France

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Ed’s Note: Following publication of this article, The Conseil d’Etat (State Council), France’s highest administrative court, ruled that burkini bans were “strictly illegal”

France is enhancing its reputation as a racist country. The mayor in Cannes has banned the use of the burkini on its public beaches. Other French cities have followed suit and there is some talk about Quebec doing the same. Everyone knows that adopting such a ban in Quebec would be disastrous.

It’s time to fully discuss why.

The burkini is in essence a full body wetsuit with a head and neck covering and sometimes a sort of over dress. The arguments in favor of such bans in France have been those of secularism, anti-terrorism and ironically, “good morals.” Sadly, these bans only serve to alienate Muslims and encourage the kind of behavior in many non-Muslims that could only be called immoral.

One Montreal lifeguard described the complaints she got when women came to the public pool in burkinis.

Many whiners would claim the burkini wasn’t a real swimsuit and that Muslim women were swimming in their dirty pajamas. The complainers, the most vocal of whom were white middle aged men and seniors, would argue that if Muslim women could wear it to swim, it would encourage others to wear whatever they wanted to the pool. She described one incident she witnessed at a pool in Ville Saint Laurent where one such man spat on a woman wearing a burkini and told her to

“Leave and don’t come back, Dirty Arab!”

When officials at the pool confronted the man and told him to leave, pointing that the first rule of pool use was that it was a safe and respectful environment, he claimed that spitting on her was ok because the woman was already dirty.

This kind of behavior is only going to increase if a burkini ban is imposed as bigots will see such a law as carte blanche to continue to express their hate. Fortunately, Quebec and Canada have laws against imposing a ban like those in France and any such ban would surely be challenged in the courts the moment the government would try to enforce it.

burkini underwater

First, we have the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is part of the Canadian Constitution and is therefore among the highest, most entrenched laws in Canada.

The Charter not only guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, but also the right “to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability” (my underlines).

The law applies to any and all actions by the government and anyone acting on the government’s behalf. If a law is successfully challenged under the Canadian Charter, the courts will strike it down or keep it in place to avoid chaos, thus giving the government a chance to enact another law that better conforms to the Charter.

The Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms also has protections against the laws like burkini bans.

The Quebec Charter is considered a quasi-constitutional law, meaning that though it’s not entrenched in the constitution and was enacted like any other law, it is considered one of the highest laws in the province and is enforced as such. Unlike the Canadian Charter, the Quebec Charter applies not only to the government and anyone acting on its behalf, but also to private parties.

The Quebec Charter guarantees “freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of opinion, freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association.” It also guarantees freedom from discrimination, distinction, and exclusion based on race, colour, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age except as provided by law, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition, a handicap. Since the burkini is an expression of one’s faith and culture, the right to wear it would certainly be protected under the Quebec Charter, which means that the government and any private establishment that would bar women wearing it would be breaking the law.

Whenever bans of anything religious are brought up, there is always someone who raises a secularist feminist argument. They’ll claim that such bans are good for women because they’ll free them from dress codes that oppress them.

The problem is that bans like these don’t free women.

They rob women of their sense of agency.

If a faith or culture, be it strict Islam, Mormonism, or Satmar Judaism, for example, forbids women from doing anything outside the home without being covered from head to toe, any law that keeps them from engaging in activities in those coverings is going to hold them back and make them more reluctant to participate in secular society, not less.

Instead of shaming women for dressing in a way that their faith or culture dictates, we should be expressing friendly curiosity and a sense of welcome.

A woman who feels safe taking a swim in a public pool in a burkini will feel safe going to a library to maybe pick up a copy of The Feminine Mystique, and maybe one day take a self-defense course (if she hasn’t already done these things).

Whether a woman is covered up of her own free will or under the pressure from an abusive family or religious leader is none of anyone’s business unless her safety and the safety of her children (if any) are in jeopardy. The only thing we can do is make sure that all women feel safe enough to make their own choices about their bodies, whether that choice includes remaining covered up or not.

Banning the burkini would only exacerbate tensions between secular society and Muslims in Quebec. After the disaster of the proposed Secular Charter, now is a time to heal rifts, not make them worse.

* Images via WikiMedia Commons

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As night fell in France, sighs of relief resonated through the French political class. The “Republican Front”– put together by the center-right and center-left coalitions — had saved the day.

Not more than a few minutes after the results filtered in and after the last fateful prayers were made, pundits both from the left and the right were quick to claim credit for the magical solution that had salvaged French democracy and French republicanism from the totalitarian threat of the Front National.  A cacophony then ensued, a mix of apologies made by the French political elite, a promise to change fundamentally the way things were done and politics in general, while at the same time offering no clues whatsoever to how that might be done.

One of the crispiest mea culpas of the night came from none other than Emmanuel Valls, the current socialist prime minister of France. In his allocation he said, as he has said at every occasion in the past week, that “there would be a radical change in French politics and especially within the Socialist Party.” The question that must be asked is what change does “change” entail?

Front National leader Marie Le Pen (image: Al Jazeera)
Front National leader Marie Le Pen (image: Al Jazeera)

Looking at the past decade of French politics, from Chirac to the 2007 election that put Sarkozy in l’Élysée to the Valls government, the difference in policy between the three governments, between “center-right” and “center-left” are almost indistinguishable. The past 15 years of French political life has been dominated by the securitarian psychosis.

Securitarinism is a socio-pyschological defense mechanism that uses the façade of security to hide a deep sectarian withdrawal that has been occurring within the prominently white de-industrialized communities of France. The withdrawal is a direct consequence of the disorientation that successive brutal reforms, carried out by both the political left and the political right, have caused. They have eroded the neuralgic center and the symbolic cartography that French working class communities had of themselves and their immediate environment.

There’s a startling correlation between the topology of the deindustrialization processes and the topology of the growth of the FN vote share. The French northern region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais is the prefect example of this distressing pattern. Once a working-class bastion of the French left with traditionally strong workers movements, it was hit hard by the French industrial down-turn and outsourcing. Today, it is the region where the FN has seen its most spectacular implementation.

The sectarian withdrawal that has occurred in many traditional working class communities in France isn’t solely the result of the economic downturn or of economic ultra-liberalism, although they are among the main causes. Another primordial reason is the implosion of traditional left-wing mass organizations and their mutation into agents of the same securitarian tradition, embracing an ultra-liberal and neoconservative unorthodox agenda, a conglomeration of all political stripes into a unified thread of the extreme-center.

The securitarian trend has been embodied by pretty much every single minister of the interior, the equivalent of our Minister of Public Safety, for the past few decades. This securitarian drive has taken control over every aspect of French political life.

In fact both ex-President Sarkozy and the current prime minister Valls, one a nominal socialist and the other nominally an ultra-liberal conservative, both used their passage through the hallways of the French ministry of the interior as launchpads for their ascendant political careers. Valls in many ways emulated the “Sarkozy blueprint” of being an overtly outspoken and outlandish minister of the interior as way to fast track his political stardom.

The state of emergency that has been imposed on France since the attacks of last month is yet another chapter of the securitarian regime. It has completely taken control of the entire French apparatus, an apparatus that was already predisposed to stifle any form of dissidence.

In reaction to the uber-militarization of French society, the fabrication of a perpetual state of war by the French political elites and the deconstruction of all the societal structures at the foundation of the French republican experiment, the right-wing FN appealed to the most sectarian impulses of the most marginalized and impoverished sections of the French population. Where left-wing movements are no more, a frenzied populism, a forced marriage between a rampant xenophobic rhetoric of economical nationalism and anti-liberalism and desultory social Keynesian economical theory, has filled the void.

