Charlie Hebdo and Europe’s rampant racism

To be a conscious African or Muslim and to live in Europe is to inhabit a dual consciousness. That reality is informed by our historical and contemporary experience of European racism and bigotry. That double consciousness defines our reality. If we are told to look up we invariably look down, when we are told ‘he was carrying a gun when shot by the police; or that ‘ the job has already gone’ we look for their lies and are rarely disappointed.

The broader context here is useful. The majority of European nations political response to austerity, sees them like demented lemmings, massing on the dangerous cliffs tops of discrimination, falling over themselves in the rush to ensure that Blacks, Muslims, immigrants and the vulnerable in general, are ruthlessly scapegoated for the sins of casino bankers and weak willed, venal politicians.

An African in Paris

This lived reality sees Black, Muslim and ethnic minority Europeans relegated to the status of third class citizens in nations that consider themselves first class democracies. Most however will not even enjoy that third rate status, most will be people without papers, without rights, paid peanuts for cleaning the homes of the right wing, rich and famous, living in the desperate twilight world of irregular migrants.

This week was indeed a tumultuous week in France and now Belgium, where religious fanatics plotted and murdered innocent people in the name of Islam. Let me say from the outset that the attacks on Charlie Hebdo were absolutely reprehensible.

However such terrible violence needs to be understood against the backdrop of deep racism of both France and Belgium in particular and the so-called ‘war on terror’.

That will upset many who want to atomise the actions of the terrorists to the pure ‘inherent evil of Islam’.

Lets take a reality check here and state categorically that white European Christianity throughout history, has been the most bloody, murderous and violent of all world religions. It has reached levels of depravity and evil that qualify christianity as being the world’s most violent religion, bar none,

The reality is millions of Black and Muslim Europeans suffer economic, political, judicial discrimination and marginalization as a result of widespread institutional and cultural racism, that remains largely unrecognised, unacknowledged and invisible.

Most white people are not racist, but until they recognise and destroy white supremacy they must all be held accountable for its continued existence.

White Europeans are petrified of losing privilege

What we see today, is a Europe suffering from a form of mass racial and religious hysteria, that results in acute moral blindness and rank hypocrisy.

This is not a contemporary phenomena by any means, any cursory glance at pre and post colonial history of European nations. This persistent and ingrained European cultural trait of racism, can be seen subverting justice, mutating laws, principles and values.

One day France is the bastion of the unrestricted right of free speech however offensive and the next the French are without hesitation or shame arresting Black comedian Dieudonné for posting an offensive tweet about the Hebdo massacre. White privilege is the reason that those French cartoonists felt there was nothing wrong with insulting Islam or Black people.

White privilege, as both Ferguson and France has shown us, is always blind to black injustice.

Absolute free speech is an extremist position

‪#JeSuisCharlie in this context is nothing more than appeal from right wings white’s to be allowed to be racist without opposition in the name of free speech.  It’s a sort of ‪#WhiteLivesMatter statement particularly when viewed in the context of the tragic violence and world silence about the Nigerian massacre by Boko Haram.

This privilege allows them to disregard the social environment and political context of such satire and its consequences.  Writing in this flawed tradition is the perogative  of white, middle class Libertarian anarchists. Charlie Hebdo is for me,  a silly magazine and quintessentially an exercise in white privilege and arrogance.

Metaphorically, not only do they want to hit us hard and repeatedly in the face, they also want to dictate how we should react to that violence

I'd be happy for such biting satire to be aimed at the Royal families of say Saudi or Qatar but surely progressive satire attacks the rich and powerful vested interests, not those who are their victims? The French are claiming an assumed moral superiority, that in truth they do not enjoy.

This hypocrisy was writ large for the world to see, when some of the worlds elected criminals, assorted Saudi despots and Israel Apartheid Prime Minister joined the Paris march to proclaim their commitment to the principles of free speech and liberty.

Unremitting European racism

This European hypocrisy remains like a putrid stench in the nostrils of most Black and Muslim people. They see the suffering of their brothers and sisters in the Middlle East and the blistering, brutal apartheid racism of Israel and their sense of oppression and domestic exclusion becomes reinforced.

I know what that feels like; I felt that anger during the years of the Boer South African apartheid regime. I felt every injury of African people, their pain was my pain and it compelled me to act. Margret Thatcher, former Prime Minster of Britain was advised during the 1980’s by the association of Chief Police Officers to stop the BBC showing black people being beaten and murdered in South Africa as UK police officers on the streets were being challenged about their racism.

As it was yesterday, so it is today. When I see Palestine, Syrian refugees, Africans drowning in the Mediterranean sea, I smell the toxic and corrosive stench of racism and injustice. This is exactly how many Muslim’s feel when they watch the profound suffering of fellow human beings who are also Muslims

It results in France in Algerians suffering aggressive racial and religious discrimination that sees them suffering deep socio-economic marginalization from white French society.

EU multiculturalism: the beginning of the end of Eurocentric hegomony

Here in Britain we see Black people and Muslims suffer similar levels of racism and across Europe we see the rise of racism and fascism. Excluded at home, assaulted abroad, Black and Muslims are perfect targets for those religious fanatics who seek to seduce disaffected people into their violent perversion.

Unacknowledged European racism at home and abroad is the biggest recruiting Sargent for extremist movements targeting Black and Muslim people.

Embattled Europe is fast becoming Fortress Europe, with many now seeing themselves as representing the last stand of White Christian Europeans whose economic and political hegemony is coming to an end in a globalized world that sees the continued rise of former colonial subjects. It’s this postcolonial decline that is at the root of white European peoples profound insecurity.  In the words of US hip hop legends Public Enemy “ It’s the fear of a black planet”

Many white Europeans are scared, very scared. They suffer the profound psychological fear that their demise will result in the African, Asian, Latin American world will subject them to the very same hatred, violence and oppression they used to secure their economic and political domination during their imperial expansion and colonial domination.

This deep primordial fear of loss of status and end of privilege feed the irrational prejudice of many. Postcolonial transition will be painful for Europe but will be made immeasurably more difficult by refusing to acknowledge its own racism.

Lee Jasper Co Chair of Black Activist Rising Against Cuts

(BARAC UK)

Twitter @LeeJasper