If all right-thinking people are united against terrorism, where are the 'Je suis Nigeria' banners?

[Jefferson23]

Patrick Cockburn

Sunday 18 January 2015



President Obama is being criticised for not joining the 40 other world leaders at the mass march in Paris in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. But, by playing down rather than playing up the terrorist killings, Obama may have shown a surer instinct about how to deal with such attacks, however horrific, than those leaders who did turn up.

It is understandable that governments and people want to show solidarity against terrorism. But in many respects, the gargantuan size and overblown rhetoric of those responding to the murders of 17 people by three terrorists, treating the episode as if it was Pearl Harbour or 9/11, plays straight into the hands of al-Qaeda and its clones.

The three terrorists, Chérif and Said Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly, were rather pathetic figures before 7 January, but have now achieved demonic status. Their actions on that day have sent millions of people into the streets, brought the leaders of much of the world to Paris, and led to the mobilisation of tens of thousands of soldiers and police. The three men would have been proud to have provoked such a response by committing what, by Middle East and North African standards, was a fairly run-of-the-mill terrorist attack.

This overreaction and the wall-to-wall media coverage may prove counterproductive. The reasons for this are eloquently identified by the Israeli commentator Uri Avnery, who writes: “For other potential Islamic terrorists throughout Europe and America, this [overreaction] must look like a huge achievement. It is an invitation for individuals and tiny groups to do the same again, everywhere.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/if-all-rightthinking-people-are-united-against-terrorism-where-are-the-je-suis-nigeria-banners-9985589.html

[brer cat]

1. Good piece.

Not to belittle what he did say, I do think he failed to state the most elemental reason why the reactions to the Charlie Hebdo killings was so much greater than those in Nigeria: the cartoonists were neither black nor impoverished.

[Igel]

4. They're also neither refugees nor economic immigrants.

They also aren't obviously of a different faith, seeking to kill those of lesser or trivial faiths.

They're seeking territorial control, and not to intimidate not only Hebdo but Western media and attitudes. The attack wasn't against light-skinned Europeans as such because they wanted, like some Donbasses, to control a building or a city block. "J'etais Charlie" not because I'm afraid that Paris will be taken over and its population slaughtered, but because I'm an adherent of freedom of speech and the attitudes that go with that right. I stand not in solidarity with skin color or income level--those aren't the most important things worth focusing on, not everything venally and narrow-mindedly is reducible to dollars and francs--but because a crucial value is at stake, crucial not just for my self-image but also for how I think the overall value system of the West is structured.

I've lived on cheese and beans for months in a 400 sq foot apartment and walked/biked everywhere because I couldn't afford better. I've been on rather nice cruises to the Baltic and Caribbean. My basic value system hasn't changed for many, many years. It's not reducible to how many francs, pesos, or dollars I earn or spend; it's not dependent upon my skin melanin content. I am more than my bank account and outer layer of dermal tissue.


I'd also note a bit of an embarrassment. The Boko Haram mess has only morphed in the last few years for much of the MSM and left into being an Islamist insurgency. For years it was agrarian versus pastoral, rural versus urban, or interethnic. Any claim to the contrary was discounted as some sort of derangement. It was crucial to avoid the essential Islamophobia of decrying what they were doing as having any connection to Islam. Then, having adopted a narrative for a decade, it's really hard to suddenly reverse course and say the opponents were right without even hinting you were wrong. (That's an impersonal 3rd person "you", by the way.)

Events on the ground forced the narrative's morphing. And even then, what Boko Haram has done is precisely parallel to what other groups in other parts of the world have done, and oddly people refuse to see the parallels. Because then the problem isn't a particular local group's ideology, but something more widespread. If it's more widespread, the question has to be, How widespread is it and how did it spread so widely? Those are embarrassing questions to ask. And also fail to reduce to $, francs, rubles, pesos, shekels, dinar, or other bits of metal and paper.

[Jefferson23]

6. Who on the left was part of this fear of being referred to as an Islamaphobe? Appears

to be your assertion, they, the left, knew more yet would not speak the truth and who was correct
about it, in your opinion.

As far as I know, human rights groups have kept a close watch for decades, so I am curious
who these leftists are that are reluctant to make associations to Islam.

[NYC_SKP]

2. Maybe if Nigerians can lighten up their complexion and take up vulgar cartooning...

In the end, people in the West don't care about atrocities on the continent of Africa when the victims are black and poor.

[msongs]

5. people in africa dont seem to much care either nt

[Gman]

3. Nobody came up with a hashtag.