For the past few decades the French republican experience has been missing in action. Last night after the ecstatic champagne flow, the final ce n’est qu’un aurevoir of a moribund elite, dried out Marianne, the allegory of the values of French Republic could still be heard cringing. The mortal blow that the FN was supposed to have dealt to her bosom didn’t occur; only for her defenders to stab her in the back, while they murmured the words: égalité, liberté, fraternité!

* Featured image: Xavier Bertrand of the center-right Les Republicains speaks after defeating National Front leader Marine Le Pen in northern France’s Nord-Pas-de-Calais (source: ibtimes)

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In this past week Beirut, Bagdad, Paris and most of Syria were the epicentres of yet another gruesome chapter of the war on terror. The images of a blood-stained Paris echoed the images of the Lebanese bloodbath that had followed the day before, but as one served as an echo chamber for the whole struggle against terrorism and radicalism the other was almost practically omitted: “after all,” some said, “it happens over there all the time!”

This gap in solidarity became much more than merely your routine ethnocentricity. Some have put forward the argument that it’s “normal” to feel more proximity to France, and this argument and the debate in general is in many ways the highest manifestation of how the war on terror is fuelled and perpetuated.

One of the best examples of this occurred in the wreckage of the Paris attacks on the On n’est pas couchés (ONPC) set–a renowned French talk-show rebranding itself On est solidaires for the occasion. During the televised debate where several politicians, artists and philosophers were invited, the discourse was the same–except for the notable exception of Jean-Luc Mélanchon (leader of the French left Parti de Gauche) and the philosopher Raphaël Glucksmann.

The drums of war were the same. The actors and the scenery had changed but the script was the same, the same one handed out in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks in the United States.

pray for paris french flag

The journalists in charge of orchestrating the whole affair reminded the audience time after time that the message the show was promoting was one of solidarity and peace but there was a cognitive dissonance, it seems, between the message of peace they were promoting and the “clash of civilizations” speech that came out of their mouths. The “us” against “them” was reformulated time after time, “they hate us because we love life,” “they hate what we love, music, art, gastronomy”… with every passing sentence the arguments became ever more void.

In the conversation that lasted more than two hours, the fact that the totality of the eight assailants who ravaged Paris last Friday were all Europeans, born and raised, was never brought up. So much for the racists and xenophobes among us for whom the prospect of one of them being a refugee birthed in them a pleasure of orgasmic proportions.

Yet the conclusion François Hollande and the majority of the panelists reached, which now seems a Cannon Law, was that these young men weren’t French, they were Daesh. Once Hollande uttered those words in his speech to the French people, real debate and reflection upon how to put an end to all of this nonsensical bloodshed was silenced.

Once Hollande uttered those words, France’s foreign policy and interventionism, its interior policy with regards to the Muslim minority, and the utter failure of France’s “integration” policies and the state’s relationship with its invisible and silenced minorities were exempt from any criticism.

And thus in the days that followed, just like every time a Western city or capital is the target of a major terrorist attack, the mystification of the terrorist, of terrorism becomes  the phantasmagoric object of all our hidden and deeply buried fears, a sort of blank sheet used as a deflection, to absolve us of all our sins.

This has become a routine affair in the past decade. Regardless of what country the attack might happen in, the drill is the same. It was same here after the attacks in Ottawa last year. Thus the real debate never really surfaces, the real question never really comes up: with all the anti-terrorism measures –le plan vigipirate in France, C-51 in Canada, the Patriot Act in the United States–  do we feel safer?

Today Syria is engulfed in a brutal and gruesome conflict that has millions of refugees fleeing for their lives and, if anything, the attacks in Paris should be the wake-up call for Europeans to understand why. Iraq has been torn apart for the past decade and apart from Kabul in Afghanistan the Taliban pretty much control  the stretches of territory that were in their possession before the invasion of 2001.

So instead of bombing Raaqa and swearing for more retaliation and pinning everything on the cosmic evil that is terrorism, it is our duty, while upholding the memory of the hundreds of thousands that perished in the past fifteen years, in this war on terror, to ask ourselves – hasn’t all of this become a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Scores of innocent civilians laid lifeless in back to back attacks in Beirut and Paris and today, as I write this article, scores more will perish in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya because of wars that were not of their doing, caught in the crossfire of a war without end, that strengthens its grip with every attack, with every bombing, with every passing of “anti-terrorist” legislation.

We must ask ourselves the questions: “Who profits from this? What companies gained points on the stock market? Who has an interest in perpetuating the constant state of fear and hate?”

To use the terminology that Podemos has employed in Spain there is a caste, a transnational caste that has every interest not only propagating such terror but also in stabilizing and maintaining perpetual terror. This is the same caste that rails about refugees and yet on the other hand rants and criticizes “Western values.” It’s the same caste that authorizes airstrikes in the guise of retaliation and yet on the other hand guns down innocent civilians in the streets of Beirut and Paris.

On the chess board that is presented to us by the media, all of these different bloodthirsty actors are portrayed as enemies, Islamists versus Western forces, the bad guys versus the good guys, us versus them, when in fact their resolve and objective is the same, when in fact what links them all together is that they are fuelled by grief, destruction and death. From this vantage point, the us and them is a fake dichotomy, a rhetoric that only finds some sort of grounding in the clash of civilizations doctrine that is their lifeline. 

In reality it has never been about us and them, Arabs and Westerns. It’s about a military-financial-complex. The vicious tempo of its ever expansionary cycle has pushed more areas to be colonized by terror and in the wake of its passage deadlier and more gruesome attacks will be symptomatic. For as long as some profit off of war, others will have to die.

In the aftermath of the terrible events of the past week, in the memory of all of the victims of this never-ending war on terror, the victims of Kabul, of Baghdad, of Damascus, of Beirut, of Mosul, of Kenya and Yemen, of Bali, of New York and Washington, of Paris, of London, of Madrid, of all of the victims of this horrible war, it is our duty to honour them, to put an end to the false dichotomy and thus an end to this war!

Vos Guerres, Nos Morts!

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“Indeed, both Jews and Arabs are the Children of Abraham; Jews descended from his second son Isaac (peace be on him) and Arabs from the first son Ishmael (peace be on him). To Moses, God Almighty revealed the Torah, as He revealed to Jesus (peace be on him) the Gospel.” – Shahul Hameed, onislam.net

Some very tragic events took place over the past few weeks. Several people were killed in a Kosher supermarket in the suburbs of Paris. A shooting took place around a synagogue in Copenhagen. Following these, a video titled “10 Hours of Walking in Paris as a Jew” appeared, which, considering the neo-conservative ties of the journalist who shot the video, was a nothing more than a PR stunt for those who absolutely want to promote the Aliyah of European Jews.

And the tragic news kept on coming. A Jordanian pilot slain by ISIS, increased ISIS presence in Libya, the murder of three Muslims in Chapel Hill, the ongoing civil war in Syria, and the ever-present situation in Gaza… The only glimmer of hope came from Oslo this weekend, where Muslims and Jews joined hands in a very mediatized show of solidarity. In the face of all this madness and insanity, some have responded with even more madness and insanity.

marine-le-pen

The witch hunt that started in France against those were identified as “enemies of secularism,” and the birth of “radical” secularism – which in fact isn’t secularism at all, but just xenophobia in disguise –  are just a couple of examples of the “madness” that is in the air. The madness culminated in its apex yesterday in a report by the president of le Conseil répresentatif des institutions juifs de France (CRIF). In the report, the supposed voice of the majority of French Jews stated that Marine LePen – the leader of the fascist Front National, the most anti-Jewish of all French political parties – was herself irreproachable, that the only problems were caused by “some members of the FN,” and that, in fact, most violence perpetrated against the French Jewish community were the acts of “Young Muslims.”

