Ralph Luker has a posting at Cliopatria on the book In Denial: Historians, Communism & Espionage.
I have a deep interest in arguments like the one put forward in the book Luker is discussing, which along with Coulter’s Treason, some recent criticism of Kerry’s opposition to Vietnam, and a long history of criticism of the left is something I think we can broadly define as “collaborationist critique” (I think I just made this term up). Yes, I am aware of the fact that, in one sentence, I have mixed a history book, a crazy polemicist’s ramblings, and political attacks on a candidate in election year. Collaborationist critique, or the branding of the left as traitors, anti-American, etc., especially through the focus on the connection between left wing Americans (and recently, Norwegian leftist politicians) and Communists, is an effective political attack in whatever form it may take. It is perhaps the most effective when it is wielded against academics, since the massive time and resources these intellectuals have personally put into their field makes it difficult to counter their scholarship directly without deploying your own researchers.
From my limited study so far, collaborationist critique comes in two often overlapping forms: the critique is generalized to make the claim that 1) the left is clearly lacking in “Patriotism” and is thus unfit to lead the nation, whose interests it will doubtlessly betray, and 2) the left is closely tied to international movements (Communism) or Evil men (Stalin) which are guilty of hideous crimes.
Of these, I believe the former is ultimately the most difficult for the left to defend itself against. I don’t deny that there are strongly nationalist or “loyal Patriots” on the left, indeed the historical rise of nationalism and progressive forces is deeply intertwined. Even Communism has developed solidly nationalist forms, the most extreme case being North Korea. However, the passionate social causes that the left champions and the fact that a radical critique of the nation (of which I am a fervent supporter) builds much of its justification from an opposition to oppression, all make it more difficult for us to compete with conservatives for control of the rhetoric of national loyalty. Ironically, there are plenty of conservatives who are vulnerable to the same. Classical liberals, libertarians, or “good old fashioned capitalists” are of course a perfect fit for the archetype of the “war-profiteer” and will generally steer a country’s leadership for the benefit of their capital over that of the nation. Unfortunately, however, this critique is most effectively expressed, as it is in current attacks on Bush’s connections to Big-Oil etc., in the negative language of “greed” rather than that of “treason.” The use of the latter only invites further attack on the internationalist/cosmopolitan elements on the left.
The second kind of collaborationist critique, which in the US starts with the claim that “Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was the moral equivalent of Adolph Hitler’s Germany” is much stronger, but I would argue, less effective overall. The current Taiwanese equivalent of this move is found in the Taiwanese nationalist claim that, “The KMT nationalist colonization of Taiwan was worse than the Japanese colonization of Taiwan,” thus countering the KMT version of Taiwanese postwar history as one of growth and progress. In mainland Chinese historiography, of course, it is sufficient to show the deep connection between KMT nationalist leaders and the Japanese, whether it is before, during, or after the war. This shows that the moral power of such attacks work equally strongly against the right. I have and will continue to look closely at postwar treason trials and media in China and Taiwan where it was the Communists who found it easiest to use the power of collaborationist critique given the nationalist connections to Japan’s military schools, leaders, and the wartime puppet regime.
In Korea, young students and Uri party supporters can use a similar move in their attack on the conservative Hannara party. In this case, they might not use “colonization” or as the North Koreans would say, “puppet regime” but will still employ the language of betrayal (combined with one emphasizing corruption) to suggest that the Hannara have historically betrayed Korea’s interests through its slavish support for the US.
It is precisely this deployment of collaborationist critique, or just the “discourse of treason”, which I hope to make the focus of my Phd research, to begin this fall. I haven’t even started the program yet, so this may not amount to more than an excited post-statement-of-purpose ambition, but I want to work on the history of the uses of treason in East Asia, especially in the early postwar period. While I think East Asia and the collapse of the Japanese empire are more than enough for a transnational doctoral thesis that will hopefully make use of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language materials, in the years ahead I also hope to look at this from a global perspective. I have already learnt a lot from the English language materials but there is great new stuff coming out, some of it focusing on postwar “political retribution.” Luker’s article reminds me of how important it will be for me to think about the US postwar rhetoric of betrayal. In addition to what is available in Norwegian scholarship on Quisling’s regime and its aftermath, there is also a rich scholarship in French and German on issues of collaboration and its postwar echoes which I will look into just as soon as I get past the minor technical issue of not yet being able to read French or German.
Hahaha, looking back on what I have written, I realize this is going to be a great entry to go back and read in a decade or so.
Of course, in discussing the Korean case, I forgot to mention the most fascinating development there in terms of the “discourse of treason” which is the government supported publishing of a “dictionary of traitors”, a politically motivated move which has huge public support that will reveal those who collaborated with the Japanese. It will serve to tarnish the families and reputations of many politicians. I wish my Korean was good enough that I could comb all the media reports and details of this, I would love to write a paper on this to get me started. Alas, I will have to wait a year or two. If there are any Korean readers, I would appreciate any articles you find on this emailed to me (webmaster at muninn dot and then net).
One of the oddities of discourse analysis, which I hope you address in your research, is the connection between the discourse and the reality. It’s far too common for discourse analysis to homogenize into dismissal of “propoganda” or lump together valid and invalid discourses because they fall into a similar pattern. In my view, discourses of propaganda often succeed because of their factual basis: the less distorted from perceived reality, the more persuasive. That’s a gross generalization, of course.
Good luck at Harvard History! The program is immensely improved from my days…. years…. 12 years….
