Theos researcher says “surrender now”
A researcher at the godbothering thinktank “Theos” wrote a blog post saying France should stop being so stubborn and just do what the murderers want, dammit.
After each attack the security services and beefed up. After each atrocity gallons of ink are spilt about whether it is time to rethink laïcité (the famous French model of secularism) or the nature of Republic French values.
That’s how badly he writes. Apologies for making you read it.
If it’s true that after each atrocity gallons of ink are spilt about whether it is time to rethink laïcité, then people should save their ink, or rather their keyboard tapping. No, it is not time to rethink laïcité, nor is it time to rethink women’s rights or LGB rights or Kashmir or anything else the murderers may or may not be Aggrieved about. No, one does not respond to mass murder by doing what one thinks the murderers want.
But as for real change to have come from these tragedies? It seems like the increasing militarization of public spaces, with more and more armed police and soldiers, has been the only meaningful consequence. The lack of change, or at least the sense of a French state finding a way forward, creates a collective hopelessness and a helplessness. Tragedy fatigue is real; the more tragedies that occur without prompting a change the less willpower there will be to create something. There is a remarkable capacity to accept even the most appalling situations as normal.
It’s quite remarkable what Ben Ryan is saying there. He’s complaining about France’s failure to change at the behest of mass murderers. He’s saying that failure to change at the behest of mass murderers creates hopelessness – as if there were a universal desire for France to do what the murderers want. He’s saying the mass murders – the “tragedies” – should prompt change.
This is the moment to call for a new approach to French society and secularism. It is now, surely, clear to anyone with eyes to see that the hopes of creating a purely civil identity in which religion and race are irrelevant are failed. It is time the French state begins recording data on the religion of its citizens, so that it can see how trends are emerging and be responsive to the reality on the streets, not just vague assumptions and prejudices.
It’s time to question again whether aspects of laïcité that seem to disproportionately hurt minority faiths (and especially Islam) are a sensible approach to pluralism and to remove those aspects that are doing more harm than good at fostering integration. Schools need the freedom to address religious and identity issues in the classroom. It’s time to stop pretending that Frenchness can sweep these issues under the carpet and start “doing religion”, not just opposing extremism.
He reminds me of that nice Maréchal Pétain who shook hands with Hitler so politely that one time.
Dumb opinions are a dime a dozen on the internet but writing that bad is something special.
I find it remarkable that he could possibly characterise French refusal to accede to terroristic threats as cowardice. And I find disgusting the insinuation that the ‘harm’ supposedly experienced by muslims having to obey secular law outweighs the harm of civilians dying to extremists, as if it were only fair for them to express their protest through the medium of mass murder.
His writing is not the only thing that makes me shudder. Lying just under the concern for minority religions is in fact that he is seeking a formalised place for religion and religious control over public life. Implicit within that is the assumption that the ‘majority’ religion, Christianity, will dominate. Maybe he foresees some form of segregation where religious courts control their adherents behaviour, dress, medical care and diet while the State mandates things like speed limits.
He can fuck right off.
He’s not just advocating surrender — he’s suggesting laïcité is partly to blame for the attacks. It’s incredible, and infuriating, but alas, so very typical of the religious that they always see secularism as the problem no matter how explicitly religious the attacks are.
I think it’s a kind of delusion — rather like how the gun nuts think gun control is to blame every time someone shoots a crowd of people to bits.
(of course I don’t think all religious people think that way — but there sure are a lot who do.)
I mind that all religious person don’t think that way
Well, hey, we are reading an apologist for a certain religion, after all. Isn’t the message ‘do what the mass murderer wants’ pretty much their canon?
I’m not at all being flip. More saying: look, you teach people from the cradle to surrender to a fictional gonna-kill-you-if-you-don’t-do-as-I-say figure, you get all sorts of stupid, costly shit downstream from that, seems to me. Like:
a) people figuring they’re justified in such killing in the fictional one’s name (or just grinding their own axe under the same name, which may also include now apparently justified killing; hell, it’s how the creator of the universe operates, apparently, so why shouldn’t we?), and
b) people figuring when such people do, surrender is appropriate.
