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    France’s Electoral Abyss

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    Across the globe, democracy appears to be in a curious state. One of the main indicators of the health or pathology of democracy is the turnout in elections. Some might claim that the high turnout for the Biden-Trump face-off last year was a sign of health for US democracy.

    But the aftermath — marked by the “stop the steal” movement, a riotous occupation of the Capitol building and a continued spirit of revolt by a significant proportion of the citizenry as well as some prominent politicians — reveals that the spectacular numbers achieved by both candidates in the presidential election were a sign of high fever in the body politic rather than healthy democratic engagement. Many commentators noticed that voting against a particular candidate — Hillary Clinton in 2016, Donald Trump in 2020 — rather than voting for a preferred candidate may have been the determining factor in those two elections.

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    Iran’s presidential election on June 18 was notable for its low turnout. But that is what everyone expected. Iran’s centrally controlled electoral system, emanating from a strictly hierarchical governmental structure in which the power of the president is extremely restricted, produces elections that are more accurately referred to as “selections.”

    Though the two-party system in the US, sometimes referred to as a “duopoly,” leaves itself open to a similar critique, Western democracies still hold onto the idea that elections are expressions of vox populi, reflecting the will of the people. The general trend noted in recent years and in many democratic nations toward levels of abstention that often dip below 50% indicates that belief in democracy as a viable representative form of government may be far less solid than politicians and educators like to affirm.

    France set a record on June 20 for its combined departmental and regional elections, two distinct opportunities to vote on the same day in the same place. With nearly 33.3% showing up to vote, two-thirds of the electorate simply didn’t bother. The only worse showing was in a referendum in 2000, where only 30% of the electorate bothered to vote on shortening the length of a presidential term. On Sunday, the abstention figure was dramatic enough, in any case, for President Emmanuel Macron’s press secretary to term it “abyssale” (abysmal).

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Abyssale:

    A French adjective, usually translated in English as “abysmal,” but with a more literal meaning that serves to compare what is being described to a literal abyss, something most French people also consider to be an appropriate characterization of the level of competence and efficacy of the current French government and more generally of the political class

    Contextual Note

    Macron’s government has every reason to deem the result of this first round abysmal. Occurring less than a year before the 2022 presidential election in which Macron hopes to break the recent trend of one-term presidents (Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande), the media and the pollsters regarded these local elections primarily as an indicator of what to expect in next May’s contest. The majority party — itself a “bricolage,” an assemblage cobbled together after Macron’s freak parting of the Red Sea in 2017 — performed particularly badly, not even attaining the 10% required to remain in the running for the second round in five of the 13 regions. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    For most of his term, Macron has had low approval ratings. He has never earned the admiration of the masses that presidents of the Fifth Republic once managed to achieve, though there have been moments when the French were willing to respect his apparent competence. This was especially true after his initial response to the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are other moments, far more frequent, in which his popularity has not only faded, but Macron himself has become an object of public scorn. The yellow vest movement that raged in 2018 and 2019 is the closest thing in modern times to the kind of popular revolt immortalized during the French Revolution that more than two centuries ago, at least provisionally, abolished the monarchy.

    The commentators were even more surprised by the unexpectedly low score of Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party, the National Rally, formerly the National Front. The media have been building up the idea that the second round of next year’s presidential election will inevitably be a remake of 2017, with a rising Le Pen challenging a fading Macron, a recipe for anguished suspense among those less tempted by fascism. Over the next week, and immediately following the second-round results, the pundits will begin drawing conclusions about what this tells us about who will actually be present in the second round next year and how they may fare. 

    The same pundits may even decide that it means nothing at all, given the rate of abstention. Prognostication has suddenly become a more difficult exercise. The manifest indifference of the electorate to everything that politicians believe is important does, however, tell us something about the state of democracy in France in what may be the waning years of the Fifth Republic. L’Obs, a left-center weekly, cites what it calls “fatigue démocratique,” a weariness with the very rituals of democracy.

    Historical Note

    The one dramatic indicator early commentators have highlighted is the apparent victory of the traditional right that had formerly been humiliated, finding itself in a no-man’s-land between Emmanuel Macron’s increasingly right-wing neoliberal center and Marine Le Pen’s xenophobic right-wing nationalism. Some see it as a sign of rejuvenation for the Gaullist tradition. The leader of Les Républicains, Xavier Bertrand, has been trying to resist Macron’s sedulous attempt to laminate the traditional right by adopting not only its policy themes, but also the demagogic Islamophobia of Le Pen’s party.

    President Macron, the self-declared centrist, was counting on using his status as incumbent to position himself in a way that would make him attractive to a full range of voters on the right, while assuming that in his contest with Le Pen in the second round, he would also pick up most of the voters on the left who would be afraid to abstain. This could be compared on some points with Joe Biden’s successful strategy in the 2020 US presidential election.

    Les Républicains appear as the real winners for the moment, if only because they have thrown a wrench into Macron’s 2022 strategy. There now may be a stronger likelihood that Bertrand will reach the second round opposite Macron, or possibly even opposite Le Pen. This is a cause of deep embarrassment, if not consternation. The combination of Le Pen’s low score and the Républicains’ success means that the traditional right — whose continuity dates back to Jacques Chirac and, ultimately, Charles De Gaulle, the founder of the Fifth Republic — may have recovered its mojo that so suddenly faded in 2017 following the scandals of its leading candidate, Francois Fillon, and its most recent president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The latter was recently convicted for electoral fraud and has been sentenced to six months in prison.

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    The media hasn’t begun asking the real historical question that underlies this curious drama. The parties are one thing, but what about the French people? What do they think, and what do they want at this historical “inflection point,” to quote Biden? The yellow vest spirit is still floating in the air, maybe even permeating the atmosphere.

    The only candidate to have dared to talk about the eventuality of a Sixth Republic is Jean-Luc Melenchon, the left-wing populist candidate who fared honorably in the first round of the 2017 election at a moment when the once conquering Socialist Party imploded. The French media refuse to take Melenchon seriously, except as a foil to the legitimate pretenders. He has been cast in the role of the French Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders, with a stronger intelligence, a more marked strain of rebelliousness against the establishment, but less charisma. Though he could never win a presidential election, he is still the strongest political personality on the left.

