NOTHING HAS BEEN FORGIVEN

In Žižek’s New Statesman article [1], which was definitely well-read and appreciated in Turkey, one key emphasis was in the very first sentence: Now, when we are all in a state of shock after the killing spree in the Charlie Hebdo offices, this is the right moment to gather the courage to think.

Now, we absolutely have to think: What cobblestones did the left contribute while the road ending in last week’s massacre was being paved? What were the mistakes? What is to be done tomorrow?
We have to think. Because, a new and very dangerous era is opening.
Let’s begin.

***
In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, when the slogan‪#‎JeSuisCharlie was spreading throughout the world, those that reacted with creating the ‪#‎JeNeSuisPasCharlie hashtag were not the Islamists: Those that were lecturing on why one should not be Charlie were democrats, liberals and liberal leftists.

One should not be Charlie, according to them, because Charlie Hebdo was not politically correct – they were not using politically correct concepts, contradicting the rules of identity politics, not regarding the sacred of the religious, not refraining from aiming at political, cultural and religious identities, thus they were de facto playing a racist and discriminating game of politics.

However, we have to think and understand: Just the opposite! Au contraire! The problem with the editorial political line of Charlie Hebdo was that they were being too politically correct.

***

A new and very dangerous era is opening.

As George Kazolias pointed out [2], we are faced with a rhetoric of war. Roger Cukierman, the President of the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) declared the attacks in Paris to be the beginning of “World War Three”. "We are at war. And in case of war, we need to escalate our measures." he added.

Former President Nicolas Sarkozy said: “War has been declared on France.”

Alright, a war has been declared against France. A global war. But, who are these people who “declared war”?

The problem with that rhetoric was the fact that all three attackers were citoyens français, born and raised. So, where would the front of the war be located?

It was Le Figaro columnist Ivan Rioufol’s duty to confess the truth and elaborate on it: “France is at war. Perhaps at civil war tomorrow. Its enemy is radical Islam, political Islam, Jihadi Islam.”

The delicately produced aura around the gigantic Sunday march, “the solidarity of everybody/tout le monde”, “national unity”, “the whole world behind a strong message”, all of this is preparation for this much-pronounced war. The first action by the Prime Minister Manuel Valls of the Socialist Party was to deploy 10 thousand soldiers to help the police force which by definition is responsible from internal security. All the oppressive legal measures suppress the people in the ghettos are on the table.

France is at war. France is in a civil war. It is true that "the whole world is united": The war's front is the whole world. "Everyone" will join forces: In the name of defending democracy and freedoms, from the liberal left to the extreme right, hand-in-hand, "the holy alliance" will once again be beating the war drums.

***

The military aspect of the war is only one of its aspects. If war is the most condensed form of politics, politics is the most condense front of the war.

The real front of the post 9-11 period was not Afghanistan or Iraq: The real front was "democracy", it was "civilization", the "freedoms". If imperialism has not been able to make advances on these conceptual fronts, it would not have been able to bomb Afghanistan or Iraq.

What makes the new period really dangerous is the fact that once again on this political front, the discourse that could win the masses to the imperialist orientation is in the process of making.

***

Every period has its figures to turn to in order to understand what the "orientation" is when the water is murky, when it is hazy outside.

Today, that figure in France is Bernard-Henri Lévy. His compass never falters, always pointing in the direction of the "orientation".

Lévy wrote an opinion piece on January 8th for Wall Street Journal [3]. After stating that "Islam must be freed from radical Islam", he added: "In the dark times ahead, battles await: Islam against Islam, pluralistic civilization against the nihilists of jihad. But it is really one war, and we must wage it together, united."

But... The pivotal point of his article and the "orientation" is not in that paragraph.