One question I hope you address in your research is the connection between discourse and reality: too often discourse analysis (or propaganda studies, like Dower’s “War Without Mercy”) blithely examine and critique the patterns of language and meaning without every stopping to consider the adherence to or distance from fact (I know, “fact”) in these discourses.
Good luck at Harvard History! The program is much improved from my days…. years…. 12 years…. Say HI! for me.
Thanks so much for stopping in. You point out a very important question. I’m very interested in the historiographical problems that history has come to face and sensitive to the central importance of the relationship between discourse and reality. Only a few years ago, coming out of an undergraduate degree which included a major in analytical philosophy, I easily embraced a clean correspondence approach to epistemology which carefully distinguishes between history and the historian.
I have since come to have deep reservations about this approach, especially when applied to history – even as I continue to harbor equally deep concerns about the consequences of a nihilistic approach. This, however, only adds to my excitement, and I look forward to thinking a lot about these questions in the years to come and I study the philosophy of history and its pomo critics.
I’m confident that I will not come to “homogenize into dismissal of “propoganda”” but even if I become re-convinced that there is some way to distinguish “valid and invalid discourses” without appeal to the sort of deeply held convictions that mark, say, Cliopatria contributor Hugo’s approach to history, or the simple posing of a minimum standard of say logical consistency plus accurate and frequent reference to empirical sources (which exemplifies, for example, the pre-war Japanese historiography of China).
I have no issue with identifying the use of blatant lies and factual error in historical accounts or the accounts of betrayal and treason. However, as I first came to see while taking a class with Carol Gluck on the differing narratives of modern Japanese history, it is entirely possible to have narratives of history which are completely incompatible, or at least rich in contrast – none of which would necessarily deny any individual fact of the other.
In the case of treason, for example, the increase or decrease in accusations of treason in history do not, I believe (and obviously I have no data at this point) correspond to a decrease in loyalty to the nation for the time in question. As I am sure you would agree, I need not join the more giddy ranks of post-structuralism to appreciate that the relationship between historian and fact is not sufficient to produce history. The all-important element of choice – choice in the questions I choose, in the facts I make space for, in the way I tie them together, and the causal relationships I posit – these introduce that uncomfortable space into which politics, moral conviction, and material conditions of my times inevitably pour.
As a student just entering the field, I promise to be conscious of my responsibility not only to maintain integrity in my work, but to be conscious always of that space where my times and I stand between my work and the past.
As I plow into the archives, I may not be thinking about “raising up young feminists” (to borrow Hugo’s interviewer’s expression) but I am aware that my own thoroughly scrambled identity and deep dislike for nations and nationalism will always be reflected in what I write.
I have gone a bit off mark here, as your points were specifically about doing discourse history as such, not necessarily historiography in general. I’m not actually all that fond of discourse history and the way it “takes a step back” from the “action” of what is going on (in this case, the acts of treason and collaboration during Japanese control of Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, and mainland China where I will focus). However, I discovered that within the process of (re)building national identity in earl postwar East Asia, the positive project of celebrating thousands of years of Korean or Chinese greatness is mirrored (to greater and lesser extents) by a negative project of identifying, excluding, and marking those who betrayed the nation. In South Korea, this process was largely delayed.
I think we both agree that hideous acts were committed by those who were part of the collaborating or puppet regimes, but it just isn’t as simple as all that. In Norway thousands of Norwegian Nazi party members, a party which was legal before the coming of the occupation, were all prosecuted as traitors – based on their membership alone, not whether or not they did anything during occupation. While few were killed, across Europe, thousands were killed for being associated with the ethnic or political group which was responsible for the crimes and or cooperated with German occupiers (Mazower’s Dark Continent and his other works has lots of this). Now, assuming there is a “valid” discourse in identifying and punishing both the perpetrators of crimes during the war, and those who willfully and without significant coercion cooperated with them – that still doesn’t explain what was going on. The discourse wasn’t simply one of punishing evildoers (except for the case of the war crimes trials), it punished those who betrayed the nation. You and I, and indeed most historians, can probably agree to the “valid” discourse of punishing torturers in Iraq or wartime occupied China – but I for one, see nothing wrong with treason for a just cause. The thing is, I am not going to write a thesis on “when is treason justified”, which is a normative question that would have put me in a different department. I will do the ground work of understand and exploring the negative project which mirrors the positive creation of national identity.
Are Iraqi civil defense officers, trained by the American occupier, traitors? I think most of us suspect that how they will be judged will depend largely on the success of America’s successor state there. From the outside, we may want to say, “Who cares? We should ask, did that civil defense officer do anything nasty?” However, the fact that this is and may continue be an important question for Iraqis can only really be grasped when see how betrayal and treason are still so politically powerful tools in America today. Were the 偽軍 (puppet soldiers) of occupied China traitors? Well, many of them lost this stigma through their valiant bravery and patriotism fighting against the 奸匪 (traitorous bandit) Communists or the 賣國賊 (country selling traitors) nationalists. Korean President Park, former Japanese military officer not only lasted for years, but was able to push through normalization with Japan. Were the Taiwanese traitors or 漢奸? They were Japanese citizens, according to international law. That got some of them exempted on the grounds they weren’t Chinese citizens at the time. Others were tried as 漢奸 because they were ethnically Han, 漢. And yet, some European citizens were even tried as 漢奸 under the same law (this bizarre case is one of the records I would love to track down, I just have a reference to a Taiwanese defense ministry archive record).