    With other crises brewing — a pandemic still dragging on, hints of a possible new global financial crisis, a deepening climate crisis, exacerbated European instability, complemented by shaky leadership in the US — the French may simply be wondering how voting for anyone promises to accomplish anything worthwhile.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Macron’s Campaign to Reveal France’s Historical Sins

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      One of the worst humanitarian disasters of the past 30 years took place in 1994 in Rwanda. Approximately 800,000 people died in a genocidal campaign led by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority. The rampage began after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. The Hutus immediately blamed the Tutsis and initiated a “well-organized campaign of slaughter” that lasted several months. A new French report on the Rwandan genocide has revealed some uglier truths about the role played by Western powers — particularly France.

      Since his election, French President Emmanuel Macron has demonstrated what some French patriots feel is a morbid curiosity about the history of France’s relations with the African continent. In the first three months of 2021, two reports by French historians tasked by Macron to tell the truth have been released. The first concerns France’s role in the Algerian War of Independence between 1954 and 1962, and the second, the Rwandan genocide.

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      Le Monde describes the 1,200-page Rwandan report as “solid, established by independent researchers and founded on newly opened archives.” Shortly after taking office in 2017, Macron asked historian Vincent Duclert to elucidate France’s role in the Rwandan genocide. Al Jazeera describes the report as criticizing “the French authorities under [Francois] Mitterrand for adopting a ‘binary view’ that set Habyarimana as a ‘Hutu ally’ against an ‘enemy’ of Tutsi forces backed by Uganda, and then offering military intervention only ‘belatedly’ when it was too late to halt the genocide.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Binary view:

      A prevalent mindset among leaders responsible for foreign policy in powerful nations, whose tendency to reduce every problem to a contest between two diametrically opposed points of view permits them to justify the most cynical and cruelly destructive policies

      Contextual Note

      In the aftermath of the genocide, analysts speculated about whom to blame, not only concerning the genocide itself but also the failure to prevent it from spinning out of control. As the leader of the nation whose role as “policeman of the world” became consolidated after the fall of the Soviet Union, US President Bill Clinton exhibited an apparent “indifference” to tribal slaughter in Africa. It included deliberate “efforts to constrain U.N. peacekeeping.” Canadian General Romeo Dallaire accused Clinton of establishing “a policy that he did not want to know,” even though since 1992, US intelligence had been aware of a serious Hutu plan to carry out genocide.

      French President Francois Mitterand’s guilt, it now turns out, was far more patent and direct than Clinton’s. The historians who authored the French report call it “a defeat of thinking” on the part of an administration never held accountable for its “continual blindness of its support for a racist, corrupt and violent regime.” Astonishingly, the report reveals that “French intelligence knew it was Hutu extremists that shot President Habyarimana’s plane down, which was seen as the trigger for the genocide.” Le Monde attributes Mitterand’s blindness to his “personal relationship” with the slain Hutu president.

      Historical Note

      By sneaking through the gaping cracks in the traditional parties on the right and left to be elected president, Emmanuel Macron became the leader of a new party created for the purpose of providing him with a majority in the 2017 parliamentary election that followed his historic victory. As a political maverick, Macron felt himself liberated from at least some of the shackles of history.

      He first dared to do what Fifth Republic presidents of the past had carefully avoided when, as a candidate, he attacked the very idea of colonization, which not only played an essential role in France’s past, but continued to produce its effects through the concept of Francafrique. In an interview in Algiers, the Algerian capital, early in the 2017 presidential campaign, Macron described colonization as a “genuinely barbaric” practice, adding that it “constitutes a part of our past that we have to confront by also apologising to those against whom we committed these acts.”

      Politicians on the right predictably denounced what they qualified as Macron’s “hatred of our history, this perpetual repentance that is unworthy of a candidate for the presidency of the republic.” This is the usual complaint of the nationalist right in every Western nation. Recently, columnist Ben Weingarten complained that Nikole Hannah-Jones’ 1619 Project for The New York Times Magazine was motivated by “hatred for America.” Patriots in every country tend to believe that exposing any embarrassing historical truth is tantamount to hate and intolerance of their own noble traditions. Telling the truth is treasonous.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In January 2021, the historian Benjamin Stora presented the report Macron commissioned him to produce on France’s historical relationship with Algeria. Stora proposed the “creation of a joint ‘Memory and Truth’ commission.” The report also recommended “restitution, recognition of certain crimes, publication of lists of the disappeared, access to archives” and “creation of places of memory.” Suddenly, Macron realized that he had received more than he bargained for. As the website JusticeInfo.net reported, “The French presidency said there was ‘no question of showing repentance’ or of ‘presenting an apology’ for the occupation of Algeria or the bloody eight-year war that ended 132 years of French rule.”

      These two examples demonstrate France’s curious relationship with history. They also tell us about how powerful nations elaborate and execute their foreign policy. France is not alone. Every nation’s policy starts from a sense of national interest. The ensuing analysis begins by assessing threats to it. These may be military, economic or even cultural. In the case of military threat, the nation in question will be branded either an enemy or, if diplomatic politeness prevails, an adversary. When the discord is purely economic, the other nation will most likely be called a competitor or a rival. When the threat is cultural — as when Lebanon and Israel square off against each other about who makes the most authentic hummus — foreign policy experts will simply shut up and enjoy the show.

      On the other hand, three forms of cultural competition — linguistic, tribal and religious rivalries — have real implications for the exercise of power and may seriously influence the perception of whether what is at stake is enmity, rivalry or friendly competition. The danger in such cases lies in confusing cultural frictions with political ambitions.

      The two French reports reveal that the very idea of “national interest” may not be as innocent as it sounds. It can also mean “extranational indifference,” or worse. Indifference turns out to be not just a harmless alternative to the aggressive pursuit of national interest. In some cases, it translates as a convenient pretext for the toleration or even encouragement of brutally inhuman practices. That is why Rwanda may be a stain on both Francois Mitterand’s and Bill Clinton’s legacies.

      Another feature of modern policy may appear less extreme than the tolerance of genocide while being just as deadly. As Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies and others have repeatedly asserted, the imposition of drastic sanctions has become a major weapon in the US foreign policy arsenal. Sanctions essentially and often sadistically target civilian populations with little effect on the targeted leaders. Sanctions have become an automatic reflex mobilized not just against enemies or rivals, but also against the economically disobedient, nations that purchase goods from the wrong designated supplier.

      In 2012, Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing for The Guardian, noted that the Obama administration’s sanctions on Iran were “pushing ordinary Iranians to the edge of poverty, destroying the quality of their lives, isolating them from the outside world and most importantly, blocking their path to democracy.” Nine years later, those sanctions were made more extreme under Donald Trump and continue unabated under President Joe Biden. All the consequences Dehghan listed have continued, with no effect on the hard-line Iranian regime’s hold on power. Can anyone pretend that such policies are consistent with a commitment to human rights? Do they reveal the existence of even an ounce of empathy for human beings other than one’s own voters?

