In the meantime the International Committee of the Fourth International’s  (Socialist Equality Parties) denunciation of the Nouveau parti anticapitaliste (NPA) as an “Instrument of Imperialist reaction” is pure fun.

(Extracts)

The French petty-bourgeois “left” and the rise of the neo-fascist vote

By F. Dubois
31 January 2012

In the 2012 French presidential campaign, the two bourgeois parties that have alternated in power for the past quarter century, the conservative UMP (Union for a Popular Movement, previously the Rally for the Republic—RPR) and the Socialist Party (PS) each are polling just barely above the neo-fascist National Front (FN).

This year, the FN may well get enough votes to directly influence the formation of the next government. .

The bourgeois “left” parties, the unions, and the petty-bourgeois pseudo-left bear the main responsibility for this situation.

The NPA plays a particularly noxious role. The NPA’s response to the neo-fascists is characterised by complete demoralisation, on many counts. The NPA was marked from its inception by an orientation to the union bureaucracy and to various layers of the petty-bourgeoisie and, consequently, by a complete lack of confidence in the working class. Its demoralisation is deeply connected with its perspective.

The NPA’s main message on the subject is that the working class can do nothing to fight against the advance of the neo-fascists and that there is no alternative on the left.

This is a heap of lies. It is precisely because of bitter social discontent that voters are deserting the UMP and the PS. What must be explained is why these voters “no longer believe” in the NPA as a means to fight social austerity and the world capitalist crisis. The reason must be sought in the actions and perspectives of the NPA and the rest of the petty-bourgeois “left.”

The NPA has defended the imposition of social austerity, President Sarkozy’s war in Libya, and the threats the French government is making against Syria. The NPA has carried out no fight against the racist “secularist” propaganda, such as the anti-burqa campaign, promoted by Sarkozy, the PS, the French Communist Party (PCF), the FN and others. Hostile to the workers’ strikes against the pension reform in 2010, having only called for a “symbolic” protest against state strikebreaking, and hostile to the revolutions in North Africa in 2011, they served as an instrument of imperialist reaction. They thus encouraged the rise of the National Front.

After such experiences, the workers have every reason to distrust the NPA.

The decision of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR) to build the NPA in 2009 as an explicitly non-Trotskyist party was a signal to the ruling elite. Hostile to the construction of a revolutionary Marxist party, the NPA wanted to bring forces from the universities and the trade union bureaucracy together to create a sort of replacement for the PCF, discredited by the fall of the USSR. This party would attempt to set itself up as a lasting electoral force on the “left” of the French parliamentary scene, using rhetoric inherited from the former students of the 1970s.

Thus, the essential aim of the exercise was to erect a new barrier between the working class and the building of a party based on a revolutionary perspective.

For the NPA, “a democratic perspective based of the solidarity of the people … is the only way to counter the rise of reactionary populism.”

In fact, this brings the NPA into line with the perspective of a “democratic” capitalist Europe, which is indistinguishable from today’s European Union.  

What the comfortable, complacent petty-bourgeois of the NPA have clearly not realised is that capitalist Europe is collapsing before everyone’s eyes, and that the workers have already had enough of being the victims of regressions negotiated between Sarkozy and the trade unions, with the support of the NPA.

 *************

So, the NPA is against strikes, deals with Sarkozy, is aligned with imperialism, against the Arab Revolutions, favourable to austerity and is also pro-European capitalism.

No wonder the masses are turning to the French Socialist Equality Party, the section of the International Committee  of the Fourth International.

Er…

There isn’t one.

More, alas, Here

Senegal’s African Renaissance, Built by North Koreans.

Has the Arab Spring spread southwards?

Violent protests in Senegal, at President Wade standing for re-election, are likely to continue after this (BBC),

“Senegal’s highest court has dismissed opposition appeals and confirmed that President Abdoulaye Wade can run for a third term in office.

The Constitutional Council said the 85-year-old president was not bound by a two-term limit because his first term began before the rule was introduced.

There were violent protests after Friday’s original ruling that Mr Wade could stand in the February poll.

The court also barred singer Youssou N’Dour from standing.

Two other opposition candidates also lost appeals against Friday’s court rulings blocking them from standing in the February 26 election.

The court had argued that it could not verify many of the signatures Mr N’Dour had gathered to support his candidacy.

The ruling was a “constitutional coup d’etat”, the singer said.

“Senegal and its people are sick. We have been betrayed by this shameful decision. I say shameful because neither the will of the Senegalese people nor the opinions of experts in constitutional law have been heard. Mr Wade has imposed his will and won the day,” Mr N’Dour said.

Security has remained tight in Dakar following Friday’s clashes between opposition supporters and government troops.

Opposition parties and activists met on Sunday before the Constitutional Council’s final decision was made public. They said they would continue with “national resistance” against Mr Wade’s bid.”

The most up-to-date news is from Radio France Internationale: Here.

Wade’s Presidency – he was elected as a liberal (both economic and social)  who would break the mould of years of Socialist Party dominance. He has proved incapable of solving the country;s economic problems. He  has veered in an authoritarian direction. Wade has become increasingly vainglorious.

