
Marion Maréchal Le Pen,[1]Marion Maréchal legally has actually dropped her grandfather’s name. the niece of Marine Le Pen and granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, has published a Facebook video reacting to the Black Lives Matter protests, the destruction of historic Western monuments, and French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner’s recent statement that he is ready to “bend the knee” for BLM. I post below an English translation of her comments, as a significant marker of the racial radicalization of discourse in France, both among anti-racists and nationalists. I have not omitted Maréchal’s “Dems Are the Real Realists” caveat at the end.
For those who have not kept up, Maréchal has left politics since 2017, dedicating herself to her daughter, setting up a Right-wing university in Lyons, which is incidentally expanding with an office in Madrid, and giving occasional speeches. She seems to be positioning herself as a unifying figure who could be the junction between conservatives and nationalists in France.
• • •
I am making this video as a kind of epidermic reaction, as a kind of psychological rearmament, so to speak, in the face of this steamroller which is coming down on us with the George Floyd and Adam Traoré[2]A black criminal who died while in the custody of French police and who has inspired BLM-style protests in France. Covered here: https://www.unz.com/gdurocher/pro-blm-demonstrations...urope/ cases.
This is a steamroller which is difficult to escape, given that it exists at once in our schools, our universities, our companies, but also sometimes in our churches. And so I want to tell you why I will refuse to bend the knee, unlike apparently the Minister of the Interior.
Because I think by this gesture all these left-wing activist groups – so-called anti-racist, indigenist,[3]“Indigenist” groups like les Indigènes de la République (“Natives of the Republic”) are black and Arab groups who claim to be mistreated like “natives” were in the French colonies of Africa. Thus, there is a complete reversal of vocabulary on the part of these foreign-origin groups. I am personally advocating for French nationalists and identitarians to declare themselves indigenous European groups. Black Lives Matters groups – do not seek respect, but rather humiliation and submission, not tolerance. They ask us not only to bend the kneel, but also to besmirch the memory of our ancestors, to spit upon our history, to purge our heritage, to take down our statues.
I don’t know what nation worthy of the name, having a minimum of self-respect, would accept to bend to such demands.
And yet, a demonstration of just 20,000 people in front of the Palace of Justice was all that was needed – I recall that the yellow-vests represented 250,000 people at the height of the demonstrations – for the government to give way on all the demands, to excuse itself, to condemn an entire profession, that of law enforcement, by recognizing virtually a presumption of guilt, and even refusing to apply the law against manifestly illegal demonstrations, despite the restrictions related to COVID-19.
This is the rule of emotion, of the crowd, of vile political calculation, and, let’s be clear, of stupidity. And I don’t think this is very surprising because this entire ruling class has been nursed on these delirious theories, emanating from American universities and which themselves derive from French theory.[4]Maréchal said this in English. A reference to postmodern French philosophers who have had a great influence in the English-speaking world and beyond, including Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Critics contend that much of this intellectual current represents nothing more than pompous gibberish. I am notably thinking of this infamous “white privilege,” intersectionality, systemic racism – theories which are as delirious in form as in substance.
If we have a Minister of the Interior who is ready to bend the knee and a President of the Republic who submits to and is complicit with these demands, I am convinced that there are like me millions of Frenchmen who are not fooled by this political maneuver and this attempt to subvert minds. I am weighing my words here.
I do not have to apologize as a white woman and as a French woman – you see to what we are reduced to in having to position ourselves on this. I do not have to excuse myself for the death of an African-American in the United States. I do not have to excuse myself for the death of a criminal, Adama Traoré, an accidental death which took place following an arrest which was not linked to his skin color, but to the crime which he and a part of his family apparently committed.
I do not have to excuse myself because I did not colonize. I have colonized no one. I have enslaved no one. In the same way, none of these political groups and activists have been colonized or enslaved. If we look upon history, all civilizations unfortunately have, in various epochs, colonized or been colonized, enslaved or been enslaved. Given this, it is extremely unhealthy to enter into this endless and perfectly unjustified victimarian competition, if we want to look to the future together.
There was a time when we prided ourselves on being heroes rather than victims. Today, these indigenist and anti-racist groups take pleasure in this unflattering status of eternal victims. I think this is no trivial thing: it’s a very profitable business, it must be said, given that behind this victimarian position there is the acquisition of power politically and in the media, money, jobs, reparations, privileges, quotas. All of this of course to the detriment of merit, competence, and genuine equality of rights. Because behind this expression “positive discrimination,” there may be something positive for those who benefit from the quotas, but there is something negative for those who are rejected from the start because of their origin or skin color.
I am very worried because these people are preparing and contributing to a completely unprecedented regression of our civilization and of our patiently-built nation. I am convinced that the racialist logic is morally regressive. As Mathieu Bock-Côté[5]A conservative Québecois nationalist and professor. says, by categorizing people solely by skin color, we abolish nations, peoples, religions, and civilizations. I think this is an absolutely atrocious world in which we first of all have to look at skin color before judging each of our acts.
And it’s a good thing “race doesn’t exist,”[6]The National Assembly in 2018 voted to remove the word “race” from the Constitution’s anti-discrimination clause, on the grounds that race does not exist . . . because in the end all of these groups have done the most to rehabilitate this concept and to systematically and even obsessionally evoke it. Fortunately, many Frenchmen – white or black, whatever their origin – are not intoxicated by this Americanization of our minds. Fortunately, they do not aspire either to civil war or to racial war. Fortunately, they refuse to participate in this victimarian competition. Fortunately, they reject these privileges on the basis of skin color or origin.
And I sincerely hope that the French will be able to draw the political weapons from their history, their culture, and their intelligence to refuse this repentance and this self-flagellation, which objectively condemn us to exit history.
Some will object: this phenomenon is not really catching on and the excesses are only present in the United States. Yes and no. Unfortunately, the trends that we experience are for the most part are merely imported with ten years’ delay from the United States. And so we must from today fight and resist this trend. We must be ready and vigilant.
Notes
[1] Marion Maréchal legally has actually dropped her grandfather’s name.
[2] A black criminal who died while in the custody of French police and who has inspired BLM-style protests in France. Covered here: https://www.unz.com/gdurocher/pro-blm-demonstrations-sweep-across-europe/
[3] “Indigenist” groups like les Indigènes de la République (“Natives of the Republic”) are black and Arab groups who claim to be mistreated like “natives” were in the French colonies of Africa. Thus, there is a complete reversal of vocabulary on the part of these foreign-origin groups. I am personally advocating for French nationalists and identitarians to declare themselves indigenous European groups.
[4] Maréchal said this in English. A reference to postmodern French philosophers who have had a great influence in the English-speaking world and beyond, including Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Critics contend that much of this intellectual current represents nothing more than pompous gibberish.
[5] A conservative Québecois nationalist and professor.
[6] The National Assembly in 2018 voted to remove the word “race” from the Constitution’s anti-discrimination clause, on the grounds that race does not exist . . .
Race does exist, blacks hate the white race, and Jews hate the gentiles. What are you going to do about it?
Bravo Marion!
America is as needful of this brilliant, courageous and principled reassertion of the values of the free society as it was some 250 years ago in looking to Enlightenment France to find its identity as a constitutional republic.
Race doesn’t exist? Sounds kinda cucky to me.
I think what France really needs is a Second Amendment: aux barricades, mes amis!
Perfectly stated. Bend a knee to no human being. Better to die standing.
Beautiful. Thank you for standing up for your national heritage, instead of kneeling in shame. Your point of view needs no apology, there is nothing to apologize for.
-R
It’s ok if the oppressed and tortured name the causes for their oppression, which is clearly racism. But that is not to say that the racist logic of the oppressors would be by any means human or correct.
– That is the mechanism, according to which this thing works. it is a little “speech-machine” (Deleuze/ Guattari). Very handy, works all the time, never lets you down, day in day out – a VW Golf of the present-day mentality, so to speak. Very popular around the world, too.
Why is Haiti so poor? Because Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiti_indemnity_controversy
She is right about French Theory being consumed at US universities and then being regurgitated into Europe. Many ideas which come out of continental Europe, which sometimes make some sense, find their way into the American academic and student mind. Strangely, something happens to those ideas at that point. They become simplified, strained through the American social filter and then taken way too seriously. Perhaps it is the age-old problem the Anglos have with abstraction. Unfortunately, given the preponderance of US power and its cultural organs, these ideas find their way back into Europe, removed from the environment in which they germinated in the US, after they were discarded 20 years ago and are taken up anew by the masses.
Wow, can we run her for POTUS? We already had one foreigner, so why not another?
“I am personally advocating for French nationalists and identitarians to declare themselves indigenous European groups.”
Guillaume, I sort of like the idea for the grim reason that it recognizes the profound weakness of the Euro-American “position” founded on 2000+ years of “commonality” (yep, interspersed by plenty of blood-letting, too). There ought to be a sober, mainstreamable American equivalent available.
“I do not need to apologize as a white woman and as a French woman”
Absolutely.
They seek both, they just won’t find the former where they are looking for it or how they are looking.
They need external respect, because they humiliate themselves in lieu of developing self-respect; just as they feel they need to humiliate others, because they misattribute the ability to do so for actually being respected.
Taking “pleasure” in having the “status of a perpetual victim” is self-humiliation.
This is not to steal responsibility from them, but to point out that they only know what they know; and it seems to be very little.
I wouldn’t blame America. France is the font et origo of all of this: Sartre, Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, etc., etc. American universities just parrot derivative thinking from the French source.
And let’s not forget the Jacobins. In fact, France is the origin of this “tear these structures down!” kind of revolutionary thinking.
“And yet, a demonstration of just 20,000 people in front of the Palace of Justice was all that was needed – I recall that the yellow-vests represented 250,000 people at the height of the demonstrations – for the government to give way on all the demands….”
Well, the reasons for this should be obvious:
BLM is zionist controlled.
Yellow-Vests are not.
Because blacks so flippantly kill other blacks lives and treat each other like animals, blacks depend on whites to lend value to black lives. Blacks have outsourced the valuation of black lives to whites.
When blacks kill blacks by the bushel in Africa, it’s just business as usual. Blacks are so used to killing other blacks that they figure it’s just how things will be. There’s no way blacks are going to spare black lives. Black kill blacks and laugh and taunt while they’re doing it.
Then, the only way blacks can make black lives matter is by having whites care. It’s like dogs fight dogs and rely on humans to value dog lives. More is expected of higher humans than from fellow dogs who just bark and bite.
So, it is up to whites to care about black suffering in Africa. And even though blacks don’t care about blacks killing blacks, whites must care OH SO VERY MUCH about an odd white person killing a black person. Whites must think and emote from a higher place.
So, in a way, blacks worship whites as the god-race. Without whites to bestow meaning to black lives, black lives are just ugabugans and savages who are whupping and killing one another.
When animals kill animals, we just see it as the natural way, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. But when humans kill animals(or certain animals like lion, gorilla, elephant, etc), we all upset because humans, as higher beings, must have kindly dominion over the animals.
White-black relations is like human and animal OR god and man.
And yet, blacks also see themselves as the god-race that should be worshiped by whites. Why? Because blacks dominate sports and pop music and became the demigods of globo pop culture. Also, as black guys beat up white guys, black race now sees the white race as weak and wussy. And whites are so awed with black athletes and studs that they are a bunch of cucky-wucks.
