Perspective On The Paris Coverage

I wasn't going to blog about this subject. Frankly the prospect of what I have to say on such an emotive subject scared me somewhat. But with recent events, and the lack of equality in reporting, I do feel the need to... Even if it has the potential to smack me a few times around the choppers for doing so.

It has been ten days since the western world sat still, stunned, watching the news come in about the horrific attacks on Paris. The media awash with images and footage offering the audience a safe space in which to peek, voyeuristically, into a world barely seen on our privileged lands. Mouths gaping as if to signal to others of our shared repulsion at the acts of barbarity committed by the murdering thugs in the name of today's villain. ISIS, the foreign invader, had thrusted its savage ideology into modern Europe.

Sections of the population silently, and very secretly, revelled in the moment. Their incoherent and unsupported arguments about the Islamification of Europe was being validated. Their imaginations running wild with images of their great crusade, of a civil war they equally feared and welcomed, a chance to spread their own savage ideology further through the collective European consciousness. Their revulsion at what they have glimpsed via a media complicit in the spreading of this ideological hatred only matched by the warm feeling someone is overwhelmed by when the finally get to utter, through the ground gnashers characterising the hate filled and bile spewing, 'I told you so'.

I also, like anyone with a modicum of compassion within their hearts, was stunned by the scenes depicted in the media. I still am shocked and fearful that someone I know will have to endure the heart-wrenching loss suffered by the families and friends of those killed in Paris. But unlike those I have characterised above, I also have as much compassion for the victims of the other terrorist attacks that have occurred this month.

The ones forgotten by the media and by the masses.

Victims from countries such as Mali, Lebanon, Nigeria, Somalia, Egypt, Iraq, Cameroon, and doubtless many other attacks committed by groups, states, or individuals as acts of terrorism, small scale or large in their devastation.

Let's not act like this attack in Paris is something unique, beyond it taking place in an imperialist, white, western nation. But that is the only reason people care so much. The only reason for the intense level of coverage in the media when compared to the barely recognised, aforementioned, murders. Even the downing of the Russian plane by a bomb on 31st of October, which coincidentally killed more people than died in Paris, barely achieved comparable levels of media interest. I would argue that this is perhaps because they are not quite 'white' enough for the media and us in the west for their lives to equal a Parisians.

I cannot recall post after post of articles based on these terrorist attacks on Facebook. Was there a whole episode Question Time devoted to the terrorist attacks in Beirut that I missed? I did not see anyone choose to press that button to change their profile pictures to have a Lebanese filter. I've yet to see a bunch of white masks declare war on Boko Haram for it's continued war of terror in Nigeria and the surrounding nations. Where were the news reporters tears Iraq?

So let us not pretend we as a society are repulsed by vile terrorists and their savage ideology. For most people they only care that it is now on their doorsteps once more. Yes it is disgusting and tragic, but its proximity to the things we care about has been the catalyst for this outrage and outpouring of emotion. That and good old fashioned British xenophobia.

Boycotting Bacon And The Hateful Eight

Surfing the web this week I stumbled across the latest in a continuous line of hypocritical reactions to truthful assertions made by individuals against the police. Fascists really do not like freedom of speech when it is directed against themselves.

On this occasion Quentin Tarantino, whilst attending a rally organised to highlight police brutality, said "I'm a human being with a conscience, and if you believe there's murder going on, you need to rise up and stand against it. I'm here to say I'm on the side of the murdered. When I see murders, I do not stand by... I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers."

This statement, when read alone and out of the context of the rally, could easily be a quote pulled from a handbook named Policing for Dummies. It might as well say "don't support bad people doing bad things." Unfortunately for the police it was not. It was part of Quentin Tarantino's speech at a rally called 'Rise Up October'. 

Unsurprisingly, given the sheer amount of instances of police brutality well documented by now in the media, and given that the protest was aimed at raising awareness of and opposing "police terror", particularly the disproportionate number of murders committed against black individuals by the police, they reacted poorly. 

In fact they acted like MRA's. In fact they even have #notallcops #bluelivesmatter campiangs like their dense counterparts, whom also completely miss the point being argued by their opponents. Just because not all cops are murderers it does not excuse the disproportionate number of incidents of hate crime committed by white officers on black citizens. How hard is that to understand? The Blue Scholars, definitely worth a listen, said it best with the lyrics "I hear them saying that this shit (meaning police brutality and murder) don't ever happen in Seattle, and if it does it's really just a couple bad apples, but if you're keeping count you will see the shit is not the apple, it's the tree, it's rotten underneath"

As with the MRA's outrage over the understandable, and thoroughly justified, #yesallwomen campaign to highlight violence against women committed by men whereby they chose a film to vainly attempt a boycott of,  Mad Max: Fury Road, so too have the Fuzz. A mixture of right-wing and racist morons have criticised Tarantino for highlighting the injustices committed against black citizens and subsequently calling for a boycott of his latest film, The Hateful Eight. 

Fox News' very own Klan member, Bill O'Reilly, said of the Tarantino speech that just last week a police officer was "shot dead by a long-time drug dealer that a judge refused to incinerate" a man who had "28 arrests on his sheet." An argument based upon the assumption that if people, or more accurately black people, were given the death penalty then tragedies against cops would not occur. Now I know like most well educated people that Bill O'Reilly, from what limited exposure to his rantings I get in the UK, is an idiot and a racist bigot. But it is still worth noting that his response to something as unobjectionable as campaigning against systemic abuse of power by some sections of the police is this vitriolic and distasteful. 

They say a picture paints a thousands words, and it so often does, but knowing what to look for in language reveals just as much. Some other commentators, such as Amanda Lozada, revealed their disgusting attitude towards the continued abuse of black people's freedoms in publications such as the New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdock of course. This white woman (shock) reported the legitimate concerns and frustrations of the protesters as a "gripe", the dictionary definition of which is to complain about something in a persistant and irritating way, that the speech by Tarantino was characterised by "complaining", and the cop was a "hero". In an article otherwise devoid of emotive language these three little words paint a vivid picture of the journalists lack of concern for black lives. 

Sentiments such as the above two are echoed all throughout the mainstream media, as would be expected from companies that exist to push a conservative agenda and maintain the white hegemonic position on societal justice matters. Something actively encouraged and maintained through the language employed by what Antonio Gramsci (here is a brief explanation of the theories) would call traditional intellectuals within his description of how hegemony permeates societal interactions. Those working within the mainstream forms of media being one such group of traditional intellectuals. In brief terms they operate in accordance with the prevalent hegemonic position. They are the group in this context seeking to legitimise and maintain force as the sole preserve of the state to dispense at its will when citizens will not do as their betters please.

Support of the black citizens of America, and worldwide, who are suffering at the hands of the (predominantly) white hegemonic class, with movements such as Rise Up October, is support of the organic or specific, depending on your ideological viewpoint, intellectuals seeking to other throw the system that enables one persons life to be viewed, whether subconsciously or otherwise, as more valuable than another. At the very least they are trying to forcibly change the position of the oppressed which is no bad thing. It is a long road but one needing to be walked. One ending in the emancipation of all humanity. 

I'm going to break with my usual position (hopefully just this once) and encourage anyone reading this who was going to see the film and thought twice about due to the boycott being attempted to just see what you wanted to in the first place. I would like to think that my words have been enough to convince you that this boycott is ill thought, irrational, and above all else, a petty reaction to some stinging truths. Hopefully it might even convince a few of you finding my blog in this dark corner of the internet to hop on a bus once in a while and join a protest or two in support something important like the right to life.