1767. Charlie Hebdo Massacre: Right to Insult or the Responsibility Principle?

By Saral Sarkar, March 8, 2015

The murderers of the Charlie-Hebdo-cartoonists got their deserved punishment. In terms of popular sentiment, it was okay that they were killed by the security forces. From their own point of view and from that of their spiritual kin, however, the murderers were highly successful. They could not only avenge the insult to their Prophet – for them a great cause – but they also died as martyrs, what they probably themselves also wanted to.

    But the murdered cartoonists did not die as martyrs. They did not want to die. They had applied for and received police protection. The chief editor had, of course, once said that he would rather die standing upright than live kneeling. But that rather testifies to his stubbornness, nothing else. For what he and his colleagues died for – namely the right to insult Prophet Muhammad and millions of Muslims – is truly not a great cause. Compare this with the bloggers in Bangladesh (one in Saudi Arabia) who are being persecuted, even murdered, for trying to make their country a secular state.

    How should one, for example, characterize a person who wants to play football on a known minefield other than by the word "stubborn" or “reckless”? You can after all play football on a different pitch! Or was it supposed to be a serious and important political cause? For example, criticism of religious superstition or criticism of the status of women in Islam? Moreover, you can criticize Islam, or religion in general, in other ways, in ways that that do not lead straight onto a minefield! It's after all known at the latest since 2005, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published its notorious Muhammad cartoons, how furiously Muslim masses all over the world react to such things. Since that time, all people know that particularly insulting Mohammed cartoons deeply hurt the feelings of devout Muslims and that at least some of them are ready to avenge the insult to their Prophet through murder.

    Given this history, CH’s Muhammad cartoons were a pure provocation, nothing else. For before this event, the right to freedom of expression was not at all in danger, neither in France nor elsewhere in Europe. These bad Mohammed cartoons are also no expressions of free speech; they are only insults. One had almost forgotten the Salman Rushdie case (1988), even the cartoons of Jyllands-Posten. Through their infantile provocations, the CH-cartoonists have not only caused their own death, but also that of three policepersons and four Jewish hostages. Indirectly they have also further deepened the already existing deep divide between Christians and Muslims.

    In many of the media comments it was, inter alia, insisted that one who lives in France must also accept the constitution and the laws of the country. I agree one hundred percent, although I do not exactly know whether also insulting Islam and the Muslim community by means of Muhammad cartoons is really covered by the laws. In Germany, probably also in France, it is a criminal offense to voice the opinion that the Holocaust did not really happen. In France, you are not allowed to express the opinion that in 1915 the Armenians had not suffered a genocide, but only, as the Turks maintain, a few hundred thousand deaths through war events. I have heard that in France it is not allowed to insult the tricolor and the Marseillaise. And almost everywhere in Europe the police also sometimes prohibit, for security reasons, the freedom of expressing one’s opinion by means of a demo. One could of course say: such simply is the legal position, that’s that, end of discussion. But that is a legalistic attitude, not a political one. Is the discussion really over? In view of the seventeen-fold revenge murder in Paris, and the revenge murders that may happen in the future, it is necessary to remember an English proverb: "When the law is an ass, someone has to kick it". 

The Responsibility Principle

But isn’t there, apart from constitutions and laws, also the common sense precept that everybody should act reasonably and responsibly? On a stretch of autobahn without speed limit one is allowed to drive as fast as one wants to. But is it responsible behavior to drive there tempo 280? No doubt, the producers of CH acted within the limits of what is legal, but they acted irresponsibly. Their murderers have virtually said: Yes, we know the constitution and the laws of the country; with our action we are going to contravene these; we know that we shall be punished for this action; OK, we accept any punishment for our decision to follow the laws of our religion and violate those of the state. Stubborn mule against stubborn mule. In any constellation that would lead to disaster. That simply is the reality. The constitutions of the world are after all nothing more than so many often questionable principles that just stand on paper.

    There is a famous Kant quote that one could here use as a criterion for right, as opposed to lawful, action: “I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.” (Alternative translation: "Act only on that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” German original: „Handle so, dass die Maxime deines Willens jederzeit zugleich als Prinzip einer allgemeinen Gesetzgebung gelten kann.“)¹ This was written in the age of Enlightenment. I remember from my student days that the Enlightenment comprised reason and tolerance as two of its most important values – both absolutely necessary for social peace. This Kant-quote lays down the moral rule for right action. It does not speak of one’s right to act within the framework of current legislation of a particular country, it speaks of maxims of one’s actions that could also at any time be valid as the principle of a universal legislation. What can be a higher principle of universal legislation than the maintenance of social and international peace?