Recently, the so-called peak in ‘extremist religious’ violence has allowed “anti-terrorism” legislations to be passed throughout the world, at the cost of civil liberties and of democratic rights. On the other hand, this violence has also empowered fascistic sections of Canadian and Quebecois society, allowing bigoted and xenophobic discourses to go unopposed, and garner mainstream coverage.

The same has happened within the Jewish community, as well. The violence perpetrated against people of Jewish descent, or of Jewish faith, has empowered a scary xenophobic discourse, which doesn’t draw a line between Islamism and Islam; between a fundamentalist minority that receives much more attention than the fundamentalist segments of other religions, and the overwhelming peaceful majority of Muslims. On the 70th anniversary of the Shoah, of the liberation of Auschwitz, we must stand firm against such kind of discourse – it’s a moral duty.

Pro-JDL-rally-2011-
French Jewish Defense League activists demonstrating in Paris, 2011. (Ligue de Defense Juive)

 

This, in no way, excuses anti-Jewish discourse or actions – they are despicable and must be fought. But those who perpetuate the most prevalent anti-Jewish discourse today, claim to to be the defender of our faith, and consider themselves the sole voice of the Jewish people. The political consequences of this is slowly showing itself, even here in Montreal, not more than a few blocks away from where I am writing this piece. The Jewish Defense League (JDL), considered to be a terrorist organization by Israel, the EU and the United States, and whose slogan, ironically, is “never again” has set up shop in Montreal this past week. To those in the JDL who stress the motto “never again” and the need to “defend the Jewish community from the Islamist threat” I have but one thing to say: The antisemitism of the 1930s and 1940s is the Islamophobia of today, and if we really want “never again” to be more than a slogan, we must fight discrimination against any and every minority. We must fight discrimination in every shape and form.

The JDL’s discourse and the true notion of “never again” are antithetical. “Never again” is a universal call for tolerance, acceptance, solidarity, peace, and, most importantly, resilience against the horrors of xenophobia. Thus, if we truly want to follow the creed of “never again,” we must make sure we fight the presence of the JDL. We must fight all those who resort to a discourse that uses violence as a justification to perpetuate even more violence, that tries to justify one form of racism with yet another. It’s a discourse of hatred that disseminates itself in the disguise of religion, or of some higher moral ground, or in the drapes of secularism. It’s a discourse that is prevalent within the neoconservative movement across the globe right now. It’s a discourse that is at the backbone of the hatred that fuels ISIS, and other such Islamist organizations. It’s the ideological foundation of fascism and of fascist movements. It’s this discourse that links them all together.

We are all sisters and brothers. Either we fight together, or we will perish together as fools!

A luta continua.

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Foreword: Following the publication of my most recent article, there were accusations that I was being an apologist for the so-called “racist rag” that is Charlie Hebdo, and absolving them of their ‘racism.’ It’s funny to see reactions from both sides. If you try to take a nuanced position, you’re either writing an apology for terrorism, or an apology for racism. Saying that I don’t believe Charlie Hebdo is a “racist rag” per sé, doesn’t mean I agree with everything that they have ever published – unlike what some believe. As I said in my previous article, I think their depictions of the prophet of Islam were senselessly hurtful, adding to an already toxic environment. It also doesn’t mean I absolve them of their responsibility, when it comes to publishing such cartoons in an era of mounting Islamophobia. On the other, this also doesn’t mean I’m oblivious to the racist environment prevalent in French society. In fact, quite to the contrary… The attack against Charlie Hebdo was merely the latest manifestation of France’s underlying problem with bigotry, xenophobia, and racism. A manifestation of how France like most Western societies – and Canada is no different – creates the so-called ‘other,’  the ‘non-French.”

The January 7 Massacre was the manifestation of that, but CH was the wrong target!

This article is about the systemic racist violence that is perpetrated on a regular basis against French citizens of Muslim heritage or faith, and how the mainstream discourse in the aftermath of January 7 continues to perpetuate the estrangement of the ‘other.’  Here is another article, which in my view should be read by all.  This article is the perfect answer to those that say that CH is a “racist rag.” 

marine le pen
Marine Le Pen

 

The name of the game in France now is “National Unity.” Politicians from all walks of life have called the French people to unite, in a joint effort to defend the principles and the values of the French Republic: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. This being said, one has to ask: Unity against what? Unity in the name of what?

In the wake of the attacks against CH, the mainstream media, the French Left, right, and extreme-right put the emphasis on the fact that the Cherif brothers were Muslim. The French mainstream, just as most of the media in the world, portrayed the assailants as violent Muslims, thereby paving the way for the French political elite to jump, right away, onto the bandwagon of France’s ‘Muslim problem.’ France’s problem of ‘Islamic fundamentalism,’ which subliminally suggests that the French nation has to defend itself against the ‘Muslims’ among them, perpetuates the same racist and xenophobic discourse that suggests that if you’re a Muslim, you can’t truly be ‘French’. The same racist and xenophobic discourse, which alienates French youth from the banlieues on a daily basis, and produced the revolt of 2005 is at the origin of all of this affair now.

By overemphasizing the fact that the four assailants were Muslim, the mainstream French media and the French political caste are attempting to absolve France and the French society of all of the racist and xenophobic crimes it has committed against Arab, Muslim, North African populations in the past and even today.

There isn’t a ‘Muslim problem,’ there’s a French problem; a crisis of French integration, which underlines the hypocrisy and voidness of the French national slogan: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. There’s a French problem which is manifest in the way the mainstream media depicts the assailants. The Cherif brothers are French citizens; they grew-up in France, lived all of their lives in France, were discriminated against in France, and were alienated by the French society in France. Their ‘radicalism’ was not a product of Islam, but of the shortcomings of French society, of the systemic and institutionalized racist, and symbolic violence omnipresent in French society that treats French muslims citizens or French arabs citizens, as ‘non-French,’ and as second degree citizens.

But this is nothing new. In 1950s and 1960s, during the French occupation of Algeria, white French colonizers were considered as fully-fledged French citizens, with the right to vote, the right to hold public office etc… The majority of Arab, Berber and Kabyle Algerians were also de facto French citizens, yet didn’t have any of the rights held by the colonizers. Still, they had to pledge their allegiances to the motto of the tricolour: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

islamophobia cartoon

The French problem stems from the fact that the French society has never recognized the crimes it has committed during the Algerian War – the millions of “French citizens” of Arab, Berber or Kabyle descent, who were brutally murdered, tortured and mutilated by French forces. Up until recently in French schools, the war of Algeria didn’t even exist. It was called ‘the Events of Algeria.’ France also never recognized the massacres committed in France during that time against French citizens of Muslim descent. Consider the infamous affair of Le Pont de Neuilly, where more than forty Muslim French citizens were kettled by French law enforcement and pushed into the frigid waters of Seine River and drowned to death. The doubled edged economical oppression of French Muslims in France during the War of Algeria is depicted amazingly in the movie Ici on noie les Algeriens.  And thus French society has in many ways perpetuated this état de guerre against its Muslim population – everyone is equal in France, but some more than others.

The rhetoric of national unity is used as a weapon against “Freedom of Expression,” which it ironically is supposed to defend. French comedian Dieudonné, along with more than fifty others have already been charged for making the ‘apology of terrorism,’ or, in other words, for daring to make comments critical of CH. Although I don’t necessarily agree with Dieudonné, in the same way that I don’t agree with everything CH said or depicted, I have to say: If you defend “Freedom of Speech,” you must defend Dieudonné’s right to speak.
National unity is the French take on the Bushian concept of, “You’re either with us or against us.” And while all of France is focusing on national unity, mosques are being torched throughout France. Marine LePen and Sarkozy are on every airwave, making Islamophobic and anti-Muslim comments under the cover of national unity. Thus ‘National Unity’ is just a magical wand of rhetoric, which allows racists to become the sole defenders of free speech, and on the other hand enables any deviant speech to be banned and silenced.

