Tragically, with today’s attacks on Paris, the cycle continues apace. As I wrote in March:
“To take a more recent example, as Juan Cole convincingly argued, the unjust violence of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris were meant to polarize or “sharpen the contradictions” between Muslims and non-Muslims in France by provoking unjustly violent oppression:
‘Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination.’ (…)
The neocons and the terrorist leaders, as Justin Raimondo put it, are “funhouse mirror counterparts” of each other. Both “see world events through a Manichean prism,” and seek to more completely realize that severe dualism by polarizing the world into two irreconcilable camps deadlocked in a civilizational Ragnarök. To this end, each pursues innocent-consuming savagery, and each counts on and even hopes for like savagery from the other.”
In fact, as I just learned tonight on Twitter, in one of its own publications following that attack, ISIS wrote of driving to “extinction” the “grayzone” between Islamic extremism and “the crusader coalition.” Again, it’s all about using terrorism to “sharpen the contradictions” and polarize the world.
And now indeed French president Hollande has said, “To all those who have seen these awful things, I want to say we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless.”
And there are even unconfirmed reports of a Calais migrant camp being set on fire.
Enough with this madness. Break the damn cycle. Stop being manipulated by extremists on both sides. This is the only world we have.