Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in Paris

I've been pretty put off by the general response I've seen to this from (American) leftists, which has been to attack Charlie Hebdo as racist, Islamhobic, white supremacist, etc. with the implication that there's some mitigating factors to the awfulness of massacring a bunch of journalists.

One thing taht has gone unnoticed is that they were not just satirists mocking Islam, although they were pretty provocative, they targeted christianity, especially catholicism just as much.

One thing that has gone unnoticed is that Der Stürmer were not just mocking the Jews, although they were pretty provocative, they also targeted catholicism and stalinism! Isn't that great? Got to defend the West and our funny traditions.

The 'making fun of all religions' thing seems like the trite 'it is illegal for both the rich man and poor man to sleep under bridges' thing, am I wrong? Obviously, Catholics are not a dispossessed, marginalized, de facto segregated and demonized minority subject to crazy disproportionate incarceration rates.

I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about this paper,the French tradition of satire, the condition of Muslims in France or the rising anti-immigrant sentiment there, but it's sort of bullshit that the choice presented here seems to be between politicized religious extremism that engages in indiscriminate attacks and Hitchens-esque neoconservative 'New Atheism' that upholds a stratified and discriminatory society. Or between an oppressive monotheistic force and an abstract 'freedom of speech'.

From what I've understood, Charlie Hebdo was a publication which was atheistic and politically moderate to left liberal. From what I understand, they'd ran a cover against islamophobia and were about to organize an anti-racism conference. The murder of these cartoonists is obviously horrible, the fact that the staff didn't bow down to constant threats is admirable on a basic human level and these cartoonists were after all working there.

I live in the Middle East and everyone I've talked to about it were shocked and sad. I think that's quite a healthy proletarian reaction to something like this. Not that there aren't people who want to highlight the alleged racism of the paper where I live but they tend to be Islamist supporters of the government.

What I'm concerned about is the people singing the Marseilles on the squares. That's never a good sign. Nor is the talk that this is a "declaration of war", people attacking mosques or blowing up kebab shops.

On I side note, I've observed that the journalists here are rather unable to discuss this situation in the telly. Whenever they try to do so, they seem to get stuck in talking about the massacres of sectarian minorities, brutal murders of missionaries and the assasinations of journalists.

Juan Conatz

The 'making fun of all religions' thing seems like the trite 'it is illegal for both the rich man and poor man to sleep under bridges' thing, am I wrong? Obviously, Catholics are not a dispossessed, marginalized, de facto segregated and demonized minority subject to crazy disproportionate incarceration rates.

Yeah, this ^^^

I find it worrying that so few people have picked up on this and think racist cartoons are satire.. as if the only thing that matters is the content regardless of context, who's satirising, who's being satirised etc..

Charlie Hebdo was blatantly racist as fuck
http://avantblargh.tumblr.com/post/107422672105

This is one of their fine satirical cartoons.

"The sex slaves of Boko Haram are angry. Don't touch our benefits."

Good satire aims up the social hierarchy. Aiming down is at best snobbery and often racist.

Several thoughts:

1. Obviously, this is murder. We (meaning Marxists, communists whatever) don't condone it; don't support it; don't defend it; "it" being this act, committed in this manner, by these individuals.

2. Politically, Hebdo's "satire" is no more "left-wing," than ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda is "left wing."

3. There's no point to us (see above we) responding as if this "is an attack on us all." No, it is not an attack on us all. No we don't express our "unity" our "solidarity" with Hebdo, or the "French people." Prior to this, after 9/11, we were NOT all "world trade centerers;" we opposed the national-ism, the "national mourning" that was designed to and for greasing the war machine.

Our "job," our class job remains what it is and was-- opposition to the bourgeoisie and its state in their local and global iterations.

4. Maybe it's just me, living in NYC, 1 mile from the WTC, and luckily, believe it or not, having forgotten to attend a meeting that day in the South Tower on the 94th floor, but I think the story about this attack stinks. I mean it just doesn't smell right. The attackers go to the wrong building, using force of weapons to enter that building; force two people to the floor and demand directions to the right building; get into the right building but are misdirected to the wrong floor, get to the right floor, and then several minutes later and several blocks away, (according to France24 news) encounter a single police car with a lone officer where they engage in a gunfight? And in all that time-- the area isn't sealed off? Other police units don't show up?

Can we see a timeline please?

Now I have no great regard for the competence of the police, or the military, or North American Air Defense Command or special forces, but come on..... given that the French police were supposed to be on heightened alert anyway... WTF? Blowback? No doubt. But something more? Does that make me a conspiracy theorist? I don't know. It just doesn't smell right to me.

EDIT TO ADD: I'm leaving the post below coz I spent time writing it but essentially bastarx did it better when he wrote

Good satire aims up the social hierarchy. Aiming down is at best snobbery and often racist.

Feel free to read my post as well but it basically says the same but with lots more words..

jef costello

There's some truth to this description of muslims, (although class and nationality play a very big role), but isn't the point of your argument that a religion cannot be mocked if it is one of a poor minority? Surely that's more of the liberal bullshit that leads to people tiptoeing around certain religions (or other aspects of minority cultures) out of patronising concern but actually doing nothing to improve their conditions. Isn't the whole point of this site to fight against the massive structural discrimination that people face on a daily basis as a class rather than defending some cultural aspect that is directly opposed to our beliefs?

Firstly, I think it's wrong to characterise this as being just about the level of Muslim poverty, it's also about persecution which often involves having the piss taken out of you based on common stereotypes.. the danger of mocking a persecuted group, then, is how easy it is to slip into those common tropes.. the image you put up is arguably a better attempt (though just having a Muslim and Jew, when you're a Christian country who's seen a recent spike in Quennelle-ing little shits is a little dodgy imo).. but others are fucking terrible..

I don't really get what's so different from the above picture and the Class War bonfire.. it's based on lazy stereotypes readily available in right-wing/mainstream press.. or this poem (just an extract) from the CH editor:

Peins un Mahomet glorieux, tu meurs.
Dessine un Mahomet rigolo, tu meurs.
Gribouille un Mahomet ignoble, tu meurs.
Réalise un film de merde sur Mahomet, tu meurs.
Tu résistes à la terreur religieuse, tu meurs.
Tu lèches le cul aux intégristes, tu meurs.
Pends un obscurantiste pour un abruti, tu meurs.
Essaie de débattre avec un obscurantiste, tu meurs.
Il n’y a rien à négocier avec les fascistes.

The jist being what? Muslims are fascists who will kill you if you try to talk about their religion? I don't get how that's anywhere near approaching satire as opposed to outright racism. So you can talk about the need to challenge structural problems rather than tip-toe around reactionary beliefs but is that what Charlie Hebdo did? No, it just perpetuated the same shit as the rest of the media..

I do think there is a way to satirise Islam that would've been more successful as satire rather than just racism.. but CH failed on that front imo..

Jef

The Marseillaise was actually at the London demo, although it was quite likely French people in the majority. The backlash is the real danger, the French politicians and press have been relatively restrained so far.

What Tyrion describes is exactly the attitude that angers me, this idea that they're responsible for it. I've never faced violence handing stuff out, but most comrades have, so the idea that people who risk danger handing out publications can believe that others can have 'brought it on themselves' is appalling.

Exactly. Here, government journalists and ideologues are trying to condemn the attack with a but implying they have brought it on themselves.

Hope you're alright man

S. Artesian

Politically, Hebdo's "satire" is no more "left-wing," than ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda is "left wing."

That makes about as much sense as saying social democrats are no more left wing than the Nazis. I don't tend to see left wing as a compliment, and I think Hebdo's politics are as bourgeois as any bourgeois paper, however I think this sort of comparisons aren't really positive.

This being said;

There's no point to us (see above we) responding as if this "is an attack on us all." No, it is not an attack on us all. No we don't express our "unity" our "solidarity" with Hebdo, or the "French people."

I completely agree with all of this.

Communists tend not to express solidarity with a company when its employees are murdered anyway.

jef costello

There's some truth to this description of muslims, (although class and nationality play a very big role), but isn't the point of your argument that a religion cannot be mocked if it is one of a poor minority? Surely that's more of the liberal bullshit that leads to people tiptoeing around certain religions (or other aspects of minority cultures) out of patronising concern but actually doing nothing to improve their conditions. Isn't the whole point of this site to fight against the massive structural discrimination that people face on a daily basis as a class rather than defending some cultural aspect that is directly opposed to our beliefs?

Why just religion why not joking about "minority" races and gender also? After all most racist ideology (or ideology of race) these days is founded on "cultural" rather then biological foundations. Your assumption here is that Islam has an essence that one out of pc concern can tiptoe around or choose to confront. Its especially pertinent to Muslims because "western" discourse demands that all societies where Islam plays any notable role must be framed chiefly around this "religion." From domestic violence right up to some governments policy. During the 2003 Iraq invasion US/UK forces organized the new security apparatus- well in fact the entire apparatus- of the colonial state on sectarian rather then national lines. Clearly in the minds of these commissioners this is the chief organizing principle needed for these societies. One always hears from NATO establishment commentators criticism of Sykes/Pikot, not out of anti-imperialism but because ME states are seen as illegitimate and so free to be molded for correction(and as nation is illegitimate and 'arab" is (usually) too general and evocative of pro-Soviet bloc movements, this molding centers on "religion").

no1

One thing that has gone unnoticed is that Der Stürmer were not just mocking the Jews, although they were pretty provocative, they also targeted catholicism and stalinism! Isn't that great? Got to defend the West and our funny traditions.

One thing that has gone unnoticed by some people on the internet is that facile comparisons to the Nazis make you look stupid and ridiculous ones make me question your grip on reality.

Just to clarify Charlie Hebdo were not responsible for concentration camps and were not implicated in any other instances of mass murder.

[/quote]

Julius Streicher was not responsible for concentration camps and was not implicated in any other instances of mass murder.

Leo

S. Artesian

Politically, Hebdo's "satire" is no more "left-wing," than ISIS or the Taliban or Al Qaeda is "left wing."

That makes about as much sense as saying social democrats are no more left wing than the Nazis. I don't tend to see left wing as a compliment, and I think Hebdo's politics are as bourgeois as any bourgeois paper, however I think this sort of comparisons aren't really positive.

In 2006 Charlie Hebdo published the manifesto "Together facing the new totalitarianism" written by the usual types as well as its then editor, stating: "After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all." They viewed their task in this war as that of propaganda (in the positive sense of this term) on the home front while, as the signatories past and future public statements show, the armies of their states would fight the war of arms.

Clearly they viewed themselves as partisans in a war. This is their significance as a target by Islamists as well as why their deaths shouldn't be mourned any more than journalists on the other side of the war like Anwar al-Awlaki were.

------

There's non stop coverage on US news networks about this now and the the nonsense is framed around freedom of speech as well as warmongering about how the Enemy fights immorally and lacks ethics while the homefront and its martyrs are righteous. There is no "freedom of speech" either in France- with its hate crime laws and lack of job protection re speech- or elsewhere. For example a few years ago when two UK Nazi's sought asylum in the US over a string of charges that essentially boiled down to them drawing an anti-Semetic cartoon called Tales of the HoloHoax it was denied and they were each jailed for 5 and 2 years. Similarly "freedom of speech" becomes "material support for terrorism" when the Enemy does it. There's countless people jailed in the US for voicing vocal support for Al-Shabbab, an Islamist militia that never attacked the US and which is fighting a foreign invasion by its neighbors, for good measure (and the US has nothing against backing Islamists militias abroad either way). And this isn't because they're Islamists, i.e. their particular politics. Israel killing Ghassan Kanafani and other intelligentsia of Palestinian nationalism didn't and doesn't conjure up denunciation.

Neither is the Iconoclasm of ISIS/AQ or the bashing of muslims by Charlie Hebdo central here (to note on the latter the Telegraph noted that Michel Houellebecq's (mentioned in the thread) latest variation on 'when-the-n----rs-take-over' story was effectively praised by Socialist President Hollande, who said he would read it but said the white genocide is not going to happen so "French [should] not to give into "fear" of "submersion, invasion, submission"" So Charlie Hebdo is by no means unique or out of step with its views on "Muslims"). Same day the massacre in Paris happened 40 cops working for the West in Yemen were blown up. They didn't get round the clock coverage and sermons. I turned on the BBC today for a second and they were actually playing a eulogy for Charlie Hebdo, with somber music and pictures of their work, as if some prince had just passed away. And_thats_why these editors were targeted and killed. They were dogs of the ruling elite in France (praised and honored by both the Sarkozy administration and the Socialists throughout the past decade). And not only were they dogs but they were, unlike the Yemeni cops, Western and by killing them their adversaries showed that they too can bleed. If from a distance one could feel sympathy, being bombarded with this self-righteousness- which characterized Charlie Hebdo's publishers when they were alive also- in the context of global war is too much for me personally.

This warrants a news thread but the Belgium General Strike of last month, fuck all.

Anyone can start a thread. Did you start one about the Belgian General Strike?

From the WSWS

Yet again the perpetrator(s) of one of these atrocities was under police surveillance. Did they double cross the cops? Or did the cops help them carry out their attack?

Gunmen were “probably followed” by French police before Paris massacre

By Patrick Martin
9 January 2015

There is mounting evidence that the intelligence services of France and several other countries were actively tracking the two brothers named as the gunmen who carried out the massacre at the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo Wednesday.

These facts raise more and more questions about how such high-profile suspects could obtain weapons and prepare what appears to have a been a highly organized and professional military assault.

According to a report in Le Figaro, French Interior Minister Cazeneuve said Thursday that the suspects were “probably followed” prior to the shooting and that there had been no signs of an impending attack. The two brothers have been known to French authorities for at least a decade.

Cherif Kouachi was arrested in 2005 on charges of conspiracy to travel to Iraq to join the Islamic fundamentalist group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He was eventually tried and convicted in 2008, but was sentenced to only three years, essentially time served, and released.

The legal outcome raises questions, to say the least, about the reason for such leniency after a lengthy proceeding, which suggests an effort to recruit the prisoner as an informant or agent.

In 2010, according to the BBC, both Cherif and Said Kouachi were named in connection with a jailbreak plot for an imprisoned Islamist and called in for interrogation, but no prosecution was brought.

Both CNN and NBC, citing unnamed US officials, have reported that Said Kouachi had travelled to Yemen in 2011 “on behalf of the al Qaeda affiliate there” and received weapons training from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Several US media outlets reported that both Cherif and Said Kouachi had been placed on the American no-fly list many years ago and so were banned from boarding aircraft bound for or leaving the United States.

Looks like a lot of good points here, although I only had time to read through it quickly. I am rather annoyed by the facile politics of just putting up memes of Facebook saying "I am Charlie" with no further thought. If anybody reads other languages, it is worth looking over some responses and discussions like on Anarkismo to see that there are a few problems with articulating responses. It was interesting also to see the different responses in France - I read the FA, CNTF Vignoles and CNT-AIT Toulouse responses. The FA, is basically sympathy with victims, the CNTF Vignoles is afraid this will be used for racism and violence against Muslims and CNT-AIT Toulouse criticizing the fact that there needs to be a struggle against capitalism and the state and people are focusing on religion.

Leo

What I'm concerned about is the people singing the Marseilles on the squares. That's never a good sign. Nor is the talk that this is a "declaration of war", people attacking mosques or blowing up kebab shops.

Particularly the emphasis being put on the line "Qu'un sang impur, arrose nos sillons..." in the singing I heard ("let[until] an impure blood waters our furrows"). Can't help having an uneasy feeling about whose blood was being put into the "impure" category, by those who were singing with gusto, being not just narrowly focussed on salafist-jihadist killers.

The horrific nature of the attack doesn't make the backlash any less ugly.

Before my own 2c, I'm posting the following from FB by someone who doesn't post on here very often any more. He indicated that he'd put in on "Public" for sharing purposes, in case you wondered re re-posting.

Charlie Hebdo...
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[Sorry, this is a bit long!]
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Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent etc. This is equally true when we just don't know the facts we need to digest. I know a little about Charlie Hebdo. After Ireland and the UK, I know the media and intellectual and political climate in France better than anywhere else. But, still, I know very little.
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Although to be honest, I think what Charlie Hebdo did or didn't do isn't really that important. Regardless of what they said, yesterday was indefensible. Even if Charlie Hebdo were racist islamophobe fascists, it would be indefensible.
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But, I think something can be said more broadly about liberal republicanism that might be pertinent here.
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The fact that this happened in France seems somehow relevant. We hear repeated in commentary how France is the home of "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", indeed it is the official motto of the French Republic. In a widely circulated blog on the events yesterday, Juan Cole states the French "invented" the rights of man and the values associated with it. And we hear both within and outside France continuous discourse on the centrality of laïcité (i.e. state secularism) for French politics.
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But it is important to remind ourselves that the French revolution was not accomplished. And its promise remains unfulfilled. Indeed socialism emerged in the 19th century from the two coterminous developments: the increasing predominance of waged workers within the population and the intellectual realisation that ideals of "liberté, égalité, fraternité" were not achievable under existing property relations.
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As Michael Ellman said, a major tragedy of the twentieth century is that socialism came to be
seen as the rival to the "bourgeois revolution" rather than its ultimate heir.
For socialists it should be important to not only defend, but to pursue more vigorously, liberal republican ideals.
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But we should not imagine that these ideals can simply be defended.
So Channel 4's John Snow is extremely wrong when he writes "Paris: brutal clash of civilisations: Europe's belief in freedom of expression vs those for whom death is a weapon in defending their beliefs."https://twitter.com/jonsnowC4/status/552804891920711680
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"Europe" does not "believe" in freedom of expression.
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It has been noted that a number of the journalists killed yesterday started working together around the satirical libertarian socialist paper "L'Enragé" which was published in 1968. (The first issue and a lovely English translation is here: https://libcom.org/files/lenrage_journal_scans.pdf )
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It is worth considering what happened to the other radicals then and in the subsequent years when the prevalent order in "Europe" was last threatened.
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Perhaps the largest group coming out of 1968 in France was the ‘Jeunesse Communiste Revolutionaire’ who were organised around their newspaper ‘Rouge’. They were banned. Then their former members formed the ‘Ligue Communiste’. So, they were banned.
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Or in Germany, not only was the Communist Party completely banned, but from 1972 all applicants for public sector employment (teachers, train drivers, gardeners etc.) were screened because "political extremists" were banned from public employment. Hundreds upon hundreds were denied or lost their employment. And later support for "crimes against the constitution" was banned. (This included advocating revolution). More recently, in 1991, one of the largest far left groups in Germany (the Marxistische Gruppe) dissolved itself as a response to a fear of reprisals against its members.
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Or in Ireland, we had "Section 31" introduced in 1971, which banned broadcast of "any matter that could be calculated to promote the aims or activities of any organisation which engages in, promotes, encourages or advocates the attaining of any particular objectives by violent means".
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Beyond that, more recently and more trivially, in the Netherlands, in 2011 two men were arrested and fined for wearing 1312 on their t-shirt, which stands for ACAB, which stands for All Cops Are Bastards. And two years prior to that a man was arrested and fined for wearing a t-shirt with "Corrupt" superimposed over the Dutch police logo.
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And more tragically, the "Allies" in the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq bombed Al Jazeera bureaus. And in 1999 NATO bombed the Serbian TV headquarters killing 16 on the basis that is was the "ministry of lies".
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This list is already too long. It is only a glimpse of "Europe's belief in freedom of expression". There are simply too many major infringements on freedom of expression in Europe by "Europe" to mention more than a few.
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It might be objected: "So what? These infringements on liberty might be real, but this was still an attack on freedom of speech and we should stand against that."
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Perhaps.
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The attack was certainly an attack on Charlie Hebdo because of what they said. But surely an attack on freedom of speech must either be (a) a call for a legal restriction on freedom of speech or (b) a form of intimidation that encourages self-censorship for fear of reprisal. This attack is clearly not the former. But it clearly is the latter. However, this is somewhat more nebulous. Indeed it is hard to imagine that the level of "self-censorship for fear of reprisal" in response to this attack will be larger than "self-censorship for fear of reprisal" caused by “Pantigate”. (This was where the Irish state broadcaster apologised and paid compensation to a Catholic advocacy group that opposes gay marriage on the basis that they had been ‘falsely’ accused of being homophobes.)
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The atrociousness of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity lies in the violence involved and the motivation behind it, not because it poses any major threat to freedom of speech.
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So if there is no major threat to freedom of speech, what is the point of defending it? When we are called to stand against the attacks and defend freedom of speech, who are we who would stand and what is it we would defend?
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Here the answer is clearer. We would be the West defending the West.
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But the West is not republicanism, it is not the legacy of the French revolution and it is not freedom. It only contains this legacy and this potential. But neither this legacy nor the hope of freedom are French or even Western. They are global and universal.
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Those of us who do claim this legacy should reject these false ideas of 'the west versus its opponents'. Republicanism, democracy and freedom are the opponents of 'the West' as it is today. Instead of defending what we do not have, we should continue to hold fast to our ideals and aspirations and should continue to work for their realisation and for a society in which they are realisable.

teh

In 2006 Charlie Hebdo published the manifesto "Together facing the new totalitarianism" written by the usual types as well as its then editor, stating: "After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism. We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all." They viewed their task in this war as that of propaganda (in the positive sense of this term) on the home front while, as the signatories past and future public statements show, the armies of their states would fight the war of arms.

Surely this says all anyone needs to know? The notion that Islamism is the greatest threat to mankind is the territory of the far right and the war on terror. I'm really not sure why anyone would have any time for them, unless they agree with PEGIDA, EDL, Britain First, Tony Blair, etc.

Juan Conatz

The 'making fun of all religions' thing seems like the trite 'it is illegal for both the rich man and poor man to sleep under bridges' thing, am I wrong? Obviously, Catholics are not a dispossessed, marginalized, de facto segregated and demonized minority subject to crazy disproportionate incarceration rates.

I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about this paper,the French tradition of satire, the condition of Muslims in France or the rising anti-immigrant sentiment there, but it's sort of bullshit that the choice presented here seems to be between politicized religious extremism that engages in indiscriminate attacks and Hitchens-esque neoconservative 'New Atheism' that upholds a stratified and discriminatory society. Or between an oppressive monotheistic force and an abstract 'freedom of speech'.

I think you're conflating two different things a little bit. One can criticise Islam, whether 'moderate' or 'Islamist' because it's a shite reactionary ideology. That's different from demonising Muslims as a minority, like the far right are depressingly but predictably doing after this incident.

Ultimately my opinion on this is that it's kind of irrelevant whether or not Charlie Hebdo was Islamophobic or whatever, it's still a horrific attack.

Well apparently 2 Libcom posters (and counting) believe that Islamism is the greatest threat to mankind. That's fine, there's a hashtag for your white supremacist crocodile tears: #jesuisungrossconnard

Or maybe the admin could get rid of the fucking bullshit down votes.

I think there are misconceptions about Die Sturmer.
It was much, much closer to NSDAP than Charlie Hebdo is to the PS or the French elite.

(Its eventual millionaire owner) Streicher was an NSDAP member from the very start took part in a militarist coup attempt, was covered in blood before the paper even was launched, As a middle-class officer he helped financed the NSDAP when it was in trouble in the 1920s.

When the Nazis took over in 1933, there were repeated accusations of his having sexually tortured political prisoners within his power when he was a high up official in Bavaria a Nazi heartland.

Especially in the critical years the printed articles in Die Sturmer feature outright lies and malicious misrepresentation connected to the Reichstag bombing, the Jewish boycott of Germany, Jewish shops selling poor quality produce to Germans.

The satirical smutty anti-Jewish cartoons did not induce the triumph of Nazism. Anti-semitism was barely mentioned in essay competitions amongst university students about 'why I became a Nazi' in the 1930s. There's reasons beyond the cartoons to attack Die Sturmer.

Jef will know this better than me but Charlie Hebdo is not like what Die Sturmer was. It's an imperfect liberal (but still liberal) paper. It does do smut against plenty of religions. It's target is basically the 'cons' of France - people who vote for De Gaulle for security, people who didn't care about French trade with militarist Chile, people who idolise the Pope and catholic schools, people who say French corruption isn't that bad because we're not a third world country, people who thought the Jyllands Posten caricatures from 2005 shouldn't be republished, people who vote FN, people who are opposed to immigrants solely on the grounds they will populate France just for (that's the target of that ugly cover above about the allocation de famille dispute), people who saw the demonstrations in the Arab world as an inconvenience to their holidays in the Magreb

- a liberal view of the world, but not a racist or fascist one.

On international affairs it's particularly weak because it is so France-focused, it has nothing much to offer on say Egypt apart from Islamists who demonstrate against the military will die just the same when they get shot. It doesn't have a clue about any step forward - so it's satire is sort of stating the obvious with puns - Egyptian bearded Islamist or Egyptian paramilitary (barbe or barbeuse ha ha)

But it doesn't channel money to any political party has journalists of different persuasions who write/draw for it - including the psychologist and economist who were shot dead. It doesn't support the PS or UMP and is very anti-FN accusing the main parties of selling out to them.

If you really want to put a tag on it, it's as racist as maybe less

It does a lot of gallows humour always has done. This was the cover of an early issue when five anarchists in Spain were executed.

It's laughing at the dead anarchist aswell as laughing at his executioners.

So it's not my cup of tea but it's not in any meaningful sense like Die Sturmer. It doesn't print purposeful falsehoods about people, it doesn't channel money into fascists.

I think it's a natural reaction for people confronted with the media blaring that CH were not only fearless martyrs to free speech but cultural heroes representing the brightest and best of Western liberal civilization to respond with - "Well, actually...".

A natural reaction, but under the circumstances a political trap. Rightly or wrongly people have a natural aversion to people speaking ill of the dead, particularly when they've just been brutally murdered. And as much as you say "I'm not justifying it, but..." people hear that as "Actually I am kinda justifying it a bit...". Regardless of how legitimate your objection is.

So I think the important bit is to focus on the relevant principle - that creating a de-individualised, amalgamated Muslim "them", and assigning the presumption of collective guilt for salafist-jihadist atrocities to anyone who doesn't "prove" their innocence by loudly denouncing extremism to a level that satisfies the right wing media (an impossible task) - is destructive of the basic social solidarity needed for a shared society.

As for this sorta thing

The Daily Hate Mail wringing its hands about a "War on Freedom" in a non-ironic way, is beyond all parody.

But the theme of defending the liberal value of "Liberty" against Islamist terror, demands a political response. Irritatingly, this morning's "Thought for the Day" brought some Reverend's reflections that were uncomfortably close to my own, albeit from liberal, Christian pov (1:48 on the iplayer). That is, that Liberty is only one of the full Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité triad. Fraternity is a bit of an archaic (and needlessly masculine) form for what is nowadays better termed solidarity. The common ground between the jihadists and the islamophobic Right's response is that they are both engaged in a "War on Solidarity". Both want to see society polarised and their own target constituencies rallied behind their parallel contentions that Muslims and non-Muslims cannot live side by side in peace.

So essentially I propose as rebuttal to the "defence of liberty" theme, that defence of liberty needs to be combined with a defence of equality and fraternity/solidarity. And that, amongst other things, does mean that claiming that "anyone offended by this picture I drew of Muhammed as a dog fucking a pig - look I drew your Ma's face on the pig, whaddya think of that? eh? eh? - is an enemy of Western civilisation and probably a terrorist sympathiser" is out of order.

Not being an expert or anything, but the fact that they're hostile to the FN really says very little in the broader context. In the UK, the conventional right wing press (eg The Telegraph) have launched open house on Ukip, since they're a major threat to the Tories, who they're historically alligned with. However, in the grand scheme of things, the Telegraph/Tory axis probably does even more damage to immigrants' material conditions than Farage, precisely cos they're able to exculpate themselves of extremism/racism by negative association.

The discourse moves most significantly when the 'respectable' centrists change, not when new characters enter. This is why I think 99.999% of anti-fascism is totally flawed. Charlie Hebdo - the "left of centre liberals" - even declared 'war' (so to speak) on Islamism. As far as I can see, they represent the institutional racism of French political discourse (if we accept that French republicanism is de facto Islamophobic).

ocelot

claiming that "anyone offended by this picture I drew of Muhammed as a dog fucking a pig - look I drew your Ma's face on the pig, whaddya think of that? eh? eh? - is an enemy of Western civilisation and probably a terrorist sympathiser" is out of order.

Not a single leftist has claimed this, but some elsewhere have suggested or hinted liberals shot dead are "racists" with an optional add on of "fascists".

OK. So long as we don't fall into the trap of assuming that liberalism and racism are mutually exclusive categories.

I've accepted President Hollande's invitation to join the Unity Rally in Paris this Sunday - celebrating the values behind #CharlieHebdo.— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) January 9, 2015

No doubt we will be told what those values are ad nauseam.

https://www.academia.edu/5049516/Book_Review_of_Secret_Affairs_Britains_Collusion_with_Radical_Islam._From_Anarchist_Studies_Vol_21_No_1_2013

I thought as communists we were supposed to attack and ridicule religion? I.e., like we've done for the past 200+ years?

Mmm. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't recall Marx siding with Bruno Bauer's position that Germany's Jews should emancipate themselves from their religion before they had a right to be emancipated from official state discrimination? Surely as a keen Marxologist you can expand on this one?

ocelot

Mmm. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't recall Marx siding with Bruno Bauer's position that Germany's Jews should emancipate themselves from their religion before they had a right to be emancipated from official state discrimination? Surely as a keen Marxologist you can expand on this one?

Yeah, every time I see this "Islam is a religion entirely incompatible with human rights, either Muslims want to assimilate and respect the values of Western civilisation or they don't want to live alongside us in one country" drivel I just want to quote "On the Jewish Question".

jura

I thought as communists we were supposed to attack and ridicule religion? I.e., like we've done for the past 200+ years?

Well certainly not in the snobbish, neckbeardy/middle-school-atheisty manner.

I think it's a natural reaction for people confronted with the media blaring that CH were not only fearless martyrs to free speech but cultural heroes representing the brightest and best of Western liberal civilization to respond with - "Well, actually...".

A natural reaction, but under the circumstances a political trap. Rightly or wrongly people have a natural aversion to people speaking ill of the dead, particularly when they've just been brutally murdered. And as much as you say "I'm not justifying it, but..." people hear that as "Actually I am kinda justifying it a bit...". Regardless of how legitimate your objection is.

A thousand times this, basically. My fb feed is now absolutely chocca with lefties wringing their hands about the racism of a magazine they hadn't even heard of 48 hours ago. Ok, so Charlie Hebdo was a bit racist. No shit. But that's not why their employees were gunned down in their offices by violent reactionaries, so that's not the thing we should be focussing on here. It's not a convincing counter-narrative to respond to politicians rallying people around "freedom of speech" to say "ah but they were a bit racist, doncha know" and then compare them to the nazis when someone inevitably says "ah but even racists have freedom etc.". This is not a good road for us to start down at this point. It will not help to soften or counteract the already-underway backlash one bit.

~J.

It will not help to soften or counteract the already-underway backlash one bit.

Something I get the feeling that these islamists want a backlash, as if it was part of the plan .... :o

ocelot

Mmm. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't recall Marx siding with Bruno Bauer's position that Germany's Jews should emancipate themselves from their religion before they had a right to be emancipated from official state discrimination? Surely as a keen Marxologist you can expand on this one?

How about "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."?

Gepetto

Well certainly not in the snobbish, neckbeardy/middle-school-atheisty manner.

I don't think Charlie Hebdo's caricatures are snobbish or neckbeardy in the least. Do you?

Deleted, because the only things of importance to me, I said in #10.

Deleted, see previous expanation.

akai

It was interesting also to see the different responses in France - I read the FA, CNTF Vignoles and CNT-AIT Toulouse responses. The FA, is basically sympathy with victims, the CNTF Vignoles is afraid this will be used for racism and violence against Muslims and CNT-AIT Toulouse criticizing the fact that there needs to be a struggle against capitalism and the state and people are focusing on religion.

Spanish version of the FA statement:

Tiroteo en Charlie hebdo

La Federación Anarquista [francófona] acusa con horror la matanza perpetrada en los locales del periódico Charlie hebdo, que ha dejado 12 muertos y 11 heridos.
Compartimos la emoción, la indignación y la tristeza de las familias, de los amigos y de los colegas tras este crimen odioso. Entre las víctimas se cuentan algunos que colaboraron en tiempos con Le Monde libertaire, y si nuestras posturas después pudieron divergir, ellos quedarán en la memoria de muchos compañeros.
Este atentado debe recordarnos que el oscurantismo religioso como política es letal.
Condenamos a los asesinos, pero permanecemos vigilantes ante las reacciones de la extrema derecha o al dispositivo policiaco del Estado.
Continuaremos combatiendo la opresión, el autoritarismo y la intolerancia, ya se escondan detrás de la religión, de la nación o del orden securitario.

Federación Anarquista
7 enero 2015

CNT-AIT Toulouse statement:

"CHARLIE HEBDO : APRES LA TUERIE

Le massacre qui vient d'avoir lieu ce 7 Janvier à Paris est d'une extrême gravité. Il importe pour nous tous non seulement d'en déplorer les effets mais surtout d'en dénoncer les causes.

D'une part, une "crise économique" persistante qui frappe la population et dont profitent les capitalistes avec la complicité d'une classe politique corrompue.
D'autre part, la diffusion massive d'une idéologie obscurantiste qui nie la lutte des classes et qui favorise volontairement la montée de communautarismes religieux.

La tuerie à laquelle nous venons d'assister n'est qu'un des résultats dramatiques de cette situation qui a permis aux religions de redevenir un fait sociétal soit disant respectable.
Pourtant, toutes les religions sont porteuses d'actes fanatiques et criminels, Voltaire l'écrivait déjà: "Ceux qui font croire des absurdités peuvent vous faire commettre des atrocités."
L'émancipation des exploités ne sera jamais l'œuvre de partis politiques ou de religions, mais au contraire celle de leur lutte solidaire et autonome contre l'Etat, le capitalisme et toutes les religions."

CNT-AIT TOULOUSE. 07 Janvier 2015

Both taken from the alasbarricadas thread
http://www.alasbarricadas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=58600&start=0

S. Artesian

Doesn't quite work that way-- again look at the Jewish religion, and the history of attack and ridicule against that religion. What exactly was the historical determinant of those attacks? An "emancipatory impulse." Not hardly.

Sure. But it's the same with money, state or capital. Doesn't mean money, state, capital and, yes, religion, aren't our enemies.

S. Artesian

Some are calling this France's "9/11." Wouldn't doubt that a bit.

Meaning what exactly?

~J.

Deleted. Yep, you guessed why.

jef costello

bastarx

This is one of their fine satirical cartoons.

"The sex slaves of Boko Haram are angry. Don't touch our benefits."

Good satire aims up the social hierarchy. Aiming down is at best snobbery and often racist.