    I can here also quote a modern philosopher. In his book The Imperative of Responsibility (Das Prinzip Verantwortung), Hans Jonas wrote about our responsibility for peace with nature. In a conversation with an interview partner he showed he had little faith in democracy. He said: "The philosopher must certainly have the courage to say that democracy, of course, is highly desirable, but it cannot itself be the indispensable condition for making human life on earth worth the trouble."^1a In the same sense, we can say that the democratic political order and constitutions and laws adopted by democratically elected parliaments cannot by themselves be enough for maintaining social peace. Jonas wrote in the aforementioned book:

" 'Act in such a way that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life on earth'; or expressed negatively: ‘Act in such a way that the effects of your action are not destructive to the future possibility of such life'; or simply: 'Do not endanger the conditions for the indefinite continued existence of mankind on earth'; or again expressed positively: 'Include in your current choice the future integrity of humans as co-objects of your willing.' "²

    Jonas wrote these sentences out of concern for the state of our natural environment. We know that the greater part of mankind’s current economic activities – even those that are covered by the constitutions and laws – is continually destroying our natural environment. Therefore, we must also appeal to the sense of responsibility of all economic actors. Following Jonas, we should be allowed to tell all people – especially the political leaders of society, Intellectuals, creative artists etc. – : Act in such a way that the effects of your action are compatible with the permanence of genuine human social existence; or in negative terms: Act in such a way that the effects of your action are not destructive to social peace.

    The CH-cartoonists knew that their Mohammed cartoons deeply offend their five million Muslim fellow citizens – many of whom had been highly welcome as they once came as guest workers. They also knew that these cartoons could provoke some among these fellow citizens to commit murder. Five million are about 8 percent of the French population, not a negligible size. In spite of that they published their offensive cartoons. What is worse, many political leaders of the world and one million French people reinforced through their subsequent demonstration in Paris the destructive effects of the cartoon publication. This is evidenced by the fact that about five weeks later (February 14), in Copenhagen, an assassination attempt was made on a public meeting in which the same person participated, who had in 2005 published the first Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands Posten (one of them depicted Mohammed as a dog.)

    Don’t such people have more important and more urgent things to do? By the end of this year, in Paris, the political leaders of the world must decide on measures for preventing further climate disasters. (Till now, Paris has not seen a demonstration of one Million people for climate protection.) The wars in Syria, Iraq, the Ukraine etc. must be ended. Adequate answers to the problem of millions of refugees all over the world must be found. The rise of radical right-wing parties and xenophobic groups must be contained. And there are many more such important and urgent tasks. But the European states are currently totally busy trying to enlarge and strengthen their anti-terror apparatus. Such a petty thing, the right to publish Mohammed cartoons, has pushed the said great and difficult tasks away from the stage.

What To Do?

We know that Islamist militants have in the past not only reacted with violence to Mohammed cartoons. They reacted to Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988) and to some texts and statements of Taslima Nasreen (Bangladeshi writer) (1994) with Fatwas and calls for killing them. It cannot go on like this. It is not acceptable that the one minority again and again insults and provokes and the other minority reacts with murder and death threats. But you cannot also always exercise self-censorship in the interest of social peace, especially since not every criticism is an insult or provocation. How should we – leftists, progressives or simply secular-minded people – behave in such cases?

    Unfortunately, what Richard Dawkins calls “God delusion"³, continues to exist in the world. Most people in the world practice, seriously or not so seriously, one or another religion. The aggression of militant Islamists against infidels and people of other faiths, or their aggressive response to certain acts of the latter, has parallels in other religious communities. Among Christians, the days of the belligerent/murderous version of aggressive religiosity, are, thank God, largely over. The conflicts in Northern Ireland and Nagorno-Karabach are two exceptions, which, however, are also cases of territorial disputes. Unfortunately, in two other major religious communities – the Hindus and the Buddhists – that is not the case yet. In India, mutual violent aggression between Hindus and Muslims do not belong to past history yet. Of late, even Buddhists, namely Burmese and Sri Lankan Buddhists, are persecuting their Muslim compatriots – citing the Buddhist identity of their country. In addition to actions of the police and security forces against violent fundamentalists, as they are required by law, any sensible person should, in the sense of civil society activities, fight against such aggressive religiosity. But how do you do that? How can we bring the militant fundamentalists of any religion to their senses?

    One thing can probably be regarded as indisputable: One cannot get any positive results through insults and provocations. On the contrary, they only stir up hatred and violence. We have observed that in the last 25 years. With this method one can only start a new conflict again and again. This is true even if the victim of insult is not a religion. Not all people react to an insult by going to a court. Even among non-religious people, for example, if X tells Y that the latter’s father was a thief and mother a prostitute, then, make no mistake, Y will first give X a sound spanking – regardless of the veracity of the assertion. That is the reality.

    It is also not possible for the security forces to finally win the fight against religiously motivated violence and terrorism. After every single success in this fight, they are and they will be confronted with new acts of violence and new threats from new militant groups. This too is a part of our experience of the last 25 years. Militant jihadists, who are not afraid to die, who are even prepared to blow themselves up in order to kill the enemy – the usual threats of punishment have little effect on such people. In such situations, the security forces of the world are at a loss.

    So we have to get to the root of the problem. But for this we must recognize the root first. I first published a short article on this subject ten years ago. The occasion at that time was the assassination of Amsterdam filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who had insulted Islam. I ask my readers to read that article. Here is the link:

http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/the-power-of-religions-and-helplessness.html

As to the question "what to do?", I set out my current and preliminary thoughts below:

It is a fact that most people are religious – that is, roughly speaking, they believe in the existence of one or several more or less powerful supernatural beings/agents (God, gods, goddesses, spirits, ancestors etc.). According to scientists such as Richard Dawkins³ and Pascal Boyer⁴, this is rooted in the phylogenetic inheritance of the human species. The proof of this assertion is the fact that religion in its broadest sense is a universal phenomenon. So we atheists and leftists cannot hope that the phenomenon religion will one day cease to exist all by itself. Moreover, our experience shows that, generally, when a person is born into a religious community, this religion has become, at least to some extent, an integral part of the identity of this person, which can be extremely difficult to strip away. This explains why, for example, recently the Yezidis in northern Syria refused to be converted to Islam and accepted to be killed by IS fighters.

