Liberal Condemning of
Charlie Hebdo Killings Offers Little
Civilising Solace
By John Hilley
January 08, 2015 "ICH"
- Very sad thoughts with the victims and
families of the Charlie Hebdo killings in
Paris.
Whatever might be claimed about the merit or
effect of such journalistic views and images
- mocking, controversial, satirical,
provocative, incendiary, blasphemous,
iconoclastic, defiant or otherwise - there
is not the slightest moral justification for
such violence or the murder of those who
publish such things.
Yet, any measured observation of that
violence must be seen against the much
greater level of violence and murder
perpetrated by the states living under such
attacks.
Many, Muslims and non-Muslims, will have
made the essential point that these killers
are no more representative of Islam than the
Ku Klux Klan is of Christianity. Many
across the Islamic world have condemned the
Paris deaths.
Which raises the perennial question: why do
Muslims, once again,
feel so compelled to make such defensive
appeals?
Largely out of basic humanity. But,
also, because a lot of liberal empathy for
socially besieged Muslims and 'moderate
Islam' is still laced with false dichotomies
and misplaced loyalty.
The problem with much liberal 'Je Suis
Charlie' solidarity is not its condemnation
of violent jihadism, or cherishing of free
speech. It's that such
expression still relies on flawed
identifications with 'enlightened' entities
like 'our' states and their 'civilising'
status.
Although well motivated,
Owen Jones, for example, comes close to
such a blanket label in this tweet:
Sickening act of mass
murder in Paris. People from all
communities will be repulsed by this
atrocity. Solidarity with France.
All fair and honourable
comment on the terrible act and widespread
response. But why any particular solidarity
with France?
Thomas Piketty has just refused the
Legion of Honour, insisting that the French
state has no such validity in determining
who or what is honourable. Why isn't Jones
similarly specific over who deserves such
empathy?
Or consider, more problematically,
this reading from Channel 4's
Jon Snow:
Paris: brutal clash of
civilisations: Europe's belief in
freedom of expression vs those for whom
death is a weapon in defending their
beliefs.
Is this really a 'clash of
civilisations'? How did Snow arrive at this
generic conceit of 'Europe's belief' in
anything?
And if we are to speak of Europe as such an
entity, what of its own dark record of
murderous violence?
One could more accurately characterise
Europe's part in Western/Nato invasions,
occupations and imperialist plundering as
distinctly anti-civilising: 'those for whom
death is a weapon in defending their
geopolitical interests, rather than
beliefs.'
Just think, past and
present, of France's own militarist
atrocities and self-serving interventions in
Algeria, Indo-China, Afghanistan,
Libya, Syria, Mali and other parts of
Africa. Indeed,
two of the Paris suspects are reported
to have returned from jihadist service in
Syria, the very same theatre of
appalling violence the French state have
been so wilfully fuelling.
While much of the liberal political class
and media make lofty proclamations and pitch
the Paris killings as a red line
issue over free speech, they have virtually
nothing equivalent, or worse, to say about
such states crossing the 'civilisational'
line into mass and sustained terrorism.
All of which perfectly shields the
hypocritical condemnations and 'we will
defend democracy' breast-beating of
Hollande, Cameron and Obama. Where are all
the searing media comments on their
suitability to invoke the values of life and
liberty?
This indulgence also provides liberal space
for the right's poisonous claim that Western
states are still soft on Islam. Thus on
Channel 4 News was war hawk and neocon
Douglas Murray allowed unopposed room to
bewail the 'attack on Western freedoms' and
declare that "terrorism works".
Likewise, in condemning the killers and
urging liberal defence of free speech, a
Guardian editorial can muster only token
words on the gravity of Western crimes:
Poverty and
discrimination at home may create
fertile conditions for the spread of
extremism, and western misadventures
abroad can certainly inflame the risks.
Those last nine words say
more about the Guardian's own
feeble mitigations, pandering to power and
failure of brave expression than any
Voltarian defence of untrammelled speech.
Appalled by the Paris killings,
Jon Snow indulges in even
more liberal hubris:
Make no mistake, this is
a landmark moment in the affairs of man.
Can you imagine
Snow offering similar enunciations over the
West's mass slaughter of Iraq, Israel's
grotesque crimes in Gaza, or the sustained killing
of Afghan civilians by Nato forces?
For Snow and much of the liberal media, men
in jihadist garb killing journalists is
barbaric, while men in suits, ordering
others in uniform to mass murder and maim
millions of innocents has, seemingly, no
such 'landmark' significance.
None of which ultimately detracts from the
personal responsibility of
those who unleashed this wicked killing in
Paris. Their actions are as
inhumanely futile in closing down real
democratic speech as they are in furthering
or illuminating Islam.
And, as ever, such acts only provide the
purveyors of 'civilising' state violence
even greater powers of control, surveillance
and repression of serious speech,
alongside the vitally extended freedom to
inflict even more
militarist aggression across the planet.
The mark of a truly courageous media is not
its willingness to reproduce more caustic
cartoons or proclaim defiant words
of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo. It's that
media's readiness to condemn and indict the
'civilising' politicians and states
responsible for even greater acts of
barbarous violence.
John blogs at
Zenpolitics
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