Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
February 28,
2005
Diana Johnstone
Censorship
and the Empire
February 26
/ 27, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
An
American Jew Laments Decline in Jewish Influence
Noam Chomsky
Nuclear
Terror at Home
Rev. William E. Alberts
Rhetoric in the Air; Reality on the Ground
Fred Gardner
AARP Gets Pot-Baited
Gary Leupp
Bush and Camus on Freedom
Saul Landau
An Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon (Part 3): the Miami
Mafia
Robin Philpot
Second Thoughts on the Hotel Rwanda
Yitkhak Laor
In Praise of the Facts
Ben Tripp
Out of Sight; Out of Mind
Justin Taylor
Zizek Seen Over the Handlebars
Jack Random
The Wounds from Wounded Knee
Rafael Renteria
Ward Churchill and White America
Jim B.
Reflections on the Eve of Fatherhood
Seth DeLong
Land Reform in Venezuela: More Like Lincoln Than Lenin
John Chuckman
A Season of Depressing Political Reruns
Alison Weir
Relativity, LA Times Style
Richard Oxman
Political Solitude: From Garcia Marquez to Maria Full of Grace
Dr. Susan Block
It Always Rains in California: All About Female Ejaculation
Poets' Basement
Landau, Lowell, Louise, Davies, Soderstrom, Norris & Albert
February 25,
2005
Roger Burbach
Murder
in the Amazon
Behzad Yaghmaian
Iranian Distrust of America: 50 Years in the Making
Kurt Nimmo
Conclave of the Brats
Joshua Frank
Diagnosing the Green Party
John Farley
How to Stop the War in Iraq: Punish Pro-War Politicians
Lawrence Reichard
The D'Aubuisson Memorial: Flowers of Evil
Pratyush Chandra
The Royal Coup in Nepal and Global Imperialist Designs
David Smith-Ferri
When
the Battlefield has No Borders
Website of
the Day
The 2005 Election in 3-D
February 24,
2005
Omar Waraich
The
Galloway Saga: Smearing an Anti-War Politician
Brian Cloughley
Bribing and Twisting Amerian Journalists: Valerie Plame &
30 Pieces of Silver
Tom Wright
Torture Nation: Abu Ghraib, a Year Later
Sharon Smith
The Anti-War Movement After Kerry: Learning All the Wrong Lessons
Dave Lindorff
Do These Roosting Chickens Have Flu?
Fred Feldman
Lynching Ward Churchill
James Reiss
On Hearing About a Plot to Assassinate President Bush
Diane Christian
Bad
Blood: Ritual & Sexual Torture in Iraq
Website of
the Day
The Gray Line
February 23,
2005
Werther
The
Poisoned Well: What the CIA's Nazi Files Can Tell Us About Iraq
W. John Green
A Salvador Option for Iraq? How Negroponte Changes the Ground
Rules
James Petras
A New Face to Bush Foreign Policy?
Conn Hallinan
Cornering the Dragon: the Return of the China Lobby
Joe Pietri
Cannabis: the Goose that Lays Golden Eggs (For Consumers and
Cops)
Louis Proyect
Hunter Thompson and the "New" Journalism
Alexander Cockburn
Hunter
S. Thompson and Gonzo
Website of
the Day
Did You Make the Blacklist? Why Not?
February 22,
2005
Naseer Aruri
The
Politics of the Hariri Assassination: Remapping the Middle East
Richard Manning
The
Economy of Hunger: Starvation is Part of the Economic Plan
William A.
Cook
Righteous
Racism Running Rampant
Paul Craig Roberts
The Agents of Instability
Ken Krayeske
Dr. Thompson is Out
Dave Zirin
How the Owners Destroyed the NHL
Kirkpatrick
Sale
Imperial
Entropy: the Collapse of the American Empire
February 21,
2005
Hunter S. Thompson
"He
Was A Crook"
John Ross
Mexico:
the Pentagon's Proxy Army in Iraq
Ward Churchill
What Did I Really Say? Why Did
I Say It?
