Opinion

Paris security response could cause long term damage

Tributes are left at the La Carillon restaurant in Paris, following the attacks in the French capital. Picture by Steve Parsons, PA Wire
Tributes are left at the La Carillon restaurant in Paris, following the attacks in the French capital. Picture by Steve Parsons, PA Wire Tributes are left at the La Carillon restaurant in Paris, following the attacks in the French capital. Picture by Steve Parsons, PA Wire

Paris is far from perfect.

It’s a city of affluence. Yet large numbers of huddled homeless people shelter near landmarks like Place de Clichy and Gare du Nord, often while freezing fog crawls relentlessly off the Seine at minus 10C.

It’s a city of the republic. Yet 'stop and search' police profiling of young non-whites is prevalent on train platforms and side-streets in poorer suburbs. Meanwhile gold-laced Dolce and Gabanna designer hijabs stroll easily up Euro Disney's Main Street to worship in the grand cathedral of the Magical Kingdom.

Thus spake anecdotes of rights and religion in modern Paris: not always universal; not always spiritual.

Critically, however, a separation of state and church is still jealously maintained as the very soul of French society and the nation's republican lifeblood.

And that's partly why Friday night's murderous attacks by ISIS in Paris have struck so viscerally.

Their immediate objective was maximum terror through wanton murder. Their longer-term aim is to provoke counter-reaction, racism and repression.

They need precisely such a state-driven chain-reaction to sustain their own patriarchal fascism.

Unfortunately, it has already started - liberty being swallowed by security.

On Monday evening, President Francois Hollande declared a security programme that could do more long-term damage to France’s republic than any terror onslaught, by hollowing out its values from within.

It includes three months of continuous emergency laws (probably rolling), new policing powers, major constitutional amendments, and thousands of new security jobs. The scale is profound, and it wasn’t just drafted in three days after the Bataclan massacre.

President Hollande has pressed a nuclear button for political reasons. Instead, he should have pressed a pause button for careful reflection.

Importantly, no such avalanche reactions are ever provoked by similarly murderous attacks on civilians in places like Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, throughout Syria, its neighbours, and further afield.

So we again face the double-standard that while we share one planet, we maintain two worlds - of major inequalities and moral inconsistencies.

Yes, Paris is more culturally relative to us and that is an understandable factor.

And yes I love the place, celebrating togetherness with lifelong friends whose faithfulness is as strong as their democratic ethos, and where some of my sunniest memories in life still live at small cafés and street corners.

However, the value of human lives should never be dependent on our personal proximity to the victims of terrorism's poison (non-state, or otherwise). Nor should our reactions descend into lazy labelling.

Make no mistake, the methods and mentality of the Paris murderers are those of modern fascists. They are like rampaging Mark II upgrades of Pol Pot's infamous Khmer Rouge.

And there is nothing in humanity to ever justify their inhumanity.

But just like Cambodia a generation ago, the ISIS monster has spawned itself in the disastrous legacy of failed imperial conquests by the west for oil, money and advantage. Even President Obama described ISIS as an “unintended consequence” of the US's Iraq invasion.

That fact must form the foundation of more effective, long-term international security responses to their specific fascist terror - and more generally.

Security - like international politics and economics - needs to become much more sustainable in strategy, rather than reactive counter-terrorism or proactive power-grabs.

One key to reshaping future security outcomes lies in repudiating the ISIS narrative.

It's time for us to remove religion and ideology and political theories from the core equation of their discussion. (Stop talking about Islam and Muslims – that is an intentional and nasty distraction. This isn’t about Allah.)

When you remove those camouflage factors, you're left largely with the grotesque power-games of a competitive global interest. But there's one crucial difference: ISIS does not even want to co-exist as another elite; it simply wants to conquer all as a dictator.

So Paris today is not just a battle over security or intelligence or policy. It has become a strategically bigger battle for ideas and ideals.

It's a battle for the ideas that Paris itself spells out in its glorious name and its gifted people: passion and politics; argument and art; rights and resistance; inclusion and imagination; solidarity and style.

Democrats must shine them upon our own domestic governments, just as strongly as we uphold them against transnational fascist assailants.

And of course, it is a battle for Paris's greatest idea of all - the infinite ideal of love.

We must never, ever lose our well-spring for loving life: the ability to love the beauty in each other and to love the diversity of our planet, no matter how heavy the hurt with which others pummel our hearts.

Otherwise, they win.

j.kearney@irishnews.com