      The French at least have solicited truthful historical research about their past. But politicians like Macron, who have encouraged the research, inevitably turn out to be too embarrassed by the truth to seek any form of reparation. After commissioning it, they prefer to deny the need for it.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Macron Enriches French Vocabulary and Impoverishes Political Thought

      by

      France appears to be living through a strange transitional period that could be described as the waning of the Fifth Republic. It contains no sense of what a sixth republic might look like or why it might even be necessary. But today’s republic, with its unique electoral system, has achieved a summit of incoherence. The current president, Emmanuel Macron, has only one thing in mind: getting reelected in 2022 and maintaining the shaky status quo. 

      The Fifth Republic had a few moments of glory marked by at least three somewhat illustrious personalities who became president. The actions of these three men left a mark on the memory of the French. Their names? Charles de Gaulle, Francois Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac. The only recent president to make a valiant but ultimately futile attempt to achieve their stature, Nicolas Sarkozy, was just this week convicted of corruption and sentenced to three years in prison.

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      Macron hoped to surpass them all but has clearly failed. Instead of playing by the consecrated rules of the Fifth Republic dominated by powerful parties, he profited from a sudden and unexpected vacuum within both the traditional right and the traditional left to sneak through the cracks and create the illusion that a system permanently dominated by the “alternance” of right and left could be run from the center. 

      It was quite an achievement, but Macron failed to understand that modern French political thinking is not about vague ideas or even attractive personalities. It remains based on the notion of “engagement” (commitment) in favor of one or another strong position. The center Macron so proudly claimed to represent has always been seen as spineless and fundamentally unexciting. At best it reflects a commitment to bureaucracy, which the French have no respect for but cannot live without.

      In 2017, it looked like a free ride for Macron that would last five years thanks to a guaranteed majority in parliament, no viable opposition and a public initially willing to entertain the centrist experiment. But it has become a living hell. Macron never managed to build his own party into something that could represent a political force, despite his massive majority elected to parliament on the coattails of his 2017 electoral victory.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Now, Macron finds himself embroiled in a controversy of his own creation. Its focus has been defining Islam as the enemy and intellectuals sympathizing with Muslims as the enemy within. In November 2020, The Atlantic reported that “Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer has bemoaned the influence of American critical race theory on the French social sciences, blaming them for undermining France’s race- and ethnicity-blind universalism, and for giving comfort to ‘islamo-gauchisme,’ or ‘Islamo-leftism.’” Then, just two weeks ago, France’s higher education minister, Frederique Vidal, set off an uproar in the media and in academe itself when she demanded an “investigation” be carried out into “Islamo-leftist” influence within the universities and research community.

      This spectacular initiative has ended up having a closer resemblance to QAnon than to traditional French intellectual creativity and freedom. Vidal now wants the French to believe that universities and research institutes are harboring a cabal that englobes the French left (irresponsible intellectuals with ideas no sane Frenchmen would endorse) and Islamist extremists (murderous jihadist activists) in an unholy alliance that is threatening the security of the Republic.

      Why? Because a number of serious thinkers have dared to detect a link between the history of European colonialism, including the extension of some its practices into the present, and the rise of violent revolt by Islamic extremists against a system they believe to be oppressive of their people and their people’s well-being. Detecting historical links — or at least certain specific links — has become a crime that can no longer be tolerated.

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Islamo-gauchiste:

      A faux portmanteau word invented by Emmanuel Macron’s government to create the belief that two segments of French society, each with its own tradition of respectability — leftist thinkers and the Muslims who were part of the booty of the former French empire — are plotting to overthrow the modern mainstream, neoliberal, corporatist and implicitly racist consensus that Macron’s party believes to be the main voting bloc in French society today

      Contextual Note

      Macron’s desire to profit from the fear of Muslims that has attracted voters to his main rival, Marine Le Pen, is understandable, though risky since its anti-intellectual belligerence alienates many to the left of center. More surprising is one of its oddest features, that its promoters have coupled it with an appeal to a long-standing trend among the French of anti-Americanism. It claims to be anti-Islamic, anti-intellectual and anti-American, all at the same time.

      It isn’t enough to attack French researchers who propose readings of history that make French colonial incursions into Muslim lands look inglorious. The Macronists are now affirming that this acknowledgment of France’s historical injustice toward its minorities is an example of slavish emulation of American “critical race theory” that has now infected the minds of a generation of French academics. It’s all the fault of American “wokism,” which has no place in French culture.

      Le Monde has long been the serious newspaper of the intellectual rather than the activist left. Since the end of the Second World War, it has stood as the alternative to the other “serious” newspaper, Le Figaro, which reflected the positions of the establishment right and more specifically the Gaullists. De Gaulle, after all, was the founder of the Fifth Republic.

      Macron claims to be neither right nor left, but his electoral strategy has clearly pushed him to commit to policies agreeable to the right. Responding to the proposal of an investigation into academic Islamo-gauchisme, Le Monde immediately published the appeal launched by 600 academics condemning Vidal’s obscurantist effort. The signatories included the immensely successful Thomas Piketty, highly respected on the left. No one would think of branding Piketty as an Islamo-gauchiste.

      Historical Note

      For nearly a century, the French have complained about the attack on the noble purity of the language of Racine and Voltaire by the importation of English words. In the past, governments have legislated to prevent modern French vocabulary from being overwhelmed by trendy American coinages. That hasn’t prevented French people, and especially professionals, from using the very “anglicisms” they are expected to patriotically deplore. “Low-cost” could simply be called “pas cher” but not by people in business, who prefer the English term. Buzz, open space, leader, flop, play-list, best-of and the verb “booster” (to boost) are commonly spoken. Many deem these words illegal occupiers, on a par with the postcolonial invasion of North African immigrants. Neither of them has any business being here and sapping French culture.

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      Interviewed by the magazine L’Obs, political analyst Olivier Roy provides an acute analysis of the French president’s absurd and futile attempt to strategize his reelection: “Emmanuel Macron believes he is playing a grand strategic game by aiming to reach the second round of the next presidential elections in a face-off against Marine Le Pen.” Macron’s ministers are no longer working for the French republic. They are working for Macron’s reelection in 2022. 

