Historian Richard Landes has a blog full of material on the Mohammed Al-Durah affair in France. A court has just found that a French Jew who demonstrated, pretty believably to my mind, that a French journalist and tv network were engaged in fauxtography in 2000 and were thus somewhat responsible for the storm of Palestinian violence and worldwide Judeophobia that followed their "reportage", was actually being libellous. Since his opponents didn't even try to make their case, it seems the fix was in. People are calling this a repeat of the Dreyfuss affair; but this time with the Jew being judicially damned. Will France soon follow into Hades? Landes has background, here; and responses to the verdict here and here.
It is really hard to keep up optimism for France. However, every next step they take into the delusional, the closer they come either to destroying themselves for ever more, or to waking up and seeing the need for yet another republic and reformation. Who's to know where the latest leap into the mental illness of Judeophobia will take them. Will enough French start to fight for courts and state tv and politicians with some grasp on reality? Or will they give up, damn Israel and America, and turn over the nukes to those who will?
10 comments:
The state's first reason for existence is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. France fails, and France's government is therefore, according to me, illegitimate. The federal state can't even protect the lives of its police officers.
A new French republic? The ancien regime will fight to swtay in its privileged postions now just as it has done before. There is no recourse to reasoned debate now. This is the time for all good neo-Jacobins to go berzerk in a frenzy of house-cleaning. the Left reactionaries in power now, the neo-feudalist estates, they deserve only the rage of the united people. Unike 1789 and 1848 when most people outside Paris could carry on as before and not even notice the sweeping from power till it was over, this time the revolution will be general and, one can hope, really terrible.
If the French lie down and die, then it is to us that the burden of salvation falls, we who will go to France to reclaim our heritage, our right to our culture. Racine belongs to the Western world, not just to the French. If they decide to lose French culture, then we have a duty and a need to save it for ourselves. Rimbaud is mine, too. If the French lose France, then we will take it for us all. It belongs to the Modern world, not to anyone else.
Dag, I claim the Savoie. We should start a market or an investment fund where people can stake and trade claims in France and help finance the army that will one day take it back for the West. Or, if the French wake up we can liquidate the company and all take a holiday.
Dibs on Bourdeaux.
Errr, did you just call for the overthrow of the French “Federal” State in an orgy of revolutionary violence? Is this the “can’t beat ‘em, might as well join ‘em” approach to dealing with civil disorder?
Anon.
You're right that France is not a federal state - though now with the EU who knows how to characterize the state that attempts to obfuscate its own illegitimate existence - "vote no to the EU Constitution? tough, you're going to have it anyway... because the new Eurabia is the realization of all French imperial dreams through the ages and we can't let little things like votes ruin that..."
But I don't think Dag is calling for the overthrow of a legitimate state - he is too conservative for that. But a state that cannot protect property or citizens is losing legitimacy fast and in such a situation inevitably all people must begin to speculate on what comes next. I call for a reformed Republicanism; but if worse comes about, I'm willing to serve, as long as needs be, as the next Duke of the Savoie. Let it not come to pass, mes amis...
Good grief! If I mean to call for the overthrow of the French government I hope I'd be sensible enough to realize that I'd be laughed out of town. If this is a case of believing everything one reads, then back to school with you. Those who can't distinguish between rhetorical bombast and boat ballast can't expect me to babysit them as they read. Give it some thought: things in France are so intolerably bad now that I am resonable by comparison to almost everyone in any postions of power there. Yes, at times I do make extravagant noises; but consider that if we don't take careof the situation now, apre moi, le deluge.
Yes yes, how dare I imply that you may have meant what you actually said. Your call for revolutionary violence was merely a radical speech act. The sheer brilliance of the rhetorical strategy is barely seen by the unenlightened like me. Next time I observe you wallowing in your own bloody fantasies I’ll recognize that you’re just trying to move along the internal security reform agenda.
Anon, are you being sarcastic?
I was aiming for irony.
Anon, it's off-topic but you might like an essay I found a long while back on irony in our modern age. I can't recall tghe title. Try a google search of German Irony. If nothing happens, let me know and I'll see if I can do better for you, he said as he washed the blood and the wine off the floor after a night of heavy thinking.
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