p**********d 发帖数: 7918 | 1 分別是德國的奧西耶茲基(被禁止領獎),波蘭的瓦文薩(波蘭政府曾經禁止播放挪威
音樂),和美國的馬丁路德金(曾被美國右派斥責掀動種族衝突)。
尤其是美國的馬丁路德金,當初在美國是毀(右派)譽(其他人)參半,現在卻是公認
的英雄。我想劉曉波的足跡大概也會如此吧。
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-wasserstrom/liu-xiaobo-and-3-past-nob_b_795183.html
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Professor of History, UC Irvine
Posted: December 10, 2010 04:12 PM
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Liu Xiaobo and 3 Noble Nobel Winners
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Read More: China , Germany , Liu Xiaobo , Martin Luther King Jr. , Nobel
Peace Prize , Norway , Poland , World News
This year's Nobel Peace Prize generated an unusual amount of attention, from
scores of commentaries on the meaning of Liu Xiaobo's selection, to
intensive coverage of the Chinese government's often paranoid reaction to
his win, to live-blogging of the dramatic ceremony that just took place. Now
, as that ceremony shifts quickly from the status of current event to that
of historical moment, history can help us place what has happened into
perspective -- and give us a sense of how Liu, his prize, and the empty seat
held for him in Oslo may come to be remembered. Three parallels from the
past -- one German, one Polish, and one American -- stand out as
particularly revealing:
The German Analogy. Much has been made of the parallels between Liu Xiaobo's
award and that given to the anti-Nazi journalist Carl van Ossietzky. The
most obvious basis for this is that 1936 was the last time that neither a
prizewinner nor a close family member was able to be present to receive the
Peace Prize.
One novelty with the Nobel Peace Prize controversy has been that even many
people, myself included, who in the past have objected to and still question
the validity of sweeping uses of the Nazi analogy and who have criticized
such specific things as the tendency to overstate the similarities between
the 1936 Berlin Olympics with the Beijing Games, found the allusions to
Hitler's German compelling in this particular instance. The New Yorker's
Evan Osnos makes this point in a moving post for his "Letter from China"
blog drafted as the Prize ceremony was ending. "Chinese leaders know," he
wrote, "that they are harming their reputation around the world," in
responding to the Prize this way, "but they are calculating that the damage
is temporary, and that they will ride it out. Perhaps, but the harm is
substantial this time. China is not Hitler's Germany," he emphasizes, but "
now the comparison will endure in history." He's right on target, both in
stressing the limits of the parallel and in implying that the van Ossietzky
and Liu peace prizes are likely to be grouped together routinely as a stand-
alone pair in the future, in a way that the Berlin Olympics/Beijing Olympics
, for all the efforts some made at the time to brand the latter the "
Genocide Games," will not.
A Polish Example. This said, some Chinese official actions paralleled those
of authoritarian leaders far less nakedly brutal than the Nazis. When
Solidarity leader Lech Walesa won the Prize in 1983, for example, while
Warsaw did not create a competing award, it did something that had a surreal
aspect to it not far removed from that of the recent inaugural Confucius
Prize award ceremony, which featured an angelic figure appearing on stage
with cash to give to the winner (who didn't show up). Namely, the Polish
government proclaimed that "the music of Norway" would be banned from state
radio.
The Polish case is also worth remembering now because Liu has said his award
honors the victims of 1989's June 4th Massacre. One reason the Chinese
government carried out those killings was a fear that, as workers joined
students on the streets, something comparable to Solidarity was emerging.
And, ironically, June 4, 1989, was not just the day that workers and
students were slain in Beijing but the day as well that Solidarity won its
first Polish election.
An American Case. The Chinese media claims that the Nobel committee has a
pro-American bias. Without giving this notion more credence than it deserves
, it's certainly true that some past awards to Americans have been baffling,
including last year's selection of Barack Obama (in spite of how little he'
d done) and the much earlier selection of Henry Kissinger (in spite of how
much he had done -- that didn't promote peace in any way shape or form).
There's another U.S. Nobel Peace Prize winner, though, more pertinent to
remember just now: 1964 Laureate Martin Luther King, Jr..
Children now grow up being taught that King was a virtuous patriot. But when
he won the prize, some Americans viewed him, as Beijing would like all
Chinese to view Liu, as a traitor to his country and its core beliefs. The
FBI sought to destroy him. Some critics on the Left chastised him as
insufficiently militant. Some citics on the Right decried him as dangerously
radical and un-American. Will Herberg, for example, wrote of King's "rabble
-rousing demagoguery" and blamed him for outbreaks of inter-racial violence.
Liu should keep King's subsequent apotheosis in mind. For in addition to
being denounced by the government, he's been chided by a few dissidents-in-
exile for being too moderate, thanks in part to his powerful "I Have No
Enemies" commentary, which was just read by Liv Ullman in Oslo. Looking back
to King's Nobel moment and his later apotheosis reminds us of something
important: how dramatically the reputation of a person who insists he has "
no enemies"--even when he is being vilified--can change over time. |
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