RELATIVE AUTONOMY: MEDIA, FILM & POLITICS
  • blog
  • about
  • Writing

two ways not to respond to the charlie hebdo massacres

20/1/2015

 
First, we must not blame Muslims for the recent Al-Qaeda massacres in Paris, as many European politicians and much of the right-wing media have been doing. True to form, Rupert Murdoch, for example, tweeted that Muslims 'must be held responsible' for the attacks. Marching under the slogan 'Je suis Charlie', politicians, supported by mainstream media, are currently exploiting the tragedy in order to promote the ideologies of democracy and 'national unity' in France through 'solidarity marches', photo-opportunism, patriotic declamations and lofty rhetoric about freedom of expression. Given that these politicians are themselves routinely involved in suppressing free speech through the bombing and torture of journalists and the suppression of critical journalism, this is nothing other than a 'circus of hypocrisy', as Jeremy Scahill has put it. The Hebdo massacres, like all terrorist actions, have been a gift from heaven for the French, and indeed European ruling classes, who have been milking the tragedy for all it's worth and stoking Islamophobic sentiment (following a depressingly familiar pattern, Hebdo has been followed by a wave of Islamophobic incidents in France). In the wake of terrorist outrage, the state will always assert its monopoly on security - Hobbes's gambit, as it were.

Nevertheless, we mustn't flip over this position and imply that a bunch of liberal French cartoonists - puerile Muslim-baiters as they may have been - somehow brought the tragedy upon themselves. Focusing on the racist imagery of many of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, many leftists have spent more time condemning the victims than the attackers and they have tended to see the massacres purely in terms of ‘blowback’, as though they were merely a reflex response to Western Islamophobia. Tankie Chavista and cult-studies edgelord George Cicariello-Maher, for example, busted out his best Internet meme-speak, tweeting "Yeah but for real, tho, fuck #CharlieHebdo". Seriously? Twelve people are brutally shot dead in a Paris office and the real villains of the piece, we are supposed to believe, are a bunch of liberal journalists who have drawn some arguably racist cartoons?

Of course, these kinds of simplistic, 'anti-imperialist' responses to Islamic terrorism have always been widespread on the left. Another example: in their book Nihilist Communism, the writers known as Monsieur Dupont rightly condemn the left-wing journal Schnews's response to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing. According to Schnews, the Islamic terrorists in Bali were attacking "a hated symbol of western imperialism", while the victims, mostly working-class Aussies, were described as "drunken, obnoxious, youngish Australians... (who) flaunt their money and feel like royalty for two weeks". Talk about blaming the victims! And then of course there are the leftist equivocations around 9/11, many of which sailed close to exonerating the atrocity. A few hours after the Twin Towers attacks, left-wing journalist Seumus Milne wrote in The Guardian that the attacks "'visited upon" Americans were a consequence of "unabashed national egotism and arrogance". In other words, those imperialist Yankees got what was coming. In both of these cases, no sympathy is expressed for the mostly working-class victims of the atrocities.

In his interesting essay 'History and Helplessness', Moishe Postone argues that those leftists who saw the 9/11 attacks in New York only as an 'understandable response' to US imperialism were in effect positing 9/11 as a 'reaction of the insulted, injured and downtrodden, not as an action'. This perspective, Postone argues, fetishises the US as the world's only geopolitical actor. Not only is this tantamount to excusing terrorism; it is also de-agentifying and racist, as it implies that 'they' are mandated to act only by 'our' oppression. And in common with the right-wing response to terrorism, the leftist blowback theory rests upon a binaristic 'them and us' framing of terrorism, which overlooks evidence of active collusion between 'our' security services and 'their' terrorists. But that's a whole other story.

A principled communist approach to events such as those we have seen in Paris must involve condemning both the actions (not simply reactions) of the Wahhabist terrorists and the hypocrisy of the mainstream media and the world leaders, who are the principal purveyors of chaos and destruction around the planet.

    Archives

    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010

    Categories

    All
    5G
    9/11
    Adam Curtis
    Advertising
    Afghanistan
    Alastair Campbell
    Angelina Jolie
    Anti-fascism
    Ashley Madison (hack)
    Aung San Suu Kyi
    Barack Obama
    Bbc
    Black Lives Matter
    Bnp
    Bosnia
    Brexit
    Burma
    Cancel Culture
    Censorship
    Channel 4
    Charlie Hebdo
    China
    Christopher Hitchens
    Christopher Nolan
    Class
    CNN
    Conspiracies
    Cornelius Cardew
    Covid-19
    Czech Republic
    Daily Mail
    Dalai Lama
    David Berman
    Donald Trump
    Economics
    Egypt
    Environment
    European Union
    Extinction Rebellion
    Facebook
    Falklands
    Fascism
    Feminism
    Film
    Free Speech
    Gaza
    Google
    Greece
    Greta Thunberg
    Guy Hibbert
    Hillary Clinton
    Hong Kong
    Immigration
    Internet
    Iran
    Iraq
    Isis
    Israel
    Itn
    Japan
    Jeremy Clarkson
    Jeremy Corbyn
    Jia Zhangke
    Johann Hari
    John Molyneux
    Jordan Peterson
    Katie Hopkins
    Ken Loach
    Kony 2012
    Labour Party
    Lawrence Hayward
    Libya
    Malala Yousafzai
    Marcuse
    Margaret Thatcher
    Marxism
    Mental Illness
    Music
    Myanmar
    Neoliberalism
    News International
    New Statesman
    New Zealand
    Niall Ferguson
    Noam Chomsky
    Norway
    Ofcom
    Osama Bin Laden
    Owen Jones
    Pakistan
    Palestine
    Paul Mattick Jnr
    Peter Bowker
    Peter Kosminsky
    Populism
    Press Tv
    Quentin Tarantino
    Racism
    Reality Tv
    Red Poppy
    Reith Lectures
    Rihanna
    Riots
    Robin Williams
    Russell Brand
    Russell T. Davies
    Scotland
    Silver Jews
    Single Mothers
    Sky Tv
    Slavoj Zizek
    Stephen Fry
    Stephen Poliakoff
    Stereotypes
    Strikes
    Suicide
    Syria
    Television
    Terrorism
    Terry Eagleton
    The Express
    The Guardian
    The Mirror
    The Sun
    Thomas Piketty
    Tony Grounds
    Tunisia
    Vaclav Havel
    War
    Washington Post
    Winston Churchill
    Wire
    Yugoslavia

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.