www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/646938.html
PARIS - The first thing the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut said to us when we met one evening at Paris' elegant Le Rostand cafe, wh ere the interior is decorated with Oriental-style pictures and the terra ce faces the Luxembourg Gardens, was "I heard that even Haaretz publishe d an article identifying with the riots." This remark, uttered with some vehemence, pretty much sums up the feeling s of Finkielkraut - one of the most prominent philosophers in France in the past 30 years - ever since the violent riots began on October 27 in the impoverished neighborhoods that surround Paris and spread with surpr ising speed to similar suburbs throughout the country. He has been follo wing the events through the media, keeping up with all the news reports and commentary, and has been appalled at every article that shows unders tanding for or identification with "the rebels" (and in the French press , there are plenty). He has a lot to say, but it appears that France isn 't ready to listen - that his France has already surrendered to a blindi ng, "false discourse" that conceals the stark truth of its situation. Th e things he is saying to us in the course of our conversation, he repeat edly emphasizes, are not things he can say in France anymore. It's impos sible, perhaps even dangerous, to say these things in France now. Indeed, in the lively intellectual debate that has been taking place on t he pages of the French newspapers ever since the rioting started, a deba te in which France's most illustrious minds are taking part, Finkielkrau t's is a deviant, even very deviant, voice. Primarily because it is not emanating from the throat of a member of Jean Marie Le Pen's National Fr ont, but from that of a philosopher formerly considered to be one of the most eminent spokesmen of the French left - one of the generation of ph ilosophers who emerged at the time of the May 1968 student revolt.
ng/site=Haaretz_Eng&adsize=300 x250eng&hposition=99&hlayer1=&HaaretzCatgory=&hlang=ENG In the French press, the riots in the suburbs are perceived mainly as an economic problem, as a violent reaction to severe economic hardship and discrimination. In Israel, by comparison, there is sometimes a tendency to view them as violence whose origins are religious or at least ethnic - that is, to see them as part of an Islamic struggle. Where would you s ituate yourself in respect to these positions? Finkielkraut: "In France, they would like very much to reduce these riots to their social dimension, to see them as a revolt of youths from the s uburbs against their situation, against the discrimination they suffer f rom, against the unemployment. The problem is that most of these youths are blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity. Look, in France there are a lso other immigrants whose situation is difficult - Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese - and they're not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character. Is this the response of the Arabs and blacks to the racism of which they are victims? I don't believe so, because this viole nce had very troubling precursors, which cannot be reduced to an unalloy ed reaction to French racism. "Let's take, for example, the incidents at the soccer match between Franc e and Algeria that was held a few years ago. People say the French national team is admir ed by all because it is black-blanc-beur "black-white-Arab" - a referen ce to the colors on France's tricolor flag and a symbol of the multicult uralism of French society - DM Actually, the national team today is black-black-black, which arouses ridicule throughout Europe. If you poin t this out in France, they'll put you in jail, but it's interesting neve rtheless that the French national soccer team is composed almost exclusi vely of black players. "Anyway, this team is perceived as a symbol of an open, multiethnic socie ty and so on. The crowd in the stadium, young people of Algerian descent , booed this team throughout the whole game! They also booed during the playing of the national anthem, the Marseillaise,' and the match was ha lted when the youths broke onto the field with Algerian flags. R, I think, who sings: I piss on France, I piss on De Gaulle' and so on. These are very violent d eclarations of hatred for France. All of this hatred and violence is now coming out in the riots. To see them as a response to French racism is to be blind to a broader hatred: the hatred for the West, which is deeme d guilty of all crimes. In other words, as you see it, the riots aren't directed at France, but a t the entire West? "No, they are directed against France as a former colonial power, against France as a European country. Against France, with its Christian or Jud eo-Christian tradition." Anti-republicanpogrom' Alain Finkielkraut, 56, has come a long way from the events of May 1968 t o the riots of October 2005. A graduate of one of the chief breeding gro unds for French intellectuals, the Ecole Normal Superieure, in the early 1970s, Finkielkraut was identified with a group known as "the new philo sophers" (Bernard Henri-Levy, Andre Glucksman, Pascal Bruckner and other s) - young philosophers, many of them Jewish, who made a critical break with the Marxist ideology of May 1968 and with the French Communist Part y, and denounced its impact on French culture and society. In 1987, he published his book "The Defeat of the Mind," in which he outl ined his opposition to post- modernist philosophy, with its erasure of t he boundaries between high and low culture and its cultural relativism. And thus he began to earn a name as a "conservative" philosopher and sca thing critic of the multicultural and post-colonial intellectual current s, as someone who preached a return to France's republican values. Finki elkraut was one of the staunchest defenders of the controversial law pro hibiting head-coverings in schools, which has roiled France in recent ye ars. Over time, he also became a symbol of the "involved intellectual," as exe mplified by the postwar Jean-Paul Sartre - a philosopher who doesn't abs tain from participation in political life, but instead writes in the new spapers, gives interviews and devotes himself to humanitarian causes suc h as halting the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or the slaughter in Rwanda. The danger he wishes to stand up to today, in light of the riots, is the growing hatred for the West and its penetration into the French educati on system. Do you think that the source of the hatred for the West among the French who are taking part in the riots lies in religion, in Islam? This is a very difficult question and we mu st strive to maintain the language of truth. We tend to fear the languag e of truth, for noble' reasons. And, of course, we also must avoid generalizations: This isn't about blacks and Arabs as a whole, but about some blacks and Arabs. And, of course, religion - not as religion, but as an anchor of i dentity, if you will - plays a part. Religion as it appears on the Inter net, on the Arab television stations, serves as an anchor of identity fo r some of these youths. "Unlike others, I have not spoken about an intifada' of the suburbs, and I don't think this lexicon ought to be used. But I have found that they are also sending the youngest people to the front lines of the struggle . You've seen this in Israel - they send the youngest ones to the front because it's impossible to put them in jail when they're arrested. But s till, here there are no bombings and we're in a different stage: I think it's the stage of the anti-republican pogrom. There are people in Franc e who hate France as a republic." "Why have parts of the Muslim-Arab world declared war on the West? They, and those who justify them , say that it derives from the colonial breakdown. Okay, but one mustn't forget that the integration of the Arab workers in France during the ti me of colonial rule was much easier. "We are witness to an Islamic radicalization that must be explained in it s entirety before we get to the French case, to a culture that, instead of dealing with its problems, searches for an external guilty party. Pos...
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