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military Recruiting on Channel One: Geometry 101, Brought to
You by the US Navy
David Swanson
Fighting for a Living Wage, State by State
Dave Lindorff
All the News That's Fit to Fake
Stew Albert
Fear and Loathing: HST
Michael Neumann
Strategies
in Palestine: a Shrinking Pie in the Sky
February 19
/ 20, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Back
to Salem: Paul Shanley and the Return of "Recovered Memory"
Kathleen Christison
Struggling
for Justice in Palestine
Ted Honderich
On Being Persona Non Grata
Gary Leupp
Self-Hating Gays: Welcome to the White House & Welcome to
Commit Suicide
Don Santina
Reparations for the Blues
Jennifer Roesch
John Negroponte: Dirty Warrior
Scott Richard
Lyons
Ward
Churchill and the Identity Police
Chris Clarke
Ward Churchill and Liberal Outrage
George Beres
Censorship in the Land of Wayne Morse: Gagging W. Churchill in
Oregon
Harry Browne
The Belfast Heist: the Plot Unravels
Manuel García,
Jr.
Who Killed Rafik Hariri?
Mark Scaramella
Lessons from the Hidden Afghan War
Michael Donnelly
Whatever Happened to John Edwards?
John Pilger
First, They Attack the Past
Norman Madarasz
Death Wish for Reform in Brazil?
Surendra Devkota
The Monarchy in Nepal
Deborah Rich
How Anti-GMO Ballot Measures May Miss the Mark
Fred Gardner
When Dr. Tod Met Merle Haggard
CounterPunch
News Service
About King Mswati: Political Developments in Swaziland
Richard Oxman
CounterPunching Arthur Miller
Poets' Basement
Albert, Giebel, Tripp, Engel and Orkin
February 18,
2005
Ben Moxham
In
East Timor, the Nightmare Continues
Dave Lindorff
The
Scum Also Rises: the Bloody Career of John Negroponte
Larry Birns
Negroponte: a Resume of Death Squads, Deceptions and Bribery
Gregory Elich
N, Korea's Phantom Nukes and the US's Subversion of Diplomacy
Samuel Logan / John Meyers
The Future of Colombia's Paramilitary Death Squads
Nicole Colson
Shock and Awe on Civil Liberties: From Lynne Stewart to Ward
Churchill
Suzan Mazur
Whose National Security Are We Talking About?
Mickey Z.
"One
Man Has Stopped Killing"
February 17,
2005
Joshua Frank
Hogtying
of the Deaniacs
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
Willing Sychophants: the Conservative Media
Robert Fisk
Under
the Shadow of Death in Lebanon
Christopher
Brauchli
Where
Time Stands Still: Kinsey and Darwin in Cobb County, GA
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Military
Recruitment TV: Why Send Them to College, When Your Kid Can be
Cannon Fodder?
Alison Weir
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions
Ahrar Ahmad
A Review of Shahid Alam's "Is There an Islamic Problem?"
Saul Landau
An
Interview with Cuban VP Ricardo Alarcon: "The US Tramples
the Laws It Wrote"
Website of the Day
Petition to Support Ward Churchill
February 16,
2005
Robert Fisk
Lebanon:
a Battlefield for the Wars of Others
Kevin Zeese
Creating a Real Ownership Society: Share the Wealth; Protect
Retirement
Gary Leupp
Meanwhile, in Nepal...
Ron Jacobs
Why the Iranian Opposition Should Not Trust the Bush Administration
Jessica Leight
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
Greg Moses
Houston, You've Got a Problem: Documenting Voting Irregularities
in Texas
Mark Engler
The Last Porto Alegre
Jack McCarthy
Where's the Outrage About Pat? Buchanan Does a Churchill
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy Dangerously Slanted Toward Israel
Website of the Day
The
World is Melting: a Photo Survey by Gary Braasch
February 15,
2005
CounterPunch
News Service
Dean
a "Safe" Moderate, Says NYT Citing CounterPunch
Robert Fisk
The
Killing of Mr. Lebanon
Uri Avnery
"Sharm-al-Sheikh,
We Have Come Back Again"
Stan Cox
Fighting Big Pharma in Little Digwal
Mickey Z.
