Dear American friends
Several of you have sent me
e-mails wondering why Denmark is now
setting the whole world on fire. I
have not had time to answer you
since I am myself in the midst of it
all in Denmark where I am in the
media constantly criticizing the
growing Danish racism and the
government's alliance with the far
rightist racist Danish Folk party.
With my experience from American
racism (towards blacks) my words
seem to carry extra weight since the
Danes are totally bewildered about
how this incredible racism towards
Muslims and immigrants could rise so
fast in a traditionally very
tolerant country. As a result I have
even had big half page stories in
the conservative daily which printed
the Muhammad cartoons in which I
attacked the paper's line.
Remember that this was the same
paper which the day after Crystal
night in Germany 1938 wrote: " You
have to admit that Germany is in its
right to get rid of its Jews, but we
must as a condition demand that it
is done in a decent way."
That tone is the same in the
newspaper today towards Muslims.
Most scary is that even many of my
better-educated friends read it -
including my younger brother Steen.
I am right now in Canada and have
not much time to tell you about it
all. If you are interested you can
read the words below from one of my
Danish allies in this struggle. Some
of you who were in Denmark in the
past are in disbelief when I tell
you about the racism there today -
especially blacks who previously
found a refuge there from the
oppressive conditions in America.
However, of all the blacks I
previously employed in American
Pictures only two have decided to
stay and they too are daily eaten up
by anger from having to listen to
their co-workers constant racist
remarks about Muslims and immigrants
reminding them of the worst
nigger-talk from their own childhood
in America. Perhaps I will later get
time to translate some of the many
stories
I write about it Danish media.
One of those who opened up my own
sheltered mind to foreigners and
Muslims was
dr. Charles Godfrey who in 1968
invited me to Tunisia - and thus
changed my life around. Most of his
88-year long life he has used every
one of his vacations going out to
poor Third World countries to do
voluntary unpaid medical work. Later
he and his family invited me to work
on this farm in Canada - the
beginning of American Pictures which
economically later also enabled
myself to make
myself useful in the Third World
building a health clinic run by
Namibia's present Minister of Health
- very much as a result of the
inspiration I got from dr. Godfrey's
work. His recently deceased wife had
a similar impact on me. As a former
Communist she shared much of my
idealism about making social change,
but not my fanaticism which at that
time was close to making me join the
guerillas in Latin America. Her
tireless work on my youthful mind
for a year on this farm made me
eventually chose the camera rather
than what is today called "
terrorism " .
Since I am right now visiting this
family again I thought I would share
this with you since I so often in my
racism workshops have talked about
the importance of us acting as
"saving angels" for other. The fact
that I - a looser in school - can
today serve my country in a
constructive and meaningful way in
the midst of its crisis I very much
owe to the Godfrey family once
serving as my "saving angel".
Since I will rather use my
limited time right now in the Danish
media I will tell the story of this
Danish crises with the words of a
couple of my Danish friends.
With love
Jacob
The
Cartoons in the words of a couple of
my Danish friends
The cartoons depicting Muhammad
were just the culmination of years
of scorn against Muslims, something
which has unfortunately been
widespread during the last ten years
of political debate in Denmark. For
the same reason the international
reputation of Denmark has been
rapidly declining for a number of
years, not just with the Islamic
countries, but with a lot of other
countries in the rest of the world
too. Therefore Jyllands-Posten's
cartoons are merely fanning a fire
whose embers have been smoldering
for years.
Jyllands-Posten's drawings are
caricatures with a tendency. They
associate the Prophet with
terrorism, criminality and
repression of women. None of them
could possibly serve dialogue,
mutual understanding or much needed
public education between Danes and
the Muslims anywhere. They are
ill-willed.
The intensity of the negative
reaction may be surprising. But seen
in the context of our contemporary,
globalizing world, their publication
was both thoughtless and
purposeless. It reveals a
mind-boggling deficit in general
education and good (journalistic)
manners.
The
Danish government has lost it
Worse, the Danish government
understood neither the affair nor
the need for early
damage-limitation. Prime Minister
Fogh Rasmussen turned down appeals
for dialogue, following an
established pattern also in relation
to Denmark's policy on Iraq and
immigration issues: by definition we
make no mistakes and have nothing to
learn from anyone.
If the government had understood
the world and our times, it could
have emphasized Jyllands-Posten's
right to publish the caricatures but
used the opportunity to strongly
distance itself from such
counterproductive, offending
activity.
The Prime Minister's and the
Foreign Minister's press conference
in the afternoon of February 7th
amounted to little but yet another
bout of self-praise without the
slightest hints at regret, apology
or reconciliation. The Prime
Minister's emphasis that he has the
full support of George W. Bush -
made in a speech to the Muslim world
- reveals that he has understood
deplorably little of that world.
Why this
is freedom of oppression, not
freedom of expression
One must welcome that
Jyllands-Posten's editor-in-chief
has apologized for the fact that
they have provoked and offended so
many; he says they were not meant to
(January 30, 2006). He maintains
that they were published as part of
an "ongoing debate on freedom of
expression that we cherish so
highly." Fine and good - but how
utterly blind culturally!
