I’m winding down in my posting about religion and the Paris attack as well as about Halloween costumes and offense in American colleges; but I fear you’ll have to endure a few final “clean-up” posts on these issues today.
I’m not sure who Lulu Nunn is, as she doesn’t have much of an internet presence; and although she’s just written a piece for The Independent, that appears to be her first one. At any rate, judging by that piece, “A French flag on your Facebook profile doesn’t make you a hero,” I despair of her future. For Ms. Nunn, as you can tell by the title of her piece, is a Sympathy Fascist: one who decides which group is worth sympathizing with in times of tragedy, and one who will call you out if you sympathize with the wrong group, or don’t properly rank your sympathies. In this case, she argues, we shouldn’t be feeling so bad for the French people murdered by ISIS, for there are so many other tragedies in the world. Frankly, I’m surprised that The Independent published this kind of tripe:
. . . [Facebook] is currently hosting a flood of French flags, applied via a function enabled by Facebook in the immediate aftermath of the attacks which is, frankly, deeply problematic.
So you want to show solidarity with France – specifically, with those killed in Paris this weekend. If you’re a British person who wants to do that because you feel sympathy and sadness for people who are brutally massacred, regardless of their nationality, then fine. I just hope that you also change your profile picture to a different country’s flag every time people are wrongly killed as the result of international conflicts – for example, during the attack on Beirut in Lebanon just the day before.
Really, “deeply problematic”? Perhaps it’s just because we feel closer to the French than we do to the Lebanese, for I doubt that anybody thinks that Lebanese Lives Don’t Matter. In the same way, when someone we’re familiar with dies, like Robin Williams, we feel worse than when a stranger dies in a distant land. I don’t see that as “deeply problematic”; I see it as human nature, as an extension of our evolved feelings about kin and members of our group.
But wait—there’s more! Along with the sentiment policing above, you get an accusation of—wait for it!—white supremacy:
Euro-centrism – a worldview which centres and places overemphasised importance on the West – reinforces its supremacy through actions like these. And there’s no ignoring the fact that this stems from European colonisation. How deeply ironic, considering that the colonisation of the Middle East and wars carried out in Muslim lands put down the roots for extremist groups such as Isis.
It’s a dismaying and damaging truth that Westerners care about and empathise with images of white-skinned women grieving in Topshop bobble hats far more than brown-skinned women grieving in niqabs and, when you lend your voice to Euro-centric campaigns such as Facebook’s flag filter, you exacerbate this. When we buy into such easy corporate public mourning, we uphold white supremacy. We’re essentially saying that white, Western lives matter more than others.
I disagree. We simply mourn more for those with whom we feel kinship based on familiarity.
But wait! There’s still more! Putting French flags on Facebook photos actually promotes murder! Yep, that’s right:
This sentiment, when it washes across the world via Facebook in a sea of blue, white and red, provides a get-out-of-jail-free card for the West’s slaughter of Middle Eastern people in retaliation, causing the very thing we’re supposed to be up in arms over: the loss of innocent lives.
What Nunn doesn’t seem to realize is that those who use these Facebook tropes aren’t trying to rectify the world’s many oppressions. They simply feel bad for what happened, and are trying to show it. I am sick unto death of people like Nunn trying to tell us what and whom we can and can’t mourn. Of course we should care about murder and injustice in other places in the world, but how does scolding people for feeling kinship with Parisians accomplish that? It only makes us shake our heads at people like Nunn, who have nothing better to do than affirm their own moral superiority by tut-tutting at others.
h/t: Robert D.
Sympathy fascist.
How apt.
The catch phrase where I work is “selective outrage.” I find that insulting.
The irony is that this description can be just as correctly directed at the person making the charge.
It probably can be directed at anyone, because there is an infinite number of potential outrage targets.
All of this is pretty normal in the age of face book and all the other soap boxes out there. Kind of odd that it would get published in any real paper or mag.
If these folks would put down their keyboards for a minute and put some effort into just knowing who the bad guys are, there would be less time to tell all of us what to do and how to think and how to act. We are all perfectly capable of doing it without assistance.
“Kind of odd that it would get published in any real paper or mag.”
Not really- most will publish any sort of garbage, half baked commentary, or the usual “I was offended by [insert anything from ‘the teacher spoke loudly to my snowflake’ to ‘some unknown celebrity made an offensive (to me with a great deal of imagination’) remark’.