Radio
Active North of the Border: an Interview with Chris Cook
Dave Zirin
Bashing Bush: Jose Canseco Comes Clean
Nadia Martinez
Ending
World Poverty? Opening at the World Bank, Apply Now
Lila Rajiva
"Little Eichmanns" and the 'Harijan': the Danger of
Magical Thinking in Politics
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
American Job Sell Out
February 14,
2005
Robert Jensen
Ward
Churchill: Right to Speak Out; Right About 9/11
Brian Cloughley
Kuwait's Freedom, Bush-style
Patrick Cockburn
Outcome
of the Iraqi Elections: Shortages, Corruption, Guerrilla War
Gary Leupp
Post-election Iraq: What Next?
Michael Donnelly
Sacred Nature: Just Another Commodity?
Dave Lindorff
When Bush Came to My Neighborhood
Elaine Cassel
The
Lynne Stewart Verdict
February 12
/ 13, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill's Genes
Saul Landau
Alarcon
Speaks: an Interview with the Vice President of Cuba
Paul Craig
Roberts
Nothing
to Fear But Bush Himself
Patrick Cockburn
Two Years After the Fall of Saddam, the Resistance Controls All
Major Roads into Baghdad
John Feffer
Bush
v. N. Korea: Round Two
Mickey Z.
Right to Remain Silent; Duty to Speak
Kurt Nimmo
Viva la Cucaracha!
Fred Gardner
Waiting for Raich
Dave Zirin
Fighting the New Republic(ans)
John Chuckman
Hiroshima, Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
A Leftist on the Bush Payroll
Carol Norris
"Buddy, Can You Spare a Dwarf?"
Robert Fisk
No Middle East Peace Without Justice
Frank / Chowkwanyun
Muzzled Activist in an Age of Terror: the Case of Sherman Austin
Mike Whitney
Condi's Euro Tour
Deborah Frisch
A Psychologist's Defense of Ward Churchill
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Reading Khomeini in Colorado
Christine TenBarge
What's So Special About Ward?
Ron Jacobs
Curtis Mayfield's Train to Jordan
Dr. Susan Block
Chemistry of Love: a Valentine's Greeting
Poets' Basement
Louise, Smith-Ferri, Ford and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Free Sherman
February 11,
20055
Manuel Garcia,
Jr
The
Eight Percent War
Kurt Nimmo
Ann
Coulter's Racism: Where's Geronimo When You Really Need
Him?
Dave Lindorff
Guckert
or Gannon? The Perfect Plant; He Fit Right In
Larry Birns
War is Peace; Slavery is Freedom: Democracy According to Elliott
Abrams
Bill Quigley
Twenty Questions: a Social Justice Quiz
Tom Barry
Bush's State of Delusion
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Lynne
Stewart's Conviction Hurts Us All
February 10,
2005
Dave Lindorff
What
Academic Freedom?
Christopher Brauchli
The Love of Slaughter: From Rwanda to Iraq
Patrick Cockburn
In Baghdad, It's Easy to Get Killed
Nicole Colson
Have the Democrats Surrendered on Abortion Rights?
Suzan Mazur
More
on the Assassination of Lumumba from Mr. Garsin of Kinshasha
Michael Donnelly
Salvaging an Opposition
Mike Stark
Driving Ossie Davis: "Give Them a Little Truth, a Little
Hope"
Greg Moses
Taking
Jesus Back from the Hijackers
Website of
the Day
The Missionary Positions
February 9,
2005
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Duck
and Cover Redux: Bunker Busters and City Levellers
Mickey Z.
What Ward Churchill Didn't Say
John Ross
Hecho
en Mexico: the Iraqi Election
Tom Barry
Ambassador of Lies: Elliott Abrams, the Neocon's Neocon
Conn Hallinan
The
Coup in Nepal: Nursing the Pinion
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Vision for Iraq: Cricket is Fine, But Chess is "Absolutely
Forbidden"
Steen Sohn
Danish PM Says It's OK for Israel to Violate UN Resolutions
Tim Wise
Reflections on Empire and Uppity Indians
Website of
the Day
Support Antiwar.com
February 8,
2005
Patrick Cockburn
Shia/Kurd
Coalition to Dominate New Iraqi Govt.: "It's an Electoral
Pact, Not a Party"
Brian Cloughley
Out
of the Mouths of Generals: "It's Fun to Shoot Some People"
Steve Breyman
Against the Selfishness of the "Ownership Society"
Harry Browne
"Don't
Get on that Plane!": Soldiers Seek Asylum in Ireland
Doug Giebel
"We Love Free Speech in America": the People, the President
and Ward Churchill
Nate Collins
The Censorship of Ward Churchill and Dancehall Reggae: It's the
Same Beast
Dave Lindorff
It's Time for a Labor-Oriented Newspaper
David Smith-Ferri
Sanctions and the Health Crisis in Iraq
February 7,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Bush's
War on Jobs
Carolyn Baker
The New McCarthyism on Campus: Churchill and the Attack on Higher
Ed
Joshua Frank
Marc Cooper's Hit List: First Mumia; Now Ward Churchill
Mickey Z.
