{"id":1395033,"date":"2023-12-15T22:44:18","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T22:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fair.org\/?p=9036552"},"modified":"2023-12-15T22:44:18","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T22:44:18","slug":"gessens-cancellation-cant-go-unchallenged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/12\/15\/gessens-cancellation-cant-go-unchallenged\/","title":{"rendered":"Gessen\u2019s Cancellation Can\u2019t Go Unchallenged"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russian-American journalist Masha Gessen has built an impressive career in US journalism by being a constant thorn in the side of the Russian state. That journalistic campaign entered a new chapter in November when the Russian government issued a warrant for their arrest (Washington Post<\/b>, 11\/27\/23<\/a>; AP<\/b>, 12\/8\/23<\/a>; RFE\/RL<\/b>, 12\/8\/23<\/a>; Newmark School of Journalism, 12\/11\/23<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Gessen, a staff writer at the New Yorker<\/b>, gave an interview in which they spoke about well-documented Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian city of Bucha (OHCHR, 12\/7\/22<\/a>). The Russian government, forever clamping down on negative press of its military invasion of Ukraine, symbolically declared them an outlaw. (Gessen lives in the United States.)<\/p>\n

\"Masha

Masha Gessen (Photo: Clarissa Villondo)<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Gessen has been an annoyance for the Russian government for some time; their book<\/a>, The Man Without a Face<\/i>, portrays Russian President Vladimir Putin not as a cunning political genius, but as a simpleton whose ego ruined the country (Washington Post<\/b>, 4\/7\/12<\/a>; Foreign Affairs<\/b>, 5\/1\/12<\/a>). Gessen, who is nonbinary, left Russia a decade ago after covering the country\u2019s hostility toward LGBTQ people led them to fear for their own safety (Business Insider<\/b>, 8\/23\/13<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In the post-2016 shock of Donald Trump\u2019s presidential election, a great deal of US media fell into a trance of believing that Trump\u2019s success could only be explained by Russian electoral sabotage<\/a>. Gessen, refreshingly, took a different approach. Rather than blame one regime for the electoral outcome, they rightfully put Trump in the context of a global movement of authoritarian backlash toward liberalism. Their pieces linking Trump\u2019s success to the rise of authoritarianism in Russia and Hungary remain essential reading (New York Review of Books<\/b>, 11\/10\/16<\/a>; New Yorker<\/b>, 3\/2\/21<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Critical reporting on Putin and Trump is highly valued, and not controversial, in US media. Putin is an authoritarian, yes, but one not backed by the United States, and is viewed as an enemy. Trump, for most liberal publications, is an abhorrent aberration in an otherwise flawed but democratic political system.<\/p>\n

‘The ghetto is being liquidated’<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"New

Masha Gessen (New Yorker<\/strong>, 12\/9\/23<\/a>): “From the earliest days of Israel\u2019s founding, the comparison of displaced Palestinians to displaced Jews has presented itself, only to be swatted away.”<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

But when Gessen turned their lens to Israel, they fell victim to pro-Israel censorship. Their recent essay (New Yorker<\/b>, 12\/9\/23<\/a>) on Holocaust remembrance culture in Germany was a self-fulfilling prophecy: As a result of Gessen’s observation that the language that most accurately describes what is happening in Gaza\u2014”the ghetto is being liquidated”\u2014comes from the Jewish experience during World War II, the Green Party\u2013affiliated Heinrich B\u00f6ll Foundation (HBS), which was planning to award Gessen its Hannah Arendt Prize, canceled the event.<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/b> (12\/14\/23<\/a>) explained:<\/p>\n

The HBS said it objected to and rejected a comparison made by Gessen in a 9 December essay <\/a>in the New Yorker<\/b> between Gaza and the Jewish ghettos in Europe.<\/p>\n

In the essay, Gessen, who uses they, criticized Germany\u2019s unequivocal support of Israel, drawing attention to the Bundestag\u2019s 2019 resolution condemning the Israel boycott movement BDS as antisemitic and quoting a Jewish critic of Germany\u2019s politics of Holocaust remembrance as saying memory culture had \u201cgone haywire.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the paragraph the HBS draws attention to, Gessen wrote that \u201cghetto\u201d would be \u201cthe more appropriate term\u201d to describe Gaza, but the word \u201cwould have drawn fire for comparing the predicament of besieged Gazans to that of ghettoized Jews. It also would have given us the language to describe what is happening in Gaza now. The ghetto is being liquidated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The foundation said Gessen was implying that Israel aimed to \u201cliquidate Gaza like a Nazi ghetto,\u201d adding that \u201cthis statement is unacceptable to us and we reject it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chilling censorship regime<\/b><\/h3>\n
\"Hannah

