Being Charlie Hebdo Part 2

The Aftermath of Crazy Is More Craziness

Pleiades sent me an article by Guy Rundle where he argues that the western ideology is so bereft and bankrupt of ideas, when it argues in principle, it ends up arguing something incoherent. Instead of heading for a transformative idea, our commentators and politicians alike sink back to old Left-Right partisanship, seeking opportunistic angles to score points within our own polity.

It's content behind a pay wall so I can't link to it, but here's something worth bringing up.

The Right is falling apart as a political formation so fast you’d need stop-action photography to catch the process. Bruce Petty was quite correct, in his cartoon this week, to draw the Right sloping to the drawing board to sketch out a new plan for surveillance and control. But he was wrong I think, to draw it as a great beast. It’s more a Caspar Milquetoast/Monty Burns figure, barely able to hold up the pencil. The failure of Iraq, free-wheeling capitalism, the collapsed legitimacy of Western Right governments, and increasing wars between its liberal and conservative factions sees it without a program, coherent worldview, common sense, or much cheer as far as I can see. 

The Hebdo massacre brought all these contradictions to the fore. Hebdo’s nihilism is actually culturally corrosive, as conservatives charge such obscene desacrilising with being. Conservatives know that a viable culture is a closed system to a degree, and unless it has pinion points -- usually religious -- which are not themselves, by matter of custom, subject to a general back-and-forth, then it is quickly in trouble. This week, sundry idiots have been suggesting that "free speech is part of our cultural tradition".
What nonsense. 

Until the 1960s, hundreds of books, films and plays were banned, even in the US, as way of maintaining the limits of what was publicly talked of, in terms of sex, religion and the like. That maintained a Christian division between profane body and sacred soul. Once abolished, Christian Western culture collapsed. A transitional period lasted into the 1990s. Remember the furore over Madonna’s hokey video "Papa Don’t Preach?". Remember when the porn industry was some marginal thing, and not another career option?

Yes, does anybody remember the furore over things like 'Piss Christ?'

How about the PMRC/Mothers of Prevention episode when a bunch of conservative mothers formed a committee to censor rock music in the 1980s? And Frank Zappa had to testify to Congress?

As Frank would say, "I mean seriously, folks! This is altogether a ridiculous state of affairs!"
It's all well and good that the Conservatives like David Cameron and Tony Abbott are thundering that  Freedom of Expression is our way of life but you sort of wonder if this is because it's just bloody expedient. As somebody who was on the side that supported 'Piss Christ and liked listening to Frank Zappa and certainly never yielded from the position of letting gangsta rappers kill as many cops in their songs, I find it tremendously strange that the very same conservatives now want to stand up for Freedom of Expression. Yay for Free Speech, it's finally self-evident even to the dumbest Conservatives.

You know what? I somehow doubt Cory Bernardi is stocking up on Gangsta Rap music on his iTunes. Anyway, Rundle goes on to have a hack at the Left too:

But much of what remains of the organised Left has revealed its own exhaustion and bankruptcy too. Though Left figures were not the first to repeat the "this has nothing to do with Islam" meme -- Merkel and Cameron joining Hollande in repeating that mantra -- many were quick to adopt it, and to focus on a revival of Islamophobia due to such an event. 

The event itself was barely glanced at, not even in an analytic way. The only response to the ludicrous pseudo-politics of declaring for free speech when no one had declared against it, was to reconstitute Western Arab-originated/descended Muslims as a whole, a subject of history, and then become their representative against oppression. The old, old accordian, got out for one last wheezing squeezeplay. But the wave of attacks against Muslims failed to eventuate. Maps of such events showed about 20 such, not good, but no Muslim-pogrom. 

It was cautioned that the attacks would create a surge of support for the French anti-immigration party Front National. But there was no sign of that (though it may come), giving a strong suspicion that the FN had reached near-saturation level. Charlie Hebdo’s nihilistic style was taken as racism, its physical depiction of Arabs vastly exaggerated. Some jokes against the Right, using their language, were taken as witless Bill-Leakesque curmudgeonliness (the eternal fate of the satirist - if Swift’s ‘Modest Proposal’ were published today it would have a beyondblue tagline, a body image trigger warning at the top, and a "Visit Ireland" google ad pop up). This shoehorned French political style into Anglosphere political divisions, where such a robust space for pre-identity politics Leftism has largely ceased to exist. Implicit was a causal model, which constructed Charlie Hebdo as having a FOX News-ish right-wing, pseudo-populist style, which it was using to rag on racial-religious minorities only -- this effectively accusing it of a certain naivete as regards race and oppression, with lethal results. As Daily Kos’ selection of some of Hebdo’s anti-imperialist cartoons showed, that wasn’t the case at all. 

But the causal/determinative model dies hard. And one popular article tweeted around was one about the "anomie of the banlieues". Ah, the anomie (i.e. lack of meaning) of the banlieues (the featureless, high-rise housing around Paris and other cities) -- Shift-F1 on the keyboard of a certain type of feature writer.