As I've said I do not particularly like Charlie Hebdo's cartoons, but do you think genuinely think that this cartoon is accusing Boko Haram's victims of demanding benefits? The images are often caricatured but they are also mocking people' use of stereotypes. Charlie Hebdo's use of steretypes is close to the line and maybe over it (I'm not an expert on their stuff, as I said, I didn't read it)

mocking stereo types by just drawing them? where does the mocking part come in? Like monkey one, how does that mock the FN to simple draw what they said?

jura

ocelot

Mmm. Unless I'm mistaken, I don't recall Marx siding with Bruno Bauer's position that Germany's Jews should emancipate themselves from their religion before they had a right to be emancipated from official state discrimination? Surely as a keen Marxologist you can expand on this one?

How about "The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."?

Was not expecting the Bernard Lewis reading from yourself, in fairness.

"Die gesellschaftliche Emanzipation des Juden ist die Emanzipation der Gesellschaft vom Judentum." The conventional reading of this (in the context both of the text that preceeds it, and as an opposition to Bauer's liberal racism) is that Marx is making a play on the double meaning of Judentum in German at that time - referring to Jewry and commerce/profiteering. In other words Marx is criticising Bauer's idealist position that Jews should emancipate themselves intellectually from "crass materialism", when this is based not in religious delusion but in the concrete reality of capitalist society. In other words, the punchline of Marx's essay is that the social emancipation of the Jews (and everybody else, in fact) is dependent on the emancipation of society from capitalism.

And obscure derail, but I would argue that Bruno Bauer's liberal antisemitic position in some ways foreshadows today's liberal islamophobia. Just as Bauer insisted that before the Jews could be treated as social equals in German society they had to defect from their "backwards" religion and accept the more advanced liberality of the christian tradition, so today's liberal racists insist that they have nothing against Muslims ("hating the sin, and not the sinner" how many times have we heard that cant?) but Islam is backwards relative to the advanced liberality of the "European judeo-christian tradition" (the same words repeated more hypocritically by extreme-right politicians who were until only yesterday card-carrying antisemites). The parallels are striking, at least imo.

sihhi

I think there are misconceptions about Die Sturmer.
It was much, much closer to NSDAP than Charlie Hebdo is to the PS or the French elite.

(Its eventual millionaire owner) Streicher was an NSDAP member from the very start took part in a militarist coup attempt, was covered in blood before the paper even was launched, As a middle-class officer he helped financed the NSDAP when it was in trouble in the 1920s.

When the Nazis took over in 1933, there were repeated accusations of his having sexually tortured political prisoners within his power when he was a high up official in Bavaria a Nazi heartland.
-----
Jef will know this better than me but Charlie Hebdo is not like what Die Sturmer was. It's an imperfect liberal (but still liberal) paper. It does do smut against plenty of religions. It's target is basically the 'cons' of France - people who vote for De Gaulle for security, people who didn't care about French trade with militarist Chile, people who idolise the Pope and catholic schools, people who say French corruption isn't that bad because we're not a third world country, people who thought the Jyllands Posten caricatures from 2005 shouldn't be republished, people who vote FN, people who are opposed to immigrants solely on the grounds they will populate France just for (that's the target of that ugly cover above about the allocation de famille dispute), people who saw the demonstrations in the Arab world as an inconvenience to their holidays in the Magreb

Streicher wasn't executed because of accusations of torture but because his essays were deemed as incitement to murder by the victors court. It was certainly a free speech issue. Just because there currently isn't a bloodbath inside of France doesn't mean France doesn't take part in bloodbaths in its or its allies current/former colonies and in the periphery. People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France.

I'm aware that this was/is a leftist publication-though one moderating with the times- but I don't think the National Fronts politics on 'immigration' are all that different from the political left. The underlining foundation is the same. France, the country, has a culture and its population of a 'Muslim' background has failed to adopt this culture. Furthermore this population of a 'Muslim' background has a culture, a Muslim culture, that is less developed on the evolutionary scale to French culture- the latter which is all the good things like equality and rainbows and so on (or, if one is self-critical, relatively speaking). Even when the French left tries to do the flip side of the coin and condescends to/patronizes "Muslims" as a (cross class) 'oppressed minority' the logic is the same. For instance when the NPA ran a Muslim woman with no relation with left politics on their ticket and then berated her publicly when she was found to have no use to them. Its a politics based on nation/people and a mystification of it.

Maybe its a misperception on my part as an outsider but I think the hostility to the National Front by the French Left has more to do with the FN 's anti-German politics then anything else. When Socialist Interior Minister Valls called for the majority of Roma to be expelled from the country because they were a threat to French life and incompatible with French culture not only was he not immediately expelled from the government and his party but he was criticized by his fellow cabinet members, as per BBC, ""A theory that such and such a person or such and such a people will never, ever be able to integrate just doesn't stand up," said Mr Valls' cabinet colleague, Arnaud Montebourg, according to Agence France-Presse news agency."That's what they said about the Italians, that's what they said about the Spanish, it's what they said about the Portuguese, and what they said about the Arabs."" In other words they can be civilized, it's just a pessimism of the spirit.

I also see a big difference between these two cartoons.

jef costello

"No gods, no masters" that's why we can and should at least be laughing at religion.

This is a slogan from the time when The Church was one of the main institutions of society. In many countries, like Spain, they were the biggest landowners and their social, political, and economic power was immense. There is no comparison to the world today. If they have social, political, and economic power its commensurate to just another lobby, akin to to treating AIPAC or oil companies as some all encompassing lords. Even its entire intellectual framework takes its cues from the contemporary 'secular' world. Someone mentioned in this thread the opposition to the Catholic church to gay marriage. When some religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality their framework, tropes, and slanders are entirely based on leftist and/or secular ideologues and ideologies and sciences of the 18-20th century beginning with the Enlightenment. And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

To be honest I'm finding it hard to take this in good faith but I'll give it a go. I don't joke about race and gender because these are not cultures and they are not oppressive ideologies that we have an explicit ideological opposition to. I don't understand what you mean about the essence and quite frankly I'm not the one lumping all muslims together, unless I'm talking about them as a group practising a faith or as victims of anti-islamic stuff, you are.

Muslim is not a culture, people from different countries- a volk- with a particular majority religion dont have a common culture. A lot of what is called culture is just vague positive/negative generalizations that can applied to any country or a reference to protectionist policies that allow domestic capital to produce (ex. entertainment) products while excluding foreign hegemonic ones (the reason why France has a comic book industry that isn't dominated by American publishers the way Hollywood studios dominate the global movie market is because of French government policy). What is called the culture of some group is not singular, all encompassing, or static. The same thing is true of religion, especially a decentralized one like Islam. Religion is what you-or material forces- make of it on any given historical moment. If a religion was rigid by nature it would remain a cult and probably not survive many generations. You're saying that there is a singular entity called Islam that can one can tiptoe around out of patronizing concern. In the anti-Islamist manifesto Charlie Hebdo published it was written

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.
We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

Does France have "equality, freedom and secular values " and who made it the flag bearer of these vague platitudes? Why is someone from Algeria being molded together with someone from Cameroon (themselves, like France, countries current or until recently amorphous identities) into "Muslim" culture because the authors couldn't care about the difference?

About race and gender not being cultures: its often construed that way. As an example in the 1960's US Democrats ground out The Negro Family report (by future senator Daniel Moynihan) which examined why blacks in the US were poor and determined it was because they were matriarchies where black fathers were incapable of playing out their natural role (out of lack of jobs or negligence) which led to social dysfunction and then poverty. To copy the wikipedia heading Moynihan said:" "The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what 'everyone knew': that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so." It was pretty influential on reform legislation of LBJ and subsequent administrations. Contemporary black conservatives love this stuff. See Obamas "Popeyes chicken" speech or any time he berates absentee fathers. Most hatreds and fears of American blacks by its non-black population is based on hatred and fear of black workers and working poor, whose dispossession like class in general is seen as a lifestyle choice.

The other danger is that people putting out a magazine are being killed for doing so, I'm not a free speech extremist, but if communists can't recognize how dangerous it is when there are political assassinations taking place (even if you think they're racists leading an anti-muslim charge this still stands).

Many sensible people recognized the danger when Meir Kahane or Anwar Al-Awlaki were killed for their practice of speech but here the elite attention and consequent media onslaught is based on them largely agreeing with the politics and views of Charlie Hebdo. Merkel, Cameron, Rajoy, Turk, and the EU president are flying in to France to commend them. Vanguards of the establishment like Guardian and Google are donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to the publication. This didn't happen with the dead cops in Yemen or the people killed by Islamists at the Jewish Museum in Belgium recently. Strikes quite deeper into the soul of the EU elite.

Jolasmo:

It's not a convincing counter-narrative to respond to politicians rallying people around "freedom of speech" to say "ah but they were a bit racist, doncha know"

The objection that they were 'a bit racist" is not an answer to the politicians rallying around "freedmom of speech" in general. It is an answer to politicians and media to rally around Charlie itself, to identify with it, with its message, to say, in scary unisono: "Je suis Charlie". Well, je ne suis pas Charlie, I am not Charlie. And Charlie 's racism is one of the reasons I take that distance.

The other reason is the suffocating pressure to solidarize, not just with the victims but with the publication, and the 'Western secular values" it promoted. Freedom expression is about NOT having to say "je suis Charlie" to prove your love of 'freedom'; NOT being pressurized by fear of beeing considered apologists for the attack, into saying that mantra. There is a backlash against Muslims. There is, at the same time, a backlash against standing outside the mainstream - a mainstream that threateningly thunders: "say "Je suis Charlie' or else". No. I am not Charlie. I will not conform. It is a repulsive state-led ritual.

The objection that they were 'a bit racist" is not an answer to the politicians rallying around "freedmom of speech" in general. It is an answer to politicians and media to rally around Charlie itself, to identify with it, with its message, to say, in scary unisono: "Je suis Charlie". Well, je ne suis pas Charlie, I am not Charlie. And Charlie 's racism is one of the reasons I take that distance.

This^^^

teh

jef costello

"No gods, no masters" that's why we can and should at least be laughing at religion.

This is a slogan from the time when The Church was one of the main institutions of society.

It's a slogan from France 1880. I live in a country where catholic Church has more influence now than in France back then. Not to mention islamists in some countries with their dark ages II

teh

And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

Keeping them does not make society more rational, scientific or benevolent either.
In other words what you've said its like saying "they abolished free-market capitalism but it didn't do any good so we should stop criticize free-market capitalism."

ocelot

In other words, the punchline of Marx's essay is that the social emancipation of the Jews (and everybody else, in fact) is dependent on the emancipation of society from capitalism.

This is correct. Still, this emancipation also entails emancipation from religion.

teh

People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France.

Is this true? Re Syria, a quick look at some of the older front pages of the magazine reveals cartoons critical of both Assad and Western militarism. On Kosovo, I found one mocking Serbian genocidal policy, and another one mocking Regis Debray's state-sponsored visit to Kosovo.

I think we need to make it clear this wasn't an attack on a magazine because it was racist, it was an attack for caricaturing mohammed by a bunch of amongst other things racist supremacist thugs, whose 'cell' also attacked a jewish shop and went on to murder jews.

I think this needs to be remembered.

teh

When some religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality their framework, tropes, and slanders are entirely based on leftist and/or secular ideologues and ideologies and sciences of the 18-20th century beginning with the Enlightenment.

No, this is not true at all, at least not in Eastern Europe. We're currently experiencing a backlash against secularism, science and the Enlightenment in my country, centered around a campaign against gay marriage, adoption by gays and sexual education, which is led by civic religious activists, nationalists and the Church. I think posters from some other CEE countries will be able to confirm this.

Also, the reason to oppose religion in the 19th century or in 20th century Spain (or other backward European countries) was not simply that the Church was a huge landowner. There is a problem with religion per se; in all of its guises, it is a reactionary and oppressive ideology that celebrates human submission. This has been a theorem of revolutionary working class politics since the 19th century. It's a bit of a shock to me that this has to be mentioned explicitly on a communist forum.

teh

And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

I'm not going to defend state socialism. But in terms of women's rights, sexual education, or family policy, I think the case could be made that it had a more rational approach than we see today in Eastern Europe. (Also, yours is a bit of a straw man argument, because replacing one kind of superstition with another ideology, i.e., Marxism-Leninism combined with nationalism, is not really the kind of emancipation from religion some of the people on this thread are arguing for.)

teh

Many sensible people recognized the danger when Meir Kahane or Anwar Al-Awlaki were killed for their practice of speech but here the elite attention and consequent media onslaught is based on them largely agreeing with the politics and views of Charlie Hebdo. Merkel, Cameron, Rajoy, Turk, and the EU president are flying in to France to commend them. Vanguards of the establishment like Guardian and Google are donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to the publication. This didn't happen with the dead cops in Yemen or the people killed by Islamists at the Jewish Museum in Belgium recently. Strikes quite deeper into the soul of the EU elite.

Of course the "Je suis Charlie" campaign is ridiculous, not least because the French state censored the publication several times in the past. There is of course no real freedom of the speech in the West. And I don't think the people who today "support Charlie Hebdo", either ordinary people or "the elite", really "largely agree" with the politics and views of the magazine. Most probably haven't heard of it before and have only seen the cartoons mocking Islam. They would probably be shocked by or at least disagree with the magazine's utter contempt of authorities, secular or religious. (In my country, some of the would-be supporters are already distancing themselves or taking a more "careful" approach, now that some of the refined depictions of Rabbis, Catholic priests and other scum from the magazine have been in circulation.)

Streicher wasn't executed because of accusations of torture but because his essays were deemed as incitement to murder by the victors court. It was certainly a free speech issue. Just because there currently isn't a bloodbath inside of France doesn't mean France doesn't take part in bloodbaths in its or its allies current/former colonies and in the periphery. People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France.

The Nuremberg judgements aren't mine I made no mention of them.

I pointed out your comparison was absurd. Again one can highlight more differences Die Sturmer was owned by one hands-on owner pumping the same line. Charlie Hebdo has had different owners, editors and different nuances.

"France doesn't take part in bloodbaths in its or its allies current/former colonies and in the periphery. People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France."

Once again, they had a range of caricaturists and journalists. On the issue of foreign interventions as far as I can gauge it was wholehearted opposition to French involvement in Cote d'Ivorie potential involvement in Iraq in 2003. A new boss came in 2004 which tried to shift it to the right, more sensationalism more attacking official enemies only.
Hence that bit about fighting Islamists just like the Nazis were fought some are quoting as if it represents all of the magazine or its journalists.

" I don't think the National Fronts politics on 'immigration' are all that different from the political left. The underlining foundation is the same. France, the country, has a culture and its population of a 'Muslim' background has failed to adopt this culture. Furthermore this population of a 'Muslim' background has a culture, a Muslim culture, that is less developed on the evolutionary scale to French culture- the latter which is all the good things like equality and rainbows and so on (or, if one is self-critical, relatively speaking). Even when the French left tries to do the flip side of the coin and condescends to/patronizes "Muslims" as a (cross class) 'oppressed minority' the logic is the same. For instance when the NPA ran a Muslim woman with no relation with left politics on their ticket and then berated her publicly when she was found to have no use to them"

This is irrelevant to Charlie Hebdo. Also I think the analysis of the FN is wrong.

"Furthermore this population of a 'Muslim' background has a culture, a Muslim culture, that is less developed on the evolutionary scale to French culture- the latter which is all the good things like equality and rainbows and so on (or, if one is self-critical, relatively speaking)"

I am not sure what point is being made here.

Maybe its a misperception on my part as an outsider but I think the hostility to the National Front by the French Left has more to do with the FN 's anti-German politics then anything else. When Socialist Interior Minister Valls called for the majority of Roma to be expelled from the country because they were a threat to French life and incompatible with French culture not only was he not immediately expelled from the government and his party but he was criticized by his fellow cabinet members, as per BBC, ""A theory that such and such a person or such and such a people will never, ever be able to integrate just doesn't stand up," said Mr Valls' cabinet colleague, Arnaud Montebourg, according to Agence France-Presse news agency."That's what they said about the Italians, that's what they said about the Spanish, it's what they said about the Portuguese, and what they said about the Arabs."" In other words they can be civilized, it's just a pessimism of the spirit.

At the risk of incurring your ire, the politician Arnaud Montebourg who you've quoted (I haven't followed what he's done) as a point is making is not wrong - Roma just as Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, Arabs all can integrate. What's the issue with Charlie Hebdo?

Charlie Hebdo in fact published cartoons critical of anti-Romany legislation in France such as:

I also see a big difference between these two cartoons.

That's subjective, but since you don't say what it is no one can respond. But it does highlight that perhaps the comparison with Die Sturmer once again fails.

the hostility to the National Front by the French Left has more to do with the FN 's anti-German politics then anything else.

This is not true I don't think the FN oppose 'cultural Marxism' and believe the trade unions have been 'internationalised' and 'Marxified'. There's a history of FN local governments attacking and suppressing trade union organisation and leftist organisation from the 1990s - it's more self-preservation. I suspect 'Oh they don't like Germany. we do' is low down on the list of concerns.

teh

When some religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality their framework, tropes, and slanders are entirely based on leftist and/or secular ideologues and ideologies and sciences of the 18-20th century beginning with the Enlightenment. And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

1. I don't understand that first part, it sounds like nonsense "some religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality their framework, tropes, and slanders are entirely based on leftist and/or secular ideologues and ideologies and sciences of the 18-20th century beginning with the Enlightenment"

The Enlightenment in its broad sense was about opposing god and religious rules over sexuality. Included in that is rules over homosexuality. Ideas for sexual equality didn't begin with the Enlightenment but it was another forward step.

2. Massive need to define terms "state athiest" what that actually means, which countries are included.

I would just confirm what Jura said.

The PM of Poland also took part in the anti-terrorist rally of the French state. Somehow these people don't see any irony in the whole thing, since the state often comes down on anybody criticizing religion in this country. Or the right-wing activists who are offended by everything from gay Telletubbies, Satanic Hello Kitty and Halloween, who also harrass everybody who insults religious feelings. The only difference is that in Poland the state helps the right-wing oppress and silence critical people and in France the silencing in done in a different manner.

ocelot

And obscure derail, but I would argue that Bruno Bauer's liberal antisemitic position in some ways foreshadows today's liberal islamophobia. Just as Bauer insisted that before the Jews could be treated as social equals in German society they had to defect from their "backwards" religion and accept the more advanced liberality of the christian tradition, so today's liberal racists insist that they have nothing against Muslims ("hating the sin, and not the sinner" how many times have we heard that cant?) but Islam is backwards relative to the advanced liberality of the "European judeo-christian tradition" (the same words repeated more hypocritically by extreme-right politicians who were until only yesterday card-carrying antisemites). The parallels are striking, at least imo.

I think that's what this paper is about: Sara R. Farris - From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question

List of anti-Muslim attacks across France so far on this link. Everyone can stfu about freedom of speech or the risk of terrorism now, it's fucking bullshit. You're far more likely to kill yourselves by eg leaving the gas cooker on or drinking bleach by accident than from a terror attack. The only exceptions to this are (off the top of my head) Syria/Iraq, Afghanistan, NE Nigeria, Pakistan, northern Mali, parts of Somalia, etc...

Like I say, the notion that Islamic terrorism is the "greatest threat to humanity" is a profoundly centre/far right one. If Charlie Hebdo really is "left wing", then maybe anti-fascists should start targeting the left?

rooieravotr

Jolasmo:

It's not a convincing counter-narrative to respond to politicians rallying people around "freedom of speech" to say "ah but they were a bit racist, doncha know"

The objection that they were 'a bit racist" is not an answer to the politicians rallying around "freedmom of speech" in general. It is an answer to politicians and media to rally around Charlie itself, to identify with it, with its message, to say, in scary unisono: "Je suis Charlie". Well, je ne suis pas Charlie, I am not Charlie. And Charlie 's racism is one of the reasons I take that distance.

The other reason is the suffocating pressure to solidarize, not just with the victims but with the publication, and the 'Western secular values" it promoted. Freedom expression is about NOT having to say "je suis Charlie" to prove your love of 'freedom'; NOT being pressurized by fear of beeing considered apologists for the attack, into saying that mantra. There is a backlash against Muslims. There is, at the same time, a backlash against standing outside the mainstream - a mainstream that threateningly thunders: "say "Je suis Charlie' or else". No. I am not Charlie. I will not conform. It is a repulsive state-led ritual.

Well, good for you I guess, personally I never felt any particular pressure to join in with the whole "je suis Charlie" bs in the first place but I guess it depends on your situation. I dunno what else to say other than it's one thing to criticise the backlash, or the hypocrisy of politicians and the press crowing about "freedom of speech" in this context, and quite another to focus on attacking the magazine itself. That's the point I wanted to make.

~J.

Caiman del Barrio

Like I say, the notion that Islamic terrorism is the "greatest threat to humanity" is a profoundly centre/far right one. If Charlie Hebdo really is "left wing", then maybe anti-fascists should start targeting the left?

Irrelevant straw man is irrelevant.

I dunno what else to say other than it's one thing to criticise the backlash, or the hypocrisy of politicians and the press crowing about "freedom of speech" in this context, and quite another to focus on attacking the magazine itself.

Mm tbh the values of the magazine itself are damn near irrelevant to the only argument of interest to anarchists, which is what the state is going to do about this clear opportunity to shore up its secret and not-so-secret use of "Muslim terror" as an excuse for extending tools of social control.

I mean terror attacks against working people are not by their own powers going to bring down free speech in France, it's just a particularly shit form of propaganda by the deed done by isolated groups of wankers looking to precipitate a religious war. Hebdo's politics (which to me seem to consist of little more than totally uninteresting mainstream muscular liberalism as done by people with some dodgy ideas) were an means to an end, and if it wasn't them it would have been someone else.

The state's reaction though is quite likely to include using appeals to a "threatened" free speech to, for example, put senior parliamentary figures at the front of a million-strong march supporting them taking charge of the situation. That's worth worrying about.

If Charlie Hebdo really is "left wing", then maybe anti-fascists should start targeting the left?

Stop victim blaming and maybe see this as the effect of the nutjobs trying to create a 'race' war. And using blasphemy and anti-semitism as an excuse to kill some cartoonists and jews.

For information, here's an interview with a journalist who worked for Charlie Hebdo:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/karima-bennoune-caroline-fourest/support-right-to-make-fun-of-extremists-interview-with-carolin

Also this article by the interviewer, Karima Bennoune:

https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/karima-bennoune/charlie-hebdo-there-is-no-way-they-will-make-us-put-down-our-pens

Caiman, you can support the right to blashpheme/freedom of expression and tackle bigotry at the same time.

the hypocrisy of politicians

https://twitter.com/teobesta/timelines/554261817963585536

List of anti-Muslim attacks across France so far on this link. Everyone can stfu about freedom of speech or the risk of terrorism now, it's fucking bullshit. You're far more likely to kill yourselves by eg leaving the gas cooker on or drinking bleach by accident than from a terror attack.

Is it just me, or is the logic here absurd?
It's highly unlikely that I'm ever going to die in a rail accident, so rail safety is irrelevant let's keep the focus only on road safety.

Like I say, the notion that Islamic terrorism is the "greatest threat to humanity" is a profoundly centre/far right one.

No one has claimed this. However, it is a threat of magnitude to the working classes especially Muslim working-classes and working-classes in Muslim regions or countrues.
It is either the advance guard of political Islamism or anti-leftist/anti-secularist intimidation - in Xinjiang, in Chechnya, Lebanon, Indonesia, in Bangladesh, eastern Turkey/Bakure Kurdistan.

We might not like the form of left Charlie Hebdo takes but this attack was

1 an attempt at anti-leftist intimidation, an extreme version of the Turkish government imposing massive fines on satire magazines there (Girgir, Leman, Pufft etc) [I'm not a fan of them either] via libel actions.

2 an attempt to retain the Mohammed depiction taboo which has been under severe strain from intellectuals from the Muslim world for some time now.

I mean terror attacks against working people are not by their own powers going to bring down free speech in France, it's just a particularly shit form of propaganda by the deed done by isolated groups of wankers looking to precipitate a religious war. Hebdo's politics (which to me seem to consist of little more than totally uninteresting mainstream muscular liberalism as done by people with some dodgy ideas) were an means to an end, and if it wasn't them it would have been someone else.

Well quite, and it was someone else as well in the form of Jews (in a neighbourhood with a high Jewish population).
The various Jewish nationalist groups will also have their day not unreasonably claiming (on nationalist lines) that Jews have become the most targetted minority in France displacing the Algerians.

There will also be convulsions are fractures within the French anti-racist anti-fascist movement further divide between
alienation from and devotion to the concept of (an as yet unachieved) laicite.
Republishing Charlie Hebdo's work will likely be a touchpaper for this, or even new French state controls on e.g. mosques and their evening/weekend education programmes.
None of which is good for the working-class.

It's highly unlikely that I'm ever going to die in a rail accident, so rail safety is irrelevant let's keep the focus only on road safety.

In fact it's much more likely you'll die in a rail accident in Britain (three deaths vs one over the last five years), which is why we see so many thundering front pages about train safety all the time. And the editorials, my god the constant editorials. And those people sharing photos saying "I am [insert name of train victim here], god we can hardly get away from it!

So yeah... it's you. Or rather, it's a lot of people who mix up levels of press coverage with actual threat levels. The thing is, neither problem is very dangerous to Jane Bloggs, and the example you just gave is actually an excellent example of how two issues with comparable rates of death don't get anywhere near consistent (let alone logical) column inches, with one being basically ignored and the other being treated as a constant threat with front pages every other week and 24-hour rolling coverage when it actually occurs. Do you even know who the last person killed on the lines was? Me neither. But if you couldn't tell me who the last person killed in Britain by a Muslim extremist was I'd be very surprised.

this. However, it is a threat of magnitude to the working classes especially Muslim working-classes and working-classes in Muslim regions or countrues.

I've seen this conflation before and it's like saying "earthquakes are a threat of magnitude to the working classes, especially working-classes in earthquake-prone regions." Which is fine, but we don't live in an earthquake prone region or one where faith-based terror is a massive issue, do we. So it's an irrelevant point when we're talking about Western responses to a European terror attack.

Caiman del Barrio

List of anti-Muslim attacks across France so far on this link. Everyone can stfu about freedom of speech or the risk of terrorism now, it's fucking bullshit. You're far more likely to kill yourselves by eg leaving the gas cooker on or drinking bleach by accident than from a terror attack. The only exceptions to this are (off the top of my head) Syria/Iraq, Afghanistan, NE Nigeria, Pakistan, northern Mali, parts of Somalia, etc...

Like I say, the notion that Islamic terrorism is the "greatest threat to humanity" is a profoundly centre/far right one. If Charlie Hebdo really is "left wing", then maybe anti-fascists should start targeting the left?

I fully agree...in the West, there is a minuscule risk of danger from terrorism compared to other hazards. This is indeed a right-wing, politically based concept.

In the US at least, I think it is a case of the bourgeoisie (self-identified liberal and conservative alike) moving rightward steadily over the last 40 years to look after their own interests more exclusively. I can't speak to French history as easily.

In fact it's much more likely you'll die in a rail accident in Britain (three deaths vs one over the last five years), which is why we see so many thundering front pages about train safety all the time. And the editorials, my god the constant editorials. And those people sharing photos saying "I am [insert name of train victim here], god we can hardly get away from it!

But I don't travel by rail ever - that's my point - I do use buses and cars, 'so who cares about railway safety?' It's absurd logic.

So yeah... it's you. Or rather, it's a lot of people who mix up levels of press coverage with actual threat levels.

I bow down to your knowledge then, so please supply us the statistics in terms deaths per passenger km or whatever.

The thing is, neither problem is very dangerous to Jane Bloggs, and the example you just gave is actually an excellent example of how two issues with comparable rates of death don't get anywhere near consistent (let alone logical) column inches, with one being basically ignored and the other being treated as a constant threat with front pages every other week and 24-hour rolling coverage when it actually occurs. Do you even know who the last person killed on the lines was? Me neither. But if you couldn't tell me who the last person killed in Britain by a Muslim extremist was I'd be very surprised.

But I wasn't comparing Islamist attacks - (yes Lee Rigby being decapitated) - to fatalities on railway lines and there's a lot of them in part because of youth tresspassing and suicides.

I've seen this conflation before and it's like saying "earthquakes are a threat of magnitude to the working classes, especially working-classes in earthquake-prone regions." Which is fine, but we don't live in an earthquake prone region or one where faith-based terror is a massive issue, do we. So it's an irrelevant point when we're talking about Western responses to a European terror attack.

What are you saying I'm conflating? We're a family of 6 billion working-class people across the globe of course there'll be areas where Islamists are more or less prominent. That's not the point though.

Earthquakes are a natural disaster, these attackers are our working class brothers (and sister) adopting an antisemitic Islamism, under the influence of Islamist bodies/groups how can it not be an issue in "the West"?

They are ravaging the concept - let alone the practical side - of class unity - not just the bombers but the soft Islamists like the Islamic Human Rights Commission, the Islamic Forum, the European Democrats (the Turkish ones I'm most familiar with). So it is an issue in Europe. (I'm not suggesting you don't think it is) just one that needs a different one to say in the Middle East or Nigeria.

wob4lyf

I fully agree...in the West, there is a minuscule risk of danger from terrorism compared to other hazards. This is indeed a right-wing, politically based concept.

In the US at least, I think it is a case of the bourgeoisie (self-identified liberal and conservative alike) moving rightward steadily over the last 40 years to look after their own interests more exclusively. I can't speak to French history as easily.

A class movement's opposition can't be solely based on risk - even if not a single journalist was killed (and hence it being a minor news story and no chance for boneheads to carry out reprisals) the fact that it was attempted weakens class unity.

Another thing which might do that would be slandering readers and writers hired by Charlie Hebdo as racists. Why should a reader or ex-reader (there are lots of ex-readers in France) take us seriously if we're like 'well they're all racists it's what they are'.

Why should people who don't see their caricatures as racist (given they attacked all religions) take us seriously if we say they're racists too for not finding them racist.

I personally don't even agree that they're muscular liberals they had one muscular liberal boss for half a decade which lead to pushing the desire to break the Mohammed taboo. That boss (whose quote it is about Islamism as *the* threat after Nazism and Stalinism) was replaced after the journalists were fed up with it becoming centrist and not leftist. I might have misunderstood muscular liberalism though it might be wider than what I think it is.

That's it for this weekend have a good week all.

But I don't travel by rail ever - that's my point

Do you work in a terror hotspot then? Because I do, I work at a socialist newspaper in London with no windows on the ground floor and a metal door to deter fascists. I also volunteer at an anarchist bookshop which was damn near burned to the ground in an arson attack two years ago (assailant unknown) which is five minutes away from that supposedly super-scary Islamist hub the East London Mosque. That's my fucking qualification for being worried about terrorism - and I ain't, because I've got a sense of perspective on it.

please supply us the statistics in terms deaths per passenger km or whatever

Over the last five years there have been precisely three deaths by train and one by Muslim extremist terrorism in Britain. So your chances are about one in 21,700,000 over five years for the first, and one in 65,000,000 for the other. That's about a factor of ten less than the chances of being hit by lightning. Per kilometre, given a network length of 15,753, divided by three that's approx one in 5,251km being fatal in a given half-decade. You're welcome.

That's not the point though.

Yes. It is. The context of this conversation is Muslim fundamentalist terror specifically in France. At a pinch, we can expand that to say terror in Western Europe. What we can't do is tackle a totally different problem in Pakistan (ie. a large, well-armed and partially socially-embedded force operating across porus borders with significant support within the military in a majority muslim country) by pretending it's exactly the same as the problem in Britain (a tiny number of alienated people who have decided that the solution to their alienation is to sign up with a small, poorly-resourced and widely despised cult in a majority Christian/atheist country which has little to no penetration in the population at large and is constantly hounded by a unified, modern and invasive State apparatus).

Just to clarify, for the #jesuischarlie folk, who are clearly far more concerned about the rights of bourgeois 'journalists' than the list of Islamophobic attacks I posted earlier, my comparison of likely causes of death was in direct response to the Charlie Hebdo manifesto which called Islamic terrorism the greatest threat facing the world today.

BTW, just so you know, France is one of the safest countries in the world to be a journalist. The primary victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims.

augustynww

teh

jef costello

"No gods, no masters" that's why we can and should at least be laughing at religion.

This is a slogan from the time when The Church was one of the main institutions of society.

It's a slogan from France 1880. I live in a country where catholic Church has more influence now than in France back then. Not to mention islamists in some countries with their dark ages II

I don't think theres any comparison with the Catholic Church being in an alliance with Law and Justice party and the 19th century when religion was still used to explain scientific phenomenon. This is before DNA, awareness of other human species, span of the universe were known. And whether people believe in, say, evolution or not is irrelevant, the awareness of its existence is there. And last year weekly church attendance was at its lowest in Poland's modern history and only 16.3 percent of church goers attended Communion ffs (if its relevant, which I dont think it should be).

I don't think the whole Islamists and dark ages (or "middle ages") rhetoric should be used. These are modernist movements that are products of modernity. Its like arguing that Protestants call for the return of the times of Jesus. They may or not believe it but its not true.

teh

And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

Keeping them does not make society more rational, scientific or benevolent either.
In other words what you've said its like saying "they abolished free-market capitalism but it didn't do any good so we should stop criticize free-market capitalism."[/quote]

Well if you solely criticize free market capitalism and not capitalism in general then no I don't think you should. I mean the reason Fordist capitalism was discarded was that it collapsed under its own contradictions and corruption. Even self styled free market capitalists yearn for the Golden Age of post-war European capitalism. Why waste your time on capitalism with a human face when it doen't exist.

My point about atheism not making society more rational, scientific, or benevolent was that many people in the 19th century believed that if religious superstitions were discarded then humans could use science to create a society based on reason, which did not turn out to be the case.

jura

teh

People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France.

Is this true? Re Syria, a quick look at some of the older front pages of the magazine reveals cartoons critical of both Assad and Western militarism. On Kosovo, I found one mocking Serbian genocidal policy, and another one mocking Regis Debray's state-sponsored visit to Kosovo.

Re Syria I don't know what 'Western militarism' refers to. Did they support the 'Syrian Revolution' or not. My impression was that they did.

Re Kosovo So they supported wiping Yugoslavia off the map while attacking the domestic 5th column, as any patriots would do.

Mr. Jolly

I think we need to make it clear this wasn't an attack on a magazine because it was racist, it was an attack for caricaturing mohammed by a bunch of amongst other things racist supremacist thugs, whose 'cell' also attacked a jewish shop and went on to murder jews.

I think this needs to be remembered.

I think if they simply wanted to express iconoclasm they would have attacked a more high profile target like LIberation in France of Die Welt in Germany. Given that this appears of be the work of partisans of the Islamic State, which controls territory the size of Britain, I think the thinking was more strategic. The massacre at the jewish shop would have not gained more attention and national/global response than the massacre at the Jewish Museum in Belgium recently. (Incidentally the family of a janitor killed at Charlie Hebdo headquarters said the French government hasn't even contacted them). Killing icons of the cultural elite, furthermore those that put themselves on the front line of the homefront in the gwot, pisses off the ruling class of the EU much more, i.e.: "This could have been us!"

bakuninja

ocelot

And obscure derail, but I would argue that Bruno Bauer's liberal antisemitic position in some ways foreshadows today's liberal islamophobia[...]

