Posted on 01/16/2015 8:02:55 AM PST by lbryce
The prime minister of France, Manuel Valls, has emerged over the past tumultuous week as one of the Wests most vocal foes of Islamism, though hes actually been talking about the threat it poses for a long while. During the course of an interview conducted before the Charlie Hebdo attacks, he told mehe went out of his way to tell me, in factthat he refuses to use the term Islamophobia to describe the phenomenon of anti-Muslim prejudice, because, he says, the accusation of Islamophobia is often used as a weapon by Islamism's apologists to silence their critics.
Most of my conversation with Valls was focused on the fragile state of French Jewryhere is my post on his comments, which included the now-widely circulated statement that, if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be Franceand I didnt realize the importance of his comment about Islamophobia until I re-read the transcript of our interview.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
View Full Version : Chomsky on French Intellectualism Versus American Pragmatism
Chomsky on French Intellectualism Versus American Pragmatism
As much as I love France and respect her history and accomplishments, I have to agree with Chomsky on this one. This is also for those who think Chomsky is an "America-hater".
Quoted from Understanding Power: the Indispensable Chomsky, edited by P.R. Mitchell and J. Schoeffel, pp 96-97.
"...if you compare the United States with France -- or with most of Europe, for that matter -- I think one of the healthy things about the United States is precisely this: there's very little respect for intellectuals as such. And there shouldn't be. What's there to respect? I mean, in France if you're part of the intellectual elite and you cough, there's a front-page story in Le Monde. That's one of the reasons why French intellectual culture is so farcical -- it's like Hollywood. You're in front of the television cameras all the time, and you've got to keep doing something new so they'll keep focusing on you and not on the guy at the next table, and people don't have ideas that are that good, so they have to come up with crazy stuff, and the intellectuals get all pompous and self-important. So I remember during the Vietnam War, there'd be these big international campaigns to protest the war, and a number of times I was asked to co-sign letters with, say, Jean-Paul Sartre [French philosopher]. Well, we'd co-sign some statement, and in France it was front-page news; here, nobody even mentioned it. And the French thought that was scandalous; I thought it was terrific -- why the hell should anybody mention it? What difference does it make if two guys who happen to have some name recognition got together and signed a statement? Why should that be of any particular interest to anybody? So I think the American reaction [towards intellectuals] is much healthier in this respect."
Note that Chomsky is talking about over-intellectualizing things, not about having the general ability to think critically. And on this point of over-intellectualising, I think the French are guilty, or have been guilty in the past -- look at the political situation of 1940. If I remember correctly, part of the reason the French couldn't mount an effective defense against the Germans is because of all the political infighting that was taking place in Paris. Too many political parties, too many different philosophical positions, too much *thinking* and talking got in the way of actually *doing*.
But of course the opposite is also true, and is perhaps alive and well in the States. That is, not enough thinking can lead to just as much trouble.
Discuss?
Islamophobia: the rational fear of being beheaded.
That’s only if you think rationally. If you have a Gallic perspective on the world then you’d have a different interpretation.
“If you have a Gallic perspective on the world then youd have a different interpretation.”
Gallic? Muslim Marxist is more descriptive.
Well, I’ll be dipped in shinola (sp?)! I never thought I would agree with Chomsky on anything but I definitely agree with him on this one.
Stating the obvious has become revelatory in this Orwellian World.
Chomsky is not familiar with the terms introspection or irony.
French Intellectualism = Muslim Marxist
The trouble with a lot of ‘intellectuals’ is that they don’t think critically, they form (or worse, adopt) an ideology, and view everything through that prism, regardless of how distorted or flawed that image is. Then they think that because their ideas are so complicated and ‘nuanced’ that they are superior to those that have been arrived at by simple unbiased observation and common sense. As George Orwell once said, ‘Some ideas are so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them’...
A phobia implies an irrational fear. Fear of the consequences of a close encounter with militant Islam is a completely rational fear - you WILL be humiliated, shamed, punished, enslaved or put to death, in sometimes painful and ignominious ways, but always as an object lesson to others who may raise a challenge.
Except when the assault is so egregious, so asymmetrical, that it finally causes blowback.
Then it becomes, “The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.”
It might be called “genocide”, but no dog was ever cured of rabies, except by a swift and authoritative killing, before there is a next victim.
Which French leader was it who tried to say the first two terrorism incidents in France were not related and not about Islam? Where’s that guy been?
A phobia is an irrational or unreasoned fear. There is nothing irrational or unreasonable about fearing those who are a physical threat to your safety and even your life.
Both over-thinking and un-thinking will lead to the situation of not seeing the forest for the trees. To see the forest and not just individual trees, I think, is to take a pragmatic approach. You have to keep in mind what the whole point of a given exercise is so that you don’t get lost.
We need to change the dialogue.
We need to call it QURAN INSPIRED TERRORISM, as that’s exactly what it is.
This eliminates the discussion about muslims, and how moderate or radical they may or may not be.
Focus on the source of the barbarism - it’s the teaching of the quran.
Koranic Terrorism.
I like that. Noted, will use.
Yes, that is accurate.
There’s a reason that millions of terrorists are under the impression that they’re islamic.
How anyone can just get on the air and proclaim that these terrorists are not representing islam is ridiculous.
Read the “holy” book. These terrorists are doing what it says to do, which means it actually IS islam.
For the sake of making it non-personal, call it Koranic Terrorism, or Quran Inspired Violence, whatever. Just don’t pretend it’s not part of islam.
LOL!
Pragmatism is OK until you remember the Pragmatists’ mantra:
“Damn the Absolute”.
The kind of relativism that idea has introduced into American morals has been very destructive.
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