Right, got that off my chest -hope everyone has a good weekend
I agree with her first bit but not with her last. Its dismaying for example that if a young blond women gets kidnapped, killed, or has a drug overdose on Spring Break it makes the front page, yet hundreds if not thousands of ‘less media photogenic’ people suffer the same problems and don’t get covered. She’s absolutely right, the western media loves them some stereotypical western victims of crime and often ignores other victims, and this is really bad.
I disagree with her on the last bit, however, because IMO the solution is to increase awareness of the other victims, not decrease awareness of the media-photogenic ones. The best response to the Paris coverage is to write stories about the Beirut attacks, it is not to decry the coverage of the Paris attack.
Lastly but something of an aside, but this whole ‘not caring enough’ thing is really annoying and frankly, tea partyish. We seem intent on eating our own – attacking allies for not being socially just enough rather than using our efforts to promote justice amongst those who might not otherwise support it. It reminds me a lot of the Tea Party booting out GOP incumbents with highly conservative records for not being perceived to be conservative enough. This is not a strategy that forwards the cause of freedom or equality; its a cause that will end with a highly ineffective movement that can do nothing proactive and get nothing done, but rather is limited to reactively complaining about things and being a political movement of “no.” No, don’t do that. Or this. Or anything – because whatever you do, it won’t be ideologically pure enough.
Broadly agree.
” the solution is to increase awareness of the other victims, not decrease awareness of the media-photogenic ones.” That is exactly the direction that we should take. What she is doing is to declare that she cares more because she actually cares less.
The truth of that depends on what she means by “care”.
It’s true that Western attention isn’t focused on places where this sort of thing happens a lot to brown-skinned people,
but I’m pretty confident that my empathy is engaged equally if I see a photograph of a brown-skinned woman with a dead child in her hands as compared with a light-skinned woman.
Yes. Anyone remember the Vietnam war? – which became a popular cause not only because young Americans were being killed, but because the press coverage showed what was happening to many Vietnamese civilians.
cr
I, too, broadly agree with Eric. What irritates me is the sheer infantility both of those who like to advertise how sympathetic and nice they are by means of the perfectly trivial gesture of attaching a French flag to their Facebook account and of those such as Lulu Nunn who become exercised about it.
Perhaps you can help me understand the difference between advertising how sympathetic a person is with a person expressing sympathy and support for others. I’m presuming that you would approve of the latter.
I read this… An utterly dreadful, holier-than-thou, supercilious attitude. Not of her business what people do with their FB avatars.
It was worth getting to the end though, for a particularly good sarcastic comment below the line. I copied it to cheer myself up after reading the piece…
“What a relief to finally hear the definitive word on this pressing subject from the world of experimental theatre. Lulu did an art course at London Metropolitan University (who wants to go Goldsmiths anyway).She brings a unique insight into third world oppression and can fully empathise and sees through the lies of the west (as only a white art student called Lulu can).
Rather than mock her for her lack of research and knowledge I’m hoping Lulu will re-visit this masterful piece of work in the form of interpretive dance on Newsnight maybe to the tune of Tears of a Clown. She also has lots of fun costumes. Check her profile she’s available for bookings …”
That response is MAG-NI-FI-CENT 🙂
Great isn’t it?! I wish I had written it!
One thing is for sure, this isn’t an example liberalism.
I think the argument I am most tired of hearing is “people of other religions do horrible things too, so don’t criticize Islam you hypocrite.” This argument encompasses several different fallacies all at the same time. For one, I wish to tell the people who say this kind of thing that I am not as limited as they evidently are. I am perfectly capable of criticizing many religions and other types of ideologies, including those that are prevalent in my own culture, all at the same time. I can even walk and chew gum at the same time too.
We have evolved socially as a tribal society. Our genetic relatives first, then our group. This is a natural part of our wiring, andhas helped us to survive as a species.
If we felt equal pain for everyone suffering (as Singer seems to suggest at times), our life would be one continuous grief cycle and we would be unable to function. Natural selection has provided a bit of filtering (we can, if we choose, move outside that filter), and there is no reason to feel guilty about it.
Well I think there is good reason to note that it’s an irrational bias, and good reason to strive to be more objective and even-handed in how we support other people. We certainly shouldn’t just be shrugging our shoulders and saying “Evolution gave me this bias in favor of people who look/act like me, so I’m content with continuing to treat those people better than everyone else.”
But I agree with you that pragmatically speaking, there is always a need to pick our battles or prioritize our help. You can’t get around that, so people should not be attacked for doing so. We can certainly criticize people’s choices of what to prioritize, but the prioritization process itself is a necessary evil.
