Censorship and the Empire

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Censorship and the Empire

Dieudonne and the Uses of "Anti-Semitism"

By DIANA JOHNSTONE

When power becomes blatantly criminal, it’s time to make people shut 
up. That time seems to have come throughout the Empire. Freedom of 
speech is increasingly threatened, both in the United States and in 
"old Europe", although the attacks come from quite different angles.

In the United States, the assault is clearly led by far right 
fanatics such as David Horowitz, who is inciting students to denounce 
professors who dare try to teach them something they didn’t think 
they already knew. The purpose is clearly to ban criticism of United 
States war policy.

In old Europe, the assault is more subtle and probably less lucid in 
its aims. It is led in part by people who consider themselves on the 
left and who seem blissfully unaware of the danger of limiting 
freedom of speech.

In Germany, it has long been illegal to deny that the Holocaust took 
place: the offense called "the Auschwitz lie" can be punished by up 
to three years [actually,  it's five yearsŠ]  in prison. German 
television insists relentlessly on Hitler and his crimes, as if he 
were still lurking in the wings. This has done nothing to prevent the 
rise of neo-Nazi groups. It may even have helped them grow, in 
accordance with the phenomenon, demonstrated in the Soviet zone, that 
establishing "official truth"-even if true-can be the best way to 
make many people believe the contrary. But more than that, the far 
right in Germany seems to be gaining ground as a result of widespread 
disillusion, especially in Eastern Germany, with the neoliberal 
economic policies that were supposed to bring prosperity but instead 
have brought growing unemployment and poverty.

In any case, the center left government of Social Democrats and 
Greens has undertaken to react to rightist demonstrations by 
broadening the law against "Volksverhetzung"-a concept that can be 
translated as "incitement of the masses" or "poisoning of the minds 
of the people". In the future, it should not be enough to prosecute 
persons who "approve, justify, deny or play down genocide of Jews and 
gypsies" in a way apt to "disturb public peace" (a vague notion). The 
new law would make it equally criminal to speak in any of those ways 
about any case of "genocide" condemned by any international court 
whose jurisdiction has been recognized by the government of the 
Federal Republic of Germany.

Now, judicial history is marked by famously unjust verdicts reversed 
after long struggles to right the wrong. But the German law could 
make it a crime to challenge the International Tribunal on Former 
Yugoslavia, set up by NATO powers to control and manipulate political 
conflict in the Balkans, when it officially convicts Serbs for 
"genocide". Anyone who points out that the Tribunal’s definition of 
"genocide" has been contrived for political purposes, and that its 
procedures are blatantly prejudiced, might risk being arrested.

If there are to be limits on freedom of speech, they should be 
directly related to action. Thus, if a political leader exhorts a 
hall full of followers to go out and commit a pogrom, this can 
legitimately be considered a criminal act. But the trend is to expand 
criminalization of speech far beyond such incitements to embrace 
expression of opinions, including opinions about the past-about facts 
which by their very nature may be debated but cannot be changed.

In France, the restriction on freedom of speech also began with 
criminalization of "the Auschwitz lie". And as in Germany, it is 
unlikely to stop there. Incitement to racial hatred or discrimination 
has been outlawed in France since 1972. In July 1990, the French 
National Assembly adopted an amendment extending the 1972 law to 
persons who dispute the existence of crimes against humanity, as 
defined by the Nuremburg tribunal, and "which have been committed 
either by the members of an organization declared criminal [...] or 
by a person found guilty of such crimes by a French or international 
jurisdiction". The intent of this law was clearly to punish 
statements denying the reality of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. 
However, the unspecified reference to "international jurisdiction" 
may have unwittingly opened the door to prosecution of persons 
challenging the verdicts of quite different international tribunals, 
such as the NATO-linked tribunal in The Hague.

The 1990 amendment, known as the "Gayssot law", was introduced by a 
Communist member of the Assembly. It seems that the French left, 
especially the Communist Party, in its understandable desire to 
preserve the legacy of the French Resistance during World War II, has 
seen no danger in setting a precedent for punishing speech as well as 
acts.

