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I fear, and expect, that our slow genocide will be replaced by a rapid one. Every rhetorical and tactical piece has been arranged for this. The world has long prepared for our death—they have practiced it every day for years. We are the ungrievable, the barbarians, the terrorist “animals.” Our suffering is expected, and excused. Welcomed, even. I fear no number of our dead that will satisfy a regime which has always intended our annihilation, and now anoints itself with the blood of its slain. And I dread watching our slaughter while my grief is rendered illegible by a consensus which has always sentenced us to death.

It may sound daft to suggest that a group of armed irregulars, numbering in the low tens of thousands, besieged and with little access to advanced weaponry, is a match for one of the world’s most powerful militaries, backed and armed by the United States. And yet, an increasing number of establishment strategic analysts warn that Israel could lose this war on Palestinians despite the cataclysmic violence it unleashed since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7. And in provoking the Israeli assault, Hamas may be realizing many of its own political objectives.

Both #Israel and #Hamas appear to be resetting the terms of their political contest not to the pre–October 7 status quo, but to the 1948 one. It’s not clear what comes next, but there will be no going back to the previous state of affairs.

The surprise attack neutralized Israeli military installations, breaking open the gates of the world’s largest open-air prison and leading a gruesome rampage in which some 1,200 Israelis, at least 845 of them civilians, were killed. The shocking ease with which Hamas breached Israeli lines around the Gaza Strip reminded many of the 1968 Tet Offensive. Not literally—there are vast differences between a US expeditionary war in a distant land and Israel’s war to defend an occupation at home, waged by a citizen army motivated by a sense of existential peril. Instead, the usefulness of the analogy lies in the political logic shaping an insurgent offensive.

In 1968, the Vietnamese revolutionaries lost the battle and sacrificed much of the underground political and military infrastructure they had patiently built over years. Yet the Tet Offensive was a key moment in their defeat of the United States—albeit at a massive cost in Vietnamese lives. By simultaneously staging dramatic, high-profile attacks on more than 100 targets across the country on a single day, lightly armed Vietnamese guerrillas shattered the illusion of success that was being peddled to the US public by the Johnson administration. It signaled to Americans that the war for which they were being asked to sacrifice tens of thousands of their sons was unwinnable.

The Vietnamese leadership measured the impact of its military actions by their political effects rather than by conventional military measures such as men and materiel lost or territory gained. Thus Henry Kissinger’s 1969 lament: “We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”

That logic has Jon Alterman of the not-exactly-dovish Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., to see Israel as being at considerable risk of losing to Hamas:

Hamas’s concept of military victory…is all about driving long-term political outcomes. Hamas sees victory not in one year or five, but from engaging with decades of struggle that increase Palestinian solidarity and increase Israel’s isolation. In this scenario, Hamas rallies a besieged population in Gaza around it in anger and helps collapse the Palestinian Authority government by ensuring Palestinians see it even more as a feckless adjunct to Israeli military authority. Meanwhile, Arab states move strongly away from normalization, the Global South aligns strongly with the Palestinian cause, Europe recoils at the Israeli army’s excesses, and an American debate erupts over Israel, destroying the bipartisan support Israel has enjoyed here since the early 1970s.

Hamas, Alterman writes, seeks “to use Israel’s far greater strength to defeat Israel. Israel’s strength allows the country to kill Palestinian civilians, destroy Palestinian infrastructure, and defy global calls for restraint. All those things advance Hamas’s war aims.”

Such warnings have been ignored by the Biden administration and Western leaders, whose unconditional embrace of Israel’s war is rooted in the delusion that Israel was just another Western nation peacefully going about its business before it suffered an unprovoked attack on October 7—it’s a comforting fantasy to those who prefer to avoid recognizing a reality they’ve been complicit in creating.

Forget “intelligence failures”; Israel’s failure to anticipate October 7 was a political failure to understand the consequences of a violent system of oppression that leading international and Israeli human rights organizations have branded as apartheid.

Twenty years ago, former Knesset Speaker Avrum Burg warned of the inevitability of violent backlash. “It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive,” he wrote in The International Herald Tribune.

Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow their shame and anger forever, it won’t work. A structure built on human callousness will inevitably collapse in on itself.… Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians, should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves up in the centers of Israeli escapism.

Israel could kill 1,000 Hamas men a day and solve nothing, Burg warned, because Israel’s own violent actions would be the source of a replenishing of their ranks. His warnings have been ignored, even as they’ve been vindicated many times over. That same logic is now playing out on steroids in the destruction being visited on Gaza. The grinding structural violence Israel expected Palestinians to suffer in silence meant that Israeli security was always illusory.

The weeks since October 7 have affirmed that there can be no return to the status quo ante. This was likely Hamas’s goal in staging its deadly attacks. And even prior to this, many in Israel’s leadership were openly calling for the completion of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine; now those voices have been amplified.

Late November’s mutually agreed humanitarian pause saw Hamas release some hostages in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails and an increase in humanitarian supplies entering #Gaza. When Israel resumed its military onslaught and Hamas returned to launching rockets, it was clear that Hamas has not been militarily defeated. The mass slaughter and destruction Israel has wrought in Gaza suggests an intention to make the territory uninhabitable for the 2.2 million Palestinians who live there—and to push for expulsion via a militarily engineered humanitarian catastrophe. Indeed, the IDF’s own estimate is that it has so far eliminated less than 15 percent of Hamas’s fighting force. This in a campaign that has killed more than 21,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, 8,600 of them children.

October 7 and Palestinian politics

Israel’s military will almost certainly oust Hamas from governing Gaza. But analysts such as Tareq Baconi, who has studied the movement and its thinking over the past two decades, argue that it has sought for quite some time to break out of the shackles of governing a territory sectioned off from the rest of Palestine, on terms set by the occupying power.

Hamas has long shown a desire to break out of its Gaza governance role, from the mass unarmed March of Return protests in 2018 violently suppressed by Israeli sniper fire to efforts thwarted by the United States and Israel to transfer governance of Gaza to either a reformed Palestinian Authority, agreed-upon technocrats, or an elected government, while it focused on refocusing Palestinian politics in both Gaza and the West Bank on resistance to, rather than custodianship of, the occupation status quo. If a consequence of its attack were losing the responsibility for governing Gaza, Hamas might see that as advantageous.

Hamas has tried to nudge Fatah onto a similar path, urging the ruling party in the West Bank to end Palestinian Authority (PA) security collaboration with Israel and more directly confront the occupation. Losing municipal control of Gaza is therefore far from a decisive defeat for Hamas’s war effort: For a movement dedicated to liberating Palestinian lands, governing Gaza had begun to look like a dead end, much as permanent limited self-governance in discontiguous islands of the West Bank has been for Fatah.

Hamas, Baconi says, likely felt compelled to take a high-stakes gamble to shatter a status quo it deemed a slow death for Palestine. “All this still does not mean that Hamas’s strategic shift will be deemed successful in the long run,” he wrote in Foreign Policy.

Hamas’s violent disruption of the status quo might well have provided Israel with an opportunity to carry out another Nakba. This might result in a regional conflagration or deal Palestinians a blow that could take a generation to recover from. What is certain, however, is that there is no return to what existed before.

Hamas’s gambit, then, may have been to sacrifice municipal governance of a besieged Gaza to cement its status as a national resistance organization. Hamas is not trying to bury Fatah: The various unity agreements between Hamas and Fatah, particularly those led by prisoners of both factions, demonstrate that Hamas seeks a united front. The PA is unable to protect West Bank Palestinians from the increasing violence of Israeli settlements and entrenched control, let alone to meaningfully respond to the bloodshed in Gaza. Under the cover of Western backing on Gaza, Israel has killed hundreds of Palestinians, arrested thousands, and displaced entire villages on the West Bank, all the while escalating its state-sponsored settler attacks. In so doing, Israel has further undermined Fatah among the population and pushed it in the direction of Hamas.

For years, settlers protected by the IDF have attacked Palestinian villages with the aim of forcing their residents to leave and tightening Israel’s illegal grip on the occupied territory—but the expansion of this since October 7 is causing even Israel’s US accomplices to blanche. Biden’s threat of visa bans against settlers involved in violence against West Bank Palestinians is an evasion: Those settlers are far from individual rogue actors; they are armed by the state and aggressively protected by the IDF and the Israeli legal system, because they are implementing a state policy. But even Biden’s miscast threat makes clear that Israel is at odds with his administration.

Hamas has a pan-Palestinian perspective, not a Gaza-specific one, and so it intended October 7 to have transformative effects across Palestine. During the 2021 “Unity Intifada” that sought to connect the struggles of Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza with those inside Israel, Hamas took actions in support of that goal. Now, the Israeli state is accelerating that connection with a paranoid campaign of repression against any expression of dissent from among its Palestinian citizens. Hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank have been detained, including activists and teens posting on Facebook. Israel is all too aware of the potential for escalation in the West Bank. In that sense, the Israeli response has only brought the people of the West Bank and Gaza closer.