Still, blacks still sense that whites are nicer, more civilized, and more advanced. And on some level, whites still see blacks as savage, animal-like, and oogity-boogity. So, without nice whites to care about black lives, black lives don’t have much meaning.
Whites are like a weak god, an oxymoron, in the eyes of blacks. Blacks look up to whites to validate black lives, but blacks also see whites as weak and wussy, to push around and bully.
Blacks are like divine animals to whites. Blacks are brutish and thuggish, but because those traits made them the top idols of sports and sex in our debased and degraded pop culture, whites look up to blacks as awesome beings. Whites look up to blacks for low reasons, but the low is the new high in the world of the new normal.
Weak gods and divine animals. This will not end well.
Marion Maréchal is sounding rather civ-nat, rather than ethno-statist … and that may end up an achilles heel in dealing with what is happening in France among the various ethnic sectors who collectively are today’s ‘French’
One thing in Europe that is being increasingly noted, is that it is the EU’s large countries which are being most ravaged by difficult problems and some oppression
Big problems are seen in Spain, France, Germany, UK, Italy
Whereas a certain okay quality of life, and even higher freedom, is maintained, in Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Czechia, Portugal and so on
It’s almost as if the small countries with populations under 12 million or so, and geographically compact as well, have an aspect of being essentially big villages, where it is more difficult to run giant scams on the populace
Whereas in big countries, where the oligarchies have more billions to deploy and more intensity in seeking domination, and actions of the centre government are more remote, things are spinning out of control
France itself was formed over the centuries with some rather authoritarian crushing of regional minorities … is it perhaps partly entropy from that forced ancient project, helping to undermine France now?
Great choice. You already are Israel’s slaves, so another Zionist puppet crushing your neck won’t make a big difference.
Marion Marechal-Le Pen’s is the biological daughter of Roger Auque, a “journalist” and militant Zionist who, posted in Lebanon, was very close to Uri Lubrani, the Israeli governor of the “security belt” in occupied South Lebanon. Auque was later arrested and kept hostage for a few months by Hezbollah for spying for Israel. His friend, Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, documented Auque’s outstanding services to the Zionist state in a whole chapter of his book ” The Secret War With Iran“.
Auque enthusiastically covered all Zionazi imperial wars: Yugoslavia, Iraq. As a nepotistic reward for his life-long efforts, Hebraic arch-Zionist president Sarkozy appointed Auque France’s ambassador to Eritrea, where his best friend was Israel ambassador Guy Feldman.
In his posthumous memoir, Auque proudly revealed having worked as a Mossad spy for all of his life. He also confirmed being Marechal’s father and being very close to her, a fact she had initially tried to conceal by suing a news outlet that made her real filiation public.
Marechal herself is being groomed by Netanyahu to whom she is close. Zionist money has been used to set up an academic institution which she manages despite her and will undoubtedly produce many Israel-friendly “White Nationalists”.
Enjoy the Zio s… on you nose and enjoy watching Black people being murdered. You deserve what you got.
There is this debate about ethno-nationalism vs civic nationalism, but even civic nationalism can work ONLY under a system that is broadly ethno-nationalist or racio-nationalist.
For minorities to go along with the system, they must acknowledge that the nation is generally defined by the dominant majority. That way, there can be peace between majority and minorities. Majority can tolerate the minorities who accept the majority as numerically and culturally dominant. So, civic nationalism can work under a tolerant ethno-nationalist or racio-nationalist system.
When was the golden age of civic nationalism in the US? It was following WWII to the mid 60s.
Whites changed their tune and were willing to be nicer to minorities and be less white-centric. But it was understood US was mostly a white euro-nation. And minorities accepted white America as the dominant Core America and sought to fit in as good minorities.
But things began to change for four reasons.
1. Jews, though a minority, began to gain ruling power, and that meant minority-centrism would rule America. As minority-elite, Jews sought to de-legitimize white Christian majority America.
2. Blacks realized they can whup whitey and that whitey was afraid of them. Thus, they lost respect for the ‘fa**oty ass white boy’ and came to look upon white power as illegitimate.
3. Mass non-white immigration that threatened to turn whites into a minority.
4. PC indoctrination that divided the white race into two broad factions: morally defensive white conservatives and self-hating white liberals who hated white cons even more.
Thus, civic nationalism has no future in the US.
Correct! And I already mentioned that this Durocher guy is Jewish, right?
So she’s basically a French Tommy Robinson?
“race doesn’t exist, kill all white people!!”
I love her so much I can’t stand it. I wish she were some sort of Universal Queen of Real Christians. I might move to Lyon in hopes of catching a glimpse of her.
For those of us who still live in caves, she gave a historic address at a gathering in the U.S.A. called “CPAC 2018.” Her quotation from Mahler was priceless.
If you don’t appreciate her you are a follower of the Dark Lord.
Mais non, mon ami. Haiti is poor because the Knee-grows slaughtered all of the French Whites.
A more appropriate comparison would be that of St. Nelson of Mandela’s ANC land grab, opposed by Zulu King Zwelithini. He understands the Boers are feeding South Africa.
https://caldronpool.com/zulus-are-backing-white-farmers-in-the-fight-against-land-expropriation-heres-why/
Similarly, Khoi-San King Khoebaha wants no part of St. Nelson’s Bantu invaders and has declared independence.
The Khoi-San are genetically different than the Bantu/Zulu invaders.
“Vigilance is the price of liberty.”
Vive la France!
I notice you did not refer to the substance of what she said. It is what she says that infuriates you. Your ridiculous post is no more than an eruption of uncontrolled female jealousy.
It is a very relevant comparison, which highlights the larger framework for political control currently deployed in Europe.
Since the end of WW2, the Zionist ideology has been consistently promoted from within the far Left under the Trotskyste faction, very small in numbers but very powerful in influence. Not at all within the far Right, which was extremely ostracised because of its supposed anti-Semitism and alleged Nazi sympathies.
A noticeable political turn occurred after 9/11 with the rise of politicians such as Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, representing a new far Right claiming to represent the voices of native Europeans, but very controlled by Israeli organisations.
At the same time the US was hit by the 9/11 tragedy, a false flag which legitimised a global “war of civilisations” , a parallel political engineering movement was launched in Europe, aiming at setting indigenous Europeans against the Muslim immigrant communities. This cleavage could be much further deepened after the 2008 financial crisis and the economic distress it brought. The GCF also sealed the failure of all traditional political parties, and required the PTB’s to take over any alternative political forces on the rise.
Veteran far Right leaders, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen (Front National) in France or Nick Griffiths (British National Party) in the UK, were too independent, or too notoriously anti-Israel to be co-opted. So Zionists PTB’s went on to create their own “alt-Right” leaders, Robinson in the UK and Marechal in France.
Jacques Attali, arguably France’s Nr 1 tribal shadow kingmaker, even cheekily let it slip in public that France’s next President could be female, a first for the country and a transparent hint to Marion Marechal.
In France, this public Zionist turn and appeal to the far/alt-Right is embodied by journalist and political analyst Eric Zemmour, who is more Islamophobic than any French gentile would ever dare to be. Interestingly, Zemmour is now ALSO involved with creating a far-Left “Front Populaire” with philosopher Michel Onfray. In summary, the inevitable disintegration of the traditional representation is being catered for by taking control of both populist sides of the political spectrum.
At a time where History is accelerating, we seem to completely lack of analytical tools to understand our current predicament; so everybody form their own opinion the best way they can.
Mine is that the greatest danger facing humankind is another World War, and that the Nr 1 force pushing to such disastrous outcome is Israel, even more so than the USA.
The alt-Right will be remembered for what they clearly are: the stupid and obsequious pawns of the Zionist global takeover. The far-Left, for all their flaws, have at least the merit to be anti-war.
Is he? He does not sound as a Zionist anyway.
I like Durocher’s articles: he is cultured and courteous, displays much originality in his ideas and covers a wide-ranging scope of subject on which he writes very pleasantly. It is always interesting reading him. And he definitely is a genuine reflection of the French alt-Right’s state of mind, just more cultured
I think Durocher is victim of the catastrophist mindset which is created and maintained by Zionist mind-control organisations in order to submit people into abject fear and make them accept the unacceptable: curtailing liberties, fascism, war.
The PTB’s are obviously trying to convince us that it is their way or no way: Moi ou le chaos, my way or chaos, to paraphrase Charles de Gaulle. Well, the truth is that there won’t be chaos for anybody if the Zionazi global order collapse, not even for Israel.
An intelligent writer like Durocher should understand that it is Zio-dominated Western elites’ pre-eminence which is doomed, NOT Western people, who have incomparably contributed to human civilisation and will remain indispensable to its future for centuries to come.
He should look towards the East, look forward for the coming multipolar world, and get rid of Zio-instilled nihilism.
Since the US is in the lead – with some luck, it will spectacularly go down the tubes, giving a warning to Europe before it’s too late.
Victorian England was built on the fear induced by the French Revolution.
Our complete lack of analytical tools.
There are those educated minds, even now, in America, who have the knowledge and tools? What they lack is a platform where the truth may be told.
The blacks have ruled Haiti for over 200 years. Interminable night. Without whites, all blacks would live in bleakest darkness, but they would be unconscious of their inferiority.
There is no such thing as a “zionazi”. The world order we see today is a direct result of the National Socialist defeat in the Second Zionist War. You can’t eat your cake and have it, too.
Haiti as an example is widely underrated. I agree. One could name a few African states, too.
And what really hurts is the obvious inferiority, I agree too. What would a decent society have to make of it? – I think this is a serious question and it is utterly dumb, to turn it into a taboo.
PS
Or of Rap-music? – What is it good for? – For sure a minor thing, but even though – to not even ask such questions seems to not work out in the end.
Zionist? What’s that? The guy is a Hungarian Jew trying to pass off as a Frenchman!
Look guys, to make all of your lives easy, even in moderation: Cioran was a Romanian (of Transilvanian (old Hungarian) origin) philosopher that was pretty much fascist in the 1930s, and wrote a lot then. Later on, this guy Durocher translated from ROMANIAN (the original and only existing versions) in French some of Cioran’s writings. Now, who would have enough local culture to translate the language of a Cioran (repressing the Romanians, of course)? Moreover, who would have been allowed to do this? I think the reply is pretty obvious: a Hungarian Jew!
Also, he’s supposed to be pretty old now but he keeps writing faster and faster…
There is no comparison here mon ami between the way Haiti was brought to eat mud cakes nowadays and South Africa. The Haiti’s economy was totally destroyed in the prolonged wars they sustained against the plantation owners, the French Royal Army, the British Army, the French Revolutionary and then Napoleon’s armies. Utter destruction. Then they were forced into compensation. That is not the case for South Africa.
The only country that could be used as a comparison for what blacks could do is Ethiopia, which was the only independent African polity ever. And from what I have been reading, their economy is booming now…
Wake up mon ami. See how much abandon had the French in exploiting others, i.e. Indochina, Algeria, and probably had a hand in Belgian Congo. The French were the biggest promoters on the overthrown of Qaddafi in Libya, with the intention of getting possession of all the waterworks done in southern Libya by the former regime.
All correct, but I would like to bring a small precision on the subject of Libya.
In a nutshell, the late President Qaddafi signed his death decree on the day he publicly revealed to having funded Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidential campaign.
After this declaration was made, a colour “revolution” was masterminded by Sarkozy’s tribal fellow Bernard-Henry Levy in Paris in Oct and Nov 2010, three months before the alleged Benghazi insurrection.
