Nothing But Trouble: Bread & Puppet Theater's Peter Schumann

Left: 1934 issue of Die Brennessel portrays a Jewish press magnate subverting Germany with a phallic tube of lies
Right: Bread & Puppet iconic avatar of the evils of modernity, Uncle Fatso, with phallic cigar.

In the latest installment of my "Nothing But Trouble" column at the Clyde Fitch Report, I discuss the politics of Bread & Puppet Theater founder, Peter Schumann on the occasion of his receiving Goddard College's Second Annual Presidential Award for Activism. Goddard President Barbara Vacarr, in her speech introducing Schumann, noted:

[...J]ust as individuals do, human societies tend to see what they want to see. They create national myths of identity out of a composite of historical events and fantasy narratives that, if not challenged, lead to destruction[...]

[...V]isionary artists like Peter Schumann are our sharpest eyes, our keenest ears, our most adept linguists as they see that which has been made invisible or unwelcome, they hear the voices missing from our dominant narratives and they speak in languages that pierce unconsciousness and translate slick sound bites into nuanced and deeper understandings of our world.

Of course, the visionary artist is another myth, and when we start examining the myth of Peter Schumann, we find something that should at least give us pause:

Schumann speaks frequently of being born in 1934 in a region called Silesia, but he neglects to mention that it was part of the Third Reich and that his hometown of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) was a major base of support of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Indeed, the local German population provided a fertile ground for Naziism to take root: in the 1920s, mob violence had already forced much of the city’s Jewish and Polish populations to leave, and, over the course of Schumann’s childhood, the city was rendered Judenfrei through deportations. Breslau was a city surrounded by a network of concentration camps and slave labor camps providing commercial products for the city. Despite the political nature of his art, Schumann never addresses the fact that for the first 11 years of his life, he was a child of Nazi Germany. He never discusses whether or not his parents were party members, whether or not he was a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk (the Hitler Youth subdivision for boys aged 10-14), or how these experiences influenced him. Popular book-length studies of Schumann and Bread & Puppet (like George Dennison’s An Existing Better World: Notes On The Bread & Puppet Theater and Marc Estrin’s essays for Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater) make no mention of Schumann’s life in Nazi-era Silesia.

The question I have been asking since 2007 since I stopped performing with Bread & Puppet has been how much of Schumann's politics are influenced by his childhood in Nazi Germany?

Read the rest in The Clyde Fitch Report!

If Amnesty International Had Its Own Theater Company

Boston Herald theatre critic Jenna Scherer writes:

If Amnesty International had its own theater company, Bread & Puppet would just about fit the bill.

In the course of its nearly 50-year existence, the Vermont-based collective has tackled more human rights issues than any other troupe out there. B&P’s viewpoints are incendiary and its style unorthodox, and attending one of its shows is a totally unique theatrical experience.

I would not dispute the point that Bread & Puppet's style is unorthodox; so at variance with the rest of the theatre world that I regard the rich dramaturgical vocabulary is worthy of study by both theatre artists and scholars, indeed "Bread & Puppet" has become a generic term to refer to a style of protest theatre: any usage of large allegorical papier-mâché puppets. However, I question Scherer's assertion that B&P should be representing any human rights group. After all, how do you square a concern for human rights with public statements by B&P founder and artistic director, Peter Schumann?

I think it’s awful that the Western community does not interfere with what Israel’s doing as an occupation force [in the West Bank]. The Western community does not do anything about it. They don’t even speak up against it. They don’t do anything. They basically serve as the Israeli propaganda for the events there.

In this statement, from a 2008 interview with the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, Schumann does more than criticize Israeli policies in the West Bank (in this specific instance, it was the the wall that was built to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel.) He claims that "the Western community" by which he appears to mean the governments and media outlets of the European and North American nations are somehow under Israeli control. How does Israel get the "Western community" to produce propaganda for Israel and obey Israeli interests? Money? Well-placed people in government? If it is the influence of money or well-placed people, how is this substantially different than other forces influencing the "Western community." I have noted this implausibility elsewhere. This "Western community" is either made up of sovereign states or media outlets that reside in sovereign states that have interests other than serving as "Israeli propaganda" organs.

Schumann is not "criticizing" Israel, rather, he is openly propounding an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, using the fuzzy logic of allusion and moralistic pronouncements. This conspiracy theory is not unlike those he would have encountered during his childhood in Nazi Germany. While Schumann often speaks of his childhood in Silesia, often bitterly complaining that it was annexed to Poland after World War II, he rather consistently neglects to mention that Silesia was part of the Third Reich. He has also managed to solicit cooperation from interviewers in misrepresenting his childhood. By Schumann's logic, one could accuse the Vermont press of serving as Schumann propaganda by helping him hide his origins.

Take this cover from a 1942 issue of Fliegende Blätter depicting Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Rosevelt, and Joseph Stalin as puppets of "The Jews.":

Another 1942 cartoon portraying the same world leaders as puppets of a Jewish puppeteer, this time in the Lustuge Blätter:

This 1940 cover to the Lustige Blätter reads "Englands Führung Liegt in Guten Handen!" or "England's leadership is in good hands!" while depicting Winston Churchill being led like a child by a stereotypical Haredi Jew:

While in this 1934 cartoon from Die Brennessel portrays a Jewish controlled press subverting Germany from abroad:

The imagery in these cartoons certainly were incendiary: They had the overall effect of making anti-Jewish legislation, street violence, deportations, and genocide more palatable to the German public-- even to those Germans who did not buy into biological racism. So it is disheartening to find a German artist who grew up during that time period repeating the same canards.

It becomes even more disturbing when we consider the strong semblance between some of these grotesque Jewish caricatures and Schumann's own personification of the evil powers-that-be, Uncle Fatso:

I have been raising these difficult questions since I walked out of a 2007 rehearsal with Bread & Puppet after Schumann made a series of installations comparing the West Bank to the Warsaw Ghetto. I was too knowledgeable about the history to not to realize that this was a misrepresentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as a form of "soft-core" Holocaust denial, in that it deliberately trivialized and misrepresented the facts of the Holocaust.

The point is that a theatre company whose artistic director creates anti-Semitic propaganda (even thinly disguised anti-Semitic propaganda) and makes anti-Semitic statements in interviews should not be proposed as the theatrical arm of a human rights NGO, as Jenna Scherer does. Not that I believe that Scherer is making a serious proposal, but it is clear that she is also not engaged in serious thought, having succumbed to the notion that theatre criticism amounts to writing blurbs.

Note: I previously took issue with Jenna Scherer when she was still at The Weekly Dig.

Nazi-era cartoons courtesy of Randall Bytwerk's German Propaganda Archive.

Outside the BCA

I snapped this photo outside the Boston Center of the Arts last week. Bread and Puppet were rehearsing in the Cyclorama and I was catching a show downstairs. After the sidebar piece in The Burlington Free Press, and my response to some of Peter Schumann's statements, I suppose it would have been awkward had we crossed paths. The last time we saw one another was right before I broke off relations with the group.

Curiously, after previous press releases in which Bread & Puppet linked its touring production of The Return of Ulysses presented the story as an allegory of how "we" use "our Judeo-Christian sky, occupied by a divine air force and permitted by the in-god-we-trust court system, to justify our atrocities in Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere." the more recent statements to the Boston Globe where Schumann says "We wanted [to link] the atrocities that the opera after all is about to modern atrocities, so we chose this WikiLeaks exposé of a helicopter of US soldiers going on a hunting party." It's pretty minor revision coming from a political artist who consistently obscures the fact that he grew up in the Third Reich.

