Paris, Brussels, responding to the attacks

“It has happened”. Many Brussels inhabitants experienced that feeling on March 22, 2016, when terrorist attacks struck the capital of Belgium, inasmuch as people had been prepared for it. In November 2015 already, the famous lockdown of Brussels, when the city was declared in a state of alert and under an “imminent” threat by the government and intelligence services, had halted all life for four long days, a real dress rehearsal for a state of emergency.

The following piece was written in the days following the March 22nd Jihadist terror attacks in Brussels. While it may require updating to take account of changes in some organizations’ thinking and public statements, its main arguments remain valid.

Since January 2015, the scale and momentum of “Jihadist” terror attacks in Europe have been without precedent. In spite of this, a large section of the English-speaking radical Left refuses to grasp the significance of what has happened. In France, much remains to be done to consider the implications of this new situation. What’s the right approach?

We should start with a worrying observation.

Heads of state understood the importance of the events of January. Representatives of “democracies” and dictatorships alike, they came to Paris and locked arms together to show solidarity “at the highest levels”. A spectacular gesture if ever there was one!

The time I saw Charb in Paris was January 24, 2010, the day of the crowded commemoration of the French philosopher and activist Daniel Bensaïd at La Mutualité. During the speeches, Charb kept drawing and projecting vignettes about his comrade Daniel, whose book, Marx: Mode d’Emploi, he had illustrated a year earlier. In the deep sadness that filled the big room his vignettes constantly reminded us of Bensaïd’s subtle humor, of his little malicious smile with which he used to charm us all, slowly helping us to heal the loss. Director of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Charb was one of the ten cartoonists and journalists killed, together with two policemen, in the ferocious attack of January 7, 2015.

We are NOT Charlie Hebdo!

Neither do we condone the bombings and murder of journalists at their headquarters, however much we are repulsed by their racist, chauvinist and hateful Islamophobic caricatures of oppressed people. Neither do we condone the subsequent murders at the Paris Kosher supermarket.

The Jan. 7 Paris bombings and shootings afforded French and allied capitalist heads of state—some 50 presidents and prime ministers plus top U.S. officials, all complicit with mass murder—the opportunity for an unprecedented show of unity under the call of “I am Charlie Hebdo.” We note the hypocrisy of the perpetrators of war and systematic violence coming together to pose as defenders of “free speech, liberty, fraternity, and democratic rights.” Virtually all have led in suppressing, if not murdering, opposition currents in their own nations and everywhere on earth where their troops engage in the ruthless murder of oppressed people.