After the Charlie Hebdo attack, the victims were few enough to be named and described one by one. As far as I saw, nobody gave the policewoman less sympathy because she was black. In fact, I felt more sorry for her than for most other victims, because she was very young, and I regret most the loss of young life (which may be politically incorrect from another angle).
It is natural for us Westerners to be more saddened or worried for those who are attacked in Paris, be they white or otherwise. Paris is “our” place, and charity begins at home.
For the same reason, I’d find nothing wrong if some e.g. Jordanian is touched more deeply by the attacks in Beirut than by those in Paris.
My feelings too.
+1
cr
“If we felt equal pain for everyone suffering (as Singer seems to suggest at times), our life would be one continuous grief cycle and we would be unable to function.”
Just the 20k or so children that starve to death every day would drive most of us to kill ourselves.
Why? Depressing as it is, mass starvation wouldn’t be solved by random suicides. Or are you seriously suggesting mass suicide would be the rational emotional response to the problem? I doubt you’re exactly volunteering, but it would be worth asking serious questions along the lines of why.
If there is one ethics-related lesson to take away from evolution, it is that it’s an atrocious source of morality. This is precisely because it must regard morality as little more than a tool for gene propagation, to be picked up or discarded only so long as it results in pumping out more copies. That it’s “natural” suggests nothing as to whether it’s “good”, to the point that there’s a whole fallacy named the naturalistic fallacy.
If we felt equal pain for everyone suffering (as Singer seems to suggest at times), our life would be one continuous grief cycle and we would be unable to function.
The only conclusions you can be angling for are either that the serious pain doesn’t exist or that it entails no moral imperative, which is ultimately just the same denial reworded, since it’s easier to feel or do nothing about pain that’s not one’s own. In any case, your point is only a pragmatic one, not a moral one. The fact that we’d never function if we felt the grief of every suffering and death is not a helpful pick-me-up to make light of the situation, but a tragedy on top of a tragedy. Certainly, there’s nothing admirable in shrugging off real suffering.
Perhaps, in the interests of honesty and compassion, our lives should be a grief cycle, the emotion fitting the circumstances? Perhaps we soldier on with that grief cycle, accepting the bitter truth as we do so and doing what we can to alleviate it? Or is this the moment when intellectual honesty loses to wishful thinking? One could, of course, deny both the problem and the solution, but then it seems to me one can no longer honestly hold on to their moral or their intellectual license. It would be like fudging the science because it doesn’t show what we want it to show.
Thank you reason shark. It seems that most of us hide,(more or less), from the unavoidability of pain in this life and admit it in in measured amounts. As one grows older it becomes more and more unavoidable, certainly personally and therefore it becomes clearer and clearer just how much suffering there is in this world And hopefully we become kinder. I do not know where morality derives from-biological discussions about genes end evolution don’t hold much water for me-tho’ certainly some of us seem not to be susceptible to develop compassion.And some have it very naturally,to one degree or another, it seems. Heart.
We cannot give over intellectual honesty for wishful thinking and if it hurts, and if we have any sympathy or liking for first of all ourselves then we can develop compassion,
Yes, thank you, reasonshark.
Yes and no. We can’t escape the fundamentally biological nature of our ethics, but it is extremely easy to go too far in weighting that as a factor. We value our children because we’re a K-selection type species; an r-type species would not do so and might even find it perfectly sensible to view their offspring as a good source of food (a sentient spider might say: “I just had thousands. The faster ones will escape and meanwhile the protein from the slower ones will help me survive.”) Likewise there aren’t many (sane, non con-artist) humans espousing photosynthesis as the only truly moral source of energy; humans are adapted to eat other living things, and that must necessarily impact our morality. Yet a sentient alien plant species might say: “you kill other living things just to eat? How horrible! Your entire race is a pack of immoral murderers!”
There are probably other fundamental ethical principles that we derive from the fact that we are social k-type omnivores too, which would make no sense for sentient species lacking one or more of those traits. Our morality is fundamentally grounded in our biology. So I’m always somewhat bothered by the naturalistic ‘fallacy’ being called a fallacy; there can be good rational reasons to base an ethical principle on biology. But OTOH yes you’re absolutely right that people often use ‘nature’ as an excuse to fashion really selfish or poorly thought out ethical rules, and that needs to be fought.
I disagree. If our evolutionary history can saddle us with “fundamental” errors in reasoning – and cognitive biases provide strong evidence that it has done just that – then appealing to “fundamental” ethical principles that evolved is equally, if not moreso, under suspicion. This is especially the case where they are transparently parochial, as your examples almost certainly are.