Burlington Free Press on Peter Schumann's Palestine Controversy

On Friday, Burlington Free Press staff writer, Tim Johnson interviewed me for a piece that ran in Sunday's edition, entitled Peter Schumann's Palestine Controversy. There's a brief quote from me that sums up the argument that I have been making since my 2007 essay, Breaking with Bread and Puppet:

Ian Thal, a playwright and Schumann admirer who broke with Bread and Puppet over the spring 2007 exhibit in Boston, said he saw the wall comparison as "inflammatory." To liken Israel's wall, which was intended to prevent violence, to the Warsaw wall, which was a tool of genocide, was "a deliberate misrepresentation," Thal said.

There are several statements that Schumann made to which I shall respond in greater detail in another blog entry, but I will leave you with one to ponder:

Schumann was called a "Holocaust-denier," among other things. "Ridiculous," Schumann said recently. "Offensive and stupid." For anyone of German descent, he said, the Holocaust is "one of the most horrible things."

To which one anonymous commentator responded:

Let's not forget, it wasn't exactly a picnic for Jews, Gypsies or homosexuals either, Peter.

N.B.: I have posted a follow-up with a more in-depth analysis of Schumann's statements

Analyzing Peter Schumann's Palestine Controversy in the Burlington Free Press

As mentioned previously I had been interviewed by Burlington Free Press reporter Tim Johnson as part of a sidebar article regarding the controversial 2007 exhibitions of a series of murals by Bread and Puppet founder Peter Schumann in which he juxtaposed his stylized images of the West Bank with text from John Hersey's 1950 novel The Wall which is set in the Warsaw Ghetto.

At the time I saw the murals at the Boston Center for the Arts in February of 2007, I was preparing to rehearse with Bread and Puppet for the show The Battle of the Terrorists and the Horrorists as I had done for other Boston area shows with Bread and Puppet over the previous four years. The one thematic link in "Independence Paintings" was between the wall that surrounded the Warsaw Ghetto as a German effort to segregate, confine, starve, enslave, and in 1943, exterminate European Jewery and the West Bank wall that was built with the short-term goals of preventing suicide bombers from entering Israel and eliminating the need for Israeli Defense Forces to launch counter-terrorism efforts thus providing an opportunity for greater stability in the West Bank (arguably, this has worked.) I concluded that the comparison between conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto and the West Bank, likening an act of genocide (over a two-year period 500,000 to 600,000 Jews died from forced starvation and overcrowding in Nazi-run Ghettos (roughly 10% of the deaths in Germany's "Final Solution" to "The Jewish Question") to something that, however controversial, had actually saved lives in the middIe of a protracted conflict amounted to cynical trivialization of the Holocaust in order inflame anti-Israeli sentiment, if not a form of Holocaust denial. He was coy as to what he meant but most audience members, including his supporters, seemed to to understand this as an attempt to pin a genocide charge on Israeli. In fact, his supporters used the phrases "Zionist Nazi" and "Zionist Genocide" in order to shut down any critic. I could not morally justify continuing to associate with either Bread and Puppet or Peter Schumann and so I left after one day of rehearsals. I After being verbally harangued in public over my decision to leave, I decided to recount the reasons for my departure.

I did not see the subsequent exhibition in Burlington, but I followed press accounts. (Also see part 2 • part 3 • Part 4)

In the interview with Johnson, however, Schumann said:

"It wasn't meant as a comparison. I simply quoted from a famous book."

Then why quote from that book unless one wants to make a comparison?

At this point I wish to discuss Schumann's statements on the matter in the Free Press article:

Schumann's work was regarded as offensive by some who saw it as equating policies of the Nazis and of the Israeli government. "Independence Paintings" drew that reaction earlier the same year when exhibited in Boston, where critics saw the juxtaposition of the two walls, and their respective scenes of human suffering, as an odious comparison. Schumann was called a "Holocaust-denier," among other things.

"Ridiculous," Schumann said recently. "Offensive and stupid." For anyone of German descent, he said, the Holocaust is "one of the most horrible things."

I already noted one anonymous commentator's response. Let us unpack this statement further, Schumann describes himself as being of "German descent." In actuality he was born in 1934 in Breslau, Silesia. What Schumann ellipses is that the part of Silesia in which he was born and raised was at the time part of Germany (the remainder of Silesia would be seized by Germany at the outbreak of World War II.) This meant that for the first eleven years of his life, Peter Schumann lived as a child of the Third Reich. He saw his country's territory expand and then shrink as it was defeated in WWII. The Schumann family were amongst the millions of Germans who became refugees as a consequence of, amongst other things, Allied reaction to Germany's immoral earnings off of genocide, deportations, slave labor, and seizures. In a March 1, 2006 interview in Real Change News [N.B.: Real Change News removed the article from their website, but it is available on archive.org.] Schumann stated:

I was born in Silesia, which was German. It became Polish in 1945, after the war. It was part of Germany that was given to Poland by the Yalta Conference. Ninety-nine percent of the population of Silesia was made into refugees at the end of the War and we were part of that 99 percent. We were all looking for a new life, so we live as refugees for a few years.

Indeed, I found it odd that Johnson, despite spending a few paragraphs of a feature length-article on Schumann's life before coming to America, also never mentions the Third Reich, only identifying Silesia as "a region in central Europe now part of Poland." (Note: I did mention this in my telephone interview with Johnson.)

"It's very hard in America to speak about that subject[the Israeli-Palestinian conflict]," Schumann said. "It needs to be said, but it's not being said."

Actually, it's very easy to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are a diversity of views on the topic, and I certainly have little problem finding such diversity. What Schumann's problem is that in America, there is a strong consensus that Israel is the Jewish homeland and that it has a right to exist within secure borders. There is also a consensus that the the desired resolution to the conflict would feature two states, Israel and Palestine, peacefully side by side. Within that consensus there is a heated debate as to how best to arrive at that desired goal and whether the involved parties are constructively working towards that desired goal, and indeed, whether that goal is reachable in the foreseeable future.

However a January 2008 interview with Schumann with Greg Cook, in the New England Journal of Aesthetic research is quite telling regarding Schumann's views on why "it's very hard in America to speak":

I think it’s awful that the Western community does not interfere with what Israel’s doing as an occupation force. The Western community does not do anything about it. They don’t even speak up against it. They don’t do anything. They basically serve as the Israeli propaganda for the events there.

Note that he shifts from arguing that the "Western community does not interfere" to arguing that the "Western community" is actively serving Israel. This is the old anti-Semitic canard of Jews or Zionists controlling multiple governments and the international media.

He said the shows often draw picketers, as have talks by other "friends of mine" -- such as Noam Chomsky or the late Howard Zinn

In our telephone interview, Johnson had mentioned to me that Schumann had complained about picketers. It is hard for me to fathom how an elder statesman of "radical" theatre would complain about being the subject of protests. My work has also been picketed. Perhaps this is a cultural difference, but growing up in a democracy where I was permitted, before attaining adulthood, to read books by Mark Twain, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, J.D. Sallinger, Yevgeny Zamatyn, Franz Kafka, or Harlan Ellison, attend plays like Candide, view films like A Clockwork Orange, or The Great Dictator, to listen to comedians like Lenny Bruce, the idea of being picketed is a badge of honor. Perhaps for somebody who grew up in Nazi Germany (though he avoids mentioning it) where dissent could send one to a concentration camp, disagreement is to be feared, and being confronted with disagreement is threatening. I write material which is intentionally controversial, I expect criticism, and I have experienced protest. The price I pay for my freedom of expression is having to acknowledge others' freedom of expression.

It's also a badge of honor because when I look at the small handful of picketers, writers of email invective, abusive visitors to this blog's comments section, I see several consistencies: anti-intellectualism, anti-Semitic rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and ad hominem attacks. I am proud that these are the sorts of people who feel threatened by the words I write. Schumann is upset that his critics are, in his own words, "a faction of the Jewish community."