Senegal is not a dictatorship.

There is an abundance of political parties, from the right, to the far left – here.

Jeune Afrique reports on the background in depth,

Considéré comme l’une des valeurs montantes de la vie politique au Sénégal, candidat pour la deuxième fois à l’élection présidentielle sous les couleurs du Parti pour le socialisme et la démocratie, Benno Jubël (FSD/BJ), le député-maire de Saint-Louis, 47 ans, mobilise ses troupes depuis son QG du quartier de Bopp à Dakar. Tout comme les autres opposants, Cheick Bamba Dieye remet en cause la validité de la candidature du président sortant Abdoulaye Wade et l’invalidité de celle du chanteur Youssou N’dour..

Benno Jubël of the  Parti pour le socialisme et la démocratie,  (FSD/BJ), 47 years old, is the deputy Mayor of Saint-Louis, and one of the rising stars of Senegalese politics. He has been mobilising his troops from his HQ at Bopp, Dakar. Like other oppositional figures he questions the legality of the existing President Abdoulaye Wade’s candidature, and the refusal to accept the candidacy of the singer, Youssou N’dour..

The rest of the article is well worth reading.

The Nouveau parti anticaptialiste (NPA)  is rightly annoyed. 

It has yet to get the constitutional number of sponsors (500 elected representatives, from Mayors upwards) to stand its Presidential candidate Philippe Poutou.

As  things and it looks that they may not get that number by the qualifying date of 15th of March.

On Friday  its candidate in the 2008 elections,  Olivier Besancenot issued this open letter to political parties and elected.

S’adressant notamment à l’UMP, au PS, au Front de gauche, à Europe Ecologie-Les Verts et à leurs élus, il explique: “le NPA approche les 400 parrainages, mais nous ne sommes toujours pas assurés que Philippe Poutou puisse être candidat” alors que des “centaines de militants ont dû faire des milliers de kilomètres pour aller à la rencontre de plusieurs milliers d’élus”. (Here.) and (Here)

“Addressing particularly the UMP (centrist), the PS (Socialist Party), the Front de gauche (left bloc), and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (Greens), he explained, ‘we are getting near to 400 sponsors, but we are still unable to say that we’re sure that Phillipe Poutou will be a candidate. To get this hundreds of activists have had to travel thousands of kilometres in order to meet several thousand elected figures.”

The NPA suggests that political pressure has been applied to dissuade members of these parties from signing Poutou’s nomination.

They make a valid point. 

Would-be Presidential candidates have to get ‘parrainage’ (sponsoring/patronage) by people most of whom (except at village Mayor level) are elected as representatives of political parties. This is obviously open to abuse.

But a  more fundamental problem looms.

Some in the NPA clutch at an opinion poll that gave Potuou 1% of the vote.

Most hover at 0,5% – and below in the depths where no survey can accurately register support.

Perhaps few are signing up because they simply don’t see Poutou as a viable candidate.

A Separation by Asghar Farhadi, has won a Bafta award and is now nominated for Best Foreign Film Oscar.

The Guardian said that the Iranian film goes beyond class and gender.

It is, by contrast, a picture that stays with class and gender. Its taut narrative develops them  within a generous humanism. A Separation also opens our eyes to some significant  religious and cultural issues in Iranian society.

Nader and Simin are a couple with a daughter, Termeh. They live in a flat in Tehran. The family is, in European terms, middle  middle class. Nadar works in a Bank. His wife, Simin, is a University teacher.

Simin want to leave Iran. While we are not shown exactly why. But there some clear indications that neither of the couple are happy with  Official Iranian culture.  In the kitchen there is a tin of Twinnings Earl Grey. Nader  uses ‘merci’ for thank you (widespread  in Farsi until the Khomeinist regime). Simin wears attractive  coloured headscarves. There is a Table Football.  Nader corrects his daughter’s teacher use of an arabic-based word to translate ‘guarantee’, offering a Farsi one. All the signs are that the couple do not support the dour Iranian regime.

But Nader does not want to leave. He wishes to keep looking after for his elderly father, who lives with the family and suffers from Alzheimer’s. Simin files for divorce when he refuses to go with her. The daughter, stays, a choice, we learn, she makes in the  hope of bringing the couple back together. The Family Court rules that the divorce cannot proceed until things are clearer. Termeh stays in the flat when her mother moves back to her parents.

The drama centres around  Razieh, a pregnant, pious woman from woman from the outskirts of Tehran. She is employed to look after the father. She arrives with her joyful small girl in tow.  When the carer  is faced with  the elderly father soiling himself  she phones up her spiritual guide to learn whether it is permitted to clean him. Razieh is rapidly exhausted by this work, and recommends that Nadar approaches her husband for the carer job.

The crisis comes when she has left the flat, for an appointment (we later learn – with a gynecologist), with her small daughter. The father is tied to his bed. He looks at death’s door. Nadar comes back, sess this,  and is furious. Meeting a returning  Raizeh he  accuses her of this, and of stealing money. He pushes her out. She falls.