      Recent polls show Le Pen within two points of Macron. For Jean-Michel Blanquer and Frederique Vidal, to steal votes from Le Pen’s white working-class constituency, intellectuals on the left must be branded as traitors to the white European republic. They may be unhappy, but just as US President Joe Biden did with progressive Democrats, the Macronists count on the vast majority on the left to vote against Le Pen.

      What Macron fails to realize is that his quandary is closer to the Democratic Party’s failure in the 2016 US presidential election than its success in 2020. Like Hillary Clinton in 2016, people now see him as a shabby, ineffective pillar of a discredited establishment. Nobody likes Macron enough to want to see him hanging around for another five years. As Roy points out, the strategy he has devised is absurd. He cannot win over Le Pen voters. His commitment to Europe has made him their enemy. And now polls show that many on the left will no longer be intimidated to vote for someone so committed to betraying them and their intellectual culture.

      After two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022 promises to be the year of political pandemonium.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Emmanuel Macron’s Dishonorable Legion

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      In recent years, France and Egypt have developed a close relationship based on common interests in the Middle East. Some might suggest that it harkens back to the tradition established with Napoleon Bonaparte’s campaign in Egypt at the end of the 18th century. It led to the future emperor’s sincere fascination with Egyptian history and …
      Continue Reading “Emmanuel Macron’s Dishonorable Legion”
      The post Emmanuel Macron’s Dishonorable Legion appeared first on Fair Observer. More

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      Did Emmanuel Macron Have It Coming?

      by

      After watching the video of a street battle raging directly below the Paris apartment I once occupied at a time when François Mitterand was president, I turned to The New York Times’ editorial board’s response to President Emmanuel Macron’s accusation that The Times and other English-speaking media have been unfair in their coverage of Macron’s campaign against Islamist separatism.

      In an excellent article examining recent developments in France, Glenn Greenwald is far too generous when he suggests that the proudly authoritarian Macron is acting either “out of political calculation, conviction or some combination of both.” For the past three years, most people in France have been wondering whether in fact their president has any convictions beyond electoral calculations. Just ask the gilets jaunes, whose legacy is far from over. The yellow vests have been seen reemerging to accompany the current protests against Macron’s new law on global security.

      To defend his policies, Macron has frequently quoted Jean Baubérot, a historian of laïcité, the French ideology of secularism. In an interview with the journal L’Obs, Baubérot excoriates the president, notably calling into question Macron’s pompous invocation of the “values” of “la République.” But as Baubérot notes, Macron’s idea of values “could disguise less than honorable intentions.” At the same time, the historian reminds the president that values are communicated by “convincing rather than constraining.”

      Macron’s Problem With the News in English

      READ MORE

      Baudérot goes even further when he compares Macron to the revolutionaries of France’s Reign of Terror who worshipped the goddess of reason. He accuses Macron of attempting to turn laïcité itself into “a goddess of which France would be her chosen people.” No one has forgotten Macron’s ambition of becoming a Jupiterian leader. The supreme god must have his goddesses. 

      Macron’s pagan religion is clearly incompatible with Islam, but, as Olivier Roy and Régis Debray have pointed out, it is also incompatible with democratic rights and especially the freedom of expression. Roy points out that Macron’s latest initiatives brutally stifle the freedom of expression of schoolchildren as well as of an entire community bullied into conformity.

      The Times editorial board thinks that the issues Macron is concerned about “should be open to debate, both within France and among mature democracies.” In an effort to sound conciliatory, The Times agrees that “the debate cannot cross into any notion that any victim of Islamist terror ‘had it coming.’ Mr. Macron is right to reject any such suggestion.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Had it coming:

      An expression used by individuals and even political leaders — such as George W. Bush with regard to Saddam Hussein or Hillary Clinton with regard to Muammar Gaddafi — to justify not only acts of war but also their own gruesome terrorist methods.

      Contextual Note

      The Times editorial board politely makes its own significant point about President Macron’s simplistic approach to complex problems when it notes that “he goes too far in seeing malicious insult throughout the ‘Anglo-American media.’” Macron may not like this critique, but most lucid observers agree he “had it coming.” And it may be getting worse with the approach of the 2022 election.

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      As he always does, Emmanuel Macron insists on keeping his word — not to others, but to himself. This is his idea of remaining consistent with his convictions. He does so, especially when those who are directly concerned by his authoritarian measures express their disagreement. He then has no choice but to wait for the explosion and watch everything go up in flames.

      That is what happened when he chose to repeal France’s wealth tax and compensate by raising the tax on gas. It led to the yellow vest revolt. He claimed that it was all about ecology when it was essentially a means of shifting the tax burden from the rich to the poor. It happened again with the stubborn promotion of retirement reform. The imminent explosion was only averted by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March that halted the legislative process.

      Even when Macron proclaimed that Islam was in crisis to justify putting France on a war footing against 10% of its own citizens, he admitted that the nation had failed its Muslim population by permitting their effective ghettoization, marginalizing most young Muslims. And concerning the depredations of the police, he admitted, in an interview with Brut, a media popular among the young, that “today, when the color of someone’s skin isn’t white, they will be much more subject to police controls.” 

      In the Brut interview, Macron characterized his proposed law to counter Islamic separatism as an attempt to “rearm the Republic against the supporters of radical Islam.” Who could not hear in this remark an echo of “The Marseillaise,” “Aux armes, citoyens”? Like Hillary Clinton with regard to Muammar Gaddafi, Macron seems to be anticipating the day when he will be able to chortle and say, “We came, we saw, [they] died.” While he admits that “French style integration failed,” he appears only to imagine a military-style response to that failure.

      Le Monde shows itself less indulgent than Greenwald on the possibility that Macron may be acting on principle. The newspaper comments that “during this free-flowing interview [with Brut], Mr Macron took the position of defending his record, with his eyes riveted on the 2022 election.” A French James Carville might be tempted to sum it up this way: “It’s the election, stupid.”

      Macron even allowed himself to enter into a spat with the writer, cineaste and ecological activist Cyril Dion, who had the temerity to remind the president that, in the wake of the yellow vest consultations, Macron had promised but failed to take on board the propositions of a committee of 150 citizens representing the full diversity of France. The president has now summarily dismissed the issue with a remark intended to sound insulting to anyone not belonging to the church of the goddess Laïcité: “Because 150 citizens wrote something, that doesn’t mean it’s the Bible or the Koran.”

