Daily Times

In France, of the leaders who led this march of freedom of expression, a majority of them never possessed the most enviable record. Nonetheless, this show of unity clearly proved one point: “The consensus behind the principle (that they sought) to reaffirm was economically and politically powerful” (Horkheimer). All those who were trying to offend it were forewarned. Despite this harassment, some undaunted voices kept the truth alive. Sean O’ Torrain says, “I was looking at the march in Paris led by hypocrites and governments, which deny freedom of speech whenever it suits them. Not only deny freedom of speech but kill, imprison and torture its own citizens to keep them quiet. The Saudi regime is one of the closest friends of US imperialism and the Bush family. It has just begun to give lashes to a blogger whose views it disagrees with. He will get 50 a week until he gets a total of 1,000. This is extreme savagery by the Bush family’s friends.”

Richard Mellor (Facts For Working People) asks some bewildering questions. He inquires, “Where were the millions and all the phony heads of state when the Zionists went in to Gaza and slaughtered more than 2,000 people? More than 500 children were killed and there were 11,000 people wounded. The Zionists also bombed the hospitals. Figures released recently claimed that 145 Gaza families lost three or more members. Where are the politicians for this? B’ Tselem, an Israeli NGO, reckons that between 2002 and May 2008, at least 387 Palestinians died as a result of Israeli targeted killings, of which 234 were the targets and the rest collateral casualties. I remember reading about two Gazan children feeding their pigeons on the roof when Israeli snipers took them out. Palestinians warn their children about rooftops; they are dangerous places for their children. The killing in Paris, horrible as it is, is small stuff compared to the slaughter of Muslims that has gone on over the past 20 years.”

Coming back to the aura of freedom of speech, which in any case is an inalienable human right, the record of the US and its stooge, the state of Israel, is most dismal though the Saudis do not lag far behind. What about Chelsea Manning, Snowden, Assange and the media-eclipsed Vanunu? The 24-year-old Chelsea Manning, who trusted this hoax of freedom, is languishing in solitary confinement. His only crime was telling the US people what in their name was happening in the wars imposed upon the hapless citizens of Iraq and Afghanistan. Is it the kind of freedom we represent that Sartre alluded to in these words: “Freedom, which chooses, but we could not choose to be free? We are doomed to freedom. We are thrown into freedom.”

And what about the millions of people who readily gulped the pall of gloom prepared by their oppressors and willingly allowed themselves to be ensnared by their class enemies? Have they gone completely indifferent to the havoc played by imperialism upon the rest of humankind? Is the reality of thousands of innocent citizens dying on the pretext of war on terror lost upon them? A land of revolutions cannot turn into a land of saintly impotent characters. If so, then nothing worse can happen to the future of humanity. Another revolution will be required to reorient the people about the concrete nature of freedom. Freedom of expression is an abstraction. Only an engineered opinion that reproduces the established reality can take this statement seriously. Concrete freedom is freedom from alienated, objectified labour, an ultimate dream of humanity turned into a nightmare by the false consciousness of the masses.

In Freudian terminology, “castration anxiety” is closely associated with “fear of death”. In the modern era, for creation of this ‘anxiety’, a key role is played by the media. Public opinion is distorted through scientific propaganda, which becomes a tool for certain interests. The more this anxiety permeates society, the more public opinion becomes a substitute for reason. Reason itself feels threatened. The media has the power to twist it into a subjective or an instrumentalised one, conforming to the established reality. This erodes the intellectual basis of democracy, which becomes a sham. Through this anxiety and death phobia in the name of security, economic interests are undermined. The hegemony of the ruling class is hence maintained, both through consent and undue coercion.

With hunches, conjectures and surmises, scapegoats have been traced but without providing a shred of concrete evidence. Akin to the tragedy of 9/11, the predator helped the prosecutors in their identification by simply leaving the solid evidence of their identity behind. According to French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, “The terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo would never have been caught had they not made one fatal mistake: they conveniently left an ID card in their abandoned getaway car.” Since when have hardcore terrorists become so relenting and merciful? The perpetrator of 9/11, Mohammad Atta, also showered the same benevolence upon the secret agencies operating in the US. His suitcase, which carried the incriminating evidence, was handed over to German police by an ‘honourable thief’ who could not resist the impulse of patriotism. According to the former German minister and intelligence expert, Andreas Von Bülow, it was the joint handiwork of both the CIA and Mossad. What a coincidence that 9/11 hijacker Satam al-Suqami left his passport behind! From the French hierarchy, Noam Chomsky asks a few probing questions: “One would naturally ask how France upholds freedom of expression and the sacred principles of ‘fraternity, freedom, solidarity’. For example, is it through the Gayssot Law, repeatedly implemented, which effectively grants the state the right to determine historical truth and punish deviation from its edicts? By expelling miserable descendants of Holocaust survivors (Roma) to bitter persecution in Eastern Europe? By the deplorable treatment of North African immigrants in the banlieues of Paris where the Charlie Hebdo terrorists became jihadis? When the courageous journal Charlie Hebdo fired the cartoonist Siné on grounds that a comment of his was deemed to have anti-Semitic connotations?” The people of France, once out of the traumatic phase, must ponder these queries.

I would like to repeat Rosa Luxemburg, the great leader of the proletariat, where she states, “Imperialism is not the creation of any group of states. It is the product of a particular stage of ripeness in the world development of capital, an innately international condition, an indivisible whole, that is recognised only in all its relations, and from which no nation can hold aloof.” How can France or any other country be an exception? Imperial forces have turned the world into a living inferno. If Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Palestine and Pakistan are set to burn at its lowest part, for how long can those who fuel this incinerator think of keeping themselves away from this fire? Nonetheless, through this catastrophe, the ruling elite has managed to sweep its crimes of imposing heavy social cuts on the people under the carpet. The liberties and victories attained after decades of struggle are gradually being snatched from the working class under the false pretence of security and terrorism. But people will not take long to realise that “those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety” (Benjamin Franklin). The solution is yet again provided by Rosa Luxemburg, who explicitly says: “Dividends are rising and the proletarians are falling. And with everyone there sinks into the grave a fighter of the future, a soldier of the revolution, mankind’s saviour from the yoke of capitalism. The madness will cease and the bloody demons of hell will vanish only when workers in Germany and France, England and Russia finally awake from their stupor, extend to each other a brotherly hand, and drown out the bestial chorus of imperialist war-mongers and the shrill cry of capitalist hyenas with labour’s old and mighty battle cry: workers of all countries unite.” Besides this, is there any shortcut to the route that may lead humanity to liberation? Unlike the advocates of a vulgar economy, who foment the ‘pillows of illusion’, Marxists are not aware of any other.

(Concluded)

The writer is based in Australia and has authored books on socialism and history. He can be reached at saulatnagi@hotmail.com