The many ways we’re NOT Charlie and you may as well go eat shit and die

The Paris attack: Je ne suis pas Charlie

(Foreword: the neofascist paranoid scumbags supporting the Western and Israeli States will jump on postings like this one to accuse the critics of being part of a « fringe minority praising these attacks« . If you’ve got the mental capacity to compute the following information, you’ll realize you are part of the problem, not those who don’t follow your BS…)

As our brave sheeple in Montreal have loyally obeyed to the Tweet command lines and the orders of their local mind-laundry machines (in that case Radio-Canada, La Presse and a few others) taking their scripted reactions to the streets by the tens of thousands (on a Jan. 11th at 11 AM… how symbolic!), following the local Pig King mayor Denis Coderre, to demonstrate not their dissent but full conformity with the line of Power imposed through its media; one will ask where all this new wave of totalizing and, well, totalitarian fever will bring us all.

Found on « MarcheRepublicaine » twitter page. Note all the blue clothes, the Euro flags and the White faces sneering with discontent… also the non-White hands holding the machine guns as floodgates holding -or funneling- their southeastward march

Let’s keep in mind that the statist media, such as Le Monde, the BBC, CNN and co are all cloning themselves mutually as they’ve been « comparing notes » for years as a NATO-wide Ministry of Propaganda would have, are those very same who, everyday, have been making themselves the spokesmen for the Police and the armies in their invasive and murderous violence here and abroad, muffling and muzzling the real expression of the people, filtering and delaying important news that concern everyone (i.e. Fukushima disaster, among so many other things), producing and enforcing phony reactionary debates as the « public debate », compartmentalizing and sectioning the minds in the same style that cops thrown people into cells, brushing their memory, their sensibility, making themselves the manipulators of a « public opinion » that only exists through the very spectacle that channels it.

Here are some translated excerpts of texts from people in France who still are refusing to take part in this formalized muting of a unifying voice that recycles the « democratic diversity » to force it down the funnel of fascism…

The great march of Democracy…

Solidarity is hard because it isn’t about imaginary identifications, it’s about struggling across the canyon of not being someone else: it’s about recognizing, for instance, that somebody died because they were different from you, in what they did or believed or were or wore, not because they were the same. If people who are feeling concrete loss or abstract shock or indignation take comfort in proclaiming a oneness that seems to fill the void, then it serves an emotional end.  – Clare DeTamble

National unity: a Weapon of war

Let’s not fall into the trap of which civilized patriotism under French pavillon, or the armed savagery under a sacred pavillon are the two jaws. Let’s try to break those discourses this scenario that is proposed to us, this consensus on the clash of civilizations, this national instrumentalization, this market opened to repressive laws.

We will fight against all sorts of racism, like all kinds of homophobia, of sexism, against the State and its liberticidal laws, more generally against capitalism.

Who says « national unity » says « front ». Who says « front », says two camps. From the moment where we are aware of this, are we obligated to choose one or the other? The « democratic pen » or the « wild kalashnikov », the republic or the shariah, racism or structural decomplexed sexism ? National unity is only good at mankind the job of the national front or the State easier and to allow its field of maneuvers to be wider.

If the union must exist this should be against the State, for combating against the violence of the capitalist system and the Western States, colonization, where thousands of people are dying and everyone doesn’t give a fuck, and/or combating the French interventions for defending dictatorial States, as the one in Mali against the Islamists, solely motivated by the local uranium resources, etc.

If unity has to live, it would be to combat the «anti-terror» laws that constitute means to control us, to govern us. If unity has to live, that would be to counter this duality between barbarian and civilized, savage and democrat. If the unity has to live, it would be to denounce the absence of free speech and not a so-called «attack» on it. If unity has to live, it would be to break this banner, this smokescreen, this «freedom of expression» with echoes of «don’t complain too loud, and in a mainstream newspaper by preference». Everyday the persons and groups are trying to express themselves in vain. If unity has to live, it would be to combat those that are monopolizing this free speech through money, contacts, power plays, and social positioning.