Warning: More Hate Speech from W. Churchill
Patrick Cockburn
The
Kidnapping Gangs of Iraq
Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism
Stacie Jonas
Pinochet: Fit to be Tried
Dave Zirin
A Miserable Super Sunday: Clinton, Bush and the FBI
Tariq Ali
Imperial
Delusions
February 5
/ 6, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Ward
Churchill and the Mad Dogs
Kurt Nimmo
A Ward Churchill Kind of Day
Joshua Frank
Liberals Trash Ward Churchill
P. Sainath
Mumbai's Man-Made Tsunami
Patrick Cockburn
Sistani's Triumph; Allawi's Bust
Laura Carlsen
Bush, Rice and Latin America
Dave Lindorff
How the NYT Killed the Bush Bulge Story
Pamela Olson
West Bank Story
Behzad Yaghmaian
The Future of Sudanese Refugees in the West
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
A Threatened UN in King George's Court
Roger Burbach
World Social Forum: a Tale of Two Presidents
Robert Fisk
History by Laptop
David Swanson
James Forman and the Liberal-Labor Syndrome
Justin E.H. Smith
Gay Marriage: a Report from Canada
Cacie Hart
The "State" of the Union: More War and a Ban on Love
Ron Jacobs
Chairman Bob Avakian: a Revolutionary Life
Mickey Z.
Viewing America from the Outside
Ben Tripp
Republican Heroes: a New Breed of Good Guy
Ben Sonnenberg
France at the End of the Devil's Decade: Renoir's Rules of the
Game
Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Davies, Collins, & Albert
Website of
the Weekend
John Trudell: How to Earn a 17,000 Page FBI File
February 4,
2005
Brian Cloughley
The
Army Symphonist: "Sometimes the Only Way to Change the Behavior
of Someone Like That is to Kill Them"
Bill Christison
Election
Parallels: Vietnam, 1967; Iraq, 2005
Elaine Cassel
Did Zoloft Make Him Do It?
Jacob Levich
Chomsky and the Draft
Kanak Mani Dixit
Return of the Royalists in Nepal
Ron Jacobs
The
Downward Spiral in Iraq
February 3,
2005
Ward Churchill
On
the Injustice of Getting Smeared: a Campaign of Fabrications
and Gross Distortions
Sharon Smith
Resisting
Soldiers Need Our Support
Mickey Z.
Leslie
Gelb Asks Iraq: Who's Your Daddy?
Mike Whitney
President of Alienation: a Desperate State of the Union
Jenna Orkin
9/11 the Sequel: the Toxic State of Lower Manhattan
Saul Landau
Elections Won't Prevent Civil War in Iraq
Yitzhak Laor
Strange is the Silence
Dave Lindorff
The
Assault on Social Security: a New Campaign of Lies
February 2,
2005
David Domke
/ Kevin Coe
Bush's
Brand of Christianity
Noam Chomsky
Iraq
After the Elections
M. Shahid Alam
O'Reilly's
Fatwah on "Un-American" Professors: FoxNews Puts Me
in Its Crosshairs
Richard Oxman
Ringing in 1984 with Ward Churchill and Derrick Jensen
Joshua Frank
The Suckering of Howard Dean
Dave Lindorff
A History Lesson from the NYT
Nina Hartley
Feminists for Porn
Website of the Day
War is a Racket
February 1,
2005
Joshua L. Dratel
The
Torture Memos
Patrick Cockburn
New Doubts About Allawi
Robert Fisk
"The Only Decent Food We Get is at Funerals"
Uri Avnery
The Stalemate
Col. Dan Smith
"W" Stands for Withdrawal
Alison Weir
Making America as "Secure" as Israel
Alan Farago
Heaven and Hell in the Everglades
Ray Hanania
Low Voter Turnout of Iraqi Expatriates: Less Than 10% of Qualified
Voters
Paul Craig
Roberts
American
Police State
Website of the Day
Statisticians Refute Official Rationale for Exit Poll Errors
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
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True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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|
February 28, 2005
Censorship and the Empire
Dieudonne
and the Uses of "Anti-Semitism"
By
DIANA JOHNSTONE
When power becomes blatantly criminal,
it's time to make people shut up. That time seems to have come
throughout the Empire. Freedom of speech is increasingly threatened,
both in the United States and in "old Europe", although
the attacks come from quite different angles.
