The Gilded Cage Part 1 – Introduction This article investigates how the Dalai Lama’s government in exile exhibits all ‘Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism.’ (1) The article will be published in sections over the next few weeks. Before reading the article it is vital that the reader understands that Dorje Shugden practitioners are not opposed to Tibetan independence, nor are they working for or paid by the Chinese government. Such allegations have been made by the Dalai Lama and his followers and they are quite simply lies. Western and Tibetan Dorje Shugden practitioners are Buddhists who share a common Dharma protector, Dorje Shugden, and simply wish to be allowed to follow this practice freely and without prejudice from others. The article will refer to the complex worldwide political net that links the Dalai Lama and the exiled community to the rest of the world; this net needs to be thoroughly investigated in order for the true nature of the Dalai Lama’s system of governance to be uncovered. The motivation for doing this is to illustrate how the exiled government has arrived at the position of having full and undemocratic control over the exile community, a power which they frequently abuse. The hope is that articles like this will uncover how the CTA abuse their power; help to end the persecution of Shugden practitioners and enable the exile community to move towards a more democratic system of governance. This article will show that the Dalai Lama and CTA have done a great deal to harm the Tibetan cause and have done little to develop independent economic stability within the exiled community. The policy of the Dalai Lama’s government in exile has been to keep a strong sense of Tibetan nationalism alive, ostensibly because this serves as a powerful weapon in the struggle for Tibetan independence. This drive for Nationalism and preservation of ancient traditions is perfectly illustrated in the Central Tibetan Administration’s (CTA) ‘Charter of the Tibetans in Exile.’ 1991, which states it has a: ‘system of government, in order that the Tibetan people in exile be able to preserve their ancient traditions of spiritual and temporal life, unique to the Tibetans.’ (2) Whilst Nationalism can be a powerful force enabling countries to achieve their goal; it can also be a tool of manipulation by the leadership of a group or nation and can lead to grave violence, as in the development of the Nazi Party. It can serve as a way for a government to control their country’s behaviour and restrict the growth of democracy: this form of Nationalism is better known as Fascism. ‘Fascism is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism that came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.’ (3) The CTA manipulates the exiled community’s strong sense of Nationalism and traps the people in an ancient structure of hierarchy, corruption and subservience. The structure of society in Tibet was that of a theocratic despotism; a form of government in which a religious group rules with absolute power. Earlier visitors to Tibet commented on this theocratic despotism: In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the “intolerable tyranny of monks” and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama’s rule as “an engine of oppression.” At about that time, another English traveller, Captain W.F.T. O’Connor, observed that “the great landowners and the priests… exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal.” (4) This oppressive, despotic dominion is not the Tibet that is promoted by the Dalai Lama of course, who describes Tibet before the Chinese occupation thus: “The pervasive influence of Buddhism,” in Tibet, “amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment.” This unrealistic ‘Shangri-La’ image of Tibet serves to reinforce the strong Nationalistic feelings of the exiled community, and to help market the Tibetan cause to the West. Of course it is appropriate that Tibet should be supported in its struggle against Chinese occupation by the West, but fabricating such a distorted view of the real nature of Tibetan society has not in the end served the exiled community well. The commonly-held view that Tibetans are brimming with love and compassion and are incapable of prejudice, abuse, discrimination and so on, stems primarily from the Tibetan Shangri-la myth. Much has been written about this myth and how it’s unrealistic and Orientalist notions of Tibet and Tibetans have been more harmful than good. As Tenzing Sonam says in A Tibet of the Mind: ‘Our sense of self-importance and moral superiority was also shaped by the growing fascination of the West with Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, and its expectation of what Tibetans were supposed to represent as a people. By this measure, we were an almost otherworldly race, spiritually evolved, naturally compassionate, peace-loving and with the good of all sentient beings always at heart. We began to take this idealised view of ourselves seriously, and remade our history in its image. The wars we had fought in the past with our neighbours, the factional infighting, the court intrigues and political assassinations, the system of cruel punishments sometimes meted out by the state, the banditry that was commonplace in many parts of the country, even the fact that many thousands of Tibetans had not so long ago taken up arms against the Chinese invasion - these were all airbrushed out in favour of a reinterpretation of Tibet as a mythical Buddhist land of peace and harmony, governed by compassion and inhabited by the morally upright and ethically pure.’ (5) The Dalai Lama and CTA have been able to use the ancient system of theocratic despotism in Tibet, together with the understandably strong nationalistic tendencies that occur in any exiled community, and the ‘sense of self-importance and moral superiority,’ created by the Shangri-La myth to create and sustain a government that has many of the features of Fascist governments. This will be clearly illustrated over the coming weeks using Dr. Lawrence Britt’s ‘Fourteen Defining Characteristics of Fascism.’ (5) Dr. Britt examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes and found 14 defining characteristics common to each. It will become clear that the CTA under the Dalai Lama has all 14 of these characteristics. 1. rense/general37/char.htm 2. Central Tibetan Administration Charter Of Tibetans- in-Exile (1991 Version) tibet.net/about-cta/constitution/ 3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism 4. michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html 5. huffingtonpost.co.uk/a…/dalai-lama_b_3851112.html
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 10:41:49 +0000
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