      Historical Note

      The New York Times, as the voice of modern liberalism, has become hypersensitive to the question of diversity and racial justice. This may simply be a consequence of its alignment with the Democratic Party, which sees identity politics as the unique theme legitimizing its brand of “progressivism.” This focus on a single theme allows it to dispense with the need to show undue concern with distracting issues such as the militarism of the US empire, the trampling of civil liberties by the intelligence community or the need for economic justice in an increasingly indifferent capitalist plutocracy. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Consistent with this logic, in its response to Macron, The Times offers the truism that “racism and Islamophobia are major problems in France, as they are in the United States, Britain and elsewhere in the Western world.” Though obvious to everyone, it subtly suggests that Macron’s claim to universalism sounds more like French exceptionalism than a commitment to universal human rights.

      And The Times is absolutely right. The universalist “republican” values Macron embraces contain the idea that its institutions are color blind. On the instructions of the Ministry of the Interior, the police may or may not be color blind, but they are not blind. They have two eyes to see with, whenever they decide to stop someone in the street. Likewise, employers can discriminate when they see the name of a candidate on a resumé or at least discover the truth during the interview. In other words, France and the US both have a problem of white privilege, but they manage it — poorly, in both cases — in contrasting ways.

      The Times concludes by celebrating its vocation as a truth-teller ready to take on the challenge of racial justice: “That’s what the news media does, at home and abroad. It is its function and duty to ask questions about the roots of racism, ethnic anger and the spread of Islamism among Western Muslims, and to critique the effectiveness and impact of government policies.” The Times’ performance at this task has, over time, produced variable results. It still hasn’t admitted its complicity in the ongoing humanitarian disaster provoked by Bush’s wars in the Middle East. But with regard to Emmanuel Macron, we can congratulate it for showing the courage to stick to its principles.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Rapid Growth of Emmanuel Macron’s Authoritarianism

      by

      In early October, French President Emmanuel Macron, as a preparation for the 2022 election, made the decision to mount a campaign blaming France’s Muslims for their failure to embrace the country’s increasingly dogmatic “Republican culture.” To counter Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration extreme right, Macron calculated that his shambolic center-right party needed to find a way of steering votes away from the passably racist National Rally led by Le Pen.

      In Macron’s eyes, French Muslims have failed to prove the sincerity of their expected conversion to France’s national religion of laicité, or secularism, that has now definitively supplanted the traditional role of the Catholic Church. To outdo Le Pen, he deviated the blame to the world’s entire Muslim population, claiming that Islam was in the thralls of a global crisis that offended French republican sensibilities. Its credo of “equality, liberty, fraternity” now excluded tolerance for any group of people who did not unanimously adopt all its trappings. Fraternity has its limits.

      Even before the gruesome assaults on a schoolteacher and three citizens in a church in Nice that horrified the French nation, through his rhetoric about a global Islamic threat, Macron managed to convince a number of governments in Muslim countries that France was at war with their religion. Several nations responded by recommending a boycott of French products.

      Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

      READ MORE

      Some went further. Since Macron felt himself in a position to signal their crisis, some Muslim authorities were tempted to focus on his own. Noticing that the French president was proposing increasingly authoritarian laws that had the effect of targeting Muslim children in schools, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari penned a tweet comparing Macron’s proposed laws, which included attributing ID numbers to school children, to the Nazi policy of requiring Jews to wear yellow stars.

      Mazari initially made the accusation on the basis of an article that was later amended to state that the IDs would be required for all children, not just Muslims. The reform aimed at obliging every child in France to receive civic instruction teaching them the “values of the Republic.” Those values include celebrating the publication of insulting cartoons that may even express bigotry and limiting the freedom to don clothing or symbols that may signify affiliation with a religion other than republicanism. Because France’s values are universal, they trump anyone else’s particular values. Conformity is a core republican value.

      France’s Foreign Ministry wasted no time reacting to Mazari’s comparison of the new measures with Nazi practices. NBC News’s headline on the story read: “France ‘deeply shocked’ as Pakistan minister compares Macron to Nazis.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Deeply shocked:

      1. Morally offended
      2. Embarrassingly surprised that one has been found out

      Contextual Note

      In the film “Casablanca,” Captain Renault, the French chief of the local police under German occupation gives the order to shut down Rick’s Café, a nightclub where he spends most of his evenings. When Rick, the American owner of the café played by Humphrey Bogart, asks why, Renault replies “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here” just as the croupier arrives to give him his winnings.

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      The French Foreign Ministry didn’t quite frame the message in the same terms as Captain Renault. NBC reports that “the minister spoke in ‘deeply shocking and insulting terms’ of Macron and the whole of France.” The ministry added, “These hateful words are blatant lies, imbued with an ideology of hatred and violence.” Clearly, Mazari had fallen into the trap of Godwin’s law (citing Nazis invalidates any argument) and the ministry jumped on it.

      France’s proposed law clearly applies the French anti-discriminatory republican rule that procedures must apply equally and uniformly to everyone. Unlike the policies of the Nazi regime, it doesn’t seek to exclude or eliminate groups of people considered different. Marine Le Pen’s party might be tempted to envisage measures of exclusion, but not France’s traditional parties. Not even Macron’s non-traditional Republic on the Move, which was cobbled together in 2017 by attracting a variety of traditional personalities from the political establishment to provide the president with a majority in parliament.

      The republican credo elevates universal civic values to the level of an alternative moral system, replacing all the traditional bases of morality, including the Christian principles of compassion, non-violence and concern for the oppressed. Universality implies uniformity. Individuals must show themselves not so much worthy of their neighbors and their community, but of the republic itself. In that sense, the spirit of the new policies put forward by Macron do vaguely resemble Hitler’s belief in a singular Aryan ideal.

      Historical Note

      Macron’s vision of la république takes Charles de Gaulle’s meme of aspiring to “a certain idea of France” beyond mere aspiration. Macron seeks to codify and monitor the behavior of individuals, who must now prove their conformity with the civic ideal.

      Recently, China’s President Xi Jinping inveighed against a trend that when translated into English is rendered as “splitism.” China is an immense country with a dominant ethnic group, the Han, and the ambition to control territory that includes other ethnicities and cultures. China enjoys the security that comes from governing a population that not only believes in its overwhelming ethnic unity but also, largely as a reaction to its humiliation by Western powers in the 19th century, embraces a fervent form of nationalism. This has permitted Xi in the 21st century to consolidate and reinforce the authoritarianism that Mao Zedong had pushed to a chaotic extreme half a century ago.

