At first they came for the smokers but I did not speak out as I did not smoke. Then they came for the binge drinkers but I said nothing as I did not binge. Now they have an obesity strategy.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
France
It's fascism. Not foreign policy, or refugees, or any such stupidity. It's fascism. Solidarity with its opponents at all times and wherever.
Fascism is not a word that means much at this point, and I don't see all that much connection with Mussolini/Hitler, unless you're suggesting that the attackers are trying to seize power in France through these attacks, which seems an unlikely outcome
The fascism of our times Steve. OK you can be pedantic about it, and I usually am, but let's say a far right theocratic totalitarianism. Will that do?
As for what it was about, this is from Jason Burke:
"The aims of terrorist violence are threefold. The first is to terrorise enemies, and thus, through the functioning of democracy, to force the leaders of those democracies to make deci-sions that they would not otherwise have made. The second is to mobilise supporters by inspiring them into action. The third aim is perhaps the most important. Here, the violence is addressed to the uncommitted, the swing voters in the global struggle between right and wrong, belief and unbelief. These are the people within a terrorist’s own community, or a particular constituency of significance in their campaign, who need to be convinced of the righteousness of a cause, the efficacy of a strategy, and the ability or vision of a leader. But they are also those who have so far resisted the urge to hate, to retaliate, to use violence themselves among the community which is being targeted. The aim, then, is to polarise. Al-Qaeda leaders and extremist thinkers more generally have often described their desire to force Muslims around the world to make a choice and to deepen divisions within and between communities. Bin Laden repeatedly spoke of the importance of reducing the immensely complex matrix of identities that each of us is composed of – one’s social origins, gender, education, nationality, city, favourite sports team, sexual proclivity, language and so on – to a single marker of faith. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi frequently explained how he sought to use violence to turn communities against each other. In early 2015, in a chilling if lucid editorial in its magazine Dabiq, IS laid out its own strategy to eliminate what the writer, or writers, called ‘the Gray Zone’. This Gray Zone was, according to IS, what lay between belief and unbelief, good and evil, the righteous and the damned, and home to all those who had yet to commit to the forces of either side too. The Gray Zone, IS claimed, had been ‘critically endangered [since] the blessed operations of September 11th, as these operations mani- fested two camps before the world for mankind to choose between, a camp of Islam and a camp of kufr’. The magazine even quoted bin Laden, in line with the IS belief that it, rather than the current al-Qaeda, is the true inheritor of his legacy: ‘The world today is divided. [President George] Bush spoke the truth when he said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Meaning, either you are with the crusade or you are with Islam. Eventually, the Gray Zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of [the caliphate] versus the camp of kufr.’ Over the years, the anonymous author of the ten-page article claimed, successive violent acts had narrowed the Gray Zone and by the end of 2014 ‘the time had come for another event to . . . bring division to the world and destroy the Gray Zone everywhere’. This event, apparently, was the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, in January 2015. "...
In other words, it was a serious act in a revolutionary process designed to bring about a theocratic tyranny.
2 comments:
Fascism is not a word that means much at this point, and I don't see all that much connection with Mussolini/Hitler, unless you're suggesting that the attackers are trying to seize power in France through these attacks, which seems an unlikely outcome
The fascism of our times Steve. OK you can be pedantic about it, and I usually am, but let's say a far right theocratic totalitarianism. Will that do?
As for what it was about, this is from Jason Burke:
"The aims of terrorist violence are threefold. The first is to terrorise enemies, and thus, through the functioning of democracy, to force the leaders of those democracies to make deci-sions that they would not otherwise have made. The second is to mobilise supporters by inspiring them into action. The third aim is perhaps the most important. Here, the violence is addressed to the uncommitted, the swing voters in the global struggle between right and wrong, belief and unbelief. These are the people within a terrorist’s own community, or a particular constituency of significance in their campaign, who need to be convinced of the righteousness of a cause, the efficacy of a strategy, and the ability or vision of a leader. But they are also those who have so far resisted the urge to hate, to retaliate, to use violence themselves among the community which is being targeted. The aim, then, is to polarise.
Al-Qaeda leaders and extremist thinkers more generally have often described their desire to force Muslims around the world to make a choice and to deepen divisions within and between communities. Bin Laden repeatedly spoke of the importance of reducing the immensely complex matrix of identities that each of us is composed of – one’s social origins, gender, education, nationality, city, favourite sports team, sexual proclivity, language and so on – to a single marker of faith. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi frequently explained how he sought to use violence to turn communities against each other. In early 2015, in a chilling if lucid editorial in its magazine Dabiq, IS laid out its own strategy to eliminate what the writer, or writers, called ‘the Gray Zone’. This Gray Zone was, according to IS, what lay between belief and unbelief, good and evil, the righteous and the damned, and home to all those who had yet to commit to the forces of either side too.
The Gray Zone, IS claimed, had been ‘critically endangered [since] the blessed operations of September 11th, as these operations mani- fested two camps before the world for mankind to choose between, a camp of Islam and a camp of kufr’. The magazine even quoted bin Laden, in line with the IS belief that it, rather than the current al-Qaeda, is the true inheritor of his legacy: ‘The world today is divided. [President George] Bush spoke the truth when he said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Meaning, either you are with the crusade or you are with Islam. Eventually, the Gray Zone will become extinct and there will be no place for grayish calls and movements. There will only be the camp of [the caliphate] versus the camp of kufr.’
Over the years, the anonymous author of the ten-page article claimed, successive violent acts had narrowed the Gray Zone and by the end of 2014 ‘the time had come for another event to . . . bring division to the world and destroy the Gray Zone everywhere’.
This event, apparently, was the attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, in Paris, in January 2015. "...
In other words, it was a serious act in a revolutionary process designed to bring about a theocratic tyranny.
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