We do not want to content ourselves in being uniquely in the anti-islamophobic reaction. Of course because of these events, many Muslim people will have to justify themselves, answer to the confused associations, and some will be the targets of racism of many kinds (physical attacks, armies, racist tags, etc). National unity will necessarily be carried on the backs of Muslim people and those who are fighting against Power. But to content ourselves with anti-islamophobia will only impoverish our reflections, our analyses. As much as we make sure that religious people are not being blamed (for their beliefs and practices), we must make sure to not put religion at the center of interests. In other terms, make it possible that people remain free to believe in whatever they will, but to combat those willing to enforce their identities, may this identity be religious or patriotic. (…)

It’s been a while that Charlie Hebdo stopped being funny, now it makes us cry

It is a quarter before midnight in the century. We are at point of an historical shift towards islamophobia and the unleashing of racism in France and more globally in Europe (and the West). The extremely simplified narrative by the media on this day of January 7th will summarize and imprint itself in the brains of the many as the « murderous attack against a « Leftist » newspaper by the Muslims ». This will destabilize and turn over political positions. Fear, anger, tetany, incomprehension, moral panic will in some people pave the way for Hate.Beyond the parameters of military opportunity that may have justified the choice of this newspaper by this commando the attack corresponds to a logic and a political vision of the tak-tak: to precipitate confrontation and radicalization among important fractions of of the population. Charlie Hebdo was still benefiting from an important symbolic capital among the Left: it still is considered by many people as antiracist and incarnating free speech. It’s not the Minute or the Figaro that have been targeted.

The tak-tak know that if the levee of antiracism blows up, then it’s the entire Europe that slides into the unleashing of a symbolic and physical racist violence of which the Muslims will the be first to fall prey. In this script, the tak-tak warriors who fancy themselves as the defenders of Islam are wishing that the already violently-oppressed Muslim populations will come behind them for protection. A bit like those zionists always ready to instrumentalize waves of antisemitism for justifying the existence of a State of Israel as a refuge of oppressed Jewish populations (prediction fulfilled!), the tak-tak need the oppression of Islam in order to conquer the hearts of the (non-Wahhabi Salafists, or all those those Muslims not associated with the Saudi and Qatar regimes) believers.

Let’s not be hypocrites, Charlie Hebdo is not a political friend. For years, it has shifted in the camp of the dominant thought and took part in the development of a Left-wing islamophobia. Though, no one can or should celebrate the execution of its journalists. Nothing can justify this act within the current context in France. But this attack must not shut down the critics towards Charlie Hebdo and the general press on its islamophobic editorial and satirical line.Today, bringing the war in the newsroom of Charlie Hebdo is like planting a bomb at the Bologna train station. That is an act of terror aimed at disorienting. (…)

The new Adolf? Things are starting to fall into place… no?

From Cévennes:

Using indignation and fear resulting from these atrocities, the ruling class wants to make us forget that it is directly responsible for the rise of fascisms (from the religious fundamentalism to the exacerbated nationalism). Through the economical, political, social system it defends and reinforces everyday, it builds the conditions for the emergence of communitarian hatred, fanaticism and reactionary movements. The migrant populations or those originating from migration, the poor, the marginals… have been stigmatized, guilt-charged, parked in ghettos, overexploited and always rendered poorer for decades. The economic, media and political powers are orchestrating the general dumbing down, pressuring to communautarism and to the war against all. The ruling class is using all the weapons to divide and dumb us down to assert its power and multiply its profits. This logic of division reinforces itself, in parrallel with the current economic crisis that touches the population in its conditions of existence.

A well-known symbol, the fasces, thinly-veiled by the banner of « the Republic, or death »

You are being mistaken: I am not Charlie

I am not Charlie, because I know that the immense majority of those Charlie’s have never been either Mohamen or Zouad, in other words none of those hundreds of young people assassinated in the suburbs by « our » policemen (of all confessions, the cops!) paid by « our » taxes. If I use the tools of the sociologist, I understand why it is more immediately easy for the White petty bourgeois to relate to a well-known cartoonist, also intellectual and White, than the children of migrant workers from Northern Africa. Understanding is neither to excuse or adhere to.