    We must then work in the long term to at least contain the influence of the radical-fundamentalist versions of the big religions. We should not criticize this or that religion, not Allah, Jehovah, Jesus or Shiva. We should try to reduce, actually question, the relevance of religion per se – especially in practical life. We can quote the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus. He is reported to have said:

„Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”⁵

    We can tell our fellow humans who are religious: Dear friends, you pray to God so many times a day. Nothing against that. But your God, as we know, does not help you. So let's leave our gods and our religions in our private prayer room, and let us together try to make this bad world a little more bearable. Salvation can wait, but we must eat everyday. 

    This is a very difficult job. For all religions are interpretable and applicable in a fundamentalist way. As Klaus Kienzler, scholar of comparative theology, writes on the major religions:

"We have seen that a number of indispensable fundaments belong to the essence of religion: inter alia the religious sources such as scripture and tradition, orthodoxy and orthopraxy, ... [So] it can also be said here that all religions are in danger of being turned in a fundamentalist manner. .... ".^5a

    It is especially so, because it is claimed (except in Buddhism) that the scriptures or at least the more important parts of them were directly revealed, even dictated (the Qur'an) or handed over (the Ten Commandments) by God. Of course, modern Christian theology does not understand revelation in the scriptures in this way. But "in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy of 1978 it is stated ...: 'We profess that the scriptures as a whole and in all their parts up to the individual words of the original writings were inspired by God.' "⁶ With such understandings of the respective scriptures, a person with a militant character, whose main identity is his religion, may not find it difficult to persecute non-believers or even to kill them, or to blow up an abortion clinic with a bomb. We must bear in mind that, of course, the spectacular attacks are perpetrated by individual culprits or small groups of militant fundamentalists, but they draw their inspiration and courage from a large field of hundreds of thousands of fundamentalists. That is why it is not enough that security authorities monitor potential assassins and render them harmless. The problem must also be dealt with broadly, i.e. macro-psychologically.

    What we can certainly do is to tell our devout fellow citizens of the world in a friendly and polite manner that they should not take their scriptures as clear words of God. Believers know that all their holy books were finally written down by humans. All prophets, also Prophet Muhammad, were humans, fallible like any other. The texts of "God's words" are far from clear. That's why there are so many places in the holy books that are in need of interpretation and have also been variously interpreted. Fundamentalist interpretations and moderate/liberal interpretations stand opposite to each other. Let me give here an example. Asghar Ali Engineer, a devout Muslim and an Islam scholar, writes about the term Kafir (infidel, heretic):

„The Qur’an … created a category of Ahl al-kitab (people of the book). All those to whom Allah sent His messenger and the book were called people of the book. The Qur’an mentions Christians, Jews and Sabaens in this category. However, it does not exclude those who have not been mentioned in this category by the Qur’an. Many others like Zoroastrians were included in this [second] category. The Sufi saints like Mazhar Jan-i-Janan included the Hindus in this [second] category, arguing that how can Allah forget to send His messengers to India as He had promised to send His messengers to all the nations. He accepts the Vedas [of Hinduism] as revealed scriptures. He also felt that Hindus were monotheists as they believe in God who is nirgun and nirakar (i.e. without attributes and shape) which is the highest form of tawhid (monotheism).”⁷ 

This shows that Islam too is amenable to reform and liberal interpretations. That is the reason why there are in Islam, just as in Christianity, so many movements and sects.

    However, to be able and allowed to say that to believers and persons of other faiths presupposes that we have and care about maintaining regular social contacts with them. Only through such contacts can we – atheists, secularists, and leftists – succeed in promoting the values of Enlightenment, tolerance, and a minimum of mutual respect. Only thus can we overcome the existing mental barriers. It is counterproductive to promote or accept a multicultural society. That would mean to promote and accept the separate existence of parallel societies. The people of other faiths must instead be included in the social life of the majority community.

    It is clear, to take up and maintain regular contact with established radical and militant fundamentalists is simply not possible for us. But the vast majority of people in any religious community, including the Islamic one, is anything but having a fundamentalist mindset. They believe in the principle live and let live and they do not comply with all the commandments of their scriptures. Moreover, there are in the world, even in Muslim majority countries, many liberal, modern, progressive and even leftist Muslims. They are culturally Muslims, even though they may not pray five times a day. In Egypt and Tunisia, recently, several million Muslim citizens ended the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood. By working with such people we may be able to create an atmosphere in which all devout Muslims would react to an insult to Islam or the Prophet with the sentence: "That leaves me cold." I actually heard this sentence in a TV show; an Islam scholar, who teaches this religion in a school, said that. This gives us hope.

