By Russell A. Berman · Saturday, October 14, 2006 The action of the French National Assembly, to criminalize any statements that deny that the mass killings of Armenians during and after the First World War constituted genocide, raises many problems, but foremost among them is the threat to free speech.
To be sure, this bill is not yet law, and it may never become law. While the vote was lopsided in favor (106 to 19), most of the 577-member chamber did not vote at all. Nor is it likely that the proposal will proceed successfully through the upper house or be adopted by the Chirac government, which has criticized it. When all is said and done, this may have only been an electoral ploy by the Left (which supported the bill): it is a way to jump on the popular bandwagon against the expansion of the EU to include Turkey, without fishing in the racist waters of the far right or adopting theological arguments about a Christian Europe. It’s ideologically easier to irritate the Turks through a symbolic gesture about Armenia, in the hope that an irritated Turkey will then turn away from Europe.
Or perhaps the French socialists were just angling for the Armenian vote (a large community in France).
Nonetheless the matter needs to be taken on face-value as well. Whatever the ulterior motives, the important chamber of a major parliamentary democracy has now declared certain speech acts, historical claims, to be so inimical to the values of society that they would warrant incarceration and a significant monetary fine. This was not a matter of the National Assembly declaring its own esteemed understanding of early twentieth-century history in a hypothetical statement that might have condemned the genocide. Nor does this involve a judgment on statements of whether or not the killings took place (as in standard Holocaust denial). Rather, the newly defined crime would involve the articulation of doubts as to whether such killing “rose” to the level of genocide. While—to make my position clear—this author accepts the historiographical consensus that the catastrophe that befell the Armenians was indeed genocide, the logic of freezing such debate through a criminalization of expressions of alternative opinion seems dangerous indeed. Dangerous because it will necessarily poison the atmosphere around this question between Turks and Armenians; dangerous because it sets a precedent of providing legislative sanction to matters of historiographical judgment; but also, and most importantly dangerous because the august stage of the National Assembly of the French Republic has now become the most prominent venue to date on which the value of free speech has come under such systematic attack.
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, October 12, 2006 Wednesday’s New York Times included an op-ed piece by Jimmy Carter, entitled “Solving the Korean Stalemate, One Step at a Time.” Needless to say, the piece talks about the successful role Carter claims to have himself played in 1994, as an agent of the Clinton administration, in defusing an earlier Korean nuclear crisis, and it also blames the current confrontation with North Korea on the aggressive stance adopted by the Bush administration. No surprises here. Party politics as usual, with a somewhat higher than normal level of self-congratulation.
Of greater interest is the underlying assumption in the essay: according to Carter, the primary problem to be solved one step at a time is the Korean stalemate, i.e., the foreign policy showdown over the nuclear arms—no doubt an important goal, but Carter writes as if North Korea were otherwise a thoroughly normal state, with no significant problems except its misguided foray into the development of weapons of mass destruction. It is true that Carter does mention, twice in fact, the domestic situation in North Korea, but only in order to argue against sanctions. He writes of the “already starving people” and of “its people suffering horrible deprivation”—as if the problem with North Korea were simply some agricultural crisis. There is no mention of prison camps, the sadistic police state and the rampant denial of basic human rights. Indeed to mention these aspects would have undermined Carter’s political agenda of advocating negotiations with North Korea—as if it were a normal state.
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By Russell A. Berman · Tuesday, October 10, 2006 A lecture by Tony Judt on “Israel Lobby,” scheduled to take place at the Polish consulate in New York, was cancelled. The report in the New York Sun attributes the decision to the incompatibility of Judt’s increasingly bitter critique of Israel and the growing rapprochement between the Polish and Israeli governments:
“It is a diplomatic post. Whatever is organized here should be in compliance with Poland’s foreign policy,” the deputy consul general of Poland in New York, Marek Skulimowski, said. “The consulate is not a Hyde Park, it’s not a discussion club, it’s a consulate.” Mr. Skulimowski said that Mr. Judt had been “very critical” of Israel, while the president of Poland had just made a warm visit to Israel a few weeks ago.