To be comprehensive, there is a point to looking at evolutionary logic and comparing it with ethics, but the point largely subdivides into two broad categories:
a) Historical, i.e. as part of our studies in how our moral instincts and systems of ethics came to be what they are, and
b) Pragmatic, i.e. comparing what would be ideal in ethics with what is practical and thus feasible.
Otherwise, it’s irrelevant in actually determining what is good and what is not, for the same reason evolution is irrelevant in determining theoretical optics. A lineage of organisms evolving eyes will come up with a structure close to what optics would dictate, give or take historical accident and practicality, but a species may have little to do with eyes – say, a mole – and other species may get by with no eyes at all – plants, for instance. Evolution explains how (or whether) optical instruments come about at all, and even what forms they take, but it doesn’t dictate optics itself.
And that’s why I disagree with every example you provide. None of those things are “alternative” ethics, any more than a species without eyes is using “alternative” optics. Even humans, among the few animals that genuinely employ ethics, are Darwinian enough to employ it only some of the time, namely when it wouldn’t hurt the genetic imperative to survive and reproduce. Moreover, since ethical codes can be co-opted by strange beliefs and questionable premises, it’s not necessarily the case that whatever we deem ethical – say, nepotism – genuinely is ethical.
To defend such a position, you’d need a rational basis and a sound argument, not an invocation of tradition, history, or even evolutionary history. Your hypothetical spider (and much less hypothetical meat-eater) are built to kill and torture other sentient organisms. Unless killing and torturing are redefined out of a spirit of self-serving denial, special pleading, and the like, they’ve lost any claim to ethicality and at best have a claim to practicality, because a standard of ethics, like a standard of reasoning, simply doesn’t depend on how a species evolved.
That’s not academic, either: our modes of reasoning, as cognitive biases show, likely evolved that way, but they don’t suddenly become principles of reason by dint of the fact that we evolved (and evolved that way). We subject them to critical scrutiny as best we can.
Certainly, it’s a sheer issue of practicality if a species has to kill others or die, but that wouldn’t change the ethical status of the action from “bad” to “good”. It just means life sucks.
(On a side-note, I think you mean “sapient”, as in having human-like intelligence, not “sentient”, which basically means being able to sense and experience things.)
Darn. Please ignore the messy italics. It was only intended for the “is”, but I must have missed the symbol at the end.
As a side point, recent developments seem to put a lie to the claim that this is ALL about US/Western military action (certainly some actions didn’t help). ISIS has now enraged the Chinese who have never had a military involvement in this fight, or an alliance with anyone in this fight. They seem to be attempting to stick their finger in the eye of the whole world.
I was watching Frontline on the PBS last night, and Daesh is moving into Afghanistan, setting up.jihadi schools and so on.
The Daesh teachers and fighters who were interviewed were pretty clear about the “global Jihad” and how they are obligated, because of their religion, to conquer the infidels.
Yes I was watching another news report, which noted that these broad-based attacks are strategically intended, because ISCIS wants international recognition as a real geopolitical entity, with sovereign territory etc., and getting bystander countries to recognize them (even if that recognition comes in the form of war) is a way to do that.
There are some opinion pieces floating around out there in the editori-‘o-sphere that ISIS wants to provoke the West into attacking, so to mobilize the Islamic world into a Final Battle. This is why the attacked a Russian plane, beheaded Westerners, and now attacked in Paris. Before long, I think they are going to find a way to get their wish.
Daesh wants to defeat the armies of Rome in am Armageddon style battle.
This is all a reaction to Roman colonialism.
Lulz
“What have the Romans ever done for us?”
Yep. As PCCE linked a few days ago, this Atlantic piece is extremely good.
They have stated clearly they want America boots on the ground in large numbers. The attacks in Europe and they say more to come in the U.S. is to provoke this goal.
Of course the republicans want to give them their wish, as long as it’s someone else’s kids doing the fighting of course.
Yes, well, I suspect that if they are successful at same-scale attacks in the US and many other countries in the next month or two, this may just end up being their Operation Barbarossa. Congratulations, you were successful in opening up multiple fronts! Now what are you going to do?
In my more optimistic moments, I like to think that ISIS are painting themselves into the same corner as Hitler in December 1941. Having declared war on the USA, quite unnecessarily, he committed Germany to an unwinnable struggle against the British Empire, the Soviet Union and the USA, all simultaneously. We all know where that led.
