\n
\n<\/a>Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThese words close Vladimir Mayakovsky\u2019s 1924 poem \u201cVladimir Ilych Lenin<\/a>\u201c.\u201d\u00a0 Written in the months after Lenin\u2019s death, \u201cVI Lenin\u201d is the greatest of Mayakovsky\u2019s works and the apex of the socialist realist style of poetry that flowered in Russia in the decade after the Revolution. \u201cVI Lenin\u201d is also the template through which some in the press construct the person and works of Jesus Christ<\/p>\n
For many members of the chattering classes Jesus is a Lenin figure, or Lenin is a Jesus figure (depending on your priorities) with the difference that Lenin was a real historical figure, while Jesus was not. A recent interview with Salman Rushdie conducted by the ABC, (note the \u201cthe\u201d before ABC, meaning the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, not the American Broadcasting Corporation) typifies this view of Jesus held by his cultured despisers.<\/p>\n
But culture first, then media criticism.<\/p>\n
Divided into three cantos, \u201cVI Lenin\u201d tells the story of the triumph of the proletarian revolution through the vehicle of the working class, which through toil and strife, guided by the laws of social development, revealed by its ideological genius Karl Marx, produces the \u201ctwin of Mother History\u201d \u2014 the Bolshevik Party and its leader, VI Lenin.<\/p>\n
The party for Mayakovsky is the symbol of the strength and wisdom of the working classes and is what has trained and mobilized the masses, and lead them out of their bondage. And over all this:<\/p>\n
appears
\nthe compass of Leninist thought,
\nappears
\nthe guiding hand of Lenin.<\/em><\/p>\nLenin\u2019s life did not end with his death as the people and the party live on.<\/p>\n
And even the death of Ilyich
\nbecame a great communist organizer<\/em>.<\/p>\nLenin will live in the hearts of the proletariat and will remain the rallying point for world revolution.<\/p>\n
Proletarians, form ranks for the last battle!
\nStraighten your backs,
\nunbend your knees!
\nProletarian army, close ranks!
\nLong live the joyous revolution, soon to come!
\nThis is the greatest
\nof all great fights
\nthat history has known.<\/em><\/p>\nWhat prompted that bit of showing off of the detritus of a wasted youth was the Salman Rushdie interview broadcast on the ABC Radio National program Books and Arts Daily<\/a>. In a forty minute segment entitled \u201cSalman Rushdie\u2019s New Memoir<\/a>: Joseph Anton\u201d host Michael Cathcart spoke to the British novelist about his life in the wake of the fatwah.<\/p>\n
The show notes state:<\/p>\n
On Valentine\u2019s Day in 1989, Iran\u2019s Supreme leader the Ayatollah Khomeini declared a fatwa \u2013 any believer who assassinated the novelist Salman Rushdie was promised eternal life. The Ayatollah announced that the Indian born British novelist had committed an unpardonable blasphemy against Islam in a novel called The Satanic Verses. <\/em>To supporters of the fatwa, even the title must have seemed like a confession. This was a man who by his own declaration was the author of The Satanic Verses. <\/em>And so Salman Rushdie winner of the Booker prize became Rushdie the Infidel. Rushdie the man in hiding. For some he became a champion of free speech, a man who refused to cave in to bullying. To others, he was the author of his own misfortune. Now he tells the story of his years in protection in a memoir, a vast book called Joseph Anton, <\/em>the alias he took while in hiding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I encourage you to listen to the interview. Rushdie tells a fascinating story about his life and his work \u2014 and also has insights in the present unrest spreading across the Muslim world.\u00a0 In recounting the protests that followed the publication of The Satanic Verses<\/a> Rushdie states the \u201cpeople who had demonstrated were ordered to demonstrate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey didn\u2019t know anything\u201d about his book and were out in the streets demonstrating against a Western provocation against Islam on the instructions of political leaders who wanted to capitalize on the book\u2019s notoriety for their local political advantage. The same pattern of events was unfolding in the Muslim world, Rushdie argued, with the obscure YouTube video \u201cInnocence of Muslims.\u201d<\/p>\n
This interpretation of events is in line with the reports I shared<\/a> from my contacts in Egypt on 11 Sept 2012 when a mob attacked the U.S. embassy in Cairo and consulate in Benghazi. While the government on 28 Sept<\/a> backed away from its claim the attack on Benghazi was caused by spontaneous outrage from the \u201cInnocence of Muslims\u201d film, I have yet to see them concede what the press and Egyptian government have concluded \u2014 that the Cairo riot was a staged provocation also.<\/p>\n
Do listen to Rushdie \u2014 he is worth your time. The interviewer, on the other hand, was not as strong.\u00a0 About six minutes into the broadcast, when discussing Rushdie\u2019s university studies about the history of Islam, the interviewer said:<\/p>\n
There is no doubt that Muhammad was a real person. .. (while) Jesus was an ambiguous person.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Muhammad is real. Jesus is, maybe, real, or maybe a legend, the ABC argues. The interviewer has mangled his facts here, as after 150 years of scholarship on this point, the historical Jesus<\/a> is conceded to have existed by most scholars. The issue as to whether Muhammad existed<\/a> is an open one<\/a> in Western scholarship.<\/p>\n
For Mayakovsky Lenin is not like other men. He is a symbol of the struggle of the proletariat: past, present and future. He is a genius and a practical man, the \u201cmost human of all humans who have lived on earth\u201d, Mayakovsky wrote.\u00a0 A man \u201cjust like you and me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ABC interviewer, were he to posit the existence of Jesus, would describe him in these terms also \u2014 and view the Christian religion in terms of its social utility. Let me say my concern is not to argue theology, but to point out the worldview the interviewer used in expressing what he believed to be the consensus as to who Jesus was. Jesus like Lenin was a figure whose value lay in his symbolic utility. It is how Jesus is interpreted, not who he is or his work that matters.<\/p>\n