      Macron’s links his idea of Muslim separatism in France to the entire Muslim world. This curiously echoes Xi’s complaint about “splitism.” The two ideas are fundamentally different, of course, since Xi worries that the cultures and traditions of autonomous regions, such as Tibet or Xinjiang, might lead to movements of political independence. No risk exists in France of a Muslim nation splitting off, whereas in the past, there have been very real threats of Breton, Alsatian or Basque separatism.

      Historically, France achieved a sense of national unity by imposing the French language on its linguistically diversified regions. Forcing children whose native language was Breton, Alsatian, Basque or Occitan to think in French and imagine themselves as descendants of the Gauls (who obviously didn’t speak French) led to the virtual disappearance of the regional languages. Macron probably sees this historical reality as a policy that paid off in the end. Why not apply it to another important component of contemporary French demography: Muslims?

      Macron is now discovering that there are a number of problems with this approach. Unlike Basques or Bretons, French Muslims are geographically dispersed across the nation. The history of their relations with the French formerly colonialist nation is extremely complex. And the fact that it is their religion rather than their ethnicity or their geographical origin that defines them means that treating them as a coherent group is not just perilous, but impossible, especially if the reasoning is restricted to France itself. An important part of their identity derives from a global community that is also extremely diverse.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This may help to explain why Macron believes that Islam is in a crisis. Someone who has a “certain idea” of France itself expects other nations and groups of people to have a certain idea of themselves. For the universalist republican Macron, anything that isn’t uniform and unified must be in a state of crisis.

      By taking on the entire Muslim world, Macron may end up disastrously achieving the goal of unifying Muslims by posing as their common enemy. His policies that now insist on shaping all young Muslims in France into the universalist republican mold is creating rather than resolving tension. For one thing, it inevitably provokes more irrational attacks by unhinged fanatics — and every community has its unhinged fanatics.

      Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut writing in The New York Times call the system Macron is putting in place “France’s Dragnet,” a policing campaign that now focuses on Muslim children as young as 10. Teachers have been instructed to denounce children who show signs of thinking differently about the values of the republic. It has already left numerous children “traumatized” and fearful to speak freely in class for fear of being suspected of terrorist intentions. That is how, in the wake of drama surrounding the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, France promotes its republican version of “freedom of expression.” 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Muslims Will Not Kill God for Marianne

      by

      Two conflicting narratives have been clashing anew in extremely heated debates amid what we may call “a new cartoon crisis.” On one side, there is a sizable portion of orthodox Muslims with a strong aniconism tradition and who perceive the representation of sacred characters as unpardonable blasphemy. On the other are defenders of secularism who consider freedom of expression a holy human right. The world is witnessing the confrontation of two epistemologically divergent civilizations: a humanist one that killed God and put the human at its center, and a metaphysical one ready to die and kill for its deity and sacrosanct icons.

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

      READ MORE

      “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” stated French President Emmanuel Macron, as he unveiled his plan to defend French secularism against Islamic extremism in early October. This prompted a backlash from Muslim communities around the world. The events escalated further amidst the beheading of a French teacher who shared with his class derogatory caricatures featuring Prophet Muhammad. In an act of defiance, Macron insisted the French will make no concessions and would “not cease drawing caricatures” as Paris displayed gigantic reproductions of the cartoons in question on government buildings.

      Post-Truth Era

      The current situation is a classic case of a post-truth-era dilemma. Each camp firmly believes it is the keeper of a universal, irrefutable truth, while in reality it lives inside its own ideological bubble and refuses to accept that there are other truths out there and probably a transcendental one that is beyond all opposing paradigms.

      Post-truth — which was named the Word of the Year in 2016 by the Oxford Dictionary in the midst of the divisions caused by Brexit and the election of Donald Trump — is a philosophical concept that signals a context where shared rational facts are replaced by subjective and emotional beliefs that shape public opinion. French humanism is rooted in centuries of reforms ending in a rupture between the state and the church. Muslim societies lived a completely different historical reality, where metaphysics are central and populations still romanticize the theological concept of the umma (global Muslim community).

      Embed from Getty Images

      In an ideal world, both “truths” would be able to coexist peacefully. Nevertheless, France never overcame its colonial mindset with its good old “civilizing mission.” Macron arrogantly insinuates that it is the white man’s burden to modernize and secularize a Muslim world “in crisis.” Acts of terror committed by Muslims are indubitably repugnant and humanly unacceptable, but so is radical secularization and the extremist modernization dogma that blindly attempts to assimilate citizens into the fifth republic’s grinding machine.

      Defenders of the French perspective would say: Why don’t followers of other religions get angry when we draw Jesus or Moses? This is a shallow and simplistic comparison that does not take into consideration the cultural and anthropological particularity of the Muslim community, nor the sanguinary colonial encounter it had with France just decades back in Africa. It also characterizes the obstinate myopia with which the country of Marianne continues to deal with its almost 6 million Muslims.

      Maybe the most revealing inconsistency in the French discourse can be summed up in a saying repeated by those who call to boycott French products: “Insulting a black person is racism, insulting a Jew is anti-Semitism, insulting a woman is sexism, but insulting a Muslim is freedom of expression.”  

      Both Sides Demonize the Other

      Of course, not all French people are rigid defenders of the values of the republic. Many philosophers, artists and journalists came out to condemn the French president’s provocations. However, as in many post-truth dichotomies, both antagonists compete to demonize the other, which fuels further hate and animosity. Moreover, instead of fighting violent extremism, it can do just the opposite, such as with the previous Danish cartoon controversy of 2005 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015. Meanwhile, Muslims are flooding the internet with hashtags and memes against Macron, while countries like Kuwait removed French products from its shelves and the Turkish president even questioned the mental health of his counterpart in Paris.

      To answer Macron’s statement, we can regrettably say that France is a country in crisis because of its failure to address systemic racism against Muslims and its refusal to embrace cultural plurality and hybridity. In the French context, Edward Said’s “clash of ignorance” can no longer be used as an excuse to hide the clash of truths between radical secularism and Muslims refusing to kill God for Marianne.

      *[An earlier version of this article was published by Raseef22.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

      by

      Throughout the month of October, French President Emmanuel Macron projected himself into the global news cycle as the leader of a new crusade launched ostensibly to bring Islam into conformity with French Enlightenment ideals. In reality, his campaign is aimed at bolstering his chances of winning a second term in the 2022 presidential election.