Levy secretly worked with Nouri El-Mesmari, who was Qaddafi’s head of protocol and betrayed him. Levy also enrolled disgruntled businessmen from Cyrenaica whose drug and people trafficking had been repressed by Qaddafi.
When fleeing for his life during his last hours in Syrte, President Qaddafi was hounded by French planes, which communicated his exact position to the NATO pet executioners, after spreading his convoy with soporific gases to make sure he would be caught.
Sarkozy and Levy are Israel-firsters and fanatic Zionists: they killed Qaddafi primarily for Israel, while hiding behind the French flag.
To honor Madam Marion Maréchal Le Pen and her eminent, brilliant, courageous, and beautiful mother, Madam Marion Anne Perrine (“Marine”) Le Pen — and ALSO the France I knew (1963-1995) while it (save post 1980 Paris) remained a great nation of sublime culture — I shall set this comment’s beginning text in the most beautiful language, French.
Ayant travaillé deux fois en France (une fois en tant qu’agriculteur, une fois comme un membre de la faculté de droit d’une université française) et ayant visité la France plusieurs fois, je suis amoureux de la magnifique culture FRANÇAISE, de son art et son art de la diplomatie, de la philosophie [Descartes, Voltaire, Rousseau, Albert Camus (pas seulement un romancier), Jacques Derrida, Paul-Michel Foucault…….], de son architecture, de sa littérature et de sa poésie, de ses films, sa musique baroque et renaissance……. Je suis une francophile.
J’adore Madame Marion Maréchal Le Pen et sa mère. Aussi, je suis d’accord avec la plupart de ses déclarations concernant les manifestations de Black Lives Matter et les réactions connexes de larges segments des populations de diverses nations et de leurs politiciens et médias. Et je m’aligne sur l’espoir de Madame Marion Maréchal Le Pen que la France deviendra FRANÇAISE.
Mais, les déclarations de Madame Maréchal le Pen comporte deux défauts.
Maintenant, en anglais, pour la commodité de la plupart des lecteurs de ce journal:
Per Madam Maréchal Le Pen:
I do not have to excuse myself for the death of a criminal, Adama Traoré, an accidental death which took place following an arrest which was not linked to his skin color, but to the crime which he and a part of his family apparently committed.
Those assertions assume certainties not maintainable vis-a-vis the history and current knowledge of the circumstances of Adama Traoré’s death. And Madam Maréchal Le Pen begs suspicion by asserting those certainties.
Sundry sources have issued variously conflicting narratives of Adama Traoré’s death. But, more than not, the narratives follow this line:
The case began on July 19, 2016 in Beaumont-sur-Oise, France,when Adama Traoré and his brother Bagui were stopped by (French) gendarmes for what was, putatively, an ID check. Adama Traoré fled away. He was not carrying his ID and, therefore, risked an arrest. Adama Traoré [hereinafter “Traoré”] died two hours later, in custody at the Persan (France) gendarmerie station. No footage of his arrest exists. No civilian witnesses are known. The only evidence consists of testimonies of three gendarmes who stopped Traoré and several autopsy reports.
In the day following Traoré’s death, media published the official version of the story — that Traoré died of an endogenously-caused coronary event while he was in gendarme custody.
Traoré’s family disbelieved the official story. The family’s suspicions grew when authorities told them: ‘Because you are Muslim and you wish to bury your dead quickly, we phoned Roissy Airport and Air France and arranged that Traoré’s body be repatriated to Mali tomorrow.’ The authorities offered to arrange passports for all family-members who lacked them.
The family refused to leave or have Adama’s body relocated. The family had not seen Traoré present symptoms that could suggest he had been ill. Local law-enforcement arranged an official autopsy. Traoré’s family found that autopsy suspect. They determined to arrange a second (independent) autopsy.
The second autopsy found that Traoré died of asphyxiation. The autopsy’s toxicology reports bore findings that Traoré’s serum and urine did not bear cannabis or alcohol. That autopsy was conducted by a “college of experts.”
Later, a senior paramedic told the gendarmerie inquiry that when he arrived to resuscitate Traoré, he found that Traoré had not been placed in the recovery position but was lying face-down on the ground in handcuffs, with no one helping him — a statement that contradicted the gendarmes’ accounts. One gendarme said Traoré had told the arresting gendarmes he couldn’t breathe, but gendarmerie officers told the paramedic they thought Traoré was faking and had refused to un-cuff Traoré because (according to the gendarmes) Traoré was violent.
Ove a year later, the investigating judges closed their investigations without issuing indictments, the gendarmes having been placed in the status of “assisted witnesses.” Fearing a dismissal, Traoré’s family relaunched investigation. More autopsies resulted.
Written by four professors of Parisian hospitals, including a specialist in sickle cell anemia and one in sarcoidosis, one autopsy contradicted the official autopsies and invited the judges to investigate whether “positional or mechanical ” asphyxia caused Traoré’s death and whether the ultimate case was the technique of the arresting gendarmes. The investigation reopened again — a fourth time.
Then another autopsy was performed — for the government. That autopsy’s report asserted: (a) that positional asphyxia did not kill Traoré, (b) that his death was explained by cardiogenic edema, (c) that likely contributing pathologies included association of pulmonary sarcoidosis, hypertrophic heart disease, and a sickle cell trait, and (d) that such pathologies contributed to causing Traoré’s death in a context of intense physical stress, physical exertion, and a high concentration of cannabis. Traoré’s family, and private physicians, contested those assertions.
A new expert —a professor of medicine and systemic diseases specialist — filed a report that implicated the gendarmes. He developed his conclusions on bases of sundry case-file documents.
He opined that Traoré’s death followed asphyxia syndrome, which followed a cardiogenic edema. The edema would itself follow from a positional asphyxia caused by “ventral plating” that resulted in hindering normal exchange of, and impossibility of releasing, gasses (oxygen, carbon dioxide). He did not find evidence capable of supporting the government autopsy reports’ “finding” of presence of cannabis. His ultimate conclusion was that death was caused by ventral-plating-induced asphyxia.
The gendarmes claimed they did not use an arrest-technique that involved “ventral plating.” In the George Floyd case, the knee-press choke-hold caused ventral plating — the cop’s knee’s and shin’s pressing on Floyd’s neck and causing the larynx, a carotid artery, or a jugular vein, or a combination of them, to be compressed.
So, the case’s “evidence” and “findings” involved and created much ambiguity respecting:
(a) whether Traoré was a criminal, rather than just a young Malian-Black Frenchman who fled arrest for fear he would by jailed merely because he was not carrying identification
and
(b) whether death resulted from ventral-plating-induced asphyxia caused by the gendarmes’ arrest-technique.
And, because in France, as in the U.S., police, prosecutors, public officials, and judges tend to try to cover up misconduct and crimes of police, an honest observer must feel some distrust of the official autopsy reports respecting the cause(s) of Traoré’s death.
Therefore, Madam Maréchal Le Pen asserted wrongly that Adama Traoré suffered an accidental death. She could not assert, legitimately, more than that the cause-of-death was not established. She was more wrong to assert that Adama Traoré’s death “was not linked to his skin color, but to the crime which he and a part of his family apparently committed,” because
(a) no evidence showed that Adama Traoré committed any crime other than a single fleeing from an ID-card stop
and
(b) any honest French person will admit that French police tend to be biased, sometimes violently, against Blacks who immigrated from previous African French colonies or who are offspring of French citizens or residents who immigrated from such French colonies.
Per Madam Maréchal Le Pen:
I do not have to excuse myself because I did not colonize. I have colonized no one. I have enslaved no one. In the same way, none of these political groups and activists have been colonized or enslaved.
I, too, refuse to genuflect to Black Lives Matter — not because I feel no empathy for the Blacks of the U.S., a majority of the Whites of which continue to perceive, silently or privately if not publically, that U.S. Blacks are creatures of an inferior other species and to treat them so, even if not with brutal or oppressive behavior.
Do not misunderstand.
I am not Black, but of Finno-Ugric (Estonian and Magyar) ethnicity. Yet, in part of my youth (1961-1963), I lived with a Black roommate (an MA-holding PhD candidate) — in Philadelphia’s Powelton Village, mostly, then, a Black ghetto where perhaps 20% of the residents were students or faculty of the University of Pennsylvania or Drexel University. In 1962, I had two Black lovers (both college graduates), then, during the rest of my life, only White lovers (Jewish and Gentile, one Jewish wife, three Gentile).
Occasionally (just rarely), I can listen to old-time Black blues and ragtime with some enjoyment — though not much longer than a half hour.
Video Linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvJrkQf-w-c
But otherwise I dislike Black culture — even contemn “ebonics” and rap and hip hop and Black-players’ childish, sometimes lewd, endzone demonstrations that mar pro football games. And I never submit to rude treatment angry Blacks try to impose on me as if I were a pre-Civil war slaver or slave-owner or a monster White of the Jim Crow South.
The last good and just Blacks-helping laws were the 1964 Civil Rights Act and The Voting Rights Act of 1965. After those statutes, U.S. Blacks-helping laws (e.g., affirmative action legislation) have harmed our nation’s economy, the quality of its goods-and-services, and its social relationships — even disgraced its institutions of higher learning.
I regret that Black society does not foster the Black culture and values manifested here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U386EMeWo3I
Video Link (See also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI12D2or2AY
Video Link) There, one witnesses mature, educated, Black society that produced three brilliant Black women who contributed vitally to NASA’s achieving manned space-travel. Of those three Black women, one, an amazing mathematician, contributed THE mathematical solutions without which NASA’s achievement would have been impossible.
Like her mother, Marion Anne Perrine “Marine” Le Pen, Madam Maréchal Le Pen hopes — as I, too, hope — that French society will reestablish the magnificent, beautiful culture it enjoyed (and bestowed on the world) before the post-WWII invasion of immigrants of foreign cultures, values, and ways of life.
But that hope’s realization does not require disregard, even denial, of the plight Blacks suffer in the U.S. Still, here, in the U.S., police and prosecutor conduct, warped judicial process, criminal law abuse, and, also, e.g., The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (partly codified in 28 U.S.C. § 2254), and dominant (actual, if not publically expressed) White attitudes shackle much of America’s Black population to the banes of bigotry.
