What’s the first thing you think when you hear of a major tragedy? I would bet that, almost simultaneously with sympathy for the victims, would be the reflexive ‘Thank God it wasn’t us.’
But what if it was ‘us’? I suspect the instant response of ‘Why us?’ would be quickly followed by ‘How could this happen?’ and ‘Who’s to blame?’
However, in some tragedies, like the recent Paris attacks, tied up in that question of outrage and shock is perhaps another fleeting thought ‘I hope it wasn’t somehow our fault …’
The French authorities and media were breathtakingly fast to blame Belgian border authorities for ‘clear security breaches’. Subsequent criticisms were levelled at the Belgian government for not keeping its own house in order—a clear reference to the disturbing discoveries of Islamic State cells and their under-monitored (possible completely undetected) subversive activity in the Brussels’ suburb of Molenbeek.
There was patent relief in the understandable French fury. But I think there’s a cynicism in the outrage expressed by the Hollande Government. The implication was that there was a single chink in the European armour—Belgium. Two seconds of clear thinking tells you that this is rubbish, but it was a neat and necessary sleight-of-hand to buy the French Government some time and earn them some unsullied sympathy. What’s interesting is that Belgium didn’t contest this deception. This is probably because they realise that there is much more at stake than mere national pride, and because, while it’s a deeply simplistic answer, it’s not entirely untrue.
For the moment, what Europe needs is clear air in which to formulate a public response as a Union. This means the victim gets to call the shots … at least publically. I suspect that behind the scenes the conversations are a great deal more messy. The whole of Europe is victim here and, to a substantial degree, the whole of Europe is also culpable.
But let’s first just drill down on France for the moment. Are they blameless victims in all this? Of course they’re not. Which is not the same as saying they deserved what happened.
But to suggest that these attacks came out of nowhere is to be ignorant, both of French history and of the realities of contemporary Paris. Most of us know something of the colonial histories of Europe, whether it be France or England or Belgium or Spain … even Denmark. And we’re probably familiar with the idea of post-colonial writing, which seeks to reverse the power of words and give voice to the edge, the fringes of the colonial world, the colonised
Since the attacks of November 13th 2015, I’ve been asking whether there is an area of post-post-colonial studies (don’t worry, I know it’s a terrible name … I’m working on something less clunky). This would be an arena which says, the colonised have spoken loudly and clearly, and the ball is back in the courts of Europe—what do the colonisers have to say for themselves? I’m sure there must be some research going on somewhere, but frankly the topic is more urgent than just some ill-defined and scattered researchers buried in universities.
The question has been asked of Europe for more than half a century—‘What have you got to say for yourselves?’ But at no time has the question been put more loudly and distinctly than with the recent migration of refugees to the continent. And while the questions asked by the Paris attackers are quite different and nakedly opportunistic, they still manage to reinforce and amplify the questions asked by the refugees, ‘Europe, you are not an island. You are complicit in a lot of that happens to us—past, present and future. You can’t stay silent and pretend innocence. What say you?’
I would suggest that anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with Paris would have some sense of the powder-keg nature of the City. Paris is not large. The central area within the Boulevard Périphérique, the large ring road that behaves something like a modern-day fortress wall, is small. This is the area that tourists see. It’s an area so entrancing and all-embracing that few visitors would ever need to stray beyond its charms. This is the area that defines the timeless image of Paris—Europe’s wealthiest and most seductive destination. Bizarrely though, one only has to stray a few kilometres over this notional boundary to discover a very alarming world that’s so at odds with the picture perfection that it feels not just like a different city, but a different continent altogether.
Five years ago, while researching for a project at the State Library of Victoria, I had to visit the French diplomatic archive, which had moved from the middle of the city to the strange netherworld beyond the Périphérique. I took the train out to La Courneuve, barely 10km from Notre Dame. The Archive sits just within a second ring road, very close to Saint Denis, the area that so much attention focussed on after the recent bombings near the Stade de France. Alongside the railway line to La Courneuve, between these two ring roads, lay a vast shanty town which, if I didn’t know I was in Paris, looked for all the world like something we usually associate with Mumbai or Rio de Janeiro or Cape Town. Lining the tracks were tiny make-shift shelters. But beyond that was a huge area of slum huts that appeared to stretch as far as I could see. It seemed the size of a small suburb. I was so shocked by the vision that I immediately started asking questions, trying to figure out what this was. I found vague, scattered references, but there was no clear acknowledgement of the space—it was so large, and yet so invisible. All this, combined with the vast swathes of high-density project suburbs, housing the more disadvantaged and disenfranchised of Paris that ring the City centre, makes for a very different reading of the Parisian social ecology and dynamic. Step outside the hermetic seal of popular Paris and you realise the entire city is a hair-trigger mix of wealthy delusion and impoverished disparity.