I think that's what this paper is about: Sara R. Farris - From the Jewish Question to the Muslim Question

Absolutely bang on. Thanks for the link, that's a brilliant paper and markedly relevant to the situation.

Highly recommend reading this to anyone else that hasn't seen it before.

teh

I think if they simply wanted to express iconoclasm they would have attacked a more high profile target like LIberation in France of Die Welt in Germany. Given that this appears of be the work of partisans of the Islamic State, which controls territory the size of Britain, I think the thinking was more strategic.

Hold on. The available evidence is that the two units had separate allegiances. The Kouachi brothers were acting on behalf of AQAP (the Al Qa'ida franchise in Yemen) and, despite certain operational cockups, appear to have been operating on the basis of intelligence (the time of that's week's Charlie Hebdo editorial meeting) and some degree of planning and support network.

Amedy Coulibaly has left a video (since released with post-production work by others, after his death) in which he declares allegiance to Daesh and al-Baghdadi. And that he was working "in coordination" with the Kouachis. This second claim seems suspect. His initial response to the Charlie Hebdo "coup" (in jihadi terms) was to gun down a random copper the next morning. Hardly a highly planned operation. You could even speculate that the inadequacy of that attack, relative to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, prompted the later attack on the Kosher supermarket (again, not exactly a sophisticated intelligence-led operation).

There was an article (actually more than one) just a week ago, a few days before the attack, by a commentator talking about how IS had gained the upper hand in it's rivalry with AQ, and how the only way the latter could regain credibility in the global jihad leadership stakes would be some kind of "coup" in either the US or Western Europe. The Charlie Hebdo massacre may not be on the level of the Madrid train bombings in either sophistication or human devastation. However clearly ISIS recognised it straightaway as a challenge and activated one of their sleepers to try and prevent AQ from stealing all the limelight.

NB I appreciate that discussing these atrocities with such a "detached" perspective may appear to dehumanise or fail to give proper due to the victims, so my apologies to anyone who finds that offensive. But imo we also need to retain some focus on the specific politics behind the actions.

see also AM: Al-Qaeda challenges Islamic State with Paris attack (Jan 8)

All too predictable: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/12/uk-spy-agencies-need-more-powers-says-cameron-paris-attacks

Naturally Dieudonné had to stick his oar in

(roughly) "After this historic march, what am I saying... Legendary [march]! Magical instant equal of the Big Bang that created the universe! ...or at the very least (more locally) comparable to the crowning of Vercingetorix, I finally get home. Know that this evening, as far as I am concerned, I feel like Charlie Coulibaly"

(Coulibaly being the author of the massacre at the Kosher supermarket at Porte Vincennes - see above)

Cue twitterstorm, media outrage and the announcement of a criminal investigation.

For the record, for the people who are using their claims to come from highly religious societies as arguments from authority (essentially), I had an extremely religious upbringing, which I've since cast off (fortunately, C of E folk don't generally believe in apostasy), and my partner is a Parisian of Arabic origin, who - despite renouncing Islam - is still treated like shit by her family for not being a good little Muslim girl, other Arabs for the same reason (eg having a white boyfriend), white French types for simultaneously being 'une arabe' but not living up to their preconceived stereotypes thereof ("t'es libéré quand-meme! On dirait que t'étais pas arabe!" from a work colleague), etc, etc. She's certainly not an anarchist, but she would agree with me (in fact, it's generally the other way round) in saying that the murders were a horrific tragedy, but that even while she has more good cause than anyone to encourage satire which draws out the hypocrisies and contradictions within Islam, still recognises that Charlie Hebdo was a total piece of inflammatory, hurtful, wilfully provocative trash (surely noone really considered this a serious publication in France?) while the whole #Jesuischarlie thing and the recuperation by the state (Bibi Netanyahu vs the terrorists anyone?) is even more insulting. On the day of the attack, she made this point to another French colleague during the lunch break, who replied by speculating as to whether she was 'une integriste', before concluding that she couldn't be since she was currently eating a ham sandwich.

Someone on my Facebook even claimed that calling Charlie Hebdo "Islamophobic" was "ignoring the French context", which has to be the stupidest thing I've heard an anarchist say since, well, the last time I checked Libcom anyway. The French state has brought in a raft of anti-Islam measures, all of which are 'justified' under the no-less-sacred "laicité" of La Republique. Essentially, the classical liberalism which some of you are shamelessly regurgitating like an unwelcome turkey sandwich is used to justify the geopolitical strategies of the French state ie the war on terror. France has laws banning Holocaust denial in public, as well as severe limits on denying the Armenian genocide. It has been an international leader and lobbyist on the prohibition of both. Muslims though have to see pictures of the Prophet's ass and him being decapitated, and just fucking lump it.

While the discussion on here has at times been about how we should accept any criticism of religion from any quarter, regardless of intent (presumably Nazi depictions of Judaism are exempt, in hindsight?), using some frankly rather tired Marxist tropes (wouldn't it be better to adapt the man's ideas to help understand the world today, rather than adapt the world today to 'understand' the man's ideas?). Didn't Marx also say that atheists were annoyign people who wanted to run around telling everyone how great they are for discovering the non-existence of God, or words to that effect (doubtless the Marxbots will dig up the exact quote, page number, possibly quibble over the translation, before accusing me of "irrelevant strawmen", no less)?

As a final point, let me put a hypothetical scenario to all of you:

Let's imagine that the mother of anyone of the people on this thread defending Charlie Hebdo was a local opposition politician with a bad reputation for corruption and dodgy dealings. A local paper decides to declare war on her, but instead of detailing her unscrupulous behaviour, they decide to call her a fucking slut cunt, and draw graphic cartoons of the deterioration of her vagina due to her prostitution and STIs. They do this relentlessly, before starting to up the ante, declaring that she's the sole cause of the small town's problems (she isn't; central government is trying to undermine her with its budgets, while the broader international economic outlook is poor) while the population at large either do that back of the mouth snigger thing, or decide that their attacks on her are basically motivated by misogyny rather than any real interest in undermining her power and ability to screw everyone over. You, as her son/daughter, would you be encouraged to break with/challenge your mother by the paper, or would you be horrifically upset, entrench yoruself in your position out of loyalty, and - perhaps - go looking for the cartoonist?

Good post Caiman. This Charlie Hebdo shite really brings out the liberal in folks.

Thread on the ex-muslims forum if anyone's interested

http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=27984.330

"We are not Charlie"

This thread is pretty shocking, I have to say. I'm particularly dyslexic today, so sorry if I'm repeating stuff or this stuff has been addressed.

This whole thing about blanketly taking the piss out of religion. That assumes all religions are on some kind of equal footing everywhere, when actually, it should be bloody obvious that context is massively important. Satirizing Islam in Turkey and satirizing it in the UK or France have a completely different impact.

Also, the liberal 'free speech' bullshit. Of course you shouldn't get killed because of stuff you've said or written. But that doesn't mean everyone can say whatever the hell they like, regardless of how nasty or bigoted it is, or what it's justifying etc. If all the Top Gear presenters get shot, I won't be all like, yeah that's great, but I'm not going to turn around and be like je suis Jeremy. That's fucking bonkers.

(Little disclaimer, like basically everyone, I have never read Charlie Hebdo, so basing this on the bits I've seen on the internet. So not sure if Top Gear is an apt comparison.)

So.. attention all those against "terrorism," please line up here behind Netanyahu, Abbas, Cameron, Blair, Cheney, Sisi. The march will begin in a few minutes.

The rest of you give aid and comfort to terrorists and will be dealt with accordingly.

It really is a simple, stark, and nauseating as that. There's nothing like "unity" for greasing the machinery of repression.

commieprincess

I have never read Charlie Hebdo, so basing this on the bits I've seen on the internet.

You could try reading this then

On Charlie Hebdo: A letter to my British friends
http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/olivier-tonneau/110115/charlie-hebdo-letter-my-british-friends

Caiman del Barrio

For the record, for the people who are using their claims to come from highly religious societies as arguments from authority (essentially)

For the record, I was responding to the factually incorrect claim that religious figures nowadays use "scientific" arguments to oppose gay marriage etc. and that religion/the Church is no longer a problem today, so to speak.

Caiman del Barrio

still recognises that Charlie Hebdo was a total piece of inflammatory, hurtful, wilfully provocative trash

I think that's a matter of taste. I find some of the cartoons quite funny, I wouldn't call it trash.

Caiman del Barrio

(surely noone really considered this a serious publication in France?)

I agree. It was not me who suggested on this thread that the murdered cartoonists were "part of the elite". (BTW, I'm also trying to picture myself feeling insulted by something that I don't take seriously, nor does anybody else.)

Caiman del Barrio

while the whole #Jesuischarlie thing and the recuperation by the state (Bibi Netanyahu vs the terrorists anyone?) is even more insulting.

No disagreement here either.

Caiman del Barrio

Essentially, the classical liberalism which some of you are shamelessly regurgitating like an unwelcome turkey sandwich is used to justify the geopolitical strategies of the French state ie the war on terror.

Honest question, what is classically liberal about anything I said? I certainly don't view this as a "free speech" issue. I'm opposed to religion. Therefore, I don't have a problem with other people attacking it in print, especially when it's done in a satirical, funny way and from a secular, anti-nationalist, anti-racist and at least vaguely left-wing point of view like that of Charlie Hebdo. Hopefully like anybody else here, I do have a problem with people getting persecuted or killed for doing that (not to mention the other workers, who weren't responsible for the cartoons, who were killed that day and in the later days). Also, I don't like when people involved in revolutionary politics relativize our opposition to religion for fear of being called "Islamophobic" or accused of "religious intolerance". (I think people who do that would be much less conciliatory towards Christianity. Some even try to justify this by saying that Muslims are oppressed, while Christains are "part of the elite" or something, which is totally true and great class analysis.) That's all.

Caiman del Barrio

Muslims though have to see pictures of the Prophet's ass and him being decapitated, and just fucking lump it.

Christians and Judaists and French-nation-lovers equally have to see their icons mocked in Charlie Hebdo.

Caiman del Barrio

While the discussion on here has at times been about how we should accept any criticism of religion from any quarter, regardless of intent

OK, maybe it came across like that. There certainly is a line, and I don't think any criticism of religion is welcome. I do think the sort done by Charlie Hebdo is fine (because it is directed towards all religion, and in a jokingly subversive, mocking way – the comparison with Der Stürmer is ridiculous).

Caiman del Barrio

Didn't Marx also say that atheists were annoyign people who wanted to run around telling everyone how great they are for discovering the non-existence of God, or words to that effect

You are correct. I will not dig up the quote, though.

Caiman del Barrio

while the population at large either do that back of the mouth snigger thing, or decide that their attacks on her are basically motivated by misogyny rather than any real interest in undermining her power and ability to screw everyone over. You, as her son/daughter, would you be encouraged to break with/challenge your mother by the paper, or would you be horrifically upset, entrench yoruself in your position out of loyalty, and - perhaps - go looking for the cartoonist?

Is this the point at which I exclaim, "Ah, the cartoonists brought it upon themselves!"? Seriously, what is the point of this analogy? Of course they were targeted because of the cartoons. They themselves predicted it would happen. Yes, this is how religious fanatics respond to mocking. Does that mean one should not mock or oppose religious fantacism? Should we form discussion groups for the Timothy McVeighs in the US and Da'esh recruits in the Middle East where we can work it out?

commieprincess

This whole thing about blanketly taking the piss out of religion. That assumes all religions are on some kind of equal footing everywhere, when actually, it should be bloody obvious that context is massively important. Satirizing Islam in Turkey and satirizing it in the UK or France have a completely different impact.

Who get to choose when offence has tipped into something that should be censored? How do you manage what is allowed and not allowed? Who gets to choose? On what grounds? For what reasons? Should it be the police that does this?, Will Self? 'community leaders'?, twitter?, comment is free in the Guardian, Newsnight?

https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/12/assimilationism-vs-multiculturalism/

But that doesn't mean everyone can say whatever the hell they like, regardless of how nasty or bigoted it is, or what it's justifying etc.

Does that not just push it underground and heighten it's appeal? Like when tackling ukip, etc. just calling people racist and shutting down the argument doesn't achieve squat.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/16/better-society-let-bigots-say-what-they-think-racism-homophobia

The free press unanimously reported this as world leaders leading a march, lol.

jura

teh

When some religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality their framework, tropes, and slanders are entirely based on leftist and/or secular ideologues and ideologies and sciences of the 18-20th century beginning with the Enlightenment.

No, this is not true at all, at least not in Eastern Europe. We're currently experiencing a backlash against secularism, science and the Enlightenment in my country, centered around a campaign against gay marriage, adoption by gays and sexual education, which is led by civic religious activists, nationalists and the Church. I think posters from some other CEE countries will be able to confirm this.

You're presenting a duality here where "secularism, science and the Enlightenment" is dialectically opposed to the opponents of the family values conservatism of the US Gay Identity movement (gay marriage, adoption by gays and sexual education). My point was that when religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality they use the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment like psychology,psychiatry, and sexology, as well as secular movements which includes the European left and feminism. They rarely use the actual intellectual heritage of their faith, as it was developed in the Iron Age and the millennium thereafter, where modern understandings and concepts of homosexual don't exist.

It sounds to me that East Europe is experiencing US style culture wars as its being integrated into that economic/political/security bloc. So a clash between internationally-oriented capital and nationally-oriented more labor intensive capital. The latter I presume is more concerned about the social and biological reproduction of labor through the classical (19th cen) family unit- especially with negative net migration caused by economic refugees leaving the region and low birth rates) than the former. But religious phraseology is incidental/superficial here, the same things happened in the Soviet Union during certain periods of its economic development (like male homosexuality and abortion being banned in the 1930's). And they didn't base that on "religion" but (for homosexuality for example) "fascist" "misogynists" hampering progressive modernity.

Maybe I'm just assuming too much but I think it was less coercive for homosexuality- at least in terms of dominant ideology- in the last Islamic Caliphate than in secular South Yemen.

Also, the reason to oppose religion in the 19th century or in 20th century Spain (or other backward European countries) was not simply that the Church was a huge landowner. There is a problem with religion per se; in all of its guises, it is a reactionary and oppressive ideology that celebrates human submission. This has been a theorem of revolutionary working class politics since the 19th century. It's a bit of a shock to me that this has to be mentioned explicitly on a communist forum.

It's a bit of a shock to me that religion is blamed for human inequality- and not class society- on communist forum. Why not ban religion then if its objective nature is oppressive? You can't argue the prospects for that would be unrealistic- like because it would hamper peoples 'traditions'- as its was 'tradition' for adults to have sex with teenagers until very recently and that was banned nonetheless as coercive and oppressive. So why tolerate this violence and oppression? It would be a lot easier to campaign to ban religion than to end capital and sections of the elite would even support it.

teh

And the experience of state atheist countries of the last century illustrate that getting rid of superstitions related to an imagined afterlife and world origin story does not make society more rational, scientific, or benevolent.

I'm not going to defend state socialism. But in terms of women's rights, sexual education, or family policy, I think the case could be made that it had a more rational approach than we see today in Eastern Europe. (Also, yours is a bit of a straw man argument, because replacing one kind of superstition with another ideology, i.e., Marxism-Leninism combined with nationalism, is not really the kind of emancipation from religion some of the people on this thread are arguing for.)

Marxism-Leninism is not a religion or a superstition, its a political and economic platform for social organization. Religion is a belief based on faith usually centered on a foundation/end times myth and a series of moral precepts. Americans might love and honor "The Founding Fathers" and "The Constitution" but that's not their religion. You can make comparisons to religion but to call it religion is to go into Body Ritual Among the Nacirema territory. And yes Stalinism did some great things but that's not what I meant by rational or scientific. Lysenkoism and it's prevalence was not a religious precept.

CNN BREAKING NEWS: The US forgot to send over a representative (to the 'national unity' march in Paris). .

Maryam Namazie on Charlie Hebdo

Those of us who have openly criticised Islam and Islamism have faced many a threat and intimidation from the far-Right Islamist movement.

I have had phone calls saying I will be decapitated to recorded messages from the Islamic regime of Iran saying my time is near (yes, they have so many threats to make, they need to use recordings!). I’ve been called every derogatory and threatening term you can imagine from kafir, murtad, munafiq to fitnah and janazie (corpse)…

I don’t think there are many atheist, ex-Muslim or secular activists (including Muslims) like myself who have spoken up publicly and not faced some form of threat or intimidation.

So for us, Charlie Hebdo’s refusal to back down when so many have has meant a great deal over these years. Also, though, in addition to the rage one feels at any such tragedy, the massacre is personal for us.

It could really have been any of us. We are truly all Charlie Hebdo.

With the focus now on Charlie Hebdo and the crucial need and right to criticise Islam and religion, though, let us not forget the many across the globe who face execution or imprisonment for “insulting the prophet” and criticising Islam. Below you will find some examples which include Muslims, believers and atheists; the charges aim not to protect “Muslim sensibilities” as we so often hear in the west but to protect the status quo and the political power of Islamists.

A defence of Charlie Hebdo must also be turned into a defence of the many who refuse and resist.

Most urgent is the case of Raif Badawi who tomorrow on 9 January 2015 faces his flogging sentence. Raif Badawi was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for “insulting Islam” in Saudi Arabia. he is to receive the first 50 torturous lashes tomorrow after Friday prayers.

Columnist Fatma Naoot, accused of insulting Islam, will stand trial on Jan. 28 in Egypt on allegations she criticised Islamic animal sacrifices.In January 2015, 82 year old Muslim scholar Kassim Ahmad lost his bid to challenge the Federal Territory Islamic Religious Department which charged him with insulting Islam after the Malaysian High Court ruled that his case fell under the Shariah Court.

28 year old Mauritanian journalist and anti-slavery activist Mohamed Cheikh Ould Mkhaitir, has been sentenced to death on 25 December 2014 for “insulting the prophet”.

An Egyptian journalist Bishoy Boulous Armia (32) has been given a five-year prison sentence for allegedly causing “sectarian strife” and “insulting Islam” as he reported on the persecution of Christians in Egypt.

In December 2014, there has been a campaign of threats to kill artists and writers for “insulting Islam” in the Gaza strip.

In December 2014, Indonesian police named The Jakarta Post editor-in-chief, Meidyatama Suryodiningrat, as a suspect in a blasphemy case stemming from a caricature on ISIS. An Islamic group filed a complaint against the newspaper, saying it had “insulted Islam”.

An investigation has been opened against Junaid Jamshed, better known as “disco mullah”, in December 2014 after he reportedly “insulted” one of Prophet Muhammad’s wives in Pakistan where blasphemy is punishable by death.

In December 2014, Islamists called for “public execution” of Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud because of his having “insults [to] Allah”.

In early December, bloggers Tan Jye Yee, 26, and Vivian Lee, 25, were revoked and were charged in the Malaysia under the Sedition Act for insulting Islam and Ramadan in a Facebook account.

30 year old blogger Soheil Arabi has been sentenced to execution in Iran for “insulting the prophet” on Facebook.

Women’s rights campaigner Souad al-Shammary has been imprisoned since 28 October 2014 on accusations she has “insulted Islam” and the prophet in Saudi Arabia.

27 year old Mohsen Amir-Aslani convicted of insulting prophet Jonah and making ‘innovations in religion’ through interpretations of Qur’an was hanged in Iran in September 2014.

47 year old British-Iranian Roya Nobakht was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “insulting Islam” when she said on Facebook that the Iranian regime was “too Islamic”.

In September 2014, Muhammad Shakil Auj, Dean of the faculty of Islamic Studies at the University of Karachi, was shot dead by gunmen two years after being accused of committing blasphemy.

49 year old mother of five Asia Bibi has been in prison for five year awaiting execution for blasphemy in Pakistan.

The list goes on and on.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/01/08/a-defence-of-charlie-hebdo-must-also-turn-into-defence-of-other-blasphemers-and-apostates/

After the massacre in Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015, expressing indignation, as so many are doing, is not enough.

A quick look at the English-speaking media shows that whilst many condemn the violence itself, they also assert that Charlie Hebdo courted (and maybe deserved?) a strong response from “Muslims”. Charlie’s regular cartoonists did not spare Islam, any other religion, nor fanatics and bigots.

This trend in the media requires our attention. Apparently secularists, agnostics and atheists must keep silent and do not deserve the kind of respect that believers are entitled to; nor can they enjoy free speech to the same degree.

In the name of “respect” of religions and of the religious sentiments of believers, it is indeed the fanatical religious-Right that is being supported and given centre stage. Meanwhile, those who are on the forefront of countering armed fundamentalists are left to their own devices. It is high time to give these secularists prominence, to recognise their courage and their political clarity and to stop labelling them “Islamophobic”.

In October 2014, secularists – including atheists, agnostics and believers from many countries, in particular many Muslim-majority countries, met in London to denounce the religious-Right and to demand being seen as its alternative. It is high time to learn from their analysis and lived experiences.

The tragic massacre in Paris will undoubtedly give fuel to the traditional xenophobic far-Right and the immediate danger is an increase in racism, marginalization and exclusion of people of Muslim descent in Europe and further. We do not want to witness “anti-Muslim witch hunts” nor do we welcome the promotion of “moderate” Islamists by governments as official political partners. What is needed is a straightforward analysis of the political nature of armed Islamists: they are an extreme-Right political force, working under the guise of religion and they aim at political power. They should be combated by political means and mass mobilisation, not by giving extra privileges to any religion.

Their persistent demand for the extension of blasphemy laws around the world is a real danger for all. France has a long – and now growingly endangered – tradition of secularism; which allows dissent from religions and the right to express this dissent. It has had a rich tradition to mock and caricature powers that be – religious or otherwise. Let us keep this hard won right which cost so many lives in history, and, alas, still does – as Charlie Hebdo’s twelve dead and numerous wounded demonstrate.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/01/07/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/

Agent of the Fifth International

CNN BREAKING NEWS: The US forgot to send over a representative (to the 'national unity' march in Paris). .

Priceless, isn't it? Everybody running a racket, from the smallest to the almost biggest, is there, to flog his/or her buttons, pennants, souvenirs, predator drones, and this guy forgets to show up? Doesn't even send the Secretary of State. Holy fuck, he's making Bush look intelligent. What a putz.

Make no mistake, white America hates him because he's black and they will use this to show how just incompetent he is in representing their interests.

teh

My point was that when religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality they use the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment like psychology,psychiatry, and sexology, as well as secular movements which includes the European left and feminism.

Yep and this may be true in your neck of the woods, but certainly not in mine. Here, they sometimes try to use (outdated) psychiatric arguments, but it's not a major component. There's actually a trend towards mysticism, organicism and teleology mixed with conspiracy theories.

teh

It sounds to me that East Europe is experiencing US style culture wars as its being integrated into that economic/political/security bloc. So a clash between internationally-oriented capital and nationally-oriented more labor intensive capital.

Capital is not really involved. However, an opposition of capitals like this did exist in the early 90s. But gay marriage, gender issues etc. were not on anyone's agenda then.

teh

It's a bit of a shock to me that religion is blamed for human inequality- and not class society- on communist forum. Why not ban religion then if its objective nature is oppressive?

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I didn't say religion was the cause of "human inequality". I said it's an oppressive ideology that celebrates human submission. And if I'm in a position of a dominated class, I certainly don't want to revel in my condition (which is what religion, with a few time- and place-tied exceptions, is mostly about).

teh

Marxism-Leninism is not a religion or a superstition, its a political and economic platform for social organization.

It is also an ideology.

teh

Religion is a belief based on faith usually centered on a foundation/end times myth and a series of moral precepts.

So was Marxism-Leninism as a state ideology. Anyway, your point was that getting rid of religion (albeit in an authoritarian, coercive way) didn't help things. I suggested some areas where one could argue the situation was better than before and even than now.

sihhi

The Nuremberg judgements aren't mine I made no mention of them.

I pointed out your comparison was absurd. Again one can highlight more differences Die Sturmer was owned by one hands-on owner pumping the same line. Charlie Hebdo has had different owners, editors and different nuances.

Die Sturmers contemporary significance is that people related to it were punished for exercising speech. Catoonist Philipp Rupprecht served hard labor for his "cartoons." Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists were old fellows. These are guys that stayed through the editorial changes into the magazines modern guise.

"France doesn't take part in bloodbaths in its or its allies current/former colonies and in the periphery. People around Charlie Hebdo supported many of these like Kosovo or Syria and where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France."

Once again, they had a range of caricaturists and journalists. On the issue of foreign interventions as far as I can gauge it was wholehearted opposition to French involvement in Cote d'Ivorie potential involvement in Iraq in 2003. A new boss came in 2004 which tried to shift it to the right, more sensationalism more attacking official enemies only.
Hence that bit about fighting Islamists just like the Nazis were fought some are quoting as if it represents all of the magazine or its journalists.

Iraq was what I was referring to with " where they opposed them it was on the principle that it was not in the interests of France." So those that left during Philippe Val's tenure came back when he got promoted to state media in 09 (he's right wing?) and vice versa? The Mohammed special issues were from after he left the magazine and I understand these were quite popular and lucrative.

"Furthermore this population of a 'Muslim' background has a culture, a Muslim culture, that is less developed on the evolutionary scale to French culture- the latter which is all the good things like equality and rainbows and so on (or, if one is self-critical, relatively speaking)"

I am not sure what point is being made here.

Maybe its a misperception on my part as an outsider but I think the hostility to the National Front by the French Left has more to do with the FN 's anti-German politics then anything else. When Socialist Interior Minister Valls called for the majority of Roma to be expelled from the country because they were a threat to French life and incompatible with French culture not only was he not immediately expelled from the government and his party but he was criticized by his fellow cabinet members, as per BBC, ""A theory that such and such a person or such and such a people will never, ever be able to integrate just doesn't stand up," said Mr Valls' cabinet colleague, Arnaud Montebourg, according to Agence France-Presse news agency."That's what they said about the Italians, that's what they said about the Spanish, it's what they said about the Portuguese, and what they said about the Arabs."" In other words they can be civilized, it's just a pessimism of the spirit.

At the risk of incurring your ire, the politician Arnaud Montebourg who you've quoted (I haven't followed what he's done) as a point is making is not wrong - Roma just as Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, Arabs all can integrate. What's the issue with Charlie Hebdo?

I didn't say anything about Charlie Hebdo here. You wrote they attacked the god,flag,and country cultural right types and mentioned their targets include" people who vote FN, people who are opposed to immigrants solely on the grounds they will populate France just for (that's the target of that ugly cover above about the allocation de famille dispute)."

And I don't think the FN's is more chauvinistic re "immigrants" than the political left. So my impression was you were saying that one can't be chauvinist and left- "imperfect liberal".

As an immigrant I don't know what 'integrate' is supposed to mean and what exactly one is supposed to 'integrate' into. Roma mentioned above are economic refugees forced to flee their countries in East Europe as those are being deindustrialized (green energy!) and plundered all over. For some reason this is their fault because the burden of their "culture" makes them fail to blend into some imaginary idea of Frenchness that changes every decade or so. These socialist politicians are unleashing unprecedented attacks on living standards in France while being ired over pickpocketing and camp dwelling (Valls outburst).

I also see a big difference between these two cartoons.

That's subjective, but since you don't say what it is no one can respond. But it does highlight that perhaps the comparison with Die Sturmer once again fails.

Showing a graphic image of democracy protesters being pumped with bullets with the heading 'the koran is shit' is the same thing as a somber image of a nettlesome but sympathetic rebel hanging?

the hostility to the National Front by the French Left has more to do with the FN 's anti-German politics then anything else.

This is not true I don't think the FN oppose 'cultural Marxism' and believe the trade unions have been 'internationalised' and 'Marxified'. There's a history of FN local governments attacking and suppressing trade union organisation and leftist organisation from the 1990s - it's more self-preservation. I suspect 'Oh they don't like Germany. we do' is low down on the list of concerns.

[/quote]

Again maybe its an outsider misperception on my part but "cultural marxism" and "marxified" trade unions is just new right phraseology. They're upset by the domination of bureaucracies by competing political parties (those that aren't any less hostile to the working class). If that was all there was to the FN then they would have remained a marginal grouping of those that lost the last world war. But the party is being used as a front by sections of the French elite to attack German imperialism in Europe. And though the electoral system is stacked against them winning they still have the prospect of destroying the European Union, at least in its current form. Since most of the EU Left (with exceptions like the pro-dprk kke) has accepted this pan-white nationalism around the concept of "Europe" the dismemberment of the union could be quite fatal for them, as it has been for many parties already.

Courtesy of my Facebook feed: The Charlie Hebdo cartoons no one is showing you.

jef costello

Some good posts here, I've just got a couple of points, but I've already said more than is necessary really.

teh

Muslim is not a culture, people from different countries- a volk- with a particular majority religion dont have a common culture. A lot of what is called culture is just vague positive/negative generalizations that can applied to any country or a reference to protectionist policies that allow domestic capital to produce (ex. entertainment) products while excluding foreign hegemonic ones (the reason why France has a comic book industry that isn't dominated by American publishers the way Hollywood studios dominate the global movie market is because of French government policy). What is called the culture of some group is not singular, all encompassing, or static. The same thing is true of religion, especially a decentralized one like Islam. Religion is what you-or material forces- make of it on any given historical moment. If a religion was rigid by nature it would remain a cult and probably not survive many generations. You're saying that there is a singular entity called Islam that can one can tiptoe around out of patronizing concern.

This seems like nitpicking, do you have an actual point other than proving that I didn't express what Islam is very well? Incidentally people likely to tiptoe around it are also likely to treat it as one singular entity, which was my point.

Does France have "equality, freedom and secular values " and who made it the flag bearer of these vague platitudes? Why is someone from Algeria being molded together with someone from Cameroon (themselves, like France, countries current or until recently amorphous identities) into "Muslim" culture because the authors couldn't care about the difference?

Firstly you don't have to live in a country that is perfect to have an opinion (in fact the opposite is basically our reason to write anything here) and secondly I don't think anyone here is particularly enamoured of the French state, and the fact that they are co-opting this attack is no surprise, it doesn't mean that we can no longer have an opinion on the attacks.
I'm not sure whart you mean about Cameroon.

I'm also not sure what you're talking about (I guess we're getting lost in forum quotes). I wrote: "Why is someone from Algeria being molded together with someone from Cameroon into Muslim." Why is the question here "Islam." Why are the ruling class mouthpieces not talking about "Algerian culture" (or "Barbar/Berber culture" as some in North Africa like to do). (Cameroon is where the family of French comedian M’bala M’bala is from. Another satirist with a love of provocation who claims he's misunderstood and is just standing up for French values). They seem to be in agreement here with pan-sunni nationalist groups about identity of a billion people (which isn't surprising because they're also the main sponsors of these groups). Charlie Hebdo made fun of "Muslims" and wanted them to integrate into "French/European values." They wrote the wrong questions and had the wrong answers.

Another satirist [M’bala M’bala] with a love of provocation who claims he's misunderstood and is just standing up for French values).

Yes but he's intimately linked with the FN and neo nazis hardly comparable no?

Those marching in the front row of the Paris free speech march yesterday:
- Prime Minister Rajoy of Spain, whose government just passed the Ley Mordaza, a gag law placing historic restrictions on the right to protest in Spain.
- Foreign Minister Lavrov of Russia, which last year jailed a journalist for "insulting a government servant" .
- Foreign Minister Shoukry of Egypt, which as well as Al Jazeera staff has detained journalist Shawkan for around 500 days.
- King Abdullah of Jordan, which last year sentenced a Palestinian journalist to 15 years in prison with hard labour.
- Prime Minister Davutoglu of Turkey, which imprisons more journalists than any other country in the world.
- Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, whose forced killed 17 journalists in Gaza last year (second highest after Syria).
- Foreign Minister Lamamra of Algeria, which has detained journalist Abdessami Abdelhai for 15 months without charges.
- The Foreign Minister of the United Arab Emirates, which in 2013 held a journalist incommunicado for a month on suspicion of MB links.
- Prime Minister Jomaa of Tunisia, which recently jailed blogger Yassine Ayan for 3 years for "defaming the army".
- The Prime Ministers of Georgia and Bulgaria, both of whom have a record of attacking & beating journalists.
- The Attorney General of the US, where police in Ferguson have recently detained and assaulted Washington Post reporters.
- Prime Minister Samaras of Greece, where riot police beat & injured two journalists at a protest in June last year
- Secretary-General of NATO, who are yet to be held to account for deliberately bombing and killing 16 Serbian journalists in '99.
- President Keita of Mali, where journalists are expelled for covering human rights abuses.
- The Foreign Minister of Bahrain, 2nd biggest jailer of journos in the world per capita (they also torture them).
- Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, which jailed a man for 15 ys for writing the Jasmine poem.
- Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who had several journalists jailed for insulting him in 2013.
- Prime Minister Cerar of Slovenia, which sentenced a blogger to six months in prison for "defamation" in 2013.
- Prime Minister Enda Kenny of Ireland, where "blasphemy" is considered a criminal offense.
- Prime Minister Kopacz of Poland, which raided a magazine to seize recordings embarrassing for the ruling party.
- Prime Minister Cameron of the UK, where authorities destroyed documents obtained by The Guardian and threatened prosecution.
- Prime Minister Orbán of Hungary, the autocrat of who Amnesty says has "put an end to the free press in Hungary."