To which I say: erm, no. Appropriate is locking up the former, and laughing at the latter, until such time as they’d like to grow up and join the rest of us in the 21st century. And neither of the foregoing actions strikes me as even the faintest approximation of ethical. The former we have laws about, fortunately. The latter, the grovelling and arguing for the same, is generally legal, though many of us have come to consider it despicable, and generally unwise, as it does leave the way open to any number of less fictional tyrants attempting to leverage such impulses.
But then, let’s face it, damaged wanks like that above probably don’t even fully grasp how to worry about that last problem. Grovelling and leading by lying, these are the only two things they figure are actually possible in life. Open government, democracy, and negotiated relationships between peers? What are those, now? They’re taught from the cradle it’s all about domination.
This author is clueless. France’s 1905 law declaring the state secular is often ignored when it comes to Islam. It is basically the only religion that is allowed to occupy the public space and to signal its presence whenever necessary. Municipal pools in areas with large Muslim populations, for example, are gender segregated and sharia-compliant. Public schools offer halal meals in the cafeterias. Every Friday aggressive, supremacist displays of ‘piety’ can be seen in the streets as Muslims (males only!) pray in public…while nearby mosques sit empty. France’s laws on secularism have more holes than a slice of swiss cheese.
If anything, the country’s secular nature needs to be reinforced. The gradual relaxing of rules, the facile willingness to defer to sharia demands and the piecemeal approach to enforcing the law all need to be addressed.
But I doubt that will ever happen
I used to think that ‘collaborator’ was a resistance term for Vichy and co. To my amazement, Collaboration was openly touted by Petain and his crowd.
They successfully packaged obedience to a conquering military occupation as ‘Patriotic’ and More French than any attempt to resist. As France was looted, as even the ruinous treaty signed with Hitler was used a toilet paper by the Germans. As French POWs were held captive (essentially hostages) while the two nations were ‘officially’ not at war.
I’m not suggesting the French have any new Petainism in the wings. But the ‘progressive’ West is riddled with it.
I’ve been learning a bit about that lately thanks to the extraordinary French tv series Un Village Français. It dramatizes the way the meaning of the word changed from 1940 to 1945, and how different people saw it at different times, etc etc. I hadn’t grasped before the extent to which Pétain was a hero to many at first, nor the extent to which respect for him was vigorously enforced. I hadn’t even really grasped that officially speaking France was part of the Axis during the Occupation.
Yes, certainly, but…
There are some questions still worth asking. We can still question the nature of laïcité or the way it is applied. This is not a concept set in stone. Indeed, it is not even set in the French Constitution! (There is a mention of the République being “laïque” but I think that’s about all)
Nicolas Sarkozy – and yes, the little twerp is an aggregate of base and contemptible ambitions set into the form of a man – at least started to ask the right question in his first (IIRC) presidential campaign. But so poisoned is the whole debate in France (and elsewhere) that it was never really discussed: in a country where Catholicism has been the dominant religion for centuries, where its structures and places of worship are numerous, well-funded and well-established, what place is there for a sizable and usually poorer immigrant community to practise their own religion? In France the refusal by the state to step in and help (and believe me, that refusal was informed at least as much by automatic racism as it was by a philosophical attachment to laicity) led to the involvement of foreign money and foreign interests: primarily the madmen of Saudi Arabia, keen as they always are to promote their own, inflexible, and fanatical view of Islam. (If the ‘War on Terror’ was a real thing, and not the sham it so obviously is, we would have bombed Riyadh a long time ago. Not that I am advocating this course of action, mind you!)
So what now? We have had at least two generations of people within our society who have abandoned the (usually) milder and kinder version of Islam of their forbearers. A lot of them, and it’s a point worth repeating, worth hammering even, have abandoned Islam altogether. For them laïcité has worked the way everybody wishes it would. Others are what you may call ‘culturally muslim’ and we should be wary that we do not by constant ostracism push them back into the arms of the mullahs. Because for most the way back to Islam as it was practised in North Africa has been severed by our intransigence, and if – as the poor and the victimised often do – they try to find the ‘comforts’ of religion… well there was one that was waiting for them with open arms and a Kalashnikov…
Oh – but do I really need to point that out? – John is talking bullshit as usual and can be safely ignored…
Oh, sure. All policies can be questioned. What I object to is Ben Ryan’s claim that France should be doing so in response to the recent outbursts of lethal violence.
There are indeed a lot of invented “facts” in John’s comment @ 10.
