictional" jobs that exist simply for the daman in question. "Politician XX has insured my father a job as a snow plough driver - sure, dad lives in Achrafieh and hasn't been near a snow storm in a decade but we get the daman with it" - so said a student (with rightwing leanings) about his family. If I say "with rightwing leanings" it is not as a derogatory remark, but rather to say that usually the idea of receiving a "free" healthcare is something that more in line with social-leaning countries (those pushing to the left) than the right - still, the student found no oddity between his political opinions (or rather those that he inherited without questioning from his parents) and the non-existent job of his father which insures him a salary and the famous daman.

I have said this before but it bares repeating:

"I admit, I was very idealistic as I was growing, but even then, I used to argue that what was wrong was not the governance but people themselves. For a long time, I used to consult with Dr. Paul Salem at the LCPS (Lebanese Center for Policy Studies) and a remarkable man. However, he believed that if we changed governance this goes into domino effect on the people. When he left LCPS, he went to head the Issam Fares Foundation. By pure chance we met a couple of months later, and after effusive hellos, he said "you know Tarek, you were right". Puzzled I asked what about - and he explained that yes, the original issue was with people, and that he found out they were using wastas (clientage system) to get what was theirs to begin with by simply filling a couple of papers."

So the question is - when people would rather ask a politician for a "favor" (in exchange for their ballot in the next election) rather than trust the state directly, what does it say about them being "citizens" in the said country? I have heard it directly from an advisor of a political leader who heads a large party in Lebanon that when their policy changed from "establishing laws" to "procuring services" their "followers" actually voted for a different person altogether at the election (that the different person in question actually started providing more services is of no surprise at all!).

What therefore, is it to be "Lebanese"? And the right to have rights to be Lebanese? In 2013, Abdo Medlej (disclosure: Abdo and I were at the same school) titled his book "indignez vous pour ne pas perdre votre dignite" (get indignant in order not to lose your dignity), but the whole idea of Medlej rests on the principle of "rights" - or rather as Arendt said "the right to have rights" and ergo be a citizen. But as demonstrated above, to take those rights, people rather revert to post-feudal lords as opposed to trust the whole idea of government (which is supposed to procure the same rights to all of its citizens). See how we are hovering around the same points? 

Because the right to have rights, means not to be a citizen in Lebanon, but rather to be part of a faction, or tribe, or a "follower" of a certain party/political family.