The curious case of Salman Rushdie
Have you heard? Salman Rushdie was viciously attacked in Chautauqua, New York in on August 12, 2022 while being interviewed onstage at the Chautauqua Institution. He was stabbed multiple times in the neck and torso and lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand.
If you haven’t heard, don’t feel bad. I only heard about this event in mid-November, a full three months after the incident. I suppose I could blame myself for being embarrassingly uninformed or not up-to-speed on something everyone else just knew. But I’m not convinced that everyone else really did know. What I find astonishing is that even if I, or anyone, care little about Salman Rushdie, news of the attack ought to have permeated into my waking consciousness, at the very least, as background noise.
I subscribe to enough listservs, RSS feeds, and headline alerts. I don’t check these religiously, but even still. Why didn’t this event, of all events, seep into the general cacophony making up my day-to-day existence? I had no idea at all that Rushdie was attacked for a full three months!
Even if one wanted to tune-out of either global COVID propaganda, or, even earlier than that, the mundane and rabid repeat of terror-attack images following the events of September 11 (or the later Charlie Hebdo fiasco), one was forced to imbibe, in some capacity, some portion of the propaganda blob metastasizing around any of these events. For even the most apathetic of souls, tuning out was impossible. The blob forced you to perceive something, however faint.
So my question is: why hasn’t propaganda metastasized around this event? Why am I not seeing shock-and-horror 24/7 news coverage in the same manner of Charlie Hebdo? Why no outpouring of social-media affection nor robust social-meme sharing solidarity?
I’ll tell you why: because the War on Terror is dead. And not because radical Islam has receded or the problem has been suitably or adequately addressed. But because it was never a problem to begin with.
For those who made a career bashing Islam and even religion altogether (remember Sam Harris and the “angry atheists”?), some type of introspection is warranted. However sincere they may have been in their opinions about Islam or the danger it poses, no one gives a flying fuck anymore. Their entire professional existence and way of thinking is not incorrect per se, but obsolete.
Remember Samuel Huntington and the clash of civilizations? Because now no one cares. Huntington has no business occupying the briefing books and policy space of all the Liberal wonks and think tanks who profiteered by forwarding this narrative not because Huntington has been “proven wrong,” but because his whole worldview no longer serves the ruling class agenda.
Good luck applying to do postgraduate work in Political Science clinging to the tenets of Professor Huntington. The world has moved on, which means that all the canards we were forced to ingest over the threat of radical Islam have died down and not a single fucking thing about the religion nor the people that follow it has changed.
Nor are the Muslim parts of the world now miraculously less “dangerous.” In fact, after all the destruction wreaked upon Muslim-majority countries in the aftermath of 9/11, you ought to be more scared of radical jihadi terror now that at any other time in human history. But you aren’t because propaganda no longer cares to make Islam your enemy. Which means that this entire time, Islam was never your enemy.
Your fear of Islam was never rational, academic, objective, or based on a real threat. If it was, you’d be shitting your pants after hearing about the Rushdie attack; but now, you aren’t even likely to know there was an attack.
Now the blob wants you to have an opinion about Russia! They want you to have an opinion about China! Try using key the word “transatlanticism” in your postdoc applications. You might get somewhere.
Ponder a little bit the complete propaganda headspace you live in. Your well-wrought opinions about Islam, China, or Russia are not your own. They are fed to you. Even if you are against Islamophobia, against anti-Asian hate, and a staunch supporter of Putin, you exist in an information headspace not of your own making. You are allowed, required, or made to have an opinion about Putin, Xi or transatlantic exchange (as either good or bad) at this particular moment because the debate around these topics itself serves ruling class interests.
You may go against the mainstream consensus on all of these issues but even your opposition has been coopted. Taking sides keeps the debate alive and the debate itself is what counts. By opposing the War on Terror, you aren’t opposing the blob. You are precisely in the blob. The only way to exit the blob is not to continually reiterate that the War on Terror is wrong. It is to understand that the War on Terror is fake. It has always been fake. It was never real.
Putin’s “invasion” of the Ukraine is equally fake. The moment you call Putin’s actions in the Ukraine an “invasion,” your thinking has already been hijacked by the blob. The invasion is not real. Putin never invaded the Ukraine.
I’m not saying he did not send troops into eastern Ukraine, nor that what is being reported isn’t actually happening. Of course it is. I’m saying that an “invasion” means a) that a war of aggression is underway and b) that the aggressor is going for the capital and complete overthrow.
Putin was never the aggressor. Taking sides on the issue means you either support his invasion or are against his invasion. But who in their right mind would support an invasion? You can try to finesse this a bit by saying you support Putin’s military action. But according to the blob, his military action equals an invasion.
If you respond by saying, “No, I don’t think it’s an invasion,” you would then be asked, “Well, what would you call it, then?” And you wouldn’t have an answer because to deny it is an invasion is to deny reality. But this reality is fake.
Imagine responding ten years ago if asked about the War on Terror: “I don’t think terrorism is real.” To say so would be a denial of reality.
But now, reality has changed! If you are to answer in exactly this way today, your answer would make sense regardless of whether or not your interlocutor agrees with you.
Putin has still given no indication that he wants to overthrow Zelensky, so as of yet, no invasion is underway. At best, Putin wants to establish a demilitarized zone between Russia and Ukraine. Putin seems happy to leave it at that as the best possible outcome, the likes of which we’ve seen many times before.
This is the standard result of imperialism spanning decades. Divide lands then work tirelessly via negotiation to “make progress” and “work toward” peace and reunification.
Divide India and Pakistan and watch them make progress (or not), ongoing since 1947.
Divide China into mainland and Taiwan and watch them make progress (or not), ongoing since 1949.
Divide Korea into North and South and watch them make progress (or not), ongoing since 1953.
Divide the Sudan into North and South and watch them make progress (or not), ongoing since 2011.
Divide Libya, Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia and watch them make progress (or not).
Supposing the conflict in the Ukraine ends in 2023, you can add Russia and Ukraine to the list of global hotspots of forever antagonism.
The farce of “peace accords” (i.e. extensions of Minsk) will carry on for the next one-hundred years and a whole host of books, novels, and movies exploring the trauma of Ukrainian “partition” will feed the “scar” industry for decades to come.
The only way to avoid the onslaught of fake history is complete military victory, achieved by only two nations in recent decades: Vietnam and Afghanistan. Not only has the world largely been spared fake North/South Vietnamese reunification stories, a whole industry of fake Afghan scar-nonsense has been rendered obsolete. Remember Khaled Hosseini? If you do, good for you. No one will care about his work ever again.
The timing of the Rushdie attack was simply unfortunate. Had it happened ten years ago, his celebrity would have exploded and he would have been lionized many times more than Charlie Hebdo. But the world has progressed beyond the fake War on Terror to focus instead on Putin’s equally fake “invasion.” It’s Zelensky’s time in the spotlight now. Sorry Salman! The world has little pity for you at the moment because of all the poor, suffering Ukrainians. Put another way: the blob doesn’t give a shit about you and really, it never did.