JE SUIS LA GRANDE FARSA...
Questa era la "bella gente" che guidava il corteo di Parigi a difesa della libertà d'espressione e della libertà di stampa:
1) Re Abdullah di Giordania , che lo scorso anno ha condannato un giornalista palestinese a 15 anni di carcere e lavoro forzato...
2) Primo Ministro Davutoglu della Turchia, paese che imprigiona più giornalisti di ogni altro paese al mondo...
3) Il primo ministro Netanyahu di Israele, che solo nell'ultimo anno ha fatto uccidere 7 giornalisti a Gaza...
4) Il ministro degli Esteri Shoukry d'Egitto, ha fatto imprigionare il giornalista Shawkan per circa 500 giorni...
5) Il ministro degli Esteri Lavrov della Russia, che l'anno scorso ha fatto inarcerare un giornalista per " aver insultato un funzionario di governo "...
6) Il ministro degli Esteri Lamamra dell'Algeria, che ha fatto arrestare il giornalista Abdessami Abdelhai per 15 mesi senza accusa...
7) Il ministro degli Esteri degli Emirati Arabi Uniti , che nel 2013 ha tenuto incarcerato un gionalista un anno senza accuse precise...
8) Il primo ministro Jomaa della Tunisia, che ha recentemente incarcerato blogger Yassine Ayan per 3 anni per " aver diffamato l'esercito "...
9) I Primi ministri di di Georgia e Bulgaria, entrambi recordman europei di censura giornalistica...
10) Il Procuratore Generale degli Stati Uniti, dove la polizia di Ferguson ha recentemente arrestato e aggredito i giornalisti Washington Post...
11) Il primo ministro Samaras della Grecia, dove la polizia anti-sommossa hanno picchiato e ferito due giornalisti durante una protesta nel giugno dello scorso anno
12) Il segretario generale della NATO Jens Stoltenberg, che deve ancora essere chiamato a rispondere per il deliberato bombardamento e uccisione di 16 giornalisti serbi nel '99...
13) Il Presidente Keita del Mali, dove tanti giornalisti sono stati espulsi perchè denunciavano la continua violazione dei diritti umani nel paese...
14) Il ministro degli Esteri del Bahrain, il 2° paese più grande carceriere di giornalisti del mondo pro capite (li torturano anche)...
15) Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani del Qatar, che ha tenuto in carcere un uomo per 15 anni per aver scritto la poesia Jasmine...
16) Il presidente palestinese Mahmoud Abbas, che nel 2013 incarcerò diversi giornalisti accusandoli di averlo insultato...
17) Il primo ministro Cerar di Slovenia, che ha condannato un blogger a sei mesi di carcere per " diffamazione " nel 2013...
18) Il primo ministro Enda Kenny d'Irlanda, dove la "blasfemia" è considerata un reato penale...
19) Il primo ministro Kopacz della Polonia, che ha fatto fare un'irruzione nella redazione di una rivista per sequestrare delle registrazioni imbarazzanti per il partito di governo...
20) Il Premier Cameron del Regno Unito, dove le autorità hanno distrutto documenti ottenuti da The Guardian, minacciando e accusando i giornalisti.
21) Ambasciatore saudita in Francia, dove i sauditi hanno fustigato

jura

teh

My point was that when religious persons/institutions speak out against homosexuality they use the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment like psychology,psychiatry, and sexology, as well as secular movements which includes the European left and feminism.

Yep and this may be true in your neck of the woods, but certainly not in mine. Here, they sometimes try to use (outdated) psychiatric arguments, but it's not a major component. There's actually a trend towards mysticism, organicism and teleology mixed with conspiracy theories.

Well if this is exclusively the case they're still using the ideas of modernity and not something intrinsic to religious faith. Teleology used by Enlightenment philosopher Kant. Organicism was developed by Romanticism. Mysticism and the occult have a rich wide-ranging history in the 20th century.

teh

It sounds to me that East Europe is experiencing US style culture wars as its being integrated into that economic/political/security bloc. So a clash between internationally-oriented capital and nationally-oriented more labor intensive capital.

Capital is not really involved. However, an opposition of capitals like this did exist in the early 90s. But gay marriage, gender issues etc. were not on anyone's agenda then.

They weren't on anyone's agendas much anywhere else in the early 90's. Denmark legalized domestic partnerships in 89 and the US had some low level fear-mongering among the elite culminating in the politically-safe-electioneering DOMA but it wasn't an issue most of the public was aware of or mobilized around in either camp (not sure what your referring to with gender issues). It's ahistorical; no country had "gay marriage" in the early 90's nor was it spreading/a part of global geopolitics. How is capital not involved in capitalism? How are these political groups/churches/culture industry institutions running? You mentioned "nationalists" in the post I was referring to. What are they nationalist about then if economics don't interest them? Eastern Europe as a whole in the 1990's was apart from the pro-SU factions looking for- eventual- Western European prosperity. There are no such prospects today.

teh

It's a bit of a shock to me that religion is blamed for human inequality- and not class society- on communist forum. Why not ban religion then if its objective nature is oppressive?

Now you're just putting words in my mouth. I didn't say religion was the cause of "human inequality". I said it's an oppressive ideology that celebrates human submission. And if I'm in a position of a dominated class, I certainly don't want to revel in my condition (which is what religion, with a few time- and place-tied exceptions, is mostly about).

So religion is oppressive but it doesn't cause oppression? What does that mean. If its oppressive it should be banned as is the case with anything else. And as capitalism has shown it can function without religion it could be done right now without even a hegemonic internationalist workers movement. Why tolerate a celebration of "human submission"? Fascist marches aren't shown tolerance and they're much less significant socially than religion.

teh

Marxism-Leninism is not a religion or a superstition, its a political and economic platform for social organization.

It is also an ideology.

teh

Religion is a belief based on faith usually centered on a foundation/end times myth and a series of moral precepts.

So was Marxism-Leninism as a state ideology. Anyway, your point was that getting rid of religion (albeit in an authoritarian, coercive way) didn't help things. I suggested some areas where one could argue the situation was better than before and even than now.

[/quote]

So you're saying there is no difference between Catholicism and being an avid follower of Ron Paul.

Edit: I just think you're fetishizing religion when it just reflects any given time period and has no material force of its own (that is god doesnt cause social divisions the way any type of class society does)

Mr. Jolly

Another satirist [M’bala M’bala] with a love of provocation who claims he's misunderstood and is just standing up for French values).

Yes but he's intimately linked with the FN and neo nazis hardly comparable no?

"Philippe Val, an idiosyncratic hero of the French left and the editor of the biting satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, says that Dieudonné “pushes us to transgress the very basis of our culture and politics—the knowledge that we have constructed on the ruins of Auschwitz. We are constructed upon that. Modern European democracy started from there. If you want to tear it all apart, the ultimate destructive anarchist gesture, there is no better place to start.”"

Hes a neofascist but him and anti-Muslim extremism satirists share the same ideological foundation. The state is a receptacle of values and there is an outside minority, a violent minority, which threatens this order. For him its Jews, for others its Muslims. They even speak the same language. "The French Revolution is my tradition. It’s a mind-set of the French, that you need a revolution. I am deeply French," Dieudonne. Or Dieudonne's Mom writing in an open letter to his former comedic partner (who is Jewish):"“I don’t imagine for a second that you didn’t understand the universal and humanistic vision that Dieudonné is expressing by ridiculing—in his own caustic way!—all the extreme identifications people hold to religions, races and politics." I forget where I read this but some article pointed this out a while ago (the above New Yorker article touches upon it vaguely though: "But the left has its own problematic history, going back to the French Revolution, when Jews provoked hostility for keeping their religious identity while accepting full citizenship in accord with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. Dieudonné’s anti-Semitism draws more from the left tradition: his attacks on Jewish capitalism mimic the worst tics of French socialism (even the revered socialist leader Jean Jaurès once wrote that the Jewish race “is consumed by a sort of fever for profit when it is not by the fever for prophesy”). And though Dieudonné attacks all “religious superstition” in his shows, he echoes Voltaire in singling out Jewish rituals and beliefs.")

If I understand this correctly this cartoon jokes about veils in public schools by comparing them to mass killing of children. How is that not the same as Dieudonne's "Isra-heil" that kicked off his noteriety?

Edit: I might not have access to the internet for about a week so might not be able to respond then

I have not been following this story particularly closely, but how does it compare to the Jyllands-Posten thing back around 2005 in Denmark (minus the shooting of course)?

deleted-post by mistake

teh

Well if this is exclusively the case they're still using the ideas of modernity and not something intrinsic to religious faith. Teleology used by Enlightenment philosopher Kant. Organicism was developed by Romanticism. Mysticism and the occult have a rich wide-ranging history in the 20th century.

I'm baffled by the way you present things you don't really seem to understand as "self-evident". Sure, teleology was used by "philosopher Kant", but stretches back to Aristotle's doctrine of causes and his theory of science, both later developed by Christian scholasticism. (In Kant, teleology has little to do with nature, which is what I meant, as opposed to human moral conduct; this is typical of Enlightenment and modernity, whereas pre-modern conceptions of science emphasised "purpose" and hence teleology in nature). Organicism originates not in 19th century romanticism, but in neoplatonism. More importantly, the "rich wide-ranging history" of mysticism in the 20th century is the history of a profoundly anti-modernist movement. Which is precisely what I'm talking about, while you're trying to pass off these trends as somehow modernist and part and parcel of the Enlightenment (where in fact in their modern guises they were always a virulent reaction against the Enlightenment, just as they are today).

teh

How is capital not involved in capitalism? How are these political groups/churches/culture industry institutions running? You mentioned "nationalists" in the post I was referring to. What are they nationalist about then if economics don't interest them? Eastern Europe as a whole in the 1990's was apart from the pro-SU factions looking for- eventual- Western European prosperity. There are no such prospects today.

This is ridiculous. Do you think every conflict in society can ultimately be traced to different interests of capitalist factions?

Anyway, my point still stands: the slogan "No gods, no masters" remains valid. I originally responded to your ridiculous claim that this is something that was only relevant in the 19th century because the Church was more powerful then and owned more land. Even if the current situation in CEE countries was somehow the conflict of two capitalist factions (which I think it isn't), the relevance of that slogan would still hold.

teh

So religion is oppressive but it doesn't cause oppression? What does that mean.

Similarly, nationalism as an ideology is oppressive, but it is not the "cause" of oppression. The police as an institution is oppressive, but it is not the "cause" of oppression. (Notice that as revolutionaries, communists want to do away not only with nationalism and the police, but also with religion. Interesting, huh.)

teh

If its oppressive it should be banned as is the case with anything else. And as capitalism has shown it can function without religion it could be done right now without even a hegemonic internationalist workers movement. Why tolerate a celebration of "human submission"? Fascist marches aren't shown tolerance and they're much less significant socially than religion.

Whatever. I'll happily grant you this. I wouldn't bat an eye if religion was "banned". For all I care, the state could shoot all the bishophs and priests.

BTW, fascist marches are shown a lot of tolerance depending on where you live.

teh

So you're saying there is no difference between Catholicism and being an avid follower of Ron Paul.

In certain respects, no there isn't.

Mr. Jolly

Another satirist [M’bala M’bala] with a love of provocation who claims he's misunderstood and is just standing up for French values).

Yes but he's intimately linked with the FN and neo nazis hardly comparable no?

Whereas Charlie Hebdo is being funded by - and, to the extent in which they treat Islam, can be said to be the ideological bedfellows of - the French state. Of course, the state has 'intervened' in Libya, Mali and Syria, while pushing through a succession of overtly anti-Islam laws. Buuut, the ruling party have the word 'socialist' in their name, so they're clearly not fascist and therefore AOK.

Am I missing something here. Since when was Charlie Hebdo "funded by the French state"?

After the shooting, the state pledged support amounting to €1M to keep it running.

Yes, just seen that "Among the visitors on Friday was the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, accompanied by the culture minister, Fleur Pellerin, who has promised €1m (£780,000) to the paper to guarantee its survival"

jura

Caiman del Barrio

(surely noone really considered this a serious publication in France?)

I agree. It was not me who suggested on this thread that the murdered cartoonists were "part of the elite".

Well I don't know enough of the background of the cartoonists to comment on that. It certainly sounds like they were some sort of French Guardianista bourgeois poseurs, essentially trying to upend the canapés at the cocktail party. The fact that they had enough comfort and time on their hands to conjure up some fantasy world in which Islam posed such a threat to them that they had to constantly bait Muslims and then make martyrs of themselves (vis a vis: their response to the firebombing in 2011). Oh the irony, someone should draw a fucking cartoon.

Caiman del Barrio

Essentially, the classical liberalism which some of you are shamelessly regurgitating like an unwelcome turkey sandwich is used to justify the geopolitical strategies of the French state ie the war on terror.

Honest question, what is classically liberal about anything I said?

I don't know Jura. I picked up on you specifically cos you responded to me pointing out how Charlie Hebdo had focused specifically on Islam since 9/11 demonstrated a centre/far-right political outlook by calling it an "irrelevant strawman". If you look through the more critical pieces on Charlie, you'll see that their baiting of Islam post-9/11 was far from irrelevant and was probably a definitive factor in their murder.

(Obvious disclaimer that I don't believe in murdering silly little boys doing racist cartoons. Not without an explicitly revolutionary programme, that is. ;) )

I'm opposed to religion. Therefore, I don't have a problem with other people attacking it in print, especially when it's done in a satirical, funny way and from a secular, anti-nationalist, anti-racist and at least vaguely left-wing point of view like that of Charlie Hebdo.

I find this argument bizarre: what the fuck is "anti-racist" about a depiction of a Muslim with a hook nose, or an uncharitable picture of Boko Haram sex slaves pregnant from rape? I mean, I'm also anti-religion, for personal reasons I explained in my above post. I also wish for a freer world in which religion's influence is significantly curtailed or even eradicated.

But you're totally failing to distinguish between a religion - as an ideology, a hierarchical institution, a dogma, etc - and the people who practice it or, for whatever reason of genetic bad luck, are associated with it. French Arabs don't choose Islam, Islam choose them at birth and as a result, they carry the baggage of the history of their religion through life on a daily basis, regardless of their personal practices, lifestyle and relationship to the religion. It's very undialectical for such a fanatical Marxist ( ;) ) as yourself to amalgamate Islam and Muslims, and kinda makes me suspicious of your intentions and prejudices to be honest. I mean, I would have thought this point was blind fucking obvious.

Also, like people keep repeating to you: the mocking of religion clearly does have a limit, otherwise we'd all be sniggering over Nazi depictions of Jews.

Hopefully like anybody else here, I do have a problem with people getting persecuted or killed for doing that (not to mention the other workers, who weren't responsible for the cartoons, who were killed that day and in the later days).

Do you - or any of the other #jesuis trendsters on here - have an issue with grenades being launched into public places, like what is happening with the anti-Islam attacks across France right now? I mean, yeah, the deaths of the cartoonists are a tragedy, but the real tragedy has yet to come: further surveillance measures, racist attacks on Muslims (or Muslim-looking people, like my partner), and the ideological fervour necessary for a renewed assault on the Middle East. This is a game-changer for European geopolitics for the next 5-10 years.

Once again, I'm totally shocked that someone like you, who's clearly much better-read and smarter than me, can miss this point. Once again. it seems obtuse to the point of suspicious.

Also, I don't like when people involved in revolutionary politics relativize our opposition to religion for fear of being called "Islamophobic" or accused of "religious intolerance". (I think people who do that would be much less conciliatory towards Christianity. Some even try to justify this by saying that Muslims are oppressed, while Christains are "part of the elite" or something, which is totally true and great class analysis.) That's all.

This comment is totally laughable and makes me feel like I've wasted my time writing the rest of the post. Religion is bad therefore we should attack all religious groups equally, and when the interests of a state or its ideological auxiliaries converge with attacking a minority religion, that's a good thing which we should also support.

Caiman del Barrio

Muslims though have to see pictures of the Prophet's ass and him being decapitated, and just fucking lump it.

Christians and Judaists and French-nation-lovers equally have to see their icons mocked in Charlie Hebdo.[/quote]

Oh my god, read up on the post-9/11 trajectory of this fucking rag.

Caiman del Barrio

While the discussion on here has at times been about how we should accept any criticism of religion from any quarter, regardless of intent

Sorry I deleted the rest of your post because frankly I think you're being disingenuous in your remarks.

Mark.

MaryAmnamazie

Their persistent demand for the extension of blasphemy laws around the world is a real danger for all. France has a long – and now growingly endangered – tradition of secularism; which allows dissent from religions and the right to express this dissent. It has had a rich tradition to mock and caricature powers that be – religious or otherwise. Let us keep this hard won right[...]

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/01/07/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/

This really is the world turned upside down.

France's policy of laïcité "growingly endangered"? By whom? Certainly not by the French government or ruling class, whose chosen social policy it is (and not some gain won by the French left or militant atheists, NB). Laicité is not about a challenge to power, it's about its reinforcement. It is not about liberating French citizens - of whatever confessional background - from the chains of religious oppression, but reinforcing a nationalist republican discourse that castigates "Muslims" as Other. There are 5 million nominal muslims in France, less than 2000 of whom choose to wear the hijab. Yet the creation of a national hysteria around the "threat to French (Occidental) civilization" around banning the headscarf from school has nothing to do with a last-ditch attempt to defend the secularism of the republic against the religious fundamentalist tsunami, and everything to do with responding to the riots of 2005 with a racist scapegoating based on Bruno Bauer-style liberal "ethno-cultural" racism (as opposed to the biological kind).

As one critical commentator said on the radio a couple of days ago, French state laïcité has two poles. The first is the enforcement of "liberty" through bans and interdictions - e.g depriving that tiny minority who wants to wear the hijab or the niqab of the freedom to do so. The other pole is the continuing state subsidy to Catholic schools and cathedrals and the use of cathedrals like Notre Dame for nominally secular state events. A pole referred to sarcastically by French anarchists and leftists as "catho-laïcité". That these two poles exist harmoniously side by side in French ruling class policy is no contradiction, so long as you understand laïcité's true purpose, i.e. as a vector of French nationalism and the exclusionary definition of a Muslim Other, that "fifth column" (to use Farage's term), the enemy within - the "Arabes" or "Immigrés" as born and bred French citizens with North African parentage or heritage are routinely referred to by all and sundry.

In a country where opinion polls show that 7 out of 10 French feel that "Islam" is incompatible with French values, attacking in words or cartoon, not jihadists or Islamists, but all muslim believers, is hardly "brave". It's trying to jump on the bandwagon, while hypocritically posing as the fearless outsider.

This is a response, in 2011, from a ex worker at charlie hebdo to deniles of charlie hebdo's racism http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

Caiman del Barrio

I find this argument bizarre: what the fuck is "anti-racist" about a depiction of a Muslim with a hook nose, or an uncharitable picture of Boko Haram sex slaves pregnant from rape?

I think the Boko Haram piece was a comment on the French debate on benefits and immigrants - saying, in effect, "Look how those who say that immigrants only come for the benefits really see the world". That's how I understand it. Of course, the hook nose and everything else about it is tasteless; however, at least in this particular case it's different from Nazi propaganda, in that the stereotype is used to mock racist right-wing views, and not promote them. (Obviously, the question is if it's interpreted like this by all the readers or people who just accidentally see it, which it certainly isn't, judging by the fact that this very cartoon is now used on blogs and social networks as a proof of CH's racism.)

Caiman del Barrio

It's very undialectical for such a fanatical Marxist ( ;) ) as yourself to amalgamate Islam and Muslims, and kinda makes me suspicious of your intentions and prejudices to be honest. I mean, I would have thought this point was blind fucking obvious.

It wasn't my intention to amalgamate Islam and Muslims (as in ordinary believers). I do think Christian, Muslim and other religious figures in positions of power need to be actively opposed, though. Probably not all of them, but certainly not just the "fundamentalists".

Caiman del Barrio

Also, like people keep repeating to you: the mocking of religion clearly does have a limit, otherwise we'd all be sniggering over Nazi depictions of Jews.

And I agree with that (it's what I said in the post you quoted).

Caiman del Barrio

Do you - or any of the other #jesuis trendsters on here - have an issue with grenades being launched into public places, like what is happening with the anti-Islam attacks across France right now? I mean, yeah, the deaths of the cartoonists are a tragedy, but the real tragedy has yet to come: further surveillance measures, racist attacks on Muslims (or Muslim-looking people, like my partner), and the ideological fervour necessary for a renewed assault on the Middle East. This is a game-changer for European geopolitics for the next 5-10 years.

I agree. But I don't think I ever implied that these things don't matter. What I criticized was the idea that we should be neutral or even welcoming towards religion, which is what some of the posts here seemed to imply. (The general reaction on the left is even worse: people say outright that "They", i.e. the people who were shot, "got what they deserved".) I never even commented positively on the #jesuischarlie trend and of course I despise all pretensions to "national unity" for "freedom of speech" etc.

Caiman del Barrio

This comment is totally laughable and makes me feel like I've wasted my time writing the rest of the post. Religion is bad therefore we should attack all religious groups equally, and when the interests of a state or its ideological auxiliaries converge with attacking a minority religion, that's a good thing which we should also support.

I never said anything about supporting a state (I don't think the argument by association, i.e., "ideological auxiliaries", works; one can mock Islam and still be critical of the state's treatment of African or Middle Eastern or Asian immigrants, as at least some of the cartoons were). But I just don't see myself standing up for, e.g., a minoritarian national liberation movement which is being suppressed by the state and supporting it as a national liberation movement. I don't see myself suspending my general opposition to national liberation simply because such a movement, consisting mostly of poor people, is under attack from the state and mistreated by everyone else. I think it's the same with religious groups, big or small. Of course border checks, school segregation or other racist policies by states from around the world have to be opposed, but not because they offend someone's national identity or religious consciousness. And I think that all the while, one can still be critical of nationalism and religion.

Caiman del Barrio

Oh my god, read up on the post-9/11 trajectory of this fucking rag.

I will. The article posted by radicalgraffiti (I haven't finished it yet) seems to support what you say. I admit I was probably too eager in my defence of CH (i.e., some of their output and perhaps some of them personally probably were racist in their fixation on Muslims, which of course is a bad thing that I despise).

ocelot, what do you think of kenan malik's piece i posted?

Caiman, how does Charlie Hebdo's output or the policies of the French state explain the shooting up of four Jewish people in a koscher supermarket?

wojtek

Caiman, how does Charlie Hebdo's output or the policies of the French state explain the shooting up of four Jewish people in a koscher supermarket?

Simple the cartoonists and the jews murdered are arms of the French state and ZOG.

One more thing I wanted to say, there's a lot of upvotes and downvotes in this thread, and it's obviously a controversial topic, but there's not as much discussion as one'd expect. I'd be interested in what other people think, especially those who disagree with me.

I think the ICT has produced a good statement on this issue http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2015-01-10/the-charlie-hebdo-massacre

As for the issues Jura and others have been discussing, I am really undecided on much of it, but what does worry me is that I see a lot of anarchists suggesting you can't attack religion, on social media and other places. Which is a very worrying development and I can only think it comes from some of this "new" privileged American politics that has been creeping into the UK.

Kenan Malik on Charlie Hebdo
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/

Mark.

Kenan Malik on Charlie Hebdo
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/

Those who claim that it is ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ to mock the Prophet Mohammad, appear to imagine, with the racists, that all Muslims are reactionaries. It is here that leftwing ‘anti-racism’ joins hands with rightwing anti-Muslim bigotry.

Indeed.

wojtek

ocelot, what do you think of kenan malik's piece i posted?

I thought it was good as far as it went. (Mine was the, so far, solitarity upvote). In terms of its limits I think it doesn't really cross over the bourgeois horizon though. I don't really know Malik's work, but a quick scan of WP reveals an RCP/LM past and an alleged position in defending the legacy of the enlightenment (which is in keeping with those politics). So I suspect that his critique of multiculturalism may not be entirely in keeping with my own. In terms of points where the discussion should go further, for e.g.

In France, policies of assimilation have, paradoxically, had the same result. Faced with a distrustful and disengaged public, politicians have attempted to reassert the notion of a common French identity. But unable to define clearly the ideas and values that characterize the nation, they have done so primarily by creating hostility against symbols of ‘alienness’, the most visible of which is islam.

Accepting that the establishment has been unable to clearly define the common values that define the social commons, the question is why? It's not clear what Malik thinks (although later indications point more in one direction). Whether this inability just stems from the incompetence or inadequacy of the political elite, or whether something more fundamental is at work. My own position that that inability is not contingent but a fundamental contradiction within liberalism - and indeed it's Enlightenment origins (which I suspect is where I diverge from Malik, if he follows the RCP line of muscular liberalism). Liberalism is originally freedom from collective values externally imposed by tradition, religion, superstition of what have you. Which is only sustainable on the basis of presupposing the state and generalised commodity/market mediated social production, as means of arbitrating between incompatible value systems. Malik talks of the fracturing of society - which is an effect, not so much of liberalism, but rather capitalism itself (rather than the contingent "merely political" effect of the "age of identity politics" as Malik may or may not be inferring - that's not clear).

To rethink both multiculturalism and assimilationism requires us to rediscover the progressive sense of universal values, a perspective that European liberals and the left have abandoned in two distinct ways. On the one hand, there is a section of the left that has embraced relativism and multiculturalism, that argues that the very notion of universal values is in some sense racist. On the other there are those, exemplified by a figure like Bernard-Henry Lévy, who insist that they still uphold traditional Enlightenment values, but do so in a tribal fashion; the Enlightenment, in their hands, has become a weapon in a supposed clash of civilizations rather than in the battle to define the values and attitudes necessary to advance political rights and social justice. Challenging both is a necessary first step in taking us beyond both multiculturalism and assimilationism.

Here again it seems like Malik is blaming the progressive disintegration of universal values on "bad politics" - i.e. that "section of the left" whose relativism is to blame (shades of the "cultural marxist conspiracy" maybe even?). Doesn't feel very materialistic, I have to say. But above all, the failure to breach the bourgeois horizon here is the implication that the "values and attitudes necessary to advance political rights and social justice" are universal ones. Whereas from a class perspective, they have to be partisan class values. Of course in the fullness of their possible unfolding, they must have the potential to become the new universal values of a genuinely universal - i.e. classless - society. But we can't start by pretending that we are already in the universal society we aim to attain. The only positive common values that we can create are ones that, even though embraceable by the great majority, still remain "particularist" in the sense that they reflect our class position. Anything else is doomed to incoherence, utopianism and impotent idealism.

Mark.

Kenan Malik on Charlie Hebdo
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/

OK, that is proper RCP/Living Marxism right-libertarian crap

Malik

fake liberals

...says it all really

I wouldn't bat an eye if religion was "banned". For all I care, the state could shoot all the bishophs and priests.

Jura, I think this is very naive. I despise religion as much as the next person and think it should be openly criticized. But in your scenario, you are ok with banning people thinking and having ideas albeit wrong ones. If the state ever starts murdering bishops and priests (it has done in some countries) don't you think they wouldn't be the only ones on the kill list, for instance communists...you?

Mr. Jolly

Mark.

Kenan Malik on Charlie Hebdo
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/

Those who claim that it is ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ to mock the Prophet Mohammad, appear to imagine, with the racists, that all Muslims are reactionaries. It is here that leftwing ‘anti-racism’ joins hands with rightwing anti-Muslim bigotry.

Indeed.

Malik is performing a peculiar inversion here. The people siding with the racist position that all Muslims are the reactionaries are the ones who, in the name of attacking fundamentalism or jihadism instead deliberately craft a graphic or text aimed at offending all Muslims as a group and then claiming that only reactionaries could possibly take offence. Such goading is going to be offensive even to many who don't personally have faith, just because it is transparently aimed at collective monsterisation.

Also Muhammed is dead, he's not the one being mocked here. The people being mocked know very well who they are. It doesn't make them reactionaries to resent being publicly humiliated.

Caiman, how does Charlie Hebdo's output or the policies of the French state explain the shooting up of four Jewish people in a koscher supermarket?

Just to elaborate, I wasn't trying to be antagonistic, just hinting that imo your analysis might be incomplete and has to acknowledge the gunmen's agency and their anti-semitic/reactionary interpretation of islam. Failure to do so risks playing into the hands of (Jewish) nationalists (sorry if that's not the preferred nomenclature).

x

ocelot

Mr. Jolly

Mark.

Kenan Malik on Charlie Hebdo
https://kenanmalik.wordpress.com/2015/01/08/je-suis-charlie-its-a-bit-late/

Those who claim that it is ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ to mock the Prophet Mohammad, appear to imagine, with the racists, that all Muslims are reactionaries. It is here that leftwing ‘anti-racism’ joins hands with rightwing anti-Muslim bigotry.

Indeed.

Malik is performing a peculiar inversion here. The people siding with the racist position that all Muslims are the reactionaries are the ones who, in the name of attacking fundamentalism or jihadism instead deliberately craft a graphic or text aimed at offending all Muslims as a group and then claiming that only reactionaries could possibly take offence. Such goading is going to be offensive even to many who don't personally have faith, just because it is transparently aimed at collective monsterisation.

All muslims? I think thats the point Malik is trying to put forward that there has been an 'othering' that has occurred and its discourse infects the far right and left anti-racist discourse, that creates the notion of an homogenous entity of 'the muslim'. What I do think he is missing from this thesis, is obviously the dynamics of class and race. To solely blame top down multiculturalism or the French alternative state policies obviously isnt the complete picture.

Racism, as I understand it, in its social manifestation expresses a relation of power. To illustrate, a cartoon in the US of a black person, wearing overalls, eating watermelon, shuffling and saying "massah" is racist; not so for a cartoon showing white people wearing khaki pants, polo shirts, and running down to the mall to eat at Chuck E. Cheese pizzeria, and catch the director's cut of The Sound of Music

I dealt with this argument long ago with those claiming the Nation of Islam in the US was "racist" because their publications referred to "white, blue-eyed devils." I argued that the references were not "racism" because the Nation of Islam had absolutely zero power over the social relations that were the material basis for racism in the US.

The relations of power, and to power, are fundamental to racism. So that... when the Danish newspaper publishes the cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb for a turban, that is indeed "racist," or the one about the doctor congratulating the parents "Congratulations, it's a bomb" is racist because the relations of power are such that the bombing that's really going on, the "dominant" so to speak mode of production, is the bombing of people who are in the main Moslem.

Now you and I may agree, that the bombing isn't being done because they are practitioners of Islam, but that point might be lost on those having to endure daily bombings, and in particular lost when there is no class-conscious movement, on an international basis, opposing these bombings; engaging in the struggle against the system perpetrating these attacks.

So, yeah I think Hebdo's cartoons depicting Moslems and Arabs were racist.

Our tasks are 1) to expose and oppose the "institutional policies," domestic and international of capitalism, that are used to categorize Arabs and/or Moslems as "enemies." 2) prevent the manipulation of events and reactions by the bourgeoisie and their state to further and expand these policies-- i.e. using "unity" or "shared values" as a stepping stone to further militarization 3) conceding nothing to, and identifying as reactionary, the ideology and practices, of fundamentalists who use the type of attacks against Charlie Hebdo as advertising.

Sadly for all the verbiage and analysis that this story has produced, the real motivations behind the attack were probably far more banal - turf wars between IS and AQ as to who can be the biggest cunt.

wojtek

Just to elaborate, I wasn't trying to be antagonistic, just hinting that imo your analysis might be incomplete and has to acknowledge the gunmen's agency and their anti-semitic/reactionary interpretation of islam. Failure to do so risks playing into the hands of (Jewish) nationalists (sorry if that's not the preferred nomenclature).

As Mr. Jolly says above, the two attacks were carried out by different groups. Hence, the attacks can and should be treated as separate. Can't remmeber which group claim to be behind which attack, but it seems as if al-qaeda activated one of its sleeper agents to carry out the attack on the one policeman and then on the kosher market. As Jolly says, this all to do with a turf war and who gets to be see as the true Islamic resistance or whatever. Reminds me a bit about the situation in Gaza where often Hamas don't actually want to lob rockets into Israel, but have to do so when groups like Islamic Jihad does. Hamas wants to be seen as the only Islamic resitance movement and thus will have to do it. Some rockets attack, similar to how there seems to be a war close to every Israeli election, is all about domestic politics in the case of Gaza.

proletarian.

Jura, I think this is very naive. I despise religion as much as the next person and think it should be openly criticized. But in your scenario, you are ok with banning people thinking and having ideas albeit wrong ones. If the state ever starts murdering bishops and priests (it has done in some countries) don't you think they wouldn't be the only ones on the kill list, for instance communists...you?

You're right, but look at the context in which I said it. Teh wanted me to admit that if I think religion is oppressive, than surely it would be a "good thing" if religion was "banned". I responded in kind.

S. Artesian

I dealt with this argument long ago with those claiming the Nation of Islam in the US was "racist" because their publications referred to "white, blue-eyed devils." I argued that the references were not "racism" because the Nation of Islam had absolutely zero power over the social relations that were the material basis for racism in the US.

So basically you are saying that no muslim, jew, black person etc can be racist? That the murder of jews in France (and there have been many) by islamists isnt racism? And the NOI's anti-semitism, isnt racism?

jura

The general reaction on the left is even worse: people say outright that "They", i.e. the people who were shot, "got what they deserved".

In Poland it's general reaction on the extreme right - "We hate islamists but leftists mocking religion, christianity even more than islam, got what they deserved"

I argued that the references were not "racism" because the Nation of Islam had absolutely zero power

Yeah as Jolly said, you dealt with it badly in that case. It's utterly nonsensical to deny that black people can be racist simply because as a group they have less power than white people. As an oppressed demographic group black people would be less effective at causing harm with racism due to lack of resources, sure, but that doesn't mean individuals and groups can't be racist.

And frankly, saying "black people have no power therefore can't be racist" also has a slight problem when it runs into the issue of class. I mean which black people are we talking about here, working class ones or mobile communications billionaire Mo Ibrahim? Is Mo allowed to be racist? How about multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey?

Mr. Jolly

All muslims? I think thats the point Malik is trying to put forward that there has been an 'othering' that has occurred and its discourse infects the far right and left anti-racist discourse, that creates the notion of an homogenous entity of 'the muslim'.

[btw I agree with the second part of your response that followed the above]

What I'm saying is that by spreading the target as wide as possible, by attacking not the hypocrisies of jihadists, or those US- and Western-endorsed "moderate Muslims" the Saudi Wahhabists (like the atrocious Ibn Baz, who attacked MB ideologist Sayeed Qutb for suggesting that getting rid of slavery was compatible with Islam, for e.g.), or even duplicitous two-faced ratbags like Tariq Ramadan, but anyone who believes that Muhammed is god's prophet (which kinda defines what it means to be a believing Muslim at all), is to promote to this 'othering' - the creating of an undifferentiated "Barbu" mass. That's what ex-CH member Olivier Cyran was basically saying in his piece linked above (and again here) when he says "Muslim and Muslim, it's not the same thing either"

You’re right, Arab and Muslim, it’s not the same thing. But you know what? Muslim and Muslim, it’s not the same thing either. Understand this: there are all sorts, rich and poor, big and small, friendly and rude, generous and greedy, wanting a better world, reactionary or even, yes, fundamentalist. On the other hand, in Charlie Hebdo, nothing resembles a Muslim more than another Muslim. Always represented as weak-minded, fanatical, terrorist, on the benefit. A Muslim woman? Always a poor dumb thing reducible to her headscarf, with no other social function than to arouse the libido of your comedians.

Again the problem in the current context, is that by highlighting what was problematic with CH's post 9/11 démarche is to end up sounding like you are in some way relativising the crime committed against them, as if in some way "they were asking for it".

