Anti-Semitic Vulgate
Le Monde Editorial
Translation by Douglas
French original: "Vulgate antisémite"
(Le Monde, 2004/01/19)These aren’t “accidents,” slips of the tongue, clumsy expressions that slip out in the heat of a protest. During the demonstration organized in Paris, one of many planned for Saturday January 17 by the Parti des Musulmans de France (PMF), one heard expressions like, “the Jews have everything.” This expresses the reality of a “plan.” It is a credo behind a “thinking,” something we know all too well. It’s called anti-Semitism. “The Jews have everything,” because they control “everything,” secretly, of course, and if they control everything, it’s because they’ve hatched a plot, haven’t they…?
You will have detected the old stench rising from the depths of European anti-Semitism, that racist fantasy which casts opprobrium over a community. That the “bearers” are new — radical French Muslims — changes nothing of the nature of the message they are advancing. And when, in the same breath or almost, the PMF leader Mohamed Latrèche, likens Zionism to Nazism, we are back in the same stale waters, very dirty and very dangerous.
We won’t get by on denouncing a miniscule faction of France’s Muslim community. It isn’t enough to point out that the march organized in Paris by the PMF — in opposition to the proposed law on “ostentatious” religious symbols in school — drew a meager ten thousand people out of all of France’s five million Muslims. The problem is that the words spoken by the PMF contribute to the development of a vulgate which passes for a self-evident truth and which is itself shared by a community that goes far beyond these militant circles. From the slogan, one passes to widespread belief and then to collective delirium — and to the sort of situation all too common in the Arab world, where an anti-Semitic forgery dating from tsarist Russia, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, still finds buyers in the bookstore.
How can one help being revolted by a protest march in which men forbid their “sisters” to speak to the press? By the anti-Republican tonality in which a “pseudo-democracy,” that practiced by France, is called into question? Lastly, by the unabashed homophobia, that hatred of homosexuals that indicates intolerance and the rejection of the Other.
But we are also aware of what many elected officials, from right to left, have said of a very make shift draft proposal: intended to combat extremism, it may also feed it — like a self-fulfilling prophecy… Doubtless a clever tactician, Mr. Latrèche knows how to exploit the “circumstances,” in order to mobilize and widen the circle of his adherents.
In fine, what was revealed on Saturday was a movement, minor at first, that has succeeded in bringing thousands of people into the streets by distributing an anti-Semitic vulgate of the worst sort. This is a challenge to be taken seriously; most of all by France’s Muslims, who must ensure that this party remains a tiny minority.
ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN THE 20.01.04 EDITION
[Posted 2004/01/22]
Copyright © Watch 2001-2006.
Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.
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