I am not Charlie, for I refuse to « gather », on the injunction of the tenant of the Élysée, with the politic-rats, with the cops and the right-wing extremist militants. I’m not talking up in the air : a relative explained me that on his-her workplace, it’s those homophobic Catholic militants of the so-called «Protest for All» that involve themselves in the organizing of the minute of silence for the team of Charlie Hebdo.

I am not Charlie, because I refuse to cry on the corpse of Charlie Hebdo along with a François Hollande who just announced that the Notre-Dame-des-Landes airport will be built, in other words that there will be more people to be severely injured by the rubber bullets (and shrapnel), and undoubtedly other Rémi Fraisse.

I’m not Charlie, because I am viscerally – and culturally – hostile to any kind of “sacred union”. Even the stupid journalists from Le Monde have understood that it’s a question of this; they simply ask how long this “union” can last. To “assemble” behind François Hollande against “Islamist barbarism” is no less stupid than to make a sacred union against “German barbarism” in 1914. Some anarchists took up this union during that epoch ; it’s good like that, we have given to it!

I’m not Charlie, because the “gathering” is the name of neoliberal class collaboration. Some of you might think that classes don’t exist any more and even less that they are still fighting each other. If you are a boss or leader of something (office, workshop …), it is normal that you claim that (and yet! – there are exceptions), or you could believe it. If you are a worker, working, forced to do tasks  or are unemployed , I advise you to inform yourself.

I’m not Charlie, because if I share the grief of friends and relatives of those killed, I do not recognize in any way what had become , and for the last few decades, of the newspaper “Charlie Hebdo”. Having started as an anarchist rant, this newspaper turned – notably under the direction of Philippe Val – against the audience it had at the beginning. It remained anticlerical. Does that count? Yes. Is that enough? Certainly not. I learnt that Houellebecq [cynical semi-fascist Islamophobe, immersed in a wretchedly arrogant  attitude of pathological contempt] and Bernard Maris [one of those killed, an economist-cum-journalist, regular contributor to Charlie Hebdo, who was part of the Directorate of the neo-liberal Banque de France – equivalent of the Bank of England – for some time, whilst also being part of ATTAC –  semi-Keynesian advocates of the Tobin tax] had become great friends, and that the former “suspended” the promotion of his book “Submission” (which will cost him nothing) in homage to the latter. This proves that even in the worst of situations, there are still opportunities to have a laugh.

I’m not Charlie, because I am a militant revolutionary who tries to keep abreast of the progress of the capitalist world in which he lives. Therefore, I am aware that the country I am a citizen of is at war, certainly in “theaters of war” distant and changing. In the worst possible way possible, since all over the world and even in my neighborhood, the enemies of France can consider me as their enemy. This is sometimes true, sometimes not. At least, knowing that France is at war, I did not experience the same astonishment as many Charlies did to learn that an act of war was committed in central Paris against humourists disrespectful towards religions.

I’m not Charlie, because, given the absence of details, and the very fact of the anonymization produced by the formula “I’m Charlie,” it necessarily implies some “anti-terrorist” unanimity coming from probably very different positions of this person or that. In other words, as a plebiscite of the so-called “anti-terrorist” legislative apparatus, which is an instrument for what I call democratic terrorisation.

I’m not Charlie. I am Claude. Revolutionary anarchist, anti-capitalist, supporter of the libertarian communist project, mortal enemy of all monotheistic religions – but I sacrifice to Aphrodite! – And not to any State. This is enough to make me a target for religious fanatics and cops (I’ve paid to find out).

I am willing, as a form of gregarious emotion, to debate with those for whom the killing of “Charlie Hebdo” is one of the horrors of this world, to which it is useless to add even more confusion.

Partly translated by Dialectical Delinquents, reprinted from the blog of Claude Guillon.]

In a backstreet of the « national communion », Black dude: « I am Charlie ». Pig: « Yeah, me too. »