There's been a growing opinion that maybe Charlie Hebdo with its crude, rude and pointed satire in some way had it coming, and that no, some of want to say 'Je ne suis pas Charlie' because some ideological sticking point makes it "none-of-my-concern". Which is probably more honest but also goes to show why the identity politics being exercised is (as Helen Razer would have it...) Stupid.

The added absurdity of arguing that Islamism is not to blame in the face of people who yelled "Allahu Akbar" after they shot 12 people is, you know, pretty Islamophilic - as in, an unnecessary love of things Islamic, - to excuse that crime on some level.

Nobody in their right mind is pinning the blame on all the Muslims the world over for what happened. Yet the guys who did it are saying they did it for Allah. So somewhere in the discussion of ideas, we have to tackle Islamism and ask it some probing questions. To date, the argument the Left-side commentators is mounting as whole is a kind of "it was just provocation by the magazine when they insulted their faith". In other words, simultaneously abandoning Freedom of Expression and condoning violent action. If we accept that, we're essentially accepting the brothers arguing "look what you made me do."
I don't think we're ready to dumb ourselves down to that level for the sake of political correctness. At least, I'm sorry, I'm not going there. And why is the Left suddenly acting Stupid?

None of this is going to play out properly without a major argument with Islamism. In Northern Iraq, it's being contested with lethal force. They are winning in parts because they have a lot of conviction in their bullshit. If we are to contest our ideas against them, we'd better get our shit straight. If it is going to be Freedom of Expression and that's where we plant a flag, it's a good start. Somehow I share Guy Rundle's doubts that what we have is just massive cognitive dissonance and a bare cupboard for transformative ideas.

Being Charlie Hebdo

Islamophobia Isn't Like Homophobia

In the years since I wrote this entry here 8years ago, the world has become just that little bit more volatile. Back then Islamophobia was a new word. Now it has gained currency - much in the way that a general acceptance of such things as Anti-Terror laws have become acceptable. I guess etymologically speaking Islamophobia would mean a fear of Islam. It doesn't mean hatred of Islam, but if we are to believe Yoda, fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate so we're two steps away from hating on Islam if we admit we're phobic, under that schema.

Based on the recent events in Paris where 12 journalists and cartoonists were shot to death by terrorists, it seems to be a legitimate fear to possess.

8 years ago, I joked that the term likens Islam to spiders, heights and homosexuals. I kind of stand by that. I'm not a big fan of the way the term is bandied about in shows like Q&A as if the term actually has some definitional - and therefore epistemological - truth to it. I wince every time I hear some talking head on the TV mentioning it, whereas the term Homophobia never struck me as odd in the same way. It really is a little like Muslims want to get a pass on the same identity-politic basis as LGBT people - even though their own religion wants to stone LGBT people. I smell hypocrisy there.

I guess whoever coined the term did so in the hope that if you could identify the phobia, you can smoke out the prejudices; which is exactly what the term homophobia has done for the gay community. If anything the construction of the term homophobia is even more precarious than Islamophobia because what we really mean by a homophobe is not somebody who fears homosexuality, but somebody who has gone straight on to hating on homosexuals. Even allowing for the more precarious construction, the term homophobia has allowed the world to move in to a direction where there is genuine emancipation of the LGBT community so in some sense there is hope yet for the term Islamophobia.

Be that as it may, the problem of all this is that terms like 'Islamophobia' force you into accepting a version of their identity politics, even if you don't accept identity politics at all. Identity politics is a pretty crappy tool. You can only claim so much ground arguing on behalf of the specific conditions of your birth. You can argue a position right up to equality, but arguing for exceptions is going to get you in trouble. Identity politics is at its core, pretty dumb. Ultimately it's the business of showing your scars and saying "somebody pay up or else back off".

I'm sorry, I'm done buying bullshit. I don't want more identity politics - my own included - when there already is enough in the world. I want more honest appraisals of what real equality means and how it gets achieved. And I dothink it gets achieved through such things as Freedom of Expression (heck, as much as it gets held back by religious dogma, but that's a separate topic). So if anybody calls you an Islamophobe, your answer should be "I'm not stupid enough to buy into your identity politics". If they shoot you for that answer, I guess that would be the point. They want the conversation to go to the Sword or the Koran.

All the same, the claim is that mocking the Prophet is simply not acceptable. That it's somehow reasonable for fatwahs to be put upon Salman Rushdie or that it is somehow understandable that people get so angered they go and shoot a bunch of cartoonists.

The law applies to us equally. There's no scope for identity politics based exceptions. That's how "equal in the eyes the law" works. So if somebody goes around shooting people, regardless of the perceived provocation, they have go before the law. And if they argue in court that cartoons were enough provocation to commit acts of murder, then they may find society and its values are dead set against you. And this would have nothing to do with their religion being belittled or persecuted. This is basic law-&-order kind of stuff. There isn't going to be some exception in French Law or European Law that is going to make this kind of thing okay.