It’s clear Israel never intended to accept a sovereign Palestinian state anywhere west of the Jordan River. Instead, Israel is intensifying long-standing plans for securing its control of the territory. That and growing Israeli encroachment into the Al Aqsa Mosque are a reminder that Israel is actively fueling whatever uprising follows in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and even within the ’67 lines.

Ironically, then, the US insistence on the Palestinian Authority’s being put in control of Gaza after Israel’s war of devastation—and its belated, feeble warnings over settler violence—reinforces the idea of the West Bank and Gaza being a single entity. Israel’s 17-year policy of cleaving a pliant West Bank run by a co-opted PA from a “terrorist-run Gaza” has failed.

Israel after October 7

The Hamas-led raid punctured myths of Israeli invincibility and its citizens’ expectation of tranquility even as the state chokes the life out of Palestinians. Just weeks earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was boasting that Israel had successfully “managed” the conflict to the point that Palestine no longer featured on his map of a “new Middle East.” With the Abraham Accords and other alliances, some Arab leaders were embracing Israel. The US was promoting the plan, with Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden both focused on “normalization” with Arab regimes that were willing to leave the Palestinians subject to ever-tightening Israeli apartheid. October 7 served up a brutal reminder that this was untenable, and that Palestinians’ resistance constitutes a form of veto power over the efforts of others to determine their fate.

It’s too soon to measure the impact of October 7 on Israeli domestic politics. It has made Israelis more hawkish, but at the same time more distrustful of their national leadership after the colossal failure of intelligence and response. It took significant mass mobilization against the government by the families of Israelis held captive in Gaza to achieve a pause in military action and secure a hostage-release deal. Dramatic, high-profile internal dissent over the hostages and what’s required of Israel to secure their return could raise pressure for further release deals and even a full-blown cease-fire, despite a determination to continue the war among much of the political and military leadership. Israeli public opinion remains confused, angry, and unpredictable.

Then there’s the war’s impact on Israel’s economy, whose growth model is based on attracting high levels of foreign direct investment to its tech sector and other export industries. Last year’s social protest and uncertainty over the constitutional fracas was already being cited as a reason for the 68 percent year-on-year drop in FDI reported over the summer. Israel’s war, for which 360,000 reservists have been mobilized, adds a new level of shock. Economist Adam Tooze wrote in his Substack:

The tech lobby in Israel estimates that a tenth of its workforce has been mobilized. Construction is paralyzed by the quarantining of the Palestinian workforce in the West Bank. Consumption of services has collapsed as people stay away from restaurants and public gatherings are limited. Credit card records suggest that private consumption in Israel fell by nearly a third in the days after the war broke out. Spending on leisure and entertainment crashed by 70%. Tourism, a mainstay of the Israeli economy, has come to an abrupt halt. Flights are canceled and shipping cargo diverted. Offshore the Israeli government ordered Chevron to halt production at the Tamar natural gas field, costing Israel $200 million a month in lost revenue.

Israel is a wealthy country with the resources to weather some of this storm, but with its wealth comes fragility—and it has much to lose.

Israeli forces have poured into Gaza with a battle plan, but no clear war plan for Gaza after their invasion. Some Israeli military leaders aim to maintain “security control” of the sort they enjoy in the PA’s West Bank domain. In Gaza, this would pit it against a better-drilled insurgency supported by most of the population. Many in Israeli government circles advocate forcibly displacing much of Gaza’s civilian population into Egypt, by engineering a humanitarian crisis that makes Gaza unlivable. The US has said it has ruled that out, but no smart gambler would discount the possibility of the Israelis’ seeking forgiveness rather than permission for more mass-scale ethnic cleansing in line with Israel’s long-term demographic goals of reducing the Palestinian population between the river and the sea.

US officials have reached for the prayer books of yore, speaking hopefully of putting 88-year-old Mahmoud Abbas, the head of PA, back in charge of Gaza, with the promise of some renewed pursuit of the chimeric “two-state solution.” But the PA has no credibility even in the West Bank because of its acquiescence to Israel’s ever-expanding occupation. Then, there’s the reality that preventing genuine Palestinian sovereignty in any part of historic Palestine has long been a point of consensus in the Israeli leadership across most of the Zionist political spectrum. And Israel’s leaders have no need to abide by the expectations of a US administration that may well be voted out next year. And they have a proven ability to wag the dog even if Biden were reelected. The US has chosen to ride shotgun in Israel’s war machine, whose destination may not be clear, but it’s certainly not any kind of Palestinian state.

The global impact of October 7

Israel and the United States may have convinced themselves that the world has “moved on” from the Palestinian plight, but the energies unleashed by the events since October 7 suggest that the opposite is true. Calls for solidarity with Palestine have echoed along the streets of the Arab world, serving in some countries as a coded language of dissent against decrepit authoritarianism. Across the Global South and in the cities of the West, Palestine now occupies a symbolic place as an avatar of rebellion against Western hypocrisy and an unjust postcolonial order. Not since the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq have so many millions around the world taken to the streets to protest. Organized labor has flexed its internationalist muscles to challenge arms deliveries to Israel and reminded itself of its power to change history, and legal mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, and even US and European courts are being used to challenge government policies that enable Israel’s war crimes.

Panicked by a world aghast at its actions in Gaza, Israel and its advocates have reverted to charges of antisemitism against those who would challenge Israel’s brutality—but everything from the mass marches to the vocal Jewish opposition to the opinion surveys on Biden’s handling of the crisis indicate that equating solidarity with antisemitism is not only factually wrong; it is unconvincing.

Several countries in Latin America and Africa have symbolically cut ties, and the deliberate bombing of a civilian population and preventing access to shelter, food, water, and medical care has left even many of Israel’s allies aghast. The extent of violence the West is willing to countenance against a captive people in Gaza offers the Global South a stark reminder of accounts unsettled with the imperial West. And when French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly implore Israel to stop “bombing babies,” Israel is in danger of losing even parts of the West. It has become difficult in the short term for Arab and Muslim countries to maintain, much less expand public ties.

Yoking itself to Israel’s response to October 7 has also burst the bubble on US fantasies of reclaiming hegemony in the Global South under a “we’re the good guys” rubric. The contrast between its response to Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestinian crises respectively has produced a consensus that there is hypocrisy at the very heart of US foreign policy, producing such extraordinary spectacles as Biden being castigated, face-to-face at an APEC Summit, by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim for his failure to stand up against Israel’s atrocities

Ibrahim specifically warned that Biden’s response to Gaza had raised a serious trust deficit with those the United States hopes to court as allies in its competition with Russia and China. Having demonstrated to Arab allies that their Washington patron will side with Israel, even when it is bombing Arab civilians, will likely reinforce the trend of Global South states diversifying their geopolitical portfolios.

The political question

By shattering a status quo that Palestinians find intolerable, Hamas has put politics back on the agenda. Israel has significant military power, but it is politically weak. Much of the US establishment supporting Israel’s war assumes that violence emanating from an oppressed community can be stamped out by applying overwhelming military force against that community. But even Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin signaled skepticism over that premise, warning that Israel’s attacks killing thousands of civilians risked driving “them into the arms of the enemy [and replacing] a tactical victory with a strategic defeat.”

Western politicians and media like to fantasize that Hamas is an ISIS-style nihilistic cadre holding Palestinian society hostage; Hamas is, in fact, a multifaceted political movement rooted in the fabric and national aspirations of Palestinian society. It embodies a belief, grimly affirmed by decades of Palestinian experience, that armed resistance is central to the Palestinian liberation project because of the failures of the Oslo process and the intractable hostility of its adversary. And its influence and popularity have grown as Israel and its allies keep thwarting a peace process and other nonviolent strategies for pursuing Palestinian liberation.

Israel’s campaign will leave Hamas’s military capacity diminished. But even if it were to kill the organization’s top leaders (as it has done previously), Israel’s response to October 7 is affirming Hamas’s message and its standing among Palestinians across the region and beyond. Large protests in Jordan with pro-Hamas chants, for instance, are unprecedented. It requires no approval or support of the Hamas actions of October 7 to acknowledge the enduring appeal of a movement that seems capable of making Israel pay some kind of a price for the violence it visits upon Palestinians every day, every year, generation after generation.

History also suggests a pattern in which representatives of movements dismissed as “terrorist” by their adversaries—in South Africa, say, or Ireland—nonetheless appear at the negotiating table when the time comes to seek political solutions. It would be ahistorical to bet against Hamas, or at least some version of the political-ideological current it represents, doing the same if and when a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians is revisited with seriousness.

What comes after the horrific violence is far from clear, but Hamas’s October 7 attack has forced a reset of a political contest to which Israel appears unwilling to respond beyond devastating military force against Palestinian civilians. And as things stand eight weeks into the vengeance, Israel can’t be said to be winning.

#Palestine

Tony Karon
Tony Karon is the editorial lead of Al Jazeera’s AJ+, a former senior editor at Time magazine, and was an activist in the anti-apartheid liberation movement in his native South Africa.