ISIS seem to be heading down the same path. Their fanaticism just doesn’t seem to allow them to bide their time, consolidate their gains, pick their fights, and tackle one foe at a time. They’ve now got the USA, western Europe and Russia all gunning for them, and seem hell-bent on provoking the Chinese too. We can only hope they go the same way as Hitler.
Not sure why their appetite has suddenly become so big and confident but it is easy to see where it came from. Our disaster in Iraq and the poor handling of the Syrian mess would give anyone confidence. They have tracked every detail and so far…see no reason for concern.
I just would hope we get a great deal smarter in this than shown in the past.
In a word, they are strong because too many people gave them the support they refuse to give to the West. Though, when things get nasty, everybody runs to the West to ask for help and refuge.
The really scary part is that quite a few fundie Christians are eager to get to Armageddon as well.
Regarding those ‘some actions’ that jay mentions, here’s Tom Engelhardt: ‘In these last 14 years of failed wars and conflicts of every sort, American military power, aided and abetted by the Saudis, the British, the French, and other countries on a case-by-case basis, essentially fractured the Greater Middle East. It helped create five failed states (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen), worlds in which terror groups could thrive and in the chaos of which they could attract ever more recruits.’
I came across an interesting television interview between a BBC (I think) journalist and an American who was formerly high up in military intelligence, in which the question was addressed as to the complacency of American officials about ISIS in its beginnings – it was thought to be a useful group in that it would help to bring down Assad. (Alas, I cannot remember where I came across it.) Nothing has been learned from the American support for fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan.
If you refuse to support any local armed group because no one can meet your high requirements, you have to step on the ground and do all the work yourself, which has its own drawbacks.
As an Eastern European, I don’t think the American support for fundamentalist groups in Afghanistan was a bad idea. It weakened the Soviet Union and so contributed to our freedom. It is no fault of the USA that the Afghan population is so heavily infected with fundamentalist Islam, and nobody had a crystal ball to predict the rise of Al-Qaida.
Well, it’s an idea that has certainly turned out splendidly, however nice it may have seemed in itself at the time, hasn’t it? Rather like the idea that democracy magically emerges merely by virtue of removing all vestiges of the apparatus of a state.
Indiscriminately supporting any band of rebels/guerillas/terrorists because they claimed to be anti-communist was a bit of Cold War stupidity that led to all sorts of morally questionable actions. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” can get you some pretty dodgy friends.
(In exactly the same way as the USSR supported any group of bandits with “People’s Democratic” in their name).
cr
Funny – the owner of the Independent is the Russian Alexander Lebedev, the Russian ‘oligarch’ (are only Russians oligarchs?). He was on Radio 4 this am talking about Russia & ISIS (8.30)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pd3b3
The other night at the football – England v France – English fans were exhorted to sing the French national anthem. I thought they should instead sing the Internationale. Much more inclusive.
No. Friday night’s massacre killed French people (with a few others) in the capital city of France. The French football team were representing their country – France. Singing the French national anthem at Wembley was therefore the correct and appropriate thing to do to show solidarity with the French people. No further “inclusivity” was called for.
Oh, she’ll grow up sometime. If she is fortunate and does not become a hardened left wing fascist. Solidifying concepts and schoolmarmishness are the province of the young. (Is she young?)
On the other hand, these comments by Lucie Kroening are much more to the point. She didn’t adopt the flag because it has become a symbol of the extreme right in France. it’s true, the Front National is seizing any symbol of French identity as theirs — the flag, the slogan, Jeanne d’Arc and more. Her article is at https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/11/18/the-problem-with-putting-a-french-flag-up-on-your-facebook/.
Btw, why are so many pages in https (secured) these days?
Right wing groups always try to hijack national symbols- it doesn’t mean they belong to them.
Marine Le Pen can wrap herself in whatever she likes, but the reality is she represents a minority in French society. The fact is the flag is designed to represent liberty, equality and fraternity- so she should actually stay well away from it.
Https helps keep browsing communications secure, esp. as so many of these communications are over unsecured or weakly-secured Wifi networks. Guards against so-called “man-in-the-middle” attacks.
Of course, everyone can (and will) mourn for whoever they want. But can we please agree that we have to cultivate ourselves (as the Chinese say) to overcome the murderous in-group/out-group-thinking of humanity’s infancy? What a lazy argument to say “My genes made me do it”. A humanist must be an internationalist, as, among others, Yeshayahu Leibowitz has pointed out. If you believe that Robin Williams was not a stranger, because you have seen him act on TV, you are easily confused. To criticize the vastly different media reactions when some “Westeners” are killed versus when some poor brown people are killed, really is to criticize the idea that some people are “worth” more, or are more important than others.
