Happy Palestinians, Happy Gypsies
Photo: Petros V. - flickr.com
In an article written in 1995, Sue Ann Tellman[1] called the government of Singapore ‘Authoritarian Parent’ for trying to address the unhappiness of its citizens in the best fascist tradition, through imposing happiness on them. Happy families were shown singing ‘Fun, fun, fun’ in commercials broadcasted on the State Television. However, even the ‘Disneyland atmosphere’ in Singapore with its spotless fast-food and entertainment franchises, did not seem to produce very happy people. That remarkable article entitled ‘Happy-face fascism’ was published thirteen years before the appearance of the Jonah Goldberg’s best seller ‘Liberal Fascism’ which became famous world-wide for the smiley face with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache on the book’s cover.
Nowadays, the ‘Happy-face’ propaganda is widespread, particularly in places around the world where people suffer most from war conflicts, poverty and racism. Such place is present day Iraq or at least what has remained of it. The publicity wing of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL or ISIS, has recently released several short videos from the series ‘Mujatweets’ showing the happy life of the people under the self-declared caliphate. The men in the videos are singing, swimming and shopping at the local market. Especially touching are the happy images of Iraqi children eating ice-cream. According to German ‘Spiegel’ Magazine the message of these videos is ‘Everyone is equal here’[2].
Earlier this year, a version of the popular Pharrell Williams song ‘Happy’ appeared in the Gaza strip. The video puts exuberant scenes of dancing and smiling Palestinians. At the end of the video the participants hold up pieces of paper spelling out "Happy Gaza" in English. On this occasion Israel’s oldest daily newspaper ‘Haaretz’ published an article entitled ‘Gaza's take on Pharrell's hit song 'Happy' shows brighter side of the Strip’[3]. The American ‘GlobalPost’ commented on the video as well: ‘Yes, you can be ‘happy’ like Pharrell Williams – even if you are in Gaza… or Tripoli or Beyrut’[4]. In response to the video with the dancing Palestinians, the comedy troupe Tashwesh Productions released a new version of the movie with provocative subtitles, such as: ‘He can’t travel! Gaza borders always closed despite this he is happy’[5]. Two months later, the Israeli army launched a military operation in Gaza, causing the death of more than 2,000 people.
Not surprisingly, in Bulgaria, which is a Balkan country famous for its large Roma minority, one of the Government’s favorite Non Governmental Organizations, decided to produce another ‘Happy’ video. About three hundred Roma and Non-Roma children were filmed dancing and singing in more than ten public schools across the country. The main message of the video was ‘The world is not black and white’. It was also inspired by the same single of Pharrell Williams, but unlike in Palestine, nobody in Bulgaria reacted to that video, resembling the old propaganda movies familiar to Bulgarians from their Communist past. Although entertaining, this kind of PR campaigns can hardly fit the actual situation in the country where only six months ago Roma parents brought a primary school Bulgarian teacher to the Commission for Protection against Discrimination for refusing to teach Roma children in her class[6]. In fact the public support for Anti-Gypsyism and Islamophobia in Bulgaria has never been higher. In its last report on Bulgaria, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance openly named two political parties as ‘Fascist’[7]. Just few months later these same parties became part of the newly-formed ruling Center-Right coalition. It seems the rise of the Far-Right and the street violence against people of color and minorities in Bulgaria bothers neither the political, nor the intellectual elites who prefer to keep their eyes closed and to chant the old lullaby about the tolerance and equality.
Meanwhile, the number of unhappy Roma in Bulgaria living in a situation similar to that of the Palestinian and Syrian refugees is growing. Due to the floods that occurred in the country in 2014[8] and the forced evictions implemented by local authorities in different municipalities hundreds of Roma families with very young children remain homeless on the eve of the winter season. Nevertheless, no one is interested in making a movie about these Roma children simply because it would not be in line with the official ‘Happy-face’ propaganda policy. To top it all, on 25th November Bulgarian Security Forces raided mosques and private homes in four large Roma neighborhoods with substantial Muslim populations. They said they were looking for supporters of ‘Radical Islam’[9]. As result of the operation seven people have been arrested and charged in ‘propagation of war’. What the operation has achieved so far is to add more fuel to the fire as the Bulgarian media gave the floor to ‘experts’, claiming that Roma are ‘possible raw material source for future fighters of Islamic State’[10].
