Submitted by Pachamama
The French have responded to last week’s attacks with a generalized crackdown. There are more than 10,000 soldiers in the streets. They have arrested 54 on specious charges of defending or glorifying terrorism and promoting hate. Included in this group is the ‘infamous’ comedienne, satirists Dieudonne. What irony! As western media continues with its near wall to wall coverage there are underlying questions which will never be asked or answered.
A few of these must be aimed at Charlie Hebdo itself. Was Charlie Hebdo a racist organization, a promoter of hate ‘speech’? Was the left of centre, Charlie Hebdo, a supporter of establishment White liberalism and colonial notions, it should have been opposing?
Given that the Francophone world is dominantly Black. Given that the behaviors of the White liberal classes has always been predicated on the rightness of Whiteness, could Charlie Hebdo and other French White liberals be serving to assure the conservatives that people of colour will find no refuse on the left, any part thereof?
Last week we approached the wanton murder of dozens and injury to many more in Paris largely within an international context. This week, we will deal with the issue from a French domestic and regional, European, perspective. We will contend that within France and throughout Europe there has been, for many years, a strong and rising anti-Semetism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-Black, neo-Nazi and xenophobic social tendencies. Politically, whether on the left or the right there is a common thread uniting the dominant political forces, of all stripes, on these issues. They differ only by degree.
These issues are important for countries which may see Europe as potential markets for tourism. The dynamics of race and other bordering issues are likely to play a role in customer decision making and may therefore have implications for strategic marketing. Certainly, ‘the empire of chaos’ which has been deliberately created by the Western powers makes all calculations infinitely worse. So much so, local projections which do not consider this measurement maybe of little validity. Maybe all methods of making estimates are useless when confronted with current levels of near complete disorder and confusion as engineered in Western capitals.
The reports that Charlie Hedbo confronts everybody, with the same zeal, may not necessarily mean they best represent egalitarianism. The fact that French assert a right to say anything does not means there is no need for a ‘moral centre’. Indeed Charlie Hedbo fired a cartoonist, in 2009, for anti-Semitic depictions. In doing so they displayed a double standard viz a viz Islam. It shows that no perceived right is absolute, lacks a converse responsibility. But their free speech rights lack balance when it comes to Islam. To Black people. To people of colour. To the Roma peoples. These ‘inconsistencies’ are being made law as a result of this French 9/11. The France seems intent on using these recent events as reasons to change the nature of the Republic.
The emergence of this new and virulent reactionary France was formalized by the former President Nicholas Sarkozy. Similarly, neo-Nazi and other far right political movements have cotermeniously emerged all across Europe. Others have arisen from their slumber and are attracting larger numbers of avid adherents. These are beneficiaries of the attacks and the current tense environment. Sarkozy’s policies were largely reinforced by current President Francois Hollande, of the Socialist Party. As an indication of the new status quo, it was made illegal, in several European countries, to deny the Jewish Holocaust, even as an academician. Indeed Charlie Hedho had oftentimes provoked the ire of European Jewry by mocking this curtailment of what they deemed to be a basic freedom of expression.
The French political left tends to see current circumstances as a repeat of the mini revolution of May 1968. This time the crisis at the heart of the body politic is engendered by a perception of the failure of capitalism. It seemingly lacks a visible alternative, a way out of a declining economy, a scarcity of resources, rising levels of White poverty. When resources are scare is the perfect circumstance for the rise of the social maladies we described above. Enter, a few terrorists, in the name of Islam to, like a match, ignite an already volatile domestic, European wide, economic time bomb.
It was Sarkozy who gave blind support to every move by Washington and Tel Aviv. Most of this was aimed at the Muslim world. But no provocation, regardless to how severe, should be responded to by violence, especially in the name of the One who claims to be the Big Peacemaker. In these circumstances the castigation of deities, the inconsequentiality of such acts, the dismissal of the feelings of many, can only be responded to by civil actions, diplomatic actions, the use of soft power.
Sarkozy’s war on Islam extended to the manner of dress. France made it illegal for Muslim women to wear burkas, hijabs and niqabs. In a population largely from Algeria, Tunisia and other North African and Middle Eastern countries, comprising 10% , Sarkozy found it necessary to limit the number of Mosques being built with Saudi and Qatari money. France needed Arab money to grow its economy but the proliferation of Mosques had to be restricted, in the operations of ‘liberal’ laws. That is free speech for yuh. Maybe free speech is not so costless after all.
But the situation is even more complex. While the population of France, from Muslim majority countries, is growing, most of whom are secular, the Jews are the ones who are leaving France in ever growing numbers. This is a direct response to the evidence of a creeping anti-Semetism, anti-immigrant sentiment, which commands official acceptance. It surely does not help, French Jews, when Hollande, in a significant policy change, decided to recognize Palestine, as a state, above the strenuous objections of Israel, of course. We should look out for a change in this very recent policy.
We have established that France has been at war, either direct or indirectly through agents. Once France decided to go to war it can’t then decide where the battle is fought. That is the nature of war. France has no power to control vicious forces once released into the ether to destroy other countries. So the war has come home to the French. Of course, there is to be a difference in the moral, legal justifications of war doctrine. On one side it is a just war, on the other it maybe seen as terrorism or state sponsorship of such. Even when the powerful do what it now admits to be a ‘mistake’ special protections must be extended with an aim of achieving victor’s justice.
The Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Whites (PEGIDA) started in Dresden, Germany a few years ago represents only one of the new anti-multiculturalists of the far right but makes Marine La Pen’s Front Nationale look mild by comparison. These are the the political machinations that are growing amongst the mainly White dispossessed in Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall has also seen their most banal representation in Russian, making a nonsense of 70 years of communist dogma. Large numbers of Whites in Europe, all of Europe, especially amongst the underclasses are looking inward and the Age of Austerity supports such movements.
The Minister of Justice in France, a women of unmistakable African phenotype was called a monkey and derided in public, a few years ago, in blatant expressions of racism. She was caricatured in popular media in a fashion not unlike the ‘left leaners’ who conveniently believe that images are merely for banter. But we know well that images are editorial expressions, not just drawings. That a former colonial power can now give credence to institutional hatred against the people who they invaded and plundered, now citizens of this mother country, suggests a deepening crisis.
After 9/11 in the US a raft of previously prepared laws were hurriedly passed. These laws gave unprecedented powers to the an alphabet soup of security agencies. Once these new powers were given it is highly unlikely that they would ever be reversed. They spawned the expansion of the military industrial complex which now employs 30 million people. 25% of the population of working age. This is the very nature of the beast. Similar calls are being echoed in continental Europe. In Britain, the chief spy appears to be using this barbarous act to increase the intrusion on what remains of the type of civil liberties, as perceived, and at the heart of this incident.
It is difficult to see how these events could help ordinary French citizens. It is definitely not in the interests of Islam, in the main. It can’t be in the longer term interests of the governing socialist party. However, if there are those who believe that circumstances are right for a return of the 1930’s and 1940’s there maybe some benefit. If a government feels it has no response to the needs of its people a distraction like this maybe of some immediate benefit. If relations between DASH and its sponsorers have been frayed recently they may have some benefit in staging these events. Indeed, it was DASH which is reported to have claimed immediate responsibility.
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