    What would help even more is that liberal-Muslim Islam scholars, who also practice their religion, dare to publish historical-critical works on the scriptures of their religion. Above I have given an example of this: the quote from Asghar Ali Engineer. If in real life and in a given situation it is too dangerous, such works could be published anonymously. There is no sense in attracting the wrath of murderous fanatics. In political movements it is (has been) common practice to publish anonymous pamphlets. A few days ago I heard on TV some good news: A French Muslim academic has given a call for reform of Islam. He has also called for a historical-critical study of his religion. I heard roughly the same in TV news on 23rd February: Also Islam scholars of the famous Al-Azhar University of Cairo spoke of the need to reform Islamic education.

    One thing we cannot do is to mitigate the hatred of all kinds of Muslims for the Euro-American imperialists and Israeli colonialists, who have since long been subjugating and humiliating Muslim peoples politically and economically. A byproduct of this is that most, if not all, Westerners are generally suspected of being enemies and haters of Islam and the Muslim world. History also gives enough reason for this suspicion. Just think of the Crusades, the second Iraq war of 2003, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the treatment of the Palestinians, etc. Clearly, Muslims cannot maintain any friendly contact with actual Islam-haters among Westerners. That is why it is extremely important that Westerners who are willing to establish friendly contacts with Muslims demonstrate anti-imperialist sentiments. 

    But mere anti-imperialist politics is not sufficient. What is needed is a great cause, a positive one, to which young people may feel inspired to commit themselves. Their hatred for the imperialists led thousands of young Muslims into the camp of Al Qaeda and ISIS, where their great cause is an Islamic “state of God”. The energetic Muslim youth who stomped the Arab Spring out of the ground with as much vigor, need a great cause for which they could engage themselves again. I can offer them the following sentences of Asghar Ali Engineer:

„Qur’an uses … the word jihad for moral struggle. It is every Muslim’s duty to continue the struggle for moral excellence, of his own as well as of the society he lives in. To fight against corruption, against environmental pollution, for human rights, for justice for weaker sections of society and such other noble causes is part of jihad. Anything, which brings relief to suffering humanity, is part of jihad in the way of Allah.”⁸

Without the reference to Allah, one could call it the struggle for an eco-socialist society.

References

1. Immanuel Kant (quoted from the internet).

1a. Jonas, Hans : Gespräch mit Eike Gebhardt, in: Ethik für die Zukunft - Im Diskurs mit Hans Jonas, Ed. by Dietrich Böhler, Verlag C. H. Beck, Munich 1994. P. 210-211. ISBN 978-3406386558, quoted in: br-online.de. (quoted from the internet).

2. Jonas, Hans :The Imperative of Responsibility. (quoted from the internet).

3. Dawkins, Richard (2007) The God Delusion. London: Black Swan.

4. Boyer, Pascal (2002) Religion Explained – The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors. London: Random House.

5. Epicurus (quoted from the internet).

5a. Kienzler, Klaus (1999) Der religiöse Fundamentalismus – Christentum Judentum Islam. Munich: C.H. Beck. P. 23.

6. ibid. P. 41.

7. Engineer, Asghar Ali (2008) Islam – Misgivings and History. New Delhi: Vitasta Publishing. P. 222f.

8. ibid. P. 227.

1710. Charlie Hebdo: Imperialism’s New 9/11?

By Jeff Mackler, Socialist Action, January 20, 2015

Protests agains new Charlie Hebdo cartoon mocking prophet Mohammad erupted in Muslim regions of the world. Iranian demonstrators burn representations of Israeli and U.S. flags during a rally against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s latest publication of a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad, which some Muslims deem an insult to Islam, in front of the French Embassy, Tehran, Iran, Monday, Jan. 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

The Jan. 7 Paris bombings and shootings afforded French and allied capitalist heads of state—some 50 presidents and prime ministers plus top U.S. officials, all complicit with mass murder—the opportunity for an unprecedented show of unity under the call of “I am Charlie Hebdo.” We note the hypocrisy of the perpetrators of war and systematic violence coming together to pose as defenders of “free speech, liberty, fraternity, and democratic rights.” Virtually all have led in suppressing, if not murdering, opposition currents in their own nations and everywhere on earth where their troops engage in the ruthless murder of oppressed people.

A recent article by Parisian journalist George Kazolias, subtitled, “The Wages of Intolerance,” captured the grotesque hypocrisy of those who led the Sunday, Jan. 11 government-sponsored and media-promoted Paris spectacle of 1.6 million people. “Then there were the world leaders,” Kazolias writes, “Ukrainian Prime Minister, Arsenily Yatseyuk, who has neo-Nazis in his government and has done nothing to bring to justice the fascists and their police accomplices who murdered 48 ethnic Russians in Odessa last May.

“There was Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has taken numerous measures to muzzle the opposition press, earning the scorn of Reporters without Borders, which ranks his country 64th in press freedom.” Orban has also earned international criticism for encouraging persecution of the Roma people and for his party’s anti-Jewish stance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu, whose government slaughtered over 2000 Palestinians last year in its invasion of Gaza, also marched in Paris. While in France, Netanyahu called on French Jews to migrate to Zionist Israel for their “protection.” What hypocrisy! Kazolias, in his article, recalls that noted Israeli historian Shlomo Sand has written, “I am aware of living in one of the most racist societies in the Western world.”