Any working society is based on the premise that unwanted phenomena affecting its members (and also done by its members) are more important than unwanted phenomena affecting outsiders. This is what Merkel forgot by inviting all the suffering world to Germany. Or maybe she was so brainwashed by the anti-Western propaganda that grossly underestimated the number of people wanting to live in Germany.
I really hope Ms Nunn never complains about the wrongs against women in the West. What’s a rape compared to women being mutilated with FGM? What’s not being promoted based on gender when women in Saudi Arabia cannot drive? Rape away! Rape away!
🌰🌰I think these are nutz??
In fairness to the Independent, they published a simultaneous rebuttal of Nunn by Michael Chessum, who, based on a quick search, identifies as “Labor left” (i.e a Corbyn supporter).
Lulu Nunn: a virtue-signalling cry-bully. Great name, mind. x
new.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/hating-the-daily-mail-is-a-substitute-for-doing-good/
blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/04/meet-the-cry-bully-a-hideous-hybrid-of-victim-and-victor/
As a French citizen (of the non-nationalist and non-exceptionalist variety) I thought the various gestures of support were well intended and demonstrated great kindness and compassion.
Paris is the most visited city in the world with over 30 million tourists p/year. That means it doesn’t just belong to us- it belongs to mankind’s collective history and collective memory. I don’t know many people who proposed to their wives in Mogadishu or spent their honeymoons in Kabul. Paris on the other hand, like NY or London, is connected to all of us, if not directly, through a friend or family member.
So true. I remember the opening page of Kenneth Clarke’s Civilisation – standing in the center Paris, he describes what he sees and how the sight makes him feel the presence of civilizaion.
I red that the victims included two sisters from Tunisia who had come to Paris for a celebration. It had to be great experience for them. Who wouldn’t want to go to Paris some day to celebrate something?
There’s a variant of this kind of thing: When someone says “Well, the French have committed atrocities too.” It is holding nations perpetually responsible for the sins of the fathers even though times change. It doesn’t justify attacks on French soil. But some people think there’s no statute of limitations on revenge.
I agree with the silly poster that we should remember the victims elsewhere. But by being over-the-top about that (and about reminding us of “Western” roles in the matter) *doesn’t help any*. I think this is a case where “tone comments” are actually appropriate.
It’s no less tragic when innocent Lebanese are massacred than when innocent Parisians are massacred.
But this isn’t just about empathy. It’s also about newsworthiness.
All else being equal—and that’s an important caveat—what happens in the West is simply more newsworthy to Westerners than what happens elsewhere. The farther (geographically) and, crucially, FURTHER (culturally and politically) away an event occurs, the less relevant it is.
That may sound callous, but it’s just a frank way of articulating a rather banal fact. Yes, the world is increasingly interconnected, but we still have concentric circles of relevance and allegiance, whether we like it or not. Humanity doesn’t yet live as “one people.” Utopia hasn’t arrived.
Now, does this mean that Westerners shouldn’t pay attention to or care about what happens around the world? Obviously not! I said “concentric circles,” and the biggest one encompasses everybody.
But this really isn’t rocket science: ISIS has taken its fight to Western soil for the first time and declared its intention to keep at it. Only a fool can’t see that the attack on Paris has far greater implications for Westerners than the attack on Beirut does.
So when I say “Je suis Paris,” I’m not merely offering moral support. I’m also acknowledging that this attack hits close enough to home in terms of my concentric circles that I consider it an attack on me, even though I live an ocean away. And you know what? ISIS sees it that way, too.
Here is a message for those who consider themselves too worldly for concentric circles, and who chastise their less enlightened compatriots for being “Eurocentric”: you’re part of the West, and you ignore reality at your own peril.
I was talking to my boyfriend about this, and he had heard of Beirut, but didn’t know much else about it except the name.
Many folks in the west have heard of Paris, but really don’t know much about places in Africa, the Middle East etc. It wont’ really resonate.
In fact, there is a big war going on in the Central African Republic right now. Genocidal, or verging on genocide. Christians and Muslims killing one another. And the western press isn’t reporting on it. And why is that? probably because no one has heard of the place. I didn’t even know it existed until I chanced across an article in the Guardian.
But everyone has heard of Paris. Or NY. Or London. etc.
To piggyback on your point about foreign conflicts, and connect it to some of what I was saying:
So you know those progressives I was talking about who consider themselves too worldly for concentric circles? Well, when it comes to a Western power deciding whether to involve itself militarily in a foreign conflict, don’t those same progressives typically insist that the decision must be made largely on the basis of how directly the conflict affects the country in question?