The freedom of expression
argument is phony. That the free
press exists is, at best, a
qualified truth. The way Western
mainstream media treat some
contemporary issues, such as their
government's participation in wars,
is only one of several examples of
self-censorship and propaganda in
the service of power rather than
truth and freedom of opinion
formation. Freedom of the press has
always also implied the freedom to
neglect and marginalize - for
instance the larger truth about how
and why billions of people keep on
living in poverty. And it has meant
a systematic orientation to
government policies rather than
civil society.
Second, freedom of expression
implies responsibility. It doesn't
equal a right to humiliate, offend,
demonize, defame or slander.
Personal maturity as well as
cultured behavior is also about
exercising sound judgment and
knowing what to say and not to say
when - and why. Journalists can
still exercise respect, be polite,
show empathy and be decent in their
dealings with fellow human beings,
can't they?
Third, anyone who has traveled
outside her or his own culture knows
that freedom of expression, together
with other so-called universally
accepted norms, must be interpreted
in a context. No culture or society
wants to have foreigners'
interpretations imposed upon them.
The generalized Westerner - the
teacher of the world, never the
learner - would strongly decline to
have Muslim or Hindu interpretations
of those norms imposed on her or his
daily living.
Self-glorification and
institutionalized racism
I (Jan
Øberg) am a Danish citizen
who has lived 33 years in Sweden.
For shorter periods I have worked in
Somalia, the Balkans, Japan, Burundi
and elsewhere. What has happened the
last decade or so in Denmark eludes
me both as a Dane and as scholar. I
am afraid, indeed frightened, when I
ponder the consequences of what I
would call Western self-glorifying
civilizational dominance and
institutionalized racism. So
pervasive and so "natural" has it
become since the end of the old Cold
War that neither the Danes nor other
Westerners in general seem to see
it. With the war on terrorism we are
already well into a new Cold War.
For no good reason except the human
folly that stems from the
combination of cultural arrogance,
absence of self-criticism and
empathy.
Not for a second do I believe
that the Muhammad caricatures or the
freedom of the press argument is
anything but the last straw in a
series of cultural blind
humiliations of non-Westerners. They
build on centuries of humiliation
and insensitivity of the "other". We
have become culturally blind and
project our own dark features upon
others.
So lacking in empathy has Danish
politics become that the Danish
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr.
Stig Moeller, repeatedly uses only
one word: Unacceptable! - but not
about his own government's
immigration policies or its
participation in genocide and mass
murder on the Iraqi people but - yes
of course - about the reactions
throughout the Muslim world.
Increasingly these hours and days,
commentators present Denmark as a
victim and the Muslim reactions as
exaggerated and staged.
Few Danes and few Danish media
seem willing to raise the broader
contextual questions and ask whether
Denmark's policies - Iraq,
immigration, Islamophobia - could be
the basic cause of all this.
They see
my country as a rogue state and I
don't blame them
Let's assume that the Danes and
their politicians still have manners
and human maturity. If so, they
would recognize that now is the time
for modesty, self-reflection,
apologies and reconciliation. A
civilization that has none of it is
decaying and, in the process, also
dangerous for itself and others. It
becomes a rogue civilization.
These days I fear that Western
culture increasingly comes across as
lacking both empathy, open debate
and the courage to say, We are
sorry! My native country is now a
rogue state in the eyes of millions
of fellow human beings. Whether or
not this is a fair judgment of
Denmark is not the issue. The issue
is that present Danish politics is a
prime reason that those millions
hold that image.
We could well be witnessing the
beginning of a drift towards
unparalleled catastrophe.
With Love
Jacob Holdt
Gernersgade 63
1319 Copenhagen K, Denmark
Tel in Denmark: +45 33 124412
Tel in the USA: 212-614-0438
Jacob@Holdt.us
If my e-mail answer
was too short or unsatisfactory,
you can find more information on
my 17.434 web pages:
www.american-pictures.com
My calendar
where you can see if one of my
lectures is in your area or - if you
want to organize one - if I am
available on your preferred date
My previous 6.500 lectures
- listed after type of school
The online version of the show or
book with 3000 pictures
Reviews of my shows
- in major American papers and
college papers
My articles on
racism, development aid, ecology,
welfare state etc.
My photographs
- from the USA, Bolivia, Nepal,
Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Thailand, Haiti ,
Jamaica, Africa and Kosovo.
My racism work with the Ku Klux Klan
- and their healing encounters
with my black friends
And some hobbies helping me to fill
out all the spare time as a lecturer
on the boring highways:
Genealogy -
with a family tree containing over
10,000 of my
family's direct ancestors through
150 generations - or 4.100 years!
Click from my children all the way
back to their x-great grandparents
such as emperor Augustus, Herod the
Great, Alexander the Great and 1,100
other kings, emperors - and
pharaohs such as Ramses II - not to
speak of Washington, Jefferson and
Roosevelt.
Influential ancestors:
Or see my family's relationship with
those persons who actually talked to
or were friends with Jesus, John the
Baptist, St. Paul, Socrates, Plato,
Sophocles, Perikles, Cleisthenes (the
founder of democracy) and others who
shaped modern humanism...... well,
even corresponded with Jesus (as
surprising as it sounds).
Glory: And if you
finally - after this e-mail - have
difficulties seeing my saint halo, -
well, let me try to polish it a bit
by showing you how much saint blood
runs in my family veins - directly
descending from more than 30 saints
and some of the popes who
(mistakenly?) canonized them!!!
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