It seems quite odd that an elder statesman of "radical" theatre and his supporters are shocked that his work is viewed as controversial, to the point of his supporters routinely white-wash his biography on Wikipedia.

If Schumann can not handle being called to task for trivializing the Holocaust by either minimalizing the Nazi "Final Solution" or by making insinuations that Israel is pursuing a genocidal program; if he cannot handle the fact that Jews have the same free speech, free press, and free assembly rights as "anyone of German descent"; if his only explanation for the reason why his views are not more widely accepted are because the "western community [... serves] as the Israeli propaganda [apparatus]" then Peter Schumann is an anti-Semite.

Peter Schumann's [Judenfrei]-Christian Skies

It's been quite a while since I wrote a post about Peter Schumann or Bread and Puppet Theatre, but I just came upon the following quotation about Bread and Puppet's touring production of a truncated adaptation of Claudio Monteverdi's opera, The Return of Ulysses:

In order to commit genocide on their competitors, the Trojans, the tricky Greeks employ their multitalented sky, full of custom tailored divinities, to justify the crime, just as we employ our Judeo-Christian sky, occupied by a divine air force and permitted by the in-god-we-trust court system, to justify our atrocities in Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere. By order of Jove, the boss, and with special help from his daughter Minerva, Ulysses finally returns home, where he has to murder 100 evil suitors in order to be happily reunited with wife and property.

Some notes:

1.) Any student of Greek mythology knows that the Greeks did not use their gods to morally justify the actions of the Trojan War: both Trojans and Achaeans are portrayed as pawns of the capricious gods of Olympus while the war is portrayed as the consequence of the gods' petty rivalries. Schumann is playing fast and loose with the canon of western civilization just as he does with 20th century history.

2.) I find it interesting that Schumann refers to "our Judeo-Christian sky" but not to our "our Judeo-Christo-Islamic sky." This allows him to ignore acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide by Muslims upon Jews and Christian Arabs-- or between different sects of Islam or even between Muslims of different ethnicities. This also gets back to a conversation in November of 2004 (I was a fly on the wall) where Schumann insisted that Osama bin-Laden was simply an anti-Imperialist and dismissed any notion that bin-Laden was motivated by religious fundamentalism or intolerance.

3.) Speaking of which, Schumann does not, as usual, address his childhood growing up in the Nazi stronghold of Bresleau, or that his father was a Lutheran clergyman during the Nazi era, and Schumann never mentions whether his family supported Naziism or not: after all, this would be his first-hand knowledge of a Judenfrei-Christian sky. In other interviews and reminisces, Schumann speaks of an idyllic childhood of free play and fresh baked bread interupted the day that day Germany was defeated, Breslau was renamed Wroclaw and became part of Poland as he and his family were forced to move westward from the no longer Großdeutchland into the post-war Kleindeutchland. This is part of his overall pattern of presenting Germany as the victim of World War II as opposed to anyone Germany or its allies might have exterminated.

The shame is that Schumann is no longer able to adapt a classic work without linking it to his anti-Israeli animus (which personal interviews repeatedly show to be rooted in elegiac romanticism for his Nazi childhood) especially when he has shown great wit it adapting other works from the theatrical canon, such as his 2002 adaption of Bertold Brecht's and Kurt Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper as Dirt Cheap Opera.

Notes on Class

I've been following Professor Matthew Isaac Cohen's blog about his course on Bread and Puppet Theatre at Royal Halloway, University of London, with interest in part because my essay "Breaking with Bread and Puppet" which is both a narrative of my decision to stop working with the troupe as well as a critique of the imagery that prompted my decision (for which I've gained a small amount of notoriety.) The main focus of the course to have the students investigate the theatrical techniques most closely associated with Bread and Puppet. Despite any political falling-out with B&P founder, Peter Schumann, I strongly endorse theatre-makers drawing upon these techniques. In fact, despite the fact that Total War is primarily written in a naturalistic style, I do incorporate many of these techniques I learned as well.

This past week, Cohen's class was assigned to use what they were learning to parody the political and racial stances of the far-right, and arguably, neo-Nazi, British National Party. One group of students was assigned the instruction:

Using a ringmaster, explore the idea that the BNP deny the Holocaust.

Which I found particularly ironic since the argument of "Breaking with Bread and Puppet" was that Peter Schumann had deliberately misrepresented the history of the Warsaw Ghetto, and by extension, the Holocaust, in order to misrepresent the West Bank Barrier Wall, and was thus engaged in what can be termed "soft-core" Holocaust Denial.

In my view, the BNP provides too easy a target, now if they were assigned to parody the controversy around the attempted boycotts of Israeli academics by the British University and College Union, that would have been edgy.

Look Ma! I'm Part of the Curriculum! Part II

Once again, Matthew Isaac Cohen, of the Department of Drama and Theatre at Royal Halloway, University of London, is offering his class on Bread and Puppet Theater. I note this in part because my Breaking with Bread and Puppet is on the reading list. The class focusses on using the techniques Peter Schumann developed in the students' own theatre making, something that, despite my own political disagreements with Schumann, I fully endorse. I as I wrote back in October of 2007:

Despite my misgivings with what I view as Peter Schumann's forays into antisemitism and trivialization of the Holocaust, I have always thought there was great artistic value to his better works, both in techniques and content-- and I certainly see a legitimate need for theatre artists in training to become familiar with this sort of work. Had I not, I would not have worked with the troupe for as long as I did.

Bread and Censorship: Making Radical Theatre Uncontroversial for Wikipedia

Mark Stoneman drew my attention to a CNet article on the sheer number of edits conducted on the Wikipedia article on Sarah Palin not just on the day of her unveiling as a vice-presidential candidate, but in the hours leading up to her announcement.

This caused me to return to a journal entry I had written in May of this year regarding the politically motivated rewrites of the Wikipedia article on Bread and Puppet Theatre founder, Peter Schumann ("When Wikipedia Renders One an Un-Person"), especially since his current exhibit at the Flynndog in Burlington, Vermont has once again placed his work on my radar. I found that the biographical article on Schumann had been censored yet again, this time to remove any discussion of his positions vis-a-vis the Holocaust, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In my previous article, I had noted that one contributor (an anonymous user with the IP Address of 76.19.64.64 in Cambridge, MA) while acknowledging that there had been some dispute over Schumann's artistic representation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, had also introduced the unverified claim that Schumann's family had been refugees from Nazi Germany (a claim that contradicts Schumann's own statements about his childhood.) I also noted that another contributor (with the address of 68.56.17.70 in Sarasota, Florida) erased the names of Schumann's critics, and even went so far as claiming that the reception to the work had been "quite positive" when, in fact, it had been seen as contentious whether it had been exhibited in Boston or Burlington.

I brought these matters to the attention of a wikipedia editor who uses the handle Moonriddengirl, who revised the article to present a neutral point of view, while still mentioning the dispute around the exhibit. ("Update to "When Wikipedia Renders One an Un-Person")

However, on August 24th, an anonymous contributor with the IP address of 97.76.239.11 (somewhere in Seminole, Florida) published a revision in which the entire section entitled "Palestine Exhibits" was deleted. The writer from 97.76.239.11 had only this to say:

Palestine Exhibits: was deleted. It was a thoroughly biased attack on Schumann's character due to political disagreements.