This is not the end of his problems. He learns that she has been taken to hospital. He meets her husband Houjat, and finds that she has had a miscarriage. He blames Nadar for pushing her down the stairs. Nadar is accused of killing the unborn child.

Shots of the Iranian legal process seems like organised chaos. The Court Official in charge conducts his interrogations in a crowded police station. Nadar is put in prison. The husband threatens him and his family, apparently without serious restraint. There is the menace that Nadar is not a ‘real’ believer.

The picture of the  law’s attempt to unravel the truth sometimes  look like the efforts of French Examining Magistrates. Sometimes succesful, other moments not at all.  The stair pushing looks a less than likely cause of the still birth. Different explanations for the death emerge. There are no independent controls. Indeed there is no lawyer. There is, however, the presumption of innocence. The hope would be, one assumes, that as in the French system, the truth will emerge under rigorous investigation.

The film’s frame draws the viewer deeply into the plot. Minimalist and sparse is appears documentary without being didactic. The middle class drive effortlessly  around the city, while Raizeh is trapped in weary bus journeys. The characters vibrant and at the kind of point where their culture crosses European’s to be both sympathetic and bewildering. It’s not the people but the depth of the cultural rules and the law which lie just outside one’s grasp.

The final scenes  revolve around ‘blood money’ . The case does not go further to the formal Court.  Payments for deaths rather than punishment, are acceptable, (if the injured family party agrees) under Sharia Law. Houjat’s lack of money helps him take this path.

But the Wergeld (as the Anglo-Saxons called it) does not get paid. How and why is the pivot of the film.

It ends with the daughter Termeh’s final choice yet unannounced to her parents.

A Separation well deserves its successes. (More  here.)

*******

No war on Iran! For regime change from below!

Against Western Intervention and for Solidarity with the Iranian Democratic Opposition  see the campaign Hands off the People of Iran (HOPI) - here.

Lady Judy Terry, Despairs at Ipswich Labour Party.

Suffolk Culture Tsar, the author of several etiquette manuals, Lady Judy Terry, lacks a public platform.

Tendance Coatesy is only too happy to guest her posts.

“I’m very much a glass or three person. I believe in relations with my colleagues and  people in the wider community. Creative leadership means the best! Not staff who lack tenacity, or a positive attitude.

That’s why I am shocked, truly shocked, by Ipswich Labour Party.

I established an Industrial and Provident Society to run the library service.

I democratically appointed the  Board and charged my good friend Mr Fox with the task of making significant savings.

What did Labour do?

They and their “rent-a-mob”criticised me!

In Ipswich Labour have got rid of Area Forums.

They provided a valuable space for people to listen to plans for the Big Society and Police reports.

Cllr Byrony Rudkin  revived the New Wolsey Theatre which I haven’t been to since she was involved.

Im March it’s  showing the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

What right has Ms Rudkin to talk about culture!

A couple of Labour councillors work in the private sector.

With this background how can they be Labour?

And look at all the money Ipswich Borough Council spends.

You’d think they had some responsibility for Ipswich people.

They say they have to employ agency staff because the government’s cut their funding. That there’s a Coalition policy to reduce the money local government has.

But who is to blame for this?

Ipswich Labour!

Sometimes, I despair.

Until I hear our brightest and best Conservative Candidate, ’Kev’.  Hallelujah! ”

More information here.

One issue came to the fore.

Le Pen wants  ‘patriotic’ top civil servants.

This is a long-standing policy.

Last year she said,

• “Dans le cycle de formation des fonctionnaires des trois fonctions publiques, l’accent sera mis sur le sens de l’Etat et le patriotisme.
• L’Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) veillera en particulier à recruter des hauts fonctionnaires patriotes, ayant le sens de l’État.”  Here.

In the education and training of civil servants in the 3 sectors the emphasis will be placed on the recognition of the state’s importance  and patriotism.

The National Administrative  College will pay special  attention to recruiting patriotic civil servants, having this sense of the state. 

How she would define this, and implement this rule is not clear.

One assumes that non-patriots would include those whom she denounced in the interview as believers in the pan-European “elite” ideal of a federal European Union.

As well as others from the ‘anti-France’.

But one thing is.

This strongly resembles the Hungarian nationalist and hard-right  Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s  policy.

Anybody interested in the French far-right’s different spheres, and how they are linked, should look at this site SCALP- REFLEX.

 This diagram is by the anti-fascist journal Reflex, though it’s widely distributed in France and this copy was taken from le Nouvel Observateur’s site.

“

“A Golden Opportunity for the Turkish Government” 

Gaël De Santis In L’Humanité  has described  the background. (here)

“Tant les islamistes de l’AKP au pouvoir que les deux principaux partis d’opposition nationaliste sont vent debout contre la proposition de loi française qui interdit la négation du génocide arménien de 1915. Les leçons d’histoire qui viennent de France, pays dont le président Nicolas Sarkozy est le héraut de la lutte contre l’entrée de la Turquie dans l’UE, ne passent visiblement pas. Le gouvernement tient à préserver l’image de son pays. Celui-ci constituerait, à l’issue des révolutions arabes, un modèle pour marier islamisme, démocratie et croissance. C’est oublier un peu vite la répression des autonomistes kurdes et des journalistes qui l’ouvrent trop.”