It’s hard to tell exactly what he’s arguing for. I clicked on the link thinking surely Ophelia must have left out a quote or something that clarifies things…nope. (Sorry for doubting you, Ophelia!)
But reading between the lines, I think he thinks The People Need Religion? So give ’em Christianity, that‘ll stop all this sectarian violence?
Riiight.
That type of argument is often employed by religiots, they naively assume that militant Islam is an ally in their struggle with secularism. In fact for Christians, Jews and other religions the secular state is their only protection from Islamic theocracy.
@10 Ophelia,
“France was part of the Axis during the Occupation”
Yes, in fact Vichy forces actually fought the Allies in North Africa and Syria. The British certainly were concerned that the Petain regime would surrender French naval assets to the Nazis so they took appropriate action.
Others are what you may call ‘culturally muslim’ and we should be wary that we do not by constant ostracism push them back into the arms of the mullahs. Because for most the way back to Islam as it was practised in North Africa has been severed by our intransigence, and if – as the poor and the victimised often do – they try to find the ‘comforts’ of religion… well there was one that was waiting for them with open arms and a Kalashnikov…
I accuse you of willful ignorance.
Standard leftist boilerplate always invokes Muslims as victims and Whites as ‘racists’. Your views are identical to those of The Three Stooges running the country, The three Stooges who were booed at the memorial service just yesterday by utterly exhausted Frenchmen. Je suis Charlie. Je suis Bataclan. Je suis Toulouse. Je suis Brussles. Je suis Nice. Je suis London. Je suis Madrid. Je suis New York. Je suis…
…épuisé.
Would it be of any help to point out that France has many other large minority communities who’ve suffered discrimination, but who haven’t killed hundreds in unprovoked attacks? Where, for example, have the Vietnamese terrorists been hiding? Have you ever heard of terrorist attacks by Black African Christians? Are you telling me Blacks don’t suffer discrimination? Why aren’t the Vietnamese Buddhists or Black Christians taking similar violent ‘comfort’ in their religion as a balm to all this White racism?
Do you deny the existence of hundreds of no-go zones? If so, why does the gov’t of France list them on its websites?
And if you deny the growing phenomenon of Friday prayers in streets and other public places while nearby mosques sit empty, then why not just watch the hundreds of videos showing just that? They’re all over the net.
You seem to blame the French State for not having financed the construction of mosques. Should France, likewise, be financing the construction of Buddhist Temples for its large Vietnamese and Chinese communities or churches for its impoverished Black Christians? If you’re going to take the French State to task, why not do so for the fact France has foolishly imported millions of people who are proving impossible to integrate.
All your ‘logic’ does is just set the stage for the next attack…AND the election of both Marine LePen and Donald Trump.
I shall now stand moderated.
RJW @ 14 –
I know. That was one of those moments in watching Un Village that I went “What? They did?!” – and proceeded to do More Reading on the subject. I was really quite amazed to learn that when the Allies landed in Morocco the French fought them.
I did know about the scuttling of the French ships by the British after the fall of France…but I suppose I assumed there just was no more French military once the Germans occupied.
John – nobody here is talking “standard leftist boilerplate.” Don’t waste all that typing on fighting monsters of your own imagination. Take deep breaths, calm down, and read more carefully. Then when you’ve done that, write more carefully. Your writing is far more stereotyped and predictable than anything Arnaud said.
Thanks for your critique. Yes, I know, my writing leaves a lot to be desired. However, it CAN sometimes be infused with passion
Yes I know, but your passion can interfere with your ability to read and think carefully.
Ophelia,
Btw, I’m not trying to promote the “Cheese-eating-surrender-monkeys” theme in relation to the French. Allied armies had been easily defeated by the Nazis and their main ally the British had fled back to their island, so a bargain with the Devil was the only option. Before the US and USSR entered the war they had no hope of rescue. I remember, years ago, a conversation with a veteran of WW2, a former German naval officer who claimed that the French were friendly until the tide of war turned. I’m not sure whether they were ‘friendly’ or just resigned to their fate.
John
Regardless of writing styles, I agree with you that there’s far too much self recrimination from some ‘leftist’ commentators. They have developed a conceit that terrorism is essentially a reaction against Western policy, whether it was the Crusades, the Sykes-Picot agreement or racism, it’s all our fault. The obvious fact that Islam is a proselytising totalitarian ideology seems to have escaped their notice.