FRONT POPS

It’s interesting to study the usage of the concept of national unity in French history. First, during the War of Algeria, the French government called for national unity as a tool to unite the French nation in its colonial oppression of Algeria. Second, it was used in the 1930s, a time during which anti-Judaism – not anti-Semitism, since not all Semites are Jewish – was rampant. The extreme-right staged several coup attempts, all of which culminated in a march on the National Assembly that almost overthrew the French government. In 1930, like today, the political caste called for national unity – a union of the right and the Left forces to fight the threat of fascism. The Left refused to make alliances with the centrists and the right-wing, complacent, in many ways accommodated the rise of fascism. Instead, the Left decided to form a Popular Front, made up of Social Democrats, Socialists and Communists and won a majority, bringing along with them the first Jewish head of government in French history: Léon Blum. The Front Populaire is a period that is occupies a significant place in the imaginary of the French Left. Today, instead of a Union Nationale, France needs a Front Populaire to fend off the xenophobic, and racist Islamophobic onslaught that is under way.

Unless French civil society can look its demons in the mirror, and stop projecting its problems onto its minorities; unless France comes to terms with its colonialist past, the massacres it perpetrated in its colonies; unless France stops its neo-colonialist interventionist foreign policy; unless France can strike a balance that truly respects its Muslim and Arab citizens as French citizens first and foremost, equal in every way to their non-Arab counterparts; unless all of this happens, tragedies such as CH Massacre will happen on a regular basis. Until then “Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité” will remain a hollow slogan.

A luta continua.

News

It has been a little bit more than a week since the horrific shooting took place Charlie Hebdo’s offices, at 10 Rue Nicolas-Appert in Paris. It’s also been a little bit more than week since I wrote my last article – and boy has it felt like an eternity. On that day, it seemed as though the sky was falling on our heads, and the whole world had lost any sense of gravity. Ferocious debates broke out throughout the world, igniting fires at every corner. But the one that was lit in the aftermath of the January 7 attacks that still blazes today – an abyss of fire, straight outta hell – is the one divides us comrades of the Left.

Almost immediately after the attacks, the hashtag “#jenesuispascharlie” made its appearance, the manifestation of a section of left-wing people –mostly Anglophone here in Canada – who had trouble coming to terms with Charlie Hebdo’s lapidary sense of humour and razor-thin usage of satire. Within the past week many cried “racism” and “xenophobia.” They were appalled, even scandalized by the “racist rag” that was Charlie Hebdo, and how it perpetuated French imperialism and French neo-colonialism.

The violence perpetrated against Charlie Hedbo didn’t appear out of nowhere. Nothing exists in a social vacuum and surely, Charlie Hebdo reinforced (either willingly or unconsciously) the violence, the racism, and the xenophobia in French society. That was their argument – although they condemned the attacks, they couldn’t come around to defending the satirical publication for these reasons.

 

je suis charlie
Photo by Thierry Ehrmann, Flickr CC.

 

On the other hand, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of disciples of the ‘Word of the Market’ – capitalistic fundamentalists – which Charb and all the others at Charlie Hebdo had fought with the blatant, in-your-face passion which was their trademark, joined the ranks of the newly sanctified #jesuischarlie crusade, along with xenophobes, racist brutes, and fascist skinheads, who had finally found their call to holy war.

The link between both the “anti-racist” leftists (or as Zizek calls them, ‘liberals‘) and the right-wing opportunists and their facistoid crusaders, is that they were all wrong!

First of all, even though this point has been reiterated time and time again – here’s an excellent Ricochet article – Charlie Hebdo was anything but a racist publication. I will not reiterate here all the facts that prove that CH wasn’t a racist publication, or go into details about the particular nuances of their satire, but let me be clear: Charlie Hedbo isn’t a “racist rag.” There are those on the left that didn’t even know what Charlie Hedbo was prior to the attacks. Two minutes after seeing one of their covers, they decreed with their almighty “super radical” powers that CH was a “racist rag.” Charlie Hebdo and the CH team worked with SOS Racism in France and campaigned actively for the rights of the sans-papiers, fought against anti-Roma discrimination in France and was vocal against the Israeli perpetual oppression of the Palestinian people, it was known generally to the French public was CH was a left-wing, anti-racist, publication. This being said this doesn’t absolve Charlie Hebdo and the CH team of their overemphasis on Islam, in the context of the war of terror, which as has been said before, played in many ways into the Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric that has been and is dominant in French society and that must be condemned. The fact that in the wake of the 9/11 attacks many journalists of CH quit the publication because of Philippe Val’s editorial line that promoted depictions of the Prophet Mohammed and Charlie Hebdo descent into Islamophobic straits, is a manifestation of the tensions that existed. Unfortunately the best example of the over emphasis on Islam and Muslims is that CH decided once again to depicted the Prophet on the front cover of their latest issue, which is mistaken and wrong in my view.

This is a complex issue and there is, in my view no clear cut answer. Sometimes it is easier to condemn and to excommunicate, as it is easier to give a clear-cut simple answer to a very complex question: a simple answer that can create a unifying discourse that criticizes Islamic fundamentalism and every religious fundamentalism, while at the same time denounces Islamophobia, xenophobia and racism; a discourse that protects minorities, religious or not, that also denounces religious fundamentalism and its intolerance, its worst misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic aspects.

Pas charlie

Charlie Hedbo used, at least in my view, an interesting tactic: they analyzed various discourses – public, religious fundamentalist, fascist, the most dominant ones – used them against themselves. Charlie Hebdo twisted, turned, and transformed racist stereotypes and rhetoric to transcend them. Charlie Hebdo is filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of cartoons and caricatures, that shredded to pieces the racist, neoliberal and austerity discourses that were and still are prevalent in French society.

Many on the left decided to overlook such aspects in their criticisms, perhaps out of ignorance or maybe out of malice, or to advance some sort of agenda.

One thing is clear though, the attack against Charlie Hebdo’s offices reopened a blistering wound, a schism that has plagued the left for the past few decades: the inability for left-wing forces to reconcile “identity politics,” which can be broadly defined as anti-racist, anti-xenophobic, struggles for recognition, as Axel Honneth defined them, and the struggle against fanaticism of all stripes, against the economical fundamentalism of capitalism. What these tragic events do offer for the left is an opportunity to unite. One positive aspect of the #jenesuispascharlie hashtag is that it opens up a period of reflection for all of us on the left, and it begs the question: How can we fight fanaticism without becoming fanatics ourselves? How can we fight sectarianism, without becoming sectarian ourselves? The answer is to be found in a reformulation of traditional leftist internationalism which has been on the back-burner for too long!

On the other hand #jesuischarlie, has become the antithesis of everything Charlie Hebdo once stood for and maybe – let’s hope – still stands for. In the name of Charlie Hebdo a new religious fanaticism, a sort of McCarthyist witch hunt against all of those that dare to say that they aren’t Charlie has emerged. Charlie Hebdo’s crew anyways found refuge in the idea that not everybody was Charlie; that their humour, their worldview wasn’t “mainstream,” but marginal. That was their saving grace, the essence of their publication, and of their journalistic project. Thus, making #jesuischarlie into some sort of religious dogma is completely missing the point, and beyond that it’s an insult to the memories of those that #jesuischarlie is supposed honour. The core value of #jesuischarlie must be tolerance – the fact that we agree to disagree. We agree that people aren’t Charlie, will never be Charlie and, don’t have to be Charlie – and that’s just fine.