Respecting my immediately preceding paragraph’s assertions, see my below-cited comments put under these Unz Review articles:
Under Paul Craig Roberts’s article, “All Races Suffer from Police Violence,” 3 June 2020), https://www.unz.com/proberts/all-races-suffer-from-police-violence/#comment-3949098 :
* My comment of June 5, 2020 at 12:41 am GMT (comment # 14)
Under Ron Unz’s article “Race and Crime in America,” Unz Review (20 July 2013), https://www.unz.com/runz/race-and-crime-in-america/
* My comment of February 19, 2020 at 3:05 am GMT (comment # 151)
* My comment of February 19, 2020 at 10:04 pm GMT (comment # 158)
* My comment of February 19, 2020 at 10:38 pm GMT (comment # 160) as corrected in my comment of February 19, 2020 at 10:49 pm GMT (comment # 161)
* My comment of February 20, 2020 at 10:31 pm GMT (comment # 168)
* My comment of February 21, 2020 at 12:47 am GMT (comment # 170)
* My comment of February 21, 2020 at 4:21 am GMT (comment # 172)
* My comment of February 22, 2020 at 11:00 pm GMT (comment # 184) as corrected in my comment of February 23, 2020 at 2:10 am GMT (comment # 186)
* My comment of June 3, 2020 at 2:09 am GMT (comment # 221)
Under Fred Reed’s article “Her Name Is Breonna Taylor,” Unz Review (7 June 2020), https://www.unz.com/freed/her-name-is-breanna-taylor/#comment-3957894
* My comment of June 10, 2020 at 2:12 am GMT (comment # 401)
See also (under the same Fred Reed article “Her Name Is Breonna Taylor”) these comments:
* My comment of June 8, 2020 at 9:24 pm GMT (comment # 236)
* My comment of June 8, 2020 at 7:41 pm GMT (comment # 210)
* My comment of June 8, 2020 at 9:24 pm GMT (comment 236)
* My comment of June 9, 2020 at 1:04 am GMT (comment # 282)
* My comment of June 9, 2020 at 11:08 pm GMT (comment # 387)
* My comment of June 10, 2020 at 9:48 pm GMT (comment # 470)
* My comment of June 11, 2020 at 1:09 am GMT (comment # 483)
France cannot reestablish, truly, the glory of its cultural past by disregarding, hence condoning, whatever bigotry-borne maltreatment its malevolent police, officials, or White citizens impose on France’s Black citizens. Such conduct does not consist with the beauty of France’s cultural past. The solution is quite what Marion Anne Perrine “Marine” Le Pen has proposed: France must exit the European Union and close its borders to immigrants who would taint France further with foreign values and foreign culture.
The U.S.? The Trump administration’s immigration-limitation program is one of only four beneficial measures the Trump administration has implemented. (Alas, however, like Democrat officials and politicians, some powerful Republicans caused an increase of foreign-worker employment during this time of Covid-19-caused economic stress. THAT conduct is reprehensible. I regret that it is not also deemed criminal.)
Alas, I forgot to block-quote my June 14, 2020 at 11:39 pm GMT comment’s two quotes of Madam Marion Maréchal Le Pen. Here are corrections:
Per Madam Maréchal Le Pen:
Per Madam Maréchal Le Pen:
Snif. She’s right:
It used to be the other way around. We would catch radical ideas from the French 10 years later.
Of course the French Rev was an American revolution manifesting a decade later in France.
Yes and no. Blacks adopt the broadest category (race) because their nations, peoples, religions, and civilizations haven’t amounted to much. And I dont see how it abolishes it. I dont see why you cant have both/and.
Skin color is a big, big deal, though. It’s not superficial at all. Blacks know it isn’t. Time whites recognize it, consciously at least.
Ethiopia was a USSR satellite from 1974-1991
These attitudes are un-optical for the purposes of a Third World audience.
I believe we have to encourage the growth of “Anti-Emigration” sentiments, in addition to anti-immigration movements in the First World.
For reasons of demographic heft, along with the dominance of Third Worldism by Western liberals, we will be paying an indemnity whether we like it or not. Perhaps it will be in the form of nationalizations, which would be the mildest result. Or it could be a permanent head tax, along with “migration as a human right”
I see less evidence that colonialism explains the wealth disparity of First vs Third, as financial data seems to indicate that colonies were largely a waste pursued for elite prestige. But feelings don’t care about your facts.
The better argument would be to point out the decadence of Western society, as a reason to deglamorize the vision that many migrants have.
Jean Raspail is dead, unfortunately his dystopian vision is not.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-jean-raspail-dead-20200613-v2y44k7nrzb5les3l5fk5ydiim-story.html
RIP author of The Camp of the Saints.
@Iris
I know that Trotskyites are unpopular but there is absolutely no need to lie about this. All prominent Trotskyists and their parties: Vanessa Redgrave and WRP, SWP, Fourth International, etc. have been staunch enemies of Zionism and Israel to the point of giving unconditional support to all Palestinian groups and Arab regimes fighting Israel regardless of their leadership.
I would definitely exclude Belgium from the list. Things are worse than in France. Also, the Republic of Ireland is another small country with a massive “diversity” problem. Portugal and Spain have, pro rata, similar problems. Generalisation is difficult.
I am ancient. I adhere to the contents and philological bent of the Oxford English Dictionary’s second edition. I contemn advocates and advocacy of drift-grammar and drift-usage. I require that assertions obtain form sound logic worked with punctilious analysis of pertinent facts. Therefore, I cannot credit, or even understand, (a) your proposition “These attitudes are un-optical” or (b) your proposition “for the purposes of a Third World audience.”
Proposition (a)’s term “un-optical” is not, and could not be, an entry in any intelligent English-language lexicon, and, being conscripted to act as predicate-adjective modifier of the nominative term “attitudes,” the term “un-optical” plummets into some intelligence-swallowing black hole — and pulls the term “attitudes” with it. Cf. “un-circumcisional perceptions.”
The proposition “for the purposes of a Third World audience” cannot submit to intelligent comprehension: (a) No one can “know” whether a “Third World audience” exists or has “purposes” or, if such “audience” does exist or has purposes, exactly what may be such audience or its purposes’ contents.
(b) No one can assert, authoritatively, or even honorably, quite what a Third World is — or even that such a “World” exists.
(c) Even if one could identify a SPECIFIC geographic or political/legal something one could call, logically/factually defensibly, “Third World,” one could not attribute, logically/factually defensibly, to that something the quality of being or including an “audience” (singular).
Matters (a) & (c)
Feeling perverse, I shall address matter (c) — along with matter (a) — before I address problem (b), despite “c” follows “b” in Teutonic and Romance languages’ alphabets.
If, say (for sake of argument), central Africa is, or is part of, a “Third World,” in what sense of the term “audience” is central Africa an “audience” (a single audience, a concerted audience, a something upon which the idea “audience” is foisted, e.g., by YOU)?
Since, however, central Africa comprises several nations of variously-distinct interests and since some included nations, regions, or peoples have warred, near-incessantly, with other included nations, regions, or peoples, how can central Africa be a single audience that shares “purposes.”
Since also, for many decades, central Africa’s national and tribal borders, political-power species and distributions, and demographics have been nearly kaleidoscopic, one redoubtable conundrum is this: WHEN shall one measure whether any logically/empirically identifiable “audience” or “audience”- “purposes” may obtain, or may have obtained, in central Africa?
Consider just the Democratic Republic of Congo [“DRC”] — and just since November 2018.
A DRC tribal conflict erupted mid-December 2018 at Yumbi in Mai-Ndombe Province. About 900 Banunu people were slaughtered by Batende community members. The fight pursued a dispute respecting monthly tribal duties, allocation and use of land, and water resources. Around 100 Banunus fled to the Congo River island “Moniende” and 16,000 fled to the Makotimpoko District. A bloodbath occurred. Some assailants wore DRC army uniforms, but may not have been actual DRC soldiers. Still, some observers suspected that local authorities and government security forces supported the holocaust.
On 30 December the DRC held a presidency election. On 10 January 2019, the electoral commission announced that the “upstart” Félix Tshisekedi won. He was sworn in 24 January 2019.
But many DRC and foreign sources believed the election was rigged. The Catholic Church asserted that the results did not correspond to the information its election-monitors collected. In some areas, the government “delayed” the vote nearly three months. The pretext was an Ebola outbreak and ongoing military conflict. In August 2019, a coalition government was announced.
So, what is or was a DRC “audience”?
Matter (b): The indeterminacy of “Third World” and absurdity of asserting that it is or includes a (single) “audience” or bears or pursues a single set of “purposes”
(1) The Czech Republic
Before WWI, the Czech Republic did not exist. Post WWI “Allies” carved a Czechoslovakia from parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Before WWII, Hitler’s Germany annexed part of Czechoslovakia. During WWII, Germany took Czechoslovakia’s entirety — briefly. September 1944, Soviet, Romanian, Czech, and Slovak forces “liberated” Czechoslovakia.
After WWII, Czechoslovakia became a “Soviet Block” state. When the Soviet Union crashed and shed many of its satellite states, Czechoslovakia became independent again — until 1993, when that lovely ameba split into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
So, is either The Czech Republic or The Slovak Republic a First World, Second World, or Third World nation? Even now, the Czech Republic’s demographics are ethnically, religiously, and politically diverse — partly because the Czech/Slovak land-split did not effect a very substantial demographic-shift. Likewise the Slovak Republic. Does the Czech Republic constitute a single “audience” bearing a universally-held single set of “purposes”? Does the Slovak Republic?
(2) Serbia
In the 8th century CE, the Vlastimirovic dynasty established the Serbian Principality. In 924 CE, the Serbs defeated a small Bulgarian army. The Bulgarians retaliated and annexed Serbia.
Then, the Byzantines annexed Serbia and held it until 1040 CE. The Serbs revolted circa 1090. In 1091, the Vukanovic dynasty established the Serbian Grand Principality that included much of pre-Byzantine-annexation Serbia. In 1142, Serbia’s remaining part was joined with the Grand Principality.
Then, circa 1804, after the Battle of Kosovo, the Ottomans began swallowing Serbia, in pieces. From the 15th century until 1804, Serbia was securely a part of the Ottoman Empire.
In 1804 and 1815, the Serbs revolted. In 1817 the Ottoman Empire “granted” Serbia independent state status — all save Belgrade, which remained an Ottoman garrison town, until 1867, when the weakening Ottoman Empire relinquished all control of Serbia, which, circa 1878, became an internationally-recognized independent nation-state.
In WWI, Serbia suffered various incursions into its independence and geography. After WWI, with
the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was born — December 1918.
Between WWI and WWII, sundry political machinations and military events regaled Serbia with political and geographic uncertainty. Ah, but WWII granted Serbia “salvation,” in the form of being dissolved into Marshall Josip Broz Tito’s non-Soviet communist Yugoslavia. Then, in 1991-1992, Yugoslavia fractured. In 1992, Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Then transpired another period of bloody hell — the history of which ought to be known even to most “Millennials” — especially those whose Clintonian or anti-Clintonian apperceptions have induced those likely-eternally intellectual cherubs to learn a little modern (or postmodern) history.
In the moribundity of his Presidency, Billy Boy Clinton invaded Serbia (illegally and cruelly) to divert attention from his Senate trial (and his perverting the Oval Office and his constitutional Oath with, e.g., a strange vaginal use of a cigar, which cigar-use he enjoyed while he “conducted” the nation’s business by telephone). Thus Billy Boy proved his Presidential-ness (which requires display of unjustifiable manifest bellicosity and sublimely imaginative perversion).
Now, post-2005, after playing phoenix another time, Serbia is, again, an independent state.
In what “World” does Serbia exist — “First,” “Second,” “Third,” other? Since Serbia’s population continues to include individuals of sundry religious and ethnic groups that hate each other (sometimes violently), WHAT is the Serbian “audience,” and WHAT could be “purposes” attributable to such “audience”?
=======
After “catching my breath,” I find my curiosity compelling me to ask: What the f..k is “Third Worldism.” Is it a psychic state in which one has experienced an epiphany that enlightens one to apprehend, as if it were a diamond tiara, the mystery of the wizardry needed to manipulate the true alchemical-determination of what, when, where, and how some geographic space shall enjoy being other than “First World” or “Second World” but not a particle of a Fourth anything?
======
The rest of your reply-comment? Alas, after trying numerous possible labelings, I have not been able to fit any term other than “pretension bordering on Word Salad.”
