Plain Talk
By
Mursi Saad El-Din
History seems to have this habit of repeating itself. Reading the recent report of a key address given by the American actor and director Tim Robbins to journalists, at least, I was reminded of a PEN congress I attended in London in 1954. It was Robbins's comment on the current persecution of dissidents that brought back that memory. "Our voices," he said, "are lost in the tide of intolerance sweeping America."
The PEN congress in question was convened in London. We were eagerly awaiting the arrival of PEN international president, Arthur Miller, when we received a message, informing us that, having been accused of "un-American activities", Miller's passport had been withdrawn by order of McCarthy. America's leading writer was thus prevented from leaving the country. It was as a consequence that Miller wrote his powerful and moving play, The Crucible, which tells the story of the horrific witch- hunts in Salem, Massachusetts, at the end of the 17th century -- dealing, in an indirect way, with McCarthyism.
Some American and European writers describe what is happening in America today as a revival of that infamous episode. Robbins, for one, believes that the wave started with President Bush's statement, "You are either with us or against us." Thus, he contends, democracy was compromised by fear and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home have all been thoroughly undermined.
Robbins goes on to describe how he and his wife were listed as traitors, as supporters of Saddam, simply because of their anti-war stance. Helen Thomas, a veteran journalist, he recounts, "finds herself banished to the back of the White House briefing room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleischer whether our showing prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention".
"A chill wind is blowing in this nation," Robbins comments. "A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio and Clear Channel and Cooperstown. If you oppose the administration, there can and will be ramifications. Every day the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, invective and hatred, directed at any voice of dissent." People "sit in mute opposition and fear". He concludes on a persuasive note: "Our ability to disagree, and our inherent right to question our leaders and criticise their actions, define who we are. To allow those rights to be taken away out of fear, to punish people for their beliefs, to limit access in the media to differing opinions, is to acknowledge democracy's defeat."
Nor is Robbins's the only such voice. Across the Atlantic Nobel laureate Gunter Grass too decries, in a newspaper article, "the moral decline of a superpower". The fact that the article was published in the International Herald Tribune shows that there is still room for free speech. Grass is rather vehement in his attack on the invasion of Iraq. He deplores the fact that irrespective of the deliberations and warnings of the United Nations a military apparatus undertook a preemptive attack in violation of international law.
The rhetoric of the aggressor, he believes, increasingly resembles that of the (dictatorial) target. Religious fundamentalism leads both sides to abuse what belongs to all religions. "Disturbed and powerless," writes Grass, "we are witnessing the moral decline of the world's only superpower." "It is not only foreigners who oppose what is happening," he adds. There are many Americans who love their country, but are horrified by the betrayal of the values on which it was founded and the hubris of those in power. "I stand with them. By their side I declare myself pro- America. I protest with them against brutalities brought about by the injustice of the mighty, against all restrictions on the freedom of expression, against information control reminiscent of the practices of totalitarian states."
Once again, in one's own turn, and while remembering the PEN predicament of 1954, one can only stand by Grass in his insistence that "we must not let our voices, our No to war and Yes to peace, be silenced."