Beating the war drums loudly, the president of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France, Roger Cukierman, declared the attacks in Paris to be the beginning of “World War Three” and likened them to what is happening in “Syria and Gaza.” Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy went further, proclaiming,  “War has been declared on France.” Le Figaro’s editorial writer, Ivan Rioufol, joined the chorus with “France is at war. Perhaps at civil war tomorrow. Its enemy is radical Islam, political Islam, Jihadi Islam.”

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu joined in the arm-in-arm display of ruling-class solidarity. There was no mention of his government’s decades of trampling on freedom of expression, not to mention its ongoing subjugation and war against Turkey’s oppressed Kurdish masses, including during recent months when the Turkish government gleefully stood aside watching the Islamic State try to wipe the canton of Kobanê and its Kurdish workers off the face of the earth.

While President Obama did not attend the rally, Jane Hartley, U.S. ambassador to France, was present, while a day earlier, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder attended a “security summit meeting” bringing together top intelligence and law enforcement officials from Europe and North America to discuss how to implement measures to stop terrorism. Holder announced that the White house would convene a Feb. 18 international forum “to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.”

But voices of dissent spoke loud and clear in the U.S. and around the world. “We are NOT Charlie Hebdo!” read the Dec. 15 statement adopted by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC).”

“Neither do we condone the bombings and murder of journalists at their headquarters, however much we are repulsed by their racist, chauvinist and hateful Islamophobic caricatures of oppressed people. Neither do we condone the subsequent murders at the Paris Kosher supermarket,” the UNAC’s statement continues.

“Yes,” the UNAC statement continued “…we are for free speech, freedom of expression and democratic rights for all, including the Muslim and antiwar activists who were banned by the French government from street protests in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, or the Muslim women who are banned from wearing the veil. We are for freedom of expression and the right to exist of Muslim Americans, 700,000 of whom have been investigated or interrogated in the U.S. for being Muslim, or the 1.5 million Latino immigrants in the U.S. who are imprisoned, detained and deported, or the entire world’s people who are victims of the all-pervasive high-tech surveillance of everyone’s personal means of communication by the U.S., France and all other so-called democratic nations.” (See complete UNAC statement below.)

Using as a pretext for deepening the concerted and worldwide assault on civil liberties and democratic rights and to justify new wars of conquest, the Jan. 7 bombing of the offices of the racist, Islamophobic satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo—where a terrorist attack killed 17 journalists—world imperialism has declared yet another “war on terror.” This one includes openly sending U.S. and allied troops to areas of the world, such as Africa, where they have generally operated in a covert manner in the past. The world’s real terrorists believe that Charlie Hebdo can be used to legitimize, in the name of fighting terrorism, their plans for theft and conquest.

The French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle was assigned a week later to head for Iraq to join U.S. fighter planes in bombing that nation to smithereens. The French National Assembly is all but certain to renew its previously “limited” commitment to join the U.S. bombing in Iraq and Syria.

Three thousand French troops have been deployed in Africa to “counter extremist groups in Chad and Mauritania.” Thousands more are stationed in other former French colonies like Mali, where in the name of fighting terrorism they organize to install dictators posing as democrats to protect their “interests,” and murder all who oppose the essential re-colonization of the African continent now in progress. The now thundered rationalizations to combat terrorism are dutifully employed to demonize all who resist—the same rationales, minus that of the “white man’s burden to civilize savages,” used in previous centuries to justify colonization, plunder and enslavement.

A massive mobilization of French police was ordered by President Francois Hollande and Prime Minister Marcel Valls. Ten thousand French troops are deployed across the country to “guard vulnerable sites deemed at risk.” Jewish schools and synagogues were placed high on the list. The objective is to manufacture a terrifying atmosphere of fear, suspicion, and recrimination. Electronic surveillance has been ramped up to “curb jihadist recruitment in prisons and other crucibles of radicalization.”

“The French response,” according to The New York Times, “played into an emerging debate across Europe that pits support for civil liberties against the demands of security officials, who site the attack as evidence of an urgent need to introduce stronger powers to monitor suspects.”

A month earlier, France witnessed a wave of criticism of U.S. mass surveillance of its citizens and of the all-pervasive horrors that were revealed in Diane Feinstein’s $40 million, 6000-page Senate Intelligence Committee report documenting widespread CIA “illegal” detention and torture. France was among the several nations who condemned as “draconian” the post-9/11 U.S. reactionary measures like the Patriot Act that included deep incursions into basic civil liberties. Today, that rhetoric has vanished. The near instant transformation was achieved using the combined powers of the French state.

 Attacks on French Muslims

We have heard of no measures taken to protect the beleaguered Muslim communities—the “banlieues” that surround Paris, largely populated by impoverished African and Middle Eastern immigrants—where unemployment ranks highest in the nation and social services rank lowest. Unemployment among Muslim youth approaches 40 percent. Close to half of the residents of Muslim communities lack a high school diploma. As in the U.S., police harassment and profiling—stop and frisk, French style—are taken for granted.

There has been little mention of the 50 recorded post-Charlie Hebdo fire bombings or of the racist graffiti-tagged and bullet-ridden mosques; such atrocities meant to terrorize the Muslim population are ongoing and proceed with impunity. France’s Central Council of Muslims reported 21 shootings that targeted Muslim buildings.