Daniel Levy
Daniel Levy is the president of the U.S./Middle East Project and a former Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians at Taba under prime minister Ehud Barak and at Oslo B under prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Karon

▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Levy_(diplomate)

une défaite annoncée, le 10 novembre dernier, par exemple

quelle que soit son issue, l’État Israël et le gouvernement Netanyahou ont perdu cette guerre avant même de l’avoir commencée.

►https://lundi.am/Faire-date-autrement

« depopulate Gaza » : superbe et très juste - sans chercher à relativiser. En particulier, ça "évite" les braquages autour du terme génocide.

Le plan serait donc une saisie de 100% de la surface de Gaza et une éjection de 90% de la population vers un ailleurs à définir ?

The government is doing forcible population transfers, and this means everyone. It’s the simplest way to explain Israel’s actions, yet American media—tied to “counterterror” narratives—can’t, or won’t, get their minds around the obvious fact that Israel is attempting to depopulate Gaza in stages.

(ma graisse)

Les médias américains ont de gros moyens et ne sont pas peuplés que de crétins.

Il y a probablement, comme en France, un pourcentage significatif de juifs parmi les journalistes et parmi les propriétaires de ces médias.
Et un considérable pourcentage de sionistes parmi eux.

Plus les moyens financiers importants du Lobby sioniste pour les pressions et la corruption.

On a compris pourquoi les civils et les enfants palestiniens sont réduits en bouillie.

Je pense qu’en France c’est pareil.

Lutter en occident contre ce Lobby sioniste et tous ces relais, c’est touchy (sensible et risqué) car « antisémitisme accusation Joker qui autorise les carnages ».

Mais ne pas le faire, c’est laisser nos compatriotes musulmans se faire insulter sur toutes les chaines.

il n’est nul besoin d’être ukrainien, afghan, tchétchène ou syrien pour constater la nature impérialiste de la Russie
►https://seenthis.net/messages/955832

Pourquoi les vœux pieux sur Covid restent aussi dangereux que jamais
Les experts qui nous exhortent à traiter le Covid « comme la grippe » ou à insister sur « l’urgence de la normalité » ne sont que des variations du chant des sirènes de la capitulation devant des morts inutiles et des maladies évitables.

Nous sommes entrés dans une nouvelle phase de la pandémie de Covid-19, que nous pouvons qualifier de capitulation bipartisane et unilatérale. Des experts et des politiciens libéraux et conservateurs des deux côtés de l’allée aux médecins célèbres qui apparaissent sur le câble ou dans les magazines de supermarché, on nous dit que le SRAS-CoV-2 est maintenant endémique - ce qui n’a bien sûr rien à voir avec le terme technique, mais est devenu un raccourci populaire pour dire « c’est fini ». Nous sommes maintenant vaccinés et nous devrions être autorisés à reprendre nos vies pré-pandémiques avec « l’urgence de la normale », sans avoir à porter de masque ou à faire d’autres efforts pour limiter la propagation.

J’ai passé deux ans à dénoncer l’irresponsabilité et la cruauté de nombreux républicains et leur réponse cavalière à la pandémie, mettant en danger des millions de personnes avec des politiques destinées à simplement rendre les gens malades : suggérer que la vaccination et la liberté sont des concepts incompatibles, que les grands-parents étaient prêts à mourir pour l’économie - toute une horrible litanie de mensonges et de désinformation débitée par le parti et ses mandataires.

Mais maintenant, c’est différent. Les personnes qui suivaient scrupuleusement les conseils de santé publique en 2020 sont maintenant trop fatiguées, frustrées et fatiguées pour s’en soucier. Ceux qui se masquent encore, qui prennent une certaine distance sociale, qui essaient de faire leur part pour endiguer la marée de la pandémie sont traités comme s’ils étaient des résistants dans une guerre qui est terminée depuis longtemps. Ou encore des peureux qui ont peur du risque, ridiculisés comme des élites libérales déconnectées de la réalité par des commentateurs de droite comme Ross Douhtat, ou comme des zélateurs trompés et trop à gauche par des experts centristes comme David Leonhardt. Tous deux écrivent pour la pierre de touche des gens très sérieux du monde entier, le New York Times, donc cela doit être vrai.

Sauf que la pandémie est loin d’être terminée. Cela fait des mois que nous constatons 1 000 décès par jour aux États-Unis ; ces dernières semaines, alors que les décès dus à Omicron rattrapent le grand nombre d’infections diagnostiquées des semaines plus tôt, nous avons eu bien plus que cela. Le dernier jour de janvier a vu plus de 2 500 décès dans ce pays. Les hôpitaux sont encore sous le choc dans de nombreux endroits, et les travailleurs de la santé et de la santé publique en première ligne sont épuisés et perdent leur sang-froid. Et ce mot endémique - qui, en termes épidémiologiques, désigne un agent pathogène qui s’est stabilisé à un équilibre à long terme dans une population - n’est pas encore arrivé, la pandémie faisant toujours rage dans le monde, même si le nombre d’Omicron commence à diminuer dans certains endroits. Ensuite, il y a la croyance - désormais populaire dans la presse - qu’Omicron est la « dernière » variante qui suscite une réelle inquiétude. Nous aurons tous été exposés au virus ou vaccinés contre lui bien assez tôt, et toutes les souches ultérieures qui pourraient nous envahir seront bénignes, pas pires que la grippe ou le rhume.

Je ne suggère pas que nous devions être en état d’alerte permanente. Mais nous devons élaborer des politiques Covid-19 en fonction des données, et non en fonction des vœux pieux de personnes qui devraient être mieux informées. Donner le feu vert maintenant ou laisser entendre que nous pourrons le faire dans les prochaines semaines est au mieux présomptueux. Si nous voulons tirer des leçons de l’histoire, il nous suffit de regarder les pandémies les plus redoutables du XXe siècle pour nous guider. John Barry, l’historien de la grande grippe de 1918, nous rappelle que la quatrième vague mortelle de cette catastrophe n’est survenue qu’en 1920, alors que des millions de personnes avaient déjà été exposées au virus, que la létalité de la troisième vague s’atténuait, que la plupart des gens avaient baissé la garde et qu’aucun responsable public n’était intéressé à pousser les efforts d’atténuation face à l’indifférence et à la lassitude d’une nation. Barry nous rappelle également que l’"immunité naturelle" et la vaccination après les pandémies de grippe de la fin des années 1950 n’ont pas empêché le virus de faire de nombreuses victimes en 1960, lorsqu’il est revenu en force. Un scénario similaire s’est déroulé en Europe lors des pandémies de grippe de 1968 et 2009, lorsque, après une première série d’infections et de vaccinations, la deuxième vague de grippe a déferlé sur le continent fatigué.

Dans une mémoire plus récente, je me souviens qu’en 1996, avec l’arrivée de nouveaux médicaments contre le sida qui ont révolutionné le traitement de l’infection par le VIH (et m’ont sauvé la vie), certains experts parlaient de la fin de l’épidémie de sida. Andrew Sullivan a écrit un article dans le New York Times Magazine intitulé « When Plagues End » en novembre de cette année-là. Bien sûr, l’épidémie de sida n’était pas terminée pour tout le monde. Les homosexuels privilégiés qui disposaient d’une assurance maladie et d’un accès facile aux soins de santé ont certainement pris les médicaments et sont rentrés chez eux, abandonnant la lutte contre l’épidémie qui continuait à ravager les communautés noires et latinos des États-Unis, en particulier les jeunes homosexuels de couleur, alors qu’elle quittait les enclaves urbaines de classe moyenne du Nord et de l’Ouest pour devenir une épidémie plus rurale et plus méridionale.

Ce que nous voyons maintenant est une combinaison de ce que nous avons vu avec la grippe et avec le VIH. Tout d’abord, il s’agit d’une capitulation fondée sur un espoir erroné ou du moins prématuré, sur la frustration et la colère de voir que cela dure depuis si longtemps et perturbe nos vies. Le fait que les dirigeants politiques américains ne se soient jamais vraiment mobilisés pour faire face à la pandémie avec le même sérieux que les autres nations, ni n’aient fourni le soutien social et économique nécessaire pour aider les gens à survivre ces dernières années, n’aide pas. Au lieu de cela, ils nous ont largement laissés seuls face à un virus. Alors que les experts tentent de faire passer cela pour un débat sur la gestion des risques au niveau individuel - en affirmant que certains d’entre nous sont trop prudents alors que nous entrons dans l’âge d’or de l’endémicité - c’est bien plus ce qui s’est passé avec le VIH : Une fois que les gens se sentent suffisamment en sécurité, la sécurité des autres n’a plus vraiment d’importance.

Dans sa lettre de prison à Birmingham, en Alabama, Martin Luther King Jr. déplorait « le blanc modéré » et la façon dont il trouvait « la compréhension superficielle des personnes de bonne volonté... plus frustrante que l’incompréhension absolue des personnes de mauvaise volonté ». Le grand milieu blanc - qui s’étend de droite à gauche à travers le spectre politique et les pages d’opinion du Times - est prêt à passer à autre chose. Le problème est le suivant : Les laissés-pour-compte n’ont pas les choix ni les ressources dont disposent les privilégiés, qu’ils soient pauvres, qu’ils vivent avec un handicap ou une maladie chronique, ou qu’ils soient tout simplement trop vieux pour que cela compte. Comme l’a noté mon ami et collègue Steven Thrasher, ils deviendront la dernière sous-classe virale de l’Amérique, là où inégalité et maladie se rencontrent violemment.