In other words, it’s my impression that the very Westerners decrying geopolitical boundaries because Paris is getting more coverage than Beirut have no problem invoking geopolitical boundaries when it suits them.
Am I wrong?
If terrorists leave the West alone, then Western media would report more about atrocities in other places.
Hmmm I have to say I disagree. As a western news consumer I’d much rather have had 5 minutes of coverage on each rather than 10 minutes of coverage on just Paris, and the same is true for text space in written coverage.
I think the news editors might agree with your position and they must have some idea of what they’re doing in terms of consumer preference, but I also think there is some level of the tail wagging the dog here; when a news channel hypes a single event and ignores other events of similar type/magnitude, they are not merely playing to an audience preference/bias, they are helping to reinforce and solidify that preference/bias.
I think a good way to see how this is so is to compare US coverage of world events with other countries’ coverage of world events. The US is highly unusual in the amount of myopia/focus it has on its own people and familiar places. The beeb and other non-US news outlets don’t do that, even though they are serving basically similar cohorts of consumers (modern 1st world middle class etc..). So the content obviously *doesn’t* have to be that myopic because similar audiences are happy with content that *isn’t* that myopic. Why is US coverage so different then? Because the tail is wagging the dog; the news outlets are in part creating the myopia they claim to be merely responding to.
You may well be right that American news outlets are too parochial. I’m not prepared to argue for or against that claim.
I’m saying that magnitude of tragedy is not the only criterion for determining how newsworthy something is or how we respond to an act of war. When it comes to major geopolitical news, we aren’t dispassionate consumers. We shouldn’t pretend to be, and we can’t afford to be.
The attack on Paris and the attack on Beirut are comparably tragic, but they aren’t remotely comparable in political implications for the Western world.
I have mixed feelings about the Facebook flag thing, but for entirely different reasons.
When I read the text that says, “Change your profile picture to support France and the people of Paris.” next to a button that says “Try It”, I was about to click it, but then I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’ve been thinking about why that was the case. It was vague to me then and still a bit vague to me now. Maybe I’m just not a joiner and it triggered my reaction to bandwagons. I think, in part, it’s because it was too easy. You don’t have to edit your own photo, or even look for the feature, it’s offered up to you. You don’t have to make a donation to get it, you just have to click. Maybe it’s the phrasing “Try It”, that put me off, like it’s a fashion statement, or something you’d do for entertainment. Maybe it’s just too corporate, to regimented, the routinization/commercialization of grief (I feel like I saw a movie where this was parodied but I can’t remember the details). Or maybe it’s because too many of my normally France-hostile friends (remember the liability of Kerry speaking French? Freedom fries?) have also adopted the flag. They strike me as insincere, as meaning “Fuck ISIS”, not “We care about France”, and I selfishly didn’t want to blend in with them. Or maybe it reminded me too much of the Christian get-out-of-doing-anything card, “I’ll pray for you”. A half-second of breath and you’re on to your next appointment, all symbolism, no action.
I hesitated to say any of this because I don’t mean it as any kind of criticism of those who did click “Try It”. All the best people I know did. My friends who are on-the-ground in Turkey helping refugees clicked it. The most caring loving and actively-helping-others people I know clicked it. I know it must cheer many people in France and elsewhere to see the support, to feel they are not alone in mourning and determination. It’s the most solidarity I’ve seen among my politically and religiously diverse friends and I myself find it cheering to see 70% of my Facebook friends agree on *anything*, even if it’s fleeting (though it makes identifying people at a glance much harder). Maybe I’ll click it yet, who knows?
I share your suspicion of the Facebook button. (I’m ‘on’ Farcebook but I haven’t looked at it for weeks, by the way). I’m deeply suspicious of anything that might be ‘trendy’ or fashionable.
(Incidentally, and probably precisely contra your France-hostile friends, I was ambivalent about France for decades following the Mururoa atomic tests, I only became reconciled to France when they refused to join Bush and Bliar’s war on Iraq. Kinda ironical.)
But back to the button, I think I’ll go and – reluctantly – click it, because what the world will see is whether I’ve got a French flag up or not. I guess that outvotes my reluctance to do something just because somebody has suggested I do it.
I can’t see Nun’s article as implying that we should care less about the French victims, as some seem to be doing here. It reads to me like she’s genuinely pointing out the hypocrisy between rallying so much time and energy to these victims versus ignoring or not doing much about victims elsewhere. Offering explanations as to why that might be the case (“kinship” and so on) does nothing to address the underlying moral point about it’s lack of even-handedness.