That said, I still want to draw people's attention to this piece from Saturday's Libé. They put this up in response to the calls, from left and right, for "moderate muslims" to come forward to denounce jihadist terror:

Charb would undoubtably have found this [calling on moderate Muslims to condemn the attacks] completely stupid. The Theatre du Rond-Point republished on its website a video of the murdered managing editor of Charlie Hebdo. He had come to support the theater in December 2011 against Catholic fundamentalists protesting against the performance of the show Golgotha Picnic by Rodrigo Garcia. Returning to the Molotov cocktail attack the offices of his weekly, he explains that he "was tired of people being concerned that moderate Muslims do not respond."
.
"We don't think that Islam will take power in France, we know well that this is a ultraminorité, they're only fifteen dickheads protesting. Same for the Catholic fundamentalists, he thought. People are concerned to see moderate Muslims not reacting but that's because there are no moderate Muslims in France, there are no Muslims at all, there are people who are of Muslim culture, respecting Ramadan as I can do Christmas and eat turkey with my parents, but they do not have to commit more than that against radical Islam as a moderate Muslim, since they are not moderate Muslims, they are citizens. "
.
"What pisses me off is that always called upon as moderate Muslims, there are no moderate Muslims, he added. It's like saying to me: "React as moderate Catholic." I am not a moderate Catholic, although I am baptized. I'm not Catholic at all. "

At first sight it looks like Charb is (rightly) condemning the sinister game that the media and political establishment plays in these moments, by projecting this "good muslim/bad muslim" dichotomy and demanding that "good muslims" prove their innocence by loudly denouncing the bad ones. But then when you look further, his contention that there are no "moderate muslims" goes further. To him it appears that so far as people from a muslim background are like him, in basically rejecting any attachment to their faith, other than purely social family occasions, then they are acceptable as citizens first and last. For Charb, the only good muslim is an unbeliever. By implication then, any muslim who has any religious belief at all, can no longer be in the "good citizen" bracket of "people like me", but belong in a generic "Muslim" category, for which the term "moderate" is inapplicable, as belief is itself fanatical.

Or you may read that differently, but I can't see any other interpretation that fits what he is actually saying (even without Cyran's contribution).

In brief, I don't see this cartoon as having any other intention than to aggravate as many muslims as possible

wojtek

Caiman, how does Charlie Hebdo's output or the policies of the French state explain the shooting up of four Jewish people in a koscher supermarket?

Hi Wojtek, I appreciate that you tried to explain your good intentions in a later post, so I'll reply. Unfortunately, Mr Jolly's comment, in which my response to him and his ilk is totally ignored in favour of implicitly accusing me of anti-Semitism, is, more than anything else, an indication of his own immaturity. It still got an upvote from some utter cretin though. I have to say, Jura's got a point, this voting thing hasn't encouraged debate at all. Rather what we have is basically a crowd of eavesdroppers playing at being the audience on Question Time. Except they're too passive to even ask any scripted fucking questions.

As for the answer to your question, well, I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make. I was attempting to put things in context, as a response to the total decontextualisation of the attacks, as if there were no reason for CH being attacked. Finding a reason for something happening is totally distinct to justifying it (a point that has been lost on many a rentamob crocodile tear brigade among my acquaintances, and a number of people on this thread). In fact, I would say it's the basis of a materialist view of the world, but maybe I was wrong, and I'm actually an anti-Semite.

So, the siege of the supermarket and printworks make no sense if they aren't seen as the epilogues to the drama in the CH offices. I mean, aren't we supposed to believe that this Koubialy guy took the hostages in an attempt to open a second front against the French state in solidarity with les fréres Koubachi? Even when considered alongside their goals, it seems like a totally flawed strategy, but then, I suppose that martyrdom is the ultimate anti-strategy.

No, I'm not saying no black person, or any other person cannot "be racist;" cannot hold racist views; I'm talking about racism as a social weapon; as a form of social oppression. The issue is precisely NOT individual views.

The knee-jerk response is "Nonsense, individuals can always be racist." We're not talking about individuals. We're talking about domination, oppression, and a social "narrative" so to speak that serves, justifies, extends that domination.

Abstracting "racist" from the material conditions of its origin, and current practice, is as pointless as arguing that Charlie Hebdo was not racist because it equally offended Catholics by drawing the pope being fucked in the ass. Nobody's sending cruise missiles and predator drones against Catholic countries; nobody's sodomizing Catholics (except for priests, that is).

K so what you're talking about is more commonly known as "structural" racism, ie. the material conditions of a given society which promote, solidify and underwrite the impact of individual racist acts. And no-one here is denying that structural racism exists, or I'd imagine that some of Hebdo's content fit into that structure.

This is different from racism as a word on its own, which in both its technical and common usage is simply the phenomenon of individuals or groups defining the superiority or inferiority of other people based on the concept of race. Which is probably why this isn't the first time you've confused people. In this latter case, there's some argument on here as to whether Hebdo's cartoons were racist in this fashion - ie. deliberately degrading public perception of a specific group of people, in this case Muslims (who obviously are actually of many races, but are structurally perceived as a bloc and treated in an identical manner to how racism functions).

Personally, not knowing any of them, I have no idea of intent, or indeed context as I'm not a French reader of the magazine, and of course this is the case for almost everybody on this thread. In terms of how I personally interpret it, some of them appear to be pretty bad, and largely in line with an unpleasant brand of "fuck you" muscular atheist liberalism, the sort of thing that Dawkins might do if he ran a Private Eye style magazine.

Beyond understanding that point and not caring to particularly associate my own politics with it, it doesn't seem terribly important to say much else - and even then only if it's in the context of "what do you think about Hebdo's politics." Otherwise it's utterly irrelevant to what should be the practical priorities for anarchists:

1. Combating racist tendencies which emerge from the shootings
2. Attacking State attempts to profit from the mess

Neither of these is in the least bit changed by whether anyone here thinks Charlie Hebdo's deceased cartoonists were fire-breathing fascists, misunderstood cuddly bunnies or something in between.

1. Combating racist tendencies which emerge from the shootings
2. Attacking State attempts to profit from the mess

Neither of these is in the least bit changed by whether anyone here thinks Charlie Hebdo's deceased cartoonists were fire-breathing fascists, misunderstood cuddly bunnies or something in between.

Agreed. Not just anarchists, Marxists too.

But it does have relevance as to why we are not Charlie.

and the point by Jura and Caiman

I have to say, Jura's got a point, this voting thing hasn't encouraged debate at all

is spot on. Get rid of this ridiculous facebook mimicry--- up/down, like/don't like, friend/unfriend.

Jef I don't live in France but

Laïcité - secularism. This was a largely dead topic in France and the only ones who actually gave a shit about it were the National Front

Really? It's always seemed to be a pretty hot topic whenever I've encountered any French political discourse.

I also don't understand what you mean when you say

Sarkozy then passed the legislation banning the wearing of religious symbols which everyone knows was about the veil, it doesn't matter where people come down on whether it was right or not.

Why doesn't it matter? It largely seems to me that French laicité was a stick to beat Islam with, at least in line with prevailing geopolitical trends. I don't think it's just laicité either, Dieudonné has been in and out of the courts for anti-Semitic hate speech (no doubt he's guilty of that, not from this quarter anyway!), and now he's nicked again for his comments about the killings no? The whole ideological basis of laicité was that it meant all citizens were equal before the law and in politics, but the effect, right now at least, is the total opposite. It's applied selectively, predominantly against Muslims/Arabs, with the rather unappetising spectacle of white French liberals (and some people on this thread) applauding and alternately hand-wringing about how more must be done.

I have been asked by a friend why anarcho-syndicalist youth in Germany uses Charlie Hebdo to rant against Islam and march against IS and the "islamo-fascist Hamas". Are anarchists against islamism per se? That would be disproportionate to opposition with other religious generalisations (as opposed to class struggle against apparatus of capitalism and the state) - with these two links below in mind (maybe someone with a good grasp of the german language can help us understand) why the second link from ASJ Bonn appears to be argueing explicitly against islam as being anti-semitic (?)

[1] "Fight the Game - Racism, Islamism, Nationalism and Capitalism - Fight Against"

[2] Kundgebung für Charlie Hebdo [auto-translation]

Depends what you mean by Islamism. A lot of people use it as a synonym for fundamentalism within Islam afaik, which obv yes anarchists would be against, as it's no better than any form of theocratic thuggery. And Hamas is pretty rubbish in political terms.

Having said so, highlighting Muslim fundamentalism in particular ahead of any other form of religious dogma does seem dodgy as fuck on the face of it. I suppose it might be something to do with that shit anti-Deutsche thing about being pro-Israel?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMbwcBYT0DI

Having said so, highlighting Muslim fundamentalism in particular ahead of any other form of religious dogma does seem dodgy as fuck on the face of it. I suppose it might be something to do with that shit anti-Deutsche thing about being pro-Israel?

Thanks that's helpful. I think the anti-Deutsche are exactly what is at the root of this. I find it infuriating that Israeli advocacy (taking sides for Israel against Palestine, muslims, etc) is tagged on to the "Fight Against... Nationalism and Capitalism" (in particular) because it is clearly not an internationalist/revolutionary class position.

On the issue of 'Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in Paris' I am not in solidarity with the business 'Charlie' or any class collaborationist press - in favour of media directly under worker control. Once again though, it was mostly workers who suffered.

AES

Thanks that's helpful. I think the anti-Deutsche are exactly what is at the root of this.

Sounds like it, a world where Bomber Harris was the first real punk.

And round and round it goes.

[youtube]XMbwcBYT0DI[/youtube]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/french-born-muslim-receives-death-threat-over-london-je-suis-charlie-sign?CMP=share_btn_tw

"Today, everyone is saying: 'We are all Charlie, I am Charlie.' Well, I'm sorry, but I'm not Charlie," Le Pen said. "I am touched by the deaths of 12 French compatriots whose political identity I don't even want to know – although I know it well enough already. These were the enemies of the FN who only recently demanded the party's dissolution."

jef costello

ocelot

There are 5 million nominal muslims in France, less than 2000 of whom choose to wear the hijab.

Don't want to be picky but this is so clearly wrong. The figure would be low even if it was for the burka.

You're right. That's me mis-referencing from Malik's piece on assimilationism where he was referring to the burqa ban (rather than the school ban on wearing religious symbols - i.e. the hijab). The actual reference is:

Out of the North African population of around 5 million, the French government estimates that fewer than 2000 wear the burqa or niqab.

Which in turn is referring back to a 2014 piece he wrote:

The campaign against the burqa is particularly puzzling when in reality so few women choose to wear it. The sight of a burqa in Paris or Brussels is almost as rare as a glimpse of a bikini in Riyadh or Karachi. France has a Muslim population of 5 million. Its government estimates that fewer than 2000 women wear a niqab or burqa. (The original survey, conducted by DCRI, the French secret service, came up with the oddly precise figure of 367; that was so low that the Interior Ministry told the DCRI to count again.)

The original DCRI and SDIG reports of 2009 covered by Le Monde here. Finding a ref for the government claim of 2000 is more difficult, it seems to have been a claim made in evidence at the European Court of Human Rights, when defending against a case that the 2010 law infringed citizens rights (according to this 2014-07-01 court report here)

La loi de 2010 jugée par la CEDH

Les avocats de la requérante ont mis en avant plusieurs articles de la Convention européenne des droits de l’Homme : pour eux, la loi française de 2010 est en contradiction avec les article 8 (« Droit à la vie privée et familiale »), article 9 (« Liberté de pensée, de conscience et de religion »), article 10 (« Liberté d’expression) et article 14 (« interdiction de discrimination »).

Le gouvernement français, auquel s’est joint le gouvernement belge qui a voté une loi similaire en 2011, a demandé le rejet pure et simple de la requête : pour le gouvernement, la loi ne présente aucune caractéristique discriminatoire car elle ne cible pas le niqab ou la burqa et en précisant que le nombre de femmes portant de tels vêtements religieux sont minoritaires : elles seraient moins de 2000.

But as to when this claim was made in evidence, and on the basis of what research, I don't know atm.

Rob Ray

Beyond understanding that point [some of CH cartoons being dodgy*] and not caring to particularly associate my own politics with it, it doesn't seem terribly important to say much else - and even then only if it's in the context of "what do you think about Hebdo's politics." Otherwise it's utterly irrelevant to what should be the practical priorities for anarchists:

1. Combating racist tendencies which emerge from the shootings
2. Attacking State attempts to profit from the mess

Neither of these is in the least bit changed by whether anyone here thinks Charlie Hebdo's deceased cartoonists were fire-breathing fascists, misunderstood cuddly bunnies or something in between.

I mostly agree. And it's notable that the statements by French anarchists like AL, for e.g., have clearly concentrated their fire on the state and governing parties attempts to instrumentalise the events.

But I think there are a few themes that have emerged in the discussion that will come back around again in the future, long after #jesuischarlie is a fading memory. For me these will be:

1. Liberalism and racism are not mutually exclusive viewpoints. Liberal racism is not a contradiction in terms, but a real political tendency (at least within Western Europe).

2. Not all racism is biological racism. The old quip that generals are always preparing to fight the last war but one, can also be applied to the anti-racist and anti-fascist movements. The impact of 20th century European fascism, and particularly the biological racist, social darwinian "race science" of the Nazis has tended to colour late 20th century anti-fascism, such that much activity has been focussed on exposing racist movements as crypto-nazis. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with exposing the odd UKIP candidate's youthful neo-nazi dalliances, but that's not going to blunt the political effect of UKIP in legitimising racist discourses and bringing them into the mainstream. Given, precisely, the impact of 20th century biological racism of the Nazi type, it is far more likely that racism will be reintroduced to the mainstream by means of ethno-cultural frameworks, and liberal republican racism of the early 19th century Bruno Bauer type, than by a resurgence of either esoteric-mystical racism, or neo-Galtonian "scientific racism", given the changed social conditions (scientific production, for e.g., has been massified and to some degree industrialised, and is certainly no longer the exclusive possession of the white European male as it was in the late 19th and early 20th centuries - the withering storm of critique of those few trying to resurrect scientific racism, not so much from left or liberal quarters, but from within the scientific community itself, bears witness).

3. Promoters of liberal and ethno-cultural racism can put themselves forward as opponents of racism without contradiction, so long as racism is identified exclusively with biological racism. Which is the way liberalism would have it. This also has implications for the possibility of constructing anti-racist and anti-fascist movements on other than explicitly anti-liberal foundations for the future.

4. The partialist (and partisan) foundation of class solidarity turns out to be more inclusive than the "universalist" liberal values, which, in the absence of class interests, necessarily limits the boundaries of social solidarity to those who are seen to be already bearers of liberal values, or more significantly, excludes those suspected of being carriers of alien, non-liberal values. The "universalism" of liberal community is dialectically transformed into an exclusionary discourse by the unfolding logic of its own contradictions around the impossibility of genuine shared values in the ideology of universal commodification and "freedom of choice".

There may be others. But I think the need to identify, critique and organise against liberal racism will continue.

* paraphrasing for brevity...

The NUJ and Charlie Hebdo
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/jan/15/controversial-charlie-hebdo-motions-upset-nuj-members

Statement by Alternative Libertaire and others
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/27793

Charlie Hebdo, freedom of speech and male privilege
https://reimaginingmyreality.wordpress.com/2015/01/13/charlie-hebdo-freedom-of-speech-and-male-privilege/

I'm continually amused by the obsession of liberal advocates of "no such thing as islamophobia" of repeatedly referencing Voltaire. From Bernard Henri Levy, through Suzanne Moore and Julie Bindel* (the good cop/bad cop of Guardian transphobic and whoreophobic feminism), to just about everybody arguing this line. The choice of Voltaire as liberal hero for the "we can't be racist, we're liberals" crowd is particularly apt, given the great man's views on the topic.

Voltaire

It is a serious question among them whether the Africans are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.[

An appropriate hero for this crowd. Although, in fairness, Voltaire was a good old fashioned biological racist, rather than an ethno-cultural one.

* Bindel's signature joins that of Richard Dawkins under that Maryam Namazie piece I took umbrage with above. Note also that Namazie is one of the 12 of the Manifeste des Douze.

* Bindel's signature joins that of Richard Dawkins under that Maryam Namazie piece I took umbrage with above. Note also that Namazie is one of the 12 of the Manifeste des Douze.

I havent read the Manifeste des Douz, anyone got an english translation? Its seems its signatories, like Namazie and Taslima Nasreen are not your typical whiggish white boys are they? And you had Gita Sahgal from Southall black Sisters signing that namazie piece as well? Where would you place these figures in your thesis? Liberal racists to be fought against?

This is a response, in 2011, from a ex worker at charlie hebdo to deniles of charlie hebdo's racism http://posthypnotic.randomstatic.net/charliehebdo/Charlie_Hebdo_article%2011.htm

Zineb El Rhazoui's reply to the above:
http://pastebin.com/zAB0Pv8a

ocelot

* Bindel's signature joins that of Richard Dawkins under that Maryam Namazie piece I took umbrage with above. Note also that Namazie is one of the 12 of the Manifeste des Douze.

This piece seems fairly representative of Maryam Namazie's views:

Siding with the oppressor: the pro-Islamist left

I'd be curious to know if you see this as liberal or racist.

Do you work in a terror hotspot then? Because I do, I work at a socialist newspaper in London with no windows on the ground floor and a metal door to deter fascists. I also volunteer at an anarchist bookshop which was damn near burned to the ground in an arson attack two years ago (assailant unknown) which is five minutes away from that supposedly super-scary Islamist hub the East London Mosque. That's my fucking qualification for being worried about terrorism - and I ain't, because I've got a sense of perspective on it.

I respect you and your work but your personalising the issue and youre swearing at me because you give zero evidence why racism and Islamism from within currents emanating from mosques/kuranic schools is not an issue or a concern.

how close you personally are in geographic terms to a mosque is irrelevant, bengali speaker leftists know bits and pieces about the activities of IFE and YMO who are active in diaspora events circles
they're happy to push an anti-class general right-wing islam onto children and young people

they prey especially on minority/diaspora people who can't afford to take their kids on holiday or don't have time/money to look after them.
[others operate trying to produce islamists by conversion which has a different dynamic]

most aren't taken in thankfully - i escaped mentally then physically from the softer version in turkish clissold park (back when it was turkish/kurdish) in in the summer holidays - but some a very small minority - will sink in the quicksand further and further becoming islamist in outlook (down with freedom of speech which protects blasphemy, long live sex segregation as practiced in the best religion on earth, islam has no current of racism unlike the rest, muslims are blamed for terror they haven't committed, intermarriage is a sin, hijab is duty for godfearers whether u18 or over 18) they will get invited into further corridor events and then - a tiny minority once again will want to be fighting for islam and go soak the kurdish autonomous cantons in blood.

you're right that britain exports its islamism in the main 95% of it i'd say bosnia in the early 90s; chechnya-dagestan and afghanistan-pakistan border in the late 90s and early 2000s up to today yemen; somalia; syria-iraq;
they ruined everywhere they went committed atrocities lied and dissembled and provoked counter-atrocities

it's a not a concious thing between soft islamist and hard islamist - the soft islamist believes they are helping things by offering their right-wing religious path as against the others, the hard islamists, but in fact they create a fertile ground for anyone else to carry on or the subject to carry on to do this terrorism mostly beyond the borders of the uk.

the end point is this kind of stuff as reported this past week:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/isis-has-fighters-just-waiting-for-order-to-attack-the-west-says-british-grammar-schoolboy-turned-teen-militant-shabazz-suleman-9980123.html

It has previously been claimed that the 19-year-old was included along with another British national in prisoner exchanges that saw Turkish diplomats released from Isis custody in September last year.

And speaking to The Times newspaper in the aftermath of last week’s Charlie Hebdo shootings, Suleman claims he was given the choice to be part of the exchanges or deported back to Britain without being linked to Isis.

Praising the Paris murders, he said: “There’s so many brothers just waiting for the order to do attacks on the West.”

And describing how he was among 200 Isis captives eventually released by Turkey, he said: “Cops were friendly. Understood why we wanted to fight in Syria. They hated Assad, Israel etc. Their ideology was that of the Muslim brotherhood.

“It was good,” he added. “Had pizza in prison. Dominoes lol. Was allowed net. We spoke to dawla (the so-called “caliphate”) in prison. Watched Isis videos.”

any working-class movement has a duty to stop this kind of stuff - the morning star's approach is to put the labour party in power so that it can give free reign and sympathy to Mi5 and security services

i think this is a damaging and harmful approach because many refuse to be involved with mi5 on any level and it further creates an illusion of 'only muslims are targetted'.
most importantly mi5 are happy to cooperate with islamists 'let loose the bastards' when they think it is in their interest e.g. so-called covenant of security to islamist preachers export abroad and you're safe here, cross the line you'll be arrested on the double; murky goings on in yemen since reunification; involvement in torture; the gaddafi assassination and coup plot from 1996; mi5 working relationship with saudi arabia? turkey?

a class-based approach is becoming harder and harder with every terrorist attack and government cut but it would involve trying to re-assert secular social services in all aspects of life, publicising and publishing the objective historical research which fairly conclusively proves several sources to the kuran and disproves the single origin claim, integrating mosques by gender [women often push a sensible more secular programme because they are segregated and relegated from higher roles in mosques, but not always]

once again, charlie hebdo satire would not be my way or my belief of what a working-class way would be.

but i think charlie hebdo had its own ambitions non-racist ones -- in publishing the cartoons they thought they could break the mohammed taboo because no one in a muslim country was ever going to attempt it unless it was part of reprinting a story from elsewhere.

it was presumptuous and misfired on them but it was not chauvinist racists welcoming the immiseration of muslims

'here' and 'there' cannot be separated easily because of cross-national links and language (primarily Arabic) learning amongst Islamists. From collecting press immediate reports in any given month apparently about 5,000 are killed as a result of Islamist terrorism, well over 2000 of who are civilians http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-30080914 and terror attacks on secular education are rising http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-30684463.
Of course it's over there but the response here has a bearing more so than before, the more ostensibly secular capitalist societies like those of Europe 'fail' the more Islamists can stress that secularism (not the capitalism) is the problem aspects of Islam is the solution.

One leg under secularism is an *idealised* right to provoke or criticise others' beliefs as long as it is not offering imminent violence. Yes this right is not perfect and it's not retained anywhere perfectly but it should be defended and not thrown away on the basis that right-wing Muslims see a cartoon as a racist attack on Muslims.
Capitalists don't care if it's thrown away. In the future the early Soviet experiment, the Spanish war endeavours, the Mexican revolution, the Berber revolts and the Amazigh national movement, the Iranian left, the Turkish left, the Kurdish national movement, the Sahrawi national movement, the Baluchi national movement they'll all be condemned as Islamophobic and racist aswell. Once you cast away Charlie Hebdo as Islamophobic for attacking and satirising all religions that's the only course left.

Malik is performing a peculiar inversion here. The people siding with the racist position that all Muslims are the reactionaries are the ones who, in the name of attacking fundamentalism or jihadism instead deliberately craft a graphic or text aimed at offending all Muslims as a group and then claiming that only reactionaries could possibly take offence. Such goading is going to be offensive even to many who don't personally have faith, just because it is transparently aimed at collective monsterisation.

Also Muhammed is dead, he's not the one being mocked here. The people being mocked know very well who they are. It doesn't make them reactionaries to resent being publicly humiliated.

no one has said muslims who are offended by the cartoons are reactionaries,
but there are right wing muslims who have interpreted them according to muslim taboos - 1 the prophet must not be depicted and 2 the prophet should be recalled in love hence the fashion of saying pbuh every time you mention him.

most importantly they have not cared to examine the style of the magazine at all.

note catholics and jews and buddhists all effectively minorities have been publicly humiliated.

e.g.

the father God the son Jesus - the most important person in Christianity - and the holy ghost engaging in a homosexual orgy with the spirit as some kind of dildo (whose purpose is sex) attacking catholics.

If Islam wasn't so Muhammed-fixated then perhaps there would be more drawings cartoons of other figures

I suspect that if say Tariq Ramadan's brother (who brought a prosecution against Charlie Hebdo in 2007 with Saudi money on the basis that it was racist the laws Dieudonne is being investigated over) being satirised on the front cover, then sections of the great and good would say that's much worse than targetting Mohammed at least he's dead, they're setting up a lynch campaign against a prominent French Muslim this is Islamophobia and racism gone wild.

Finally 'collective monsterisation' good lord - isn't that what you've done to these 10 journalists and their colleagues?

It looks to many of Muslim heritage people on the side of the political divide strongly in favour of secularism (because they know it is the best tool against chauvinism), that they've been framed as racists and anti-Nigerians and bigots to maintain the rosy picture that the Muslim far-right would just go away as long as no one provokes them.

Thanks for the posts above sihhi.

ocelot

Rob Ray

Beyond understanding that point [some of CH cartoons being dodgy*] and not caring to particularly associate my own politics with it, it doesn't seem terribly important to say much else - and even then only if it's in the context of "what do you think about Hebdo's politics." Otherwise it's utterly irrelevant to what should be the practical priorities for anarchists:

1. Combating racist tendencies which emerge from the shootings
2. Attacking State attempts to profit from the mess

Neither of these is in the least bit changed by whether anyone here thinks Charlie Hebdo's deceased cartoonists were fire-breathing fascists, misunderstood cuddly bunnies or something in between.

I mostly agree. And it's notable that the statements by French anarchists like AL, for e.g., have clearly concentrated their fire on the state and governing parties attempts to instrumentalise the events.

But I think there are a few themes that have emerged in the discussion that will come back around again in the future, long after #jesuischarlie is a fading memory. For me these will be:

1. Liberalism and racism are not mutually exclusive viewpoints. Liberal racism is not a contradiction in terms, but a real political tendency (at least within Western Europe).

I agree with a lot of this point but with one proviso Islamism should be included as a liberal racism, it uses the space given by liberalism to seek to impose *its* rules to privilege *its* religion in its "communities" which crush w/class organisation.

those who uphold separation of mosque rules and school rules, marry outside the faith as women, defend blasphemy openly, call for democratic not theocratic messages in mosques, treat mohammed as a historical figure etc they are the refugees or gypsies or who are beyond the pale

Mr. Jolly

* Bindel's signature joins that of Richard Dawkins under that Maryam Namazie piece I took umbrage with above. Note also that Namazie is one of the 12 of the Manifeste des Douze.

I havent read the Manifeste des Douz, anyone got an english translation? Its seems its signatories, like Namazie and Taslima Nasreen are not your typical whiggish white boys are they? And you had Gita Sahgal from Southall black Sisters signing that namazie piece as well? Where would you place these figures in your thesis? Liberal racists to be fought against?

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

I'm just wondering who the idiot is who downed sihhi's posts.

@plasmatelly Is that not a hilarious satire on liberals who think Islam is the biggest threat facing the wolrd right now?

radicalgraffiti

@plasmatelly Is that not a hilarious satire on liberals who think Islam is the biggest threat facing the wolrd right now?

Imo, not if it wasn't intended as satire.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Wow, what a list of reactionary d-bags...

youre swearing at me because you give zero evidence why racism and Islamism from within currents emanating from mosques/kuranic schools is not an issue or a concern.

No I'm swearing at you because you were implying I had an "I'm alright Jack" attitude over the dangers of terrorism in Britain whereas in fact if we were to assume it actually was a serious danger I'd be ticking lots of boxes to be a potential target. So your smug and accusatory tone annoyed me, basically.

Beyond this, it's not up to me to prove a negative, it's up to you to explain how a total of 15 attempted/thwarted terror attacks in 10 years with a maximum kill count of a few hundred even if they'd all been wildly successful justifies weekly front pages, billions spent on largely useless "prevention" tactics and the removal of vast numbers of our rights, in comparison to the total lack of urgency (and often active dismissal, as in the case of deaths at work) displayed over so many other issues which directly leads to deaths week in, week out.

most aren't taken in thankfully

This is the key bit. These people are isolated, they have no ability to pose a serious threat to the status quo.

any working-class movement has a duty to stop this kind of stuff

Oh I agree, in the same way as it has to confront fascism, cults and redevelopment - but there is a difference between working class communities directly dealing with problems in their midst and making Islamism out to be a problem which threatens the lifeblood of freedoms in Britain. Down that way lies appeals to the State to sort it out and a potential echoing of the priorities of racist elements, which is a deal with much bigger, nastier devils.

Islamism should be included as a liberal racism, it uses the space given by liberalism to seek to impose *its* rules to privilege *its* religion in its "communities" which crush w/class organisation.

Given its outright reactionary basis I'd probably say fundamentalism is a beneficiary, as opposed to a purveyor of liberal racism, in much the same way as the BNP when it made huge political capital out of observing that "only white people aren't allowed to have their own clubs."

While it had its fair share of problems, the IWCA offered quite an interesting line on this stuff with its critiques of liberal multiculturalism a while back, which argues that the liberal line of "let them have their own customs" reeks of a sort of Othering, patronising, indulgent parentish approach which allows the worst kind of reactionary scum a great deal of leeway to gain ground in arenas which have been artificially divided into hermetically sealed groupings "led" by self appointed arseholes who are deemed to represent the interests of entire swathes of disparate people.

Khawaga

... Maryam Namazie.... Wow, what a list of reactionary d-bags...

Do you really think Namazie is a reactionary? I don't share much of her politics but even with a mind to the culture of leftist shit throwing I find it difficult to see why you describe her (a feminist, anti-clerical communist) as a reactionary. I would ask you to define your use of ‘reactionary’ and provide evidence (i.e. direct quotes) that Namazie fits this labelling. Many of her recent writings are on http://www.maryamnamazie.com/

Personally I heard her speak in Brighton a few years ago and felt her talk was the most class conscious I have heard for years (at least from our class...)

[youtube]N0Njm2vJ8EY[/youtube]

Compared to some of the identity riddled crap espoused by several people in this thread, that Maryam Namazie can hardly be called reactionary, certainly on this issue at least.

Serge Forward

Compared to some of the identity riddled crap espoused by several people in this thread, that Maryam Namazie can hardly be called reactionary, certainly on this issue at least.

The visceral hatred towards these people to their words by anglo-american left is quite depressing. Even as an anarchist one finds it quite difficult to stick up for these voices. Why is it met with such hostility, ironically, usually people hip with their intersectional politics? You can see it with the CH stuff the french IFA anarchists mourning their estranged old mates and voices from the same international in the UK pouring reactionary bile on them. Something is wrong.

Possibly because the anglo-american left is infected with the virus of identity politics, intersectional cack and privilege political guff which causes them to view islamism as something to be supported or given the status of pet ideology. I suspect the non-anglo left hasn't been properly infected with this shite... yet.

Serge Forward

Possibly because the anglo-american left is infected with the virus of identity politics, intersectional cack and privilege political guff which causes them to view islamism as something to be supported or given the status of pet ideology. I suspect the non-anglo left hasn't been properly infected with this shite... yet.

But surely the heuristic toolbox of intersectionality should give them diamond tipped analysis to cut through the BS... :/

...and they all lived happily ever after...

i blame foucault.

I seem to be making the same argument others have made except with catholics here, but that front cover in post #162 reminds of the Sochi anti-Putin posters (where were all those critics during the Commonwealth games by the way?), could someone explain how you combat homophobia by calling those who practice it gay, presumably trying to humiliate them? Doesn't it throw lgbt catholics under a bus?

Serge Forward wrote:

Possibly because the anglo-american left is infected with the virus of identity politics, intersectional cack and privilege political guff which causes them to view islamism as something to be supported or given the status of pet ideology. I suspect the non-anglo left hasn't been properly infected with this shite... yet.

This for example, as brought to you by class struggle anarchists at the Ford Foundation. Apparently it's a privilege these days to be less oppressed. That's progress for you.

See, it's things like that suddenly make the ICC look sexy. Thanks a bundle, factvalue. I had a very strong gag-reflex to that webpage and would have chucked up my brekky, had I not quickly navigated away from the page. Stronger warnings next time please.

I apologise unreservedly, no way to treat a fellow elite. But seriously, why would FF be interested in spreading division amongst the working class? Why would they be happy to fund things like this? It's just too much for me. I can't get my head around it, it just makes no sense at all.

Mr. Jolly

... the CH stuff the french IFA anarchists mourning their estranged old mates...

I have looked through the thread and think this statement has not been put up before, it's short so I am pasting it in:

"Statement FrAF - Shootout at Charlie Hebdo

The French Anarchist Federation learns with horror the killing taken place in the headquarters of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, that left 12 deaths and 11 injured.

We share the commotion, the indignation, and the grief of the families, of friends, of colleagues after this hideous crime. Among the victims, some had contributed for a while in our newspaper Le Monde Libertaire, and if our positions might had diverged afterwards, they will remain in the memory of several comrades.

This attack should remind us that religious obscurantism as political obscurantism is lethal.

We condemn the killings, but we also stay vigilant face to reactions of the far right or to the police schemes of the State.

We will continue to fight oppression, authoritarianism and intolerance, whether they hide behind religion, the nation or security constraints.

French Anarchist Federation, January 7th 2015

http://www.i-f-a.org/index.php/statements/federation-membre-de-l-ifa/638-statement-fraf-shootout-at-charlie-hebdo

Kuffarsplaining

http://kiranopal.com/kuffarsplaining-a-how-to-guide-for-talking-about-islam/

"Moroccan man in France killed at home in front of wife in 'horrible Islamophobic attack' "

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/moroccan-man-in-france-killed-at-home-in-front-of-wife-by-intruder-shouting-about-islam-9985072.html

edit: Bugger. Should have read the thread first. Plasmatelly beat me to it. Oh well...

Mr. Jolly

I havent read the Manifeste des Douz, anyone got an english translation?

AFAICS there's been no English translation. Here then is a quick translation from the version here.

The debate initiated by "twelve drawings" about Muhammad must proceed on the terrain of ideas and not anathemas. Refusing to be intimidated in the name of respect for cultures and religions especially, twelve intellectuals - including several dissidents of Islam threatened with death and exile in Europe and the United States because of their secular positions - decided to sign this manifesto to call together for an ideological resistance to fundamentalism, the new totalitarianism threatening the century.

MANIFESTO OF THE TWELVE "TOGETHER AGAINST THE NEW TOTALITARIANISM"

After having vanquished fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This fight will not be won by arms, but on the terrain of ideas. It is not a clash of civilizations or a West - East antagonism, but a global struggle that opposes democrats to theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism feeds on fear and frustration. The preachers of hate play on these feelings to form the battalions through which they wpould impose a liberty-killing [liberticide] and unequal world. But we say loud and clear: nothing, not even despair, justifies choosing obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it goes. Its success can only lead to a world of injustice and domination: that of men over women and that of fundamentalists over others. Instead, we must ensure access to universal rights to oppressed or discriminated peoples.

We reject the "cultural relativism" of accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secularism in the name of respect for cultures and traditions.

We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of encouraging "Islamophobia", unfortunate concept which confounds criticism of Islam as a religion and stigmatization of believers.

We advocate the universalization of the freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We launch an appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century is that of enlightenment and not of obscurantism.

Signatures

Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

Wednesday 1 March 2006

Mr Jolly

Its seems its signatories, like Namazie and Taslima Nasreen are not your typical whiggish white boys are they? And you had Gita Sahgal from Southall black Sisters signing that namazie piece as well? Where would you place these figures in your thesis? Liberal racists to be fought against?

I don't know these people's work, so I can't really comment. NB also, my "thesis" is not a schema or some categorizing method of pigeon-holing individuals (still less of passing moral judgement on them) but more about an emerging tendency of a certain discourse around the Islamist/Islamic threat (and the slippage between the two terms is key).

Mark.