RJW, no, I didn’t think you were. I’m not either. The situation was a complete nightmare. I’m not tut tutting at the French, just a little annoyed with myself for having such a bad grasp on the history.
On the other point – my issue with John’s writing isn’t his style, it’s his escalating tendency to go into full-on xenophobic mode and his habit of arguing furiously with people who aren’t here.
Ophelia
The study of the French Apres Guerre could in all fairness keep whole generations of sociologists busy and contented (but maybe a little scared). I can hardly think of any other time when a whole country tried to such a extent to rewrite its own immediate past. The Resistance and the Free French became the myth of the Resistance and the Free French. Hardly a Frenchman in those years who did not claim a connection!
Let’s be clear: there was a Resistance, brave men and women who fought German occupation and the Vichy government for the length of the war at some time terrible costs. But let’s not also delude ourselves: standard military doctrine until the eighties was that, if more than 10% of the population of a territory is actively engaged against the occupation, the position of the occupying armies is untenable. We are not talking 10% of the population actually fighting here, merely supporting the much smaller number of actual fighters. So it’s obvious that we were far, very far from that number in occupied France!
As for the Free French Forces, while it’s true that at the end of the war they counted more than a million combattants, they were around 7000 in number at the time of De Gaulle famous appel and for most of the conflict were organised around a nucleus of colonial troops from Senegal and northern Africa. According to Wikipedia at the time of the liberation of Paris the Free French Forces were 65% colonial! These are the same people who now apparently are impossible to integrate in our oh-so-marvelous white western world but passons… On the other side, as you noted, French Vichy forces fought sometimes bitterly against the allies mostly in North and West Africa. At Bir Hakeim (IIRC) two regiments of the Foreign Legion fought one another to a standstill…
And let’s not talk of the SS Division Charlemagne…
Or the Milice…
So from 1945 onward there was a great effort in France, an effort of reinterpretation of history, run parallel if you will, with the effort of reconstruction of the economy, where half of the country’s population was busy vouching for the Resistant status of the other half, in the certain knowledge that the favour would eventually be returned. (I exagerate, obviously, but not as much as I would like…) After a while it became the accepted version of history and woe to anybody who tried to dig too deep…
It’s only in the last few decades that a real effort has been made to unearth the truth from this incredible weight of self delusion and hypocrisy, and we can finally now have that much needed debate. We owe it to those who actually fought.
So is Christianity – or at least most versions thereof – and so what? This is where you are wrong. We are not fighting an ideology. (And to be honest I don’t think you believe it either.) We are fighting people and until we realise that simple fact we will not win…
Arnaud,
“So is Christianity – or at least most versions thereof – and so what? This is where you are wrong. We are not fighting an ideology. (And to be honest I don’t think you believe it either.”
First I’ll comment on your arrogant attitude, do not presume to tell me what I really believe, which is basically calling me a liar. I have absolutely no tolerance for ad hominem attacks. Or do you have a crystal ball? I wouldn’t rely on it as an accurate source.
Of course Christianity is a totalitarian ideology and it took 1500 years to develop the idea of a secular state, i could ask what relevance your comment has? You appear to dismiss the threat to liberal democracy.
“We are fighting people and until we realise that simple fact we will not win…”
What a banal statement, of course we’re fighting people. Consider for a moment the question, “why are we fighting them.” Do you really think that ISIS and the hate preachers at mosques aren’t ideologues?
Try to present a coherent argument.
Arnaud – yes, I’ve been learning that, especially the part about everyone claiming to have been in the Resistance.
But it was true everywhere, I think, not just France – more people claimed to have helped Jews than possibly could have, more claimed to have protested the internment of Japanese citizens than possibly could have, etc etc etc. There was a lot of shame in a lot of places.
Ophelia,
“But it was true everywhere”.
Yes, it was. The Japanese are not the only people with selective amnesia. In his book “All Hell Let Loose” British historian Max Hastings recounts some appalling behaviour on the Allied side of the conflict.
Ophelia – True everywhere yes. It is just the sheer scale of it that sometimes leaves me speechless. We are not talking about the actions of troops in a foreign war. These can easily be brushed under the carpet. But this was something that everybody had seen and witnessed. That everybody knew. A whole nation learning in a few years to lie to itself…
The accusation has been made before. Several times. Well, a great many times to be honest.
I’ll live.
