Is France Coming to its Senses?

After 9/11, it gradually became clear that Western elites (generally, but not exclusively, on the left) had no interest in fighting against the rise of reactionary Islam, but were settling for appeasement. The reason they refused to fight against reactionaries is that they didn’t see them as reactionaries, but instead saw them as oppressed people of the Third World fighting against those who were oppressing them. It was all about grievances. This meant that any violence that didn’t fit that narrative tended to be ignored or wished away. For example, the response to the massacre in the Orlando gay nightclub led to a discussion of, not the reactionary nature of most Muslims, but of the proliferation of guns. The murders of thousands of leftists in Iran back in 1979 is never even mentioned. And I guess Malala was shot by some American gun nut who somehow made his way over to Pakistan. Attempting to get through to these people that they need to switch sides is simply impossible, for even if one persuaded an individual here and there, our media, schools, and entertainment industry have been flooding our whole culture with pro-Islamist rhetoric. And they don't even support liberal Muslims; no, it's the reactionaries they support. Not too long ago a liberal Muslim sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for saying he was an Islamophobe. (See here.)

But now it seems that there is a slight ray of hope in France. Macron actually seems to be fighting for secularism against Islamic extremism. See here. Apparently, French people are angry at the press in the Anglophone world for taking the side of the Islamists and seeing the French as the problem. Consider this passage in the article:

In Le Monde, Hugo Micheron, a leading jihadism expert, slammed “hallucinatory” American coverage, writing that: “the progressive media appear uncomfortable with the facts. In the New York Times and the Washington Post, the two most influential newspapers on the left, the term ‘jihadism’ never appears.” Indeed, in some American coverage there is barely an admission that Islamic extremism is a real problems confronting France. The term “Islamism” is rarely found, unless directly attributed to Macron, as though a mere figment of his imagination.

Well, that is very nice, and a big turnaround for Le Monde compared to this, which describes how 19 professors wrote a letter of complaint that was published in Le Monde against an Algerian novelist for being an Islamophobe. But back to the article. Consider this quote:

Not all Anglophone media is the same, and to its credit, the FT [Financial Times] spoke to French teachers on the ground, where one admitted to not feeling safe. “If I have to show a film with a nude scene, a couple embracing, there’d be shouting,” she told the paper: “not the normal teenage stuff, real aggression, kids saying it’s not allowed.”

This is the sort of reaction I thought I would be seeing after 9/11. I thought every liberal and leftist would be worried about how the secular society they had created was going to be destroyed by Muslims, but instead there has been nothing but appeasement. So, it is nice to hear this, for once.

But is this article correct in thinking that everything is turning around in France? I don’t think so. There are a few clues that this is nothing but wishful thinking on the author’s part. For example, he says, “Among what little discussion of Macron’s campaign against Islamism in France there has been....” Yup. I thought so. This isn’t a country focused on the problem of the Islamists. They are mostly paying attention to other things. Moreover, that sentence continues like this: “... it’s not unusual to find accusations of pandering to the far-right, electioneering, attempting to reform Islam, and enforcing hard-line secularism, or even state atheism.” Pandering to the far right is, of course, exactly what leftists say about any attempt to rein in the Islamists. But things are pretty far gone in France if the left is also whining about “enforcing hard-line secularism.” I haven’t heard that one before.

Anyway, it is nice to hear about French anger against our media for not understanding their campaign against the Islamists, but I really don’t expect much from it.

Comments

[Jawick]

Hope it's not too little too late.

[John Pepple]

It probably is.