Belfast much-bombed*, Paris yet to be much-bombed.
Whataboutery
is a snide term for 'historical perspective'
encountered particularly
(but less and less) in Ireland.
It can now gain a new lease of life in France,
whose colonial land-grabs
and associated vicious anti-'Arab',
anti-Berber, anti-Hamitic, anti-Muslim
anti-environmental activities
from Morocco to Syria, and especially in Algeria
(a whole country simply confiscated from its native peoples
and 'planted' with the French unemployed - as north-eastern
Ireland was 'planted' with restive lowland Scots)
took or destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands
of the dispossessed, despised and utterly rejected.
The Biblical cliché comes to mind:
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind -
maybe 150 years later. This is
'whataboutery'.
*The number of dead in the thirty years of low-level
terrorism/thuggery in Northern Ireland was about the same
as that killed in one day in New York in 2001.
(I have just been reading both Camus' L'étranger
- in which the five-times-shot victim of the semi-Aspergerish
Meursault's circumstantial, semi-accidental crime
is never named, is just 'The Arab' -
and Kamel Daoud's 'whatabout' and undeservedly
prizewinning riposte
called Meursault, contre-enquête,
which, it seems to me, has as much relevance
to 'terrorist outrages' in Paris as has the
proxy-war in Syria,
France's former 'protectorate'.)
7 comments:
I feel much sadness for the victims of París attacks but nobody cares about the victims in syria,irak and congo Raúl
Exactly as I expected, Auban's ASS (Acute Self-importance Syndrome) does not disappoint! #FeelTheCuck !
" took or destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands
of the dispossessed, despised and utterly rejected.
The Biblical cliché comes to mind:
Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind -
maybe 150 years later. This is
'whataboutery'."
But what about the 270,000,000 people murdered by Islam in the 1400 years before? Is this also caused by the Evil Subhuman Western Heterosexual Cis-Gendered White Male Who Should Check His Privilege And Live In Shame™ ?
What about them ? Victims of a very aggressive religion. I am not saying that WASPs are to blame for everything, just the more recent things. Before Islam there were the Visigoths and Huns, the appalling Romans, the vengeful Greeks, the murderous Jews...right back to Adam (or rather the most successful hominid).
How can I - how can anyone - feel self-important ?
This is the second time in four months I have encountered a reference to Kamel Daoud's book. Maybe it was a very panned review from the LA Times. I am not certain. In any case, the Middle East, the historical, intellectual, and cultural father of the three Desert Religions as T. E. Lawrence called them, is the source of untold suffering and brutality to countless millions in the past and now fleeing to Europe, which may soon be bankrupted because of immigration, and at the very least, cranky, divided, miserable and no longer culturally pure, linguistically discrete, and morally compassionate (if it was ever any of those things). The US wants out of there, and yes, we are to blame, we started a war and left a vacuum, but IS would have happened anyway given the rage of fundamentalism against the West. Wasn't this what Spengler predicted in his Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West)? Yet, Auban, your "what about them?" is rather cavalier. And WASPs to blame for everything? Isn;t one of the recurrent themes of your blog that we, each of us as individuals, are to blame for everything? Wasn't that the essence of Diogenes of Sinope's pointed cynicism?
Indeed, Marcus. I do not subscribe to the EvilWasp theory at all: genociders (especially nasty kind of insiders) include Catholic Spaniards in south America, Orthodox butchers in the Caucasus, various massacres and mass-murders over the centuries in Africa and Asia, etc. etc. My view is essentially Diogenean. My reaction is against the hypocrisy of our news media, politicians and "ordinary innocent people", who are outraged by the events in [a very small part of] Paris (a horrible city of cramped conditions and rushing-about), but are inured to news from Syria (etc.)where such bombings and shootings are daily events.
The lesson from Northern Ireland is that chickens almost always come home to roost, and will continue to do so. Especially where the Abrahamic religions are powerful.
"Chickens come home to roost" is another way of saying, "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." So said a great teacher long ago who was crucified for his counter-cultural insights. When I returned to Paris in 2007 after an absence of 31 years, I was appalled at the urban sprawl, the endless freeways, and the interminable tacky high-rise apartment buildings--so like an American city! Nevertheless, all of that is a result of precisely what has caused American urbanization--a country's people wanting to live in the city. Paris and France are not to blame, all of us are, but not because we watch the news, support leaders who have impossible jobs solving the problems of masses of people, nor are we to be blamed by being outraged by human suffering. Where does our responsibility lie? It lies in our preferring our creature comforts, our possessions, our capacities to move, learn, know, have, and enjoy, our properties, rather than to live in a barrel, be content with little, and delight in the epicurean sensualities of our own bodies in free sunshine.
I toadally agree, Marc.
These things happen to and in cities, where stupid and/or desperate people end up. The rural depopulation in France is still going on - which is why the English, Dutch, and Belgians (and the odd Irish person) can buy beautiful property very cheaply. To my mind cities are inherently evil (and I'm talking cities here, not Siena or Lucca or Venice or even Tallinn) and Paris is a much more evil place than London. For a start there are hardly any gardens within the peripherique, and the very few parks are pretty bleak. London is a much more habitable place because of all the little gardens and the huge and beautiful parks.
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