I am no defender of the French. DeGaulle was asked to leave Canada after meddling in internal affairs. Their history of colonialism makes the British and Spanish look like saints in comparison. I`m not even suggesting the slaves were wrong to revolt. Yes, there has been a newer colonialism with the US, but there have been a heck of a lot of corrupt Papa Docs and Baby Docs with their Tonton Macoute`s over the years, as well.
In the fourth sentence of the first paragraph of my comment of June 15, 2020 at 10:52 pm GMT (comment # 48), the term “form” of “I require that assertions obtain form sound logic” ought to be the term “from” — hence: “I require that assertions obtain from sound logic worked with punctilious analysis of pertinent facts.”
I apologize for committing the typing error.
But, explaining why she would not genuflect to Black Lives Matter, Madam Marion Marechal Le Pen said:
Sarkozy and Levy are, alone, responsible for their own criminal acts. Their criminal conduct is not the conduct of French culture or the FRENCH people. The same is true of the conduct of monsters like Charles de Gaulle.
You may argue that French culture and the FRENCH people share criminal responsibility because they did not act to stop Sarkozy, Levy, de Gaulle, Marshal Philippe Pétain, Napoleon, Louis XIV, Catherine di Medici, Louis XII, ……Charlemagne……
But, if you are honest, you will admit that, in any nation, THE PEOPLE very rarely have power enough to prevent the nation’s leaders’ committing their immense criminal acts, partly because THE PEOPLE lack power or ability needed to resist the propaganda and leadership-contrived warped education systems that disable THE PEOPLE from apprehending the criminality of their leaders’ acts.
Like Madam Marion Marechal Le Pen, I, too, will not genuflect to Black Lives Matter. I am not responsible for the hurts or deprivations Blacks have suffered or suffer now. And while I have worked, even suffered economic loss, to resist manifest anti-Black racism, I deny that I am obliged, legally or morally, to do more than avoid hurting Blacks simply because they are Black.
If an armed Black tried to rob me as I walked dark a street late at night, I (an Aikidoka) would kill him, instantly, without feeling a pinch of regret, even for a millisecond.
Aikidoka? See this:
See also my comment of June 14, 2020 at 11:39 pm GMT (comment # 39).
Her national heritage is White – she took a knee on that.
Tepid civic nationalism is the center which cannot hold in the inevitable polarization that multiculturalism & globalism has unleashed.
As much as Ms. LePen would apparently like to deny it, she was born wearing her uniform and will die wearing it as well.
Her grandfather, a much more admirable and courageous man, took pride in that.
“including Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Critics contend that much of this intellectual current represents nothing more than pompous gibberish”
Althusser & Foucault have some value, if read with common sense. Derrida (& Lucan & Barthes) is not only gibberish, but toxic gibberish. Their books should carry (psychological) health warnings, like tobacco products.
“. Blacks realized they can whup whitey and that whitey was afraid of them. Thus, they lost respect for the ‘fa**oty ass white boy’ and came to look upon white power as illegitimate.”
This is where the problems came in. By the 60’s it should have been clear that the tide of history was turning against overt signs of racism.
In theory, had white America been seen to be willing to give up some of the more crude displays of racism (ie lunch counters, back of the bus, voting, housing etc) White America may have been better able to control the pace & kind of change.
Unfortunately, reactionary elements, not only in the Sth, made the whole process an agonising inch by inch retreat from Moscow saga.
In short, blacks were offered up a feast of resentment, which lasts to this day.
So — today — there is essentially nothing that can be done, except, to deal with the more crude, overt behavior that can be interpreted as “racist”.
Winding back police power & brutality would be a positive for everyone. The police are the cutting edge of Elite power: blunting that power a little will also send a message to Elites. (I am NOT suggesting anything as inane as “defunding the police”. However, the ease with which police can brutalise the public without consequences does need change. Civil asset forfeiture is another egregious example of police powers.)
You haven’t looked at Calvinism or the English reformation then.
The US amplifies this nonsense across the world, even if it originated in France.
Completely irrelevant. We are talking about actual political power, not celebrities, nor fringe organisations without any leverage.
The UK being historically and intrinsically very conservative, Trotskyist presence in the British political system is zero. The only minimal exception is possibly Alistair Darling who, allegedly, was a Trotskyist during his years at University. If true, he made great amend by joining the most Zionist Labour government that ever existed under Tony Blair.
In France, on the contrary, Trotskyist parties have had a continued presence in the presidential electoral process; their role is of course to divert voter constituency from their Communist foes.
Furthermore, many individuals covertly formed in Trotskyist factions later joined the socialist Left as moles and spies, and have had stellar mainstream careers in government: Dray, Moscovici, Hamon, Melenchon, Cambadelis, Sapin (Economy Minister), Rebsamen (Head of Parliament), Jospin, for example, with the latter being so successful as to become Prime Minister.
None of these people support the Palestinians: Melenchon, a fake leftist, was a strong proponent of the imperial war on Libya. Jospin is notoriously an ardent Zionist, to the extent that his official protestant faith was often questioned. His power is so great that he selected Francois Hollande as his succession as head of the Socialist Party, a position that later got Hollande elected President of France.
The Trotskyist parties in France had an influence far-exceeding their numbers and popular support. They covertly spearheaded the take over of executive power by unidentified Deep State actors. They had a very specific ethnic make-up too, to the extent that one of their leaders (Alain Krivine, I think), once joked that in their heydays (the 1960’s-1970’s), their adherents could have held their Paris party meetings in Yiddish.
Trotskyist parties are historically the enemies of the working classes and of the oppressed. They were of course adhered to by principled individuals unaware of this role, and who were negatively influenced by the “Stalin’s crimes” information war.
Wipe out the Zionist s*** off your pink glasses.
Marion Marechal is a Zionist proxy clown who did not produce any interesting thought, apart from a new method for licking Netanyahu’s a**.
She did not devise her response to the current situation either, just copied and pasted outstanding Black intellectual Frantz Fanon’s and his famous 1950’s writing on slavery. She should have quoted him and given him credit instead of trying to pass for the intellectual she is not.
In Frantz Fanon, “Peau noire, masques blancs”, Paris, Le Seuil, coll. « Points-Essais », 1971 (1re éd. 1952)
I note that you did not include a quote of Madam Marion Marechal Le Pen or citation of a quote of her. So, your assertion is just that, a bare assertion.
I have not read anything that suggests Madam Marechal Le Pen differs with her mother’s politics, which clash dramatically with Zionism’s designs and methods. Given the power, Madam Marechal Le Pen’s mother, Madam Marion Anne Perrine (“Marine”) Le Pen, would free France from the toxic grip of the European Union [“EU”] and United States and exclude from France all presumptuous foreign influence, especially Zionists’ consistently corrosively intrusive, manipulative, and greedy influence-efforts.
You might argue that Marine Le Pen’s politics parallels that of Zionist Israel, which spits in that face of all international law, which would vanish from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza all non-Jews and which invades, regularly, its neighbors, Lebanon and Syria.
But Marine Le Pen would not expel current French citizens of non-French ethnicity. Merely would she have France freed from foreign rules and policies and not further diluted by foreign ethnicities and cultures.
She would not have France invade other states or intrude in other states’ internal affairs. She would have the EU and U.S. cease dictating policies or rules to France.
Again, bare assertion. I do not see in your quote of Frantz Fanon any basis of asserting that Madam Marion Marechal Le Pen “copied” any part of Mr. Fanon’s essay.
I can deduce only either that you speak from ignorance or that you hate or, for irrational motive, contemn Madam Marechal Le Pen and your hatred or scorn causes you to hallucinate Madam Marechal Le Pen’s holding positions she does not hold or her uttering propositions she has not stated.
Marion Marechal Le Pen’s position is simply that she is responsible only for any wrongs that SHE commits and, hence, feels not guilt for Blacks’ suffering maltreatments wrought by racists. Her position is reasonable and held by many other healthy, rational people, including myself (though I differ with Madam Marion Marechal Le Pen concerning some details. See my comment of June 14, 2020 at 11:39 pm GMT (comment # 39).
6 out of 10 for the comic content.
As for the discussion, you have the most basic fact wrong: Marion Marechal Le Pen is Marine Le Pen’s niece, not her daughter, so there’s no point arguing further with you “insightful” opinion. Cheers.
I cannot spare time enough to proofread this comment. I type badly. I apologize now for any typing error I commit.
I appreciated, much, your comment of June 16, 2020 at 10:40 am GMT (comment # 54), though I should have preferred a bit more fact/evidence refinement and supplementation.
But you exhibit some unfortrunate (potentially dangerous) ignorance by stringing together the names of Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault.
To explain as a competent scholar ought, I would need to put a disquisition-length exposition. But. since this venue is a mere comment-thread related to a journal article that is, itself, just a 1300-words-long piece, I must limit my exposition to a set of hyper-abbreviated abstracts. Sorry.
Althusser was a Marxist and for 42 years (1948 until 1990, his death-year) a member of the French Communist Party. His epistemological/psychological/ideology-effects writings do not stray far from the pronouncements of Lenin.
Unlike the great philosophers of ancient China and Greece (Lao Tzu, Socrates……) or the renaissance and “enlightenment” philosophers of Europe (Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Loke, Hume, Hegel, Kant, Marx……) Althusser constructed a cloyed, practically useless that did not question, materially, its Marxian roots.
Alas, however, Althusser’s writings influenced many away from healthy-and-healthful critical analysis of the real sociopolitical and economic machinations and forces of the “elites” who dominate society, politics, and economic trends and experience — though among those influenced, many had, already, chosen Marxism as their religion.
Althusser was a punk among philosophers.
Unlike Althusser, Michel Foucault did not suffer a tendency of adopting a philosophy as if a religion. Early, Foucault devoted much mental energy to comparative analyses of Hegel, Marx, and existentialism’s notables — Jean Hyppolite, Martin Heidegger, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre. But soon he rejected much of the thinking of those minds, especially that of Marx and Sartre. Foucault rejected the “transcendental narcissism” and “inviolable-individual-freedom” principle of Sartre and Nietzsche and the intrepid unreality of Marx.
Even did Foucault reject Kant’s method of critique of knowledge: Kant maintained that if a critical epistemological analysis reveals the limits, or contingencies, of human power of knowledge that same analysis would indicate the conditions necessary to effective manifestation of that power. Foucault would quasi-reverse Kant’s method of critical analysis, thus: Where a condition is identified to be “necessary,” one must ask what may be a limit or contingency.
Also, Foucault argued that universal scientific truths — human nature truths, physics truths, math truths — are, ultimately, mere expressions of ethical and political commitments of a particular society. To appreciate, or, perhaps, test Foucault’s argument, one might compare Karl Popper’s science-assessment method “Falsification” and Professor Leonard R. Jaffee’s argument that math and exact sciences rest, ultimately, on emotional premises.
Though Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Foucault differed much with each other, they would agree that his much is (ironically) sure: A “fact” is a “finding” that some mind derives from that mind’s perception that certain events constitute “evidence” from which that mind believes it can derive a “finding” of a “fact.”
Karl Popper (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ ] believed the solution was “falsification” — the endeavor of attempting to disprove a “finding” of “fact” or an hypothesis.
If a “fact-finding” or hypothesis withstands, or withstands substantially, a relentless, rigorous endeavor of proving the fact-finding or hypothesis false, then the fact-finding may be “true” or the hypothesis maintainable — at least pending any further falsification.