In recent years, the context has changed considerably. In the face of 
worldwide protests over treatment of Palestinians, increasing efforts 
have been made to extend the definition of "anti-Semitism" to cover 
criticism of Israel. By insisting that there can be no distinction 
between Jews and "the Jewish state" (a proposition vigorously denied 
by many if not most French Jews), and thereby identifying criticism 
of Israel with "anti-Semitism", the ultra-Zionists seem to be 
provoking the anti-Semitism they denounce. Whether or not this is 
deliberate is debatable. France has the largest Jewish population in 
Europe, a skilled and assimilated population that Ariel Sharon is 
openly trying to lure to Israel by claiming that Jews are not safe 
anywhere else, and notably not in France because of alleged 
anti-Semitism.

Once criticism of Israel is identified with anti-Semitism, it becomes 
implicitly taboo because of the association of anti-Semitism with 
holocaust denial. A main practitioner of this moral intimidation is 
Roger Cukierman, a far right Zionist who presides over the 
"Representative Council of Jewish organizations of France" (CRIF). In 
April 2002, Cukierman actually hailed the surprisingly strong showing 
of Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential elections as 
a "good lesson for the Arabs". Cukierman surely does not represent 
the countless French citizens of Jewish origin who are not members of 
Jewish organizations. Nevertheless, CRIF’s annual dinner has become a 
"must" for France’s political leaders, who listen docilely each year 
while Cukierman castigates them for not doing enough to stop 
anti-Semitism. (The exception, two years ago, was a Green who walked 
out after Cukierman identified "Greens and Reds" with fascist 
"browns" on account of their support to Palestinians.) This year, 
sixteen cabinet ministers bowed their heads while Cukierman attacked 
President Chirac’s foreign policy. By this is meant Chirac’s 
opposition to the U.S. war against Iraq and attempt to pursue a 
balanced policy toward the Middle East.

This illustrates the fact that the "fight against anti-Semitism" is 
increasingly being injected into geopolitical discussion, as a 
pretext for stigmatizing growing opposition to policies of both 
Israel and the United States.

This stigmatization has reached a new pitch with the current campaign 
to silence, legally or illegally, the French comedian Dieudonné. The 
campaign began back in December 2003 following a short TV sketch in 
which Dieudonné, dressed as a uniformed Israeli settler in the 
Palestinian occupied territories, called on young people to "join the 
American-Zionist axis of good". This was punctuated by "Isra-heil !" 
An uproar ensued. Jewish organizations were largely successful in 
forcing theaters around France to cancel Dieudonné’s appearances, 
sometimes by threatening violent disruption. Nevertheless, courts 
dismissed all the numerous lawsuits brought against him. When he 
succeeded in finding a theater that would let him perform, he won 
standing ovations from a full house.

Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala is the French son of a mother from Brittany 
and a father from Cameroon. As rather frequently happens, his 
education in Catholic schools turned "God-given" (the literal 
translation of his Christian name) into a freethinker sharply 
critical of all religions. In his one-man shows, he habitually 
parodies all religions without exception including the animism of his 
African ancestors. Irreverence is a staple of French humor, which 
constantly ridicules Catholicism and Islam in the most outrageous 
terms.

Insisting on his commitment to equality and universal human values, 
Dieudonné has refused to censure himself as his critics demand. They 
have been lying in wait. In a press conference in Algiers last month, 
he cited the expression "memorial pornography", coined by an Israeli 
historian, Idith Zerkal, to refer to aspects of certain 
commemorations of the Holocaust. Apparently, none of the Algerian 
journalists saw fit to report this particular remark, which reduced 
it to a private expression. However, it was picked up by a Zionist 
website, <http://www.proche.orient.com/>www.proche.orient.com, which 
spread the word that Dieudonné had described the Shoah as "memorial 
pornography".

A new and more violent "Dieudonné affair" was launched. The stock in 
trade of comedians is excess and bad taste. On both those counts, 
Dieudonné is relatively mild. His manner is good natured; with none 
of the venom caracterizing certain U.S. talk show hosts. Back in 
Paris, Dieudonné told the press that his words had been distorted. He 
had never mentioned the Shoah itself, and stressed his respect for 
the victims of that great tragedy-a tragedy for all humanity.

