Columbia J-School’s Marie Brenner has published a 12 page piece in the June issue of Vanity Fair after over 100 interviews of the French on the issue of rising French anti-semitism in “France’s Scarlet Letter.” She cites a new wave of anti-semitism in Europe centered in France, and especially in a northwest suburb of Paris, involving French guilt about integrating Algererians, who, of course, suffered imperial colonialism and revolt. Now France is paralyzed over how to integrate an multi-million strong Arab immigrant population. What’s novel about this wave of anti-semitism is its origins among the Left—many have been confused, thinking it came from the Right-wing. But just the last four months have witnessed a quadrupling of such crimes (total: 250 since January). Denial and obfuscation have accompanied the rising wave of anti-semitism, and France’s “Progressive” hate-crime laws have been no bar to its rise. French people are holding another people (ie the Jews) to account for a country’s policies that is not their own. This is true among the Left here in the US, albeit without the violence (verbal harassment and slurs are another matter). In her interview on C-SPAN Tuesday (27 May), Ms Brenner answered the canard that she was somehow an apologist for Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine by calling this a slur that paints innocent people as somehow inherently responsible for the wrongs done by others. This is identifying Jews as a collective group bearing collective responsibility, rather than being individuals accountable for individual wrong doing—something that would be racist when evinced against any other group! And all the more abhorent when done by the self-rightous PC minded Left! (I give myself 2 points against Tom Head's defense “It’s not my Left” claim. Perhaps not, but it’s still the Left, and it’s still because of the Left’s collectivist mentality--not despite it!) Ms. Brenner repeatedly identified the US leftist caller’s disturbing anger, if not rage, directed at Jews because these Leftists cannot dissociate innocent French and Jewish victims from right-wing governments in Israel and the US. One caller even ID’d the ruling British government as “rightwing!” “IT IS old anti-semitism,” she says, but merely "disguised as opposition to certain governments policies." And even among these threads on this board, this comfusion has been argued for—and an old persecuted minority’s right to be left alone not defended! Denial is not a river in Egypt—it’s a place in the soul of today’s Left, too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Excerpt from interview with Marie Brenner, BoujourParis.com BRENNER: The Iraq war changed everything. America is furious with the French. The war showed us a truer picture of France in crisis. And what's happening to French Jews is part of that crisis. BONJOUR PARIS: What should France be doing? BRENNER: France should be actively prosecuting the people who caused the attacks. Even now, the victims are very afraid to speak out. BONJOUR PARIS: Why? BRENNER: The French judicial system is very lax. Thirty-seven percent of the French who are sentenced are let go. Victims do not feel protected. BONJOUR PARIS: Do you think your article will change anything? BRENNER: Too soon to tell. But one early reaction isn't encouraging. When the publicity head of Vanity Fair called Agence France Presse and offered them my piece, the local people for AFP said, "No one has persuasively made the case." They wouldn't even take a look at it. http://www.bonjourparis.com/featurebox.php?featureBoxID=1 =============== Hmmm. "No one has persuasively made the case." Sound familiar to any Degreeinfo.com readers? --Orson
Actually, the problem seems to originate from certain segments of the "Right" as well, judging by borderline-antisemitic right-winger Le Pen's success in the last election: http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,11981,711437,00.html ...and judging by the fact that neo-Nazis tried to assassinate Chirac not that long ago: http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,11981,756312,00.html But this isn't really a "the Left" problem or a "the Right" problem, because French politics (like American politics) is too complex to conveniently break down into two labels. Cheers,
I've heard a lot lately about France's anti-semitism, but I've not caught the details. France . . . weapons of mass destruction??!!?!?! Hmmm! I GOT IT! Butter, cream and Lard! Such a conspiracy they've concocted to destroy the US! Starkman
Tom, Your dismissial of the evidence (last paragraph) within the "vanity Fair" aricle itself--before even bothering to read it--speaks volumes! "It's too complex" for us to consider the evidence of a mere American reporter's firsthand investigation. But it just happens to contradict you. Sorry, Tom. I have more respect for facts than you. How "French' of you. Or, should I say, mighty white of you. The Right have indeed been anti-semitic. But who holds power today? The Left Who rationalizes anti-semitism as anti-nationalism? Both. Who looks the other way in the face of anti-semitism? The Left. You would learn a few things from reading the article. (But I won't bet on it.) It's joined my files of stories on contemporary horror and fatuities and lies by the Left. --Orson
I was therefore amused to read a US congressman's dismay at Tom's insouciance, coming instead from a certified Eurocrat: "'When the issue of increased anti-Semitism was raised, he looked at us and said, 'There's no anti-Semitism. There's no wave of anti-Semitism in Europe,'" said Florida Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler, who has visited Israel and Syria recently. "'I was stunned to hear him say, more or less, that there has not been a rise in anti-Semitism in Europe,'" said Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a leader on the committee. 'And so I said, 'Oh, it must be another Europe.' And other members couldn't believe it either.'" "The Simon Wiesenthal Center and other groups have noted a spike in anti-Semitic attacks in Europe since 2001, with 1,300 attacks in France alone, including the stabbing of a rabbi in Paris and the torching of a synagogue in Marseilles. Last week, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held its first-ever conference on anti-Semitism in Vienna. At the conference the head of the US delegation, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani, referred to anti-Semitism as "a burden that has held Europe back for two millennia.' Germany agreed to host a follow-up conference to be held next year in Berlin on anti-Semitism specifically." (Source: Jerusalem Post, 27 June 2003.) And people doubt ("Those lying Jew-bastards!") me when I scream about institutional denial? It seems my astonishment and outrage has found better company. --Orson
“Judeophobia Explains the Pro-Palestinian Hysteria of the European Left” Transtlation of an inter view with a former Spanish MP on ant-semitism on the Left. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/799547/posts Then there's this recent roundtable on the issue from US but mostly French intellectuals, including Jean-Francois Revel, on how this phenomenon affects France; most troubling. http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8289 Ignorance can last forever, but enlightenment is up to you. --Orson
Le Pen's success?? I thought Black Jack Chirac wailed on his heiny. Must have been that other France.