Peut-être aurons-nous tous de la chance. Peut-être la maladie s’éteindra-t-elle au cours des prochains mois, ou de l’année prochaine, et de nouvelles variantes apparaîtront, mais elles n’auront que peu de conséquences cliniques. Tout cela semble merveilleux, n’est-ce pas ?

J’ai étrangement espéré que nous trouverions un moyen de nous rallier à ce plus grand défi auquel nous sommes confrontés - une pandémie qui ne se produit qu’une fois par siècle. Mais cela ne se produira jamais, n’est-ce pas ? La méthode américaine ne consiste pas à construire un système qui fonctionne pour nous tous, qui protège tout le monde. Les Américains ne sont pas non plus intéressés à être les gardiens de nos frères et sœurs. Ce que nous sommes, qui nous sommes, nous a préparés à la calamité démesurée qui s’est produite ces deux dernières années. Nous n’avons jamais cru que tout le monde devait avoir accès aux soins de santé, à un solide filet de sécurité et à un système de santé publique complet. En Amérique, si vous ne réussissez pas, si vous tombez ou trébuchez, c’est de votre faute, car ici, nous sommes tous des hommes et des femmes qui se sont faits tout seuls. Ceux qui survivent sont destinés à le faire. Le reste d’entre nous n’est qu’un dommage collatéral, dans un darwinisme social qui est américain comme une tarte aux pommes.

Gregg Gonsalves : correspondant de Nation pour la santé publique, Gregg Gonsalves est codirecteur du Global Health Justice Partnership et professeur associé d’épidémiologie à la Yale School of Public Health.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

excellent. merci, @kassem et merci @sombre !
#viral_underclass #covid-19 #capitulation #media #désinformation #self_made_man #darwnisme_social #pandémie #histoire #John_Barry #émidémiologie #sous-classe_virale #santé_publique #prévention #réduction_des_risques

La liberté académique aux prises avec de nouvelles #menaces

https://images.theconversation.com/files/432827/original/file-20211119-27-3yc30f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1196%2C785&q=45&auto=format&w=926&fit=clip#.jpg

Colloques, séminaires, publications (Duclos et Fjeld, Frangville et alii) : depuis quelques années, et avec une accélération notoire ces derniers mois, le thème de la liberté académique est de plus en plus exploré comme objet scientifique. La liberté académique suscite d’autant plus l’intérêt des chercheurs qu’elle est aujourd’hui, en de nombreux endroits du monde, fragilisée.

La création en 2021 par l’#Open_Society_University_Network (un partenariat entre la Central European University et le Bard College à New York) d’un #Observatoire_mondial_des_libertés_académiques atteste d’une inquiétante réalité. C’est en effet au moment où des libertés sont fragilisées qu’advient le besoin d’en analyser les fondements, d’en explorer les définitions, de les ériger en objets de recherche, mais aussi de mettre en œuvre un système de veille pour les protéger.

S’il est évident que les #régimes_autoritaires sont par définition des ennemis des libertés académiques, ce qui arrive aujourd’hui dans des #pays_démocratiques témoigne de pratiques qui transcendent les frontières entre #régime_autoritaire et #régime_démocratique, frontières qui elles-mêmes tendent à se brouiller.

La liberté académique menacée dans les pays autoritaires…

S’appuyant sur une régulation par les pairs (la « communauté des compétents ») et une indépendance structurelle par rapport aux pouvoirs, la liberté de recherche, d’enseignement et d’opinion favorise la critique autant qu’elle en est l’expression et l’émanation. Elle est la condition d’une pensée féconde qui progresse par le débat, la confrontation d’idées, de paradigmes, d’axiomes, d’expériences.

Cette liberté dérange en contextes autoritaires, où tout un répertoire d’actions s’offre aux gouvernements pour museler les académiques : outre l’emprisonnement pur et simple, dont sont victimes des collègues – on pense notamment à #Fariba_Adelkhah, prisonnière scientifique en #Iran ; à #Ahmadreza_Djalali, condamné à mort en Iran ; à #Ilham_Tohti, dont on est sans nouvelles depuis sa condamnation à perpétuité en# Chine, et à des dizaines d’autres académiques ouïghours disparus ou emprisonnés sans procès ; à #Iouri_Dmitriev, condamné à treize ans de détention en #Russie –, les régimes autoritaires mettent en œuvre #poursuites_judiciaires et #criminalisation, #licenciements_abusifs, #harcèlement, #surveillance et #intimidation.

https://i.imgur.com/w1C5dfO.png

▻https://twitter.com/AnkyraWitch/status/1359630006993977348

L’historien turc Candan Badem parlait en 2017 d’#académicide pour qualifier la vague de #répression qui s’abattait dans son pays sur les « universitaires pour la paix », criminalisés pour avoir signé une pétition pour la paix dans les régions kurdes. La notion de « #crime_contre_l’histoire », forgée par l’historien Antoon de Baets, a été reprise en 2021 par la FIDH et l’historien Grigori Vaïpan) pour qualifier les atteintes portées à l’histoire et aux historiens en Russie. Ce crime contre l’histoire en Russie s’amplifie avec les attaques récentes contre l’ONG #Memorial menacée de dissolution.

En effet, loin d’être l’apanage des institutions académiques officielles, la liberté académique et de recherche, d’une grande rigueur, se déploie parfois de façon plus inventive et courageuse dans des structures de la #société_civile. En #Biélorussie, le sort de #Tatiana_Kuzina, comme celui d’#Artiom_Boyarski, jeune chimiste talentueux emprisonné pour avoir refusé publiquement une bourse du nom du président Loukachenko, ne sont que deux exemples parmi des dizaines et des dizaines de chercheurs menacés, dont une grande partie a déjà pris le chemin de l’exil depuis l’intensification des répressions après les élections d’août 2020 et la mobilisation qui s’en est suivie.

La liste ci-dessus n’est bien sûr pas exhaustive, les cas étant nombreux dans bien des pays – on pense, par exemple, à celui de #Saïd_Djabelkhir en #Algérie.

… mais aussi dans les #démocraties

Les #régressions que l’on observe au sein même de l’Union européenne – le cas du déménagement forcé de la #Central_European_University de Budapest vers Vienne, sous la pression du gouvernement de Viktor Orban, en est un exemple criant – montrent que les dérives anti-démocratiques se déclinent dans le champ académique, après que d’autres libertés – liberté de la presse, autonomie de la société civile – ont été atteintes.

Les pays considérés comme démocratiques ne sont pas épargnés non plus par les tentatives des autorités politiques de peser sur les recherches académiques. Récemment, en #France, les ministres de l’Éducation nationale et de l’Enseignement supérieur ont affirmé que le monde académique serait « ravagé par l’#islamo-gauchisme » et irrespectueux des « #valeurs_de_la_République » – des attaques qui ont provoqué un concert de protestations au sein de la communauté des chercheurs. En France toujours, de nombreux historiens se sont mobilisés en 2020 contre les modalités d’application d’une instruction interministérielle restreignant l’accès à des fonds d’#archives sur l’#histoire_coloniale, en contradiction avec une loi de 2008.

https://i.imgur.com/oi5FTkS.png

▻https://twitter.com/VivementLundi/status/1355564397314387972

Au #Danemark, en juin 2021, plus de 260 universitaires spécialistes des questions migratoires et de genre rapportaient quant à eux dans un communiqué public les intimidations croissantes subies pour leurs recherches qualifiées de « #gauchisme_identitaire » et de « #pseudo-science » par des députés les accusant de « déguiser la politique en science ».

D’autres offensives peuvent être menées de façon plus sournoise, à la faveur de #politiques_néolibérales assumées et de mise en #concurrence des universités et donc du champ du savoir et de la pensée. La conjonction de #logiques_libérales sur le plan économique et autoritaires sur le plan politique conduit à la multiplication de politiques souvent largement assumées par les États eux-mêmes : accréditations sélectives, retrait de #financements à des universités ou à certains programmes – les objets plus récents et fragiles comme les #études_de_genre ou études sur les #migrations se trouvant souvent en première ligne.

Ce brouillage entre régimes politiques, conjugué à la #marchandisation_du_savoir, trouve également à s’incarner dans la façon dont des acteurs issus de régimes autoritaires viennent s’installer au sein du monde démocratique : c’est le cas notamment de la Chine avec l’implantation d’#Instituts_Confucius au cœur même des universités, qui conduisent, dans certains cas, à des logiques d’#autocensure ; ou de l’afflux d’étudiants fortunés en provenance de pays autoritaires, qui par leurs frais d’inscriptions très élevés renflouent les caisses d’universités désargentées, comme en Australie.