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

      READ MORE

      The Muslim world’s reaction to Macron’s crusade has been one of stunned bewilderment. In an interview with Al Jazeera on Saturday, the president offered no apologies and instead sought to explain his motives: “I understand the sentiments being expressed and I respect them. But you must understand my role right now, it’s to do two things: to promote calm and also to protect these rights.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Promote calm:

      Engage in any action — however ill-conceived, unjust or destructive — that affords peace of mind to a politician worried about his diminishing chances of winning the next election.

      Contextual Note

      Can President Macron be serious when he says that his actions and discourse have served to promote calm? Has the world or France itself become calmer since his speech at the beginning of October, when he declared that Islam was in crisis globally? Can he be unaware that when a Western leader announces what Al Jazeera describes as “his plan ‘to reform Islam’ in order to make it more compatible with his country’s republican values,” some may interpret that as a sign of aggression against their culture by a European who appears to have retained a neocolonial mindset?

      Does Macron believe that by providing a supplementary motive to unhinged individuals driven by fanaticism and ready to engage in murderous violence against his own people he is promoting calm and protecting rights? President Donald Trump might claim the same thing when he encourages white supremacists and the police to attack protesters in the name of “retribution.” The only logical perspective that could lead to calm in the struggle he describes would be total victory. In other words, crushing and humiliating the other side. But even that would be a failed plan. Humiliation brings short-term peace but sets the stage for major revolt as soon as the winner’s grip begins to loosen.

      Macron proudly announces: “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw.” The only threat to that freedom can come from institutions with the power to repress it, not from individuals who react irrationally to what some people write, think and draw. Macron’s language is fundamentally dishonest. The controversy that has been going on for over a decade is not about the right to speak, think and draw. It concerns the possible social consequences of publishing, disseminating and amplifying messages that some may interpret as an expression of hateful and discriminatory intimidation. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Jules Ferry, the virulently anticlerical father of laïcité, created France’s modern public education system. As minister of education in 1883, he instructed teachers to speak “with the greatest reserve, whenever you risk even brushing against a religious sentiment of which you are not the judge.” He insisted that if “a single honest man may take offense at what you are going to say … abstain from saying it.” Macron has a different reading of laïcité. In fact, the controversy turns around a bigger problem at the core of today’s civilization: the role of the media. In its quest to increase its audience, the media routinely amplifies every difference of opinion or quarrel that it presents as a cause to be defended, on one side or the other. In such circumstances, every word and gesture may be perceived as a provocation of the other side. 

      By way of contrast, in a society that encourages healthy dialogue and debate, friction and tension will inevitably exist, but they contribute to building a culture of tolerance and open exchange. Social dialogue can have its ugly moments, as parties directly challenge each other. But respectful dialogue creates networks of understanding rather than pockets of conflict. As soon as debates are turned into defending “a cause,” dialogue disappears.

      Causes kill debate by invoking a higher principle that often exists only in the purveyor’s mind. Emmanuel Macron’s formulation of the idea of freedom is far more absolute than its actual practice in France, where restrictions on freedom of speech, including libel and hate speech, incitement to violence and insulting public servants, exist and are enforced. Jules Ferry would have expected his teachers to reflect on whether the Charlie Hebdo cartoons fell into any of those categories.

      French political culture has traditionally reserved a special status for satire. Its preservation ensures that the people may criticize the government and institutions of authority. The government is free to counter with its own arguments but runs the risk of being held to account if it goes too far in restricting citizens’ rights. The cartoons in question had nothing to do with the questioning of national authorities. They were much closer to nationalistic propaganda.

      The controversy over the cartoons appears to cross an invisible borderline between satire and gratuitous and xenophobic insult. There is no readily identifiable borderline but a culture that pretends to be as rational as France’s vaunted Enlightenment culture claims to be should acknowledge the reality of the borderline. Even in his attempt at an apology in the Al Jazeera interview, Macron clearly refuses to do so.

      It is a well-known fact that politicians distort everything to attain their ends. It is part of their job profile. Macron distorts even the idea of distorting. He complains about “distortions” that led people “to believe that the caricatures were a creation of the French state.” That is clearly a distortion on his part. No serious voice has made that claim. He then generously notes that “in the world there are people who distort Islam and in the name of this religion that they claim to defend, they kill, they slaughter.” That may be true, but the effect of his speeches has been to distort the nature what he calls the “global crisis” of Islam.

      Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, Marwan Bishara, sagely and humbly expresses the wish that Macron “should begin to improve the atmosphere between France, Europe, and the Muslim world.” Bishara nevertheless implies that is unlikely. On this occasion, he doesn’t mention the reason why, which he is well aware of. There will be a new presidential election in 18 months.

      Historical Note

      Samuel Paty, the assassinated teacher at the heart of all this, undoubtedly believed that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, originally published in 2015, belonged to history and could be treated as artifacts of the past when he presented them in a civics class. After all, political cartoons published in newspapers are essentially ephemera. They quickly disappear from everyone’s cultural memory. The Greeks understand that since their word for newspaper is εφημερίδα — ephemerida. 

      If Paty believed that the cartoons belonged only to the past, he was wrong. Because of the media’s and politicians’ obsession with causes and the fact that the Charlie Hebdo murder trial was currently underway, the issues around the cartoons were very much alive. 

      In the late 20th century, Ireland endured a prolonged conflict between Protestants and Catholics marked by terrorism. The IRA was better organized and better equipped than any of today’s loose Muslim extremist networks. We might wonder today whether it would have made any sense for Protestant cartoonists to publish cartoons of the pope as a terrorist? (They obviously could not have taken Jesus as their target because both of the warring religions were Christian). 

      The answer is simple. It didn’t happen. Everyone understood the conflict had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with communities and conflicting loyalties. This is perfectly illustrated in a joke from that time: It’s night and a man is walking on the streets of Belfast. Suddenly a shadowy figure leaps out and thrusts him against a wall in a dark alley. He feels a gun pressed up against his skull. A voice shouts, “What religion are you?” He thinks: “If I say Catholic and he’s Protestant, he’ll kill me. If I say Protestant and he’s Catholic, I’m dead.” Thinking quickly, he said, “I’m Jewish.” He then heard the voice blurt out, “I must be the luckiest Palestinian in Ulster.”

      Now that is meaningful and effective satire. Though troubling, it can elicit a laugh from people of any religion. 

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Is Peace Religious or Secular?

      by

      Reporting on yesterday’ horrendous knife attack in Nice’s cathedral, Al Jazeera defined the context: “The incident comes amid growing tensions between France and the Muslim world over French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent speech wherein he said Islam was in ‘crisis’, and amid renewed public support in France for the right to show cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.”

