Jamal Khashoggi is declared "The person of year" according to the Time magazine.
You read about it and you think: Khashoggi - who is he?
Khashoggi is the journalist who was born in Saudi Arabia. In September, 2017 he went to the United States where he was conducting a column in Washington Post.
But the United States is probably the country with the most journalists - when compared to the number of journalists in other countries.
The one newspaperman of very large number of journalists.
Who heard about the journalist Khashoggi prior to sad events? I will assume, that rather not many people heard about him.
What did he write about? Yes, all - about the same - is about abuses, about corruption, about an arbitrariness of an uncontrolled power. All these themes have the right for existence since the beginning of history of mankind.
It is asked: for what to kill him? It was much simpler not to pay attention to him. Or, - for some individual situations, - to give traditional, meaningless answers to publications by Khashoggi.
But that's the thing. Not such is the absolute uncontrolled power. She is jealous, sensitive, vindictive, spiteful. She's "in a special position." "On a goat" you will not drive up to her.
She watches changes of borders of her control.
If borders of her control extend or remain stable, then she either rejoices or shows certain neutrality.
At hints on reduction of a controlling "area", she is filling with aggressive badly controlled artful energy.
However, it is unlikely Khashoggi's activity created threat for the sphere of control of the absolute power. He could write the articles twenty five more years. Also it is not known, there would be for these twenty five years any changes. And if they would occurre, so the Khashoggi's articles would be responsible for such changes.
In this point hides a certain mystery that characterize despotic power - a despotic power of this kind, which did not undergo considerable influence of the European humanistic culture, values of the European education, the European political history. The word "European" in this case means not territorial, but conceptual and value belonging.
But certain "secrets" are also in modern western, European culture. For example, notion "we". "We", - Khashoggi thought, going for documents, needed for marriage registration. "He", - those, who waited for him, thought. There is a certain difference between concepts "we" and "he". Thin a matter ...
"The situation" with Khashoggi may be other points of view. For example, in some publications we can meet the point of view that the managed and the managers are in a certain harmony, they "correspond" to each other. Management methods are also adequate to the situation. If to look at a situation from this point of view, then Khashoggi was transformed, living in the "western" society, stopped being that person, whom he, perhaps, was earlier, - the "obedient" "operated" participant of a certain public process.
Whichever way you look at "the situation" with Khashoggi, one gets the impression: that he, - to the time of the sad events that had happened to him, - he was able to think, analyze, draw conclusions, was able to write, had the courage to speak.
Perhaps, there are bases to call him the cultural person in the "western" sense of a word ...
December 11, 2018 18:41
Translation from Russian into English: December 11, 2018 19:49.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Монолог о Джамале Хашогги'.