Ces logiques de #dépendance_financière obèrent l’essence et la condition même de la #recherche_académique : son #indépendance. Plus généralement, la #marchandisation de l’#enseignement_supérieur, conséquence de son #sous-financement public, menace l’#intégrité_scientifique de chercheurs et d’universités de plus en plus poussées à se tourner vers des fonds privés.

La mobilisation de la communauté universitaire

Il y a donc là une combinaison d’attaques protéiformes, à l’aune des changements politiques, technologiques, économiques et financiers qui modifient en profondeur les modalités du travail. La mise en place de programmes de solidarité à destination de chercheurs en danger (#PAUSE, #bourses_Philipp_Schwartz en Allemagne, #bourses de solidarité à l’Université libre de Bruxelles), l’existence d’organisations visant à documenter les attaques exercées sur des chercheurs #Scholars_at_Risk, #International_Rescue_Fund, #CARA et la création de ce tout nouvel observatoire mondial des libertés académiques évoqué plus haut montrent que la communauté académique a pris conscience du danger. Puissent du fond de sa prison résonner les mots de l’historien Iouri Dmitriev : « Les libertés académiques, jamais, ne deviendront une notion abstraite. »

▻https://theconversation.com/la-liberte-academique-aux-prises-avec-de-nouvelles-menaces-171682

« #Wokisme » : un « #front_républicain » contre l’éveil aux #injustices

CHRONIQUE DE LA #BATAILLE_CULTURELLE. L’usage du mot « wokisme » vise à disqualifier son adversaire, mais aussi à entretenir un #déni : l’absence de volonté politique à prendre au sérieux les demandes d’#égalité, de #justice, de respect des #droits_humains.

Invoqué ad nauseam, le « wokisme » a fait irruption dans un débat public déjà singulièrement dégradé. Il a fait florès à l’ère du buzz et des clashs, rejoignant l’« #islamogauchisme » au registre de ces fameux mots fourre-tout dont la principale fonction est de dénigrer et disqualifier son adversaire, tout en réduisant les maux de la société à quelques syllabes magiques. Sur la scène politique et intellectuelle, le « wokisme » a même réussi là où la menace de l’#extrême_droite a échoué : la formation d’un « front républicain ». Mais pas n’importe quel front républicain…

Formellement, les racines du « wokisme » renvoient à l’idée d’« #éveil » aux #injustices, aux #inégalités et autres #discriminations subies par les minorités, qu’elles soient sexuelles, ethniques ou religieuses. Comment cet « éveil » a-t-il mué en une sorte d’#injure_publique constitutive d’une #menace existentielle pour la République ?

Si le terme « woke » est historiquement lié à la lutte des #Afro-Américains pour les #droits_civiques, il se trouve désormais au cœur de mobilisations d’une jeunesse militante animée par les causes féministes et antiracistes. Ces mobilisations traduisent en acte l’#intersectionnalité théorisée par #Kimberlé_Williams_Crenshaw*, mais le recours à certains procédés ou techniques est perçu comme une atteinte à la #liberté_d’expression (avec les appels à la #censure d’une œuvre, à l’annulation d’une exposition ou d’une représentation, au déboulonnage d’une statue, etc.) ou à l’égalité (avec les « réunions non mixtes choisies et temporaires » restreignant l’accès à celles-ci à certaines catégories de personnes partageant un même problème, une même discrimination). Le débat autour de ces pratiques est complexe et légitime. Mais parler en France du développement d’une « cancel culture » qu’elles sont censées symboliser est abusif, tant elles demeurent extrêmement marginales dans les sphères universitaires et artistiques. Leur nombre comme leur diffusion sont inversement proportionnels à leur écho politico-médiatique. D’où provient ce contraste ou décalage ?

Une rupture du contrat social

En réalité, au-delà de la critique/condamnation du phénomène « woke », la crispation radicale qu’il suscite dans l’hexagone puise ses racines dans une absence de volonté politique à prendre au sérieux les demandes d’égalité, de justice, de respect des droits humains. Un défaut d’écoute et de volonté qui se nourrit lui-même d’un mécanisme de déni, à savoir un mécanisme de défense face à une réalité insupportable, difficile à assumer intellectuellement et politiquement.

D’un côté, une série de rapports publics et d’études universitaires** pointent la prégnance des inégalités et des discriminations à l’embauche, au logement, au contrôle policier ou même à l’école. Non seulement les discriminations sapent le sentiment d’appartenance à la communauté nationale, mais la reproduction des inégalités est en partie liée à la reproduction des discriminations.

De l’autre, le déni et l’#inaction perdurent face à ces problèmes systémiques. Il n’existe pas de véritable politique publique de lutte contre les discriminations à l’échelle nationale. L’État n’a pas engagé de programme spécifique qui ciblerait des axes prioritaires et se déclinerait aux différents niveaux de l’action publique.

L’appel à l’« éveil » est un appel à la prise de conscience d’une rupture consommée de notre contrat social. La réalité implacable d’inégalités et de discriminations criantes nourrit en effet une #citoyenneté à plusieurs vitesses qui contredit les termes du récit/#pacte_républicain, celui d’une promesse d’égalité et d’#émancipation.

Que l’objet si mal identifié que représente le « wokisme » soit fustigé par la droite et l’extrême-droite n’a rien de surprenant : la lutte contre les #logiques_de_domination ne fait partie ni de leur corpus idéologique ni de leur agenda programmatique. En revanche, il est plus significatif qu’une large partie de la gauche se détourne des questions de l’égalité et de la #lutte_contre_les_discriminations, pour mieux se mobiliser contre tout ce qui peut apparaître comme une menace contre un « #universalisme_républicain » aussi abstrait que déconnecté des réalités vécues par cette jeunesse française engagée en faveur de ces causes.

Les polémiques autour du « wokisme » contribuent ainsi à forger cet arc politique et intellectuel qui atteste la convergence, voire la jonction de deux blocs conservateurs, « de droite » et « de gauche », unis dans un même « front républicain », dans un même déni des maux d’une société d’inégaux.

▻https://www.nouvelobs.com/idees/20210928.OBS49202/wokisme-un-front-republicain-contre-l-eveil-aux-injustices.html

#récit_républicain

« Le mot “#woke” a été transformé en instrument d’occultation des discriminations raciales »

Pour le sociologue #Alain_Policar, le « wokisme » désigne désormais péjorativement ceux qui sont engagés dans des courants politiques qui se réclament pourtant de l’approfondissement des principes démocratiques.

Faut-il rompre avec le principe de « #color_blindness » (« indifférence à la couleur ») au fondement de l’#égalitarisme_libéral ? Ce principe, rappelons-le, accompagne la philosophie individualiste et contractualiste à laquelle adhèrent les #démocraties. Or, en prenant en considération des pratiques par lesquelles des catégories fondées sur des étiquettes « raciales » subsistent dans les sociétés postcolonialistes, on affirme l’existence d’un ordre politico-juridique au sein duquel la « #race » reste un principe de vision et de division du monde social.

Comme l’écrit #Stéphane_Troussel, président du conseil départemental de Seine-Saint-Denis, « la République a un problème avec le #corps des individus, elle ne sait que faire de ces #différences_physiques, de ces couleurs multiples, de ces #orientations diverses, parce qu’elle a affirmé que pour traiter chacun et chacune également elle devait être #aveugle » ( Le Monde du 7 avril).

Dès lors, ignorer cette #réalité, rester indifférent à la #couleur, n’est-ce pas consentir à la perpétuation des injustices ? C’est ce consentement qui s’exprime dans l’opération idéologique d’appropriation d’un mot, « woke », pour le transformer en instrument d’occultation de la réalité des discriminations fondées sur la couleur de peau. Désormais le wokisme désigne péjorativement ceux qui sont engagés dans les luttes antiracistes, féministes, LGBT ou même écologistes. Il ne se caractérise pas par son contenu, mais par sa fonction, à savoir, selon un article récent de l’agrégé de philosophie Valentin Denis sur le site AOC , « stigmatiser des courants politiques souvent incommensurables tout en évitant de se demander ce qu’ils ont à dire . Ces courants politiques, pourtant, ne réclament-ils pas en définitive l’approfondissement des #principes_démocratiques ?

Une #justice_corrective

Parmi les moyens de cet approfondissement, l’ affirmative action (« #action_compensatoire »), en tant qu’expression d’une justice corrective fondée sur la #reconnaissance des #torts subis par le passé et, bien souvent, qui restent encore vifs dans le présent, est suspectée de substituer le #multiculturalisme_normatif au #modèle_républicain d’#intégration. Ces mesures correctives seraient, lit-on souvent, une remise en cause radicale du #mérite_individuel. Mais cet argument est extrêmement faible : est-il cohérent d’invoquer la #justice_sociale (dont les antiwokedisent se préoccuper) et, en même temps, de valoriser le #mérite ? L’appréciation de celui-ci n’est-elle pas liée à l’#utilité_sociale accordée à un ensemble de #performances dont la réalisation dépend d’#atouts (en particulier, un milieu familial favorable) distribués de façon moralement arbitraire ? La justice sociale exige, en réalité, que ce qui dépend des circonstances, et non des choix, soit compensé.

