From Academia To Hackademia: Hamid Dabashi As Native Informer
By N. Wahid Azal
15 September, 2015
Countercurrents.org
…Notwithstanding its poses and sentimental outbursts, seldom, if ever, is the academic corps a disobedient lot…Academia in the West is for the most part indentured to Big Business…
~ Guido Giacomo Preparata, ‘The Ideology of Tyranny'.
…they [i.e. the native informers] can feign authority while telling their conquerors not what they need to know but what they want to hear. (In return, American and European liberals call them “voices of dissent”.) Faced with the Islamophobic conditions of their new homes, they have learned the art of simultaneously acknowledging and denying their Muslim origins. They speak English with an accent that confirms their authenticity to their white interlocutors…Natives informing on their brothers and sisters back in the field as a way of ingratiating themselves with their white masters have been a major character type since at least the time of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a pathology created by the condition of coloniality…They have undertaken their activities in the honorable name of defending human rights, women's rights, and civil rights of Muslims themselves…The blatant manner in which these native informers have demonized their own cultures and societies is made possible by the protection they enjoy when they relocate to the centers of Western European and North American power…[those] who use the muddy waters of war to advance their careers …or to become spin doctors on current affairs. These kind of activities, in effect, all serve to rationalize and justify
~ Hamid Dabashi, ‘Brown Skin, White Masks'.
From respected
For some time Hamid Dabashi held considerable influence over the subaltern intellectual scene among the Iranian diaspora in the West as well as a generation of leftwing and progressive Iranian thinkers and activists inside Iran itself. His Theology of Discontent is still considered to be one of the finest scholarly references on the roots of the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1978-79. His 2011 reprise and updating of Franz Fanon's classic Black Skin, White Masks as Brown Skins, White Masks is an intellectual tour de force that would certainly make the revolutionary Martinican proud. Even his recent Can Non-Europeans Think? (much like his earlier Post-Orientalism) should in its own right be considered an important contribution to critical theory and therefore a significant expansion and augmentation on the theoretical line of investigation begun by Edward Said.
Be that as it may, in the geopolitical equation of things, over the past few years Hamid Dabashi has increasingly blown his own credibility with a few of the eyebrow raising causes and positions he has aligned himself with and thus, at least on that front, he has made himself into a brand name that can no longer be trusted.
Dabashi and the Arab Spring
Since the outset of the so-called Arab Spring (and some would argue even earlier from June 2009 with some of his biased spin on events in Iran, not to mention his central role as one of the leading intellectual figures of the Green movement in North America) all has not been well with the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at
To be clear, these positions by Dabashi cannot be attributed to mere naiveté alone, although that is certainly present in abundance. Rather it is a clear cut case of pure intellectual skulduggery, and one which has also become symptomatic of much of the discourse of mainstream segments of the First World Left regarding conflicts in the post-Arab Spring Middle East, particularly when called upon to identify the real culprits and the true locus of blame for the origination, escalation and perpetuation of these conflicts.
Dabashi's own 2012 publication The Arab Spring is a veritable testament to the sort of irresponsible, pie-in-the-sky, hypocritical naiveté of this particular subculture of establishment First World leftists entrenched inside the Western Academy with their muddled (and often totally incorrect) theorizing and deliberate misreadings: erroneous geopolitical theorizing and misreadings with consequences (due to how they form popular perceptions and consensus) which have played right into the hands of Empire and its agendas at every juncture time and again. Yet any explanation as to how the author of Islamic Liberation Theology can get it so wrong about the Syrian conflict, Iran's involvement in it and the current refugee crisis arising from that (together with possible solutions) cannot be sought in Dabashi's purported naiveté alone. The explanation lies elsewhere.
Hackery
Let me break it down further: Hamid Dabashi has incessantly demonstrated a proclivity to bias and outright political animus towards both the Iranian and Syrian states throughout the entire course of the present, ongoing conflict in the Middle East (as well as against the whole Resistance Axis, which includes the Lebanese Hezbollah). The form of this animus often manifests in nearly identical terms as to how the
While his views on these issues are largely communicated through the language, contexts, subtexts and lens of deconstruction, critical theory and postmodernism, when all is said and done, there is nothing substantially different to how Dabashi addresses the conflict in Syria and Iran's role in it (at least in his Al Jazeera opinion pieces) that is substantially at odds with the official misinformation/disinformation spiel coming out of the US State Department, Whitehall, the corrupt Gulf kingdoms, the mainstream Western corporate presstitute media, or the assorted pro-Atlanticist NGOs and think-tanks who are systematically undermining Iran and Syria on a daily basis. In short, where the Syrian conflict and Iran are concerned, since 2011 Dabashi has stood with Empire, whatever else he pretends to, and thereby he has made himself into an imperial mouthpiece and propagandist, and hence a native informer of Empire via its Qatari franchise Al Jazeera.