Compare this assessment with what was deleted:

In 2007 Schumann premiered "Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories" in Boston and Burlington, Vermont.[2] The series was inspired by ten days Schumann spent in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, as well as John Hersey's 'The Wall', a graphic account of the birth, development, and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany during the Jewish Holocaust. The series proved controversial, with critics labeling Schumann's works as "anti-Zionist", "anti-Semitic" and "sort-core Holocaust denial", accusations Schumann denied, stating that "I’m not saying that what’s happening in Palestine is the same as what happened in Warsaw . . . but it’s certainly a reminder."[2] While Schumann later acknowledged that he "may have unnecessarily hurt some people's feelings" with the series, he returned in 2008 to the theme of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his subsequent art series, "The University of Majd: The Story of a Palestinian Youth", which addresses a case of what Schumann believes to be false imprisonment in Israel.[3]

Was this actually a "biased attack or Schumann's character"? That is something best judged by people other than myself. However, the real problem is that we are seeing censorship of any mention of contentious positions taken by an artist who has for decades been a leading figure in radical theatre in America, censorship of criticisms he has received, and a reluctance by his self-appointed defenders to even write about his immense contributions to puppetry and theatre. Indeed, Schumann's allies are censoring mention of controversy in which Schumann clearly wants to be embroiled.

Once Again: Disturbing News From Burlington, Vermont

Recent correspondence with Michael Strauss an artist and scientist who teaches at the University of Vermont, both by email and on his blog has alerted me that once again the deceptively named Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) are sponsoring the exhibition of Bread & Puppet founder and artistic director, Peter Schumann's artistic representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While, I have not seen the work that is on display this year, it was Schumann's misrepresentations of this conflict (as well as misrepresentations of conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto) that caused me break off relations with Bread and Puppet Theatre in February of 2007 after having performed in all Boston-area shows since November 2003.

Strauss came to my attention when first began to address Schumann's connections with VTJP's anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, and Holocaust denying agenda. In a blog entry entitled "The Art of Social Consciousness? I Believe Not", Strauss examined Abdullah Dourkawi’s winning entry in the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, and why an organization that claims to be committed to a "Just Peace" would publish such a cartoon on their website. This has caused Strauss to continue examining anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic cartoons featured on the VTJP website and to address the anti-Semitic rhetoric that has begun to appear in the peace movement.

VTJP, as it happens, is exhibiting Schumann's "The University of Majd" at Flynndog in Burlington as part of a show entitled "Palestine in Resistance: 1948 - 2008." The dates are interesting, as 1948 is the year that the UN Partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into both a Jewish and an Arab state. Unless the curators mean also to include resistance to Jordan and Egypt, they mean to label any Israeli sovereignty anywhere as an invasive occupation (which as I have pointed out previously, is precisely what VTJP does claim.)

I did not see the "The University of Majd" when it was exhibited in Boston in February of this year for reasons explained in this interview with Greg Cook of The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, so while I am uncertain of the exact content of the work, I do know that it is specifically aimed at casting Israel in a negative light without discussing the over all context of the conflict.

Thus far, the reportage from Burlington on the situation seems to be harder to come by than last year, and I had only come upon a single article by Sally Pollak in the September 4, 2008 edition of Burlington Free Press entitled, "Art Hop draws more exhibitors than ever":

Schumann’s art will be part of a group show at the Flynndog, a gallery on Flynn Avenue that participates in the Art Hop. His piece is part of an exhibit called “Open Eyes: Open Minds: Open Hearts,” curated by Bren Alvarez.

“This man has a lifetime of producing artwork that really looks at, and creates awareness about, humanitarian issues,” Alvarez said. “What I felt passionate about was being absolutely certain that Peter Schumann is welcome in Burlington.”

Schumann’s piece, on display at the Flynndog through late October, is called “Wall with Checkpoint.”

“Peter’s been interested in walls, walls, walls,” said longtime puppeteer Linda Elbow, who helped with the installation. “The wall around the Warsaw ghetto, the Berlin wall, the Palestine-Israel wall and the wall between Mexico and the U.S.”

Unlike last year, where Schumann spoke for himself, longtime Bread and Puppet member, Linda Elbow, served as his spokeswoman and created the context of Schumann's anti-Israeli propaganda, by once again creating false analogies. The Berlin Wall was built by the East Berlin government to maintain a police state by preventing East Berliners from leaving or from having direct contact with either West German citizens or their economy; the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto was build by Germany in order to deliberately segregate and starve the Jews that had been deported to the ghetto, thus five-hundred-thousand to six-hundred thousand Jews, roughly 20% of Poland's Jewish population was killed over a period of two years. The Israeli built wall and checkpoints that separate Israel from the Palestinian territories have eliminated suicide bombings in Israel and eliminated IDF counter-strikes to those attacks (obviously walls can be circumvented by rockets, which invite further counter-strikes.) However, the result has been a rebuilding of the economy and a decrease in violence on the West Bank, as well as renewed peace talks between Israel and the Fatah (Hamas, the government in Gaza, is quite another story.)

The point is that the Israeli-built wall that has caused Schumann's ire for two years simply cannot be sensibly understood as analogous with the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Berlin wall, or currently imaginary wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. When Israel's attempt to defend its citizens from terrorism is likened to an instrument of genocide, one simply engaged in a 21st century version of the blood-libel. It's not the "hard-core" Holocaust denial advocated by such figures as David Irving or Bradley Smith but a "soft-core" Holocaust denial that seeks to trivialize the significance.

The piece is made from brown papier-mache with black-paint definition and includes hand-printed banners from Schumann’s 17-question series.

Among the questions: “Whose money?” and “Whose pleasure?” Ibid.

Based on additional documentation on the Flynndog's website, the "17-question series" in question is a series of wood-cuts entitled "17 questions about the War in Iraq: an elementary Iraq war inquiry." The attachment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its resolution to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while a common ploy amongst anti-Israel propagandists the world over, is nothing more than unsupported lies.

And this is the crux of the problem: It's not that art should not tell the truth; it's that art should not lie.

The Golem of Church Street

One story that seems to never end for me is one that began when I ended my association with Bread and Puppet Theatre over a mural-sized series entitled "Independence Paintings" by Bread and Puppet founder, Peter Schumann, that juxtaposed the images and text of the Warsaw Ghetto with conditions in the Palestinian West Bank. I perceived both a provocative from of antisemitism and what is sometimes referred to as "soft-core" Holocaust Denial ("soft-core" in that it either minimizes the suffering of the victims of the Shoah, that it grossly misrepresents another event through comparison to the Shoah.)

I revisited the story this past September when "Independence Paintings" were exhibited in Burlington, Vermont as part of that city's annual Art Hop. While I was not present for the events in Burlington, I did follow the controversy that raged in the Burlington press for several weeks.

Perhaps the most moments were on the morning of Saturday, September 8th when Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP)-- whose website I discuss elsewhere-- the organization that sponsored the Schumann exhibition, presented a lecture by Joel Kovel drew protesters. There were many varied accounts of what occurred at that lecture, however, one thing that was clear was that there had been a breakdown in civility (elsewhere, I note that any breakdown in civility originates in misrepresentations made by Schumann and VTJP.)


Perhaps the most powerful image from that day was a flyer by local artist David Sokol that portrayed parading Bread and Puppet puppets, a recent victim of vigilante justice, and the text "Puppets Lynch the Jews." Sokol has since created a book of prints entitled The Golem of Church Street: An Artist’s Reflection on the New Anti-Semitism. The prints are currently being exhibited at the Burlington art gallery, Kasini House until August 9th.

I have yet to see the prints, but the interview that Sokal gave to Margot Harrison in Seven Days has made me excited to see the work. Much of the work, based on the description, presents many icons revered by progressives (of whom Vermonters are accustomed to describe themselves) but in the context of their complicity with antisemitism-- and this part of what is the "New" in the "New Antisemitism" the way that a hatred that has long been associated with theological intolerance, racial hatred, and right-wing extremism, has co-opted the rhetoric of Enlightenment humanism (though, I would note, it really isn't that new.) Sokol eloquently describes his stance towards the phenomenon here:

“My issue is not with the left. I’ve supported the Progressive Party. I’m trying to make a distinction between the left and the fundamentalist left. My definition of fundamentalism is that you no longer see the needs of other people, because your ideology gets in the way.”