Hannah Arendt (New Yorker<\/strong>, 12\/9\/23<\/a>) called Israel’s Herut party\u2014a forerunner of Likud\u2014”a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.\u201d Such opinions would likely disqualify her for the Hannah Arendt Prize.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Germany\u2019s political culture of strong support for Israel, deeply tied to its guilt over the Nazi genocide of Jews, has led to a deeply chilling and severely anti-Palestinian censorship regime. As I have previously reported for FAIR (11\/5\/21<\/a>), this culture has even taken a grip in US media.<\/p>\n

There is a special irony in a prize in the name of German Jewish philosopher and journalist Hannah Arendt, whose work on the rise of German fascism is essential, being withheld from another Jewish journalist for writing about the rise of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

Arendt herself, as Gessen’s essay noted, wasn\u2019t afraid to link Zionist extremism with the \u201cN word,\u201d joining other Jewish intellectuals in 1948 (including Albert Einstein) who protested the visit of Israeli politician Menachem Begin to the United States, denouncing Begin’s Herut (Freedom) party as \u201ca political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties\u201d (Haaretz<\/b>, 12\/4\/14<\/a>). It seems likely that Hannah Arendt would also be deemed unworthy to receive the Hannah Arendt Prize.<\/p>\n

The Daily Beast<\/b> (12\/13\/23<\/a>), New York Post<\/b> (12\/14\/23<\/a>), Washington Post<\/b> (12\/14\/23<\/a>) and Literary Hub<\/b> (12\/13\/23<\/a>) covered the issue. But the absurdity of the situation should be shouted from the rooftops of every respectable newspaper.<\/p>\n

Job-costing solidarity<\/b><\/h3>\n

Gessen, of course, isn\u2019t the only media victim of anti-Palestinian censorship since the outbreak of violence began in October. Reuters<\/b> (10\/21\/23<\/a>) reported that<\/p>\n

Pulitzer Prize\u2013winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen said\u2026a Jewish organization in New York City canceled a reading he was due to give on Friday without explanation, a day after he said he signed an open letter condemning Israel’s “indiscriminate violence” against Palestinians in Gaza.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Two writers were forced out of the New York Times Magazine<\/b> because of their protests against Israel\u2019s military action in Gaza, as the magazine\u2019s editor \u201cJake Silverstein said the letter violated the outlet\u2019s policy on public protest\u201d (Democracy Now!<\/b>, 11\/14\/23<\/a>).<\/p>\n

After Artforum<\/b> editor David Velasco was fired for posting an open letter expressing solidarity with Palestinians, he told the New York Times<\/b> (10\/26\/23<\/a>), \u201cI have no regrets.\u201d He added that he was \u201cdisappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jackson Frank, a sports writer for PhillyVoice.com<\/b>, was fired for tweeting “solidarity with Palestine always” (Guardian<\/b>, 10\/10\/23<\/a>). Michael Eisen lost his job as editor-in-chief of the academic journal eLife<\/b> after commenting favorably on an Onion<\/b> (10\/13\/23<\/a>) article with the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized for Not Using Last Words to Condemn Hamas” (Science<\/b>, 10\/23\/23<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The absurdity of Gessen, a queer Jew, being punished in the name of Hannah Arendt, also a Jew, by a branch of the German political machine for being too open about the nature of global authoritarianism should be a wake up call for how degraded our discourse on Israel\/Palestine has become. But it likely won\u2019t change minds in most media. At least not yet.<\/p>\n

The post Gessen\u2019s Cancellation Can\u2019t Go Unchallenged<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on FAIR<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gessen, a queer Jew, is being punished by the German political machine for being too open about the nature of global authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

The post Gessen\u2019s Cancellation Can\u2019t Go Unchallenged<\/a> appeared first on FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1416,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1392,1303,92,259,307,221,262,263],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1395033"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1404146,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1395033\/revisions\/1404146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1395033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1395033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1395033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}