The Music of Power

It’s been a discouraging summer for those of us who look for signs of leadership among politicians. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy has made another of his periodic attempts to attract hard-right nationalists, namely by cracking down on illegal immigration: rounding up and deporting Roma. This is particularly distressing behavior, coming from a man who’s the son of one immigrant and the husband of another, and whose heritage is in part Jewish. And rounding up minorities this way looks especially bad in France.* But Sarkozy has long been consumed with the idea of stealing votes away from the Front National, and my guess is, he hoped that, by moving swiftly in the month of August, when most French people are preoccupied with their vacations, he wouldn’t alienate moderate voters too much.

Besides, in politics, one’s personal background does not translate automatically into sympathy for others in the same boat, as Ken Mehlman and Barack Obama have proved, in different ways. As chairman of the Republican National Committee in 2004, Mehlman was the principal foot soldier in an aggressively homophobic campaign — even though he’s gay.** Obama, whose own parents’ marriage was illegal in many U.S. states at the time of his birth, nevertheless clings to the “traditional” concept of marriage, even after Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in the Prop 8 case left him no rational basis for his position — something the President, as a former professor of Constitutional law, surely realizes.

Yes, We Can (forget where we came from)

In the American “debates” over immigration and the Islamic cultural center this summer, we’ve seen less leadership than a sort of herd mentality, in which the mob charges off in one direction, and the politicians chase after them, hoping to arrive at the head of the pack. The former maverick, Senator McCain, is but one disheartening example. But the most curious display of dubious leadership this summer came from Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

It’s nothing new for a totalitarian regime to censor the arts. Art does not often speak its mind directly; it communicates by offering its messages to interpretation by its audience. It’s frequently subversive to the prevailing order, and it can be a good deal more effective than garden-variety propaganda and speechmaking. Even in free societies, there’s an impulse to control it: witness Tipper Gore, who worried about the negative influence of rap music (and who handily earned herself a national platform by speaking out); or J. Edgar Hoover, who for much of his career seemed unaware that he wasn’t living under a totalitarian regime, and who obsessed over the influence of Left-wingers in Hollywood.

Censorship Lite

The Nazis used censorship of the arts not only to squelch dissent but also to target the communities of whom they made enemies or scapegoats. Art by political opponents or “inferior races” was declared “decadent”: entartete Kunst. This signaled that anyone who read a banned book, or listened to unapproved music, was challenging the state and might expect reprisals.

The policy didn’t work, exactly. It seldom does. When the Nazis put on a display of entartete Kunst in a museum, they set aside one room where recordings of music by Kurt Weill were played. It turned out to be the most popular room in the exhibition, crowded to capacity, and the curators had to shut it down. Later, Weill’s song, “J’attends un navire” (I wait for a ship), became a coded greeting in the French Resistance. The Nazis didn’t recognize it as Weill’s work (and the Resistance may not have, either), but that’s the thing about those tricky Jew composers: they’re always sneaking around and writing music that sounds as if it was written by normal people.

What the Nazis didn’t attempt was to ban all music — but this seems to be the direction that Khamenei is heading. Already, when he was president, he followed the time-worn totalitarian tradition by banning Western music, forcing many artists to flee the country. Last month, however, according to the Fars news agency, Iran’s supreme leader went further, telling a young follower that, “Although music is halal [lawful], promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.”

In other words, while it’s permissible to play music, you can’t tell anybody you’re doing it, and if you don’t already know how to play, you’re out of luck. Khamenei’s word is considered law in Iran today.

“It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music,” Khamenei is reported to have said.

If he enforces his policy, it will be almost breathtaking in its audacity. And yet we know from close reading of history that, ultimately, these policies never work. Khamenei isn’t known for pragmatism, but what on earth is he thinking?

I suspect that this is one more sign that the regime is absolutely terrified of losing power. We had plenty of evidence of this last year, in the trumped-up election results and the violent crackdown on protest and opposition. Even Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power is a sign of fear and weakness. For one thing, the regime saw how easily the United States invaded next-door Iraq, but didn’t touch North Korea. The message was clear: members of the “Axis of Evil” who possess nuclear capability are safe.

So banning music is just one more piece in a puzzle-portrait of totalitarian anxiety. That which cannot be controlled must be suppressed. And this is the best plan that the Supreme Leader could think of. Talk about leadership: we may count ourselves lucky if Sarah Palin is the worst we have to contend with.

The Persian culture has a proud tradition of music; indeed, the illustrations of classical musicians here are taken from an Iranian website. It will take more than a peevish mullah to put an end to that tradition. Unfortunately, however unsteady it may be, the regime has been successful so far in tightening its grip on the people. For now, I don’t see how the opposition can prevail. But I’m pretty sure that they’ll be singing when they do it.




*NOTE: Sarkozy’s partisans indignantly denied that the roundups resembled the “Rafle” of French Jews during the Occupation. This only served to confirm the resemblance.

**Now, of course, Mehlman has come out and is throwing a fundraiser for marriage equality. While I hope for a Damascus-style conversion on his part, and I’d rather have him on our side than continuing to oppose us, he’s got a lot to atone for, and a single event won’t suffice. By your actions, we will know you, Brother Mehlman.