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This being said, it isn’t surprising that #jesuischarlie has become such a twisted and void slogan given the amount of tyrannical superstars, who have endorsed the so-called ‘movement.’ Some had high hopes in the aftermath of the tragic events that occurred on January 7, but by January 11, anyone that still hoped that #jesuischarlie would translate into a movement that would defy the institutional structures that continue to propagate discrimination and inequality were and remain delusional.

The fact that right-wing politician Nicolas Sarkozy used Charlie Hebdo’s tragic fate to boast his own political agenda; the fact that dictators, oppressors of free speech such as Netanyahu used #jesuischarlie to advance his call for French Jews to return to Israel; the fact that Marine LePen is using #jesuischarlie to advance her Islamophobic poison and justify the hate crimes that are rampant across France; and the fact socialist prime minister Valls is using #jesuischarlie as a trojan horse to pass the French version of the Patriot Act, in order to jail all those that have been thorns in his side for the past few years – Dieudonné – is tragic. It’s senseless, it’s disgusting. It’s so bad, that I don’t even know if Charlie Hebdo’s satires could render it justice.

So as things stand, we have a raging right-wing pole, disguised in the drapes of ‘Free Speech’, which in the name of an extreme-leftist publication has called for a Holy War under the banner of #jesuischarlie. We have leftists – only in name – who have decided to follow in their steps under the fake banner of National Unity. We also have leftists that have decided to embrace the #jenesuispascharlie rhetoric, and finally, we have those that will try as best as they can to stay true to the essence of Charlie, #jerestecharlie: those who understand the true essence of what Charb, Cabu Wolinski and Tignous stood for, understand what strain of leftism they came from.

There is one important lesson for the left to take from the tragic events that occurred last: there are many “lefts,” but nevertheless we must live with that, and work together. But most importantly out of the ruins of the Charlie Hebdo massacre comes the possibility for the left to build a Popular Front – instead of a National Union – that will reinvigorate the strain of radicalism born out of the French Revolution and build a movement that will simultaneously fight fanaticism and xenophobia.

Last Wednesday in a spontaneous moment of solidarity, I joined hundreds that had gathered in front of the French Consulate in downtown Montreal. At the end of the gathering, the crowd roared a resilient “la Marseillaise,” But what we need now isn’t La Marseillaise, what we need now is L’Internationale!

 

News

On Sunday, January 11, thousands of people marched the streets of Montreal, to protest and remember the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, France.

More than 3,000 people walked the streets of Montreal in silence that afternoon. I’ve been to a few Police and Firefighter funerals and it was the same atmosphere minus the pipes and drums. It was an eerie feeling, and it got to me. Even the police officers covering this event seemed overwhelmed by the loud silence that overtook the crowd. This is the hardest event I have ever had to cover, and I’m surprised that any of my shots came out. I was sure I had nothing, I was so out of it.

Charlie Hebdo SundayCharlie Hebdo Sunday

Click on the photo above to open the gallery. All photography by Gerry Lauzon.

News

Je suis Charlie… And have been for a while.

Not too many people know this, but I used to be a cartoonist. The work never amounted to anything and I moved on to photography. I started when I was 12, inspired by Asterix and Tintin like everybody else. But later in my teens I started to read more of the big names: French and Belgian artists like Moebus, Goetlib in publications like Fluide Glaciale, rubrique à brac and the likes. Then came Hara Kiri, a spin-off of Charlie Hebdo with Reiser, Cabu and Wollinski. The most vulgar and vile humor I had ever seen. Nothing was taboo for these guys and it was mind blowing. They put to paper what people did not dare to speak of and then some! Now you have to realize that back in the late 70’s controversy was not available one simple click away. You got ahold of that stuff from an older cousin or something. All these guys were an inspiration and at some level heroes to me for being that bold.

Today I felt strange going through my day, didn’t know if I was mad or sad. I went to take some shots at the vigil downtown. I showed up to see a thousand people braving the cold and the atmosphere was jovial in general. I hurried to get some shots and when my camera froze I decided to call it an evening. Before I left, I went to the small improvised memorial to leave my pencil amongst the other pencils and the candles. Then the whole thing came crashing down on me. The bastards took away my heroes. People who had the balls to stand for what they believed in where stolen from us in the most horrible way and it just overwhelmed me with sadness. It was 9/11 for me all over again.

I got back home and post-edited my images and balled my eyes out again while editing the memorial shot. Will this bring me down? Hell no! If anything it gives me even more courage to stick to my convictions and hopefully it will inspire others to do the same. Charlie Hebdo is not dead, if anything it has spawned even more creative and daring spirits. If you ever get intimidated for making any kind of art, remember these words from Charb, “I’d rather die standing than live on my knees”.

Charlie HebdoCharlie Hebdo

Click on the photo above to open the gallery. All photography by Gerry Lauzon.

News

I would like to start this post with two simple words: I accuse. “I accuse” as the title of an article is odd, isn’t it? But it’s not mine to take credit for. Émile Zola had used such words to lecture the ghosts of anti-semitism that were creeping out of every pore of French society during the Dreyfus affair. Unfortunately a little more than 100 years and a decade have passed since that sordid affair, and once again France braces itself for another mediatic circus, where all the demons of France’s racist and xenophobic past and present will be unleashed.

It had been merely a matter of minutes since news started arriving that the HQ of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo was besieged when Marine LePen, in the glaring armour of Jeanne D’Arc she so fondly believes to have inherited, mounted her horse of self-righteous indignation and galloped, sword in hand, to fend off the “Islamic hordes.” Merely minutes after two armed gunmen shot and killed two police officers and several caricaturists and employees of Charlie Hebdo.

Marine Le Pen’s venom was all over the airwaves of mainstream French media: “We must cleanse France of Islamic extremism,” she repeated time after time. “We mustn’t be scared anymore,” she stated, but we must be upfront with our racism and xenophobia is what she meant.

On the other hand, hundreds of French and non-French political representatives reiterated the fact that this attack was an attack against one of the most fundamental pillars of democracy, the quintessential core of sense of liberty: liberty of expression.

I would agree with that statement only if liberty of expression was defended at all times and places, regardless of by whom, or in the name of what it is silenced! Coincidentally and interestingly enough, the horrid massacre of Charlie Hebdo comes on the heels of another – at least according to mainstream media – trampling of the rights of free speech: the Sony versus North Korea, or The Interview release fiasco.

It’s almost tragicomic to think that two weeks ago the whole of the “Free World” was up in arms in defense of the multinational media giant Sony, and now are using exactly the same rhetoric while they mourn the passing of several Charlie Hebdo journalists that fought tooth and nail, all of their lives, against multinational media empires such as Sony. The rhetoric used today, of “defending freedom of expression” is exactly the same that was used two weeks prior during the Sony vs North Korea showdown.

If the The Interview itself wasn’t and isn’t Oscar-worthy, the drama revolving around it surely was! The fact is that multinational corporations such as Sony commit barbaric attacks against alternative media outlets such as Charlie Hebdo on a daily basis, while the world was parading around calling for “freedom of expression” for Sony. Sony was killing in the egg thousands if not millions of creative media/artistic projects that didn’t fit within the framework of their “free-market” worldview.