There is little mention of the fact that 60 percent of French prisons are crammed with Muslims or that Muslim women are repeatedly attacked by Islamophobic bigots who tear off their veils (nijab) or even their hijab (traditional clothing). The report of an Islamophobic monster tearing off the veil of a pregnant 21-year-old Muslim woman went largely unnoticed, including the fact that she was thrown to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the stomach, only to lose her unborn child a few hours later in a local hospital. The French police report noted in the diminutive that she was “kicked in the side”! No one has been arrested for this murder! There are no nationwide searches for the racist gunmen and bombers!

There have been some voices of sanity and compassion in the midst of this government-promoted warmongering, hate, and hysteria, as when a French association representing 120 mayors issued a statement warning that Muslim communities were “on edge” in the face of the terror launched against them. The statement pointed to the need to address “economic, social and educational shortfalls” with regard to France’s most impoverished, segregated, and oppressed communities.

French revolutionary socialists, like those in the Anti-capitalist and Revolution current of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), have strongly condemned the racist hysteria. Yet under present conditions a massive and united counter-mobilization has proved impossible to organize.

The “liberal-minded” New York Times opines that “nearly everyone agreed the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo attack in France—including a heightened security response by its allies—is a distraction from a larger problem: a sense of increasing economic and social marginalization that many cited as a root cause of young people drifting toward extremism.” The Times neglected to add that the endless imperialist slaughter and wars against Muslim nations around the world are bound to produce not only massive opposition among the oppressed but also rare acts of terror by desperate individuals who envision no other means to avenge imperialism’s systematic slaughtering of millions and its reduction of whole nations to starvation.

Long ago, Leon Trotsky sharply counterposed individual acts of terrorism by tiny groups and individuals outraged by imperialism’s never-ending wars, torture, and racist rationalizations to the necessity of collective and united struggles against the capitalist system itself. He wrote, “To learn to see all the crimes against humanity, all the indignities to which the human body and spirit are subjected, as the twisted outgrowths and expressions of the existing social system, in order to direct all our energies into a collective struggle against this system—that is the direction in which the burning desire for revenge can find its highest moral satisfaction.”

Tragically, in the absence of collective struggles against the system led by conscious mass revolutionary parties deeply rooted in all the struggles of the oppressed and aimed at challenging capitalist rule, the imperialist war makers will continue to prevail—through conquest and occupation or through the ruination of entire peoples. Under these circumstances, isolated and individual acts of terror will inevitably continue and be used to further fan the flames of hate. As in France, imperialist usurpers will use them to justify their mass terror—that is, unending wars as well the imposition of blanket restrictions on civil liberties for all those who dare to speak out.

We need not search for evidence of the latter. “French Rein in Speech Backing Terror: Recent Law Allows For Rapid Trials and Stiff Prison Sentences,” reads a Jan. 16 New York Times headline. Some 100 people are already under investigation for “making or posting comments that support or try to justify terrorism.” Two examples were cited by The Times; in one, a 28-year-old man of Tunisian background was sentenced to six months in prison for shouting support for the gunmen involved in the Charlie Hebdo shootings while passing a police station. Another, a drunk driver who hit another car and injured the driver, was sentenced to four years when, under police detention, he praised the same gunmen.

French prosecutors were urged by Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira to fully utilize a November 2015 law to fight and prosecute “words or acts of hatred with utmost vigor.” The zeal with which law enforcement has undertaken this mission was shown in Nantes, when a 14-year-old girl was jailed on charges of “apology for terrorism” for uttering the words “bring out the Kalashnikovs” when a bus conductor asked her for her ticket.

One can only wonder whether the words of Charlie Hebdo journalists, or the words of the multitude of journalists from publications throughout France, not to mention the words of the neo-fascist supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Front, will be subjected to the same scrutiny. Bigots, including those of the liberal or libertarian Charlie Hebdo type as well as their right-wing counterparts, rarely mobilize to defend “free speech” other than their own.

Here we note that there was far less than unanimity in Francois Holland’s “Socialist Party” with regard to inviting Marine Le Pen to participate in the Paris demonstration. Le Pen’s vitriolic hate-mongering Islamophobic tirades against immigrants were largely indistinguishable from Holland’s. She used the rebuff to complain that her “mainstream” views were being purposefully excluded. More than a handful agreed, including the New York Times reporter covering the issue, who speculated that her exclusion was perhaps a “political” move aimed at not boosting Le Pen’s poll ratings as a future presidential candidate.

The flagging presidential poll numbers of Hollande’s Socialist Party were undoubtedly a factor. Le Pen’s National Front, which received the largest vote of all parties in the last French general elections to the European Parliament, 27 percent, today ranks first at 30 percent with regard to a future presidential candidacy.

In Germany, where neo-fascist groups are similarly on the rise, thousands mobilized in anti-immigrant rallies in the city of Dresden in the eastern state of Saxony following the Paris mobilization. But they were effectively countered in Dresden by 35,000 who demonstrated soon afterward in solidarity with Germany’s immigrant communities, the largest in Europe. They sought to block the racist protest route of Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West), Germany’s neo-fascist political grouping.

