Paris – January 11: A Disturbing Event

by Shmuel Trigano (April 2015)

translated by Gila Walker

It is as if [the democrat] were fascinated by all who plot his downfall. Perhaps at the bottom of his heart he yearns for the  violence which he has denied himself.
                               — Jean Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew

 

The January 11 rally in Paris constitutes a momentous event that we have only begun to analyze. By its sheer massiveness, its geographic spread, and its density, it stands as a moment of national fusion of an emotional nature, seemingly non-rational, but which lends itself to a rational sociological explanation on a level that escapes the experience of the participating individuals taken separately.[1]

Let us start by noting that a rally this massive evidences the scope of the crisis that enabled it. There was nothing artificial about it, notwithstanding the government’s directive, articulated by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in his speech in Evry the night before the gathering when he declared that, “all citizens must take to the streets the next day.” The rally reveals a great deal about the state of society, as it afforded a gigantic outlet for the general malaise, thereafter “fetishized” in a symbolic object: the new issue of Charlie Hebdo, printed and purchased by the millions.

There was desperate end-of-the-world quality to the rally. As if all you could do in response to the events that were unfolding was take to the streets in silence, applaud, sing the Marseillaise, and chant “Charlie.” Indeed, the silence of this demonstration spoke volumes of the unspoken and unconscious dimension informing it. What the slogan “Je suis Charlie” signifies precisely is an identification with the dead as a matter of dignity by virtue of a sacrificial compassion in the face of murderers. There was no declaration of war on Islamists and no attempt to identify the terrorists for what they are. It can even be said that the unconscious aim of the rally was not so much to identify the terrorists – after all the symbolic cost of doing so would be to undermine thirty years of illusions (since the Socialists came to power wanting to “change people’s lives”) – as to identify WITH the victims, and of whom they are victims we can’t say since the aggressors are not clearly identified.

It is not in fact “freedom of expression” (another substitute) that is at issue here, but an Islamist attack in the national not the global arena this time. And so it is not a matter of defending the former but of decisively eradicating the latter. Thinking that we can prevail by raising our pencils in the air or drawing caricatures or communing in a pacifism brimming over with good intentions spells defeat.

Compassion-resignation

Contrary to what pundits chose to see and celebrate, the universal compassion manifested at the rally had nothing to do with an ethical sublimation of feelings of vengeance. It was an expression of resignation, of the silent willingness to be exposed as martyrs to blows (in the future). The fact is that a “war” (to cite Valls) without clearly identified enemies has no chance of being won.

“Je suis Charlie, je suis un flic, je suis juif”

The slogan that was repeatedly chanted at the rally, “Je suis Charlie, je suis un flic, je suis juif,” speaks volumes of another form of resignation, internal this time. If “I” am all these things at once – Charlie, policeman, and Jew – then I am no one in particular. This means that I cannot be identified, that I choose not to own who I am, and thus be able to face my attacker in order to win the fight. But when it comes to neutralizing the identity of the victims, the Jews pose a problem: to conform to the resigned frame of mind, Jews must not leave the role they play as silent consenting victims, and this is precisely what they would be doing were they to decide to leave the country. The movement of aliya was thus presented on many French TV stations as a betrayal, a blow to “national unity.” On January 15, for example, a report on the evening news on FR2 went out of its way to demonstrate that the Jews do not want to move to Israel, that they want to remain French. This attitude is of course intimately bound up with the media portrayal of Israel over the past 15 years, as the country that symbolizes military force and “occupation.” It is more convenient to celebrate Jews in the role of victims, as sacred symbols of the Republic (“An attack on a Jew is an attack on the République,” was the way former president Jacques Chirac put it). This is extremely worrisome because of the proximity between the sacred and the terrifying taboo, which sustain one another and can easily switch places.

The “pas d’amalgame” syndrome

The fact is that the blurring of distinctions is widespread amongst political leaders on the highest level (Cameron, Hollande, Obama, and others). After every attack they repeat the selfsame profession of faith, asserting urbi et orbi that the publicly stated reason for the attacks – namely, Islam – is being falsely cited by the assailants whose acts are actually “unrelated to Islam.” It is obvious to everyone, however, that Islam is the unique motivation of the attackers, a fact that is corroborated by the rapidity with which some new converts to Islam commit terrorist acts for which they had no grounds prior to their conversion. The blurring of distinctions is thus surreptitiously reproduced whenever political leaders speak of Islam as an absolute or of the betrayal by these Islamists of Muslims as a whole. Their very need to defend Muslims as a whole, when there is no reason why they should ALL be held accountable for the fundamentalists among them (even if the latter claim to be motivated by Islam), is a sign that at bottom they believe there’s a reason for suspicion.