But in varying degrees, that also describes the whole of Europe. The region’s attempts at pious innocence, which seems to have worked in the past, simply doesn’t convince the wider world. It’s an old form of Wizard of Oz posturing that all Western nations persist on engaging in—a patronising game of bluff that has managed to keep widespread scrutiny and critique at bay. But the dam of discontent has burst, and the boundaries—cultural, historical and physical have been breached. This globalised world is reconfiguring itself into the single organism that it’s always been, but which has never been stressed in the way it is today.
None of these questions are regional. None of these dilemmas can be quarantined. The Paris climate accord is an acknowledgment that the environment doesn’t observe political boundaries. It’s only a matter of time before the world realises that our social ecology and survival is also a globally singular issue. If we continue to try to bludgeon ‘difference’ into submission, no matter how toxic that difference might be, we will continue to create fractures and widen chasms that can swallow us all—self-righteous and infidel alike.
As long as we maintain the ‘us and them’ stance, the options for everyone are fairly straightforward—conquest or coexistence. If the battle of the ideologies persists, dialogue remains limited, always framed in terms of a struggle for control. A few years ago Dr Gesine Schwann, political scientist and one time German Presidential aspirant, told me that the German people had to accept an immigration future. It seems surprisingly prescient given recent events, but the implication was that Germany would either go there willingly, or be dragged there kicking and screaming. Dr Schwann’s point though was that this had already happened, in part, with Turkish guest workers, and the country hadn’t unravelled as a result.
However, Turkey is perceived by the West as Middle East ‘light’ when compared to the Muslim world that lies beyond the Bosphorus, and this is the major stumbling block. There’s been much commentary recently from many quarters about the absence of what they believe is any discernible ‘reformation’ within the Islamic faith, as if that absolves the West of any responsibility and places the onus of survival entirely on the political and religious leadership of the Muslim world. I would argue fiercely that this is a vast, ignorant and potentially calamitous lie that we perpetuate to ourselves. If we hold this line, it can only end in a pyrrhic victory for stupidity.
There is no single Martin Luther of the Islamic world about to nail a manifesto of change to the door of a mosque. Instead we have had millions upon millions of intelligent, brave and forthright Muslims risking everything to reshape the Islamic world by challenging the forces of old, repressive traditions and teaching. If the Islamic State is anything, it’s the Muslim world’s version of the Inquisition—a terrible, sadistic and irreligiously desperate fight to hang onto old, patriarchal and deeply oppressive distortions of religious and social teaching.
I believe that Islam is undergoing the greatest reformation we’ve ever seen. If we persist in our deliberately binary responses to the complexities of what we’re witnessing across so much of the world, I think we demonstrate our failure to maintain an ‘enlightened’ state by determinedly refusing to adapt to a world-in-flux. The moderate Islamic peoples of the world need our support and encouragement. The tribal breast beating of so many of our Western leaders and commentariat is a sad reminder that centuries of historical sectarianism and violence within the Christian world was usually only about power and politics. It rarely had anything to do with the Christian faith.
A fortnight’s stay in Berlin a few weeks ago, placed me with within a kilometre of the City’s refugee registration centre—the Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales. Berliners have determinedly sought to set a high benchmark for Germany, Europe and the wider world with regard to the current and future tides of need. I was so moved by the unambiguous unity of voice from the people. But even here the dilemmas are myriad, with nothing straightforward. For all of Berlin’s efforts to take in a record number of refugees, fully conscious that German migrants were made welcome after WWII, the government was sued by a group of refugees for not processing them as fast as had been promised. In addition, while the German Government wants to present a united front, many individual states or Bundesländer have said they will take no refugees. And so the burden falls very unevenly on the shoulders of the states that have said ‘yes’. This seems unsustainable with the record number of roughly a million migrants in just one year … and many many millions more to follow.
Whatever your view of German Chancellor Angela Merkel might be, her statement that the current refugee crisis is an ‘historic test’ for Europe, is unarguable. Her Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, called it a ‘rendezvous with globalisation’. But this moment is not just happening for Europe. It is happening for the world. There is no hiding from this truth. On a small, spherical planet, what goes around truly comes around.