I accuse here all the shameless and spineless hypocrites, such as Sarkozy and his right-wing minions, that came out today en mass to defend Charlie Hebdo, when during their tenure in government they tried in every way possible to shut it down. I accuse here all the media outlets, all the mainstream media that only use the words “freedom of expression” when it involved some radical lunatic, but are silent when multinational corporations such as Quebecor and other such empires control the majority of media in the world, and thus can censor and filter the news as they wish.

je suis charlie demo montreal

I accuse all the journalists on the 8 o’ clock news tonight in France, who will utter the words “liberty and freedom” while the private interests that pay their wages hand them the censored script they’re supposed to recite. I accuse the extreme right-wing rhetoric that will blame everything on Islam and recall with crocodile tears in their eyes and with Oscar-worthy voices full of despair, how much Charlie Hebdo’s publishing was important for the maintenance of freedom and liberty in French society, but secretly rejoiced in a macabre manner when they first heard that Charlie Hebdo had been attacked. Yes, because if it wasn’t a bunch of Islamic Extremists, it very well might have been a bunch of FN-adoring French skinheads!

I accuse those who, up until a few hours ago, were the biggest critics of Charlie Hebdo, those who had a visceral hatred for Charlie Hebdo, who are now all adorned in black and are in sorrow! I accuse those who through the mingling of the market, through points of the stock exchange, silence publications such as Charlie Hebdo in cold blood on a daily basis!

Marine Le Pen and all the French extreme right and their extended family have found their political nirvana in the wake of this attack, because the French mainstream media will focus on the superficial aspect that “Islamic radical militants” perpetrated the attack, without mentioning the fact that several financial institutions, several financial predators had already tried unsuccessfully to kill Charlie Hebdo, several multinational media conglomerates had tried to buy it out, to silence it forever.

ou est charlieCharlie Hebdo might have fought the fascistic tendencies of “extremist Islam,” but it fought every extremism equally. It fought xenophobia and racism, mostly embodied in French society by the FN. And most importantly it fought the muzzling of “freedom of speech” by the “free market!”

Freedom of speech isn’t killed most of the time at gunpoint, doesn’t succumb due to “physical” bullets. Unfortunately in this day and age, in the system we live in, the system Charlie Hebdo, Cabu, Charb, Wolinski and Tignous fought until the bitter end against. Massacres like the one that happened to Charlie Hebdo occur metaphorically on a daily basis – not through the cold steel of a bullet but in the hot frenzy of the stock exchange.

To honour their memory, we should remember that this isn’t about a few individuals – as they promoted during their life’s work – This is about a system that kills creativity, that kills freedom of speech. It’s that system today that I accuse of murder!

A luta continua!

NewsPolitics

The Western left is in dire straits today. Supposedly, the Left (at least the political parties on the left side of the political spectrum) is suffering from an acute sickness. Or is the Left dead?

What if the self-inflicted debacles of the Hollande/Valls administration in France, or of the Renzi coalition in Italy are not the symptoms of a sick socialist movement, but rather a clear manifestation that the Left as we know it has ceased to exist?

Up until now, debates within left-wing political formations have always been about direction, strategy, ideology and semantics. This is a tradition of the anti-establishment, or anti-capitalist movements that has varied throughout the decades and the past century.

Consider the debate between Bakunin and Marx, during the First International. Bakunin supported anarchist decentralization and horizontal organizing, while Marx argued for centralized, communist organizing, with an emphasis on the importance of the party structure. Also think of the indirect debate between Rosa Luxemburg‘s position of virulent war of movement and Gramsci‘s theory of cultural hegemony and his strategy attrition warfare during the la belle époque. And then there’s the debate between orthodoxical marxism and the New Left in the 1960s.

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The New Left in all its glory: The Weathermen during the Days of Rage in Chicago 1968

Debates concerning ideas have always been the tempo to which left-wing movements have danced and they have created the space and the horizon for the evolution and mutation of such movements. Through these debates, for example feminist, anti-racist and Queer agendas have been able to impose themselves, making left-wing movements put a greater emphasis on the notions of patriarchy, the subaltern, racism, gender and recognition. But today the left, especially the European “traditional” left, doesn’t debate ideas anymore, it debates the central idea that braids all of these different threads of struggles together: the idea of socialism.

Emmanuel Valls, the current prime minister of the French socialist government, didn’t create many ripples when he stated earlier this year that it was about time the French Socialist Party came to terms with what he called the modern world. His vision of modernizing the Socialist Party was to change its ontological conception and drop the whole notion of socialism to the extent of dropping the word from its name.

This has already happened in Italy where once the strongest Communist Party on the continent, outside of the Soviet orbit, which at its peak boasted one million card carrying members, decided to drop its Communist label and opt for a more modern appellation, re-branding itself the Democracy Party of the Left. This maneuver was then as it is now the manifestation of a roller-coaster magnitude slide to the right.

Dropping the word Communist threw the flood-gates wide open. First the non-Marxist-Leninist lefties and socialists joined the fray, then its was the social democrats, then confused and dazed centrists who still considered themselves progressive, but actually were neo-liberals at heart but couldn’t come to terms with it (kind of like the Liberals here in Canada) and finally anyone and everyone who like the color red or later on fancied pink.

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This used to be the Italian Communist Party

The story of the Italian Communist Party is like the story of Jesus transforming water into wine, only that in this case it’s about wine being transformed into water. With every new section of adherents further from the Communist ideological base, the new Democracy Party of Left became more and more diluted until it finally reconstituted itself along neo-liberal ideological guidelines. Today the ideological differences between Matteo Renzi and  the remainders of Silvio Berlusconi’s political group are non-existent, both are the guardians of an austere status-quo.

In the aftermath of WWII in eastern Europe, Stalin had operated a similar strategy. To impose the hegemony of his Stalinist communist affiliates in the newly self-proclaimed people’s republics, Communists parties would side during the first set of “open” elections with left-wing non-communist political groups to fend off the fascist threat and thus succeed in outlawing them. Then they would cut off any centrist opposition and so on and so forth until there would be no opposition left.

At the end of this process Stalinist ideology and the Kremlin’s line reigned supreme. This was known as the salami-slice strategy.

In 2014 its seems that the Brussels or maybe the Frankfurt line reigns without any constraints or limitations. The opposition that should have been offered by existing left-wing governments or by socialist parties is dead, these political formations have slowly been devoid from any of their founding ideological principles, they are the walking-dead of neo-liberalism.

In a context such as this strange things can happen, such as a Socialist prime minister addressing the Business TV awards and telling the 1% audience with a rather soothing and gentle tone that he would make sure that next year they would capitalize even more on the plight of the French working-class. Such a turn of events has pushed many commentators to disbelief and denial.

Fédérique Lordon had to publish in Le Monde Diplomatique of September of this year, a lengthy article entitled The Left Cannot Die to feel better about the whole ordeal. Unfortunately, in most cases, when debating if something can or cannot die then the thing in question (in this case the left) is probably already dead.

But amidst this windfall of Socialist auto-destruction there are some glimmers of hope. The breach opened by the tragic suicide of the traditional left has allowed in some places such as Greece and Spain new movements with new ideas to breed.

The death of the left as we knew it has allowed a new generation of anti-capitalist, progressive and alternative perspectives to enter the political scene, this apparent ontological death carries within itself the power to give birth to a new ontological premises for left-wing movements. So maybe “socialism” must die, for socialism to thrive.

A luta continua,

NewsPolitics

A specter is haunting democracies throughout the world. A barely visible cloud, an entangling nebula is settling in throughout large swaths of modern political rhetoric. Many pundits and opportunistic spokespeople are saying that the Ghost of Ideology from days long past is speaking from beyond the grave, and that it has resurrected and is walking among us again.

But, surely the question we must ask ourselves is, “Did ideology ever die in the first place?”

Ideology — as a word — is used for the most diverse purposes nowadays. It can mean almost anything in the current state of world affairs. Ideology is seen as the equivalent of a political agenda or religious dogma; thus, the religious extremism of ISIS and the “neo-fascistoid” elements of Greece’s Golden Dawn or  France’s Front Nationale become conflated. Ideology has also become individualised; ideology is not a systemic development anymore, but rather a personal one. Individuals can build their own ideologies.