In Munich 20,000 protesters mobilized to block a Pegida rally. Similarly, 30,000 mobilized in Leipzig in a pro-immigrant demonstration to counter an Islamophobic call to the streets. A few hundred participated in the latter.

 Civil-liberties crackdowns in the U.S.

The history of capitalist government bans on free speech—not to mention its restrictions of freedom of association, free press and the right to assemble to redress grievances—is pitiful. In the U.S. in recent years a wave of reprisals has been meted out against college professors, including termination, for their public statements opposing Israel’s persecution of Palestinians. Students who assemble to protest the massacre of Palestinians and who organize on campus to support BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against apartheid Israel see their organizations disbanded across the country.

During the McCarthy era witch hunt of the 1950s, and long afterward, government-invoked “national security” was employed to persecute and imprison radicals of every kind, especially members of the Communist Party (CP) and Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In 1941, the central leadership of the SWP was jailed for 18 months under the notorious Smith Act for their socialist ideas alone. A few years later, the Smith Act and other reactionary laws were used against the CP, with wholesale arrests and imprisonment—again for ideas alone. The “evidence” against the prisoners cited activities such as displaying the works of Karl Marx in their public bookstores.

The witch hunt included legally sanctioned and government-enforced mass expulsion of socialists from trade unions and jobs. Loyalty oaths were mandatory in several cities for everyone teaching in public schools. Travel restrictions, blacklisting in the entertainment and media industries, and a multitude of other fundamental infringements of democratic rights were the rule and remained so for decades.

Almost all of these horrors were codified in law and/or decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, including the infamous decision handed down by Felix Frankfurter, wherein the individual liberty “guaranteed” by the U.S. Constitution, was “balanced” against the “national security” interests of the U.S., with disastrous results for the former. The most heinous of all these laws were subsequently ruled unconstitutional, but only with the rise of a massive civil rights and antiwar Vietnam movement, which rendered them impossible to enforce lest they further enrage mass sentiment opposing any government bans on free speech, free association, and freedom to assemble.

Today, the invocation of “national security” is once again used for deep incursions into democratic and human rights. The wholesale surveillance of the entire citizenry—as revealed by Edward Snowden—as well as torture and detention, and even selected murder of American citizens through drone attacks in other countries, are routinely justified by government officials while the courts grant their rubber stamp of approval.

Socialist have always been ardent defenders of free speech and all other democratic rights won in struggle against government efforts to restrict them. We know full well that so-called hate-crime legislation will inevitably be employed to restrict the rights of radicals and socialists to freely organize and protest. We have no illusions that the bigots organized across the country in groups like the Ku Klux Klan, not to mention racist Tea Party fanatics or racist police and elected officials, will be punished. Indeed, capitalism intentionally keeps these rabid organizations in reserve—albeit on a short leash and on the margins of society—until they are needed to stoke the flames of murder, hate, and repression.

When that time arrives, the hate groups will be joined by the full force of capitalism’s increasingly militarized police and other repressive forces. Armed with the “legal” weapons that are today being systematically put into place, U.S. capitalism must resort to repression of a magnitude never before seen in this country as its only “solution” to the rise of mass working-class resistance. We expect that such resistance will arise since U.S. capitalism, which is enveloped by crisis, has no alternative to its present course of steadily imposing austerity measures against workers and all oppressed people.

Only the united and conscious mobilization of the hundreds of millions of capitalism’s victims, in the U.S. and worldwide, can pose a serious alternative—an alternative aimed at ending the system’s inherent need to oppress and exploit in the interests of the ruling-class “one percent.” The rule of the 99 percent—in which the working class in all its manifestations, in all its nationalities and racial groupings, rules democratically and through its own institutions—can open the door to a bright new society, a socialist USA.

1698. We Are NOT Charlie Hebdo!

By United National Antiwar Coalition, January 16, 2015

The Paris march was led by heads of governments with a long  history of human rights and democratic rights violations, including Israeli Prime Minister and Netanyahu and French President Francois Hollande.

Neither do we condone the bombings and murder of journalists at their headquarters, however much we are repulsed by their racist, chauvinist and hateful Islamophobic caricatures of oppressed people. Neither do we condone the subsequent murders at the Paris Kosher supermarket.

Yes, we are for free speech, freedom of expression and democratic rights for all, including the Muslim and antiwar activists who were banned by the French government from street protests in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, or the Muslim women who are banned from wearing the veil. We are for freedom of expression and the right to exist of Muslim Americans, 700,000 of whom have been investigated or interrogated in the U.S. for being Muslim, or the 1.5 million Latino immigrants in the U.S. who are imprisoned, detained and deported, or the entire world’s people who are victims of the all-pervasive high-tech surveillance of everyone’s personal means of communication by the U.S., France and all other so-called democratic nations.

We will NOT join the Paris parades orchestrated by imperialist French President Francois Holland and the heads of state of the world’s “great powers;” nor will we applaud their call for the worldwide “Anti-terrorist Conference” that President Holland has set for Paris. We are saddened at the participation of French working people in these state-sponsored mobilizations, whose objectives are to further war in the Middle East and Africa and to restrict democracy for Muslim communities in France and around the world. Those who participate believing that they can advance freedom of expression, peace and solidarity are being used for opposite ends.