But — Foucault might have asked — “true” or maintainable in what context or for what purpose or to what extent? And what determines the context, purpose, or extent? And what determines the existence, truth, or content of the context, purpose, or extent? And what determines the “what” that does, or determines, the determination? And was the falsification submitted to falsification; and, if so, was the falsification’s falsification submitted to falsification; and, if so,………..?
My colleague, Professor Leonard R. Jaffee, has argued:
Scientists, mathematicians, and logicians choose premises, theorems, axioms (which bear no premise but desire), definitions, observations……..that fit their emotional imperatives.
Emotional imperatives?
Craving to make a system “symmetrical” or “consistent” or picturing “the universe” and its phenomena in ways that satisfy a wish of controlling nature or attaining public acclaim.
Leonard R. Jaffee, Mad-e-matics, Reader Supported News (7 April 2014), https://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/398-science/23003-mad-e-matics
Professor Jaffee demonstrated his assertion with several examples drawn from physics, mathematics, statistics, and, even, law. I have not encountered a refutation of Professor Jaffee’s argument.
Foucault hated and scorned French bourgeois society and culture. He showed sympathy for lunatics and those imprisoned on premise of criminal conviction — likely because “lunatic” is an ambiguity imposed according to greed or personal taste and too many criminal convictions are false and too many criminal laws empathically illegitimate.
Foucault contemned Sartre’s judging society according to supposed “universal moral principles,” because no morals or principles can be universal or justifiable per any “universal’ standard or logic and all “universal.” To assert a “universal moral principle” is to be supremely narcissistically presumptuous.
Madam Marion Maréchal Le Pen said:
And I don’t think this is very surprising because this entire ruling class has been nursed on these delirious theories, emanating from American universities and which themselves derive from French theory.
Guillaume Durocher added a footnot [footnote 4] in which he asserted:
Maréchal said this in English. A reference to postmodern French philosophers who have had a great influence in the English-speaking world and beyond, including Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault. Critics contend that much of this intellectual current represents nothing more than pompous gibberish.
Guillaume Durocher’s footnote does not quote, or reflect, an opinion of Madam Marion Maréchal Le Pen. Rather, the footnote expresses Guillaume Durocher’s own fascist philosophy and world-view?
Madam Marion Maréchal Le Pen observes correctly that American “philosophers,” university students, inferior of gravely biased law professors, radical feminists, homosexuals, transsexuals, and radical “progressive” politicians have misapprehended, oft-intentionally, “French theory.” One example is some radical feminists’ asserting, on premise of grave misapprehension of Foucault’s writings, that ALL heterosexual sex is a male’s raping a female, and the in ALL heterosexual sex, the male’s penis is a knife that stabs and subjugates the female.
Foucault would rail against the U.S. deep state’s and American politicoeconomic elites’ steady impairment of liberty and privacy. But he would not find current Black Lives Matter riots defensible, because they involve irrational violence that does not attack the real sources and causes of the growing sophisticated oppression and high-brow economic rape proliferating in our time.
Derrida’s “philosophy”? It is simply an acknowledgment and means of accounting, rationally, the inarguable reality that virtually zero utterances state anything unambiguous and that such disregarding such reality has wrought, and will continue to cause, most or all of the suffering humans experience related to language — legal language, cultural language, political language, scientific language, religious language — all language.
Derrida’s works sought to help humanity understand, and work to minimize the harms threatened by, that problem. His demonstrations are irrefutable. They have advanced, substantially, the cause of justice — because they have shown illegitimate the many judicial (even legislative) assertions that this or that legal-language-interpretation is clear and certain though it is, at best, debatable.
No reader can argue, legitimately, that Derrida’s writings is “pompous gibberish.” His writings are incandescently brilliant and among the most Benthamian-utilitarian philosophic offerings of all time.
My genealogical mistake (daughter rather than niece) does not impeach the content of my showing that your comment is dross; and if your psyche bears some fibre of honesty/integrity, you will acknowledge so. Your genealogical observation cannot defend your reply’s utter lack of relevant substance — a lack explained by the impossibility of legitimate counter-argument.
I very much doubt that French Trotskyites differ much from others elsewhere as they are about the most internationalist of all the leftists. So what if some neocons and Labourites were once Trotskyists? It’d be like saying that Mussolini was a Marxist, which he was, until he became a Fascist. I may disagree with Trotskyists on many issues but as far as questions of Zionism, Israel and Palestine go they have been about the most consistent and principled of any groupings on the left or the right.
Does she refer to the US, or to the hemisphere?
Nothing is more American, in the hemispheric sense, than the idiotic idea that the presence of Africans in your country could add value. This has never happened at any time in history, anywhere. However, Latin Americans, from Cuba to the River Plate, were even more intent on this fantasy than were Anglo-Americans.
However, the laïcité and (pseudo)republicanism of which the French are so proud have got to be the most significant imports from the US. Why are these two holies-of-holies never questioned, particularly by the anti-American strains? When will France return to her King and her Church, and abandon these clearly American fads?
The Colonel said the most intelligent thing anyone has said about the Middle East this century, perhaps any century: “Arabs are the joke of the world.”
For a while there, he seemed to favor black Africans over his own
triberace. Now that’s as deep an insult as one can make.And why, why, why, why, wherefore, why do Parisians celebrate the imperialist monster war criminals Wilson, Roosevelt, and Kennedy with boulevard names? Is this to mock us?
Really, the names of the Lindberghs, father and son, should grace those streets. They fought to keep us out of France.
I suspect we have divergent philosophic views.
I do not wish to assert that so & so philosopher is the “gold standard” but that their work contains material sufficient to be considered interesting or, indeed, perhaps valuable.
Althusser: is useful for his illumination of the fact that Elites “use” ideology as one of their primary methods of maintaining/reproducing the mechanics of capitalist production & the social system which is both its foundation & its product.
Foucault: has value in so far as he illuminates the real (historical) intersection between power & knowledge.
He over cooks the whole “discourse” subject, but he has value to the extent he shows that real history has (some) foundation in the Elite’s ability to codify reality via new “knowledge” — ie the changes in the uses & meaning of the concept of “punishment”.
Your views on Derrida I find quite astounding. For me he is the font of Post Modern poison. Derrida created the term “differance” — which means that words have no external signification; their only meaning is in their ever shifting difference from OTHER words. Reality is essentially a trip through a dictionary & thesaurus. “Blue” doesn’t have meaning b/c it refers to an actual colour, but b/c it is not red, green, yellow etc. Derrida rejects objective truth (we can always argue & not agree that “this” shade is “blue”. Obviously he rejects the scientific method & “Truth” with a capital “T”.
All there is, is discourse. We are discourse (ie our subjective self). Given all this we get “deconstruction” the puerile game of taking texts apart on the basis of the self contradiction. (No external reality ? All words are equal ? Then there’s no context. The words in a text can be made to mean almost anything….& thus every writing is equal (Shakespeare & a box of corn flakes).
So, Derrida…no Truth…wow, who knew ? That Newton — what a wanker ! Can’t imagine how we ever came down from the tree tops….
You mis-describe Derrida’s writing and philosophy and misjudge its sociopolitical utility. Your errors find best illumination in the field of law.
On 15 June 2020, six U.S. Supreme Court Justices held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that an employer cannot fire someone simply for being homosexual or transgender:
Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/17-1618_hfci.pdf
Notice that the six “Justices” used the term “transgender.” “Gender” does not equal “sex.” Nor is homosexuality a sex. Notice also that 42 U.S.C. §2000e(k) provides:
42 U.S.C. §2000e-2(h) provides
29 U.S. Code §206(d) states what is, and what is not, wage-discrimination, a matter not at issue in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia.
The six-Justice Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia decision is not shocking to anyone who believes in the LBGT religion and satellite anti-science-sectarian myths (like the myths that homosexuality is natural or that a “gay gene” exists). But an honest LAWYER must find that decision a flagrant violation of the Justices’ oath of office — that they shall enforce, faithfully, the LAWS of the United States and NOT substitute for those laws’ language their political views.
But the core problem is society’s relying on “precise” legal language to obtain social, political, or legal justice. Because of that reliance, justice evades us; raw power prevails to satisfy interests of the elites of greed — wealth-greed, power-greed, sexual greed, greed of special advantage……
Derrida’s philosophy-contribution includes incandescent exposure of the politically clouded reality (a) that not only ALL prescriptive propositions, but also ALL purportedly logical exercises are procrustean much as they are hopelessly ambiguous, inherently indeterminate, and (b) that “authority” uses (i) the lie of linguistic certainty and (ii) the reality of linguistic indeterminacy to achieve one group’s or stratum’s illegitimate sociopolitical/economic domination.
Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus, New York University, used a simple hypothetical ordinance to illustrate the problem legislative indeterminacy:
Nagel mused a bit on a whiff of the ambiguity of that simple legislative language. Nagel’s musing begs much elaboration.
[The following is mostly part of one of my copyrighted published philosophy-of- law articles.]
Take the Nagel ordinance’s words as they are — not as conveying, magically, what YOU THINK the writer meant, or ought have meant. Do not forget that too many writers and readers use or intend illogical syntaxes and violate rules of grammar; and too many expect others will edit/interpolate their utterances, as, near-always and greatly, they edit/interpolate those of others.
Is “person” legal person? Suppose an illegal alien, or an infant. Suppose the ordinance imposes criminal penalties. Suppose society thinks kids are not “human” until they reach a certain age or accomplish certain things— being weaned, killing a lion, completing bar mitzvah.
Suppose a dog is accompanied by a highly intelligent, well-mannered, verbally skilled orangutan, who knows how to lead the dog on/with leash and make it “heel,” perfectly, without a leash, just with “verbal” commands. Suppose the orangutan is the ward of the dog’s human owner.
See that “walk” is the only act disallowed. Ask: What is “walk”? What of run, skip, saunter, dance meanderingly, stopping here and there to talk to friends or your dog’s admirers?
When you walk a dog, do you make it walk? Suppose your dog pulls you. Suppose you follow your dog’s lead, because his safety requires you attend him. Suppose you and your dog just happen to walk together, quite adventitiously. Suppose your dog walks utterly alone, outside anyone’s or anything’s control. Suppose your dog is circus-trained and rides a skateboard next to yours. If you carry him, are you walking him — as you might a child set in a perambulator?
Does the ordinance’s prohibition work, then, only where the human forces the dog to walk, but without a leash? What is “without a leash”? Suppose you use a leash as if a whip (unattached to your dog).
“Without” can mean “outside.” Suppose you do not keep your dog outside (to the left of) a leash extended to your left). “Without” can mean “absent” — so, “absent a leash.” Suppose my dog grips a leash between its teeth; but I do not hold it.
“Without” can mean “not with.” In the subject context, “not with” can mean either “absent” or “not using.” “Not using” is a dangling participle modifying “park.” How many parks use leashes? But assume (ungrammatically) that “not using” modifies “person” (because somebody’s “rationality” says such must be so”). Then, “not using” for what purpose? Suppose the person uses a leash as if a belt to hold his pants up. [The last-previous paragraph treated “absent.”]