It is in the following one:

"It is time for us to break, once and for all, with the Leninist reasoning that has been served up for so long by the useful idiots of a radical Islam immersed in the sociology of poverty and frustration." [emphasis is mine]
This orientation that divides the society on the identity axis and that preaches for winning the Islam over as an ally against the "war to be waged on Islam" is exactly the same orientation that has strengthened political Islam to this day: Forcing the poor masses into clinging to their identities (religious, ethnic etc.) instead of struggling against inequality and injustice. In the post-Charlie era, they want to "once and for all" get rid of the antidote of the "democracy-multiculturalism/identity politics" poison, i.e. class politics and Leninism.

It is exactly this that Žižek has figured out and is rejecting. Today, the only force that can defeat radical Islam is a "new and radical Left", it is Leninism.

***

"New left" is Leninism because what has been marketed as the "new left" for decades, i.e. identity politics, has long grown old.

We need to think and understand, Charlie Hebdo has grown old as well.

In the post 9-11 era, during the "war against terror" hysteria, Charlie Hebdo has played the game of "political correctness". The magazine did not oppose the occupation of Afghanistan. In June 2002, when one of the founders along with Charb and the chief editor at that time, Phillipe Val, was sniping at Noam Chomsky as "one of the Americans hating America too much and one of the Jews criticizing Israel thinking that he can avoid antisemitism charges since he is a Jew himself", in June 2002, “the civilization” was raining down as bombs on Afghanistan.

In 2006, during Israel's occupation of Lebanon, Phillipe Val was writing the following: "Looking at the map, heading east, crossing the frontiers of Europe, i.e. Greece, one realizes that the democratic world comes to an end. There is one exception this in the middle of the Middle East: The state of Israel. From there on till Japan, there is nothing else. (...) Between Tel-Aviv and Tokyo, it is one government after another who can stay in power only by filling their 80% illiterate people with hate towards the West and democracy." Those times, as Noam Chomsky has called everyone to exercise their memories a bit, in Fellujah, American soldiers, similar to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices by the jihadists, were busy assaulting the Fallujah General Hospital, forcing the medical personnel and patients out from the rooms and piling them in corridors and New York times was writing "American officials said that the hospital, a center of propaganda against allied forces as it was inflating casualty figures, was shut down."

In 2008, when Charlie Hebdo editorial board fired cartoonist Siné on charges of "anti-semitism", it wasn't that they did not care about being "politically correct", on the contrary, they were being too much politically correct.

Their allies then were the people who are declaring war today. One of the 12 signatories to the "Manifesto of the 12" in 2006, that was published in Charlie Hebdo and said "After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism", was Bernard-Henri Lévy [4].

***

Charlie Hebdo is "one of us": And the discussion we have is one internal to the left.

It is not racism when Charlie artists depict and satirize about what various religions hold to be divine - the liberals are diagnosing the problem totally wrong. The "divinity" of a religion is only valid for the people who follow that religion. The critique of religion as an institution and all the political figures who claim to be the representatives of that religion, the critique of all the groups of economic interest formed around “religious” connections, the critique of all types of attempts to use religion as a tool of intervention in political and daily life cannot be restrained on any reasoning based on the "sanctity of religion".

The mistake Charlie made was a deeper political mistake. Without the guidance of class politics, an attack on religion would cause turning a blind eye to the violence of imperialism created using the "war against terror" rhetoric.

It wasn't enough to attack the French racists Le Pen and Front National - to fight political Islam, one had attack liberal democracy as a whole.

***

We are now faced with a paradoxical situation that really gives us pains: The slaughter of our comrades in Charlie Hebdo, is being manipulated as a tool for forcing all of us to make the same mistake that our comrades in Charlie Hebdo made.

We need to think, because a new and very dangerous period is unfolding.

And with the cover of the magazine they published after the massacre, our comrades in Charlie Hebdo are still mistaken: Nothing has been forgiven.

[1] http://www.newstatesman.com/…/slavoj-i-ek-charlie-hebdo-mas…
[2] http://www.counterpunch.org/…/01/13/charlie-and-the-banlie…/
[3] http://www.wsj.com/…/bernard-henri-levy-a-france-united-aga…
[4] http://www.thegully.com/…/wo…/060403_islam_totalitarian.html