My experience involving a nice 'friend' acting as an executioner's collaborator
I was threatened with ‘elimination’ (a Nazi term), and then with indefinite detention on medical and psychological pretenses, and ‘friends’ I knew collaborated in this, set me up, took me for a fool, while remaining unassailably nice, which they are, and I can still only wish them a happy life. I don’t want to be eliminated in any way by the American police. The friend, referencing his own scientific expertise, accused me of having an ‘amydala’ (and not recognizing it), that is the technological military state’s terms for a disposition to rage, which obviously meant he thinks I might be a ‘terrorist’ (that is am evil in my actual potentiality, and thus one who can be justly targeted for possible elimination). He might have accused me of an unrecognized evil inclination. (Does he think his own is more properly controlled and circumscribed? If so, what would that justify?) We know what that meant in Judaism, and we know what it means to the current police state, which is modeled not on Jewish antecedents (at all) but on Roman and contemporary American militarist ones. It also has a Nazi legacy, in that usage. This man is a very nice person, we shared some literary and artistic interests, I can only wish him and his wonderful family a nice life. I honestly do. No hate, it’s something else. I was threatened with being silenced. People who have survived this may want not revenge but to tell the story and to write and be read.
The official story now is that this was all because those nice families who were only celebrating their dinners gave their descendants an ownership claim. That is a lie and it has recently become publicly manifest how ugly it is. Lies are added to lies when some of us call attention to them, as we must. As a lawyer warned me: never write about what they did to you, because they are powerful, you are vulnerable, and they will do it again, anytime, with impunity. There is no ownership of victimhood. There is a legacy of history. It does not belong to some of those who have claimed it. It belongs to you and me. Others, yes, I accuse, but that’s a detail in the story of liberation as I tell it. I am not entirely a nice person and I draw boundaries that I personally enforce solely by my own obnoxiously outspoken choices of free association. Some of them might read my story but I do not write it for them, and I will not again set foot in their houses, these kapos and executioner’s friends. Executioners this time not of Jews, sometimes of leftists (including Jews who are), often of other people belonging to other populations who do not count for them and who apparently in their way. Friends of assassins all the same. What would you do if you lived in a country whose government arrests people in the night, and you realize it was your best friend who set you up?
They targeted me. To confuse me, to silence me, to make me afraid, to keep me from doing anything worthwhile. They used friends of mine to do this; nice people, who like me love similar books and art, they were not friends at all. My friends are the other victims, not the people with imaginary ties to some enchanted family legend that they were or, even more absurdly, might be but for all this policing and war. Warned never to talk about what they did to me, advised to live as a coward, I chose to ‘come out’ and talk about what they did to me. Their names will be made public only if they or the police for whom they were working choose to do so. What happened to me is common news in many countries. I am a victim in what is among other things a “Jewish war.” They used psychological warfare tactics against me. The group’s apparent principal operator appeared to be the coordinator of a loose group of ‘friends’ I knew in the New York film world. The details about what he does render it all so comically obvious in retrospect. Personally, the nicest nebbishy man, he is very disarmingly hard to not like, as nice people are. Interesting fainéant set of people, some posing as intellectual radicals (with armchairs) with various convictions proclaimed that seemed comic now. I concluded that the authorities at least probably would not mind if I diverted my attention from useful work by hating any of them individually, nor of course if they could provoke me to thinking myself an antisemite or a hater of god knows what. Sartre said in The Flies that “life begins on the other side of despair.” And hatred perhaps. The Germans were occupying Paris when that play was written and performed. Hatred of injustice is not where it ends (a story police might like to hear, and many a psychological operative would cooperate), it’s where it starts. It is a joyful passion as well, and the friend is a political concept, just as social antagonism founds the political and total governmentality, liberal or fascist, aims to destroy it. What would you do if you lived in a country whose government arrests people in the night, and you realize it was your best friend who set you up?
They figured me for a fool. This friend was an operative, doing a job. I was awfully blind. But, see, American liberal society kind of is that way; how many people do you know are politically committed to anything at all, even as artists? The art world in which I am involved to which he showed some interest and connection is driven by a notion of aesthetic interest and entertainment value whose political objects must remain vaguely affirmed outside the artwork itself, even if you are as political as a Godard, a Pasolini, a Fassbinder, etc. Of course he’s not my problem, he was a cog. Neither is my psychological state exactly, at least not as cause for an enforced separation, which is what he was engaged to do with me, keep me under control and when necessary take me out. We presume that if they come for me in the night because I put up this essay, they will remove it first. I came to New York years ago at a time when you would normally be surrounded by people who take for granted the legitimacy of the repressive apparatus of the state. My ‘Marxist’ friends also do, and are quite inconsequential. It all seems so comical now. I think next time they will try other tactics. I work in the art world, in film and film criticism, but everyone who knows me or bothers to check knows what are my politics. Almost 25 years after 9/11 and I am still angry. Yes, I was a fool, but otherwise, I’m not alone in this, am I?
Psychology was their weapon. Many on the left are against psychiatry, but how many people realize that it really is a tool of fascism? In my case it was blatant and an aim of my creative work is to expose and combat it. As I said, hatred of injustice is the starting point. If you hate nothing, you are a fool, perhaps a very lucky one. If you think that all such thoughts are comic because the only thing that is really interesting about the world or in art is that how funny people can be, then, having no political sense, you are worse than a fool. You might be a happy suburbanite. Good luck and good bye then to you.
They targeted me. To confuse me, to silence me, to make me afraid, to keep me from doing anything worthwhile. They used friends of mine to do this; nice people, who like me love similar books and art, they were not friends at all. My friends are the other victims, not the people with imaginary ties to some enchanted family legend that they were or, even more absurdly, might be but for all this policing and war. Warned never to talk about what they did to me, advised to live as a coward, I chose to ‘come out’ and talk about what they did to me. Their names will be made public only if they or the police for whom they were working choose to do so. What happened to me is common news in many countries. I am a victim in what is among other things a “Jewish war.” They used psychological warfare tactics against me. The group’s apparent principal operator appeared to be the coordinator of a loose group of ‘friends’ I knew in the New York film world. The details about what he does render it all so comically obvious in retrospect. Personally, the nicest nebbishy man, he is very disarmingly hard to not like, as nice people are. Interesting fainéant set of people, some posing as intellectual radicals (with armchairs) with various convictions proclaimed that seemed comic now. I concluded that the authorities at least probably would not mind if I diverted my attention from useful work by hating any of them individually, nor of course if they could provoke me to thinking myself an antisemite or a hater of god knows what. Sartre said in The Flies that “life begins on the other side of despair.” And hatred perhaps. The Germans were occupying Paris when that play was written and performed. Hatred of injustice is not where it ends (a story police might like to hear, and many a psychological operative would cooperate), it’s where it starts. It is a joyful passion as well, and the friend is a political concept, just as social antagonism founds the political and total governmentality, liberal or fascist, aims to destroy it.