In the subject context, “without a leash” can mean “unleashed.” Then, “No person may walk a dog in a park unleashed.” Be kind: assume (ungrammatically) that “unleashed” is not a dangling participle that tries to modify “park,” but that “unleashed” modifies “dog; ” so, “No person may walk a dog unleashed in a park.” Suppose Jane loosed [“unleashed”] her dog in a park. John saw the dog running wild in the park; and he calmed the dog, walked it (“at heel”) to Jane and induced her to take it to her home. Has John violated the ordinance?
Must we read “without” as if it equals “not on” — as if the ordinance said: “No person may walk a dog in a park if the dog is not on a leash”? [Common usage is “keep your dog on a leash.”] “The ordinance did not say “…if the dog is not on a leash.”
What is “on” a leash? Suppose the dog is not attached to a leash you are holding but you make him walk so that he keeps stepping on a leash you keep dragging around the front of him.
In a liberal, libertarian court, will the ordinance’s prohibition apply to you if your dog is so well trained it will stay, leashless, at your side, quite as if “leashed to your mitt”? Unruly “leashed” dogs may break away. Well-trained fidos will not stray, or be unruly, despite unleashed.
Suppose your dog is old, crippled, barely walks, has jsut six, blunt stubs of teeth, molars. You must feed it only mush. A leash might not be just superfluous, but cruel. When the cops stop you, you were using a “pooper scooper” to collect the poor beast’s excrement. The dog was lying still. You carried it there — you walking. You have no leash. None is attached to your dog.
The relevant place — or place type — is “park.” What is “park”? An amusement park, lacking trees and grass? An asphalt commons, where people play sports (basketball, soccer) in fenced courts and race dogs on concrete paths ribboned around the outsides of the courts? An industrial park? Must “park” be a place where people relax and recreate in green and flowering nature? Must you, and your dog, be “sufficiently” in, on, or among those things?
When are you in a park with your dog, walking your dog in it? Suppose your dog is in your car and you drive in a semi-forested region like New York’s Central Park. Suppose you walk your dog to a park’s perimeter. Your dog barely enters, without you, just stands on its grass. Suppose you let your dog enter and roam freely, his way, at his pace — you watching from outside. Suppose your dog slips its leash, runs into a park, lies down, and you run to him, lie by his side.
The more you define or substitute an intent’s terms, the more you must define and submit to ambiguity. Each new definition is a new set of words suffering new infinities of ambiguity suffering impossibility of definition.
Even intent begs definition — lives, as it is born — in unknowability. Intents are issues of multiple, varyingly mixing forces — whether the intents are purposes of legislatures or bents of individuals, whether their creations are seen inside or as effects of their bearers or makers. And — like much or all of the sources and processes of its invention — each intent is language, since all conscious inclination consists just of words, even if not ordinary-language symbols.
Actions make self. Just so, word equals idea, consciousness: self is language, utterly. A wolf’s howl is longing, though its curve inspires, by mimicry, the sadness of a lip crescented down. Actions make self only when they behave as words, even if only to the actor. Speech and thought are action, and conscious action is language, that of manifest judgment — even if a wolf’s, even to the wolf. Contempt is not beast, but judgment. Judgment aggregates and orders terms to build import — as if “lazy” + “thieving” + “squalid” + “cruel” = “contemnable” (a synergy).
All conscious sense is language. It occurs just as symbol, even if not of any lexicon. You recall — in image and feeling — a garden party. You chose, subliminally, to recall only part, to which you attribute significance, by your choice of THAT memory. You devise the reminiscence symbol. You remember a scent you loved in your youth. You feel you smell it, now, as if actual. Why? Unconsciously you chose it among all odors of your past. You pursue its meaning, what it “says” — its bell that made Pavlov drool.
Suppose YOU draft a statute. You think you pick the simplest, least ambiguous terms, least susceptible to context-imposed ambiguity. Still, the terms WILL breed each other’s confoundment, when they relate to, operate on, each other. Wherever you place a word, you cannot give syntax perfect alignment, if only because words must, always, suffer linear syntax. Wishes have many sides and times and spaces, many dimensions and directions. But — whether in statements or questions, even in poems — always language is linear.
Be careful. Even “Beth runs” is made with many words, bears many modifiers, each, alone and in context, a trouble of ambiguity. “Beth” and “runs” assume or demand “definitions. A human’s name imports not only the human’s identity and all its complex psycho-physical ingredients and their history, but also the name’s philological history, social significancies, sonic meanings.
Maybe “runs” is what a good clock or watch does. Maybe it is how “last-minute” people live, inside and out — darting through this emotion, that thought, this endeavor, that love affair, sundry rooms, shops, streets……. Is Beth’s “run” what John’s is?
Which Beth? Not just which human individual (if Beth’s human, not, say, a female dog), but also which self within Beth? What is “Beth”? The girl-aspect of a woman whose proper name is Elizabeth. Is a human Beth part of an Elizabeth person who submits to others’ nicknaming her — to their lessening her social status or power or self-importance?
What is “human” or “girl”? Suppose scientists “find” that some current Europeans are, genetically, much Neanderthal. Consider all meanings of “girl.” Disregard constraints feminism and political correctness would impose on usage. Many people say “good girl” to their mature female dogs, though they may not call a woman “good girl.”
Shall we read “without a leash” as if “not attached to a leash” — despite the ordinance did not bear the terms “not attached to…”? Suppose, attached to a leash that you hold, your dog pulls you and your psychology prevents your letting go. The dog runs crazed as if not “leashed” and bites another dog. Did you violate the ordinance because effectively the dog was “unleashed” (not “attached to” a leash that kept him “under control”).
Suppose a THIS ordinance: “No person may walk a dog in a park unless the dog is attached to a leash the person holds and uses to control the dog so it harms no one and nothing.”
Jo walks in a park with Fido, a Great Dane. Jo uses a leash to control Fido so Fido will not hurt anyone or anything. The leash is a leather thong attached to Fido by Fido’s holding it in his teeth. In the past, always Jo could control Fido thus. But Fido sees a bitch “in heat.” He breaks free, the leash dangling from his mouth. He rams a little child who falls hurt. Has Jo violated the ordinance? Jo held the leash and used it to control Fido so he would not hurt anyone or anything
Suppose Jo “leashed” Fido with a strong chain-leash attached securely to a chain-collar Fido wears around his neck. Jo’s hand grasps a strong nylon loop attached securely to the leash-end opposite that attached to Fido’s collar. Earnestly, Jo uses the leash to control Fido, so Fido will not hurt anyone or anything. But Jo is a 6-years-old, 76-pound, 3-feet-tall, gravely anemic, 82 I.Q. girl; and Fido wieighs 170 pounds and is 38 inches tall “at the shoulder.” Jo had not “walked” Fido (or any dog) before, ever. Has Jo, or her parent, violated the ordinance?
Cure is impossible. All rules are incompetent — much as they are pathological and spawn pathology. What shall society do?
You may argue that mostly my language-deconstructions are absurd: no “sane” person will credit them. But the ordinance’s words and syntax are just exactly what they are — naught more, less, or different. Your “absurdity” criticism reduces to your editing and interpolating the ordinance’s actual words and syntax to fit the demands of your emotional composure or political taste.
[Side-Note: When six Supreme Court Justices held that sexual orientation is a sex, they edited and interpolated the statute they pretended to “interpret” — to fit their political taste or their fear of the wrath of transgenders or homosexuals. They defied science by denying a clear reality of biology. They re-wrote the statute — applied their own bastard text, not the language of 42 U. S. C. §2000e-2(a)(1) and 42 U.S.C. 2000e(k), which the federal constitution required the Justices obey. Or they gave the governing statutes a “meaning” the statutes’ actual words made ABSURD. End Side-Note.]
What is the solution? Discard rules, their diction, grammar, command-syntax, their trying to account the unaccountable. Depict, bring to life, with words, a scene — a STORY, its personal and social problems, emotional problems, problems of honor and empathy, of native responsibility or its lack — a story of a park, a dog, and a human who ought be responsible for the beast. Describe desired behavior, not to command it, but to bestow a sense of what it is and how it feels. Entreat that in such scenes, such action or forbearance be the preponderant norm.
Give the reader strong feeling of events, conditions, reactions, effects. In like, felt, tangible ways, give the reader the feeling of the cost we would suffer should the reader create an opposing kind of scene that the story language portrays, well, with feeling, not mere diction and grammar. Appeal to the reader’s EMPATHY.
At all park entries, post a huge sign that says something like this:
I need to change the paragraph that is the second before the final block-quote of my comment of June 19, 2020 at 11:48 pm GMT (comment # 67). That paragraph must be this:
Give the reader strong feeling of events, conditions, reactions, effects. In like, felt, tangible ways, give the reader the feeling of the cost we would suffer should the reader create a scene that opposes the normative story you present— a story like the one put here-below. Appeal to the reader’s EMPATHY.
Thank you for your extraordinary reply, with it’s emphasis, almost obsessive discursion into statutory interpretation & the inherent ambiguity of language
To sum up: essentially what you are saying is there is no “TRUTH”. No foundational, unquestionable eternal “TRUTH”.
This is a disturbing observation. Derrida, & 2500 years of philosophers have sought to deal with this problem. Indeed, you could almost say that it’s Philosophy’s raison d’être.
“Cure is impossible. All rules are incompetent — much as they are pathological and spawn pathology. What shall society do?”
Do ? We “do” what we always do — we muddle through. Its all we can do.
I have appreciated our brief colloquy, because you show you are well-educated and markedly intelligent and your comments are not frenetic or tainted by Alt Right or pseudo-Progressive madness — as are the comments of too many commentators, and authors, one meets at Unz Review.
Still, I must chide you for two of the asse4rtions of your last-previous reply.
(1) You wrote:
One can find several “definitions” of “discursion.” Four are:
(a) an instance of wandering or logically unconnected statements
(b) a ranging from topic to topic
(c) digressiveness.
(d) rigorous formal analysis or demonstration — distinguished from immediate or intuitive formulation
“Definitions” (a) through (c) reduce to “sloppy, rambling, logically or empirically pointless speech or writing.” Discursion’s adjectival form is “discursive.” Many sloppy minds — especially cynical specimens — conflate “discursive” with “pedantic,” the latter of which such sloppy minds contemn as if “pedantic” equaled “discursion”-definitions (a), (b), or (c). The same minds treat “punctilious” likewise. The true explanation is that such minds suffer a psychological malady describable as logic-deficit/attention-deficit disorder, which, in America, is epidemic.
While I (now a Professor of Law Emeritus) remained foolish enough to think that American law school students could become LAWYERS, I encountered a consistent superabundant manifestation of that psychological malady [logic-deficit/attention-deficit disorder]. The sufferers were not only the student, but also many faculty, who produced near-zero utile published scholarship and, for many years, taught from the same yellowing notes mostly plagiarized from canned expositions of pseudo-law. In America, most “attorneys” and law professors are low-grade mechanics.
Surely you would agree that “discursion”-definition (d) fits my comment.
My comment did not stray from anything. It began: “You mis-describe Derrida’s writing and philosophy and misjudge its sociopolitical utility. Your errors find best illumination in the field of law.” Then it proved that point both with an actual recent decision of the highest court of the U.S. and with a fact-scrupulous theoretical showing that involved hypothetical-case demonstrations of number and variety sufficient to preclude legitimate question.
As my comment asserted, your errors find best illumination in the field of law, where the errors’ consequences are most dramatic and bear greatest society-damaging effects. [I use “law” to denote judicial and quasi-judicial administrative action, arbitration-proceedings, legislation and legislative process, and Presidential and Gubernatorial “Executive Orders and the processes that produce them.]