I intend to set my eyes upon the prints in the immediate future.

(* Note: it is my practice not to hyphenate "antisemitism", my reason for doing so is that there is no contrasting ideology of "Semitism"-- this is a common practice in the scholarly community. The standard practice, however, is hyphenate.)

Update to "When Wikipedia Renders One an Un-Person"

My recent post about the politically motivated revisions to the Peter Schumann article on Wikipedia seems to have have an impact on the latest set of revisions.

As I had mentioned before, anonymous contributors had dismissed allegations that some of Schumann's recent work could be legitimately interpreted as either anti-Semitic or "soft-core" Holocaust denial, one from 76.19.64.64 falsely claimed that Schumann "and his family fled Nazi Germany when he was 10" while a contributor from 68.56.17.70 claimed that "the general reception to the work was quite positive."

Since I was ethically bound not to contribute to the article myself (especially because I was mentioned in an earlier revision) I had to find a way for someone to correct the factual distortions, so I posted to the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons Noticeboard, and received a quick response from an editor using the handle of Moonriddengirl.

Moonriddengirl's revision, while not a full biographic essay, removed the ideologically motivated misinformation and added links to some of the resources I suggested. So while it was the inclusion of my name in the article that caught my attention and it was the deletion of my name that inspired the title of my earlier blog entry, whether or not a wikipedia editor considers me notable for the current revision is not the issue: the important matter is that no longer is Schumann falsely said to be a refugee from Nazi tyranny and that reports that his artistic rendition of the Holocaust was divisive in communities where it was shown are now acknowledged.

When Wikipedia Renders One an Un-Person

Frequent readers of this blog will note that I frequently link to Wikipedia articles on and in most cases, I have found the articles I cite to be reasonably good introductions the topics I mention in passing. When I found myself to be written into a Wikipedia article only to be made an "un-person" a month later in what appeared to be a ideologically motivated revision, I decided to dig deeper into a world of topsy-turvy wiki redaction. In this case, it was not an example of editors determining that I was not a notable individual, but rather an anonymous user erasing certain inconvenient facts, such as myself. This story begins when my attention was called to an article on Peter Schumann because I was mentioned as a critic of his:

the series ["Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories"] was the subject of a sermon by Burlington Rabbi Joshua Chasan on Rosh Hashanah [2] and made longtime company contributor Ian Thal cut relations with Bread and Puppet Theater over the paintings and over the fact that the content of the new B&P show The Battle of the Terrorists and the Horrorists[sic][3].

The revision came from an anonymous editor from the IP address 76.19.64.64, which belongs to server that appears to be based in Mount Laurel, New Jersey and is owned by Comcast. The revision is dated February 8, 2008, the week that Bread and Puppet Theater was performing in Boston. While Greg Cook would not publish his series to The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research that included interviews with both Schumann and myself for another day, his preview of the show had already appeared The Boston Phoenix.

Leaving aside the need for proofreading, the article was incomplete in that it spoke about the dispute surrounding Schumann's work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict yet gave scant attention to any of his notable accomplishments (of which are many.) This is not the worst flaw in a Wikipedia, as articles are collaborative endeavours, someone would be expected to eventually fill in the details, however far off into the future "eventually" may be. What caught my eye was not so much that I was mentioned but this particular passage:

Schumann denied any such accusations [of anti-Semitic content], pointing to how his family escaped from Nazi rule when he was 10, accusing his critics of "over-interpreting" his work and saying :I’m not saying that what’s happening in Palestine is the same as what happened in Warsaw...but it's certainly a reminder. [4].

The citation was from Ken Picard's Septemeber 19, 2007 article for Seven Days, "Over the Wall" in which Picard writes:

For his part, Schumann has repeatedly denied the accusations of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial — after all, he and his family fled Nazi Germany when he was 10.

Note that Picard did not specifically state that Schumann claimed to be a refugee from Nazi Germany as the anonymous author from 76.19.64.64 had done. Picard may very well have made a statement that he mistakenly believed to be common knowledge (an error that few, if any, have never made.) However, this is contradicted by other statements made by Schumann, such as in this interview conducted by Rosette Royale that appeared in the March 2, 2006 edition of Real Change News:

I was born in Silesia, which was German. It became Polish in 1945, after the war. It was part of Germany that was given to Poland by the Yalta Conference. Ninety-nine percent of the population of Silesia was made into refugees at the end of the War and we were part of that 99 percent.

Without going too in depth into the complex history of Silesia, one ought note that up until 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, only parts of Silesia had been part of Germany. Of the "Ninety-nine percent of the population" that was deported after the 1945 redrawing of Germany's borders, many of those Germans were settlers who had taken up homes, land, and property from Silesian Poles who had been either assigned to slave labor camps or deported to the General Government area of occupied Poland, or the Silesian Jews who were walled into ghettos or exterminated in death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkeneau, conveniently located in Silesia. Clearly, Schumann's family was a refugee not from Nazi Germany but from the defeat of Nazi Germany.

An article in the August 5, 2007 The New York Times tells a parallel story:

[Schumann] was born in Silesia, now part of Poland, in 1934, the son of a Lutheran schoolmaster. During World War II the family fled to northern Germany, where, as refugees, they lived on scraps gleaned from local farms.

Which indicates that Schumann's family fled from Silesia not due to redrawing of borders but by the advance of Soviet troops or Allied bombing campaigns, not from Nazi Germany, but rather deeper into Nazi Germany. Other articles tell similar stories.

Though I first commented on what I presume to be Picard's error on this blog, I also broached the topic in a letter to the editor which led to a stimulating email exchange with Picard. However, because of my understanding of Wikipedia ethics, I felt constrained from correcting or altering the Peter Schumann article, and instead left a note in the discussion section attached to the article on February 15, 2008:

Obviously, since I am named in this article, it would be inappropriate for me to contribute directly, but I should note that there appears to be a major factual error regarding Schumann's childhood[....]

The points being, 1.) It appears to be an error; and 2.) my understanding of wiki ethics requires that I not touch the article, 3.) somebody else needs to fix it.

However, on March 20, 2008 revision, an anonymous contributor with the IP address of 68.56.17.70 (a server operated by Comcast out of Cherry Hill, New Jersey) to the article changed the text to:

In 2007 Schumann premiered "Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories" in Boston and Burlington, Vermont [2]. The series was inspired by ten days Schumann spent in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, as well as John Hersey's The Wall", a graphic account of the birth, development, and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany during the Jewish Holocaust. Though some members of the Jewish community deemed Schumann's equation of the concentration camps for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories with the concentration camps of the Jews in Nazi Germany "offensive", the general reception to the work was quite positive. Schumann denied accusations of anti-Semitism, emphasizing how his family escaped from Nazi rule in his childhood. [3].

The heading was also changed from "Accusations of anti-semitism" to "Palestine Exhibit." The writer from 68.56.17.70 stated:

I've edited political distortions out of the "Anti-semitic accusations" section, as well as created a section on the Domestic Resurrection Circus, which I can update again soon.

The writer from 68.56.17.70's removal of the "political distortions" included:

a.) repeating a politically sanitized myth about Schumann's childhood and misrepresenting his family as victims of the Nazis, so to deny any criticism that his work may have an anti-Semitic character or in anyway misrepresents the history of the Holocaust;

b.) deleting the names and acts of any of the exhibit's critics and content of their critiques, thus trivializing the criticism;

c.) trivializing concern regarding antisemitism by using scare-quotes around the word "offensive" as if the likening of the Palestinian West Bank to the Warsaw Ghetto were merely impolitic as opposed to a distortion of known facts; and

d.) characterizing the reception of the exhibit as "quite positive" when press coverage from Seven Days, The Burlington Free Press, The Boston Phoenix, and WCAX; blogs such as my own and The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, and Joshua Chasan's letters indicates that the reception in both Boston and Burlington was best described as "contentious."