Dabashi's obfuscations on the Syrian refugee crisis and Iran
Now, halfway through his 11 September 2015 Al Jazeera op-ed, Dabashi asserts: “There is one glaring case of a Muslim country that is heavily involved in Syria but has yet to accept a single Syrian refugee, and that is the Islamic Republic of Iran… not a single refugee has been admitted to Iran. Why not?”
Contrary to Dabashi's categorical claim, the truth of the matter is that
But there are simultaneous complexities that nuance the equation of the discussion even further: nuanced complexities that have either totally missed the consideration of Professor Dabashi or perhaps are simply brushed off in silence because they outright contradict his smoke and mirrors imperialesque, North American liberal establishment narrative.
First, much of the chatter in Persian language cyberspace seems to indicate that the Jordanians and the Turks appear to have an expressed objection to
Second, perhaps it has escaped the considered notice of Professor Dabashi that
Third, for those Syrian refugees who would possibly seek to come to Iran on their own initiative via the land route from Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey, this would entail them crossing through territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq that is presently being controlled either by ISIS or the other takfiri death-squad, Gog and Magog mercenary armies of Empire (like al-Nusra and the various other armed al-Qaeda affiliates) which the government of Professor Dabashi's Qatari media benefactor has been actively aiding, abetting, training, arming and fortifying since 2011.
Fourth, given that the Syrian war has spilled over into
The regional proxy war, Qatar, Dabashi and Iran
And even with such facts that temper his objections, it seems to have escaped Professor Dabashi that, again, there is an actual war going on in the region as devastating and catastrophic as the Second World War was for Europe: a war which the government of Dabashi's Qatari media benefactor is eyeball-deep involved with, and a proxy war which has very much been targeting Iran from its very inception.
And while we are it, why, exactly, is Hamid Dabashi conspicuously silent over the decisive role played by
He next opines: “…
Yes, indeed,
So what planet does the good professor live on; and why not highlight the “murderous…war crimes against the Syrian people” perpetrated by
Exaggerating for his audience and the accusations of a native informer
Dabashi then bemoans the experience of previous refugee influxes to
This is, frankly, utter nonsense and quite an unfair, below-the-belt accusation for Dabashi to be making against his own nation.
Iranians are by nature a hospitable people (however expat opponents to the current system residing in North America and
Then, to top it all off, Professor Dabashi hypocritically demonizes and reverse psychologizes Iranian Muslims (blaming the victim!) who complain about Islamophobia in the West, and even has the gall to castigate them for their purported hypocrisy and alleged discrimination of Afghan refugees in
Dabashi and the darkside of the Force
A sense of perspective would go a long way with Hamid Dabashi, one which he apparently seems to have lost while shilling for Empire of late. Unfortunately entrenched political interests that op-ed for the Qatari Al Jazeera, together with the opportunistic career-hackery that pulsates within the cut-throat and hyper-politicized corporate environment that is the North American Ivy League Ivory Tower, often works precisely against the acquisition of such a sense of perspective. Be that as it may, make no mistakes, at least with the last op-ed, Dabashi has without a shadow of a doubt proven himself to be a native informer.
It is a real shame that Hamid Dabashi is walking down this path of the darkside of the Force serving the Emperor and the Empire of the Sith because at one time, only a decade ago, he was idolized by many of us as the revamped, twenty-first century Jedi version of the great Jalal Al-e Ahmad with rock solid political integrity to boot. Since a decade ago Dabashi has lost this integrity, and the mojo along with it, becoming a caricature of himself and turning into the very same thing that he publicly railed against in Azar Nafisi. Does he see it himself? Is it karma? Who knows. But perhaps if Hamid Dabashi took a moment and stopped pandering to his overly-Westernized, sycophantic and faux-leftist, hipster, bourgeois establishment audience of Al Jazeera's Globalistan, and instead returned to his real native leftwing intellectual roots, like Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker he would find his way back again to the Light side of the Force.
N. Wahid Azal is an independent scholar and political commentator living in
[1] http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/09/iran-duty-syrian-refugees-150910081439202.html
N. Wahid Azal © 2015
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