Compare the differences of (a) Gödel’s proof, (b) various asserted distillations of what that proof proved and (c), e.g., Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, which, after spending 83 pages of its Volume II on cardinal arithmetic and it fundamentals, tried and failed to prove that 1+1 = 2.
Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica fits “discursion” definition (d). But, alas, ironically, that work suffers notable inelegance.
Various writings attempt to reduce Gödel’s proof to cute propositions like this (a proposition I read in one work of one of my colleagues who hold’s an endowed chair at one of the top 20 law schools): “Arithmetic, so all math, is indeterminate because ultimately and in its rudiments it depends on unproved and unprovable assumptions.” Such propositions issue from ignorance reinforced the by logic-deficit/attention-deficit disorder malady I observed above.
Gödel’s proof did deconstruct Principia Mathematica’s proof of 1+1 = 2 (and other, like failed proofs). But the deconstruction required an intensive and extensive mathematical essay every minute detail of which was necessary (so that any abbreviation would descend the proof into grievous insufficiency). And I shall not wax foolish enough to try to abstract Gödel’s proof.
But Gödel’s proof lives in the beautiful, sublime, but unreal world of mathematics theory and its chimerical “truths.” Derrida’s philosophy — and my last previous comment — address the reality of humanity’s frailties and its (extremely few) strengths. Hence, my last-previous comment closed with an adumbration of a non-rule-regulated social-order style that might cure the incurable ill that rules manifest and magnify.
(2) You tried to “sum up” my last-previous comment thus:
Perhaps a little true story will help.
For a time, my third wife was transfixed by some of the writings of Derrida and Foucault. For a few weeks, every day, many times, she exhibited dramatic distress caused by her “realization” that facts do not exist.
I tried to reassure my wife with various questions: “Do we not know SOME facts — like the fact that the Earth and its Moon are spherical and revolve around a spherical star we call ‘Sun’ or the fact that ‘reptiles’ do not possess mammary glands or the fact that all living things die?” She remained distressed by her conviction (itself a FACT) that facts do not exist.
I discussed my wife’s state with my friend, Dr. H, an Orgonomic/characteranalytic psychiatrist. I lamented that I may have exhausted all means of curing my wife’s distress. Dr. H said: “If MY wife were inflicted by such consternation, I would wrap her in my arms and tell her ‘Baby, maybe no facts exist, but I know one thing surely: I love you infinitely, and you really turn me on’. Then I’d seduce her to bed.”
I had hoped you would understand my last-previous comment’s implicit ultimate observation. You did not.
That observation?
Law an emotion are close kin. Both are irrational judgments — irrational because they pursue desires that are stupid, unempathic, or sick, even oft-psychopathic. No judgment can form or rest on truth, but only manifest or pursue emotion. All emotion — hence all law — is irrational judgment.
The only TRUTH is FEELING.
Feeling?
You see a gazelle run, a whale leap, a snow-capped mountain reaching past clouds, a huge gothic cathedral, Karl Richter’s rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s B minor Mass, a woman giving birth, a man performing an acrobatic feat. (Maybe) your breath halts an instant and your jaw drops and your eyes open ocean wide and halogen bright. Your reaction is FEELING.
Then, you think: That was beautiful or astounding or majestic or heavenly or magnificent or……. You suffer EMOTION — judgment that arbitrates the “quality” of the event you witnessed.
But the gazelle, whale, mountain, and cathedral do not apprehend anything qualitative in what they do. At the moment she gives birth, a mother does not judge the event — just FEELS what NON-human birthing mothers feel (which I cannot describe, because I am a man). But I CAN assure you that at the moment when he executes HIS feat, the acrobat suffers NO emotion, but pure feeling: passionate joy. I can assure you so, because I recall what I felt every time I performed an Aikido feat: ineffable passionate joy.
And, when I hear Karl Richter’s rendition of the Kyrie, Agnus Dei, and Dona Nobis Pacem of Bach’s B minor Mass, I lose my mind to tears of joy.
What is feeling? Hunger, thirst, pain, animal pleasure, animal anger, animal lust, animal joy, animal love (the only true love, the love my dog shows me and I feel for my dog), mindless passion (the intensity my dog displays when she chases a frisbee and leaps to catch it with her mouth), animal empathy (felt physically, as my dog feels it, as I feel it, with my tears, my chest, my arms, my legs), a REAL orgasm [the rarest of all feelings felt by humans other than those few traditional San people (a.k.a. Bushman people) who still exist].
Jesus of Nazareth (an Essene) was reputed to teach a philosophy that emphasized “faith and hope” — but above all “love.” Many non-human animals feel faith (my dog does), hope (my dog does), and TRUE love (like the love my dog lavishes on me). I interpret Jesus’s term “love” to denote ANIMAL love and ANIMAL empathy. Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Reich observed, rightly, that, for humans, the only goods are mindless love and passionate work.
So, I ended my last-previous comment with a conduct-ENTREATING narrative means diametrically alternative to legislated rules and judicial judgments and precedents — a narrative that seeks to appeal to empathy and would treat unempathic transgressions with measures that empathy suggests.
Recall that to construct my last-previous comment, I excerpted parts of one of my law-and-philosophy articles. That article inspired my colleague and best friend, Leonard R. Jaffee, to write an article he named Empathic Adjustment—An Alternative to Rules, Policies, and Politics, 58 University of Cincinnati Law Review. 1161 (1990). That article endeavors to describe how “Empathic Adjustment” can order a viable, healthy society. You can find that article in any major law school’s library or buy it online at heinonline.org.
Recall also that in my first comment replying to yours, I referenced another of Prof. Jaffee’s writings — Mad-e-matics, Reader Supported News (7 April 2014), https://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/398-science/23003-mad-e-matics . That wee article resulted partly from discussions Prof. Jaffee and I pursued concerning two of his most-influential works — Of Probativity and Probability: Statistics, Scientific Evidence, and the Calculus of Chance At Trial, 46 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 925 (1985), AND his sequel piece, Prior Probability—A Black Hole in the Mathematician’s View of the Sufficiency and Weight of Evidence, 9 Cardozo Law Review 967 (1988). I recommend those two others of Prof. Jaffee’s works. You can find those articles in any major law school’s library; or you can buy them online at heinonline.org).
You write…a lot. Too much for me to deal with in detail. Way too much.
I’ll deal with just with one bit:
“The only TRUTH is FEELING.
Feeling?”
Fine __ I dont dispute the primacy of “feeling”. But, again, you enter well walked paths.
“Feeling” in toto, is pure subjectivity. Its a positive step, your mate Derrida wouldn’t have had a bar to do with it.
Cognito ergo sum — is the “modern” base line for subjectivity.
Problems ?
I think therefore I am — “I” think ? There’s quick sand — who thinks ? You ? Really ? Thoughts often just — appear. Thoughts think themselves.
Same with feelings.
But, even more problems — you have a feeling….you call it “anger” or “pleasure”….Is it really ? Truth
is, often we have to analysis our own feelings. Feelings are complex…if they are foundational – then they are ALSO problematic….not foundational — although better than the P.M discourse runaround.
Pure subjectivity is a blind alley. Life is somekind of combinaton of the Objective & the subjective. Don’t ask me — it’s defeated philosophers who are as a giant to an ant to me.
.
Once, a boy, dying, dreamt that stiffening his limbs could make him fly.
Alas, you disappoint, animalogic. The more because your last two posts belie your pseudonym.
A parting gift:
[Second and third stanzas of Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes“]
Adieu, poor sir or madam.
Sic Transit Coatimundi.
“Sic Transit Coatimundi.” — Reminds us of “”sic transit gloria mundi” ?
But, clever : thus passes the animal world ? Unfortunately the coatmunidi is a mistake of zooological definition (similar to early mistakes with the Eclectus parrots). Nor is coatimunidi Latin, but a Sth American language.
Try W.B Yeats (nothing personal, it just seems to fit with your quote). The Rose of the World (2nd stanza):
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men’s souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
I could also reference “April is the cruelest month…”
Sorry to disappoint….although, maybe not. “The Feet, mechanical, go round –
A Wooden way”. That’s no gift, its just – mean….
You are flawed, egregiously.
A coatimundi is a raccoon-family mammal that inhabits northern South America, Central America, and Mexico, and in the lower southwest U.S. (especially souther Arizona).
https://www.animalfactsencyclopedia.com/Mexican-raccoon.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_coati
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati
I put “Coatimundi” with “Sic Transit” to mock the warning “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” [SEE BELOW].
The term Coatimundi is not a zoological mistake. YOU are a zoological mistake.
The term Coatimundi is not a formal zoological term, but a name South Americans and Central Americans use to identify the raccoon-family animal that they gave the name. The The South American varieties’ zoological name is Nasua nasua. The Coatimundi is a member of the family Procyonidae, genera Nasua and Nasuella.
But all that zoological crap is irrelevant. The relevant matter is your not perceiving the play on words that parallels, ludicrously (but with dark, contemptuous humor), “Sic Transit Coatimudi” with “Sic Transit Gloria Mundi” [SEE BELOW]. Your egregious flaw is your lack of wit combined with your lack of knowlege of much history— in this instance, your lack of knowledge of the Roman Church’s Pope-appointment ritual.
“Sic transit Coatimundi” references, farcically, a fictive line of the fictive Jesus of the “Gospels” of the “New Testament”—the “Jesus” created by the Roman Church’s inventions, which rested on materials like Thomas À Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (circa 1400 AD). See http://www.ccel.org/ccel/kempis/imitation.all.html
Inventions? The Roman Church discarded two “Gospels” that did not fit, but clashed critically with, the Roman Church’s designs. The discarded Gospels reflected the nearly Vegan & very communistic teachings of Jesus & underscored his never having asserted that he was Son of God or that his flesh or blood would save anyone from anything.
Even the original of the saved Gospels [Mathhew, Marc, Luc, John…….] do not assert that Jesus was Son of God, but observe that Jesus said he was the son of Man. One must be amazed by how the Roman Church’s aplopgists have tried to argue that “son of Man” means “Son of God.” (Here is not a place appropriate to exposition of the absurdity of the arguments.)
The fictive line is “Sic transit gloria mundi” (“Thus passes the glory of the world”), which seems to have derived from Kempis’s proposition “O quam cito transit gloria mundi” (“How quickly passes the glory of the world”).
When a new Pope is installed, a master of ceremonies falls to his knees before the new Pope while he holds a silver or brass reed bearing a piece of smoldering tow (untwisted bundle of continuous fibre filaments). Three times, as the tow burns away, he says, loudly and mournfully, “Sancte Pater, sic transit gloria mundi!” (“Holy Father, so passes the glory of the world!”).
I ought to have added:
(a) “Sic Transit Coatimundi” cannot mean “thus passes the animal world,” since the Coatimundi is merely one species.
(b) Vis-a-vis the Roman Church’s invention of its Christ Jesus, a beneficial read is Eric Zuesse, CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q1H4EG , which exposes the pre-Roman-Church Christ-invention that contributed to the Roman’s Church’s Christ Jesus invention.
See my comment of June 23, 2020 at 5:43 pm GMT (comment # 74). That comment was intended to reply to your comment to which this comment replies. But that intent does not show with the usual “@animalogic” reference.