On the other hand, we apparently live in a “non-ideological” world. Modern day apostles have announced, in a very Nietzschean manner, “Ideology is dead”.
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At the same time, ideology has been “democratized” to the extent that it doesn’t mean anything anymore and has been declared irrelevant in the context of the advent of a non-ideological world.

Ideology can only be understood as a system of symbolic representations. It is, first and foremost, the articulation of a world-view through symbols. For instance, the current dominant global ideology of neo-liberalism uses growth, free trade, free markets, free enterprise and representative democracy as its symbols.

For many contemporary commentators, ideology was buried under the ruins of the devastation it created. From this vantage point, the death of ideology marked the end of a century of ideological struggles, which brought about war, famine and misery to most of mankind. The bi-ideological, and bipolar struggle that defined the Cold War is over. Capitalism is triumphant, all is well, ideology is dead, good night and good luck!

President Bush and President Gorbachev

But it is exactly when you think that you are roaming through the desert of ideology, exactly when the absence of ideology is supposedly self-evident, that is exactly when you’re submerged in ideology. You’re in the thick of it and can’t get out.

In his most recent public interview broadcasted on French national television 2 weeks ago, Nicolas Sarkozy confirmed his intention of reentering the French political scene. During the one hour interview Sarkozy made the case for a new “non-ideological” political movement that would move beyond the drawn fault line of left versus right. For Sarkozy, the main problem with the current Socialist regime was its ideological stance. I couldn’t disagree more. If anything, with the nomination of Manuel Valls as prime minister and his relentless grab for power, the Socialist government has proven that they too abide to this logic of a so-called non-ideological stance.

The problem with this discourse is that ideology, far from having disappeared from the French political scene, has, within the past few years, reinvigorated itself and has become so omnipresent that it now appears to be invisible, even non-existent. And this, because the majority of the French population has internalized the dominant ideology of austerity as being the ultimate truth — as has the majority of human beings on this planet.

In reality a non-ideological stance doesn’t exist. The political project to move beyond the ideological dichotomies of left versus right, of liberalism versus socialism — in the economical sense — doesn’t amount to anything more than a mirage of wishful thinking. Sarkozy is ideology at its purest form.

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Protesters against austerity in France

The left — read here socialists — might have abandoned their ideological attire, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t ideological. In many ways socialist parties throughout the European Union have shedded their social vision and have become another one of those -isms without a suitable prefix. Within this new political dimension of fluid -isms, the driving force is the market and the free circulation of capital, better known as austerity. Differences are non-existent, but one ideology clearly reigns all mighty.

This abandonment of ideology by left-wing movements has allowed extreme-right movements to fill in the void and appear as alternatives. The story is the same throughout Europe, but also with the Tea Party in the US, the Reformists here in Canada, and Modi in India. These neo-nationalist and neo-liberal movements may take various forms, specific to the context to which they belong, but their raison d’être is the same, to fill in an ideological void.

Sarkozy can proudly parade his “non-ideological” message, and he will encounter no dignified opposition, because the ideologically left-wing alternative is dead — if it isn’t dead, then it’s in tatters. From the ruins of this ideological surrender, we must strive to rebuild an alternative dialectic; the ontological survival of the “Left” depends on it. The battle against neo-liberalism and the rise of neo-fascism is, first and foremost, a direct assault on their symbolic mobilizers: The key words, like growth and jobs, that are at its symbolic foundation. Only though this deconstruction can come the construction of a true alternative. Now, more than ever, it is imperative that an alternative ideology be built from the ideological ruins of the Left’s upcoming self-destruction.

A luta continua.

NewsPolitics

In space of a few months the old continent has been rocked by a series of reactionary revolts that have spread like wildfire. Parallel to the rise of neo-fascist elements is an inverse movement: the retreat of the center-left and their embracing of neo-liberal, traditionally center-right policy.

The examples of the debacle of the socialist or social-democratic movement are self-evident, be it the humiliating defeat of the French Socialist Party at the municipal level, the incapacity of the left to govern in Italy, the defeat of the German social-democrats for the fourth time in a row or the Labor Party in Britain which is still dealing with the specter of Labor’s past. The once bright red flame of European socialism is but a pale shadow of its former self, a fading pink.

blair brown

For every defeat the left has succumbed to in the past months, it appears that the extreme-right has made leeway. There is much emphasis put on the “rise of neo-fascism” in Eastern Europe or on the Front Nationale, but this movement is a general one. We are seeing the comeback of neo-fascism in countries that in a not very distant past fought tooth and nail to establish a political system that would banish the gloom of fascism forever…  or at least they thought.

In Portugal, Spain and Greece, the countries that not so long ago emancipated themselves from some of the longest and most brutal dictatorships in Europe, the fascist movements, which were their graves before the economic meltdown of 2008 and the austerity measures of these past years, are now reinvigorated. The success of some of these movements translates into political parties with an unprecedented number of seats in their respective political arena, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn.

But something much more unsettling is happening in Europe. The neo-fascist message is getting generalized and some of the extreme-right’s fundamental ideals and principals now flow freely through the main arteries of the European political system.

In the 2012 French presidential election, Nicolas Sarkozy lost the first round mainly because the Front Nationale had succeeded in capitalizing on the disenchantment of certain sections of the right-wing which had previously voted for him. Before the second round, Sarkozy made a final campaign pitch to those further to his right to rally to him in this final duel between himself and François Hollande.

Sarkozy and LePen posters side-by-side during the 2012 French Presidential Election (image lessentiel-magazine.fr)
Sarkozy and LePen posters side-by-side during the 2012 French Presidential Election (image lessentiel-magazine.fr)

It wasn’t so much the fact that he tried to lure the votes of the Front Nationale, it was the way in which he did it that, in many ways, changed the face of French politics forever. During the final stretch of the campaign, Sarkozy made one simple pitch to the nationalistic, xenophobic, neo-fascist electorate of Marine Lepen at every rally and in every speech he made: “Don’t be ashamed of being a fascist, your values are my values and beyond that the values of the French Republic.”

Now let’s put this in the context of France which still toils to make peace with the demons of WWII. In the context of post-WWII France, the Gaullist movement (of which Union for a Popular Movement UMP is an heir) was one of the firewalls against fascism on the right. Traditionally, the center-right movement was furiously opposed to any form of recognition of the values of neo-fascist movements within French society. That was the most important heritage of the French resistance against fascism which was shattered by Nicolas Sarkozy’s brand of la droite décomplexer.

Unfortunately this is not a trend that is cornered or quarantined in France. It’s a dynamic that fits perfectly within pro-austerity and neo-liberal agendas.

The rise of fascist movements is inherently linked to the development of austerity measures in Europe. Thus to focus solely on the fascist movements which are mainstream and not on the fascist rhetoric and policies that are advanced by parties that “supposedly” are in complete opposition to the fascist ideology is to miss the real “breakthrough” of the extreme-right.

The potency of a political ideology is not how many seats political parties that claim such an ideology gain or lose, but how the rhetoric and the ideals of such a movement influence the political discourse in general. And one thing is clear in Europe and to a certain extent in most of the world: the infatuation of neo-liberalism and austerity with fascism is shifting the center of gravity of the political spectrum towards the right on a daily basis.

For those that would shun this thesis, its factuality is manifest on the European political scene. It’s manifest in the coalitions between neo-liberal forces and neo-fascist forces throughout Europe, it’s tangible in the recuperation of ideals of the far-right by the neo-liberal movement, the most important being the corporatist element of neo-liberalism, which favors a complete laissez-faire attitude towards multinationals and the unrestricted flow of capital.