In the United States, the assault
is clearly led by far right fanatics such as David Horowitz,
who is inciting students to denounce professors who dare try
to teach them something they didn't think they already knew.
The purpose is clearly to ban criticism of United States war
policy.
In old Europe, the assault
is more subtle and probably less lucid in its aims. It is led
in part by people who consider themselves on the left and who
seem blissfully unaware of the danger of limiting freedom of
speech.
In Germany, it has long been
illegal to deny that the Holocaust took place: the offense called
"the Auschwitz lie" can be punished by up to three
years in prison. German television insists relentlessly on Hitler
and his crimes, as if he were still lurking in the wings. This
has done nothing to prevent the rise of neo-Nazi groups. It
may even have helped them grow, in accordance with the phenomenon,
demonstrated in the Soviet zone, that establishing "official
truth"-even if true-can be the best way to make many people
believe the contrary. But more than that, the far right in Germany
seems to be gaining ground as a result of widespread disillusion,
especially in Eastern Germany, with the neoliberal economic policies
that were supposed to bring prosperity but instead have brought
growing unemployment and poverty.
In any case, the center left
government of Social Democrats and Greens has undertaken to react
to rightist demonstrations by broadening the law against "Volksverhetzung"-a
concept that can be translated as "incitement of the masses"
or "poisoning of the minds of the people". In the
future, it should not be enough to prosecute persons who "approve,
justify, deny or play down genocide of Jews and gypsies"
in a way apt to "disturb public peace" (a vague notion).
The new law would make it equally criminal to speak in any of
those ways about any case of "genocide" condemned by
any international court whose jurisdiction has been recognized
by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Now, judicial history is marked
by famously unjust verdicts reversed after long struggles to
right the wrong. But the German law could make it a crime to
challenge the International Tribunal on Former Yugoslavia, set
up by NATO powers to control and manipulate political conflict
in the Balkans, when it officially convicts Serbs for "genocide".
Anyone who points out that the Tribunal's definition of "genocide"
has been contrived for political purposes, and that its procedures
are blatantly prejudiced, might risk being arrested.
If there are to be limits on
freedom of speech, they should be directly related to action.
Thus, if a political leader exhorts a hall full of followers
to go out and commit a pogrom, this can legitimately be considered
a criminal act. But the trend is to expand criminalization of
speech far beyond such incitements  to embrace
expression of opinions, including opinions about the past-about
facts which by their very nature may be debated but cannot be
changed.
In France, the restriction
on freedom of speech also began with criminalization of "the
Auschwitz lie". And as in Germany, it is unlikely to stop
there. Incitement to racial hatred or discrimination has been
outlawed in France since 1972. In July 1990, the French National
Assembly adopted an amendment extending the 1972 law to persons
who dispute the existence of crimes against humanity, as defined
by the Nuremburg tribunal, and "which have been committed
either by the members of an organization declared criminal [...]
or by a person found guilty of such crimes by a French or international
jurisdiction". The intent of this law was clearly to punish
statements denying the reality of the Nazi genocide against the
Jews. However, the unspecified reference to "international
jurisdiction" may have unwittingly opened the door to prosecution
of persons challenging the verdicts of quite different international
tribunals, such as the NATO-linked tribunal in The Hague.
The 1990 amendment, known as
the "Gayssot law", was introduced by a Communist member
of the Assembly. It seems that the French left, especially the
Communist Party, in its understandable desire to preserve the
legacy of the French Resistance during World War II, has seen
no danger in setting a precedent for punishing speech as well
as acts.