The so called non-traditional denominations of Christianity and Islam have been targeting the densely populated and impoverished Ghetto-like Roma settlements in South-East Europe for years. It is important to notice that the living conditions in these settlements are not quite different from those in the Palestinian refugee camps. The concrete walls and fences separating Roma from Non-Roma in some towns in Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic strongly resemble the walls surrounding the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. It is also striking that on their arrival to countries like Bulgaria, the Syrian, Iraqi and Palestinian refugees often face the same harsh treatment as the local ‘Gypsy Pariahs’. The chairman of Bulgarian State Agency for Refugees, a former military himself, has repeatedly compared the asylum seekers from the Middle East with the Roma even saying that ‘Kurds are worse than Gypsies’[11].
While propaganda images of Happy Gypsies and Happy Palestinians are being advertised, the voices warning about the danger of ‘Happy-Face Fascism’ have been neglected for years. In the view of the Israel Prize laureate and renowned historian Zeev Sternhell the creeping Fascism that threatens Jews and Non-Jews alike is tacitly encouraged by the conformism on the part of most Israeli intellectuals who in his words ‘have just followed the herds’[12]. On the old continent the fears about possible ‘Weimarization’ of European politics have until recently been undermined in the writings of some leading scholars. An example is the 2013 article ‘The Myth of Weimer Europe’ by Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde who was arguing that ‘extremists are relatively minor political players’ and ‘democracy is hegemonic in contemporary Europe’[13]. And yet, according to Liz Fekete from the London-based Institute for Race Relations it is exactly the democratic Europe where the Roma are becoming Fascism’s first victims again[14].
Obviously, the greatest danger is coming from the top and not from the bottom of today’s social pyramid. As the proverb says the fish begins to stink of the head. Extremist groups have always existed; what turns them from a minor player to an unavoidable factor are the survival strategies of the discredited political elites. The establishments are not frank enough to say ‘We have failed with our stupid policies”, instead what they say is: ‘The Multiculturalism has failed’; ‘The Roma inclusion has failed’; ‘The peace negotiations have failed’. To paraphrase the great American comedian George Carlin the modern Fascism does not come in brown and black shirts but in smart ties and expensive suits. It does not use words like ‘inferior race’ or ‘asocial people’ but new terms like ‘socially vulnerable groups’ and ‘marginalized communities such as Roma’. It does not build concentration camps, but refugee camps with video surveillance systems. And as long as nobody takes the courage to reveal the true face of modern day Neo-Fascism, its followers will be happily feasting on the leftovers of the so called ‘liberal democracy’.
[1] Sue Ann Tellman (1995), “Happy-face fascism”, New Internationalist, issue 263 (January). The author wrote under a pseudonym so as to preserve the ability to re-enter Singapore http://newint.org/features/1995/01/05/happy/
[2] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-professional-pr-strategies-of-isis-in-syria-and-iraq-a-995611.html
[3] http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.588259
[4] http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/140423/yes-you-can-be-happy-pharrell-williams-even-if-youre-gaza
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFtG3ZZKCSk
[6] http://dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_id=1275290
[7] The Fifth Monitoring Report on Bulgaria is available in English, French and Bulgarian on the official website of ECRI http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/ecri/library/publications.asp
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Bulgarian_floods
[9] http://sofiaglobe.com/2014/11/25/arrests-in-bulgarian-police-operation-against-radical-islam-in-four-cities-and-towns/
[10] http://dariknews.bg/view_article.php?article_id=1363368&audio_id=184746
[11] http://www.novinite.com/articles/164960/Comparing+Roma+and+Kurds
[12] http://www.globalresearch.ca/fascism-grips-israel/5397588
[13] https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/cas-mudde/myth-of-weimar-europe
[14] http://www.irr.org.uk/news/roma-fascisms-first-victims-again/