The horrific murder of Samuel Paty makes the need for critical and unwaveringly antiracist approaches all the more necessary
There are no words to express the horror of the murder of Samuel Paty on the 16th of October, and there are no excuses to be found for the terrorist who committed this atrocity.
Sadly, and as expected by anyone who follows French politics, reactions from the French political and intellectual elite soon turned to reactionary rhetoric about war and revenge. This has diverted attention away from the complexity of the situation and the many points of failure. Instead, early political and media reactions have placed responsibility on the usual scapegoats from Muslim communities, anti-Islamophobia organisations with no links to the attack, fantasised Islamo-leftists and even the Observatory of Laïcité’s rapporteur accused of being overly concerned with fighting Islamophobia.
While such reactions have become commonplace in the wake of terrorist attacks in France, they have done little to tackle the issue and heal the wounds. They place Muslim communities, and anyone loosely associated with them, under further suspicion in an already tense and threatening climate. Furthermore, this approach is likely to play right into the hands of the terrorists seeking to sow fear and division, but also that of the far and extreme right, who are pursuing similar goals, as it has many times before.
The horror of the act and its motivations should not prevent us from trying to understand what has led us here and how to prevent such attacks from happening again by taking a longer view. As clearly shown by the demonstration which took place to pay respect to Samuel Paty, France can no longer pretend to be united behind a hashtag as it falsely and fleetingly did after the horrific attacks on Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
At the time, the shock and pain were so great that to many, unity felt the best response as people tried to come to terms with what was a clear attack on free speech and freedom of the press. However, this uncritical reaction, natural at first in such horrific circumstances, was quickly hijacked by reactionaries and turned into a threat to the very ideals it purportedly supported, as anyone warning caution about some of the more reactionary elements of the movement became suspicious, shut down from debate or even worse.
Demands for nuance and critical assessment should be an obvious part of any democratic society and yet, after the murder of Samuel Paty, voices warning that critical assessment is needed have again been shut down. This has been articulated with varying degrees of violence, but with the same underlying disrespect for careful, in-depth analysis of tragic and incredibly complicated contexts and events.
It was symptomatic watching nouveau-philosophe-turned-fully-fledged-reactionary Pascal Bruckner violently accuse Rokhaya Diallo, one of the sharpest critical voices in France today, of having ‘armed their killers’ with her writing on anti-racism and ‘led, with others, to the death of the twelve from Charlie’.
Such accusations have become commonplace for anyone voicing dissent, even though their aim is to find better solutions to a problem that politicians and pundits have been unable to address for years with their current approach. I have myself been accused by reactionary voices of ‘crassly excusing’ the murder of Samuel Paty for highlighting the danger of falling for ineffective and divisive Islamophobic rhetoric.
Suggesting different approaches and demanding that the fight against terrorism is not done at the expense of the fight against racism, and that a democracy worthy of the name should not have to choose between denouncing both, is considered ‘treason’ in the current context.
While this is expected from reactionary pundits, as their hypocritical and cynical approach is part of their culture wars, it is far more concerning to see more mainstream and liberal actors buy into similar narratives.
The French Minister of Education declared that part of the solution to the plague of ‘islamo-leftism’ was to fight the import of ‘intersectional theses’ from the US, no less. This of course is reminiscent of the recent reactionary focus on Critical Race Theory in both the UK and US, as if it were these groups of academics and activists who held power in our societies.
These moral panics have long been engineered to divert attention away from common struggles and plights in the current rise of inequality. Concepts of free speech and laïcité have been hijacked to push for increased suspicion of some communities, mostly Muslims and anyone loosely associated, but also anti-racist organisations, writers and academics. The meaning of these concepts has been reshaped to demonise and curtail freedoms that their users claim to defend.
Today free speech is more often than not deployed to defend the right to push reactionary ideas and negate the humanity of certain groups, but also to quash any dissent and criticism of such politics, thus censoring its opponents. Similarly, laïcité, which used to represent the right of individuals to believe or not believe against state interference, is now used to impose certain beliefs and behaviours on some communities in a flagrant liberticidal manner. As liberties are quashed in full view, the silence of so-called libertarians is deafening.
This was clearly demonstrated by the burkini affair in 2016, when the laws banning this garment were found to be unconstitutional by the State Council who ruled that the ban ‘constituted a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of fundamental liberties’. This decision was greeted with uproar by politicians from both sides of the spectrum as if a bathing suit worn by a handful of women was the biggest threat to French society at the time.
The same has been heard in the past few days in France where many politicians, from both the government and the right-wing opposition, have demanded more power and even at times the ability to bypass the constitution. It is telling that these demands are happening as more information is coming out about the tragedy confirming that there have been multiple points of failure and that the current system could and should have been able to protect Samuel Paty, as some of the people allegedly involved in his murder were already under surveillance.
In this context, and as the reactionary right is imposing its politics on much of our public discourse, it is more than ever essential to carve out space for critical voices and not fall for cheap, cowardly and divisive narratives, pitting communities against each other and fuelling both terrorist organisations and the far right. As many of our governments are failing their people in the fight against Covid-19, it is also crucial not to let our attention be diverted from how dysfunctional and uncaring our systems have become.
This means that we must stop fighting the culture wars on the reactionaries’ turf. Free speech and laïcité do not have to be reactionary, and in fact they have been positive and even emancipatory in the past. But they are concepts, not natural occurrences. They can evolve and be shaped and reshaped by their context and political struggles. We must remain unwaveringly antiracist in our response to terrorism. This is hardly a radical thing to say, but the fact that it seems to be so in the current context, and that voicing such simple concerns leads to a witch-hunt, should be a dire warning about the state of democracy in France and beyond.
