{"id":140876,"date":"2015-03-11T13:36:56","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T08:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=140876"},"modified":"2015-03-31T16:21:58","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T10:51:58","slug":"nazi-roots-of-the-so-called-indigenous-academic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/nazi-roots-of-the-so-called-indigenous-academic\/","title":{"rendered":"Nazi Roots Of The So-Called Indigenous Academic!"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Laksiri Fernando<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Dr. Laksiri Fernando<\/p><\/div>\n

The response begins by calling names. In the very first sentence, Dr. Siri Gamage is called \u201can expatriate academic critic<\/span><\/a>.\u201d This is in nationalistic terms and not on academic credentials, perhaps to find \u2018enemies\u2019 like Carl Schmitt did. I am here referring to Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka\u2019s \u201cThe New Political Mission is Essentially the Old One<\/span><\/a>,\u201d in a defensive reply to Siri Gamage. That is excusable when compared to his xenophobic outrage against the Tamils. My take on the debate is to trace the obvious Nazi roots in Dayan\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n

Out of 17 paragraphs he has written, 5 begins with the claim \u201cI know.\u201d Then there are another half a dozen of \u2018I knows\u2019 within paragraphs.<\/p>\n

It is too noticeable that even Mahinda Rajapaksa<\/span><\/a> is too small for his so-called mission which he claims to have started during President Premadasa\u2019s time or from his Peradeniya first year tutorial. He refutes \u201cGamage\u2019s idea that my [his] political mission is new, bound up entirely with Mahinda Rajapaksa and is indeed post-2015 election.\u201d He also says that he is not \u201cunaware of or unconcerned about the many faults of the Rajapaksa regime.\u201d<\/p>\n

He says \u201cI am not primarily concerned with matter of political culture, political behavior and issues of governance. My focus is the state.\u201d The State obviously is his God, like in the case of Carl Schmitt. He further says, \u201cI am concerned about the State, not about Government, still less governance, which is why I didn\u2019t give a darn as to whether or not President Premadasa<\/a><\/span> ran a \u2018one \u2013man show\u2019 as was widely alleged.\u201d It is obvious that Dayan likes \u2018one man shows.\u2019<\/p>\n

Most clearly he supports dictators and tyrants. He despises human rights as a tool of imperialism, or calls \u2018human rights imperialism,\u2019 assistance of which Rajapaksa sought in late 1980s. He is rather frank about his values and criteria. As he further says, \u201cThat\u2019s why I support\/ed Mahinda Rajapaksa, Ranasinghe Premadasa (rather than the DUNF or <\/em>CBK<\/em><\/a><\/span>), Mao (despite the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap), Stalin (despite the Gulags), the Communist tradition rather than the Trotskyist, and am a (non-practicing) Catholic rather than a Protestant. I am sure the continuum of values and criteria are rather plain.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Dayan<\/a>In the case of Mao and Stalin, he has stated \u2018despite\u2019 what he supports\/ed them. Even in the case of Premadasa, he has supported him despite the \u2018one-man show.\u2019 But in the case of Rajapaksa he has not stated despite what he has supported him. Therefore, the readers might like to know whether it was despite \u2018corruption,\u2019 \u2018family rule,\u2019 \u2018war crimes\u2019 or \u2018human rights violations in general? I hope he could be frank about his \u2018despites\u2019 in his next missive.<\/p>\n

Dayan has also claimed that although he is not practising, he is a \u201cCatholic rather than a Protestant.\u201d This is intriguing. Obviously he is not Buddhist. Although he talks a lot about Sinhala heritage, his thinking does not appear to be anything akin to rationalist or humanist thinking of the Buddha or Buddhism. That is very clear.<\/p>\n

Then where does he get his thinking? Of course it is ingrained. However, Dayan traces his ideological roots to Carl Schmitt who was or became a Nazi. He says \u201cThe distinctions I observe are analogous to the one made so famously by Carl Schmitt, between \u2018politics\u2019 and \u2018the political\u2019. He conceptualized the latter as defined by the \u201cfriend\/enemy\u201d distinction, and paid a tribute to Lenin for introducing this new political perspective\u2014which, interestingly, he also traced to tough-minded Catholic political thinkers<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is true that Schmitt made a rare distinction between \u2018politics\u2019 and \u2018the political,\u2019 and latter to mean the State or the state power. It is also power and state power that Dayan is concerned about. But for what purpose? The state cannot or should not be considered a \u2018thing in itself\u2019 without its purpose\/s. Human societies are more important than the states. The state has a history of about 7,000 years, but the human history goes back to around 3 million years.<\/p>\n

Without quoting from too academic publications, let me quote just a paragraph from Wikipedia (The Free Encyclopaedia) to introduce Dayan\u2019s mentor, Carl Schmitt.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchmitt joined the <\/em>Nazi Party<\/em><\/a> on 1 May 1933. Within days of joining the party, Schmitt was party to the burning of books by Jewish authors, rejoicing in the burning of “un-German” and “anti-German” material, and calling for a much more extensive purge, to include works by authors influenced by Jewish ideas. In July, he was appointed State Councillor for Prussia (Preu\u00dfischer Staatsrat) by <\/em>Hermann G\u00f6ring<\/em><\/a> and became the president of the Vereinigung nationalsozialistischer Juristen (“Union of National-Socialist Jurists”) in November. He also replaced Hermann Heller as professor at the <\/em>University of Berlin<\/em><\/a> (a position he held until the end of <\/em>World War II<\/em><\/a>). He presented his theories as an ideological foundation of the <\/em>Nazi<\/em><\/a> dictatorship, and a justification of the <\/em>F\u00fchrer<\/em><\/a> state with regard to legal philosophy, in particular through the concept of <\/em>auctoritas<\/em><\/a>.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

I am not surprised that Dayan has called Tamil nationalism<\/span><\/a>, \u2018Tamil Zionism.\u2019 Schmitt did the same. Schmitt was incorrigibly anti-Semitic, like Dayan becoming strongly anti-Tamil. Dayan is not merely talking about the LTTE ideology or certain sections of the Diaspora, but Tamil nationalism in general without a distinction.<\/p>\n

Dayan is right in saying that Schmitt looked for \u2018friend \u2013 enemy\u2019 distinction to strengthen the state, sovereignty and also Nazism. Dayan already does half of it looking for \u2018enemies\u2019 to strengthen the \u2018state and sovereignty.\u2019 He even calls or denounces his former academic colleagues \u2018expatriates.\u2019 At what point he would become a full Nazi like Schmitt may be a matter of time.<\/p>\n

On the positive side, however, there is a world of difference between Schmitt\u2019s time and today, not only in terms of calendar time, but also in terms of ideas, thinking and values. In comparison, Schmitt\u2019s ideas are quite archaic and regressive apart from his support or capitulation to Nazism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":92325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8,6968],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial","category-popular-columns"],"yoast_head":"\nNazi Roots Of The So-Called Indigenous Academic! - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/nazi-roots-of-the-so-called-indigenous-academic\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nazi Roots Of The So-Called Indigenous Academic! 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