“The Islamists of the AKP as much as the two Turkish opposition parties have stormed against the French legal project which forbids the denial of the Armenian genocide of 1915. History lectures from France, which is at the forefront of those opposing Turkey’s entry into the EU have not gone down well. The Turkish government is trying to maintain its country’s image. That is, as a result of the Arab revolutions, is to be a model of how Islamism, democracy, and economic growth can go together. That is, of course, if we forget its repression of the Kurdish movements and too inquisitive journalists.”

Human Rights Watch says,

“As the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government focused on promoting Turkey’s regional interests in response to the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements, human rights suffered setbacks at home. The government has not prioritized human rights reforms since 2005, and freedom of expression and association have both been damaged by the ongoing prosecution and incarceration of journalists, writers, and hundreds of Kurdish political activists, particularly through the misuse of overly broad terrorism laws. Violence against women in Turkey remains endemic. Police continue to use excessive force, particularly against demonstrators, and are rarely held accountable for such violence.”

The French legislation, which will penalise those denying or “minimising” the Armenian genocide could face a €45,000 fine and a year in gaol, has been some time in the making. It follows laws which make it illegal to deny the Holocaust (‘negationisme’).

Yesterday the Senate passed the law, which is backed by Sarkozy,  by 127 votes against  86.

It now has to go to the Constitutional Council, where opposition to this move is certain

There is a strong suggestion that Sarkozy’s need for support in his Presidential campaign has favoured its introduction this time.

500, 000  French citizens are from an Armenian background.

Nevertheless his close colleagues have criticised the project. Foreign Minster Alain Juppé has called it a connerie” (fucking stupidity).

Opposition from other quarters has been widespread, if far from being enough to stop the law passing. It has been loudest from the Centrist candidate François Bayrou. But it has not stopped there. All parties are divided, though the Green and the small Left radical group  Senators voted en bloc against the law (report here).

In debates Roland Muzeau of the French Communist Party (PCF) rejected the idea of giving into to Turkish pressure. It is however,wrong, he says, for the French Parliament  to take upon itself the responsibility of writing history.

Which we think it the right take on this controversy, despite all our heartfelt solidarity with the Armenians.

Map of Cameron’s Big Society.

David Cameron’s Big Idea on Radio Four yesterday was extremely informative. (Here)

The Producer, Steve Richards, related how important the Prime Minister’s policy is in the Independent,

Cameron’s friend, Danny Kruger, who worked for him in his early days as leader, told me: “I know that David Cameron is in office to enact or see happen or help to grow the Big Society. That’s his driving mission… if he can do anything by the time he leaves office, it’ll be to see a bigger, stronger society.” He is convinced the Prime Minister will never let go of it.

The programme set out the ‘idea’ that individuals and society, the people themselves rather than the state, would be encouraged to run public affairs. That paradoxically it was the government and its place-people in the state that are introducing the  ‘Big Society’ – whether anybody wanted it or not.

The most revealing moment came when one figure went into the source of Cameron’s viewpoint. He believed that the Prime Minister drew on his own experience of growing up in Peasemore, Berkshire. There, it appears, if there was a social problem it was settled by a  quiet word with influential people, the Vicar, the Rotary Club, and, though this was not mentioned, the landlord of the Fox and Hounds and the Squire.

There was no need for elected authorities to intervene.

There’s something about this backward-looking vision that reminds one of the Lord of the Rings. The Big Society,  will help restore the natural order of self-governing Hobits . Kindly Wizard David Cameron will protect them from the Eye of the State-Mordor.

The Red Tory Phillip Blond spoke of his hope that British politics might become centred around this ideas.

Blue Labour will no doubt happily join the Berkshire Bagginses.

Meanwhile in France François Holland kicked off his Presidential campaign with an attack on finance capitalism and a demand for justice.

Speaking to his supporters this weekend at Le Bourget his ‘Big idea’ was equality.(Here Here).

The audience shouted “Egalité! Egalité! Egalité!”

Instead of the Big Society: Egalité ou la mort!

The Guardian reported yesterday on two police infiltrators who had children with activists they conned into thinking the backed their causes,

“One of them is Lambert, who adopted a fake persona to infiltrate animal rights and environmental groups in the 1980s.

After he was unmasked in October, he admitted that as “Bob Robinson” he had conned an innocent woman into having an 18-month relationship with him, apparently so that he could convince activists he was a real person. She is one of the women taking the legal action against police chiefs.

Now the Guardian can reveal that in the mid-1980s, just a year into his deployment, Lambert fathered a boy with another woman, who was one of the activists he had been sent to spy on..

Lambert did not tell her or the child that he was a police spy as he needed to conceal his real identity from the political activists he was spying on. The Guardian is not naming the woman or the child to protect their privacy.”

On the 15th October 2011, Lambert was a star speaker at Celebrate Diversity, Defend Multiculturalism, Oppose Islamophobia and Racism (Here).