If holding to equality makes somebody an Islamophobe, then maybe the fears are well-founded.

Takes Two To Terrorise

This business of shooting the editorial staff at Charlie Hebdo could have been carried out by once person. In which case we might have involved the lone-nut theory; yes, the same one I invoked with the Martin Place Siege. The, "that's not an act of terror because it's just one person." argument. I've been wondering a little about that call but I'm a little less certain of it now. I am now thinking that maybe we have a fear of the possibility that terror acts carried out by one suggests each and every individual is potentially a terror threat. And if that were true we would opt to abandon trust and liberty and give into our darkest xenophobic needs.

If anybody on their own is a terror cell then we have to start building a category outside of the individual and say "all muslims are potentially terrorists". It flies in the face of our own tolerance to say such things. So we opt with saying the lone gunman is a nutter. It may not even be true, when properly diagnosed.

Two brothers on the run with guns however constitutes a legitimate terror cell. This seems to be our acceptance of things base on events at the Boston Marathon as well as this week's Charlie Hebdo massacre. I guess it takes two people to have a conversation, which could then be characterised as a conspiracy. A lone person talking to himself is by most social counts, more crazy than conspiratorial.

'We' Do Terrible Things - But Do We Deserve What We Get?

One of the discussions I had this week in the aftermath involved talking about what the Colonial powers of the 19th century - that is Western Europe and Russia and the USA - still do today in the middle east. For a start the USA supports Israel and Israel isn't exactly a joy for the Arab world. Then there are the puppet regimes with dictators that dominated the second half of the Twentieth century. Name like Hussein, Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, tell us exactly how problematised the Arab world has been for a overlong time. Those countries have fallen into various states civil distress and in all these cases they offer up terrible choices.

We found out that much as we dislike Saddam Hussein, his government was stable enough to keep the waring factions from erupting into violence. We found out in Egypt that the alternative to a military government was the Muslim Brotherhood who essentially ruled in a way that made things worse, and whose democratic credentials quickly paled. Libya is oner-reported but it doesn't seem like things are getting better there, and Syria is in a terrible civil war where the enemy of our enemy ashore Assad, is ISIL. Even without the issue of religion - ignoring it outright, even - the Arab world is filled with difficult political issues.

The argument offered to me this week was that 'we' in the West are dropping bombs and insulting their prophet. That we should be more understanding when they rise up and exact their vengeance. As if Charlie Hebdo and its irreverent cartoons were just too much to bear; that this magazine constituted just provocation.

I have no problem with the notion that their grievances are legitimate. I have immense difficulty accepting that the terror act in paris this week is a legitimate act of war or defiance. At some point we are responsible or our own actions. These guys knew what they were doing. It doesn't matter that bombs are falling Syria or drone strikes are happening in North Pakistan or that Iraq and Afghanistan are in strife, if you live in Paris (or Boston or Sydney).
Yes, it's political. But it's shitty politics.

There Is A Problem With Islamism

This is hard to write because I have Muslim friends, but you're allowed to disagree with friends. My own reading of the Koran is mostly idle interest and morbid curiosity. There are parts of history where Islam found tremendous high points worthy of admiration and awe. Even so I'm really troubled by the way it keeps expressing itself in the contemporary world with violent bursts.

Bill Maher was seen in an interview talking about the problem of Islam as a religion and in it he has an interesting point. This is a religion where they behead people in Mecca for falling-out of religion. It's violently hostile to secular thinking. As Maher notes, it's amazing the world doesn't look at this a bit closer and harder. It would be like crucifying people in the Vatican forecourt for lapsing as Catholics.

Islam is ideologically opposed to our tolerance, even of Islam itself. Even though we talk about moderate muslims who are not violent benighted majority the 1billion-plus believers on the planet, at its very core is this beheadings at Mecca. There are crazy off-shoots of all the religions. Christianity alone has things like the Ku-Klux Klan and the Westboro Baptists Church but they are fringe. There are militant Buddhists in Burma rounding up and persecuting Muslims in Myanmar - but that is fringe stuff too; in the main Buddhism at its core is temples and tourism and selling trinkets. Hinduism, and Confucianism, alike have their odd violent fringes but it's not central to the practice.

Looking into Islamism at its core is like staring in to 8th century Dark Ages thinking in the desert of Arabia. it's unflinchingly uncompromising and brutal. It's so extreme one can think we're lucky they didn't enshrine cannibalism. There isn't a heart that says "turn the other cheek". It's "mock our prophet and we come shooting."

If we are indeed small-'l' liberals, it is worth considering how tolerant one must be to tolerate that which would kill you for your tolerance. Because that's a principle at stake. Our credo for tolerance says we believe in Freedom of Expression and standing by the cartoonists who lampoon Islam. They believe it's their duty to retaliate against the words (and especially images) with violence. It keeps coming around to the same collision point. If we're strictly talking the ideas, then Islam has a problem.
Yes, we're phobic for a reason.