In contrast, Judt, who was to speak on the thesis of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, that an Israeli Lobby directs US foreign policy, evidently also believes that a similar lobby controls the scheduling decisions of the Polish consulate:
Judt . . . blamed the Anti-Defamation League and [the ADL National Director] Mr. [Abraham] Foxman for the cancellation. “The pressure was brought by the ADL,” Mr. Judt said. “They had no choice. Foxman had been leaning on the consulate all afternoon.”
In fact, Judt has only recently had a high-profile opportunity to debate his points not far away in Cooper Union. The arguments of Mearsheimer, Walt and Judt reportedly did not fare very well.
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By Russell A. Berman · Friday, October 6, 2006 Robert Redeker’s essay on Islam and the Free World has been discussed here during the past two days. Its publication in Le Figaro on September 19 led to a wave of death threats against the author that have forced him into hiding. The advocate of free speech—the key theme of his essay—has lost his freedom. Here two documents characterizing recent developments: a letter by Redeker to André Glucksmann and excerpts from the editorial of Le Monde of October 1.
A Letter of Robert Redeker to André Glucksmann
Dear André,
Bonjour.
I am now in a catastrophic personal situation. Numerous and very precise death threats have been sent to me, and I have been condemned to death by organizations of Al-Qaeda. The Anti-Terrorist Coordinating Force [UCLAT] and the Bureau of Territorial Surveillance [DST] are involved, but . . . I no longer have the right to stay in my home (the websites where I am condemned to death include a map describing how to get to my house to kill me; there is a photograph of me and the places where I work, with telephone numbers, along with the declaration of condemnation). At the same time, I have no place to go, I am obliged to wander, two nights here, two nights there . . . I am under constant police protection. I have to cancel all my planned talks. And the authorities oblige me to keep me moving. I have become homeless. A terrible financial situation results, since all these costs are my responsibility, including the possibility of having to rent somewhere far from here, the costs of two households, legal fees, etc. . . . It is terribly sad. I exercised my constitutional right, and I have been punished for it, on the very soil of the Republic. This affair is also an attack on our national sovereignty: foreign laws, decided by fanatic criminophiles, punish me for having exercised a French constitutional right, and even in France, I must suffer great damage.
In friendship
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By Russell A. Berman · Thursday, October 5, 2006 The circumstances around the publication of Redeker’s article in Le Figaro of September 19 were discussed in a prior blog, as was the first half of the essay. In the second half Redeker addresses the question of violence in religion, particularly in Islam, but with reference to the status of violence—and their surpassing—in Judaism and Christianity as well. The argument proceeds through three levels: a characterization of the founding prophecy and the figure of the prophet in Islam; a discussion of the anthropological standing of a central ritual in Islam; and finally a comparative treatment of violence in the three Abrahamic traditions.
Redeker draws briefly on the work of Maxime Rodinson, a Marxist historian of Islam, known especially for his book on Mohammed (and additionally one of the initial sources for a theory of “Islamic fascism). The portrait Redeker paints is far from complimentary, including quotations from Rodinson that convey “some truths that are as important as they are tabooed in France.” These include the recounts of Mohammed’s early militarism, his reliance on a private army, the attacks on caravans, the destruction of Jewish communities in the Arabian peninsula, as well as his marital practices.
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By Russell A. Berman · Wednesday, October 4, 2006 News reports over the weekend, including in the New York Times of September 30, recounted developments in France involving Robert Redeker, an article of whose in Le Figaro of September 19 on Islam elicited death threats which have forced him into hiding.
Redeker has been described as a high school teacher in Toulouse, which is true. He is also the author of some ten books and numerous article publications, listed on his c.v. He has written for Le Monde as well as for Le Figaro (so he cannot be cast simply as conservative); indeed he is an editorial board member of Les Temps Modernes.
Unfortunately it is important to underscore all of this. We are facing another case of threats to free speech and free thought in Europe, but the news reporting subtly tries to minimize the significance (did somebody say “appeasement”?). There are suggestions that he is merely a high school teacher (as if high school teachers have less of a right to free speech than do the journalists of the wire services), or that he was writing for the “center-right” Le Figaro, suggesting that he probably got what he deserved. Shall we henceforth write that Elaine Sciolino writes for the “center-left” New York Times? In fact, Redeker turns out not to be a “center-rightist,” for whose free speech our “center-left” might not give a hoot, but very much a European intellectual with a publication record with all appropriate pedigrees.
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