I'm just wondering who the idiot is who downed sihhi's posts.

Me. I will get to explaining why, but there's a lot to catch up on. Give me a chance.

There's some confusion developing between two different lists of people: the Manifesto de Douz, just above, and the list of signatories to the recent statement put out after the Paris attacks linked to in comment no. 98. Maryam Namazie is the link.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/01/07/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/

Ocelot dismissed this recent statement on the basis that it was signed by Richard Dawkins and Julie Bindel, ignoring the rest of the 100 or so people who signed it, most of whom were black women from South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds. You demonstrate Namaze’s point that the white left speaks over and for Muslim and ex Muslim people when they present a different narrative.

And then you write:

I don't know these people's work, so I can't really comment. NB also, my "thesis" is not a schema or some categorizing method of pigeon-holing individuals (still less of passing moral judgement on them) but more about an emerging tendency of a certain discourse around the Islamist/Islamic threat (and the slippage between the two terms is key).

Maybe you should read a few of the people you don’t know before you carry on commenting. South Black Sisters and Women against Fundamentalism, for example, have been dealing with issues around Muslim and other religious fundamentalisms for at least 25 years, since the Rushdie affair.

Of course, this stuff isn’t so popular today since these groups were founded on a critique of identity politics, and this now dominates feminism and anti-racism. I recommend the WAF books: Refusing Holy Orders by Gita Sagal and Nira Yuval Davis from '92 and the brand new Women against Fundamentalism 25 years edited by Nira Y-D and Sukhwant Dhaliwal. Pragna Patel of SBS is someone you should know. All these are signatories to the statement and others who signed who might be worth looking up are Kiran Opal (who I expect is no fan of Bindel’s!), Karima Benoune, Fatou Sow, Elam Manea, Lila Ghobady, Nahla Mahmoud, and Soad Baba Aissa (I saw some these speak a few months ago).

By all means critique the statement for its liberalism, lack of class politics, and so forth, but don’t just write off the important work of these anti-racist, anti-fundamentalist feminists. I believe there is no emerging discourse and no slippage here.

...Faizun Zackariya, Meredith Tax...

Just catching up on stuff that's been happening:

Anti-Islam rally in France set for tomorrow protesting Front National's exclusion from the last Sunday rally has been banned by police.

Daily newspaper in Turkey Cumhuriyet (republic) that was publishing examples from Charlie Hebdo was raided at its offices and printing press to ensure none showing Mohammed would be printed.

Iran's mardom-i emruz magazine (today's people) has been suspended indefinitely after a Charlie Hebdo cartoon again not a Mohammed or Islam one, facing heavy questioning.

Jamaat's youth wing with death penalty demands tried to enter the French consolate in Karachi slogans against, dispersed by police with injuries.
Pakistan has sent a strong letter to all foreign ambassadors in the country stating that the new cover is unacceptable to Pakistan.

Niger has seen deaths in riots attacking local churches and France-related sites.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/charlie-hebdo-protests-five-dead-as-churches-and-french-flags-burn-in-niger-riots-over-cover-9985195.html

A summary on who we're dealing with, by chance, I've read stuff from all three mentioned

Taslima Nasreen was a government doctor in Bangladesh writing on the side, then became a full-time writer/poet involved in human rights movement under the Ershad era. Then she wrote Lajja (means shame) in 1994 which described the response to the Hindu nationalist-fundamentalist attack on Ayodha, India, in 1992 in Bangladesh when Muslim-nationalist Islamist gangs attacked/killed/made homeless Hindus. I think she was sort of close to Bangladesh's main communist-socialist weekly newspaper Ekota, in the introduction (Tutul Gupta's English version) she mentions it as a source of info for facts for the novel. The government banned her novel and put her on trial on bail in 1993-4 for infringing hate speech laws, a large anti-Taslima campaign was underway from Islamsists so she fled to India. Then became something of a thorn in its side for attacking India's surface-only secularism, so she fled to Sweden and is something of an "exile intellectual" only, does a lot of conferences nowadays.

Maryam Namazie's whole family left Iran in 1980 (she aged 17), after the second major Islamist anti-left crackdown. She became an aid worker working with refugees in Sudan's civil war and Iranian speaking Lurs, Kurds and Azeris fleeing from Iran to Turkey, to avoid military service in the first gulf (iran-iraq) war. She was part of/very close to the Hekmatist Worker communist party of Iran, which was which was the largest amongst non-nationalist (ie non-Komala) iranian/rojhelat Kurds. Now in England she set up One Law for All a charity pressure group which has been fighting against the Muslim Council of Britain's idea for shariah courts, it courts supports from mainstream figures and liberals.

On Gita Sahgal, she is daughter of a novelist, sent to study in England but also took part in the student movement under the end of Emergency and the new Janata coalition in India. Returned to England to set up Southall Black Sisters in the early 1980s as a women's organisation for Punjabi or Hindu speakers in the area. Supported lots of famous cases about domestic violence in subcontinent families which I believe led to accusations in Southall that it was an Indian government front or pro-British government front to make Sikhs look bad.
It eventually ended up becoming a charity with a strong link to Labour-dominated Ealing Council, rather a political feminist pressure-group organisation.

No I'm swearing at you because you were implying I had an "I'm alright Jack" attitude over the dangers of terrorism in Britain whereas in fact if we were to assume it actually was a serious danger I'd be ticking lots of boxes to be a potential target. So your smug and accusatory tone annoyed me, basically.

Shorthand to say we shouldn't.
It's not about it being a serious danger which you wake up thinking about in the present, it's about trends continuing on the basis of what they are with a continuing capitalist crisis, growth of UKIP solidification of

Beyond this, it's not up to me to prove a negative, it's up to you to explain how a total of 15 attempted/thwarted terror attacks in 10 years with a maximum kill count of a few hundred even if they'd all been wildly successful justifies weekly front pages, billions spent on largely useless "prevention" tactics and the removal of vast numbers of our rights, in comparison to the total lack of urgency (and often active dismissal, as in the case of deaths at work) displayed over so many other issues which directly leads to deaths week in, week out.

I'm in favour of health and safety from all sources of danger in all fields that was my point in favour of some kind of movement able to take dangers from all wings of racists - Islamist and Britain-loyalist seriously - opposing Trojan Horse style school jobs but also calls for 'immigration only from non-Muslim countries'.

At the minute things aren't great.

Seeing these cartoonists for what they are - non-racists - will help mean we can form a relationship with the left-minded within those Islam-heavy minorities, at the same time, not being smarty pants who want to down anything which attacks Islam as racist.

To some secularists I've spoken to, they're heroes: defended the Kurdish movement 100%, took the heat off the danish satirists in an act of solidarity, went on to break the muhammed depiction taboo got firebombed, got window smashed, got a police guard and still went ahead. I don't share that view but it *is* there in a group of people.

If we say to them 'no no no charlie hebdo are racists, because they should stick to satirising jesus alone 'cos they're only 10% muslim by headcount', we'll lose them, aswell as losing non-muslim ordinary people who see them as just people doing what french people do and got shot.

Not to mention the impact on liberal Zionist Jewish orgs here, the left it can defend to the death Steve Bell's bloody Israel cartoon but the minute it comes to Muslims they love them, you can't trust the left with its antisemitism etc.

There'll also be knock-ons to other groups like non-Muslim black Christians charismatic or otherwise (attacking Jesus OK, Muhammed not), Hindus, Nepali Hindus, Sikhs, Sri Lankan Buddhists the Tamils in opposition many anti-religious but very pro-nationalist.

This is the key bit. These people are isolated, they have no ability to pose a serious threat to the status quo.

Can it be as simple as this - just the status quo - to be the concern? They *do* have an ability to be dangerous to the cause of class unity and facilitate. Why did the EDL emerge after all? It started because of constant Islamist provocations - particularly after the 2005 homegrown terror attacks - to ordinary non-Muslim born and bred English people in Luton, English nationalist types when given a chance to organise and they did.

Oh I agree, in the same way as it has to confront fascism, cults and redevelopment - but there is a difference between working class communities directly dealing with problems in their midst and making Islamism out to be a problem which threatens the lifeblood of freedoms in Britain. Down that way lies appeals to the State to sort it out

I agree that appealing to the state to sort it out won't work.

It's not about it being a serious danger which you wake up thinking about in the present, it's about trends continuing on the basis of what they are with a continuing capitalist crisis

Agreed. But for me, the main worry isn't that fundamentalist Islam will trend towards more effectively killing people but that its adherents will provide a very useful scapegoat for far-right elements who have much more of a foothold in the general populace and much more opportunity to grow exponentially as working people's lives continue to deteriorate. Fundamentalist Islam simply doesn't have the reach to pose the same kind of long term threat to the general public, and unless British demographics change dramatically in the next couple of decades they never will. That's not to say they aren't a threat at all, but they aren't such a major one that the tiny anarchist movement needs to specifically prioritise and take time out to deal with it.

Seeing these cartoonists for what they are - non-racists - will help mean we can form a relationship with the left-minded within those Islam-heavy minorities

As I say, I have no idea whether they are or aren't racists, I can only go on what I've seen, which is not enough to make a definitive judgment other than "well they're not anarchists." That lack of information/background/understanding applies for most left-minded British Muslims as well I'd imagine and I suspect that broadly speaking there'll be as wide a selection of views within the Muslim left as there is within the anarchist one. Some will appreciate lefties who try not to join the ranks of the State and the Sun by uncritically lauding Hebdo, others will think that approach is mealy-mouthed bullshit which misses the point. Not being part of that scene I have no idea what the trend would be, but I suspect wanking on with a big half-assed opinion on it rather than focusing on useful activities will generally have few upsides other than stroking our own egos.

I agree that appealing to the state to sort it out won't work.

It's worse than that, appealing to the state actively adds to the problem. The State has no interest in undoing cultural divides within the working class, which are so much more useful when you can utilise them instead to bolster your position as the sensible one in the room holding those crazy people away from each other.

Which is why in general, I really dislike it when people make extremism out to be a bigger deal than it actually is. OTT rhetoric about Islamic extremism being a massive danger to life and limb in a climate where Muslims are already isolated from the wider populace plays directly into the hands of such people and undermines the sort of solidarity needed to actually bring communities together in mutual support against reaction of all stripes.

sihhi

This is the key bit. These people are isolated, they have no ability to pose a serious threat to the status quo.

Can it be as simple as this - just the status quo - to be the concern? They *do* have an ability to be dangerous to the cause of class unity and facilitate. Why did the EDL emerge after all? It started because of constant Islamist provocations - particularly after the 2005 homegrown terror attacks - to ordinary non-Muslim born and bred English people in Luton, English nationalist types when given a chance to organise and they did.

this is not really accurate, the edl emerged after years of scare stories in the media about immigrants, muslims and people that dont respect "our tropes", if i remember correctly the thing that inspired the creation of the edl directly was claims that muslims where going burn poppies, but the environment where that was enough to attract lots of people to protests was created by the media, although they used terrorist attacks as material to work with, they created stories which where nothing had happened, which prompted hostility to none white people and immigrants, the "political correctness gone mad" ones tended to go something like this, "BLACK BOARDS BANNED BECAUSE THEY MIGHT OFFEND BLACK PEOPLE" this sort of thing didn't always directly attack Muslims but it helped create and environment where it was easy to claim something bad was happening because of marginalized group X eg "school dinners are halal Muslim are forcing children to to take part in there religion" this sort of thing appears to have far more influence on edl members than terrorist attacks, most of which are carried out by people with politics like theirs after all.

also you cant really call business owners, such as at least some of the edl leadership, ordinary people.

Rob Ray

Agreed. But for me, the main worry isn't that fundamentalist Islam will trend towards more effectively killing people but that its adherents will provide a very useful scapegoat for far-right elements who have much more of a foothold in the general populace and much more opportunity to grow exponentially as working people's lives continue to deteriorate. Fundamentalist Islam simply doesn't have the reach to pose the same kind of long term threat to the general public, and unless British demographics change dramatically in the next couple of decades they never will. That's not to say they aren't a threat at all, but they aren't such a major one that the tiny anarchist movement needs to specifically prioritise and take time out to deal with it.

.

Isn't there a danger both from a general increase in racism (both from the state and the far-right) and also from reactionary religion? Ok maybe fundamentalist Islam doesn't have the reach to impact much on the 'general public', but in some specific places it really does have a lot of impact on peoples' lives and most of the people who are suffering from that are people from Muslim backgrounds, they are our neighbours and workmates and I think deserve our support just like we try to support any other working class people. The problem is I think we do have to see both increase in racism and also increase in religious fundamentalism as a threat and fight both, and that's just really really difficult. This issue of increased religious fundamentalism is not just about Islam either, there is an increase in general.

There is a massive narrative being pushed on us about western civilisation vs barbarism, but we really have to be able to see round it to understand this is about working class people experiencing both an increase in racism and also, sometimes, experiencing oppression from religious fundamentalism. We can't just walk away from that because it's very difficult.

I don't experience problems in my every day life with organised reactionary religious political groups, but I do massively with the impact that religion- influenced chauvinism has on women, I deal with that a lot, and I know some other posters on the thread experience it more than me.

I know it's really difficult to address this without getting caught in all sorts of horrible political spider webs with the government's racist anti-Muslim narrative, but I still think it's imperative that we find a way to deal with it. It's really important.

Agreed. But for me, the main worry isn't that fundamentalist Islam will trend towards more effectively killing people but that its adherents will provide a very useful scapegoat for far-right elements who have much more of a foothold in the general populace and much more opportunity to grow exponentially as working people's lives continue to deteriorate. Fundamentalist Islam simply doesn't have the reach to pose the same kind of long term threat to the general public, and unless British demographics change dramatically in the next couple of decades they never will. That's not to say they aren't a threat at all, but they aren't such a major one that the tiny anarchist movement needs to specifically prioritise and take time out to deal with it.

This is the point where I thought you were ignoring made a comparison that didn't capture it and annoyed you but your misapprehension is here again.

The crucial thing about what hard Islamism does in this country is that it exports to hotspots elsewhere, like the grammar school 18 year old arm-in-arm with turkish intelligence officials, like many others including according to Kings College London now 30 British women in Syria with jabha al'nusra or daish (isis)

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/29/schoolgirl-jihadis-female-islamists-leaving-home-join-isis-iraq-syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/17/isis-uk-female-jihadists-database-icsr

Just today there are three more arrests in Ethiopia because hard Islamists want the Oromo struggle in Ethiopia to become an Islamist one not a national civil rights struggle. Similar to the their ways in Chechnya:- legitimate aspirations for language rights and regional or national development pushed into war of religion with the self-sacrifice of foreign Islamists often by suicide operations.

http://rt.com/uk/223367-ethiopia-british-men-jailed/

The emphasis of media reporting has been on terror plots to target Britain, but by a large factor (who knows what exactly) much activity in this country has been about trying to get out fighters to other countries especially if they have a language connection there however shaky.

This is what the Woolwich attackers were aswell no one media-wise paid much attention to them in their attempts in Somalia.

You asked me about rail deaths, so I'll ask had you heard of either Adebolajo or Adebowale in 2010 when they were detained by the Kenya-Somalia border?
It should have been newsworthy British citizens of a Nigerian Christian background converting to Islam learning Arabic going to fight for al'shebaab.
But their only targets would have been Somalis so it was not widely reported or investigated.
However other British citizens were used in Somalia including Bilal al'Berjawi and Muhammad Sakr until they were killed in drone attacks.

That's not to say they aren't a threat at all, but they aren't such a major one that the tiny anarchist movement needs to specifically prioritise and take time out to deal with it.

I never ever claimed this, I pointed out that that Charlie Hebdo was not racist but that there were two dangerous poles of racist nationalism.

unless British demographics change dramatically in the next couple of decades they never will.

class struggle will be one that lasts beyond our lifetimes so why the focus on only the next 20 years???

i don't know much about demographics but there are changes happening - some minorities are growing others are falling there's been an influx of polish catholics and other eastern europeans, pakistani, bengali and somali birth rates are still high.
i think you're right that soft Islamists will continue to not play nice with the general public but defend causes within their domain ie push for muslim-influence R.E. in free schools in minority areas, oppose demands to democratise and sex-integrate mosques/open up their books etc, perhaps push for muslim courts between muslims because mainstream courts are racist against them etc

Rob Ray

Which is why in general, I really dislike it when people make extremism out to be a bigger deal than it actually is. OTT rhetoric about Islamic extremism being a massive danger to life and limb in a climate where Muslims are already isolated from the wider populace plays directly into the hands of such people and undermines the sort of solidarity needed to actually bring communities together in mutual support against reaction of all stripes.

are you saying that i'm making "extremism out to be a bigger deal than it actually is"?

"Muslims are already isolated from the wider populace" - is this accurate as a generalisation?

Only the Islamist-minded are already isolated from the wider populace. There's minimal isolation imposed on Muslims from the wider populace however. The problems of immigrant heritage people is another thing.

I don't want to list the examples cos it's complicated would take too long lot but there's an amount of self-isolation by Islamists or Islamist-minded not ordinary Muslims.
Plus some black Africans feel Muslims especially shopkeepers and Muslims who back them up - are the ones isolating them.

Also importantly not-'isolated' 'integrated' have part of involvement in terror activities over the past decade - even doctor or private school graduate aswell as company computer scientist.

i'll try come back to the rest soon or later.

Ok maybe fundamentalist Islam doesn't have the reach to impact much on the 'general public', but in some specific places it really does have a lot of impact on peoples' lives

Well yeah, but I didn't claim otherwise. What I said was that it's not a major threat to free speech/Britain and isn't something that is particularly special, or of an order that requires the massive state resources being ploughed into it, let alone a specific political intervention from the anarchist movement (which has zero counter-reach and for the most part, no idea of who we would go to even just to show solidarity with progressive elements within affected areas).

they are our neighbours and workmates and I think deserve our support

I think this is basically a different argument from the one I've been countering though, which was that Islamism is being presented a major ongoing threat to all. What you're talking about is basic support for people who are affected by parasitical entities, or whose friends/family are, which to my mind is a task no different from dealing with the impact of dodgy gangs on estates, or the Christian cult at the end of my street. It's a problem, but it's not a special problem outweighing other problems.

your misapprehension is here again

It's not a misapprehension, it's a difference of viewpoint. Mine stems from the longstanding creed that you should only worry about the battles you can actually make a difference in. What happens in Syria is not something I have any ability to influence, and a few dozen people being unfortunate enough to believe the hype and head out there is not something I can do much about (are we supposed to be patrolling the internet here? Monitoring random teenagers' behaviour?) other than just continue to push anarchist viewpoints and generally be supportive of progressive thinking in the places where I actually live and have influence - ie. what we do and advocate already.

had you heard of either Adebolajo or Adebowale in 2010 when they were detained by the Kenya-Somalia border? It should have been newsworthy

Why? People join cults all the time.

But their only targets would have been Somalis

Yes because Brits going off to fight for Islam in foreign climes are never reported by the press.

so why the focus on only the next 20 years

Because I wanted to throw in a semi-arbitrary number meaning "a long enough time from now that organising anything on the basis of prediction would be silly."

I never ever claimed this, I pointed out that that Charlie Hebdo was not racist but that there were two dangerous poles of racist nationalism.

Not outright, no but you did say "It is a threat of magnitude to the working classes," which is what I've been responding to by pointing out that it's actually not on a broad scale, at least in Europe which is where is actually relevant to the conversation. And honestly, if you aren't actually advocating that we do anything, what's the point being made here? That you believe Hebdo is alright? Fair enough, we're all entitled to a view. That both swastika-skinheads and beards-with-index-fingers are dangerous groups of arseholes? Sure thing.

are you saying that i'm making "extremism out to be a bigger deal than it actually is"?

I certainly have had the impression that you reckoned Islamism has the potential to cause massive problems across Britain, which would be overstating the case (though from your thoughts above, I may be wrong there). Worldwide, maybe not. But the key position I'm coming from is a practical one. I really have no ability to make a difference in Pakistan, so the (possibly quite high, I don't know as I'm not from there and get most of my information from AP which is super-biased) potential for nutters to expand their influence there isn't something that I can help with, so I'm not going to waste time naval-gazing impotently about it.

"Muslims are already isolated from the wider populace" - is this accurate as a generalisation?

On a macro level, yeah. Distribution of British Muslim communities tends towards being very dense in certain areas and non-existent in others. I don't (can't) know how isolated Muslim people do or don't feel from non-Muslims in particular areas where density is high, I'd imagine there's probably a spectrum of experiences and views.

Mark.

ocelot

* Bindel's signature joins that of Richard Dawkins under that Maryam Namazie piece I took umbrage with above. Note also that Namazie is one of the 12 of the Manifeste des Douze.

This piece seems fairly representative of Maryam Namazie's views:

Siding with the oppressor: the pro-Islamist left

I'd be curious to know if you see this as liberal or racist.

A little bit of both, to be honest.

Before I explain, I should repeat that when I talk of "liberal racism" I'm not talking of a conjunction of liberalism and racism, as if they were separate things, i.e. of liberals being racist or racists being liberals. I'm talking about a specifically-liberal form of ethno-cultural racism that proposes the "universal values of liberalism" as the foundation of national unity and national community. This is a particular form of racism that is distinct from the biological racism of skin-colour prejudice or the "tribal" or communitarian ethno-cultural prejudices ("not like us") of populist xenophobia. Liberal racism is a particular form of ethno-cultural racism that casts its object as intrinsically hostile to the liberal state of individual secular rights - "secular freedom" here being the freedom from being subject to the would-be universalist values of all faiths and creeds - other than liberalism itself (contradiction). The form of liberal racism in Western Europe relating to the debate over islamophobia is pretty much as Sara Farris outlines it in her paper on the parallels between today's "Muslim Question" and the 1840s Judenfrage posed by Bruno Bauer:

Ultimately, the structuring of the debate on the Muslim Question in the case of the controversy over the wearing of religious symbols in public schools, showsthe same threefold argumentation that we saw in Bauer at the time of the Jewish Question debate: as the argument goes, (a) the condition of alienness of Muslims could be remedied through (b) their assimilation into the universal political community of equal citizens, which requires the dismissal of religion and (c) promises to bring about emancipation, albeit via a moment of enforcement. The paradox of establishing emancipation as simultaneously an achievable end through the mediation of the law, and an inner trait of (certain) individuals, therefore by definition unavailable (to others), is the specific puzzle that derives from – as I called it in the case of Bauer’s Judenfrage – the combination of republican rigorism and culturalist differentialism. Two more antinomies derive from this latter combination, both interrogating the relationship between means and ends in the pursuit of emancipation as a condition antithetical to the maintenance of (a certain) religion: the antinomy of emancipation as an end without means and the antinomy of emancipation as an end pursued by means of its negation, namely enforcement.

I appreciate the above is dense and difficult to make sense of without reading the rest of the paper, (which I would again encourage people to do), but some of it may become clearer as I refer back to it.

Back to the Namazie text.

In the first place, the main thrust of the paper is a criticism of the SWP and assorted hangers on getting into bed with the Muslim Brotherhood, via their UK branch, the Muslim Association of Britain, and then using charges of islamophobia to try and silence criticism of the MB's islamism from any quarter.

I fully support that criticism and I'd be very surprised if there's anybody on here that wouldn't also.

But if this paper is being put forward as relevant to this debate, it is presumably because it has elements in it that go beyond the limits of criticising the SWP's genuinely pro-Islamist politics. In other words, we need to look at the aspects that are in opposition to a "Neither islamism nor islamophobia" position (to sloganise).

First we have to outline the point of commonality:

Conflating Islamism with Muslim is a narrative peddled by Islamists in an attempt to feign representation

The likes of StWC, Socialist Workers Party, Unite against Fascism, Islamophobia Watch, and Respect Party or Ken Livingstone and George Galloway are there as prefects to silence dissenters and defend Islamism as a defence of ‘Muslims’. There are many examples to show that they equate Muslim with Islamist.

We all agree that conflating Islamism with Muslims in general is a bad thing. In fact, that amalgamation is, for some of us, the primary element of fear-mongering that encourages people to see the (genuine) dangers of islamism in the beard or shalwar kameez of the Asian pensioner walking down their street - or "islamophobia" as we like to call it - the phobic fear of muslims in general.

But, hang on, what comes next?

This pro-Islamist Left deems any criticism of Islam or Islamism as racism or Islamophobia.

Surely amalgamating the criticism of Islamism with the criticism of Islam is amalgamating the two categories? Maybe it's a slip of the pen? Let's see.

This is of course not to ignore that racism exists. Of course it does. But racism cannot be stopped by silencing much needed criticism of Islam and Islamism.

Oops she did it again. "Islam and Islamism" - inseparable. Any concern over the "much needed criticism of Islam" is equivalent to a defence of Islamism. So, the position of "Neither islamism not islamophobia" is impossible because there is apparently no legitimate use of islamophobia.

However, criticising a religion, ideology or political movement – far-Right or otherwise – has nothing to do with racism. In fact, Islamophobia is a political term used to scaremonger people into silence.

So, the amalgamation of Islamism with Islam and all Muslims, is both wrong and racist... unless it's Namazie and her allies doing it.

This pattern is not unique to this article or this author. It is repeated again and again, in fact in an almost obsessive-compulsive fashion, by all the diverse authors amplifying and relaying this general discourse.

The "liberal" aspect is more in the absences. There's no consideration of the British state or the class composition of British society (the Islamists of MAB, for e.g. are casually labelled "the oppressor" in glorious isolation). The political-economic boundary is never crossed. Capitalism and capitalists are noticeable by their absence. The goals of class recomposition and class solidarity, for e.g. are not in evidence. And so on.

I appreciate that people on this thread have said that they have seen Namazie talk in other contexts, and that her talk was "the most class-conscious thing I've heard..." (iirc?). But you asked about this specific text. And in relation to this specific text, I'd have to say, despite passing mentions of class politics, this is not an example of such.

tl;dr - if you sign a manifesto saying, basically "Islamism=Nazis", you have a duty not to promote the equation "Islamists=Islam". This Namazie fails to do.

If you spread the idea that society is being menaced by the plague, you can't be surprised when people go hunting for rats. Similarly if you spread the idea that society is being menaced by "Islam" then you can't be surprised when the majority non-Muslim population go hunting for Muslims and women get attacked in the street for wearing the hijab.

Ocelot, maybe I've misunderstood you but are you saying Namazie is wrong to be in favour of criticising islam? I don't think she is conflating islam and islamism by the way. As libertarian communists, socialists, anarchists, should we not be critical of islam as well as islamism?

ocelot

Mark.

I'm just wondering who the idiot is who downed sihhi's posts.

Me. I will get to explaining why, but there's a lot to catch up on. Give me a chance.

OK, as promised. All quotes below from Sihhi's posts I downvoted (except for the last one)

from comment #161

I respect you and your work but your personalising the issue and youre swearing at me because you give zero evidence why racism and Islamism from within currents emanating from mosques/kuranic schools is not an issue or a concern.

There's a tone problem here, but that's a common libcom problem and not worthy of a downvote in itself. However, we've established the issues in question are islamism and racism - grand.

but i think charlie hebdo had its own ambitions non-racist ones -- in publishing the cartoons they thought they could break the mohammed taboo because no one in a muslim country was ever going to attempt it unless it was part of reprinting a story from elsewhere.

This is just wrong. I find it hard to believe that anyone could look at the various muslim-baiting cartoons CH has published over the last years and think that their primary motivation was to break the taboo on depicting Muhammed. If you wanted to do that you could depict Muhammed in a non-insulting way. But the insults were the point, not the ban on iconography. Again, although wrong, not in itself downvote worthy.

a class-based approach is becoming harder and harder with every terrorist attack and government cut but it would involve trying to re-assert secular social services in all aspects of life, publicising and publishing the objective historical research which fairly conclusively proves several sources to the kuran and disproves the single origin claim

This, however, is the amalgam of opposition to islamism with opposition to islam that I just talked about in relation to Namazie above. This is self-contradictory and buys into the islamophobic trope of "cultural differentialism" - i.e. that Islam is specifically a barrier to "universal liberal values" in a way that Judaism and Christianity is not. Downvote for the amalgam.

Capitalists don't care if it's thrown away. In the future the early Soviet experiment, the Spanish war endeavours, the Mexican revolution, the Berber revolts and the Amazigh national movement, the Iranian left, the Turkish left, the Kurdish national movement, the Sahrawi national movement, the Baluchi national movement they'll all be condemned as Islamophobic and racist aswell. Once you cast away Charlie Hebdo as Islamophobic for attacking and satirising all religions that's the only course left.

I'm guessing there are english-as-a-second-language issues here, because I can't understand the intended sense of the first sentence at all. But the assertion seems to be that if I have a problem with CH promoting an islamophobic agenda (albeit for specifically singling out Islam as "special" - NB they did not publish any manifestos equating either Judaism or Christianity with Nazism), then apparently the only logically consistent course I have left to me is to denounce all of the listed political movements as islamophobic as well. I'm not sure whether I'm more impressed by the utter nonsensicality of this claim, or the staggering arrogance of it. If I hadn't already downvoted for the Islamist/Muslim amalgam, this would probably do it as well.

from comment #162

no one has said muslims who are offended by the cartoons are reactionaries, but there are right wing muslims who have interpreted them according to muslim taboos - 1 the prophet must not be depicted and 2 the prophet should be recalled in love hence the fashion of saying pbuh every time you mention him.

The second part of this statement is irrelevant to the first part. If you accept that the cartoons are offensive to ordinary muslims rather than islamists and right-wing muslims, then surely that is the intent of the cartoons? And if the intent of the cartoons is to offend ordinary muslims who are not reactionaries, islamists or right-wing conservatives, is this not aiding the latter by pushing away the away the former and justifying the islamists when they say "See, didn't we tell you that the kufr hate all us muslims equally?". This is not combatting islamism, its acting as a recruiting sergeant for it.

note catholics and jews and buddhists all effectively minorities have been publicly humiliated.

Again, Charlie Hebdo did not print a manifesto denouncing Catholics, Jews and Buddhists as an apocalyptic danger to France equivalent to the Nazis. Islam is given pride of place, as per "cultural differentialism", as the predominant threat to republican values and laicite.

If Islam wasn't so Muhammed-fixated then perhaps there would be more drawings cartoons of other figures

Once again we've moved from Islamism being the issue, to Islam being the issue. Amalgam = downvote.

Finally...

from comment #164

Islamism should be included as a liberal racism, it uses the space given by liberalism to seek to impose *its* rules to privilege *its* religion in its "communities" which crush w/class organisation.

I didn't downvote this one. But seriously, WTF? I would have thought that if there was only one single thing everybody here could agree on, it was that islamism is fundamentally anti-liberal.

As for islamism's ability to crush w/c organisation in France, UK or other Western European country where muslims are a marginalised minority - I would have thought that the most problematic barrier to class organisation was the barriers to solidarity from the majority of the w/c erected by racism and social exclusion.

Certainly in the UK, the ruling class' original scheme of importing whole village communities with the intent of the village chiefs and mullahs delivering their subjects as a meek and compliant workforce, did not prevent an eventual rash of strikes and industrial struggles by Asian workers, including women workers, where they got the support to do so.

Rachel

There's some confusion developing between two different lists of people: the Manifesto de Douz, just above, and the list of signatories to the recent statement put out after the Paris attacks linked to in comment no. 98. Maryam Namazie is the link.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2015/01/07/after-the-charlie-hebdo-massacre-support-those-fighting-the-religious-right/

Ocelot dismissed this recent statement on the basis that it was signed by Richard Dawkins and Julie Bindel, ignoring the rest of the 100 or so people who signed it, most of whom were black women from South Asian and Middle Eastern backgrounds. You demonstrate Namaze’s point that the white left speaks over and for Muslim and ex Muslim people when they present a different narrative.

Wrong. I dismissed the post on the basis of its content - France's secularism is under threat - as being blatent bollocks. I merely commented on the presence of Bindel and Dawkins. I have no comment to make about people of which I know nothing.

Rachel

And then you write:

I don't know these people's work, so I can't really comment. NB also, my "thesis" is not a schema or some categorizing method of pigeon-holing individuals (still less of passing moral judgement on them) but more about an emerging tendency of a certain discourse around the Islamist/Islamic threat (and the slippage between the two terms is key).

Maybe you should read a few of the people you don’t know before you carry on commenting.

Why?

I'm not challenging your right to participate in the conversation on the basis of books that I have read and you haven't. That would be totally elitist and censorious.

The fact is no full-time wage slave working woman or man has the time to read all the available texts that might be relevant to a particular topic. Luckily we don't have to because we can discuss in a collaborative fashion and pass on what we think is relevant from our differing experiences and readings.

So rather than trying to censor me or put words into my mouth that I haven't said, why not add to the conversation cooperatively by passing on what is was you gained from reading these people's books that you think is relevant to the conversation?

Serge Forward

Ocelot, maybe I've misunderstood you but are you saying Namazie is wrong to be in favour of criticising islam? I don't think she is conflating islam and islamism by the way.

Your "by the way" is my point. I am criticizing Namazie for conflating, in word and deed, the struggle against islamism with the struggle against islam. That is, that there is no distinction to be made between attacking islamists and attacking muslims in general. So that when Charb draws cartoons of a bent-over hairy arse and asks "And Muhammed's arse - can we have that?" (both in the sense of as a drawing and sexually - the double-entendre is deliberate). That to criticise that as "islamophobic" is to join the pro-Islamist left - according to Namazie's position (at least in the text I was asked to comment on)

As libertarian communists, socialists, anarchists, should we not be critical of islam as well as islamism?

In the sense that we are opposed to all religions, along the lines of Bakunin's "God and the State" for e.g., sure enough. But to take a cultural differentialist position of saying that Islam is culturally opposed to women's rights, in a way that Sikhism or Hinduism (and Judaism and Christianity) is not, is politically suspect.

Let me tell you a story about my introduction to the whole problem of izzat (honour) crimes amongst Asian families in the UK. Back in the late 80s I was staying on the couch at a mates place (he was away) when I heard a crash that sounded as if it was against the door or the window (but the window didn't come in). As we were both active anti-fascists and on our local fash hit-lists, I assumed it was an attack and I grabbed one of the nearest weapons that we had abotu the house for such eventuality, and sallied forth in my jocks. Outside I couldn't see anything. A car had screeched off before I got the door unlocked and there was no sign of what had made the smashing sound. The Asian guy next door poked is head out in a similar state of armed undress, also ready for whatever, but we both looked around shrugged our shoulders and went back to kip. Anyway, turned out next day that someone had thrown a petrol bomb against the neighbours door, but the light must have gone out before it hit. The story turned out that one of the daughters of that family had run away from an unhappy arranged marriage and now the extended family/clan of the groom were out to get even with the family for taking her back and sheltering her, as a grudge of "izzat" or "honour". Hence began my interest in the nature and role of izzat in Asian family and community conflicts. You've probably guessed the point of this story is the twist in the tale. Sure enough, it was a Sikh rather than Muslim family. The social relations of izzat cross confessional boundaries in the North-Eastern sub-continent, affecting Muslim, Sikh, Hindu alike.