Indy media reported,

“UNDERCOVER POLICE AGENT PUBLICLY OUTED AT CONFERENCE

Campaigners today outed the most-senior-yet police spy responsible for infiltrating environmental and social justice campaigns.

Former Detective Inspector Bob Lambert MBE had just spoken at a “One Society, Many Cultures” anti-racist conference attended by 300 delegates at the Trades Union Congress HQ in Central London. He was then challenged by 5 members of London Greenpeace who called on him to apologise for the undercover police infiltration of London Greenpeace, Reclaim The Streets and other campaign groups – an operation he took part in or supervised over two decades, whilst rising to the rank of Detective Inspector.”

What  has Lambert’s role been over the last years that brought him to this Conference?

He is no longer a clandestine infiltrator.

Lambert is an academic studying Islamophobia. That is, “Dr. Robert Lambert is Co-Director of the European Muslim Research Centre at the University of Exeter.”

He has tried to combat ‘extremism’. To this end he  has engaged in ‘dialogue’ with Islamists.

Lambert was part of the Special Branch’s Muslim Contact Unit (MCU). This was replaced in 2007 by the ‘Prevent’ strategy to counter terrorism, in term under review as the government claims to try to prevent non-violent as well as violent extremism.  In his own view, described in the Times Literary Supplement by Jonathan Benthall (20.1.12)  as “self-important’,  he has helped prevent Al-Qaeda, or similar, organisations attacking British targets.  

This is what he said in The New Statesman,

“My modest contribution to public debate, published next month, Countering al Qaeda in London challenges much received wisdom about terrorism, counter-terrorism and public safety in Britain. I argue that the best kind of counter-terrorism remains narrowly focused on the terrorist threat and seeks to avoid stigmatising or criminalising those communities where terrorists seek recruits.”

In particular I challenge the popular assumption that many politically active Muslims have either wittingly or unwittingly been part of the terrorist problem – sometimes described as a “conveyor-belt” model of radicalisation.

“Having worked closely with many of these so-called Muslim subversives for many years I am inclined to suggest that the vast majority are far less subversive to British democracy than some of the individuals funding and implementing this new Cold War strategy against them. Significantly, many of them also have far more impressive counter-terrorism credentials than their counter-subversive opponents.”

Lambert criticises, with some reason, the right-wing agenda of the Centre for Social Cohesion and Policy Exchange. This think-tank attacks Islamism in all its forms from the standpoint of the British state.

“In my book I explain how Policy Exchange has gradually won government backing for a Prevent strategy that is a counter-subversion strategy in all but name. Significantly Prevent no longer purports to be tackling ‘violent extremism’ but simply ‘extremism’. As a result several outstanding Muslim community projects that have reduced the adverse impact of al-Qaeda influence in Britain have been shelved and risk stigmatisation as ‘extremist’ or ‘subversive’ instead.”

“One of the most powerful lessons from Ed Husain’s remarkable book, The Islamist, is that the people most intimidated by Islamist extremism in this country are Muslims themselves….We need to realise that every time the wider society enters into dialogue with the extremists we are not only dealing unwittingly with bad people, we are also empowering them against good people”.

Lambert also defends the interests of the British state. He notes, then, that Islamists have “ community legitimacy and support”. His position is that dialogue, not repression, is needed to appease them. In particular he has used his experience of working with Salafists to argue against casting them as extremists.

This, in the light of the activities of Salafists in Tunisia and their counterparts, Al Noor, in Egypt, is not a generally held opinion.

Lambert follows a long British tradition.

In  Secret Affairs. Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (2010)  Mark Curtis. described Foreign Office appeasement of radical Islam “

The Home Office has long sought out contacts to negotiate with domestic Islamists. At the moment the Foreign Office is attempting to establish relations with ‘mdoerate’ Islamists, from the Moslem Brotherhood spectrum. The spectre of more extreme Salafist, not to mention jihadist, groups, is brandished to make this strategy seem respectable. In fact it is bad on sheer self-interest.

This realpolitik is not surprising.

More astonishing is that any anti-racist group can make excuses  the same right-wing anti-feminist, ultra-conservative parties like the Moslem Brotherhood.

In their own way they are trying to reach a modus vivendi with them. They claim that the fight against Islamophobia (defined to include political criticism of Islamism)  takes precedence over the interests of secularists, feminists and the left in Moslem countries.

Bob Lambert’s sordid career should cause some rethinking. It should make at least some wonder what kind of players get involved in this kind of  game. Or to what ends it is aimed.

As Benthall notes, “it is not irrational for thsoe who accept Enligthenment values to be phobic about the alws against apostasy and blasphemey current in some major Islamic states”. Or to recoil at the wider social and moral agenda of Islamists.

We await the response of Lambert’s friend at Islamophobia Watch.

La Dernière Utopie. Caroline Fourest. (2009/11)

“..it sometimes seems as if the current enthusiasm for the ideology of ‘human rights’ is little more than twenty-first century form of the secular Christianity that played such a central imperial role in the nineteenth century.” Britain’s Empire. Richard Gott. 2011.

