Reykjavík Grapevine - 03.02.2017, Page 10

Words
HALLDÓR
ARMAND
Photo
ART BICNICK
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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 02 — 2017
10
History speaks from the lips of Presi-
dent Trump. It is the crude and truthful
voice of human mayhem and we should
listen closely. The man is her beloved
agent, a dedicated distributor of confu-
sion and fury, a Hegelian incarnation
of the nameless laws and mysteries at
the heart of our existence. I was waiting
for him to say torture was “fantastic”
or ‘amazing” but he chose to assert that
torture “absolutely works.” This was his
first interview as president, a shining
planet of orange on television, and the
verdict is already here. Torture works.
Fuck your idiotic progress, there’s
no right side of me. Your dream is but a
shadow. Your life is only a story, told by
an idiot, signifying nothing. This is his-
tory’s yawning Shakespearean message
now, waking up from her latest sleep
of decades. And is the Clown of Clowns
correct?
Of course he is.
Don’t ask the Guardian or the New
York Times or Vox. Ask the Egyptians,
the Greeks, the Romans. Ask the ghosts
of civilization. Coercion is one of his-
tory’s catchiest melodies. Time is the
ultimate stressor. Its currents carry
away redundant ideas, things and pas-
sions. Repetition is the filter of history.
And human life is the eternal return of
horrors. Did we really think it was over
because we loved goodness?
The horrific carnage of the 20th cen-
tury ended peacefully with the marriage
of liberal values and market capitalism.
It was consummated before the altar
of progress. One of the compromises
made was the ban on torture. We didn’t
include a ban on torture in all major in-
ternational legal agreements because it
doesn’t work. The Geneva Conventions
weren’t negotiated in the aftermath of
the Second World War because torture
doesn’t work. The United Nations Con-
vention against Torture doesn’t have 160
state parties because some academics
have so conveniently concluded that tor-
ture doesn’t work. We have these things
precisely because Trump is correct here.
However, let's not be naive. This kind of
debate is intellectual bullshit at best.
Torture is not a washing machine. It is
not something that simply either works
or not and nothing in between. Torture
has various faces and multiple ends. But
of course violence can get you what you
fucking want! That’s why it is a recur-
rent theme of history. That’s why we
need infinitely complex legal instru-
ments to try to prevent it.
The same goes for all other human
rights. Nobody who believes in and is
ready to fight for freedom of speech does
so because he also believes censorship
doesn’t work. The core myth behind hu-
man rights in the Western world is that
we choose to believe that means don’t
justify ends. What works is not neces-
sarily right. Something can be wrong
precisely because it works too well. At
least that’s what we used to believe. The
marriage might be over now. There’s
blood on the kitchen floor. Keep listen-
ing to the Prophet of Chaos for clues.
There’s so much truth in his lies.
Tonight I will picture myself in a cold
room at a black site, lying on my back,
hands tied. Darkness and a small lamp.
A man wearing a white shirt covering
my face with a cloth. A bland face, a Red
Bull, a cigarette burning in his mouth.
And here comes the water now, cascading
from an old plastic bottle in his hand, at-
tacking my breath, burning my lungs. Tell
me the truth, he screams. Can truth save
me? What is truth? Did Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed contemplate this when they
waterboarded him for the fourteenth
time? Will Pilate’s famous question con-
quer my mind just before consciousness
escapes me? Is it a question that troubles
the Prophet as well?
I don’t think Christ will be there to an-
swer me with silence. Let’s not forget
they tortured and killed him for speak-
ing the truth, not for concealing it.
There’s probably a philosophical di-
mension to all this. Humans torture,
always they have, always they will, be-
cause deep down they understand that
truth and suffering are inherent in each
other.
OPINION
Torture Works
“Torture has various faces and
multiple ends. But of course violence
can get you what you fucking want!
That’s why it is a recurrent theme
of history. That’s why we need
infinitely complex legal
instruments to try
to prevent it”
“The Supreme
Court Values
Hitler's Reputa-
tion at ISK 200”
On January 6th 1934, famous Ice-
landic author Þórbergur Þórðar-
son wrote an article in the now
defunct daily paper Alþýðublaðið.
Its headline, “Kvalarlosti nazista,”
roughly translates as “Nazi Sa-
dism.” In the article, Þórbergur
said many a negative thing about
Hitler and his henchmen, such as
the fact that just after Hitler and
his party came to power, prison
camps in Germany were rife with
“suffering and torture, that even
the Inquisition itself would be hor-
rified by, if it could slide its eyes
over these nearly 800 years of eter-
nity which lie between Lucius III
and the sadist in the German chan-
cellor's chair.”
The German Consul to Iceland
sued Þórbergur for this statement
on behalf of the German Reich, and
on October 31st 1934, the Supreme
Court of Iceland sentenced Þór-
bergur to pay a fine of 200 ISK—
around 80,000 ISK at today’s rates.
That day, the same daily paper
printed that “The Supreme Court
has valued Hitler’s reputation at
200 ISK.” It has since plummeted.
Back to the future
On January 31st 2017, Pirate Party
MP Ásta Guðrún Helgadóttir said
that “what the President of the
USA has done in his first few days
in office is fascist.” Interviewed on
February 1st 2017, Independence
Party MP Óli Björn Kárason said
that although he disagreed with
Donald Trump’s immigration
and refugee policies, he thought
it inappropriate for MPs to call
Trump, a democratically elected
head of state, a fascist (Ed: Do you
know who else was a democrati-
cally elected head of state?). This
time around, the US Embassy has
yet to press charges. JTS
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