NEO-LIBERAL cultural apparatuses are on the counter-offensive after the potent challenge of the violent terror attacks in France. And the spin has been to resuscitate the hegemony of the West under the usual banner of feel-good unity bolstered by glossy TV-ready images and simple easy-to-digest slogans. One can almost see a Robert de Niro-character from the movie Wag the Dog directing what the news anchors say to color the purported one million march against terror.
That the silent majority hidden inside gated villages, coffee shops, and office cubicles came out and congregated under the flag of “Je suis” or “I am” indicated the breadth and scope of the current unity.
They came as individuals and dispersed as such. At the end of the march, the best that they achieved was the temporary unity that they would no longer tolerate the intolerance of fundamentalists, propping up the war of the West against radical Islam.
For sure, there was a multiplicity of discourses in that march, but the medium can only allow for a palatable message. At least, this was the picture painted by the panoramic shots of forty nine world leaders of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim nations marching hand-in-hand; the vibrant red, white, and blue flags of the French colors fighting against the settling dusk; and the sea of humanity never perhaps seen since the French revolution?
But what revolution is this? That the moderate Muslims are now referring to themselves as “je suis” Jew, and that everyone has practically changed their names to Charlie are hardly the groundbreaking events that could top the transformations during the political birth of modernity centuries ago.
The carnage actually continues in Syria, Nigeria, and Palestine and many of the minorities, Muslims included, in wealthy European nations will remain excluded from the economic and social gains of these advanced societies. Despite the triumphalism of French philosopher Bernard Henry Levy declaring the event as a defining moment when humanity finally stood up against Islamic fascism in defense of democracy, it is a foreboding sense of anxiety that is instead felt.
Philosopher-rockstar Slavoj Zizek attempts to define the contours of this new anxiety in his piece on the Hebdo massacre. He draws from WB Yeats poem to drive home a controversial point. He refers to the adherents of the neo-liberal order as the “best who lack conviction” while the fundamentalists are the “worst who are full of passionate intensity.”
While it may not be productive to assign these categories of best and worse using a Nietzschean critique that reveal the inherent weakness of both positions, the astute philosopher is correct in treating the two positions as somewhat related. The position of intolerance that the fundamentalists take on is merely the mirror-image of the regime of tolerance under the neo-liberal order.
In the grand scheme of things, it is really the laissez-faire political and economic hegemony propped up by an insidious liberal philosophy that has wreaked havoc all over the developing nations of the world which has fuelled the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The irony is that the West has tolerated even abetted global inequality and sponsored neo-imperialist projects so as to maintain the social privileges of their populations including the practice of satire and free speech. Their tolerance for the disenfranchisement of their minority populations within their own territory and elsewhere has produced the monster of terror.
But when ghosts of structural adjustments past and exported asymmetrical wars come back to haunt them in the form of the violent intolerance of Islamic fundamentalism, they can only retort an appeal for tolerance as a response. The two positions are trapped in a single ideological bind and that is why the vista for understanding of the two discourses is similarly handicapped.
Zizek appeals for the integration of Left discourse in the brewing social debate as a possible way out. He quotes from Walter Benjamin: “Every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution.” In this instance, he considers the disenfranchised masses who have been lured to fundamentalism as the same ranks that should have joined progressive movements. However, Zizek fails to call out the inherent fascistic character of Western societies and instead merely wants to save the “liberal order from itself.”
This I believe is at the root of the new anxieties that the Western world is facing. What has taken place in France is evidence that the dominant neo-liberal order cannot be saved and its mirror-image of fundamentalism must not supplant it. Things fall apart, indeed. Now, what is to be done?