The West appears, suddenly, devoid of its greatest virtues, constructed century after century, preoccupied now only with reproducing its own defects and with copying the defects of others, such as authoritarianism and the preemptive persecution of innocents.\u00a0 Virtues like tolerance and self-criticism have never been a weakness, as some now pretend, but quite the opposite: it was because of them that\u00a0progress, both ethical and material, were possible.\u00a0 Both the greatest hope and the greatest danger for the West can be found in its own heart.\u00a0 Those of us who hold neither “Rage” nor “Pride” for any race or culture feel nostalgia for times gone by, times that were never especially good, but were not so bad either.<\/p>\n
Currently, some celebrities from back in the 20th century, demonstrating an irreversible decline into senility, have taken to propagating the famous ideology of the “clash of civilizations”\u2014which was already plenty vulgar all by itself\u2014basing their reasoning on their own conclusions, in the best style of classical theology.\u00a0 Such is the a priori and 19th century assertion that “Western culture is superior to all others.” \u00a0And, if that were not enough, that it is a moral obligation to repeat it.
From this perspective of Western Superiority, the very famous Italian journalist Oriana Fallacia wrote, recently, brilliant observations such as the following: \u00a0“If in some countries the women are so stupid as to accept the chador and even the veil, so much the worse for them. (\u2026) And if their husbands are so idiotic as to not drink wine or beer, idem.” \u00a0Wow, that is what I call intellectual rigor. \u00a0“How disgusting!”\u2014she continued writing, first in the Corriere della Sera and later in her best seller The Rage and the Pride (Rizzoli International, 2002), refering to the Africans who had urinated in a plaza in Italy\u2014”They piss for a long time these sons of Allah!\u00a0 A race of hypocrits.” “Even if they were absolutely innocent, even if there were not one among them who wished to destroy the Tower of Pisa or the Tower of Giotto, nobody who wished to make me wear the chador, nobody who wished to burn me on the bonfires of a new Inquisition, their presence alarms me.\u00a0 It makes me uneasy.” \u00a0Summing up: even if these blacks were completely innocent, their presence makes her uneasy anyway.\u00a0 For Fallaci, this is not racism, it is “cold, lucid, rational rage.” \u00a0And, if that were not enough, she offers another ingenious observation with reference to immigrants in general: \u00a0“And besides, there is something else I don’t understand.\u00a0 If they are really so poor, who gives them the money for the trip on the planes or boats that bring them to Italy?\u00a0 Might Osama bin Laden be paying their way, at least in part?” \u2026Poor Galileo, poor Camus, poor Simone de Beauvoir, poor Michel Foucault.<\/p>\n
Incidentally, we should remember that, even though the lady writes without understanding\u2014she said it herself\u2014these words ended up in a book that has sold a half million copies, a book with no shortage of reasoning and common sense, as when she asserts “I am an atheist, thank God.” \u00a0Nor does it lack in historical curiosities like the following: “How does one accept polygamy and the principle that women should not allow photographs to be taken of them?\u00a0 Because this is also in the Q’uran,” which means that in the 7th century Arabs were extremely advanced in the area of optics.\u00a0 Nor is the book lacking in repeated doses of humor, as with these weighty arguments: \u00a0“And, besides, let’s admit it: our cathedrals are more beautiful than the mosques and sinagogues, yes or no?\u00a0 Protestant churches are also more beautiful.” \u00a0As Atilio says, she has the Shine of Brigitte Bardot.\u00a0 As if what we really needed was to get wrapped up in a discussion of which is more beautiful, the Tower of Pisa or the Taj Mahal.\u00a0 And once again that European tolerance: \u00a0“I am telling you that, precisely because it has been well defined for centuries, our cultural identity cannot support a wave of immigration composed of people who, in one form or another, want to change our way of life.\u00a0 Our values.\u00a0 I am telling you that among us there is no room for muezzins, for minarets, for false abstinence, for their screwed up medieval ways, for their damned chador.\u00a0 And if there were, I would not give it to them.” \u00a0And finally, concluding with a warning to her editor: “I warn you: do not ask me for anything else ever again.\u00a0 Least of all that I participate in vain polemics.\u00a0 What I needed to say I have said.\u00a0 My rage and pride have demanded it of me.” \u00a0Something which had already been clear to us from the beginning and, as it happens, denies us one of the basic elements of both democracy and tolerance, dating to ancient Greece: polemics and the right to respond\u2014the competition of arguments instead of insults.