Corporatism is the centerpiece of many center-right political platforms nowadays. It goes without saying that corporatism is the economic policy at the foundation of fascism. Fascism in politics is completed only by corporatism in economics and this is the point of junction between the neo-liberal and neo-fascist movements.

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Unfortunately it seems that the socialist movement is fading into a political landscape that has become color blind. The revolutionary force of austerity is pushed further and further by neo-fascist movements which, in a very paradoxical way, find their source of attraction in the rebuttal of austerity measures, but couldn’t survive outside of the framework of austerity. The socialist movement, which was once a force that wanted to revolutionize the very structure of global capitalism, has become a reactionary force which only acts in reaction to the palpitations of the neo-liberal right.

The only hope that still resides within the European political spectrum is the establishment of a viable left wing alternative in the form of a coalition of the parties of the European Left that have rejected austerity and the rhetoric of neo-liberal populism. With the European elections around the corner, it seems like more than ever the traditional political divide between center-right and center-left is irrelevant and that the European parliament after the upcoming elections will be a true reflection of European society in the wake of austerity: polarized to the extreme.

To those that ask how are we to stop the rise of the neo-fascist movements? The answer is clear: the fight against austerity is a fight against fascism.

A luta continua.

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Something smells fishy within the realm of the French republic; La Quenelle, a sort of inverse Nazi salute, which first appeared during the 2009 European Elections for an ‘anti-Zionist’ political formation and was popularized by the French comedian Dieudonné, has gone viral, being by many adherents and ardent supporters of extreme right-wing rhetoric throughout French society.

From 2009 onwards, it became a popular online occurrence to see pictures posted on the social media of proponents of La Quenelle. One of the most noteworthy occurrences was when Alain Soral, a French extreme right-wing pseudo-intellectual that has refuted on several occasions the existence of gas chambers, made the gesture in the middle of the holocaust memorial in Berlin. Another occasion that put the spotlight on La Quenelle was when Jean-Marie Lepen, ex-leader of the xenophobic extreme-right wing Front National, was seen alongside his right hand man Gollnisch and two other self-identified ‘supports’ making the salute at the end of one of his political rallies.

But the source of the actual controversy is the fact that international footballer Nicolas Anelka on the 28th of the past month made reference to the gesture while celebrating a goal he had scored in the English Premier League. Many anti-racism and Jewish organizations immediately called for a playing ban and public excuses for what they saw as a hateful gesture.

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Anelka denied that La Quenelle was a racist, anti-Jewish or hateful gesture, he stated that for him and Dieudonné, La Quenelle is an anti-system salute. La Quenelle represents the rage that many people have for a system of globalized capitalism that breeds inequality and alienation.

I won’t go more in depth about what I believe the real significance of La Quenelle is, because that isn’t the essential question that should be asked. Unfortunately though, “What’s La Quenelle” or “What’s the true significance of La Quenelle” are the only two headlines that make reference to the nascent trend in the media. It isn’t a trivial fact at all that most media outlets’ focus is to give a definition to this salute. Why? Because it’s much easier to label something as racist, xenophobic and anti-Jewish than actually attack the problem at it’s root.

The same logic works for the French government that has decided to take Dieudonné to court and shut down his shows, these attitudes are shortcuts… not solutions. They’re intellectual shortcuts that try to put the fault on the perpetrators and omit the underlying crisis.

The rise of La Quenelle is undeniably linked with the rise of extreme right-wing rhetoric in Europe. If La Quenelle signifies anything at all; it signifies the failure of the ‘progressive’ forces to reorient the political debate in Europe.

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In May of 2012, the election of Francois Hollande was seen as a victory that would reinvigorate the European left and the fight against austerity. Since May 2012, things have continued the same. The European Union has continued on its ruthless quest for balanced budgets, no matter what the social sacrifices might be. The social malaise on the other hand has increased ten fold since that faithful day in May 2012, exactly because in many ways not much has changed.

The ‘historical’ socialist left in Europe has in many ways endorsed the austerity measures that were implemented by their predecessors for fear of destabilizing a fragile economic recovery they say. Because of this they are now trapped in the iron cage of neo-liberal economics.

Salutes, gestures and discourses are not the problem here and unfortunately for the French officials no law will stall the rise of the extreme right wing. Because right wing nationalism, xenophobia and racism aren’t fueled by a salute, they are fueled by economic inequality, austerity measures and the dismantling of the welfare state. La Quenelle is but the physical expression of this accrue rupture between the burden of millions for the well being of a few.

Dieudonné is but a pawn in this game, an insignificant factor, that will be pushed aside with the motion of time, but others like him will come forward and unfortunately maybe some of them will be more malicious and direct.  The rise of right-wing extremism will not die out until the left wing offers a clear alternative to the neo-liberal homogeneity.

To those that see La Quenelle as a battle cry, I have but one thing to say: one cannot create a more just and equal society with an impulse of hate, only compassion and solidarity can do that.

In the words of Che Guevara “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.”

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Off all the asinine comments made by Mme Marois in defense of her fatally flawed ‘Québec charte des valeurs’ (daycare workers wearing hijabs are threatening our children, comparing it to Bill 101, etc.) I think the one I want to discuss here is her rather unfortunate using of the French model of “laiçité” as an example for Québec to follow in integrating its Muslim population.

The notion, that French secularist traditions have led to some sort of social harmony between French society and millions of Arab speaking Muslim Algerian, Tunisian and Moroccan immigrants, the vast majority of which arrived in France during the post-war period at the invitation of previous French governments to help fill jobs created by the boom of recovery in Europe’s war-torn economies, is simply laughable.

Anyone who has been paying attention to recent French history knows that unemployment rates among the Arabic Muslim minority (one in every 13 French citizens describes themselves as Muslim) are much higher than they are among the general population. There has also been a rise, though not due only to socio-economic conditions, of homegrown terrorism and racial tensions in France’s major cities (for example the riots of Clichy-Sous-Bois back in 2005).

French secularism is very different from North America’s, or even Quebec’s version of the institution, owing to the dramatically different historical, political and legal contexts in which it evolved. Even Marois seems to vaguely grasp this fact, saying that “Quebec will develop its own model based on our values and experiences.”

For starters, France has essentially been thoroughly secular at the governmental level since the French Revolution in 1789. But, more to the point, their version of secularism makes no exceptions for Christian symbolism in the public sector (i.e. no cross hangs in their National Assembly). Also, it should be said, that the measures being proposed by the PQ are not as drastic as those that were imposed in France, where there are no niqabs allowed in public whatsoever, and female students are not even allowed to wear hijabs at state schools.

But Marois’ ignorance of the French model that ostensibly inspired her bill is not confined to French history. She also spectacularly misreads British multiculturalism as a main cause of British terrorism, in the process unwittingly spewing the same claptrap as such noble political parties as the racist British National Party and the ultra-right wing UK Independence Party. I suppose it has never occurred to her to look at the rest of Canada as a successful model of multiculturalism?

Marois either doesn’t appreciate the obvious differences in context between Western Europeans societies and ours with respect to integrating religious minorities, or doesn’t care to. Irrespective, she will pursue her destructive agenda to the bitter end.

Perhaps we on the federalist side of the political spectrum should rejoice. This could be the final nail in the coffin for an already out-of-touch government with no economic or job creation strategy to speak of. Maybe one day we will look back on this moment as the kind of desperate gamble to remain relevant that resulted in the Republican Party in the US becoming beholden to the overwhelmingly white lunatic fringe of right wing politics that the Tea Party represents in that country.

But when we see the hatred, taking some of its cues from the rhetoric of the Parti Quebecois, starting to poison everyday life the way it did for the victim of a racist tirade on a bus in Montreal recently, it’s awfully hard to feel smug about the situation.