La Dernière Utopie begins with this declaration, “Une utopie se meurt. Celle des droits universels. La perspective d’un monde où tous les êtres humaines seraient libres et égaux, sans distinction.” (The utopia of universal rights, the prospect of a world in which all human beings would be free and equal, is dying) Today, Caroline Fourest asserts, people are turning away from universal ideas and falling back on their separate identities. Our sense of belonging, to a nation, a religion, an ethnic group, overrides the ‘abstraction’ of a common humanity. And nothing could be more abstract than world-wide human rights.

This is bold claim. Richard Gott’s view that human rights have become part of the “imperial backcloth” carries weight. Stephen Pinker’s claim that the ‘rights revolution’ has been linked to a decline in violence may reflect trends in most of Europe, America and some parts of the globe (The Better Angels of Our Nature. 2011) Overall the picture is much bleaker.

Appeals to the humanitarian duty to intervene against abuses in Iraq are fresh in the mind. Western governments have used its language to cover their unscrupulous military actions. And then we have the UN’s impotence faced with dictatorships, the remnants of Stalinism and Islamist regimes. The inability of the UN to prevent genocide in Rwanda and the killings in Africa by stateless armed gangs equally make the Declaration seem hollow. These failures, rather than ‘identity’ have been more than effective in undermining the utopian promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The UN and Human Rights.

La Dernière Utopie‘s opening chapter is an account of how the 1948 UN declaration came about. Fourest covers the negotiations that led to it, and the efforts to reach beyond purely Western conceptions*. She covers efforts to thwart its application, initially largely from the Official Communist bloc, a practice China continues in the name of state sovereignty. Moslem countries offered an ‘Islamic’ human rights declaration in 1990 based on the Sharia. This claimed that Islamic community was superior to any other form of civilisation. It skirted around outlawing slavery and denied the right to change religion. Islamic countries have attempted to limit freedom of expression in faith’s name.

It is as if it is Fourest considers that human rights are principally weakened from within the UN rather than in the inability to entrench human rights in the world at large. So, she observes how UN attention to the Palestinian issue has sidelined human rights in Africa and Burma. But could this association of world states resolve political and historical conflicts, as if these were waiting to be settled by applying human rights? Is indeed the UN a suitable forum for ‘cosmopolitan democracy’? It has been powerless to end American abuses in Guantanamo, or its sanction of torture. Could it deal, by peacekeeping or other means, with Central Africa and its multiple conflicts, kept financed by international commercial interests? This question is not raised.

By contrast we can at least see one dead-end. Instead of trying to develop material forms of international democracy a part of the left is stuck in political anti-globalisation. It is prepared to side with any form of resistance to the World Order. Certain forms of third-worldism, Fourest emphasises, are prepared to align with dictatorships and reactionary Islamists in the name of anti-imperialism. Cultural confrontation from this quarter is also backed. The French Indigènes de la République distinguished itself by attacking secular Arab feminists as infected by “post-colonial gangrene”. There are many similar movements in the rest of Europe and North America. They are no doubt at present nerving themselves up to defend the Salafist campaign for moral purity in North Africa and Egypt.

Multiculturalism.

La Dernière Utopie hits hardest when Fourest tackles multiculturalism. The present day use of the principle of ‘diversity’ has legitimised communalist movements. The gay and feminist activist explains how these movements enrich society by creating their own “espaces de liberté”. Cultural associations, for people of a common background, or groups that promote languages or a shared heritage, contribute to human development. They are different, she asserts, not completely convincingly, from ‘communitarian’ groups that promote exclusion. Extreme separatist feminism may well not pass this test. Nor would the activities of many inward-looking religious sects like the Plymouth Brethren. More importantly however separatism is by definition not a programme that anybody wants to impose on the whole of society.

For Fourest the most fundamental attacks on universalism come from elsewhere. She argues that the existing forms of multiculturalism have become a “passoire” (sieve) for radical religious demands that sap equality. Accommodating difference allows for impositions on others. Fourest notes that in 2008 David Toube and his 5-year-old son were excluded from the swimming Baths at Clissold Leisure Centre – reserved at that hour for “Muslim men”. Challenged, only the religious reference was dropped. At present this demand for gender segregation, on religious demand, has become an issue in many countries. It does not just come from Moslems. In Israel at the moment there is a sharp conflict with ultra-Orthodox Jews who wish to extend it to the entire public sphere. The right to difference is in conflict with the right to universal equality.

Nicolas Sarkozy attempted in 2008 to write the word diversity into the French Constitution. This was not accepted. But his concept of “open” laïcité, engaging with religious bodies, continues. Contrary to accepted opinion the French Churches, the Paris Mosque, the Conseil français du culte musulman (CFCM) and the Conseil répresenatif des institutions juives de France (CFIF) have a close relationship with the state. Fourest complains that this weakens the republican principle of equality, and blames the influence of multiculturalism for opening the door to further communitarian influence.