My point? Certainly in Muslim-majority societies, patriarchal social relations expressed in forced marriages and notions of "honour" are reproduced and enforced by the Muslim religious authorities, and declared to be mandated by god. But the reality is that patriarchal social relations have been around a lot longer than the monotheist religions. And part of their reproduction today is due to economic interests around using arranged/forced marriages between cousins to keep property "within the family". When it comes to the question of "god or money", money has a lot to do with it. Then there's the whole question of caste in India and Pakistan, and tribalism in the FATA/Pahstun regions. So to single out Islam as having somehow invented patriarchy, in a region (India and Pakistan) where pretty much the same relations occur across all religious boundaries, is to propagate politically loaded misinformation.

So in answer. Is it valid to criticise Islam? It depends what exactly it's being blamed for, in my opinion.

I've sworn off this "voting" stuff. I think Ocelot makes very important points in his responses regarding Sihhi's posts.

At the risk of shameless, vulgar, self-promotion, something I am only to happy to indulge in whenever I think it might self serve-- below is some grist for the up and down voting millers:

Can we sum up here? Probably not. Probably a fool's errand, but call me foolish:

1. Assassination of journalists (not really clear who killed the hostages in the supermarket) by those claiming allegiance to iterations of Al-Qaeda and/or ISIS/ISIL

2. After shock, outpouring of grief: Everybody (well, almost everybody) is flicking their Bics, like at a big concert, humming the tune "Unity, Republican Values," holding hands and swaying to the music.

3. A few, tone deaf Marxists, anarchists, etc. can't hear the music, but do see where this "unity" is heading-- or rather trailing. It's trailing behind in a march with Merkel, Cameron, Hollande, Netanyahu, etc. etc. ad infinitum at its head.

4. The danger, these few tone deaf off-key malcontents suggest, is that nothing greases the wheels of repression, and war like national unity....and republican values. Check your history if you disagree

5. The few, different drummers provide the usual, and requisite disclaimers--
opposition to terrorism;
opposition to hostage taking;
opposition to executing journalists;
opposition to "fundamentalism."

They repeat this despite the fact that all their previous actions, arguments, positions amount to a rejection of terrorism. religion, etc. They do this for a number of reasons:
a) they believe it's worth repeating
b) they do it in the attempt to pre-empt the unity and value crew
c) they do it to provide some protection against the repression that is sure to follow the attacks
d) they do it because they think there's a deeper problem, a deeper "reason"-- using "reason" to mean a determining force that is getting expressed in the warped actions by the assassins.
e)That deeper "reason" of course is of course the conflicts, antagonisms, that both rend, and bind, capitalism
.
6.The few, different drummers, point out, tactlessly, vulgarly, rudely, whatever-ly, that the victims, were actively promoting the dominant side, in a conflict-- that is to say the ridicule and demonization of an entire "type"-- "the other"-- those who are associated with Islam.

7.Well, that's just intolerable to unity and value, so the argument is joined. Meanwhile, of course, what the few pointed out, that any expression of unity and values that excised "bourgeois" from "republic" only provides a cover for repression, takes material shape. Quelle surprise.

And here's a bit of obiter dictum for comrades who think the institutions and "democratic values" of France were built by the French Revolution-- bullshit. Those institutions were built by bringing the revolution to an end. Read your history.

Your institutions, your values are built upon slavery, upon the re-imposition of slavery, you ignorant, blind "republicans" you.

No, Ocelot. Namazie doesn't appear to be conflating islamism and islam. You, however, do appear to be conflating islam and muslims. Your arguments read like a more nuanced version of the SWP and others' cultural relativism. As libertarian communists, opposition to not only reactionary ideological and political forms of a religion but opposition to organised religion itself of whatever creed, particularly when it's at its most oppressive, is fundamental to anarchism or communism. It's not good enough to go easy on a certain religion because of its adherents lack of power in the global pecking order. Your arguments sound very similar to those on the left who backed Saddam in the Gulf wars. Meanwhile, in the case of islam, there are apostates we should be standing with rather than standing with clerics.

ocelot

This pro-Islamist Left deems any criticism of Islam or Islamism as racism or Islamophobia.

Surely amalgamating the criticism of Islamism with the criticism of Islam is amalgamating the two categories? Maybe it's a slip of the pen? Let's see.

You don't show here how she equates the two, apart from the use of OR between the two words. She's talking about the criticism of Islam or the criticism of Islamism.

ocelot

This is of course not to ignore that racism exists. Of course it does. But racism cannot be stopped by silencing much needed criticism of Islam and Islamism.

Oops she did it again. "Islam and Islamism" - inseparable. Any concern over the "much needed criticism of Islam" is equivalent to a defence of Islamism. So, the position of "Neither islamism not islamophobia" is impossible because there is apparently no legitimate use of islamophobia.

Again you don't show the equation, here it's the use of the word AND. The context of the sentence shows she is referring to the criticism of Islam and the criticism of Islamism.

ocelot

However, criticising a religion, ideology or political movement – far-Right or otherwise – has nothing to do with racism. In fact, Islamophobia is a political term used to scaremonger people into silence.

So, the amalgamation of Islamism with Islam and all Muslims, is both wrong and racist... unless it's Namazie and her allies doing it.

Again, how is she equating the two? Here she's talking about the use and abuse of the term islamophobia.

I can't reply to everything, but will try next weekend.

What I said was this

This is what the Woolwich attackers were aswell no one media-wise paid much attention to them in their attempts in Somalia.

This wasn't my claim

Yes because Brits going off to fight for Islam in foreign climes are never reported by the press.

I'll say so it's crystal clear, Somalia is not reported with the same focus or intensity as the Middle East, if Adebolajo had done a suicide operation in Somalia it would not be important, but even a failed plot in Britain it would be given more importance. As we live in Britain, our tendency is to underestimate the effects of hard Islamism beyond Britain's borders.

The overall point is that British citizens are trying to causing chaos to the w/class across boundaries. We can see it as just one pole and oppose only British/European forces engaged in sorties over the Middle East, or oppose both poles and see British/European Islamists as a major backward force wherever they go Bosnia, Chechnya, Albania, Somalia, Kenya or more recently Kurdistan. The terror that they're making has been; is; will be massively dangerous to the w/c in Kurdistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and beyond. I have no answer anyway but they've made the situation a thousand times worse.

On a macro level, yeah. Distribution of British Muslim communities tends towards being very dense in certain areas and non-existent in others. I don't (can't) know how isolated Muslim people do or don't feel from non-Muslims in particular areas where density is high, I'd imagine there's probably a spectrum of experiences and views.

Our only concern cannot be how Muslims feel from 'non-Muslims'. There are other minorities within Islam who feel pressure from Sunni Islamist-minded Muslims eg Kurds in Sparkbrook.
Because Kurds are a very small minority in this country there've been no massive flashpoints.

The one time it happened was in Peterborough in 2004 when the Islamist minded of the resident Pakistani (mostly Kashmiri) population attacked newer Kurdish asylum seekers from Iran and Iraq, the supposed cause was their street drinking and public speaking about Islam to support fellow asylum seekers still detained and not dispersed. I've

In Germany where there are probably both more Islamists and more Kurdish nationalists it's happened more frequently Islamist pressure on others.

At a peaceful march in Hamburg for Germany to pressure Turkey to open a corridor to Suruc/Kobane, Islamists - masked - laid in wait and sprung a surprise attack on them with swords and knives

Most escaped arrest; stragglers who were street fighting with the Kurds both sets got rounded up.

There've been small numbers of other incidents over the years e.g. in 2012 at an antifascist (left) counter-rally against the rightwing populists like UKIP in Westfalia the Burgerbewegung pro Nordrhein-Westfalen called pro-NRW at Solingen. Islamists attacked and injured 2 antifascists on a side street link here:

https://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/59620

Most recently Islamists arsonised the offices in Hamburg of the Hamburger Morgenpost a centrist daily which had republished the cartoons as news.

If we label people who aren't racist (Charlie Hebdo's team of cartoonists) as racists then the self-confidence and victim narrative of Sunni Islamists only comes easier and powerful to them.

Once again we've moved from Islamism being the issue, to Islam being the issue. Amalgam = downvote.

This doesn't make sense and my point is been avoided about the Mohammed taboo, something central to both Islamists and ordinary Muslims.

Why would I say Islam is the issue? I'm born and raised Muslim circumcised along with all my siblings with two believer Muslims parents one who wears an Anatolian headscarf, and an aunt in Germany who wears a much tighter veil.

I've spent far too long already but does kind of stuff work
"we've moved from specific capitalist firms being the issue, to capitalism being the issue. Amalgam = downvote."
"we've moved from Putinism being the issue, to Russian nationalism being the issue. Amalgam = downvote."
or why not?

As an extra development this is Turkey's satirical newspaper Leman's front page (no Mohammed cartoons because of taboo) with a tribute to Wolinski 'Wol' the ex-PCF artist sketching in Eyup mosque Istanbul, when they invited him over.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/images/Ajanda/wol.jpg

Another piece of good news is apparently only about 200 turned up to Bradford's defend the prophet, anti-Charlie Hebdo rally.

I'll respond properly next week, stay good everybody.

Serge Forward

No, Ocelot. Namazie doesn't appear to be conflating islamism and islam. You, however, do appear to be conflating islam and muslims. Your arguments read like a more nuanced version of the SWP and others' cultural relativism. As libertarian communists, opposition to not only reactionary ideological and political forms of a religion but opposition to organised religion itself of whatever creed, particularly when it's at its most oppressive, is fundamental to anarchism or communism. It's not good enough to go easy on a certain religion because of its adherents lack of power in the global pecking order. Your arguments sound very similar to those on the left who backed Saddam in the Gulf wars. Meanwhile, in the case of islam, there are apostates we should be standing with rather than standing with clerics.

What's impressive about this "reply" is that not only does it not address a single thing I said in my post, but I am left with the inescapable impression that you would have written exactly the same thing no matter what I said. Dialogue presupposes a degree of engagement that is clearly lacking here.

Shorty

ocelot

However, criticising a religion, ideology or political movement – far-Right or otherwise – has nothing to do with racism. In fact, Islamophobia is a political term used to scaremonger people into silence.

So, the amalgamation of Islamism with Islam and all Muslims, is both wrong and racist... unless it's Namazie and her allies doing it.

Again, how is she equating the two? Here she's talking about the use and abuse of the term islamophobia.

She is not talking about the uses and abuses of the term. She is not saying "Islamophobia is [here] being used..." or any such contextualised or conditional statement, She is making an absolute statement - "Islamophobia is [always and only] a political term used to scaremonger people into silence" - That is, there is no legitimate "use" of the term, it is only ever an abuse.

A position which makes sense in the context of the position that "criticism of islamism and criticism of islam" being in fact "one struggle, one fight". Which, again, I maintain is the only reading in which this text, taken as a whole, is consistent.

But by all means, if you can find a part of this text (or perhaps some other text of Namazie's) in which she says that of course the criticism of islamism and the criticism of islam are different things, then please share.

ocelot

She is not talking about the uses and abuses of the term. She is not saying "Islamophobia is [here] being used..." or any such contextualised or conditional statement, She is making an absolute statement - "Islamophobia is [always and only] a political term used to scaremonger people into silence" - That is, there is no legitimate "use" of the term, it is only ever an abuse.

True. Though this example is not one of equating Islam and Islamism.

ocelot

A position which makes sense in the context of the position that "criticism of islamism and criticism of islam" being in fact "one struggle, one fight". Which, again, I maintain is the only reading in which this text, taken as a whole, is consistent.

But by all means, if you can find a part of this text (or perhaps some other text of Namazie's) in which she says that of course the criticism of islamism and the criticism of islam are different things, then please share.

But then we're taking a political statement of two struggles being equally important with a logical one of the two (Islam and Islamism) being the same.This doesn't necessarily follow.

As we live in Britain, our tendency is to underestimate the effects of hard Islamism beyond Britain's borders.

No, our media's tendency is not to care when it doesn't affect British interests - and I'd point out that my first link, the "white widow," is directly linked to Somalia, which kind of undermines your point. And in any case that's not what I'm doing - there is a difference between not caring, underestimating, and recognising there's not a lot to be done.

The overall point is that British citizens are trying to causing chaos to the w/class across boundaries.

As opposed to say, the British state spending billions on foreign interventions every year. Or the far-right maintaining a significant European alliance both in the EU and via numerous international get-togethers. Or indeed the actions of every major British multinational going. Or the activities of British-led drug gangs or arms dealers or traffickers of whatever, all of which cause much more chaos, much more effectively. I don't see why a tiny minority of people getting sucked into a cult should be regarded as special here?

And they haven't made it "a thousand times worse," they've acted as a small contributor of manpower in a region which is already totally fucked - waay more so because of Western guns which have flooded the region than because a bunch of wannabes have shown up from Duncetown UK - and would remain so with or without their involvement. This is exactly the shit I mean when I suggest you're overstating the case, and frankly comes across as a bit Western-centric, as though these countries would be idyllic if only those surly British teenagers weren't around.

If we label people who aren't racist (Charlie Hebdo's team of cartoonists) as racists then the self-confidence and victim narrative of Sunni Islamists only comes easier and powerful to them.

So having made this massive deal about Islam being a huge terror threat this appears to be your only actual suggestion? That we shouldn't make a big deal out of Charlie Hebdo being racist because it offers a victim card to fundamentalists? Well newsflash mate, that's exactly what's happened. And as a direct result:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2914532/Anti-Charlie-Hedbo-protests-Somalia-Pakistan.html

Apparently supporting Hebdo isn't doing much to stop fundamentalists playing the victim card. Which is a bit "well duh" really - cults as a matter of course take whatever the non-believer's reaction might be and spin it to the crowd in a way that bolsters their position. So here's the thing - as someone in Britain, I have no ability to avoid that outcome whatsoever. And that's as true in Somalia as it is in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Our only concern cannot be how Muslims feel from 'non-Muslims'. There are other minorities within Islam who feel pressure from Sunni Islamist-minded Muslims eg Kurds in Sparkbrook.

This kind of diverges from why you asked me the question in the first place and the reason for my answer, and comes across as quite disingenuous, but never mind. Again though, how is this different from any other cult, gang, or drug problem that has been dogging working class communities up and down the country over the last three decades? The problem is still "bunch of parasites exploit communities," and the solution is still "build up solidarity within communities to fend the bastards off," ie what we've been saying for god knows how long. It's not a new or special problem except in the dockets of media and political vultures who are looking to capitalise on building an atmosphere of fear.

ocelot

What's impressive about this "reply" is that not only does it not address a single thing I said in my post, but I am left with the inescapable impression that you would have written exactly the same thing no matter what I said. Dialogue presupposes a degree of engagement that is clearly lacking here.

Bit harsh there. I was referring to the post before your response to my post. In all your posts though, you continue to conflate islam and muslims while continuing to accuse others of conflating islam and islamism (even though no one has actually done this).

Just as a backgrounder...

Interview with Mansoor Hekmat (the founder and intellectual authority of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran) - "Islam and De-Islamisation"

The blurb on the official www.m-hekmat.com website says "The above is an interview first published in Farsi by Negah publication, January 1999. It was first published in English in the Worker-communist Review 1, dated June 2004." Maryam Namazie was one of the translators, NB.

Negah: The existence and conduct of Islamic groups and governments in the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have instigated disagreements over how to deal with religion and religious movements and governments. There are those who say that ‘we must differentiate between Islamic groups/governments and Islam’. They also claim that: ‘what takes place in these countries have nothing to do with Islam but are the result of a mis-interpretation of Islam’ and that ‘one mustn’t speak out against religion because it insults people’s beliefs and divides them’. What do you think about these statements?
.
Mansoor Hekmat: I realise that the interests of some require that they rescue Islam (as much as possible) from the wrath of those who have witnessed the indescribable atrocities of or been victimised by Islamists. I also realise that the extent of these atrocities and holocausts is such that even some Islamists themselves do not want to take responsibility for them. So it is natural that the debate on ‘true Islam’ vis-à-vis ‘practical Islam’ is broached over and over again. These justifications, however, are foolish from my point of view (that of a communist and atheist) and from the points of views of those of us who have seen or been the victims of Islam’s crimes. They are foolish for those of us who are living through a colossal social, political and intellectual struggle with this beast. The doctrinal and Koranic foundations of Islam, the development of Islam’s history, and the political identity and affiliation of Islam and Islamists in the battle between reaction and freedom in our era are too obvious to allow the debate on the various interpretations of Islam and the existence or likelihood of other interpretations to be taken seriously. Even if the debate were in the future and on other planets where the most basic rights and affections of humanity were not violated. In my opinion, it shows the utmost contempt for the science and social intelligence of our times if every excuse and justification that Islamists fling into society whilst retreating is scientifically analysed and dissected... In Islam, be it true or untrue, the individual has no rights or dignity. In Islam, the woman is a slave. In Islam, the child is on par with animals. In Islam, freethinking is a sin deserving of punishment. Music is corrupt. Sex without permission and religious certification, is the greatest of sins. This is the religion of death. In reality, all religions are such but most religions have been restrained by freethinking and freedom-loving humanity over hundreds of years. This one was never restrained or controlled. With every move, it brings abominations and misery.
[...]
Today, it is our movement – worker-communism – and the deep-seated hatred of Islam by the vast population at large in Iran, particularly women and youth, which is building the foundations of a serious anti-religious and de-Islamised development in Iran. If the people in Iran are to experience prosperity, this movement must become victorious. I am sure that along the way and with the people’s advancement, a section of freethinking intellectuals will join this front.

I think that pretty much answers the question of equating Islamism with Islam?

there were btw. some conflicts in the “worker-communist milieu” about cooperating with bourgeois secularists which were to my knowledge one of the reasons why the group around Azar Majedi (Mansoor Hekmat’s widow) and others left the Worker-communist Party of Iran (where Maryam Namazie is a member) in 2007 to set up the Worker-communist Unity Party of Iran (which merged in 2012 with the Worker-Communist Party - Helmatist

So,

Equating Islam and Islamism; wrong.

Criticising Islam; okay.

Criticising Islamism; okay.

Cultutal differentialism; wrong.

That about right?

Pretty much. Although I guess as usual the devil is in the detail - i.e. what forms of criticising Islam would constitute cultural differentialism (i.e. the idea that being a believing muslim is in some way fundamentally incompatible with living in a pluralist society in a way that being a believing Jew or Christian isn't). But anyway...

In other news...

FR24: Far-right leader says French govt afraid to use word 'Islamist'

Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front (FN) party, has accused the French government of failing to tackle Islamic fundamentalists, in part by its reluctance to call them just that.[...]
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Le Pen specifically targeted Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, but blamed the entire political establishment for allegedly not “looking the enemy in the eye” and for its lack of vigilance.
.
“It does our Muslim compatriots no favors to fuel suspicions and leave things unspoken. Islamist terrorism is a cancer on Islam, and Muslims themselves must fight it at our side,” she wrote in the op-ed published on Sunday.
[...]
Speaking on Europe 1 radio on January 11[...] Fabius explained:
.
“I don’t want to play the role of censor, but I think the word Islamist … is not the right one to use. I call them terrorists. Because as soon as you use the word Islam, you are promoting an idea of continuity between a Muslim – who practises his religion, which is a religion of peace – and something which is an interpretation of the Muslim religion.”
[...]

EI: France begins jailing people for ironic comments

[...]
Wave of arrests

“A string of at least 69 arrests in France this week on the vague charge of ‘defending terrorism’ (‘l’apologie du terrorisme’) risks violating freedom of expression,” Amnesty International said in an understated press release on Friday.
[...]
They include:
.
* A 14-year-old girl charged with “defending terrorism.” She allegedly shouted at a tram conductor: “We are the Kouachi sisters, we’re going to grab our Kalashnikovs.” Cherif and Said Kouachi are two French brothers authorities say carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack.
.
* A 21-year-old was caught without a ticket on a tram, and subsequently sentenced to ten months in prison for allegedly saying, “The Kouachi brothers is just the beginning; I should have been with them to kill more people,” according to Amnesty International.
.
* In the northern city of Lille, authorities suspended three school workers for allegedly refusing to observe a moment of silence in honor of the victims of the attacks, and then justifying their action. One is being charged with “defending terrorism.” The accused denies that he refused to respect the minute of silence, but said he did “debate it with colleagues outside work hours.”
.
* In Paris, one man who was drunk and another who suffers psychiatric problems were jailed for fourteen and three months respectively for “defending terrorism” for comments they made. A third was jailed for fifteen months and the court ordered that their sentences begin immediately.
.
* In Bordeaux, police carried out a traffic stop. A very drunk 18-year-old passenger in the car allegedly hurled abuse at the police and made comments sympathetic to the Charlie Hebdo attackers. She was charged with “defending terrorism” and sentenced to 210 hours of community service. Prosecutors had asked for a four-month jail term.
.
* In almost every case where a name is provided, those arrested would appear to be of North African ancestry – suggesting that France’s crackdown is quite targeted.
[...]
It may seem surprising that French authorities can charge and jail people so quickly. These summary trials and long custodial terms are the result of a change in the law last November in which the charge of “defending terrorism” became a criminal offense subject to fast-track trials.
[...]

Maryam Namazie talking about the Charlie Hebdo attack on Bread and Roses TV, which I think is basically a worker-communist youtube channel. I don't see anything earth shaking in her analysis, or much to object to either. I certainly don't see anything that could be seen as either racist or equating Islamism and Islam.

[youtube]mJuTkz1ZCVc[/youtube]

Rob Ray

Agreed. But for me, the main worry isn't that fundamentalist Islam will trend towards more effectively killing people but that its adherents will provide a very useful scapegoat for far-right elements who have much more of a foothold in the general populace and much more opportunity to grow exponentially as working people's lives continue to deteriorate. Fundamentalist Islam simply doesn't have the reach to pose the same kind of long term threat to the general public, and unless British demographics change dramatically in the next couple of decades they never will. That's not to say they aren't a threat at all, but they aren't such a major one that the tiny anarchist movement needs to specifically prioritise and take time out to deal with it.

I don't think the point is that Islamism is a major threat to the general public in Britain (at least in the bigger scheme of things) but that it's a real threat in various ways to people from a muslim background who live here, whether they're believers or not. I don't think ex-muslims and others are asking the left to prioritise or take much time to deal with their issues. I expect they'd be happy with not having to face active opposition and accusations of racism, and maybe getting the occasional nod of support.

I've quoted this on ex-muslims and the left before but it's maybe worth putting up again: http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=23368.0

Reflections on Six Years of the Ex-Muslims Forum

In 2007, a group of people who met on websites sceptical of religion and Islam decided to create a forum specifically focussing on the many issues facing ex-Muslims in the modern world.

They felt uncomfortable with the atmosphere and attitudes of many existing forums which were critical of Islam. Too often these websites existed to service Christian proselytising, or a political agenda that fitted into wider far-right nationalism.

It was felt that there was a lack of a space sympathetic to the experiences of those whose free conscience rejected Islam, who wanted to express this rejection in the spirit of secularism, humanism, feminism, individual rights, atheism, science and rationalism.

In some ways, the need to create this space suggests the dilemma of those who reject Islam in liberal, secular non-Islamic countries. Despite having members from around the world, those who founded the forum were ex-Muslims from the West, and the general orientation of the forum originates from this experience.

To be critical of Islam, and to reject Islam in a society like Britain, is to be assailed by immense pressures and contradictions.

On the one hand, certain reactionary values and precepts of Islam, and the violent, often murderous hostility towards those who leave Islam can crush an individual. These pressures emanate from family, peers, and the wider Muslim community.

But another pressure exists externally, the pressures caused by those whose concern for Muslim apostates is rooted in an agenda that seeks to assert general hostility to Muslims collectively.

The rise of organisations like the EDL and other far-right xenophobic movements in Europe and America presents an extremism that mirrors the extremism of Islamist identity-politics. In so many ways these movements feed off each other, and ex Muslims are caught in a paralysing bind by these tendencies.

So navigating this landscape is difficult, and doing so presents moral dilemmas and inhibiting pressures that can be intimidating and silencing.

It is not surprising then that the voice of ex Muslims is so stifled, both by the theological and socially sanctioned hostility towards apostasy within Islam, and by the treacherous waters of modern multicultural politics.

Because one of the tragedies of the ex Muslim experience is that too often a section of the social tendency that should be their natural home is either tacitly or actively hostile towards them.

There is a sense that some parts of the Left would rather ex Muslims, and their criticism of Islam, did not exist. This is understandable in some ways.

Instinctively, the Left seeks to be inclusive and sympathetic to minorities, especially in the face of far-right activism.

But this means that sub-minorities, in this case dissenters and apostates from Islam, are neglected, and sometimes betrayed by those who should be their natural friends.

The values that should be fought for by the Left as inviolable; of secularism, the struggle against misogyny, free speech, free conscience, scepticism towards clerical power, are the values that ex Muslims are fighting for.

The rigidities of religious identity politics in a complex world all too often negate the religious dissenter and apostate.

And so it is that often even in societies like Britain, taboos against apostasy, and the open rejection and criticism of one particular religion, Islam, prevail.

[...]

You might want to read the rest of the conversation Mark. Or even just my following post from that one you quoted.

I had read the rest of the conversation. I take it this is the post you're referring to:

Rob Ray

Ok maybe fundamentalist Islam doesn't have the reach to impact much on the 'general public', but in some specific places it really does have a lot of impact on peoples' lives

Well yeah, but I didn't claim otherwise. What I said was that it's not a major threat to free speech/Britain and isn't something that is particularly special, or of an order that requires the massive state resources being ploughed into it, let alone a specific political intervention from the anarchist movement (which has zero counter-reach and for the most part, no idea of who we would go to even just to show solidarity with progressive elements within affected areas).

they are our neighbours and workmates and I think deserve our support

I think this is basically a different argument from the one I've been countering though, which was that Islamism is being presented a major ongoing threat to all. What you're talking about is basic support for people who are affected by parasitical entities, or whose friends/family are, which to my mind is a task no different from dealing with the impact of dodgy gangs on estates, or the Christian cult at the end of my street. It's a problem, but it's not a special problem outweighing other problems.

your misapprehension is here again

It's not a misapprehension, it's a difference of viewpoint. Mine stems from the longstanding creed that you should only worry about the battles you can actually make a difference in. What happens in Syria is not something I have any ability to influence, and a few dozen people being unfortunate enough to believe the hype and head out there is not something I can do much about (are we supposed to be patrolling the internet here? Monitoring random teenagers' behaviour?) other than just continue to push anarchist viewpoints and generally be supportive of progressive thinking in the places where I actually live and have influence - ie. what we do and advocate already.

[...]

Whether you think fundamentalist Islam is anything special as a problem surely depends on where you're standing, just like a lot of other issues. No one here is arguing in favour of the state's responses to it, just for some kind of solidarity with the people directly affected. That isn't saying it has to be a major issue for you or whatever organisations you're involved in.

Paris, 2015
http://www.the-utopian.org/post/108352129568/paris-2015

I will try to put this simply:

1. Charlie Hebdo was not "equally" irreverent, dismissive, offensive, disrespectful to "all." Take a look at the covers "criticizing" Israel's actions in Gaza. They are downright mild and inoffensive, drawn as if by a cartoonist for the Jerusalem Post. No flies buzzing about the heads of the IDF soldiers; no rabbis fucking dead Palestinian children in order to save "40 euros" on a 9 year old prostitute. No hook noses. No fangs. Nothing. zero. Cartoons pleading, basically, for Netanyahu (or whomever) to be more precise in their attacks and spare the schools-- and that's about as harsh as it gets. Seriously. No surprise to me then that Netanyahu shows up at the funeral. "Good dog, Charlie. Good dog. I'm going to miss you."

2. CH wanted to provoke, and provoke it did; its provocations were indeed based on "shared values"-- shared republican values which are part and parcel and inseparable from, the colonial project, the colonial extension of the "mother" country . It isn't the irreverence that attracted "defenders" of CH. It isn't it's iconoclasm, because in truth CH was not iconoclastic-- as evidenced by its gentle treatment of Israel. Actual commitment to the "humanity" ? The"humanism" the so-called values that others attribute to CH? None of that is real. No, what attracts the Je suis Charlie-ers is the safety that CH provided, its affirmation of the underlying goodness to the colonial project.

3. Now given the actual military assaults in and by advanced capitalist countries against people in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran, Palestine; given the general disregard, and dismissal of Arabic people, and followers of Islam as ignorant, backward, subhuman; given the French state's attack on the head scarf; given the real terrorism that occurs sporadically, and sometimes regularly, against people looking like "Arabs" or "Moslems," -- with all that, and with CH's alleged "humanism" wouldn't it have been more "humanist" for CH to avoid feeding the flames even though it had every right to do so? Didn't that real danger to innocent people who "looked the part" kind of outweigh the need for CH to provoke? The answer of course for CH was "absolutely not." And that, that categorical refusal to consider the repercussion of its exercise of its "right" is what I call "colonists' entitlement."

The "others" don't count. The others haven't learned our ways yet; our "codes;" our idiosyncrasies/ So Charlie went ahead, believing that "republican values" were "protection."

4. CH as an embodiment of French humor? Sure thing, like Haiti is the embodiment of "republican values." We're not Charlie, or BHL, or any other of those house-broken, and house trained performing pooches. The murders at CH were a crime. The canonization of CH is a falsification.

Mark.

Paris, 2015
http://www.the-utopian.org/post/108352129568/paris-2015

^more "if you point out charlie hebdo's racism your supporting the attacks" bullshit?

ok then, everyone who sympathized with he dead are supporting french imperialism, it makes exactly as much sense and some of them actually are.

Noam Chomsky: Charlie Hebdo outrage demostrates West's double standard on terrorism

[...]
To demonstrate, the linguist and political scientist compared two reports by the New York Times’ veteran correspondent Steven Erlanger — one following the Paris attacks and another from an April 1999 missile attack by NATO forces on Serbian state television headquarters.
,
Erlanger reported at the time that the U.S. and NATO defended the missile strike, which killed 16 journalists and knocked the station off the air, saying the TV station was a legitimate target because it helped promote the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
,
“There were no demonstrations or cries of outrage, no chants of ‘We are RTV,’ no inquiries into the roots of the attack in Christian culture and history,” Chomsky said. “On the contrary, the attack on the press was lauded. The highly regarded U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, then envoy to Yugoslavia, described the successful attack on RTV as ‘an enormously important and, I think, positive development,’ a sentiment echoed by others.”
[...]

Mark.

Paris, 2015
http://www.the-utopian.org/post/108352129568/paris-2015

Well that's 10 minutes of my life I'll never get back.

"subtlety, doubt, imagination, playfulness, and, yes, freedom." Not exactly what I think when I look at those CH cartoons.

Seriously. If anybody on this thread had been shown those cartoons a month ago and told "Look what the French National Front are printing in their magazine", you'd have gone, "That's fucking disgusting".

Too much double-think.

Mr. Jolly

Serge Forward

Possibly because the anglo-american left is infected with the virus of identity politics, intersectional cack and privilege political guff which causes them to view islamism as something to be supported or given the status of pet ideology. I suspect the non-anglo left hasn't been properly infected with this shite... yet.

But surely the heuristic toolbox of intersectionality should give them diamond tipped analysis to cut through the BS... :/

Damn straight. Islam has a patriarchy problem. Any attempt by women to emancipate themselves is dismissed as imported American ideology undermining their traditional dogma. Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem. These women are just importing American ideology and undermining everything our tradition stands for.

I see what you did there, Mr K :D

Joseph Kay

Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem..

Indeed it does, thats why large swathes of people have fucked it off over the past few years.

Mr. Jolly

Joseph Kay

Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem..

Indeed it does, thats why large swathes of people have fucked it off over the past few years.

Damn those pesky feminazis!

I can feel a CAMpaign for Real Anarchism coming on... (non-muslamic beards only, guys)

(*rolls eyes*)

ocelot

Mr. Jolly

Joseph Kay

Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem..

Damn those pesky feminazis!

Obnoxious shouty undergraduates does not equal feminism.

Mr. Jolly

ocelot

Mr. Jolly

Joseph Kay

Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem..

Damn those pesky feminazis!

Obnoxious shouty undergraduates does not equal feminism.

Not very ladylike to be shouty and draw attention. Mulier taceat in ecclesia.

no1

Mr. Jolly

ocelot

Mr. Jolly

Joseph Kay

Anarchism on the other hand has an intersectionality problem..

Damn those pesky feminazis!

Obnoxious shouty undergraduates does not equal feminism.

Not very ladylike to be shouty and draw attention. Mulier taceat in ecclesia.

I really really dont care anymore.

I'm sorry but criticising women for being educated and expressing political ideas sounds pretty bad and in tune with some very old traditions.
Of course intersectionalism can be liberal or it can be anarchist, but it strikes me as pretty useful for expressing an anarchist understanding of power relationships as they exist in our daily lives, so dismissing it out of hand in this way is quite odd.

no1

I'm sorry but criticising women for being educated and expressing political ideas sounds pretty bad and in tune with some very old traditions.
Of course intersectionalism can be liberal or it can be anarchist, but it strikes me as pretty useful for expressing an anarchist understanding of power relationships as they exist in our daily lives, so dismissing it out of hand in this way is quite odd.

Im sorry but where did I criticise women for being educated? Talk about putting words in my mouth.
The problem is is that you assume because people don't agree with parts of feminist theory they are misogynists old fashioned etc. I may be guilty stereotyping anarchism today as being nothing more than shouty undergraduate oddball politics, but to suggest I meant anything other than that is dishonest. But carry on if you want I don't really expect anything less.

no1

so dismissing it out of hand in this way is quite odd.

I can assure you that some of us who dismiss it have given it a fair bit of thought. That's not to say that intersectional theory doesn't have its good points and can be learned from, but by and large, it's a negative element currently being imported into libertarian communist politics, a new spin on what used to be called 'right on politics' or, if you like, Identity Politics 2.0.

ocelot

Damn those pesky feminazis!

I can feel a CAMpaign for Real Anarchism coming on... (non-muslamic beards only, guys)

(*rolls eyes*)

This is one of the more depressing type of responses from those who support intersectionality or privilege theory, or aspects of such theories. Stereotyping those who are critical of intersectionality/PT as misogynists or in some way anti-muslim (or whatever other reactionary label you care to stick on them) is exactly one of the reasons intersectionality is having a negative effect on what stands for a libertarian communist or anarchist movement.

This is a derail. Let's just accept that we fundamentally disagree about what is meant by the term intersectionality and get back to information and opinions related to the Paris attacks.

ocelot

This is a derail. Let's just accept that we fundamentally disagree about what is meant by the term intersectionality and get back to information and opinions related to the Paris attacks.

Is it a derailment though? If we are talking about people's opinions, then whether or not someone is receptive to intersectionality theory will and must colour their analysis and opinions related to the Paris attacks and the various responses to those attacks, just as would their perception of, or attitude towards, class struggle, capitalism, the state, the far right, islamism, cultural relativism, etc.