Oh, someone might say that Lebanese lives matter as much as French ones, but if that doesn’t show in one’s behaviour, then either you don’t genuinely mean it or you’re doing a poor job of living up to the principle. Wouldn’t you want to confront and deal with the truth in either case, instead of finding a “justification” that doesn’t adequately exculpate it?
I’m not fully convinced about the extrapolated “white supremacy” stuff, as the claims seem to be a bit extreme after that. However, it is troubling what such a lop-sided view of casualties suggests about people’s conceptions of others.
I don’t want to be nasty, but do you think there is much sympathy in Lebanon to innocent victims in Israel, and would Nun ever write a piece on this subject? Double standards again, huh?
No, it’s not nasty. It’s a fair question. Out of the standards of consistency, I certainly hope she would at least agree with the idea. But if she didn’t go out and write an article to that effect, I wouldn’t necessarily take that as evidence of hypocrisy without at least wondering A) if she could plausibly get the message across, and B) what the possible backlash would be if she did.
In any case, if she turned out to be a raging and blatant hypocrite – and there, I would stand by you to denounce her as such – I still can’t fault the principle itself.
“Frankly, I’m surprised that The Independent published this kind of tripe”
I expect better from The Independent.
Well, she’s half right. We do take more notice when a western European target is attacked. From a global perspective that’s probably inequitable, but it’s perfectly natural.
I’ve also felt very sorry for Lebanon for decades, stuck between hardline Islamists and hardline Israelis (this is not the time to go into that).
But I’ve been to Paris. Beautiful city and it has its own very-much-alive ambiance. The people are delightful. I wish them and their society a speedy recovery from these religious psychos. Somehow clicking on a Facebook profile seems trivial but, like signing a petition, it’s one tick that collectively adds up to a million.
That doesn’t mean I’m ignoring Lebanon or somehow giving carte blanche approval to ‘collateral damage’ in the middle east.
cr
On a slightly related note, I enjoyed this First Dog cartoon in the Guardian about a closely related species to the “sympathy fascist” — the “insufficiently condemny fascist”.
“Somebody somewhere isn’t condemning something as condemningly as they should!”
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/nov/19/the-news-corp-columnist-and-the-case-of-the-missing-grand-mufti
Good one! 😀
I was listening to the CBC, and a Muslim lawyer was talking about how unfair it is that Muslims must condemn the actions of Muslim extremists.
He pointed out that if they don’t condemn the violence, that people then wonder why they are silent and if they secretly applaud the extremists, which is why they must condemn.
Of course, no one demands this of Christians. Yet it is demanded of Muslims. Perhaps we need to ask *why* it is demanded of Muslims and there we will find our answer.
It is demanded of Muslims because this is quite clearly what their Holy book demands. As PCC has pointed out, Daesh *are* following Islam. To the letter. Islam is all about conquering the infidel. All of the rape and genocide is justified in the Koran.
“It is demanded of Muslims because this is quite clearly what their Holy book demands.”
I think the Christians’ holy book is probably just as bad.
But – at the moment – there are hardly any Christian terrorists blowing things up.
(Having said that, I instantly thought of drone strikes. I suppose the only redeeming feature the West can claim is that they are not deliberately targeting non-combatants. And this is a big difference.)
cr
Oh damn, that was a reply to Cindy of course….
cr
I’ve read both holy books, and the Christians’ is not just as bad, it cannot even compete in the same group.
Of course, Christians in past ages had no problem with mass-scale killing in the name of “love thy neighbor”. But, as you said yourself, not now.
The drone strikes, apart from being directed against combatants, are not used with religious motivation. When Christian Serbia was ethnically cleansing Muslim Bosnians and Kosovars, Christian countries led by the USA bombed it into submission. I cannot even imagine a Muslim country attacking another Muslim country to protect some non-Muslim population.
I’ll take your word for it re holy books.
Suffice to say there’s still more than enough in the Bible to satisfy the most psychopathic Christian.
Good point about the Serbian business.
As an aside (but it’s relevant), my Bosnian Muslim refugee tenants were very mild Muslims (I couldn’t even tell till I noticed a Koran on top of the TV set on about my fifth visit). They were quite proud of their traditional home-made wine. It’s hard to imagine them killing anyone over religion except, possibly, a militant Serb. I expect they’d be quite high on ISIS/DAESH’s hit list as backsliders.
cr