But it was not enough to correct misquotes.. Whatever his words, 
hostile reporters demanded to know: "but what did you mean?" In other 
words, what did you think? The criminalization of spoken words leads 
almost inevitably to the attempt to criminalize unspoken thoughts. 
Explaining his political outlook, Dieudonné said that his fight 
against racism led him to oppose "exacerbated communitarism" which 
sets one religious community against another. But why was there no 
memorial for victims of the slave trade? Why was it that subsidies 
were available for some 150 films on the Holocaust, while he was 
unable to get backing for a film on the "code noir", the legal basis 
for the French slave trade? This did absolutely nothing to assuage 
Dieudonne’s critics, and the chorus of media attacks in the following 
days became more virulent. Bernard-Henri Levy flamboyantly described 
the comedian as the "son of Le Pen"- regardless of the well-known 
fact that in his home town of Dreux, Dieudonné has been politically 
active in opposing Le Pen’s National Front. For Dieudonné, the 
cancellations and death threats are pouring in.

Even if he wins in court, as he has in the past, the media are 
clearly out to destroy him. The significance of this campaign goes 
far beyond its effects on the career of a talented young performer 
with children to support. Two more general effects can be signaled.

First of all, the campaign against Dieudonné amounts to an attempt to 
silence a leading voice of secular universalism with a strong 
following among young people of all communities in France, 
notably-but by no means exclusively-among children of immigrants from 
African and Arab countries. Many, unlike him, are religious. But if 
veiled Muslim girls can laugh at the comedians’ satire of Islamic 
extremists, why is similar satire of Orthodox Zionist settlers not 
allowed? Why does the CRIF have more influence than any organization 
representing the far more numerous Muslim community? Isn’t the 
secular universalism of Dieudonné a healthy response to the threat of 
conflict between religious communities? Secondly, and perhaps of even 
greater significance, the campaign against the French comic is a 
small part of a broad tendency to use the charge of "anti-Semitism" 
to silence criticism of United States policy in the Middle East, 
including the conquest of Iraq. This is sometimes blatant and 
sometimes subtle. The expression "memorial pornography" is no doubt 
lacking in both precision and good taste. But it expresses a certain 
fatigue, not least among a number of Jewish high school students, 
with the constant commemoration of a terrible past tragedy, to the 
exclusion of others (the bombing of Hiroshima, for example). There is 
a growing suspicion that this repetition is not really helping to 
ensure that "it can’t happen again". Rather, it is being exploited to 
silence opposition to the war policies of the United States and its 
main partner in the Middle East. Such opposition, after all, was the 
meaning of Dieudonné’s parody of "the axis of evil"-essentially 
concerned with the present and the immediate future, and by no means 
a denial of the past.

On the ideological level, the constant reference to the Holocaust, 
with the suggestion that a new persecution of Europe’s Jews may begin 
tomorrow, creates a subtle but profound cleavage between the United 
States and "old Europe". For Germany, obviously, but also-with 
infinitely less justification, but equal insistance from American 
critics-for France, reference to the Holocaust arouses an endless 
sense of guilt, disqualifying those European powers from any future 
geopolitical role.

For the United States, on the contrary, the Holocaust has become the 
key feature of an ideology justifying U.S. military intervention to 
"save victims" around the world. This is based on the mythical notion 
(which ignores, among other things, the decisive role of the Red Army 
in defeating the Third Reich) that it was the United States that 
finally came to the rescue of the victims of the Holocaust. The 
implication of this myth, which underlies the enormous exaggeration 
of "the return of anti-Semitism" in France, is that Europeans, if 
left to their own devices, will probably start to persecute the Jews 
once again. And only the United States can stop them.

Thus the myth of benevolent U.S. military intervention is empowered 
by the ideological exploitation of the Holocaust, just as "old 
Europe" is disempowered by it. This is one reason why politicians and 
media in Europe by no means all of them Jewish-who want their 
countries to follow Washington find it politically useful to keep 
harping on the Holocaust.

This is not respect for the victims but exploitation of them. By a 
constant implicit blackmail, the pro-NATO politicians and media help 
keep Europe morally crippled, disqualified from opposing the U.S.-led 
wars to remodel the Middle East.

There seems to have been more indignation in French media over some 
garbled reports of remarks by Dieudonné than over the total 
destruction of the Iraqi city of Fallujah. In such a world, is there 
much place left for humorists?

Diana Johnstone is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/158367084X/counterpunchmaga>Fools’ 
Crusade : Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions published by 
Monthly Review Press.

SITE SOURCE : <http://www.counterpunch.org/>http://www.counterpunch.org