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Title: Paris Attacks
Author: Chris Hobson
Date: November 20, 2015
Language: en
Topics: Paris, terrorism, The Utopian
Source: Retrieved on 10th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2014%20-%202015/utopian-paris-attacks/
Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 14.

Chris Hobson

Paris Attacks

From my point of view, the armed attacks that killed at least 129 people

and wounded 352 in Paris on Nov. 13 are not only morally and humanly

wrong, but also have nothing in common with revolutionary action.

Revolutionaries should condemn the attacks, not feel any solidarity with

the attackers, and not defend them against the state—as we would with a

wide variety of revolutionary activists whom we might oppose

politically. This said, it’s important not to lose sight of the larger

truth that the various imperialist powers—the U.S., Russia, Great

Britain, Germany, and France itself—remain the main perpetrators of

terror and destruction in the Middle East and elsewhere.

While all the evidence isn’t in, it seems likely that the attackers were

so-called “radical Islamic” forces, perhaps affiliated with or

identifying with the “Islamic State,” as the French government claims.

(It’s reported that the “Islamic State” has taken responsibility.) If

so, the attacks might seem a continuation or part of a struggle against

Western domination over Muslim countries. And in a very general (and

superficial) sense they are part of such a struggle. However, even

leaving aside that the “Islamic State,” where it has power, is

repressive and exceptionally brutal, attacks like those in Paris are a

substitution for and a deterrent to revolutionary struggle.

Conspiratorial terrorism against civilians—as was also true of the

September 2001 attacks in the United States, for example—is an attempt

to substitute for a mass movement of the people, and/or it is an action

against the mass of the people. These actions were aimed at French

people as enemies, rather than as potential allies in a struggle against

imperialism. They were also a substitution for—and really a deterrent

to—mass action by Muslims and Arabs against imperialism, including mass

action by French Muslims and Arabs against French anti-Islamic

legislation and social and economic oppression. And, always and

everywhere, the effect of conspiratorial terrorism against civilians is

to drive ordinary people into the arms of the government, since they

want and need to be protected against murder by unseen forces. So, the

effect of these actions is to strengthen rather than weaken oppressive

governments.

I see a distinction between these acts and such actions as the recent

wave of Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli citizens in Israel

and the occupied West Bank. I don’t see the latter as a road forward but

I do see them as part of a mass anger and desperation. The attacks on

Israelis are negative in some of the same ways as the Paris attacks—they

mostly target ordinary people rather than the military or police, and

they increase support for Israel’s government, at least in the short

term. But they are an outgrowth of a long prior struggle including the

two preceding intifada movements, and they take place when the Israeli

government has undermined all efforts at negotiating with Palestinians

and has continued to support colonization and partial annexation of the

West Bank. I think it probable that tactics of mass civil disobedience

would gain more for Palestinians; but nonetheless, I am in sympathy with

those struggling against Israel and defend them against the state.

In the Paris attacks, in contrast, those killed and wounded are not

occupiers, they are ordinary people attending sports events and

concerts. Those who treat them as enemies have the wrong goals, not just

the wrong strategy or tactics. They view the issue as a clash of

civilizations or ways of life rather than a struggle against imperialism

and oppression.

Finally, let’s remember the overriding shape of modern history as a

history of imperialism—in its second phase, after about 1960,

imperialisms often acting through local clients and oppressors. (The

very term “Middle East,” used above for convenience, is part of the

imperial vocabulary—“east” from whose point of view?) One such

particularly horrible and destructive set of imperial actions is going

on in and around Syria and Iraq. A popular uprising in Syria, stalemated

since 2011, tepidly supported by the U.S. which won’t provide real help,

has been beaten back by the Syrian government, now aided by Russia

seeking to regain power and influence in the region. Iraq and its

successive corrupt and unrepresentative governments have been seen as

“up for grabs” since the U.S. withdrew most of its troops. The “Islamic

State” and other “Islamic” terrorist forces, with their regressive

theocratic ideology and hatred of what they see as a “decadent” West,

arose out of the failures of secular “socialist” nationalisms in the

last century to throw off Western domination. Out of this mix has come

the “Islamic State’s” push to power in Iraq and Syria. This in turn has

created what Europe sees as a “refugee crisis,” that is, hundreds of

thousands of human beings fleeing for their lives, hoping for a safe

place where they can live normally, who appear as a “crisis” for

countries and cultures that still conceive themselves as distinct from

the other countries and cultures they have overrun and exploited for

centuries. (It was to the great credit of many Europeans, earlier this

year, particularly Germans mindful of their own country’s dark night of

destruction, that they mobilized to welcome refugees and ease their way

so far as possible—and in so doing pushed their own governments to

greater humanity than otherwise. But with a boost from the Nov. 13

attacks, the European pendulum has now swung back to exclusion.)

In this situation, the governments of the U.S., Russia, France, England,

and others—acting directly with air strikes and drone attacks,

indirectly through proxy powers, or by inaction—kill far more than 129

people each day, wound far more than 352, as innocent people are bombed,

gassed, or lost at sea in a desperate losing gamble for life. Only,

these people “don’t count.” They aren’t (or aren’t seen as) white, they

aren’t European, and many have the bad taste to believe in Islam, one of

the world’s great monotheistic religions that is seen as exotic and

morally questionable by many in the West. In news clips, they tug

distantly at Western heartstrings; French victims tug viscerally for

most in the West. But let’s not forget the overlying situation and the

major perpetrators of direct and indirect terror in the world today. The

Paris attacks are horrible. But the word “barbaric,” used over and over

by world leaders in the last few days—presidents Hollande and Obama

among others—is peculiarly acid and hypocritical in the mouths of the

masters of imperial barbarism.

(My thanks to Ron Tabor for comments on an earlier draft.)