Now such distinctions should really be the work of Muslims. The problem is they have not to date clearly undertaken to draw them, no less to deal with the issue of their relationship to Jews. The Arab-Muslim world is currently consumed by a deep-seated hatred of Jews – religious, political, and historic. Even those who oppose the jihadists do not take a clear stand on the subject. The lack of clarity can be felt, for instance, in the words of Dounia Bouzar, a regular guest in the French media who speaks out strongly against “blurring distinctions” when she blamed the absence of Muslims at the January 11 gathering on the presence of Netanyahu. The fact is that anti-Semitism today advances under the banner of anti-Zionism, drawing its legitimacy from Israel’s purported crimes – an invention of Palestinian propaganda to justify Palestinian terrorism. The synagogue on Rue de la Roquette in Paris was attacked in July to cries of support for Gaza. In what way does this differ from the discourse of the jihadist Mohammed Merah who gunned down Jews in Toulouse?

The role of Israel

From victimary compassion to accusations against the Jews

When it came to neutralizing the cause of the attack, we were more than well served by the media on the day of the rally. Such repression requires compensation elsewhere. Thus, comments regularly slipped from compassion to accusations against Jews, firstly with regard to their “fear” (“Is there reason for their fear?” was the maddening question asked by TV host Anne Sophie Lapix on the January 12 “Mots croisés” broadcast) and secondly, and more significantly, with regard to eventual plans to leave the country.  

The blurring of distinctions used against Israel

What the rally was really about

In other words, were the majority of people at the rally supporters of the Front National or advocates of multi-culturalism? If the former, they would have profited from the occasion to gain legitimacy for their position against Muslims, rushing into the political and security cracks to demonstrate patriotism in opposition to a government accused of weakness. And indeed, the acts of terrorism made it possible for people to designate Islam without being accused of Islamophobia. If the latter, the advocates of “Living together,” they would have been manifesting there a final burst of energy as they stand on the brink of the threatening abyss, a desperate attempt to patch over the cracks, rescue their multiculturalist dream and their strategy of resignation in the face of Islamism. In this case, the march would have been a last ditch attempt to maintain a narrative of 20 years of mistakes that have clouded the issues and made it impossible to confront the real problems. This is all the more credible given how central the “Muslims of France” were in all the discourses accompanying the event, with commentaries celebrating fraternity, fraternizing between “communities,” how truly French Muslims are, and so on. The presence of European leaders at the rally lends further support to this idea since the politics of the past 30 years has been that of the European Union and its commissions, which has undermined nation-states and national identities, a trend that has been amplified by EU immigration policy.

But to be properly understood the January 11 rally has to be put into a wider perspective. I’m thinking of the astonishing series of mass demonstrations in France, and, in particular, Copernic in 1980 and Carpentras in 1990. Indeed out of the highly problematical reaction of the French public to Copernic in 1980, grew the analysis of the Jewish situation in France that I developed in La République et les Juifs après Copernic (1982), and that has very unfortunately continued to hold true to this day. All three demonstrations were related to Jews and anti-Semitism, and they brought together French society with all its political parties (separately in the case of Copernic or Carpentras, if not at the January 11 march). I might add that all three had to do with the Socialist Party, insofar as it was in power and initiated these movements. However, these major demonstrations, deemed positive at the time, didn’t change a thing for the Jews. On the contrary, they set up the situation that we’ve known for the past fifteen years and have done nothing but punctuate French Judaism’s march to the abyss.

Exploratory forecast

We’re on the eve of a nationalistic and/or Republican upsurge. The two are not sociologically incompatible. They are two versions of an affirmation of collective identity, one right-wing, the other left-wing. All parties seem to be converging in this direction, with Marine Le Pen setting the tone, in tune with a general trend in Europe toward the muscular right-wing. What this march shows, at any rate, is that a strong current of public opinion is going in this direction. This concerns Sarkozy, of course, but also Hollande and the socialists. I had an article I was writing on “the nationalistic shift of French socialistm” that shows us how a government in difficulty has tried in recent months to unite a disenchanted public around “France, a great country,” “our soldiers,” “our armies.” And here François Hollande succeeded. The nationalism to which we are heading will have two dimensions: it will be both “identity-based” and “Republican.” The former has to do with national identity, the latter, embodied by Manuel Valls, with “human rights” and laïcité. This trend will be deeply anti-European and could be the prelude to a war between ethnic identities, the ineluctable result of the demise of citizenship subsequent to the weakening of the nation-state in the European construction.

 

[1] Their feelings and good will were genuine and are not the subject of this analysis. Sociological analyses rest on the hypothesis that society is something more than the aggregate of individuals that constitute it, that it has its own modes of behaviour that escape the conscious intentions of individuals.

 

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http://www.shmuel-trigano.fr.

 

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