There is plenty of truth to this publication. A jewish friend of mine was given the "2nd class" treatment when he visited Paris a few years ago. He swore he would never return. Anti-semitism isn't new in France. There's plenty of hard evidence (Simon Wiesenthal Center) that it existed long before the invasion of France by the Nazis during WW2.
Had Orson stopped foaming at the mouth long enough to remember my previous comments on this topic, he would have rememberede that I have agreed on a number of occasions that there is an antisemitism problem in Europe, and have even hyperlinked to a petition complaining about antisemitism in European universities. But the fact of the matter is that Chirac has never made any comment that could be reasonably construed as antisemitic, and the right-wing Le Pen--who was indeed trounced by Chirac, but made it to a two-man runoff with him--has. (Chirac also holds the distinction of being the intended victim of a neo-Nazi assassination attempt.) My point was not that there are no antisemitic liberals (there may--may--even be more antisemitic "liberals" than "conservatives" in the Western world); only that antisemitism can't be used as an excuse to further bolster hatred and bigotry against "the Left" and "the French." As for opposition to the Sharon administration versus antisemitism, I should not need to remind you, Orson, that there is an opposition party within Israel that also opposes some of Sharon's policies, and whose representatives (including the assassinated Yitzhak Rabin) have served in Israel's highest office. Sharon is the Israeli equivalent to Norman Schwartzkopf. He is not the only living Israeli politician, and his policies are not the only policies that have been represented in Israeli government. Criticism of the Sharon administration is no more anti-Israeli than criticism of the Bush administration would be anti-American. Hey, wait a minute... Cheers,
To sum things up, Orson: I agree that there is a serious antisemitism problem in France. I do not agree that "the French are antisemitic" or that "the Left is antisemitic." I have always believed that it is pointless to respond to dehumanization and bigotry with more dehumanization and bigotry. If you can look past the fact that I'm a member of "the Left" and "the South" and see me as a human being, you'll find this philosophy to be consistent with my posts on this forum. If you believe--as I do--that antisemitism is a serious problem in the contemporary world and would like to study it in more depth, I hope that you'll join me on the H-Net ANTISEMITISM listserv. As far as this thread goes, you can have the last word. Cheers,
Here's a conundrum for all of you Mensa geniuses: Orson is passionate about something called "antiSemitism" that he believes exists in France and among the "Left". Apparently this means that somebody, somewhere, doesn't like Jews. Orson obviously doesn't like France very much. Others on Degreeinfo don't like Islam. In fact, I suppose that if I looked hard enough, I could find somebody that dislikes just about anything. So why is this different? What makes it important? To put it bluntly, why should I care? I don't care about Jews very much, one way or another. They aren't a big object of my attention. I have some Jewish friends, but the fact that they are Jewish is kind of tangential to our friendship. I had a Swedish grandmother, but that doesn't move them very much either. In other words, to me, Jews are kind of like Sikhs. A small religious group with some idiosyncratic customs, at least among some of the devout. The family across the street from me are Sikhs, and that's cool. But I generally treat the Sikh Khalsa as I treat Judaism, with a kind of dispassionate academic interest. My own path extends in a different direction. In my experience, very few people go about their lives obsessed by Jews. People don't even think about them from one day to the next. People don't go about their days obsessed by Buddhist monks either. I expect that much the same thing is true in France. My experience with France has certainly not contradicted that. So why do we see these repeated Degreeinfo attempts to move Jews to the center of attention, to tie them to the French in some highly emotionalized relationship, and to treat that relationship as if it were somehow very close to the focus and the fulcrum of world history? I realize that some kinds of Christian theology put the Jews in a central position, but didn't Orson say he was an atheist at one point? So, geniuses, go back and start at the beginning so that somebody like me can understand. Why should I be more interested in Jews than in Jains?