In recent years, the context
has changed considerably. In the face of worldwide protests
over treatment of Palestinians, increasing efforts have been
made to extend the definition of "anti-Semitism" to
cover criticism of Israel. By insisting that there can be no
distinction between Jews and "the Jewish state" (a
proposition vigorously denied by many if not most French Jews),
and thereby identifying criticism of Israel with "anti-Semitism",
the ultra-Zionists seem to be provoking the anti-Semitism they
denounce. Whether or not this is deliberate is debatable. France
has the largest Jewish population in Europe, a skilled and assimilated
population that Ariel Sharon is openly trying to lure to Israel
by claiming that Jews are not safe anywhere else, and notably
not in France because of alleged anti-Semitism.
Once criticism of Israel is
identified with anti-Semitism, it becomes implicitly taboo because
of the association of anti-Semitism with holocaust denial. A
main practitioner of this moral intimidation is Roger Cukierman,
a far right Zionist who presides over the "Representative
Council of Jewish organizations of France" (CRIF). In April
2002, Cukierman actually hailed the surprisingly strong showing
of Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential elections
as a "good lesson for the Arabs". Cukierman surely
does not represent the countless French citizens of Jewish origin
who are not members of Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, CRIF's
annual dinner has become a "must" for France's political
leaders, who listen docilely each year while Cukierman castigates
them for not doing enough to stop anti-Semitism. (The exception,
two years ago, was a Green who walked out after Cukierman identified
"Greens and Reds" with fascist "browns" on
account of their support to Palestinians.) This year, sixteen
cabinet ministers bowed their heads while Cukierman attacked
President Chirac's foreign policy. By this is meant Chirac's
opposition to the U.S. war against Iraq and attempt to pursue
a balanced policy toward the Middle East.
This illustrates the fact that
the "fight against anti-Semitism" is increasingly being
injected into geopolitical discussion, as a pretext for stigmatizing
growing opposition to policies of both Israel and the United
States.
This stigmatization has reached
a new pitch with the current campaign to silence, legally or
illegally, the French comedian Dieudonné. The campaign
began back in December 2003 following a short TV sketch in which
Dieudonné, dressed as a uniformed Israeli settler in the
Palestinian occupied territories, called on young people to "join
the American-Zionist axis of good". This was punctuated
by "Isra-heil!" An uproar ensued. Jewish organizations
were largely successful in forcing theaters around France to
cancel Dieudonné's appearances, sometimes by threatening
violent disruption. Nevertheless, courts dismissed all the numerous
lawsuits brought against him. When he succeeded in finding a
theater that would let him perform, he won standing ovations
from a full house.
Dieudonné M'Bala M'Bala
is the French son of a mother from Brittany and a father from
Cameroon. As rather frequently happens, his education in Catholic
schools turned "God-given" (the literal translation
of his Christian name) into a freethinker sharply critical of
all religions. In his one-man shows, he habitually parodies
all religions without exception including the animism of his
African ancestors. Irreverence is a staple of French humor, which
constantly ridicules Catholicism and Islam in the most outrageous
terms.
Insisting on his commitment
to equality and universal human values, Dieudonné has
refused to censure himself as his critics demand. They have
been lying in wait. In a press conference in Algiers last month,
he cited the expression "memorial pornography", coined
by an Israeli historian, Idith Zerkal, to refer to aspects of
certain commemorations of the Holocaust. Apparently, none of
the Algerian journalists saw fit to report this particular remark,
which reduced it to a private expression. However, it was picked
up by a Zionist website, www.proche.orient.com, which spread
the word that Dieudonné had described the Shoah as "memorial
pornography".
A new and more violent "Dieudonné
affair" was launched. The stock in trade of comedians is
excess and bad taste. On both those counts, Dieudonné
is relatively mild. His manner is good natured; with none of
the venom caracterizing certain U.S. talk show hosts. Back in
Paris, Dieudonné told the press that his words had been
distorted. He had never mentioned the Shoah itself, and stressed
his respect for the victims of that great tragedy-a tragedy for
all humanity.