Percevoir et dénoncer les mécanismes qui maintiennent les hiérarchies héritées de l’#ordre_colonial constitue l’étape nécessaire à la reconnaissance du lien entre cet ordre et la persistance d’un #racisme_quotidien. Il est important (même si le concept de « #racisme_systémique », appliqué à nos sociétés contemporaines, est décrit comme une « fable » par certains auteurs, égarés par les passions idéologiques qu’ils dénoncent chez leurs adversaires) d’admettre l’idée que, même si les agents sont dépourvus de #préjugés_racistes, la discrimination fonctionne. En quelque sorte, on peut avoir du #racisme_sans_racistes, comme l’a montré Eduardo Bonilla-Silva dans son livre de 2003, Racism without Racists [Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, non traduit] . Cet auteur avait, en 1997, publié un article canonique sur le #racisme_institutionnel dans lequel il rejetait, en se réclamant du psychiatre et essayiste Frantz Fanon [1925-1961], les approches du racisme « comme une #bizarrerie_mentale, comme une #faille_psychologique » .

Le reflet de pratiques structurelles

En fait, les institutions peuvent être racialement oppressives, même sans qu’aucun individu ou aucun groupe ne puisse être tenu pour responsable du tort subi. Cette importante idée avait déjà été exprimée par William E. B. Du Bois dans Pénombre de l’aube. Essai d’autobiographie d’un concept de race (1940, traduit chez Vendémiaire, 2020), ouvrage dans lequel il décrivait le racisme comme un #ordre_structurel, intériorisé par les individus et ne dépendant pas seulement de la mauvaise volonté de quelques-uns. On a pu reprocher à ces analyses d’essentialiser les Blancs, de leur attribuer une sorte de #racisme_ontologique, alors qu’elles mettent au jour les #préjugés produits par l’ignorance ou le déni historique.

On comprend, par conséquent, qu’il est essentiel de ne pas confondre, d’une part, l’expression des #émotions, de la #colère, du #ressentiment, et, d’autre part, les discriminations, par exemple à l’embauche ou au logement, lesquelles sont le reflet de #pratiques_structurelles concrètes. Le racisme est avant tout un rapport social, un #système_de_domination qui s’exerce sur des groupes racisés par le groupe racisant. Il doit être appréhendé du point de vue de ses effets sur l’ensemble de la société, et non seulement à travers ses expressions les plus violentes.

#Alexis_de_Tocqueville avait parfaitement décrit cette réalité [dans De la démocratie en Amérique, 1835 et 1840] en évoquant la nécessaire destruction, une fois l’esclavage aboli, de trois préjugés, qu’il disait être « bien plus insaisissables et plus tenaces que lui : le préjugé du maître, le préjugé de race, et enfin le préjugé du Blanc . Et il ajoutait : « J’aperçois l’#esclavage qui recule ; le préjugé qu’il a fait naître est immobile. » Ce #préjugé_de_race était, écrivait-il encore, « plus fort dans les Etats qui ont aboli l’esclavage que dans ceux où il existe encore, et nulle part il ne se montre aussi intolérant que dans les Etats où la servitude a toujours été inconnue . Tocqueville serait-il un militant woke ?

Note(s) :

Alain Policar est sociologue au Centre de recherches politiques de Sciences Po (Cevipof). Dernier livre paru : « L’Universalisme en procès » (Le Bord de l’eau, 160p., 16 euros)

►https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2021/12/28/alain-policar-le-mot-woke-a-ete-transforme-en-instrument-d-occultation-des-d

#WEB_Du_Bois

signalé par @colporteur ici :
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/941602

L’agitation de la chimère « wokisme » ou l’empêchement du débat

Wokisme est un néologisme malin : employé comme nom, il suggère l’existence d’un mouvement homogène et cohérent, constitué autour d’une prétendue « idéologie woke ». Ou comment stigmatiser des courants politiques progressistes pour mieux détourner le regard des discriminations que ceux-ci dénoncent. D’un point de vue rhétorique, le terme produit une version totalement caricaturée d’un adversaire fantasmé.

(#paywall)
▻https://aoc.media/opinion/2021/11/25/lagitation-de-la-chimere-wokisme-ou-lempechement-du-debat

Derrière le débat sur le « wokisme », les trois mutations du racisme : biologique, culturel, systémique
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/943324

Le WOKISME, #Béligh_Nabli

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtQXTG8LAR0

Europe’s War on Woke

Why elites across the Atlantic are freaking out about the concept of structural racism.

https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Robinson-McAuley_Woke-illo_img.jpg

On my 32nd birthday, I agreed to appear on Répliques, a popular show on the France Culture radio channel hosted by the illustrious Alain Finkielkraut. Now 72 and a household name in France, Finkielkraut is a public intellectual of the variety that exists only on the Left Bank: a child of 1968 who now wears Loro Piana blazers and rails against “la cancel culture.” The other guest that day—January 9, less than 72 hours after the US Capitol insurrection—was Pascal Bruckner, 72, another well-known French writer who’d just published “The Almost Perfect Culprit: The Construction of the White Scapegoat,” his latest of many essays on this theme. Happy birthday to me.

The topic of our discussion was the only one that interested the French elite in January 2021: not the raging pandemic but “the Franco-American divide,” the Huntington-esque clash of two apparently great civilizations and their respective social models—one “universalist,” one “communitarian”—on the question of race and identity politics. To Finkielkraut, Bruckner, and the establishment they still represent, American writers like me seek to impose a “woke” agenda on an otherwise harmonious, egalitarian society. Americans who argue for social justice are guilty of “cultural imperialism,” of ideological projection—even of bad faith.

This has become a refrain not merely in France but across Europe. To be sure, the terms of this social-media-fueled debate are unmistakably American; “woke” and “cancel culture” could emerge from no other context. But in the United States, these terms have a particular valence that mostly has to do with the push for racial equality and against systemic racism. In Europe, what is labeled “woke” is often whatever social movement a particular country’s establishment fears the most. This turns out to be an ideal way of discrediting those movements: To call them “woke” is to call them American, and to call them American is to say they don’t apply to Europe.

In France, “wokeism” came to the fore in response to a recent slew of terror attacks, most notably the gruesome beheading in October 2020 of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty. After years of similar Islamist attacks—notably the massacre at the offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and the ISIS-inspired assaults on the Hypercacher kosher supermarket and the Bataclan concert hall in November 2015—the reaction in France reached a tipping point. Emmanuel Macron’s government had already launched a campaign against what it calls “Islamist separatism,” but Paty’s killing saw a conversation about understandable trauma degenerate into public hysteria. The government launched a full-scale culture war, fomenting its own American-style psychodrama while purporting to do the opposite. Soon its ministers began railing against “islamo-gauchisme” (Islamo-leftism) in universities, Muslim mothers in hijabs chaperoning school field trips, and halal meats in supermarkets.

But most of all, they began railing against the ideas that, in their view, somehow augmented and abetted these divisions: American-inspired anti-racism and “wokeness.” Macron said it himself in a speech that was widely praised by the French establishment for its alleged nuance: “We have left the intellectual debate to others, to those outside of the Republic, by ideologizing it, sometimes yielding to other academic traditions…. I see certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States.” In October, the French government inaugurated a think tank, the Laboratoire de la République, designed to combat these “woke” theories, which, according to the think tank’s founder, Jean-Michel Blanquer, Macron’s education minister, “led to the rise of Donald Trump.”

As the apparent emissaries of this pernicious “Anglo-Saxon” identitarian agenda, US journalists covering this moment in France have come under the spotlight, especially when we ask, for instance, what islamo-gauchisme actually means—if indeed it means anything at all. Macron himself has lashed out at foreign journalists, even sending a letter to the editor of the Financial Times rebutting what he saw as an error-ridden op-ed that took a stance he could not bear. “I will not allow anybody to claim that France, or its government, is fostering racism against Muslims,” he wrote. Hence my own invitation to appear on France Culture, a kind of voir dire before the entire nation.

Finkielkraut began the segment with a tirade against The New York Times and then began discussing US “campus culture,” mentioning Yale’s Tim Barringer and an art history syllabus that no longer includes as many “dead white males.” Eventually I asked how, three days after January 6, we could discuss the United States without mentioning the violent insurrection that had just taken place at the seat of American democracy. Finkielkraut became agitated. “And for you also, [what about] the fact that in the American Congress, Emanuel Cleaver, representative of Missouri, presiding over a new inauguration ceremony, finished by saying the words ‘amen and a-women’?” he asked. “Ça vous dérangez pas?” I said it didn’t bother me in the least, and he got even more agitated. “I don’t understand what you say, James McAuley, because cancel culture exists! It exists!”

The man knew what he was talking about: Three days after our conversation, Finkielkraut was dropped from a regular gig at France’s LCI television for defending his old pal Olivier Duhamel of Sciences Po, who was embroiled in a pedophilia scandal that had taken France by storm. Duhamel was accused by his stepdaughter, Camille Kouchener, of raping her twin brother when the two were in their early teens. Finkielkraut speculated that there may have been consent between the two parties, and, in any case, a 14-year-old was “not the same thing” as a child.