Essentially, the writer from 68.56.17.70 has engaged in a form of politically motivated vandalism, possibly motivated by some personal affinity for Peter Schumann or Bread and Puppet Theater or an affinity for the causes Schumann espouses, but most certainly not out of an affinity for Wikipedia's mission to be a high quality free encyclopedia. The lesson that can be gleaned is that while parts of Wikipedia may be well policied by the community of editors, it is possible for less frequently visited articles to either carry unintentional distortions and that articles covering particularly contentious subjects might be manipulated by partisans and must read with vigilance .

Notes on the NEJAR interview with Peter Schumann

As noted earlier, Greg Cook interviewed both Peter Schumann and myself regarding Bread and Puppet's recent show at the Boston Center for the Arts and the controversies surrounding his recent work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his email interview of me, excerpts of which appear both on this site and on the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, Cook asked me to respond to some of Schumann's statements.

There were also a series of questions that Cook posed during a face to face conversation on February 1st, which while not transcribed, were thought-provoking and I will attempt to explore these issues as I comment on some of Schumann's other statements. Boldface italics represent Cook's questions; plain italics represent Schumann's responses. The first quotes come from part two of the NEJAR interview:

Well, it’s something that we can’t talk about because it’s so electric. It’s very difficult to even begin a discussion. It seems like you’re consciously going there because of that.

Yeah, I think it’s unfairly so. I think it’s awful that the Western community does not interfere with what Israel’s doing as an occupation force. The Western community does not do anything about it. They don’t even speak up against it. They don’t do anything. They basically serve as the Israeli propaganda for the events there. They give us what the embedded reporters give us from Iraq, which is the picture of the perpetrators.

I'm not certain as to which "Western community" Schumann refers. Given such incidents as the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2002 reports of a "Jenin Massacre" in which hundreds of non-combatants were allegedly slaughtered, was later dispelled as propaganda, it would seem that the largest news agency in the world has for some time been serving as anti-Israeli propaganda. In addition, we can look at the failed attempt to sponsor a boycott of Israel by the National Union of Journalists (a union that serves journalists in both the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.) Neither conform to the picture Schumann presents. Indeed, if we examine the media of most other Western nations, it is quite probable that we will see quite the opposite of a pro-Israeli bias (I haven't done such a study, and clearly, neither has Schumann-- however the Anti-Defamation League has done a study of European attitudes.) Indeed, this claim that "The Western community [...] serve[s] as [...] Israeli propaganda" seems very similar to the old canard of Jewish or Zionist control of the media.

[Your critics]seem to say your work doesn’t represent that the Israelis are doing this to fight terrorism from the Palestinians. And so that by not representing the Israelis’ problems you’re being unfair.

I don’t know. It’s like when you go to any war naturally the guerillas who rise up against occupation forces are to be blamed for atrocities they commit, but that’s not on the same page with the atrocity of the occupation. Take an extreme case like the Nazis in Poland. Naturally what the Polish and the Russian guerillas probably did against the Nazi soldiers was probably pretty horrible, dismembering them or burning them or putting them into cement walls, or whatever they could to, probably, to punish them. Is that on the same page as the very fact of the invasion?

Leaving aside that Schumann is again comparing Israelis with Germans (which he claims not to be doing) he is conflating the distinction between guerilla warfare and terrorism. Guerilla warfare is generally understood to be the tactics used by small mobile armed groups against larger, less mobile military organizations. Terrorism, on the other hand, is violence against civilians in order to pursue ideological or political objectives, often by irregular forces. While both are acts of violence, it is terrorism, not guerrilla warfare, that the Israeli government considers an obstacle to peace with an entity representing Palestine.

However, this conflation of guerilla warfare with terrorism, is just one conflation among many-- such as the likening of the West Bank Wall with the Warsaw Ghetto Wall, that is, the likening of a non-lethal anti-terrorist strategy with a tool of genocide, that first inspired my parting company with Bread and Puppet, criticism from Rabbi Joshua Chasan, criticism by arts writer, Ric Kasini Kadour, and ultimately a breakdown in civility at last year's ArtHop in Burlington, Vermont.

The other disturbing element of this answer is the repeated word "probably" in the phrase, "what the Polish and the Russian guerillas probably did against the Nazi soldiers was probably pretty horrible, dismembering them or burning them or putting them into cement walls." [My emphasis.] No doubt such behavior would be against the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, but rather than state such atrocities did occur, or that there were contemporary reports of such actions, he stated that such acts of sadism probably happened.

There is no ethical excuse for any of this violent dealings and revenging and so on. There isn’t. Ethically this is wrong. But a state always takes exemptions from these ethics. So as the U.S. does. And so does Israel. It’s a fascist democracy just like the U.S. is. And these fascist democracies that are not real democracies, but fake democracies, they do as they wish. They build their ethics with the help of ethics professors as they go. They just have to find the right ethics professors, and they do all the time. They pay enough and so they find another ethics professor. That’s the sad story.

This is an interesting quote because it forces us to ask several questions of Schumann: If there is no ethical excuse for revenge, then why the opposition to the West Bank Wall, which barring a working peace settlement, is the only non-lethal means of short circuiting any perceived cycle of revenge currently on the table? What are the criteria by which the U.S. and Israel are fascist, not real democracies? If that is the case, are the forces against which Israel is defending itself democratic and anti-fascist? What is the model for "real democracy?" How is this fable of "searching for the right ethics professor" different than Schumann's own pronouncements on truth and ethics?

The sad thing is that "Fascism" has become little more than an epithet and that is precisely how Schumann uses the word-- instead of as an analytical tool to describe ideologies or systems of governance. (Umberto Eco has an excellent essay that attempts to restore some meaning to the term.) However, this an on-going problem with Schumann's rhetoric, as evidenced in this quote from the first part of the interview on NEJAR:

[...]as the show shows [...] Guantanamo is the logical result of the prevailing consumerism and capitalism in its shape as it is right now. It’s not illogical, it’s not an aberration, it’s a totally logical result of that. So I’m saying the School of the Americas or Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo are not ‘rotten apples,’ as Bush called them, but are directly philosophically correct, pin-pointable climaxes of the system.

While I would certainly agree with Schumann that the torture and rendition programs are not aberrations to an otherwise functioning system, as they have been, time and time again, demonstrated to be the direct result of government policy, it is absurd to say that the institutions of torture, "secret" prisons, and detention without due process are products of either capitalism or consumerism. Feudal, communist, fascist and tribal societies have all tortured and held prisoners without due process. The phenomenon is unchecked power over human bodies, and as shown by philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Michel Foucault, there is neither a singular rationale nor a singular meaning. Societies always include elements of the societies that precede them. If capitalism uses torture as a tool, it is because it follows and interacts with societies that have used torture as a tool.

Some Additional Excerpts from the NEJAR Interview

Here is some additional material from the interview Greg Cook conducted with me in the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research regarding my criticism of Peter Schumann's presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Holocaust. While Cook and I did have a face to face conversation on the evening of February 1st, the interview was mostly conducted via email on January 25th except for the first question and response which were from a follow-up on February 5th:

NEJAR: Do you really mean to compare Schumann to [Leni] Riefenstahl? That is a powerful charge. Aren't you basically calling him a Nazi?

Thal: I think the picture is far more ambiguous than that. The analogy I make is of how an artist interacts with the world of politics, not of the artist's ideology.