By all means start a new thread on "Paris attacks and Intersectionality".

no1

I'm sorry but criticising women for being educated and expressing political ideas sounds pretty bad and in tune with some very old traditions.

oh fucking christ, not this

Ooo, lets hear more about what the men think! They haven't really had a chance to express themselves here. And guess what, they HAVE thought about intersectionality and decided any mention of it deserves groans and eye-rolling and 'oh fucking christ not this' etc.

Doesn't really sound like people who take issue with just some aspects of it, sounds to me like boys who feel threatened. Perhaps that's not it at all and there's some really nuanced critique there, but it doesn't really look that way right now.

Bring on the down votes!

commieprincess

Doesn't really sound like people who take issue with just some aspects of it, sounds to me like boys who feel threatened.

Hiya CP, I cannot speak for anyone elses take on this but personally why would I (as a 'boy' and 'white') feel threatened by intersectionality, why? I dont understand.

And that, as they say, is that.

No one's threatened. They disagree. Still, if it someone feels empowered by saying those they disagree with are threatened by them, then that's nice.

I know it's already in the tracker. But I'm going to plug it anyway. The formatting's a bit messed up and the language might be a little abstract-philosophical, but still worth persevering with imo.

Henri Simon's reactions on the Paris attacks and the reactions to it. - "About Charlie"

edit: D'oh! Roland Simon, not Henri Simon. h/t Spikeymikey

Wow.

Empowered is definitely not the word I would use.

Mr Jolly, if threatened isn’t the right word, what is?

I don’t know why you personally would feel threatened by intersectionality, or people discussing it, but it seems from your posts that you have a knee-jerk negative reaction.

Anyway, I probably have overstepped the derail line, so enough from me.

commieprincess

Mr Jolly, if threatened isn’t the right word, what is?

I don’t know why you personally would feel threatened by intersectionality, or people discussing it, but it seems from your posts that you have a knee-jerk negative reaction.

Anyway, I probably have overstepped the derail line, so enough from me.

I can be critical of something, without feeling threatened, no? I mean its not as if I have to hold onto anything power wise, I don't hold power, I have no real influence over people lives (except once when I had power of attorney) beyond one would guess the ebbs and flows of micro power dynamics of personal relationships. What do I have to lose?

ocelot,

Roland Simon's related text is not an easy read but certainly makes some interesting observations. It might read better in French and ring more bells with radical Pariseans than the rest of us I suspect. I note that some of the fleeting references to it's underlying theoretical foundations are the same as in their text here on the PKK and the Kurdish issue that I recomended but you did not comment on and I wonder/doubt if you actually agree with them on those 'foundations'.

Mr. Jolly

commieprincess

Mr Jolly, if threatened isn’t the right word, what is?

I don’t know why you personally would feel threatened by intersectionality, or people discussing it, but it seems from your posts that you have a knee-jerk negative reaction.

Anyway, I probably have overstepped the derail line, so enough from me.

I can be critical of something, without feeling threatened, no? I mean its not as if I have to hold onto anything power wise, I don't hold power, I have no real influence over people lives (except once when I had power of attorney) beyond one would guess the ebbs and flows of micro power dynamics of personal relationships. What do I have to lose?

Yes I seem to have gone a bit ranty.

Ranty? My go now :D

commieprincess

Anyway, I probably have overstepped the derail line, so enough from me.

Except you haven't derailed the thread. You've employed a poor argumentative technique, which attacks the person rather than what they are saying. Ocelot has argued similarly by suggesting that anyone disagreeing with him/her is possibly a misogynist, anti-muslim (with all the racist implications of such a throwaway comment). Maybe we should go back to just calling each other 'trot', 'petty bourgeois', or 'you massive cock' instead ;)

Anyway, when challenged, Ocelot then tells us that we are derailing the thread and,
ocelot

By all means start a new thread on "Paris attacks and Intersectionality".

Now while this is not a thread about intersectionality, intersectionality has been central to the views of certain contributors. Throughout this discussion, Ocelot (and correct me if I'm wrong, Ocelot) has argued the position that while we might criticise 'islamism', we should not criticise islam as it would be seen as attacking an oppressed group (muslims), that it would play into the hands of the right/far-right, and that anyone who has a beef with islam is actually conflating islam with islamism and/or is possibly a bit racist.

All this intersectional juggling serves no purpose in terms of revolutionary politics, communism, furthering class struggle, etc. other than to obfuscate, demoralise and maybe engage in a spot of oppression olympics.

I don't have any answers to all this by the way, but if we are remotely interested in finding possible solutions to how we, as libertarian communists should respond to all this, then pussyfooting around oppressive aspects of religious belief, even if for the best intentions, does no good whatsoever.

By the way, Ocelot, if I've misrepresented your views, feel free to call me a massive cock, but please lay off the anti-muslim slurs.

Serge, it obviously is a derail, but if no-one's bothered by it, then I guess that's not a problem.

I'm not sure how I attacked you as a person? I actually had no beef with your response to JK and No1s posts - only thought you were a bit over-defensive by saying how deeply you've thought about intersectionality. Other than that, I had no big problem with the rest of it.

I'm sorry my arguing technique doesn't live up to your criteria.

Mr Jolly, I'm not saying you have special white-man-super-powers, but like you say, there are those low-level, every day things you don't have to worry about because of your white-man-ness. This is purely anecdotal, but when I've been in a situation where low level stuff occurs, like men interrupt women, dominate meetings etc and I or someone else has challenged it, 9/10 times, the reaction has been defensive and all the classics come out about how shit privilege politics/identity politics/intersectionality/blah blah are.

I certainly find lots of faults with these things, but basically it's just bloody exhausting and disheartening to have to deal with that stuff, and focus on the shit bits... My dinner is ready, so I'm gonna have to leave this a bit unfinished.

I think those who regard CH's selected and selective attacks as somehow expressing an emancipatory impulse are putting themselves, and us on.

I think it gets one into that famous trick bag where the French state, in banning a head scarf or a veil, is viewed as defending secular, republican values, rather than targeting a section of the population for.....further targeting.

Does anybody here remember Laura Bush, then first lady of the then US Bomber-In-Chief, defending the invasion of Afghanistan for the positive impact it has on women's rights?

Hell, there's a whole school of wing-nut "Marxist" formalists, who thing the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, and the threatened attacks on Iran represent the emergence of another great wave of the bourgeois republican revolution; designed to break the middle east free of "feudal chains."

There's a long and ignorant tradition of that-- of ignorance, and prejudice riding in under the guise of "progress;" of secular-ism; of "republican values."

Why old Fred Engels himself praised the US's attack on Mexico in 1846, convinced as he was that the Yankee capitalists would drag Mexico out of the swamp of the Spanish conquest, and into the republican value of bourgeois property.

Of course the fact that the war was fought for the benefit of the South and slavery-- that's a mere technicality

While CH may not have adapted everyone one of those positions, CH was most definitely in that tradition; that ignorant tradition that serves power under the pretense of emancipation.

The point being what was being attacked by CH is not the oppressiveness of all religion as religion; what's being attacked is not even a single religion on the basis of the oppressiveness it shares with all religion.

What is being attacked is a sector of the population that has already been "kettled" so to speak, separated, subjected to discriminatory treatment (Q: What portion of the French population is three generations or less removed from North Africa/Africa? Next Q: What portion of the prison population traces itself to North Africa/Africa?) through the proxy of religion.

So it's Muslims in France. And in Greece and Spain it's immigrant labor. But what's hidden under the guise of attacking the oppressiveness of religion, or"preserving" the "national wage/living standard," are the capitalist attacks on the ability of the working class, as a class, to represent the interests of all the poor and oppressed in, and as, itself. That's precisely what CH did.

I am not in a position to pronounce on PT etc. without going into my anecdotage but I can remember at least as many women interrupting men as I can men interrupting women, in or out of meetings so does anyone have any sources of hard data on things like this, or meta-studies on things like the methodology used to calculate stats on domestic violence or the gender pay gap etc.? I've been curious about this since finding out that the CIA funded Ms Magazine, which led me to wonder about why the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations fund so many departments of "Womens' Studies" like the institute that awarded Ursula Le Guin a prize a few years back?

I'm of course aware that this sounds like desperate words from a desperate privileged white man but is it really out of the question that misandry might be a tool for weakening class struggle? Can comrades suggest any well-documented material on this beyond anecdote and knee-jerk and/or conspiraloonery, on the sort of level of approach taken in this piece?

Now that's a derail! :D

Nah, just a bit of contrapuntal - come on Sergey, get with the beat!

And guess what, they HAVE thought about intersectionality and decided any mention of it deserves groans and eye-rolling and 'oh fucking christ not this' etc.

I don't think that Petey can at all be grouped in with what Serge and Jolly were saying, he was commenting on something No.1's (extreme) misinterpretation.

This is one of those situations where I would employ a down vote, rather than typing all this out. It isn't good manners at all ascribe things to people that they are not trying to say, I have spent enough time on this site to know that everyone has an adequate reading comprehension level, I have to assume it's dishonesty/rhetoric. The same goes for No.1's

I'm sorry but criticising women for being educated and expressing political ideas sounds pretty bad and in tune with some very old traditions.

To which I can find no other reference to in the thread. Anyway, I hope these aren't seen as personal attacks or anything, I'm just trying to express myself without the ambiguity of the voting system (which I like).

While we're at it, can S. Artesian or Ocelot (I gather they are saying somewhat the same things) express whether they think that CH were trying, like conspiratorially, to do what you say they were doing with their cartoons, if it is an inescapable aspect of satirizing certain groups etc.

Spikymike

ocelot,

Roland Simon's related text is not an easy read but certainly makes some interesting observations. It might read better in French and ring more bells with radical Pariseans than the rest of us I suspect. I note that some of the fleeting references to it's underlying theoretical foundations are the same as in their text here on the PKK and the Kurdish issue that I recomended but you did not comment on and I wonder/doubt if you actually agree with them on those 'foundations'.

Spikymike, are you able to pass on a link to the Roland Simon/TC text on the PKK? I've clearly missed it what with all the mammoth threads on the topic of late!

Spass...

Well you have caught me out as on checking I realise my mistake was in confusing the 'End Notes' republished text from another source that you have already noted with the TC text, though if you read both do they not in fact have some clear similarities in their underlying theory?

So apologies also to ocelot though I might ask the same question.

Put it down to old age and tiredness - I should have double-checked before posting.

Spikymike

ocelot,

Roland Simon's related text is not an easy read but certainly makes some interesting observations. It might read better in French and ring more bells with radical Pariseans than the rest of us I suspect. I note that some of the fleeting references to it's underlying theoretical foundations are the same as in their text here on the PKK and the Kurdish issue that I recomended but you did not comment on and I wonder/doubt if you actually agree with them on those 'foundations'.

I missed the link when you last posted it. Which thread was it in?

edit: damn should have read the whole thread first - duplicate of Spassmachine's query. Anyway, whatever article it was, link please?

Factvalue

does anyone have any sources of hard data on things like this, or meta-studies on things like the methodology used to calculate stats on domestic violence or the gender pay gap etc.? I

Yes. Dale Spender - Man Made Language (1980) and multiple subsequent studies, which i don't have time to google before going to work.
This guy pretty much nails the Rockerfeller-feminist connection -
http://www.savethemales.ca/001904.html

You know misandry isn't really a thing, don't you? However, if it makes the guys feel a little bit better for having to listen to women a bit more often, well go for it.

Kimberly Crenshaw is in one of those elite yank secret societies though...

(*sigh*)

Serge Forward

Anyway, when challenged, Ocelot then tells us that we are derailing the thread and,
ocelot

By all means start a new thread on "Paris attacks and Intersectionality".

Now while this is not a thread about intersectionality, intersectionality has been central to the views of certain contributors.

Actually Serge, the first people to bring up intersectionality were yourself and Jolly doing your Waldorf and Statler act (although the muppets were funnier) back in comments 174 - 177 where you indulge in a good bit of mutual indignation frottage over the issue. Much to general indifference.

Then it pretty much went quiet until JK made his (imo) well crafted crack back there a bit ago. To which you responded with good humour (kudos) but Jolly took the opportunity to be, as usual, a complete dick. Which elicited my sarcastic response. For which I am guilty for feeding the troll, which is why I stopped myself going any further down this particular derail. However the derail continued anyway, so, seeing as you insist...

Serge Forward

Throughout this discussion, Ocelot (and correct me if I'm wrong, Ocelot) has argued the position that while we might criticise 'islamism', we should not criticise islam as it would be seen as attacking an oppressed group (muslims), that it would play into the hands of the right/far-right, and...

Well, that would be an approximation of what I said, once you filter out all of the associated theory that you either didn't understand or didn't like the look of (which appears to be ~90% of what I wrote, but whatever...)

Serge Forward

...that anyone who has a beef with islam is actually conflating islam with islamism and/or is possibly a bit racist.

And here I will correct you, because, even with the benefit of your restrictive ideological blinkers, I responded to a version of this question from Shorty above, quite explicitly.

It is not the case that anyone with a beef with Islam is conflating Islam with islamism. However, certain "beefs", like the regular twitter bollocks from Dawkins for e.g., does do this.

Some != all.

I also made the case that Mansoor Hekmat and his epigones in the WCPI (and various fractions) also put forwards a discourse that amalgamates the two*. Ditto the Manifeste des Douze (and the ever-obnoxious BHL, anyone associating themselves with that fumier is obviously a wrong-un, imo).

But let's get back to the intersectionality question, seeing as we must (apparently)

Serge Forward

All this intersectional juggling serves no purpose in terms of revolutionary politics, communism, furthering class struggle, etc. other than to obfuscate, demoralise and maybe engage in a spot of oppression olympics.

In addition to the "oppression olympics" reference, I'll also refer back to some of your previous comments about intersectionality being indistinguishable from "right on politics" of "identity politics 2.0" and (haven't found the reference) the association between intersectionality and privilege theory or PT.

I too am old enough to remember the "right on", "hierarchy of oppressions" politics of the 1980s. From your references I take it you see intersectionality as just a case of "old beer in new bottles". This is where I think you have fallen into the common bad habit of older activists of assuming that time is circular and that there's "nothing new under the sun". Thus, combined with the common problem of "pattern bias", new political tendencies tend to be examined one-sidedly for their similarities to previous ones. In itself there's nothing wrong with this. The problem is not also examining new movements for what is different to previous ones and then determining which differences are merely novelties of form, and which actual differences of content.

In your case this has lead to your conflating intersectionality with privilege theory, partly on the basis that there are already ignorant adherents that also do so, but mostly because privilege theory looks most like the hierarchical oppression identity politics of the 1980s that you're already familiar with.

Dispensing with this error can be done via the example of this thread. Given that racism is at the core of the discussion - where did privilege theory come from? From a liberal bastardisation and extension of the (already fatally flawed) US Maoist theory of "white skin privilege". White skin privilege remains, then, the centre of privilege theory's attempt to get to grips with racism. From which all other aspects must be formulated as extensions of this central concept. We've already talked about the inherent US-centric (even colonial, to use the "c-word") conceit behind trying to extend the particularities of US racism to the status of globalised explainer of racism everywhere. But, in relation to this thread, the concepts I have been putting forwards here re racism - the distinction between biological and ethno-cultural racism, the parallels with the Marx-Bauer debate around the antisemitism of the 1840s, the specifically liberal form of ethno-cultural racism, the attendant liberal prejudice that only biological racism is "real racism" - can only be seen (especially the last point) as being diametrically opposed to privilege theory's approach to racism in particular, and by extension the whole framework generally.

So, if I accept, with caveats (i.e. that we obviously understand entirely different things by the term) that, even without explicit mention, that my approach, implicitly founded as it is in considering racism in the context of its interactions with class, state power, nationalism and liberal ideology, can be described as intersectional. Yet it is fundamentally opposed to privilege theory on racism, and therefore your identification of the two, brought upon by false analogy with the politics of the 1980s, is clearly wrong in this case.

There's more that I could say, but best not prolong an already long post.

---
* They also curiously, follow Iranian mullahs in dealing with the Sunni/Shia sectarian divide by basically trying to pretend that it doesn't exist. Given the appalling sectarian slaughter in Syria and tensions elsewhere, it would be great if this fantasy were true, but wishing it were so does not really confront the concrete problems of competing islamisms by subsuming it under the myth of a non-existing united Islamic abstraction. But that's another story...

That's a long post, Ocelot, which I've only had a quick skim through but I'll read it properly in a bit. But prima facie (er, excuse my latin):

(*sigh*)

Bad sign, that.

doing your Waldorf and Statler act

Like :D

you indulge in a good bit of mutual indignation frottage

Really like and I'm now left wondering if that means I've scored with Mr Jolly ;)

Anyway, the rest looks interesting and I really appreciate you taking the time to write all that, you have far more patience (or attention span) than I will ever have. I'll respond to it later.

Okay, I've read it in more detail now, Ocelot. Aside from your occasional sneaky digs (no hard feelings over that, though, because I'm prone to giving out the odd sneaky dig myself) I don't disagree with a fair number of the things you say. You make some really interesting points about the history of PT and clearly separate it off from intersectionality, something that I don't always do, often tending to clump them both together as one bad joblot. Fair play, although I am still not convinced about intersectionality.

I don't honestly know enough about Hekmat and the WCPI so can't really say owt else.

More on topic, on the criticising islam (or not) discussion:

Well, that would be an approximation of what I said, once you filter out all of the associated theory that you either didn't understand or didn't like the look of (which appears to be ~90% of what I wrote, but whatever...)

Fair fucks, then. Like I said, I wasn't aiming to misrepresent and you have quite rightly corrected me. And though I understand your position, and fair doos to you for trying, I still have to disagree with you.

Right then, can we be friends now? :)

In your case this has lead to your conflating intersectionality with privilege theory, partly on the basis that there are already ignorant adherents that also do so, but mostly because privilege theory looks most like the hierarchical oppression identity politics of the 1980s that you're already familiar with.

I for one would not have a problem if Intersectionality was understood and practiced in terms you outline. But thats the problem, practitioners are all over the place, they conflate intersectionality, privilege theory and identity politics, they do behave like the maoists you mention, indulging in a kneejerk hierarchy of oppression and victimhood rhetoric. Its not that intersectionality that is wrong per se, as a theory, its an exercise in stating the bleeding obvious. Its how its applied by the laity, how it functions that is significant. Which on the ground is indistinguishable from privilege theory in my experience.

Fleur

Thanks Fleur but I was hoping for some data if you have time and can be bothered, I’m interested in forming my own opinions and I don’t like the feeling of being confined to a dogmatic regulatory system of acceptable thought and behaviour when it comes to important issues of liberation. The Dale Spender book looks interesting though so I’ll give it a go, thanks for that. This quotation from its introduction seems apt:

“This is a perfectly understandable reaction, for when a society has developed a particular pattern for meaning, those who do not abide by it are being unreasonable - in its terms. But unless that pattern for meaning is infallible (and there is considerable evidence that it is not, given that meaning changes not just from one society to another, but within one society over time) then the flaw may be in the pattern itself, and not in those who protest. If patriarchal order can be shown to be unreasonable, then those who are attempting to dismantle it are behaving in an eminently reasonable fashion.”

On the subject of misandry I’m not sure what you mean by misandry not being a ‘thing’. For example, when introducing and defining ‘patriarchy’ in this same introductory chapter, Spender writes “With Mary Daly, I agree that 'patriarchy appears to be everywhere'.” Daly was once interviewed about her book Quintessence by Catherine Madsen. In her book, Daly describes a utopian future world without patriarchy. Madsen said to Daly, "The convenient disappearance of the patriarchs, and of males generally, just doesn't strike me as sufficiently credible to give hope." The interview next touches on Madsen's use of the word "convenient" and continues:

MD: But -- but why not? I mean, what it does is examine possibilities and new avenues of thought.

CM: Well, why not is because of so many attempts at conveniently disappearing other populations in the twentieth century.

MD: Well, I'm not disappearing them. It's just a possibility. It would be a wonderful one to me. Let it happen. Do you see any other way that patriarchy will disappear?

Perhaps it doesn’t qualify as misandry - I await your clarification on that - but if Daly sees the elimination of "males generally" as "wonderful" and the only way to end "patriarchy," is this not at least a “thing”? In the introduction to the interview, Madsen writes, "She [Mary Daly] is a proponent of parthenogenesis [reproduction from an ovum without fertilization by a male], in both its physical and intellectual forms -- the creation of 'unfathered works.'" When she was sacked for refusing to admit men to her class at Boston College, was her reason unconnected with her views?

Daly was also interviewed in 2010:

WIE: Which brings us to another question I wanted to ask you. Sally Miller Gearhart, in her article "The Future—If There Is One—Is Female" writes: "At least three further requirements supplement the strategies of environmentalists if we were to create and preserve a less violent world. 1) Every culture must begin to affirm the female future. 2) Species responsibility must be returned to women in every culture. 3) The proportion of men must be reduced to and maintained at approximately ten percent of the human race." What do you think about this statement?

MD: I think it's not a bad idea at all. If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. People are afraid to say that kind of stuff anymore.

WIE: Yes. I find myself now thinking that's a bit shocking.

MD: Well, it's shocking that it would be shocking.

WIE: So it doesn't sound like your vision of a separate nation for women is something you see as an interim stage that would eventually lead to men and women living together in true equality.

MD: No. That's a very old question. I answered that to audiences twenty-five, thirty years ago. I just don't think that way.

But Mary Daly is a completely different writer to Dale Spender, I don't think you can discredit Dale Spender's research just by a short mention of agreeing with the statement "patriarchy appears to be everywhere" which is something loads of feminists would agree with, just talking about the pervasiveness of sexism really. I've read loads of Dale Spender's work and I've never seen anything suggesting she thinks anything remotely like what you are quoting Mary Daly saying.

factvalue, seconding fingers malone and also if you're that interested in stats on women being interrupted, you can do your own googling rather than making Fleur do all the legwork. Neither they nor anyone else is responsible to prove to you something that I can pretty confidently guarantee that 90% of women here have experienced. (Though Fleur's such a badass that it wouldn't surprise me if they do go off and find them and be like 'bam! Stats in your face!'.)

And while statistics are useful, maybe a less dick way to deal with this is to believe women when they say they're interrupted disproportionately, unless you have some strong evidence not to. And given you clearly haven't, then yeah, I'm telling you, women get interrupted more than men!

Also, finding quotes from a woman who'd prefer a world without men doesn't really tell us anything about anything. It definitely doesn't mean that 'misandry' is something that's worth worrying about - you can google some stats on violence against women, pay inequality etc and then decide if this woman's comments are really a major problem in the grand scheme of things.

seconding Commieprincess as well

fingers malone - it was not my intention to discredit a writer I have just this minute come across but to ask questions of someone with more understanding than me and Mary Daly, again from the tiny amount that I know of her, seems perfectly at ease as a misandrist.

commieprincess - I'm asking Fleur precisely because she's a lot more knowledgeable than me. I have collected quite a few more bits of data since I last posted, some of which supports what you say/shout, some which flatly contradicts you but I wasn't only asking for data but meta-analysis on how such data are constructed, so as to get further underneath the fingernails of the issue. And at the risk of looking cockaludicrous in proceeding in this pedestrian way with my dick-tionary in one hand and my abacus in the other, I prefer this way of doing things to relying entirely on background noise as a method of making sense of the world. I'm trying to open up a dialogue between what I honestly think at the moment and the fundamental grounds beneath the assertions I come across in connection with the issue of the nature of patriarchy, while trying to take nothing as just given if there is more to find out.

factvalue - if you really want to get to grips with measuring behaviour and language; this is how much shit you are talking:

I realise that your deep insight wasn't really intended for me but for general consumption but your image doesn't appear on my screen. Have you ever thought about maybe reviewing your life?

factvalue

some of which supports what you say/shout

Yeah, only women can shout on the internet. It's part of this whole misandrist, reptilian conspiracy designed by the CIA to destroy the labour movement.

I feel partly to blame for opening the door to the recent weirdness on this thread, which is, after all, supposed to be related to the recent events in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, Kosher shop, etc. So I'd like to say, hand on heart, that I'm really sorry for inadvertently letting out the Factvalue Monster.

L'enfant du frottage.

Factvalue, if someone tells you that they're boss is bullying them at work, do you ask for statistics and meta-data on how many bosses bully workers? Do you start questioning the methodology behind those studies? Or do you perhaps offer a suggestion of,"Well, sometimes a worker bullies a boss. It happens, you know. I've got this quote..."

I don't think you do. I think you probably believe that person because, well, solidarity and having a basic understanding of hierarchy, oppression, and exploitation.

I suggest you might want to think about taking the same tact here.

factvalue - you should be able get most the info you're after here - http://thewomansplainer.com hth

factvalue

introduction to the interview, Madsen writes, "She [Mary Daly] is a proponent of parthenogenesis [reproduction from an ovum without fertilization by a male], in both its physical and intellectual forms -- the creation of 'unfathered works.'"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexmission

:D

commieprincess wrote:

Yeah, only women can shout on the internet. It's part of this whole misandrist, reptilian conspiracy designed by the CIA to destroy the labour movement.

But that's only really bad stand-up and the most obvious thing for you to have written. Is this all there is then?

Chilli Sauce - You're absolutely right, there's nothing more important to me than solidarity, and I'm concerned about anything that might threaten it. I'm not about taking up a position and defending it, or winding people up for no good reason or personal gratification, and I'm almost completely immune to insult and popular opinion if I'm trying to understand something. I simply wanted to find out more about this issue and thought that someone on here with more knowledge about it than me might be prepared to share it with a more ignorant person. Since no one wants to then enough with the really spooky derail, please return to the events in Paris (and don't have nightmares Serge).

Factvalue

I am pulling really long hours at work this week and I am utterly exhausted and haven't got the time or energy to go looking for links and references. Maybe over the weekend I'll get back and also explain the thing about misandry, without the benefit of Mary Daly, who was a rad-fem theologian, who carried much of the rad-fem baggage that very few people posting here would have much common ground with.
It is, however something that most women will be all too familiar with and a greater threat to solidarity, in my opinion, is to not listen to people's lived experience and counter it with "citation please." If anyone is getting shouty, and I'm not really seeing it tbh, it's perhaps it is because it is all too often the case that women say something about their experience and inevitably some man will say, oh that's not a problem/real thing, prove it. I get fed up of having to prove things, over and over again, which a fairly obvious, like the existence and effects of patriarchy.
And accusing someone who disagrees with you with shouting, it's a little close to telling them to calm down dear.

Fleur

With respect to shouting, I was referring to commieprincess' "maybe a less dick way to deal with this" way of expressing herself that you say is perfectly understandable. If I'd engaged this way myself then I'd have expected a response in kind but I didn't, so why was it so irresistible, necessary and acceptable? Personal domestic violence incidents, from what data I have studied so far, seem to be fairly evenly distributed between men and women. And the methodologies I've encountered so far for calculating a gender pay gap seem not to hold up to much scrutiny. But I am not claiming to know anything with absolute certainty and will need to spend a lot more time on it before making up my own mind.

Please don't spend any valuable private time on this on my account, the numbers and analyses I have accumulated myself are more than enough to be going on with. I just thought you or someone would have a few quick directions at your fingertips that you could point me in.

By the way I brought up Daly as a counter-example to the point I'd interpreted you as having made about the existence of misandry, not as a representative of anyone else, on here or elsewhere.

Misandry is about as much of a threat to the working class or anyone else as heterophobia.

Ok

factvalue

Personal domestic violence incidents, from what data I have studied so far, seem to be fairly evenly distributed between men and women.

indeed they are.
i accept completely the reports i hear from women about their lived experiences. i was, i admit, stunned when i came to realize what a high percentage of women have been molested, certainly much higher a percentage than men. so here's the test: i'm a "white" male. i was raped by a previous girlfriend, and was battered by my wife (i'm divorcing her). will my lived experienced be accepted? or will it be "contextualized" as it was not so long ago when someone in the Guardian wrote that it's just not the same when a woman batters a man? because if anarchism means anything (to me) it means assuming nothing about anybody, and that goes for everybody, and i don't like it anymore than anyone else would when i'm lectured on how i'm supposed to react to the experiences only i can know i've had, or told that the thing that happened to me didn't happen to me, as has happened more than once.

, I was referring to commieprincess' "maybe a less dick way to deal with this" way of expressing herself that you say is perfectly understandable. If I'd engaged this way myself then I'd have expected a response in kind but I didn't, so why was it so irresistible, necessary and acceptable?

And I thought you were almost immune to insults and personal attacks.

Apparently I was wrong.

That bit about gender pay gap methodologies. Do explain and do tell us what the errors in methodology mean for the gap, or is it your contention that there is no gap?

Me, I tend to stick with the numbers, for the US, provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but if you have evidence that says that "equal pay for equal work" is a reality, please share.

S. Artesian

Ok but it might take a while longer tonight as my wife is going out with her mates and I'm at home with the kids. My main observation so far about the numbers that are typically passed around, such as those produced by the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, has been that they tend to be based upon aggregation, not like for like, simply because this more relevant metric is so hard to come by. I'll see what I can put together for you. Do try to receive it without ideological blinkers on if you can, won't you? Oh do!

I'd rather not engage too much with your other point if it's all the same to you, except to say that I'm not absolutely immune to insults, and in any case my point was to keep communication at an acceptable level since feelings run strong on this issue. Arguing as others have that the unprompted use of insulting sexist language like "dick" is reasonable or understandable while denying the reality or importance of misandry kind of misses the point/begs the question a wee bit in my opinion.

i suppose if you tell people to go and google something theres always the possibility that they will actually just go and look and some mra blogs

Well, Fleur did recommend Man Made Language which is basically a whole book on the topic about power and men and women and speaking and being listened to and not listened to, I can't give a data summary as I lost my copy when I was evicted when I was nineteen.

Of course, the statistical studies are based on aggregates. How else can you can make a statistical study? If there's another way of showing was the average, approximate, mean variations, differences are for classes or sectors or groups... exactly how can it account for the average, the mean?

You might as well be telling me that statistics on distribution of national income, accrued wealth, profits, wage shares, are skewed because they refer to "aggregates."

In any case, I'm not interested in ideology of any sort.

But if you have data that refutes this: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat39.pdf, I'd be happy to see it. When I say data of course I'm not interested in disputing methodology, I'm interested in a more accurate presentation of the real conditions under examination.

fingers malone

Well, Fleur did recommend Man Made Language which is basically a whole book on the topic about power and men and women and speaking and being listened to and not listened to, I can't give a data summary as I lost my copy when I was evicted when I was nineteen.

no intention of criticizing anyone who hasn't the time or motivation to argue with someone who's clearly made they mind up.

Tyrion

Misandry is about as much of a threat to the working class or anyone else as heterophobia.

Word.

according to this

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_298904.pdf

the majority of victims of domestic violence are women, although not by as overwhelming a majority as for sexual assault.

In the last year, non-sexual abuse by a partner and stalking were the most common of the
separate types of intimate violence:
•
4.2% of women and 3.0% of men reported having experienced non-sexual partner abuse.
•
4.2% of women and 2.7% of men reported having experienced stalking.
•
Many more women than men experienced some form of sexual assault (including attempts) in
the last year: 3% of women compared with 0.3% of men. The majority of these were less serious
sexual assaults

its also the case that

Female victims were more likely than male victims to be killed by someone they knew. Over
three-quarters (78%) of female victims knew the main suspect, compared with 54% of male
victims. In most of these cases, female victims were killed by a current or ex-partner (51% of
all female victims) while male victims were most likely to be killed by a friend or acquaintance
(39%).

which suggest domestic violence is more sever for women despite the relative closeness of the numbers of men and women reporting it, possible women are more likely to under report.

factvalue

Arguing as others have that the unprompted use of insulting sexist language like "dick" is reasonable or understandable while denying the reality or importance of misandry kind of misses the point/begs the question a wee bit in my opinion.

Is this for real? Does calling someone a dick reinforce the general subordination of men in matriarchal society? What importance does misandry have beyond the hurt feelings of some men oblivious to gender power dynamics?

Also:

factvalue

With respect to shouting, I was referring to commieprincess' "maybe a less dick way to deal with this" way of expressing herself that you say is perfectly understandable. If I'd engaged this way myself then I'd have expected a response in kind but I didn't, so why was it so irresistible, necessary and acceptable?

This is so gross and typical. A woman expresses her experiences with patriarchy, a man demands "proof" and is so innocently confused if the woman expresses any emotion about this issue instead of being as rational and objective and civil as he is. I wonder if a man posting about being hassled by cops would be expected to post some statistical proof with acceptable methodology that cops do indeed hassle people and hey, maybe those subversive types harming cops is an important issue too.

Tyrion

factvalue

Arguing as others have that the unprompted use of insulting sexist language like "dick" is reasonable or understandable while denying the reality or importance of misandry kind of misses the point/begs the question a wee bit in my opinion.

Is this for real? Does calling someone a dick reinforce the general subordination of men in matriarchal society? What importance does misandry have beyond the hurt feelings of some men oblivious to gender power dynamics?

Also:

factvalue

With respect to shouting, I was referring to commieprincess' "maybe a less dick way to deal with this" way of expressing herself that you say is perfectly understandable. If I'd engaged this way myself then I'd have expected a response in kind but I didn't, so why was it so irresistible, necessary and acceptable?

This is so gross and typical. A woman expresses her experiences with patriarchy, a man demands "proof" and is so innocently confused if the woman expresses any emotion about this issue instead of being as rational and objective and civil as he is. I wonder if a man posting about being hassled by cops would be expected to post some statistical proof with acceptable methodology that cops do indeed hassle people and hey, maybe those subversive types harming cops is an important issue too.

As we say in the railroad business: Abso-fucking-lutely!

Personal domestic violence incidents, from what data I have studied so far, seem to be fairly evenly distributed between men and women. And the methodologies I've encountered so far for calculating a gender pay gap seem not to hold up to much scrutiny.

Three people upped a post with this in it? Seriously?

***removed*** inappropriate power ballad from this thread.

Mr Jolly
Is there any actual fucking good reason why you feel it is an appropriate response to a thread which has touched upon gender inequality, domestic violence, sexual violence, a crap video by a has-been TV star? Or do you think that this sort of dickish behaviour is just funny? Yes dickish. I'll use gendered insults when you think inane Sue Pollard videos are an appropriate response to a serious conversation about gender.

Petey
I am very sorry to hear about what has happened to you. Abuse is appalling and unacceptable regardless of gender. And yes, I accept your lived experience and I believe you and I wish you all the very best.

Fleur

Mr Jolly
Is there any actual fucking good reason why you feel it is an appropriate response to a thread which has touched upon gender inequality, domestic violence, sexual violence, a crap video by a has-been TV star? Or do you think that this sort of dickish behaviour is just funny? Yes dickish. I'll use gendered insults when you think inane Sue Pollard videos are an appropriate response to a serious conversation about gender.

I removed it, it was kind of the wrong place for Sue Pollard. Apologies.