I tell this story because it is a useful encapsulation of France’s—and Europe’s—war on woke, a conflict that has assumed various forms in different national contexts but that still grips the continent. On one level, there is a certain comedy to it: The self-professed classical liberal turns out to be an apologist for child molestation. In fact, the anti-woke comedy is now quite literally being written and directed by actual comedians who, on this one issue, seem incapable of anything but earnestness. John Cleese, 81, the face of Monty Python and a public supporter of Brexit, has announced that he will be directing a forthcoming documentary series on Britain’s Channel 4 titled Cancel Me, which will feature extensive interviews with people who have been “canceled”—although no one connected with the show has specified what exactly the word means.

Indeed, the terms of this debate are an insult to collective intelligence. But if we must use them, we need to understand an important distinction between what is called “cancel culture” and what is called “woke.” The former has been around much longer and refers to tactics that are used across the political spectrum, but historically by those on the right. “Cancel culture” is not the result of an increased awareness of racial disparities or a greater commitment to social justice broadly conceived—both of which are more urgent than ever—but rather a terrible and inevitable consequence of life with the Internet. Hardly anyone can support “cancel culture” in good faith, and yet it is never sufficiently condemned, because people call out such tactics only when their political opponents use them, never when their allies do. “Woke,” on the other hand, does not necessarily imply public shaming; it merely signifies a shift in perspective and perhaps a change in behavior. Carelessly equating the two is a convenient way to brand social justice activism as inherently illiberal—and to silence long-overdue conversations about race and inequality that far too many otherwise reasonable people find personally threatening.

But Europe is not America, and in Europe there have been far fewer incidents that could be construed as “cancellations”—again, I feel stupid even using the word—than in the United States. “Wokeism” is really a phenomenon of the Anglosphere, and with the exception of the United Kingdom, the social justice movement has gained far less traction in Europe than it has in US cultural institutions—newspapers, universities, museums, and foundations. In terms of race and identity, many European cultural institutions would have been seen as woefully behind the times by their US counterparts even before the so-called “great awokening.” Yet Europe has gone fully anti-woke, even without much wokeness to fight.

So much of Europe’s anti-woke movement has focused on opposing and attempting to refute allegations of “institutional” or “structural” racism. Yet despite the 20th-century continental origins of structuralism (especially in France) as a mode of social analysis—not to mention the Francophone writers who have shaped the way American thinkers conceive of race—many European elites dismiss these critiques as unwelcome intrusions into the public discourse that project the preoccupations of a nation built on slavery (and thus understandably obsessed with race) onto societies that are vastly different. Europe, they insist, has a different history, one in which race—especially in the form of the simple binary opposition of Black and white—plays a less central role. There is, of course, some truth to this rejoinder: Different countries do indeed have different histories and different debates. But when Europeans accuse their American critics of projection, they do so not to point out the very real divergences in the US and European discussions and even conceptions of race and racism. Rather, the charge is typically meant to stifle the discussion altogether—even when that discussion is being led by European citizens describing their own lived experiences.

France, where I reside, proudly sees itself as a “universalist” republic of equal citizens that officially recognizes no differences among them. Indeed, since 1978, it has been illegal to collect statistics on race, ethnicity, or religion—a policy that is largely a response to what happened during the Second World War, when authorities singled out Jewish citizens to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. The French view is that such categories should play no role in public life, that the only community that counts is the national community. To be anti-woke, then, is to be seen as a discerning thinker, one who can rise above crude, reductive identity categories.

The reality of daily life in France is anything but universalist. The French state does indeed make racial distinctions among citizens, particularly in the realm of policing. The prevalence of police identity checks in France, which stem from a 1993 law intended to curb illegal immigration, is a perennial source of controversy. They disproportionately target Black and Arab men, which is one reason the killing of George Floyd resonated so strongly here. Last summer I spoke to Jacques Toubon, a former conservative politician who was then serving as the French government’s civil liberties ombudsman (he is now retired). Toubon was honest in his assessment: “Our thesis, our values, our rules—constitutional, etc.—they are universalist,” he said. “They do not recognize difference. But there is a tension between this and the reality.”

One of the most jarring examples of this tension came in November 2020, when Sarah El Haïry, Macron’s youth minister, traveled to Poitiers to discuss the question of religion in society at a local high school. By and large, the students—many of whom were people of color—asked very thoughtful questions. One of them, Emilie, 16, said that she didn’t see the recognition of religious or ethnic differences as divisive. “Just because you are a Christian or a Muslim does not represent a threat to society,” she said. “For me, diversity is an opportunity.” These and similar remarks did not sit well with El Haïry, who nonetheless kept her cool until another student asked about police brutality. At that point, El Haïry got up from her chair and interrupted the student. “You have to love the police, because they are there to protect us on a daily basis,” she said. “They cannot be racist because they are republican!”

For El Haïry, to question such assumptions would be to question something foundational and profound about the way France understands itself. The problem is that more and more French citizens are doing just that, especially young people like the students in Poitiers, and the government seems utterly incapable of responding.

Although there is no official data to this effect—again, because of universalist ideology—France is estimated to be the most ethnically diverse society in Western Europe. It is home to large North African, West African, Southeast Asian, and Caribbean populations, and it has the largest Muslim and Jewish communities on the continent. By any objective measure, that makes France a multicultural society—but this reality apparently cannot be admitted or understood.

Macron, who has done far more than any previous French president to recognize the lived experiences and historical traumas of various minority groups, seems to be aware of this blind spot, but he stops short of acknowledging it. Earlier this year, I attended a roundtable discussion with Macron and a small group of other Anglophone correspondents. One thing he said during that interview has stuck with me: “Universalism is not, in my eyes, a doctrine of assimilation—not at all. It is not the negation of differences…. I believe in plurality in universalism, but that is to say, whatever our differences, our citizenship makes us build a universal together.” This is simply the definition of a multicultural society, an outline of the Anglo-Saxon social model otherwise so despised in France.

Europe’s reaction to the brutal killing of George Floyd in may 2020 was fascinating to observe. The initial shock at the terrifyingly mundane horrors of US life quickly gave way to protest movements that decried police brutality and the unaddressed legacy of Europe’s colonial past. This was when the question of structural racism entered the conversation. In Britain, Prime Minister Boris Johnson responded to the massive protests throughout the country by establishing the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, an independent group charged with investigating the reality of discrimination and coming up with proposals for rectifying racial disparities in public institutions. The commission’s report, published in April 2021, heralded Britain as “a model for other White-majority countries” on racial issues and devoted three pages to the problems with the language of “structural racism.”

One big problem with this language, the report implied, is that “structural racism” is a feeling, and feelings are not facts. “References to ‘systemic’, ‘institutional’ or ‘structural racism’ may relate to specific processes which can be identified, but they can also relate to the feeling described by many ethnic minorities of ‘not belonging,’” the report said. “There is certainly a class of actions, behaviours and incidents at the organisational level which cause ethnic minorities to lack a sense of belonging. This is often informally expressed as feeling ‘othered.’” But even that modest concession was immediately qualified. “However, as with hate incidents, this can have a highly subjective dimension for those tasked with investigating the claim.” Finally, the report concluded, the terms in question were inherently extreme. “Terms like ‘structural racism’ have roots in a critique of capitalism, which states that racism is inextricably linked to capitalism. So by that definition, until that system is abolished racism will flourish.”

The effect of these language games is simply to limit the terms available to describe a phenomenon that indeed exists. Because structural racism is not some progressive shibboleth: It kills people, which need not be controversial or even political to admit. For one recent example in the UK, look no further than Covid-19 deaths. The nation’s Office for National Statistics concluded that Black citizens were more than four times as likely to die of Covid as white citizens, while British citizens of Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage were more than three times as likely to die. These disparities were present even among health workers directly employed by the state: Of the National Health Service clinical staff who succumbed to the virus, a staggering 60 percent were “BAME”—Black, Asian, or minority ethnic, a term that the government’s report deemed “no longer helpful” and “demeaning.” Beyond Covid-19, reports show that Black British women are more than four times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as their white counterparts; British women of an Asian ethnic background die at twice the rate of white women.

In the countries of Europe as in the United States, the battle over “woke” ideas is also a battle over each nation’s history—how it is written, how it is taught, how it is understood.

Perhaps nowhere is this more acutely felt than in Britain, where the inescapable legacy of empire has become the center of an increasingly acrimonious public debate. Of particular note has been the furor over how to think about Winston Churchill, who remains something of a national avatar. In September, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust renamed itself the Churchill Fellowship, removed certain pictures of the former prime minister from its website, and seemed to distance itself from its namesake. “Many of his views on race are widely seen as unacceptable today, a view that we share,” the Churchill Fellowship declared. This followed the November 2020 decision by Britain’s beloved National Trust, which operates an extensive network of stately homes throughout the country, to demarcate about 100 properties with explicit ties to slavery and colonialism.

