McCain As Evil As Hitler?

During her last world tour, Madonna chose to take part in the presidential election in her own way. On the giant screen placed over the stage, we see, on one side, a picture of John McCain followed by portraits of Hitler and Mugabe, on the other, Obama accompanied by Gandhi and John Lennon. As we would not dare to think of Madonna as a Nazi, we then conclude she is a Democrat and that her historical political demonstration grossly associates McCain to the Evil and Obama to the Best. Thoroughly criticized in America for such subtle attempts – and not only by the right – of an amalgam, Madonna fought back, saying she had changed what was until then “just a stage gimmick” into a definitive work of art – a video which she has just put online on Youtube herself.

One should not mock the apparent candidness of her idea: it’s not even more stupid than both candidates’ televisual ads. I try, without success, to be keen of American culture (including in terms of masculine elegance, TV shows and gastronomy), I’ll gladly leave them with their political propaganda (and also their contemporean R’nB, but that’s another story). Had the political argument not fallen that low, McCain, who suffered more in his viet camp, could just have gone on with an eloquent smile. Instead of this, he rushes head first into this mediatic trap and lets his staff publish more and more of his indignated speeches, somehow like Obama and the New Yorker’s caricatural drawings.

It’d be wrong to be put off by the discrete revisionist equation Madonna suggested. First, she’s far from holding the monopoly on this type of stupidity: Our Badiou practices them all the time in Normale Sup* , he even wrote a bestseller on it. We could however regret the influence that her McCain=Hitler equation might have on the way millions of adolescents will reflect upon the GI’s action in Iraq. It’s really similar to WWII, except that the effect is not that big seeing how they will have forgotten most of it before the pop video ends.

It’d also be wrong to consider the reference to Gandhi to be the most appropriate to counterbalance the former equation. Madonna (and I fear that she is not the only one in that case) apparently seems to promote a strictly two-tier vision of the world around us: nice / malicious, democrats / republicans, Nazis / antinazis, cool / uncool. This binary reduction is really too shallow to include Gandhi.

The Mahatma indeed happened to write two letters to the Führer. The first time, in 1938, it was about using non-violence. It indeed had very little effect, as we have learned. The second time, on December 24th, 1940, we can read the following that might have escaped Madonna’s vigilence: “We doubt neither your courage nor your patriotic love, and we do not believe either you be the monster they describe.” Ouch! History is complex. Beware of such casting bugs.

But wait, I did not suggest, unlike Indian nationalists, that Hitler=Gandhi. He was against an open alliance with the Axis forces… as he was against sending the Indian soldiers to help the English against the 3rd Reich: “Our position is unique: we resist the British imperialism as much as the nazism.” Had such principles been followed in Tumbuctu or Agadir, there would never had been the “Indigens” movie.

During her last world tour, Madonna chose to take part to the presidential election in her own way. On the giant screen placed over the stage, we see, on one side, a picture of John McCain followed by portraits of Hitler and Mugabe, on the other, Obama accompanied by Gandhi and John Lennon. As we would not dare to think of Madonna as a Nazi, we then conclude she is a Democrat and that her historical political demonstration grossly associates McCain to the Evil and Obama to the Best. Thoroughly criticized in America for such subtle attempts – and not only by the right – of an amalgam, Madonna fought back, saying she had changed what was until then “just a stage gimmick” into a definitive work of art – a video which she has just put online on Youtube herself.

*Translator’s Note: an elite French high school