What are the real lessons to be learned from the Toulouse killings?
People were quick to blame the far Right for the shootings in Toulouse; now the finger points at Islam. But the killer and the killer alone is responsible, writes George Grant.
Even before French police stormed the building containing the
Toulouse terror-suspect Mohammed Merah, questions were being asked
as to what lessons France
could learn from this gruesome episode.
Revealingly, however, as the killer’s suspected identity metamorphosed, so
both the ‘lessons’ to be learned, and the identity of those stepping forward
to teach them, changed just as fast. This should tell us something
important.
Initial reports had suggested that the killer was a Neo Nazi with links to
groups on the far Right. Certainly, given the racial profile of those he
killed, this was plausible. The three French soldiers he murdered last week
were of North African or Caribbean origin, and a neo-Nazi attack on a Jewish
school would also not be difficult to comprehend. One witness of the school
shootings said she saw a tattoo on the killer’s face beneath his mask, and
links were drawn with three French paratroopers ejected from the army in
2008 for their racist activities, which included executing a salute in front
of a swastika flag.
No sooner was this connection made than efforts to contextualise the killer’s
actions on this basis began in earnest. At the forefront was François
Hollande, the socialist candidate in this year’s French presidential
elections, who accused President Sarkozy and the far-right candidate Marine
Le Pen of fostering a climate of intolerance towards foreigners in France.
“There are words that influence, that penetrate, that free up”, said M. Hollande, referring to recent speeches by President Sarkozy and Mme Le Pen on immigration. “Those who have responsibility must master their vocabulary”.
Joining M. Hollande in these insinuations was François Bayrou, the centrist
presidential candidate, who claimed that the murder of children “because of
their origin, of the religion of their family” could be linked “to a growing
climate of intolerance” in France.
The message of both men could not have been clearer. France, and the French
political right in particular, bore some responsibility for these crimes,
and greater tolerance towards immigrants was therefore needed if similar
incidents were not to happen again.
Barely had this lesson been proffered, however, than police reported that they
suspected the killer of having an altogether different identity. He was not
a skinhead after all, but Mohammed Merah, a 24-year old French citizen of
Algerian extraction with suspected links to al Qaeda. Just as his identity
changed, so his suspected motives and the lessons France needed to learn
from them changed also. The soldiers had been killed not because they
weren’t white, but because they had fought for France in Afghanistan. The
Jewish children were killed to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children
killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
In a flash, Marine Le Pen was off the ropes and into the centre of the ring:
“It is time to wage war on these fundamentalist political groups who are
killing our children”, she thundered. “The fundamentalist threat has been
underestimated. Security is a theme that has just signed up to the
presidential campaign”.
The French, however, have not been alone in their opportunism. From the
British far-left came Lindsey German, head of the UK’s Stop the War
Coalition, who offered an altogether different narrative. “Islamophobia is
not some aberration in France: it stems directly from the support for
imperialist wars and the legacy of colonial rule.” Anti-Muslim racism,
France’s involvement in Afghanistan, and the legacy of French rule in
Algeria were in fact to blame. The lesson? End these wars and clamp down on
the racism, and such killings will not so likely happen again.
How extraordinary. Exactly the same man committed exactly the same murders
against exactly the same people. What changed was not the man, but who those
watching suspected him to be. So too his ‘agenda’, understood as a reaction
to supposed aggravating factors generated by others.
The point here should be clear: it is far too easy to shift responsibility
away from the man and onto the environment in which he operates, and to
advance a given political agenda accordingly.
This is not to argue that context has no bearing on peoples’ thoughts and
actions, but it is to argue that when those thoughts and actions are carried
into the realm of cold-blooded murder, context should never be used as an
excuse, and it should be used to argue for a change in this or that policy
only very rarely.
One person may feel very strongly that the war in Afghanistan is wrong.
Another may feel equally strongly that anti-immigrant rhetoric is unhelpful.
Neither should seek to use the actions of such a man as this for
justification of their arguments. It is quite possible to disagree with
something in the strongest terms and not turn to the gun to settle the
dispute. That, indeed, is the essence of democracy.
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