Diana Johnstone: An Open Letter to Noam Chomsky
Next, in the more explosive Faurisson case, the simple fact of defending the principle of free speech was interpreted as support for Robert Faurisson's theses, despite Chomsky's insistence that the two things were quite separate.
The "Gayssot law" and State Religion
Nobody could have been fully aware at the time, around 1980, of where the "Faurisson affair" would lead. The uproar over the literature professor who undertook to challenge the accepted historic fact that gas chambers were used to exterminate Jews in Nazi concentration camps turned out to be a key event in a process that has led to the establishment of the Holocaust, or "Shoah" (the Hebrew religious term now commonly used in France) as a sort of religion of memory and repentance, raised to the status of official dogma.
Far from following Chomsky's advice to let issues be settled by free debate, the French National Assembly in July 1990 adopted an amendment to an 1881 law on press freedom known as the "Gayssot law", after the Communist member who introduced it. This amendment specifically calls for punishment of anyone who publicly "contests" (questions or disputes) "the existence of one or several crimes against humanity" as defined by the 1945 Nuremberg Tribunal statute and which have been committed "either by members of an organization declared criminal" under that statute or "by a person found guilty of such crimes by a French or international jurisdiction". The Nuremberg crimes against humanity are listed as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and all other inhuman acts committed against civilian populations" as well as "persecutions for political, racial or religious motivations".
Generally, this law has been used to prosecute or silence persons who do not in fact contest, dispute or question the existence of the above-named crimes in general, but who question the use of gas chambers to commit mass genocide. Since actual "negation" of Nazi persecution of Jews is nearly nonexistent, the law has been brought to bear especially on persons who, because of their general political orientation, are suspected of concealed anti-semitism. Such was the lawsuit brought against Bruno Gollnisch, a leading member of the National Front. Gollnisch, a professor of Asian studies at the University of Lyon, merely dodged a question about the Holocaust during an interview, saying that it was an issue for experts. The case against him was finally dismissed on appeal to the highest court in France, but meanwhile he had been suspended for five years from his university position.
This sort of law has effects that go beyond its immediate application.
First, it has contributed to the sacralization of the Holocaust, or "Shoah", which has increasingly been regarded less as an historic event than as a sacred dogma. In a secular state where traditional religions are excluded from public schools, only the Shoah demands both the mental and emotional adherence traditionally reserved for religion. Its place in the school curriculum grows as the teaching of history in general shrinks.
Initially, Nazi crimes were taught as contrary to humanity in general, but as identification of victims has been increasingly centered on Jews, the effect is to implicitly divide school children between potential victims, namely the Jews, and everyone else, whose innocence is less assured. This amounts to a reversal of the much-decried Medieval stigmatization of Jews as "Christ-killers". Today, non-Jews are in the uncomfortable position of being the descendants of "Jew-killers" (or perhaps of those who failed to save Jewish children from deportation to Auschwitz).
One inevitable effect is to encourage other ethnic communities to stress their own status as historic victims, especially victims of "genocide". Africans, Armenians, Muslims and others all feel that the tragedies of their own ancestors deserve comparable respect and commemoration. This rivalry in victimhood may lead to extensions of the Gayssot law, or of an earlier law against incitement to racial hatred, to prosecute persons who consider the term "genocide" inappropriate in regard to tragic events in the Ukraine, Armenia, Bosnia, etc.
Making history an object of reverence rather than of curiosity marks a subtle but serious regression from the secular values of free inquiry. It contributes to an atmosphere of self-censorship, of "political correctness" that encourages intellectual timidity rather than boldness. The political effect is to instill in children the world view of the Three Vs, in which the Victorious Savior is represented by the United States, and France is a semi-culpable bystander.
Times Are Changing
For much of the younger generation, the Shoah cult, with annual obligatory commemorations and constant reminders of the "duty of memory", is getting to be as boring as any other imposed religion. It cannot inhibit criticism of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. The guilt trip may be coming to an end.
Your visit to Paris during the last five days of May came at a time when there are signs that the ideological winds are changing, and one such sign was the generally youthful turnout for your talk at the Mutualité hall, sponsored by the monthly newspaper, Le Monde diplomatique.
Contrary to Le Monde diplomatique, Le Monde, once a respected newspaper of reference, has become the flagship of "la pensée unique" and pro-Atlanticist subservience to the United States and the EU. First the daily published a silly report by its reporter who failed to get into the College de France to hear Chomsky's main speech and wrote a complaint about being left outside. A few days later, Le Monde went on to publish a hatchet job in its weekly books section, ignoring important new books and digging up the Faurisson affair in order to pile heaps of praise on Chomsky's critics, without the slightest echo of Chomsky's own arguments in favor of free speech.
But on the other hand, at the end of your visit to Paris, you were interviewed on the popular late night show, Ce soir ou jamais, which gave you a chance, after all these years, to answer the leading questions put by the host, Frédéric Taddei. The show is popular, and viewers who went to bed early can easily find it on the internet.
This TV interview was favorably commented on by Marianne, which in recent years has become France's most widely read weekly magazine. Marianne stressed the "strange silence of the media" concerning Chomsky's visit, and in particular their failure to cite his sharp criticism of the Israeli attack on the Free Gaza flotilla, which had occurred that morning. The magazine cited Chomsky's own words to explain this media neglect: sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, we tend to filter out what we don't want to see or hear if it makes us uncomfortable.
Chomsky clearly still makes some people in the French media uncomfortable.
But not all. There was, of course, a big spread in Le Monde diplomatique, a co-host of the visit, with a long article by Professor Jacques Bouveressse, Chomsky's host at the Collège de France. Daniel Mermet of the popular afternoon radio program "là-bas si j'y suis" broadcast Chomsky's meeting with labor leaders. The Catholic newspaper La Croix ran an informative article on the visitor.
Back in February 2003, then foreign minister Dominique de Villepin gave a speech to the UN Security Council opposing the US attack on Iraq. His speech won enthusiastic international applause. It seemed that France might recover an independent voice. But fear of US retaliation for such impertinence was a factor in the subsequent Sarkozy alignment with the US and Israel. However, this brings no visible rewards, other than to share in the Afghan quagmire, and to alienate much of France's own Arab population. Years of George W. Bush, the war in Afghanistan, uncritical U.S. support for Israel's serial crimes, the financial crisis and growing disillusion with the European Union are undermining popular acceptance of France's passive allegiance to US imperialism.
The pendulum swings. Sarkozy's fiercest political enemy, Villepin, is back on the scene, calling for France to "learn the lessons of Vietnam, of Algeria, of colonialism", to withdraw from Afghanistan, and recognize that the world is changing. The West can no longer dictate its will to the world, where new powers are emerging, Villepin insists. He is far out of power, but his words resonate. The paradox is that Chomsky, who is considered anti-French because of his disdain for French intellectuals, actually provides support to those who want to recover French national independence in order to play a constructive and peaceful role in the multipolar world of tomorrow. At least, he helps to free speech.
With best regards,
Diana Johnstone
A French version of this text can be obtained from the author at
diana.josto@
Diana Johnstone is author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press). She can be reached atdiana.josto@
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