But I do not possess a name as famous as Fallaci\u2014a fame well-deserved, we have no reason to doubt\u2014and so I cannot settle for insults.\u00a0 Since I am native to an under-developed country and am not even as famous as Maradona, I have no other choice than to take recourse to the ancient custom of using arguments.<\/p>\n
Let’s see.\u00a0 The very expression “Western culture” is just as mistaken as the terms “Eastern culture” or “Islamic culture,” because each one of them is made up of a diverse and often contradictory collection of other “cultures.” \u00a0One need only think of the fact that within “Western culture” one can fit not only countries as different as the United States and Cuba, but also irreconcilable historical periods within the same geographic region, such as tiny Europe and the even tinier Germany, where Goethe and Adolf Hitler, Bach and the skin-heads, have all walked the earth.\u00a0 On the other hand, let’s not forget also that Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan (in the name of Christ and the White Race), Stalin (in the name of Reason and atheism), Pinochet (in the name of Democracy and Liberty), and Mussolini (in his own name), were typical recent products and representatives of the self-proclaimed “Western culture.” \u00a0What is more Western than democracy and concentration camps?\u00a0 What could be more Western that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the dictatorships in Spain and Latin America, bloody and degenerate beyond the imagination?\u00a0 What is more Western than Christianity, which cured, saved and assassinated thanks to the Holy Office?\u00a0 What is more Western than the modern military academies or the ancient monasteries where the art of torture was taught, with the most refined sadism, and by the initiative of Pope Innocent IV and based on Roman Law?\u00a0 Or did Marco Polo bring all of that back from the Middle East?\u00a0 What could be more Western than the atomic bomb and the millions of dead and disappeared under the fascist, communist and, even, “democratic” regimes?\u00a0 What more Western than the military invasions and suppression of entire peoples under the so-called “preemptive bombings”?<\/p>\n
All of this is the dark side of the West and there is no guarantee that we have escaped any of it, simply because we haven’t been able to communicate with our neighbors, who have been there for more than 1400 years, with the only difference that now the world has been globalized (the West has globalized it) and the neighbors possess the main source of energy that moves the world’s economy\u2014at least for the moment\u2014\u00a0in addition to the same hatred and the same rencor as Oriana Fallaci.\u00a0 Let’s not forget that the Spanish Inquisition, more of a state-run affair than the others, originated from a hostility to the moors and jews and did not end with the Progress and Salvation of Spain but with the burning of thousands of human beings.
Nevertheless, the West also represents Democracy, Freedom, Human Rights and the struggle for women’s rights.\u00a0 At least the effort to attain them, and the most that humanity has achieved so far.\u00a0 And what has always been the basis of those four pillars, if not tolerance?<\/p>\n
Fallaci would have us believe that “Western culture” is a unique and pure product, \u00a0without the Other’s participation.\u00a0 But if anything characterizes the West, it has been precisely the opposite: we are the result of countless cultures, beginning with the Hebrew culture (to say nothing of Amenophis IV) and continuing through almost all the rest: through the Caldeans, the Greeks, the Chinese, the Hindus, the southern Africans, the northern Africans and the rest of the cultures that today are uniformly described as “Islamic.” \u00a0Until recently, it would not have been necessary to remember that, while in Europe\u2014in all of Europe\u2014the Christian Church, in the name of Love, was persecuting, torturing and burning alive those who disagreed with the ecclesiastical authorities or committed the sin of engaging in some kind of research (or simply because they were single women, which is to say, witches), in the Islamic world the arts and sciences were being promoted, and not only those of the Islamic region but of the Chinese, Hindus, Jews and Greeks.\u00a0 And nor does this mean that butterflies flew and violins played everywhere.\u00a0Between Baghdad and C\u00f3rdoba the geographical distance was, at the time, almost astronomical.<\/p>\n