op-ed: let the paris attacks show us our common enemy

Following the recent attacks in Paris, which left over 120 people dead on November 13th, it seems what we still can never seem to afford neither the dead, nor the living, is context. Without it, all our efforts at resolution fall flat on their face. This fear, grief and loss is a lived reality, daily, outside of those moments it pierces the bubble of the global North. If we want to show respect, as many now wish to, then we must learn to lay our condolences besides the truth of our collective responsibility. And importantly, if we come together to find one common enemy, let it be those who divide us up to make enemies amongst ourselves; the political, military and corporate leaders not just on ISIS’ side but on all sides.

By Joshua Virasami, AFROPUNK Contributor
Banner photo: Melbourne Street Avant-Garde

#TerrorismHasNoReligion is trending, but religious extremism is the left aorta at the heart of this. Terrorism does not have a religion, but it has an institutional religious moniker. The siege of Western Asia by ISIS is enforced under an extremist Muslim card, in the occupied territories of Palestine genocide is carried out under extremist Jewish brands, and the NATO invasion of Iraq was propelled by extremist Christian ideas (for example, former U.S. President George W. Bush claimed that God told him to go to war in Iraq). The leaders of ISIS and the GCC(Gulf Monarchies)NATO nexus, are all part of an extremist outfit that perpetuates chaos to prolong power.

Black and brown communities are being besieged. French President François Hollande’s deafening speech misinforming the world that this is the worst attack of its kind since WW2, was a violent erasure of how this siege is at the heart of radicalisation, of episodes like the Paris Massacre of 1961 which saw French Police kill over 200 Algerians on Saint-Michel bridge, unconscious bodies thrown into the Seine. The paris attacks are part of a timeline, and NATO has been at war in all four corners of the globe for many decades.

Young Muslim men are already being arbitrarily detained in Paris, families being torn up, homes raided, as a 3 month national state of emergency hovers like a torturous big brother over a divided nation. Mosques are being set alight across Europe. Our Hijabi sisters are being shoved into moving trains, being attacked in broad daylight. European leaders are using this as an opportunity to shut down Fortress Europe to displaced migrants. Refugee camps are facing arson attacks. Fascists have already begun to further earmark our communities for sustained violence.

Those of us who will now write and shout, day in and day out, beseeching for clarity and context, will be called apologists. The saviour brigades will decry that this is a moment for coming together and hand holding, that ‘they’ hate ‘our values’, what values? The values which now see France bombing war-torn Syria? The country France manufactured with imperial map-making post WW1? Whom they committed war crimes against inorder to maintain the French Mandate? The world leaders will hypocritically bemoan that we are politicising this issue, but aren’t our lives are just political fodder to them, so we must return fire in this political battle. To my people, keep speaking up for one another, no matter how hard they try to silence us.

On the Syrian border last year, and in Iraq, I heard news of not dozens, but several hundred young and inspired ISIS fighters flocking back to the nations of Europe. Kurdish freedom fighters explained to me how they had identified over 60 nationalities between captured or dead ISIS fighters, many, they said, were known to be heading back to Belgium, France, Britain and others.

The warmongerers in the East and West want us to believe this is a war of ideologies, that you are with us or against us, lies. To the soldiers, Salafists and my people I say this, there is a third way, the true revolutionary must be non-aligned in these times. As people of colour we need to carve out our position as radically opposed to all forces who see everyday people as tools to gain power and wealth, we must maintain our non-aligned position, we know that black power, people power, are the only blocs capable of bringing lasting peace.

The mindset of unrighteous militancy is born from a context, it does not emerge overnight, and to assess it from its final reaction, the explosions in the street, is to miss all the opportunities it could’ve been prevented before. As much as mainstream media will erase the back story, we must start our analysis with the racist, sexist and imperial policies of political leaders globally, but particularly in the Global North. The plights of these young men, who are compelled to perpetrate such heinous crimes need to be studied in order to understand them, otherwise any respect we pay to the sanctity of life is empty and temporary.

Photo | VGrigas

It is easy to blame the young Muslim men in Paris, or Britain or elsewhere; it is harder but necessary to understand what drives people to commit these crimes. To some of the culprits these are not crimes, they are retribution for European governments continued imperial policies across Africa and Asia, to them this is politics, it is about the lines Sykes (Britain) and Picot (France) drew across indigenous land. Therefore, if we want to speak about prevention, we must also speak about neo-colonialism, about bombs, about borders.

Why do they choose violence? ‘Might is right’, the dominant patriarchal ideology chiseled into the mind of young men, by ‘shock and awe’ wars, by punitive judicial systems plays a role in this. In Britain, government cuts to services providing solace for disenfranchised young Muslim men, and the public character assassination of groups who try to intercept extremism, are also to blame.

Political narratives, born of a rich-white-straight-male ideology, dispersed through the echo chambers of mainstream media, which scapegoat migrants and ramp us xenophobia, is to blame. Predatory Imams, often funded by the British Ally of Saudi Arabia, converting young Muslim men to violence in mosques across Europe, are to blame.

Bombs will detonate across Europe, as they do in Africa and Asia daily, with increased frequency, unless we organize day in and day out against the very same world leaders who will now use this tragedy as a political tool to further a program of perpetual terrorism against black and brown bodies in Europe and all over the world.

Pray for Paris by all means, but pray too for those marginalized communities already facing the wrath of fascism as violent attacks already take place against migrants. 40 homes were burned down in Calais where migrants await crossing. Pray for Muslims, for migrants, for black and brown people, for they have long been and are now facing the full wrath of state terrorism and fascism in France and across Europe. The narrative cannot afford to slip away into feel-good factors, and pat-on-the-back exercises of ‘have mercy on Muslims’, now is the time for Solidarity, not charity.

As Eduardo Galeano once said, charity is vertical but solidarity is horizontal. Stand/sit shoulder to shoulder with those facing loss and oppression, but remember that our trajectory in Europe is that we will reap more of these tragedies, as we sow seeds of terrorism over the world. This cannot afford to be a temporary interest, we need to collectively stay out beyond tip of the iceberg and begin to survey the huge body beneath that is holding up and causing the fractures on the surface. Be patient, be critical and organise.

Joshua Virasami
@joshuavirasami