      After the US Election, Will Civil War Become the Fashion?

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      Earlier this week, Fair Observer’s founder, CEO and editor-in-chief, Atul Singh, teaming up with the great and respected scholar Ishtiaq Ahmed, published an article with the title, “Macron Claims Islam Is in ‘Crisis.’ Erdogan Disagrees.” Citing the public quarrel that recently broke out between the French and Turkish presidents, the authors review various moments of violence in the political history of Muslim expansion in Asia.

      France finds itself undergoing a historical psychodrama with existential implications. At the beginning of October, Macron asserted that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis,” accusing it of the anti-republican crime of “separatism.” Commentators avoided noticing that this was a clever ploy on Macron’s part to distract attention from the fact that France and Europe have been in an existential crisis for some time. Pointing to someone else’s crisis is an efficient way of hiding one’s own.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Above all, Macron wants to convince voters in France that he, far better than the nationalist Marine Le Pen, has the stature to confront the consequences of Islam’s global crisis. The president has built a fragile center-right power base, and his main challengers in the 2022 election are on the right and the extreme right. He must at all costs occupy some of their terrain. The Muslim threat is the hot-button issue that has the most immediate impact.

      Shortly after President Macron’s denunciation of the global crisis of Islam, the gruesome killing and beheading of Samuel Paty took place. The history teacher’s 18-year-old assassin, born in Chechnya, had been educated in French public schools from the age of 6. Paty’s crime had been to show his class the controversial Charlie Hebdo cartoons ridiculing Islam in a lesson about freedom of speech. Macron has since made a point of defending the “liberty of blasphemy” as a basic right, protesting that he would not “renounce the caricatures,” which for some may sound as if he is endorsing their content.

      The article by Ahmed and Singh builds up to a fundamental question: “Does Islam lead to violence and terrorism?” After noting that “[m]any Islamic scholars and political analysts argue in the negative,” the authors boldly announce their “contrarian view that Islam can only be a religion of peace after it conquers the world and establishes a supremacy of sharia.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Religion of peace:

      Every religion at its spiritual core, just as every religion as soon as it is appropriated or overtaken by political forces becomes a religion of war

      Contextual Note

      Throughout mankind’s history, there have been so many sects, cults, churches and spiritual philosophies that generalizing about religion itself can only be a futile exercise. Generalizing about any single religion, especially one shared by more than a billion people and that has lasted over a thousand years, is equally fraught with ambiguity. Attributing to a religion the ambition of conquering the world begs so many questions of history, economy, political organization and culture that no discussion, however rational, can hope to produce an acceptable general conclusion.

      St. Augustine observed that if fire is used to produce warmth, we see it as good and peaceful, but if used to burn and destroy, it appears aggressive and evil. The same is true of any religion. History offers examples of both the good and evil uses of religion. Searching the sacred texts of any religion will provide examples of exhortations that may at times suggest aggressive inclinations and at others, peace and harmony.

      It is not the task of a Devil’s Dictionary’s to defend any particular religion or religion in general, but rather to recognize those occasions when even secular thought — and more particularly political thought — hides the fact that it has its own dogmas, often as categoric and absolute as the most puritanical religion.

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      Most media commentators have refused to notice what is obvious about the situation in France. Laicité in the hands of French politicians has become a surrogate religion. It has produced a belief system with doctrines increasingly formulated as dogmas. Political scientist Olivier Roy wonders whether Macron isn’t seeking to abolish the separation of church and state, the foundation of laïcité, by focusing only on Islam. Macron’s stance implies that “the simple fact of placing God above men is a declaration of separatism.” Laïcité risks becoming a religion of war, not peace.

      Emulating the Catholic Church, Macron’s government turned Paty into a republican saint and martyr when it instantly conferred upon him the Légion d’honneur. In the days following his killing, some had proposed to have him interred at the Pantheon, to be entombed with the “gods” of the republic. In contrast, the Vatican requires an elaborate procedure, the passage of time and the intervention of the devil’s advocate before canonizing its saints and martyrs.

      One prominent voice in French politics has suggested a subtle but necessary distinction that Macron’s government and the media prefer to avoid. Jean-Luc Mélanchon, the head of the party La France Insoumise, has consistently militated in the past for severe punitive measures directed not at “Islam in crisis,” “radical Islam” or even fundamentalism, but at the actors of “political Islam,” a term Roy defines as “the contemporary movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology.” For this crime, Macron’s minister of education calls Mélanchon a treasonous “Islamo-gauchiste.”

      Historical note

      Though the characterization of Islam by Ishtiaq Ahmed and Atul Singh appears abusive in its generality, there is a very real sense in which is true. All systems of thought that claim to be universal are tempted by despotism. If we define secular peace as a state of shared understanding and harmonious interaction across an entire population, we must recognize that it implies some degree of submission and conformity to an order, usually a political order. It’s a question of degree and the means of enforcement available. France’s Reign of Terror was conceived by secular rationalists. Throughout history, submission and conformity have been achieved through fear and intimidation, conquest and slaughter.

      Both Christianity and Islam claim to be universal. In the history of both religions, we have seen examples that tended toward two extremes: the generous belief that the religion is accessible to all people and the insistence that all people in a specific region embrace it. The determining factor has always been the political climate and social traditions within which the universality of the religion and its moral system have been applied or imposed.

      The same is true of secular religions such as French republicanism and American exceptionalism. These non-religious cults play a determining role in the nations’ foreign policy. The US and France have each created a political religion that they believe is not only proper to their nation, but represents a universal model that other nations should emulate. In both cases, the separation of church and state plays an important role, clearing the way for universal adherence to the declared values of the republic and the civic religion.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some point out that Islam differs from Christianity, whose founder insisted on rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s but not what is God’s. They may argue that Islam has never taken the trouble to distinguish between religious and political authority and has, throughout history, consistently invited confusion between the two. But in the Muslim world, the tradition of Sufism dates back to the early Umayyad period. Though it never had any pretension of becoming dominant, its historical reality demonstrates the awareness of a radical distinction between the spiritual (faith) and the worldly (politics).

      In short, religions play the role that history allows them to play. They also influence the politics we in the West, somewhat presumptuously, consider to be the unique basis of history. Moral philosophy always accompanies religion and can at times play a dominant role. But more often, political forces associated with religion manage to push it aside or mold it into something new. Whether any dominant religion becomes a religion of war or peace lies in the eyes of the beholder at a specific moment of history.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More