In what Fourest calls the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model diversity can be extended to the public realm to the extent that people are considered in terms of their ‘race’ or ‘community’. In Britain each group is held to keep its distance (tenir à distance) She remarks that it is easier to be tolerant towards an Other (autre) when nobody seriously considers them as part of the same ‘family’. Polite reserve is the norm between separate communities. It simply ignores potential clashes of values. Only when, she claims, people start making claims to ‘Britishness’ without abandoning their ‘racial’ or religious identity, are feathers ruffled.

In Canada, Fourest observes, multiculturalist policies led to the legalisation of Islamic Courts with legal powers in mediating family disputes. Once the effects on women’s rights became clear their status in law was withdrawn in 2005. In Britain Rowan Williams has envisaged the same move – without referring to the Canadian experience. No doubt the Imperial experience of assigning subject peoples in India to live under their own religious ‘personal law’ played a role in this position. Faced with this the government’s announcement that no decisions made by such courts could be made that went against British law would be valid left open a space for the development of these tribunals.

Official multiculturalism can drift towards communalism. Promoting ‘diversity’ as a form of social justice is a mask for rising inequality. But intolerance of difference is a major problem. Fourest does not shy away from criticising “authoritarian secularism” – the complete refusal to accept any religious manifestation, individual or collective. Riposte laïque, the secularist ‘ultras’ demand that the Islamic veil, in any form, should be banned.

This is a thorny problem. On the one hand Fourest asserts that the veil is more than an item of clothing. This is not a purely cultural demand but a political one. It is a symbol of female submission. Moreover it is forced upon women in many countries. “Le jour où le voile ne sera plus le porte-drapeau de l’Islam politique réactionnaire et anti-féministe, il trouvera peut-être une signification spiritualle” (The day when the veil is no longer the badge of reactionary and anti-feminist political Islam will perhaps be when it can have a spiritual meaning). On the other hand, a secularism that rests on a state that carries out an emancipatory role cannot be concerned with every detail of people’s private lives. While the Burka, promoted by the most reactionary Islamists, has, she argues, present a range of other difficulties (making recognition hard) is this the case for all forms of the veil? The hijab included? These come in many shapes and colours. Few would recognise them all as signs of support for Political islam.

In the public domain, where people are treated equally, a special religious sign that separates the pure from the impure is unwelcome. Its use to spread religious division creates problems. But is everybody wearing a veil proclaiming her solidarity with regimes that punish the unveiled? Many have absorbed John Stuart Mill’s liberal principle that any behaviour that is purely ‘self-regarding’ – that causes no harm to others – should not be prohibited. It is up to feminists to find ways of explaining their critical message, and not the public authorities.

The Secular Alternative.

La Dernière Utopie sees no future for human rights in “mono-culturalism”. But Fourest is attached to one state model that she thinks serves them best. She argues that the French “universaliste et laïque” tradition offers a channel for emancipation through a different, tolerant, approach to cultural difference. For her the French paradigm does not demand assimilation but, attempts, ideally, to transcend “les differences en favourisant les convergences, la mixité, et le mélange” (differences by encouraging coming together, coexistence and blending). This then is the balanced way, between assimilation, communitarianism, tolerant republicanism and a reasonable form of multiculturalism. This is the “integration laïque” which might serve as a “laboratory” for a better – utopian? – future.

Creeping towards distopia is the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of multiculturalism. Fourest rehearses a number of features of American society, the history of slavery, positive discrimination and its social policies and politics inflected by ‘race’. Nobody who is the slightest bit acquainted with this – and Fourest is – can ignore the deep injustices at stake here. She explains the way race is an important political and cultural marker in the country. In what sense, apart from a debt to ‘negative’ (individual based) liberalism does Britain share in this structure of policies that have been developed in the US to deal with this legacy? She notes that Britain has been shaped by a similar post-colonial immigration as France. That its multiculturalism is a result of this. Neither then has a history of domestic slavery. Both have an imperial past. America has never had a formal empire. This might be a good point to begin to disentangle the ‘special relationship’ and look at similarities between the Isles and the Hexagon. But instead she concludes by referring to “le multiculturalisme anglo-saxon”.

Britain, unlike America, and like France, has a real, that is, social democratic and socialist, left. It, like France, and unlike the US, has a large welfare state, which plays an ideological unifying role not dissimilar to the Republic in France. Multiculturalism has established itself as liberal orthodoxy, and, in a modified form, as state policy. Its supporters are more numerous and its institutional weight is greater than in France. But it has its critics, from the right – on nationalist ‘mono-cultural’ grounds – and the left, from a Universalist and class position. As does France.

Fourest’s critique could be culled from any number of English language articles and studies, but particularly from those produced in the United Kingdom. From Southall Black Sisters to other anti-racists people have attacked state sponsored ‘community’ leaderships, and the tolerance of Islamist intolerance. Accepting violence against women, in the name of religious cultural norms has drawn great attention. On the wider picture Kenan Malik’s From Fatwa to Jihad. The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy. (2009) might be a good place to start. From there, the role of class in overdetermining multiculturalism, would be an essential reference for anyone looking at the issue in Britain.