These moves elicited the ire of many conservatives, including the prime minister. “We need to focus on addressing the present and not attempt to rewrite the past and get sucked into the never-ending debate about which well-known historical figures are sufficiently pure or politically correct to remain in public view,” Johnson’s spokesman said in response to the Churchill brouhaha. But for Hilary McGrady, the head of the National Trust, “the genie is out of the bottle in terms of people wanting to understand where wealth came from,” she told London’s Evening Standard. McGrady justified the trust’s decision by saying that as public sensibilities change, so too must institutions. “One thing that possibly has changed is there may be things people find offensive, and we have to be sensitive about that.”

A fierce countermovement to these institutional changes has already emerged. In the words of David Abulafia, 71, an acclaimed historian of the Mediterranean at Cambridge University and one of the principal architects of this countermovement, “We can never surrender to the woke witch hunt against our island story.”

This was the actual title of an op-ed by Abulafia that the Daily Mail published in early September, which attacked “today’s woke zealots” who “exploit history as an instrument of propaganda—and as a means of bullying the rest of us.” The piece also announced the History Reclaimed initiative, of which Abulafia is a cofounder: a new online platform run by a board of frustrated British historians who seek to “provide context, explanation and balance in a debate in which condemnation is too often preferred to understanding.” As a historian myself, I should say that I greatly admire Abulafia’s work, particularly its wide-ranging synthesis and its literary quality, neither of which is easy to achieve and both of which have been models for me in my own work. Which is why I was surprised to find a piece by him in the Daily Mail, a right-wing tabloid not exactly known for academic rigor. When I spoke with Abulafia about it, he seemed a little embarrassed. “It’s basically an interview that they turn into text and then send back to you,” he told me. “Some of the sentences have been generated by the Daily Mail.”

As in the United States, the UK’s Black Lives Matter protests led to the toppling of statues, including the one in downtown Bristol of Edward Colston, a 17th-century merchant whose wealth derived in part from his active involvement in the slave trade. Abulafia told me he prefers a “retain and explain” approach, which means keeping such statues in place but adding context to them when necessary. I asked him about the public presentation of statues and whether by their very prominence they command an implicit honor and respect. He seemed unconvinced. “You look at statues and you’re not particularly aware of what they show,” he said.

“What do you do about Simon de Montfort?” Abulafia continued. “He is commemorated at Parliament, and he did manage to rein in the power of monarchy. But he was also responsible for some horrific pogroms against the Jews. Everyone has a different perspective on these people. It seems to me that what we have to say is that human beings are complex; we often have contradictory ideas, mishmash that goes in any number of different directions. Churchill defeated the Nazis, but lower down the page one might mention that he held views on race that are not our own. Maintaining that sense of proportion is important.”

All of these are reasonable points, but what I still don’t understand is why history as it was understood by a previous generation must be the history understood by future generations. Statues are not history; they are interpretations of history created at a certain moment in time. Historians rebuke previous interpretations of the past on the page all the time; we rewrite accounts of well-known events according to our own contemporary perspectives and biases. What is so sacred about a statue?

I asked Abulafia why all of this felt so personal to him, because it doesn’t feel that way to me. He replied, “I think there’s an element of this: There is a feeling that younger scholars might be disadvantaged if they don’t support particular views of the past. I can think of examples of younger scholars who’ve been very careful on this issue, who are not really taking sides on that issue.” But I am exactly such a younger scholar, and no one has ever forced me to uphold a certain opinion, either at Harvard or at Oxford. For Abulafia, however, this is a terrifying moment. “One of the things that really worries me about this whole business is the lack of opportunities for debate.”

Whatever one thinks of “woke” purity tests, it cannot be argued in good faith that the loudest European voices on the anti-woke side of the argument are really interested in “debate.” In France especially, the anti-woke moment has become particularly toxic because its culture warriors—on both the right and the left—have succeeded in associating “le wokeisme” with defenses of Islamist terrorism. Without question, France has faced the brunt of terrorist violence in Europe in recent years: Since 2015, more than 260 people have been killed in a series of attacks, shaking the confidence of all of us who live here. The worst year was 2015, flanked as it was by the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan concert hall attacks. But something changed after Paty’s brutal murder in 2020. After a long, miserable year of Covid lockdowns, the French elite—politicians and press alike—began looking for something to blame. And so “wokeness” was denounced as an apology for terrorist violence; in the view of the French establishment, to emphasize identity politics was to sow the social fractures that led to Paty’s beheading. “Wokeness” became complicit in the crime, while freedom of expression was reserved for supporters of the French establishment.

The irony is fairly clear: Those who purported to detest American psychodramas about race and social justice had to rely on—and, in fact, to import—the tools of an American culture war to battle what they felt threatened by in their own country. In the case of Paty’s murder and its aftermath, there was another glaring irony, this time about the values so allegedly dear to the anti-woke contingent. The middle school teacher, who was targeted by a Chechen asylum seeker because he had shown cartoons of the prophet Muhammad as part of a civics lesson about free speech, was immediately lionized as an avatar for the freedom of expression, which the French government quite rightly championed as a value it would always protect. “I will always defend in my country the freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw,” Macron told Al Jazeera shortly after Paty’s killing. This would have been reassuring had it not been completely disingenuous: Shortly thereafter, Macron presided over a crackdown on “islamo-gauchisme” in French universities, a term his ministers used with an entirely straight face. If there is a single paradox that describes French cultural life in 2021, it is this: “Islamophobia” is a word one is supposed to avoid, but “Islamo-leftism” is a phenomenon one is expected to condemn.

Hundreds of academics—including at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France’s most prestigious research body—attacked the government’s crusade against an undefined set of ideas that were somehow complicit in the Islamist terror attacks that had rocked the country. Newspapers like Le Monde came out against the targeting of “islamo-gauchisme,” and there were weeks of tedious newspaper polemics about whether the term harks back to the “Judeo-Bolshevism” of the 1930s (of course it does) or whether it describes a real phenomenon. In any case, the Macron government backtracked in the face of prolonged ridicule. But the trauma of the terror attacks and the emotional hysteria they unleashed will linger: France has also reconfigured its commitment to laïcité, the secularism that the French treat as an unknowable philosophical ideal but that is actually just the freedom to believe or not to believe as each citizen sees fit. Laïcité has become a weapon in the culture war, instrumentalized in the fight against an enemy that the French government assures its critics is radical Islamism but increasingly looks like ordinary Islam.

The issue of the veil is infamously one of the most polarizing and violent in French public debate. The dominant French view is a function of universalist ideology, which holds that the veil is a symbol of religious oppression; it cannot be worn by choice. A law passed in 2004 prohibits the veil from being worn in high schools, and a separate 2010 law bans the face-covering niqab from being worn anywhere in public, on the grounds that “in free and democratic societies…o exchange between people, no social life is possible, in public space, without reciprocity of look and visibility: people meet and establish relationships with their faces uncovered.” (Needless to say, this republican value was more than slightly complicated by the imposition of a mask mandate during the 2020 pandemic.)

In any case, when Muslim women wear the veil in public, which is their legal right and in no way a violation of laïcité, they come under attack. In 2019, for instance, then–Health Minister Agnès Buzyn—who is now being investigated for mismanaging the early days of the pandemic—decried the marketing of a runner’s hijab by the French sportswear brand Decathlon, because of the “communitarian” threat it apparently posed to universalism. “I would have preferred a French brand not to promote the veil,” Buzyn said. Likewise, Jean-Michel Blanquer, France’s education minister, conceded that although it was technically legal for mothers to wear head scarves, he wanted to avoid allowing them to chaperone school trips “as much as possible.”

Nicolas Cadène, the former head of France’s national Observatory of Secularism—a laïcité watchdog, in other words—was constantly criticized by members of the French government for being too “soft” on Muslim communal organizations, with whose leaders he regularly met. Earlier this year, the observatory that Cadène ran was overhauled and replaced with a new commission that took a harder line. He remarked to me, “You have political elites and intellectuals who belong to a closed society—it’s very homogeneous—and who are not well-informed about the reality of society. These are people who in their daily lives are not in contact with those who come from diverse backgrounds. There is a lack of diversity in that elite. France is not the white man—there is a false vision [among] our elites about what France is—but they are afraid of this diversity. They see it as a threat to their reality.”

As in the United States, there is a certain pathos in the European war on woke, especially in the battalion of crusaders who belong to Cleese and Finkielkraut’s generation. For them, “wokeism” —a term that has no clear meaning and that each would probably define differently—is a personal affront. They see the debate as being somehow about them. The British politician Enoch Powell famously said that all political lives end in failure. A corollary might be that all cultural careers end in irrelevance, a reality that so many of these characters refuse to accept, but that eventually comes for us all—if we are lucky. For many on both sides of the Atlantic, being aggressively anti-woke is a last-ditch attempt at mattering, which is the genuinely pathetic part. But it is difficult to feel pity for those in that camp, because their reflex is, inescapably, an outgrowth of entitlement: To resent new voices taking over is to believe that you always deserve a microphone. The truth is that no one does.

▻https://www.thenation.com/article/world/woke-europe-structural-racism

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