But it was not enough to correct
misquotes.. Whatever his words, hostile reporters demanded to
know: "but what did you mean?" In other words,
what did you think? The criminalization of spoken words
leads almost inevitably to the attempt to criminalize unspoken
thoughts. Explaining his political outlook, Dieudonné
said that his fight against racism led him to oppose "exacerbated
communitarism" which sets one
religious community against
another. But why was there no memorial for victims of the slave
trade? Why was it that subsidies were available for some 150
films on the Holocaust, while he was unable to get backing for
a film on the "code noir", the legal basis for the
French slave trade? This did absolutely nothing to assuage
Dieudonne's critics, and the chorus of media attacks in the following
days became more virulent. Bernard-Henri Levy flamboyantly described
the comedian as the "son of Le Pen"- regardless of
the well-known fact that in his home town of Dreux, Dieudonné
has been politically active in opposing Le Pen's National Front.
For Dieudonné, the cancellations and death threats are
pouring in.
Even if he wins in court, as
he has in the past, the media are clearly out to destroy him.
The significance of this campaign goes far beyond its effects
on the career of a talented young performer with children to
support. Two more general effects can be signaled.
First of all, the campaign
against Dieudonné amounts to an attempt to silence a leading
voice of secular universalism with a strong following among young
people of all communities in France, notably-but by no means
exclusively-among children of immigrants from African and Arab
countries. Many, unlike him, are religious. But if veiled Muslim
girls can laugh at the comedians' satire of Islamic extremists,
why is similar satire of Orthodox Zionist settlers not allowed?
Why does the CRIF have more influence than any organization
representing the far more numerous Muslim community? Isn't the
secular universalism of Dieudonné a healthy response to
the threat of conflict between religious communities? Secondly,
and perhaps of even greater significance, the campaign against
the French comic is a small part of a broad tendency to use the
charge of "anti-Semitism" to silence criticism of United
States policy in the Middle East, including the conquest of Iraq.
This is sometimes blatant and sometimes subtle. The expression
"memorial pornography" is no doubt lacking in both
precision and good taste. But it expresses a certain fatigue,
not least among a number of Jewish high school students, with
the constant commemoration of a terrible past tragedy, to the
exclusion of others (the bombing of Hiroshima, for example).
There is a growing suspicion that this repetition is not really
helping to ensure that "it can't happen again". Rather,
it is being exploited to silence opposition to the war policies
of the United States and its main partner in the Middle East.
Such opposition, after all, was the meaning of Dieudonné's
parody of "the axis of evil"-essentially concerned
with the present and the immediate future, and by no means a
denial of the past.
On the ideological level, the
constant reference to the Holocaust, with the suggestion that
a new persecution of Europe's Jews may begin tomorrow, creates
a subtle but profound cleavage between the United States and
"old Europe". For Germany, obviously, but also-with
infinitely less justification, but equal insistance from American
critics-for France, reference to the Holocaust arouses an endless
sense of guilt, disqualifying those European powers from any
future geopolitical role.
For the United States, on the
contrary, the Holocaust has become the key feature of an ideology
justifying U.S. military intervention to "save victims"
around the world. This is based on the mythical notion (which
ignores, among other things, the decisive role of the Red Army
in defeating the Third Reich) that it was the United States that
finally came to the rescue of the victims of the Holocaust.
The implication of this myth, which underlies the enormous exaggeration
of "the return of anti-Semitism" in France, is that
Europeans, if left to their own devices, will probably start
to persecute the Jews once again. And only the United States
can stop them.
Thus the myth of benevolent
U.S. military intervention is empowered by the ideological exploitation
of the Holocaust, just as "old Europe" is disempowered
by it. This is one reason why politicians and media in Europe
by no means all of them Jewish-who want their countries to follow
Washington find it politically useful to keep harping on the
Holocaust.
This is not respect for the
victims but exploitation of them. By a constant implicit blackmail,
the pro-NATO politicians and media help keep Europe morally crippled,
disqualified from opposing the U.S.-led wars to remodel the Middle
East.
There seems to have been more
indignation in French media over some garbled reports of remarks
by Dieudonné than over the total destruction of the Iraqi
city of Fallujah. In such a world, is there much place left for
humorists?
Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools'
Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions published
by Monthly Review Press.
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