From documentaries and articles I've seen and read about Leni Riefenstahl, the picture I have of her is that of an artist whose work was accomplished and innovative (as is Schumann's) but who enjoys the patronage and association with extremists. In Riefenstahl's case, the extremists were Nazis, in Schumann's case they are Holocaust deniers like Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel or the International Solidarity Movement who support violent terrorism. At the same time Schumann pleads innocence when his association with extremism or the extremist content of his own work is questioned, just as Riefenstahl pleaded that she was just an apolitical filmmaker-- and she did in fact make some good apolitical films early in her career.

Remember: Riefenstahl was not a war criminal. She was a selectively amoral propagandist who could never take ethical responsibility for her art.

Schumann's decision to use misrepresentations of the Holocaust in order to completely demonize Israel and then, depending on the interview, either defend this representation, or state that this was never his intent, is a similar personal moral failing, though lacking the patronage of a powerful nation-state, it's a failing on a much smaller scale.

* * *

NEJAR: Have [your feelings about Bread and Puppet and Peter Schumann] changed at all since a year ago? Or since last fall?

Thal: They solidified further [...] when I discovered his support for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) which uses western activists as human shields to protect arms smuggling operations for terrorists based in Gaza, and when he worked with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) whose official website includes Holocaust Denial materials.

* * *

NEJAR: Clearly, comparing people to Nazis (whether intentional or not) shuts down all discussion.

Thal: False charges of genocide, which is ultimately what using the iconography of the Warsaw Ghetto as a metaphor for the Palestinian West Bank, even by insinuation, only enables genocide and war-crime deniers everywhere-- be they Holocaust deniers in Europe, America, and the Middle-East, or Armenian Genocide deniers in Turkey, Japanese deniers of the Rape of Nanking, or Communist deniers of the atrocities of Lenin, Stalin or Mao.

NEJAR: But the Israeli-Palestinian matter is such an important and dear and tense issue that it seems hard for us to talk about it at all. What's your sense of why it's so difficult for our community to talk about?

Thal: It's difficult because too many of the people with strong opinions are unwilling to deal with the complexity of the situation-- consequently they attempt to impose simplistic schema that are completely inappropriate to the subject matter. There's a refusal to address the role that neighboring states have played in perpetuating the conflict for their own political gain. There's often a refusal to see the role that antisemitism and Arab racism against other minorities in the region have had both as a motivating factor and as window through which the situation is viewed. There's a refusal to see how the Palestinians are violently oppressed by the very political parties that claim to represent them.

NEJAR: What might be some ways to aid in a discussion?

Thal: Research. Learn how to distinguish between well researched history and propagandistic pseudo-history.

* * *

NEJAR: Are you going to see the Bread and Puppet performances at the BCA next month? Or Schumann's new paintings there, which he says are about a young Palestinian man whom he believes was falsely imprisoned by the Israeli government? Will you perform with Bread and Puppet this time around? Ever? How come?

Thal: I'm performing my own show at Willoughby and Baltic in Somerville on February 9th, so I'm rather busy, but even if my schedule were not at issue, there would be both ethical and practical matters.

[...]

Given the content of any of Schumann's work regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seems to come from animus and not from a commitment to truth (even the sort of truth found in allegory or satire) it's not worth my while. The experience the past year has left me with grave doubts regarding his intentions and his sincerity-- and I can't work with an artist whom I can no longer trust. I certainly cannot trust his perceptions of what constitutes "a fair trial." The Israeli courts often decide in favor of Palestinians who sue the government-- what makes this situation special?

Thal contra Schumann: The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research Interviews

As mentioned previously, I was interviewed by Boston Phoenix contributor, Greg Cook for his blog The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research regarding my criticism of Bread and Puppet Theater founder and artistic director, Peter Schumann which began last year after ending my relationship with the troupe.

Cook, though by no means endorsing either my position or Schumann's, did an admirable job of asking both of us difficult questions, many of which I am still pondering.

Cook's series begins with an overview entitled "Peter Schumann's Israeli-Palestinian problem?" and continues with a two part interview with Schumann beginning here and ending here. The series concludes with an interview Cook conducted with me via email.

As I digest the contents of Cook's interview with Schumann, I may decide to comment further. However, as of this writing, I wish to note that both Cook and I (largely at Cook's suggestion, though it seems to be keeping in tune with my general practice) have cross-linked and each other's blogs to such a degree. The result, is a potential in hypertext rarely seen exercised in the blogosphere.

Going to Hell with Bread and Puppet

Greg Cook previews Bread and Puppet Theater's Divine Reality Comedy in this week's Boston Phoenix. The show, by coincidence, will be running the same weekend as my own show at Willoughby and Baltic. Cook conducted an interview with me regarding the controversies surrounding last year's show and Peter Schumann's exhibition of Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories both here in Boston and in Burlington, Vermont after his deadline. The interview will appear elsewhere in the near future.

[N.B. Part One of the interview appears here on the NEJAR website, Part Two appears here.]

Given the word count limitations that editors must always impose upon their writers, Cook's preview is very thorough in that it covers both the current show and last year's controversies. Interestingly enough, Schumann stated to Cook that “[it] wasn’t my intent [to equate Israelis with Nazis]” as he was so interpreted at the last February, he continued to exhibit the work in question this past autumn despite realizing that he “may have unnecessarily hurt some people’s feelings.”

The stage show is said to be about the United States' "extraordinary rendition" and torture programs with allusions to Dante's Inferno (a promising concept) but the accompanying visual art exhibit is going to be about "one young Palestinian man who he believes was falsely imprisoned by the Israeli government." Given how last year's stage show was advertised to both the players and the public as being about the United States' war in Iraq, yet, once we we showed up for reherasals, turned out to be about Israel and Palestine, I am left to wonder what show will really be seen by audiences.

Cook interviewed Schumann once before for his New England Journal of Aesthetic Research.

The Wall has Two Sides in Burlington

I was naîve to assume the story of the controversy surrounding the exhibition of Peter Schumann's "Independence Paintings" had come to an end, as I just ran across some more references to it.

I'm not sure how this escaped my notice for over a month but my letter to the editor was published in Seven Days, in it I comment on journalist Ken Picard's article, "Over the Wall" (some of my comments appeared in an earlier blog entry.) In the interim, Picard and I had a civil email exchange where we discussed our differing views on how stories of this complexity should be ideally covered. Ultimately, I think our biggest differences owed to his being concerned with his being a working journalist who has to worry about deadlines and space constraints, while I am a blogger and an artist who doesn't think of such things as often.

Other responses to the story can be read here. That said, I do think his follow-up story, "The Wall has Two Sides" is a very well done story that juxtaposes the reactions of two Vermonters, one of Jewish, and one of Palestinian Arab descent to the exhibition.

KEY ISSUES IGNORED

While Ken Picard’s story, “Over the Wall,” was the most comprehensive story to appear in the Burlington press regarding the controversy surrounding Peter Schumann’s “Independence Paintings” at this year’s Art Hop, it failed to address the key issues of the debate.

The three most vocal critics of the piece and its exhibition — Rabbi Joshua Chasan, Ric Kasini Kadour and I — have never stated any opposition to art representing the Palestinian plight, nor have we advocated censorship. Our position was that the work, by appropriating imagery of the Holocaust in a manner that we found intellectually dishonest, amounted to soft-core Holocaust denial (in terms of minimalizing or trivializing the genocide) and thus, anti-Semitism.

Mr. Kadour’s essay asked that the work be presented in a context where that would be clear. Rabbi Chasan’s letters to Art Hop’s organizers were to ask them to consider the ethical implications of the exhibit, and his letter to his fellow clergy was to ask them to speak their consciences (Rabbi Chasan’s letters have been published on my blog). My own writings explained in explicit detail why the work should be regarded as anti-Semitic. I do not charge anti-Semitism on a whim.