That’s the thing with arrogance: one presumes. One presumes a lot. Here, for instance, I’ll presume that your obvious anger stems not from my arrogance or my presumption but from the mere fact of my disagreement.
So, I’ll repeat what I said before: we are not fighting an ideology because the ideological tools used by Daesh and Boko Haram, and before them Al Qaeda, we know exactly where they come from. And that is Saudi Arabia. (Which also provides, still as we speak, much of the funding.) And we do absolutely nothing about that.
And one of the ways they spread their propaganda is by nurturing a feeling of victimhood in their targets. Now, you may disagree with me as to whether that feeling is justified or not (I would not presume to know your mind!) but it is a fact that it is there and it is extraordinarily potent. And to tell people, as John seems to want to do: “Look at the Cambodians! Pull your damn socks up!” is not going to prevent the next fucking terror attack.
Three points
1 – I rather suspect that they are not. (See? My argument is coherent!) In the sense that their ideology is not what ultimately motivates them. I think that what they are after is power and the satisfaction of their own personal desires. The ideology is just a tool they use, in the same way paedophile Catholic priests could not possibly have any belief in the Gospel they preached but used the power the very act of preaching gave them. These goals I do not know what they are and they probably vary from one individual to another, (although there seem to be a lot of rapes) and they are probably not coherent or logical, and some people, let’s not forget, just enjoy the mere use of their power, the terror and the carnage…
2 – It seems that one can abandon the trappings of religion but certain habits linger for a while. And if there is no God-shaped hole, there often seems to be a Satan-shaped one. Me, I am always sceptical of any reasoning that presuppose the existence of a great evil, stalking the Earth as it were, quasi-independent of human minds. I always suspect the situation is more complex than that. Occam’s razor does not really apply itself well to human affairs.
3 – This one is rather long, so please bear with me.
We were told that the Thalys attacker had been “radicalised” in the year prior to the attack.
Said and Cherif Kourachi (the Charlie Hebdo killers) were two drifters and small time crooks, drinking alcohol and taking drugs, having casual sex, who were apparently radicalised (that word again) in a matter of weeks. So was Amely Coulibaly who attacked a jewish supermarket at the same time.
The Nice killer, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, was a nasty, nasty piece of work, well known of the police. But he had never been flagged as a potential terror suspect. According to his neighbours, he drank, ate pork, took drugs and was promiscuous. He only started attending his local mosque in April this year. Apparently he was “indoctrinated” by an Algerian Daesh militant in Nice.
I call bullshit.
All these people are dead. All of them went to accomplish these atrocities in the sure and certain knowledge that they would not come back alive. I do not believe that people could be “indoctrinated” to such a degree in a few weeks. We are back to the great Satan, an entity so dangerous and powerful that its mere touch is sufficient to make you its agent. I like Star Trek but I do not believe the Borg to be real.
The operative word in ‘suicide bombers’ is ‘suicide’.
We are dealing with people who, for one reason or another, do not believe that their lives matter. I do not think they are fundamentally different from the fathers who, before committing suicide, kill their partners and children.
In Africa, Boko Haram use children soldiers and suicide bombers, Children soldiers are easy to ‘make’: a combination of drugs and atrocity (as in: you force them from the very beginning to commit atrocities, so that there is no possible return. You reward them with drugs and sex. The method was perfected to an astonishing extant in the eastern Congo in the 90s and noughties). What you have then is no indoctrinated fanatic, just a kid who absolutely does not care and has an AK47. The suicide bombers… well it seems that nowadays most of them are schoolgirls kidnapped months or years before. We all know what happened to them.
These are people who have been forcefully taught that their lives and that of others absolutely do not matter.
The technique seems to have jumped to the middle east and Daesh: we tend to look at the atrocities perpetuated in Syria and Iraq as a function of the ideology propagated by the mullahs but that does not really resist scrutiny. They are tools used to create the damaged people they need.
And in the west, when they cannot create them, they can easily find them. There are damaged people everywhere…
So yes, what we are fighting are people, not an ideology. And I am sorry if you find that ‘banal’.
Arnaud @ 28 – yes – but…I can’t help sympathizing with their plight. That’s one reason I like this tv serial so much: it’s because it does what extended tv serials can do: give one some sense, however faint, of what a situation would be like to live through. I can easily imagine being a total coward in that time and place.