Looking at these writings we find that there are far fewer dissimilarities between Britain and France than she asserts. Community organisations may not be as officially recognised in France, but nobody would deny the role of the Jewish and Muslim associations in the country’s politics. Nor is its model without similar faults. As the report in Le Monde, Banlieues de la République indicated, Islamist identity has grown in the bleak French suburbs abandoned by the French state (5.10.11). Gilles Kepel notes that despite some political integration, secularism (laïcité) is seen as an “external constraint” without real presence in everyday life. This position has obvious British inner-city and Northern town parallels, with the Mosque playing a role beyond the practice of worship in many Moslem communities. But one should be aware of other religious minorities in ‘ communities that have come from post-war immigration, such as Hindus and Sikhs. Black identity, Caribbean and African, has also a more than cultural significance. The Stephen Lawrence case illustrates its political reach. Despite a large black population in France, both Christian, secular and Moslem, it does not figure in the present work. There is also the importance of mixed background. Fourest does not discuss these parts of the cultural mosaic.

That said there are important distinctions between our lands. There is no ‘école laïque’ in the UK. There is indeed a House of Lords, and an established Church, though I would find it hard to notice its influence on my life, or be more than indirectly affected by the aristocratic culture she claims pervades our society. The present government indeed encourages religious enthusiasts to indoctrinate the young, and to take an important role in state policy. But it may well have laid the basis for a secular push from the ‘new atheist’ lobby that they will come to regret. It is not easy to think of a French equivalent to Bob Lambert. This political policeman is now an academic who cultivates Islamists and is honoured on anti-racist platforms, after a past infiltrating, undercover, the left. But perhaps his exposure may encourage others not to follow in his footsteps.

Fourest has written an important book. It is plainly and lucidly written. It travels through a range of contemporary controversies without becoming bogged down in theory. But some philosophical questions are inevitable.   The introductory discussion reveals a gap. If universal human rights are not a ‘secular religion’ what are they? La Dernière Utopie has no account of what Robin Blackburn has described as thirty years of human rights discourse in France (On Human Rights New Left Review. 69. 2011) This would not doubt imply looking at how the terms have been misused, in the way Richard Gott desribes, for other ends than the cause of humanity. Reviewing Samuel Moyn’s Last Utopia: Human Rights in History Blackburn raises the wider issue of what human rights are. They are not created by Saints or Founding Documents, or always embodied in laws and treaties. Nor are they just about protecting “free agency” (Michael Ignatieff). They are borne by human aspirations and forged in political fights. Blackburn suggests that Marx, despite disparaging “phrases” about rights and duties, offered a basis in human “species being” for human rights as part of the struggle against oppressions and destruction. If this is a utopia, it is a hope rooted in history.

Fourest places hope in mobilising the best side of the French Republic. Yet the fundamental role of the state is left unpondered. Is a liberal state needed to entrench human rights? Or can they be located in a cosmopolitan democracy – a development on the foundations of the UN that reaches out to civil societies across the globe? Would there ever be a sense in which states would wither away in the face of self-organised communities, a true ‘universalism’ which knows no national boundaries? For a believer in universalism the Kantian problem of how a world-wide ‘republic’ of right (as law) is compatible with the existence of separate political republics remains unresolved. This perhaps, remains the hardest issue of them all.

*A striking feature of the debates was this effort to rise above differing cultural traditions, as described in her main source – Mary Ann Glendon. A World Made New. Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 2001.

Appendix.

Brother Tariq.

Caroline Fourest is best known in the English-speaking world for Frère Tariq (2004). This exposed the Islamic thinker Tariq Ramadan’s ‘double language’. Cassette recordings of his speeches revealed another side to the humanist Islam he preaches to Western audiences. Ramadan’s “reformist Salafism” was a strategy of alliances to win a less than reformed Islamic influence. He had a prude’s obsessions – feeling repelled by mixed bathing, hostile to homosexuality, and finding it immoral that unmarried men and women have sexual relations. In La Dernière Utopie she cites how Ramadan was sacked from a post as an adviser in integration and multiculturalism to Rotterdam Council. His broadcasts on the Iranian state financed Press TV – during the repression of protests at electoral fraud in 2009, which he failed to mention – was the final straw.

Such writing has earned Fourest the reputation of building a media career out of “stigmatising Islam” in the name of secularism (laïcité). She signed the petition, Together Facing the New Totalitarianism. (2010) This defended secular values and freedom of speech during the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons controversy. Far from limiting herself to Islam or Islamism, Fourest has written a series of book attacking Christian fundamentalism, defending abortion rights, gay rights, and, from her first publication to her latest, the French far-right, above all the Front National. (FN) Her biography of Marine Le Pen (2011), co-written with her partner, Fiammetta Venner, questions the far-right leader’s conversion to ‘secularism’. To her this is a form of ‘mono-culturalism’ hiding the FN’s deeper Catholicism not to mention forces hostile to the French Revolution and the Republic. This book has only increased the number of Fourest’s enemies.

Her weekly column in Le Monde and her Blog  is where people can catch up with her latest reflections. She is active in the feminist and gay movement, and edits the magazine Pro-Choix.