At no point did any of us advocate censorship. We have only attempted to follow bad speech with good speech. While it is sad that would-be censors, unable to articulate their own criticism, attempt to co-opt a cause that does not call for censorship, it is worse when those who court controversy misrepresent all of their critics as censors. I encourage members of the community to work with Art Hop organizers to evaluate what went wrong so that trust can be re-established.

That said, the issue of Holocaust denial is barely addressed in the article, and opinions that have little basis in fact are given equal footing with those that are well researched and well thought out.

Furthermore, Bob Greene and Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) can deny that they advocate anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial all they wish, but, as Chasan, Kadour and I have all pointed out, a simple visit to their website contradicts such denials. Picard could have and should have visited the website and reported on what he saw there, as I did. A libel is only a libel if it has no basis in fact. Labeling me a “motherfucker,” as Greene has done, does not change that.

That Schumann and VTJP have chosen to confuse issues by injecting false analogies with the Holocaust into any discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict shows that they lack the moral seriousness to discuss the facts of the conflict, the causes, their history, and any possible solutions in an honest and thoughtful manner. They simply have no regard for historical truth.

The reports of the September 8 presentation make an unambiguous case that civil discussion has broken down, and, while there are guilty parties of varying political affiliations, the fault originates with those who inject divisiveness and dishonesty when there should be truthful reasoned dialogue. Ugly statements breed ugly statements.

Ian Thal
SOMERVILLE, MA

Look Ma! I'm part of the Curriculum!

While glancing at technorati, (a search engine for the blogosphere for those of you who are new to blogs) I discovered that my earlier entry, "Breaking with Bread and Puppet" is being read by a class in the Department of Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London. The class, which has set up its own blog is investigating the techniques and history of Bread and Puppet Theater with the aim of having students attempt to use similar methods to create their own work over the course of the semester. The professors are Nesreen Hussein and Matthew Cohen.

Despite my misgivings with what I view as Peter Schumann's forays into antisemitism and trivialization of the Holocaust, I have always thought there was great artistic value to his better works, both in techniques and content-- and I certainly see a legitimate need for theatre artists in training to become familiar with this sort of work. Had I not, I would not have worked with the troupe for as long as I did. I will be curious about how the class reacts to my criticism of the work they are attempting to emulate.

Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont: The End?

Frequent readers of this blog will have noticed the attention I have been giving to a controversy in Burlington, Vermont regarding the exhibition of Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories, mural sized collage of painting and text by Bread and Puppet Theater founder, Peter Schumann. My involvement with the story began with my writing an account of my own break with Bread and Puppet over the exhibition of just that particular work.

The story, at least in Burlington, seems to have drawn itself to a close though there are a few developments that I feel the need to comment upon.

Sally Pollak, in an article in the Burlington Free Press provided both an account of how the piece had come to be exhibited and of the fallout in Burlington. The exhibition was brokered by Marc Estrin (whose defense of the exhibition as "appropriate" I responded to here) working with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, a group that hosts anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material on their website.

I have, like both Chasan and Kadour already noted the anti-Israeli and Holocaust denial material on the VTJP website, to which Bob Greene, a spokesperson for representatives VTJP has stated to Ken Picard in Seven Days:

“We’ve been called a thinly disguised hate group and anti-Semites, despite the fact that a quarter of our regularly attending members are Jewish, including one who escaped Hitler, [....] These are dangerous, ugly libels. If we were a group that had money or made money, we’d sue these motherfuckers.”

Greene and VTJP can deny that they advocate antisemitism or Holocaust denial all they wish, but as Chasan, Kadour, and I have all pointed out, a simple visit to their website contradicts such denials. A libel is only a libel if it has no basis in fact. Labeling me a "motherfucker," as Greene has done, does not change that.

While the September 19 Seven Days piece by Ken Picard, framed the story as one between political art and censorship (despite the fact that many of the most vocal critics of the exhibit, Rabbi Joshua Chasan, Ric Kasini Kadour, and I never called for censorship) Pollak's piece was far more nuanced, identifying the problem as the fact that a group with no connection to the arts community, sponsoring an exhibition for political purposes, to quote Yoram Samets in the Pollak article:

"It is our understanding that the Art Hop is an open community opportunity for artists to display their work and for the community to get involved, [...] In this case, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel hijacked the venue for their political agenda. What we have here for the first time is the Art Hop being used by a political organization to further their point of view."

However, despite this, rather than discuss ways to prevent Art Hop from being hijacked in the future by a political organization, State Senator Hinda Miller, as reported Picard, has assembled a coalition to "go after" Art Hop's funding (the Pollak piece describes it as a petition "to overhaul policies and procedures at the annual arts celebration.") The artists, including those highly critical of Schumann's work have reason for concern: art festivals, like the larger Open Studios weekends we have in the Boston metropolitan area thrive on free expression-- and indeed, a review process unless highly streamlined, is cost prohibitive due to need for staffing. The fear that any potentially controversial artwork could be dropped from Art Hop is a real one that must be addressed. At the same time, statements by Carlos Hasse, Executive Director of the South End Arts and Business Association, which sponsors Art Hop are clear that there is a willingness to reevaluate its processes and listen to community concerns. The question is: can this be done without endangering artistic freedom in Burlington, Vermont?

If we value freedom of speech, we must oppose censorship, but rather than grit our teeth when ideas with which we disagree are given voice, we should instead explain why those ideas are wrong and why ours are better. This is the practice, not of censorship, but of following bad speech with good, and this is what I have attempted to do in my own critique of Schumann's work and of his apologists.

That said, my critique of press coverage of this event is over the most central issue: what is the truth-value of the art in question? Journalism, which by nature, reports on current events, is often at a failure to account for historical context. Both Picard and Pollak do a good job of identifying the participants in the controversy and what they have to say about one another's positions, but not about the truthfulness of the claims. After all, is not the value of political art the ability to tell truth to power?

Schumann and VTJP have chosen to confuse issues by injecting false analogies with the Holocaust into any discussion of the
Arab-Israeli conflict shows that they lack the moral seriousness to discuss the facts of the conflict, the causes, their history, and any possible solutions in an honest and thoughtful manner-- they simply have no regard for historical truth. The reports of the September 8th presentation make an unambiguous case that civil discussion has broken down, and while there are guilty parties of varying political affiliations, the fault originates with those who inject divisiveness and dishonesty when there should be truthful, reasoned, dialogue. Ugly statements breed ugly statements.

Schumann chose to juxtapose the Warsaw Ghetto with the West Bank Wall in a single piece of art (note that this was not a decision made by the Palestinian artists with whom he worked in Beit Sahour) and it seems to be understood by both his supporters and his critics (nearly everyone except for him) as a statement of near equivalence. The system of ghettos Germany established in the General Government of Poland killed five- to six-hundred-thousand Jews through engineered concentration, overcrowding and famine over a period of two years. A statement of equivalence is either to falsely charge Israel with genocide in the West Bank (where is the evidence?) or to claim that the Warsaw Ghetto was merely a place of high unemployment and humiliating checkpoints (as Schumann described the West Bank in his February presentation at the Boston Center for the Arts.) The Warsaw Ghetto killed over one-hundred thousand, the West Bank Wall, despite some of its worst effects, has prevented terrorist attacks on Israel, eliminated the need for IDF reprisals-- it has saved lives, both Israeli and Palestinian and permitted rebuilding in Palestinian communities-- but neither Schumann nor VTJP are concerned about that.

In the meantime I should note that Pollak did not repeat Picard's erroneous report that Schumann's family were refugees from the Nazis. I have mentioned this issue with Picard via email, and as Picard did not state he was in error when I brought it to his attention, I have to assume that this was an instance of Schumann misrepresenting himself in order to deflect criticism.