The war proclaimed by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls as “… a war against terrorism. Against jihadism. Against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom and solidarity" is, in fact, a war to reestablish and strengthen French economic hegemony in her former colonies. As Americans we heard this language from President George Bush when he declared his own “war on terror,” shredded the U.S. Constitution, imprisoned the innocent en masse and went to war in Iraq based on the now-exposed false flag lie that the Hussein government possessed  “weapons of mass destruction.”

We don’t march with “leaders” ­– including the government of the United States and the Barack Obama administration – who oversee and direct mass murder and torture. Need we mention the recent U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Report revealing the extent of U.S.-sponsored torture?

The heads of state of the world’s past and present colonial conquerors today murder with impunity on every continent. President Obama is the headmaster of terrorist wars, with six to his credit since his 2008 election. Need we mention the U.S. drone terror bombings and overt wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Somalia and Iraq? Every public poll demonstrates massive majority opposition. Yet the wars continue and expand everywhere. 

France’s largest party, the neo-fascist National Front of Marine Le Pen, revels in the government-promoted hate-mongering, thinking its time has come. In the past few days some 50 Muslim mosques in France have been hit by bullets and explosives and/or tagged with racist graffiti. In Corsica, a severed pig’s head was mounted on a Muslim prayer hall. In Sweden a Muslim mosque was firebombed. Racist mobilizations in Germany denounce the “Islamization of Europe.”

As in the U.S., where Latinos flee Latin America to escape poverty and persecution stemming from the policies of U.S.-backed corrupt and murderous regimes, Muslim immigrants flee their homelands that have been ravaged by the wars and exploitation of foreign powers. 

We hear no imperialist voices denouncing French troops in Mali. No corporate media voices recalling France’s Vietnam in Algeria a decade earlier, where one million were slaughtered until that nation’s war for independence was won. Imperialism’s memory is short, as with the four million Vietnamese murdered in that ten-year U.S. colonial war. As social justice and antiwar activists our memory is long. We are not deceived by yet another imperialist campaign to justify the perpetration of new horrors on the world’s people.

Neither do we support the renewed calls for stepped up repressive measures, including billions more for police and military repression and new laws further restricting civil liberties and democratic rights.

As U.S. social and political activists, we are witness to the horror of institutionalized racism, where Ferguson-type police murder is the norm for most every city – where mass incarceration of the oppressed ranks first in the world – where repeated police murder of unarmed Blacks goes unpunished. We march for the victims in Ferguson and in every city, not for their murderers.

We note the racist parallels between France and the U.S. The great majority who are locked in U.S. prisons are Black and Latino. In France up to 60 percent of the prison population are Muslims.

France, England, the U.S. and their associates have no standing among human beings who seek justice, peace, civil and democratic rights and an end to imperialist wars across the globe. We stand without equivocation with the millions who mobilize against them.  

We refused to hail their slaughter, as with their “humanitarian war” against Libya that was perversely promoted by their kept media. Tens of thousands of Libyans were murdered while the corporate “free press” remained silent. The imperialist air and naval forces that pulverized Libya were employed with impunity, while on the ground imperialism’s paid jihadists were called into service to “liberate” Tripoli on the bombed ruins of that nation. They remain today, grotesquely fighting each other over Libya’s oil and for scraps of “aid” from the various imperialist-backed oil corporations who are the real “victors.”  

Today’s modern-day crusaders continue to join in the catastrophic destruction of Iraq. Twenty-four years of saturation bombings, mass murder, starvation sanctions and U.S.-installed dictators were and continue to be employed in the name of a war against non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” One and a half million Iraqis have been slaughtered by imperialist weapons. The slaughter continues – a classic colonial-era oil war for control of the very fossil fuel resource whose continued use spells doom for humankind. And yesterday’s U.S.  allies in this venture are today’s “enemies” – at least for now!

The United States, with French support, has brought about the death and immiseration of hundreds of thousands of Syrians through its backing, covert and otherwise, of “moderate” and fundamentalist combatants, the latter mustered with the aid of the allied Gulf States. The current U.S. bombing of Syrian sites continues the slaughter of civilians. 

We heard no cry of outrage from the imperialist nations when Mubarak’s military heirs in Egypt, financed, to the tune of $1.1 billion annually, slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims in a U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected Mohamed Morsi government. The 30-year Mubarak dictatorship was always a U.S. favorite, as are his successors today – democratic elections notwithstanding!

We heard no cry of outrage last year when racist, Zionist Israel once again slaughtered over 2000 Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, the U.S. and its imperialist allies remain Israeli’s chief supporters, granting it the largest “aid” package of any nation to maintain its world-repudiated historic occupation.

We stand in solidarity with all victims of imperialist oppression and exploitation everywhere on earth – for free speech, the right to assembly, democratic rights and the right to be free from intervention and occupation.

Never with their oppressors!
Never with their oil wars!
Never with their police state measures!
Never with their ceaseless racist “wars on terror!”
Never with their endless drone wars, privatized army wars, overt and covert wars, mass detention and torture wars, embargo, blockade and sanction wars!

End all imperialist wars, occupations, and interventions!

Self-determination for the world’s oppressed people and nations!

U.S. and all imperialist powers Out Now!