Sociologist Marc Hatzfeld hearkens back to another famous article in Al-Jazeera sur Seine dating from a certain date in 2001, September 12th, to be precise. It was an article that will live in infamy. Either for anti-Americans if they dwell on the first 3 paragraphs, of anti-anti-Americans when they notice the cynicism that kicked in therafter. His article in Le Monde appeared on the Thursday 10 November:
“We are all riff-raff” «I belong to those who observed the events in Clichy-sous-bois with a mixture of concern and quiet impatience. It is of course the concern which prevails because one knows the effects of the riots on the inhabitants of the cities which started them and were hurt by them at the same time. Beyond considerable destruction to their own neighborhoods, it is for the inhabitants of that cities in flames, that I fear for. Fear that one of them own doesn’t get a grenade in their face, that he is also caught and finds himself made of an example of, and receiving collective punishment, that the city will be spied on in the years to come, and that you address becomes more defamatory than ever.»
Their addresses have already been subsidized - and still are. What does he want now? Room service?
This habit of declaring that one “has become” someone else in order to wear sympathy on their sleeves – in order to ride the coat-tails of the sympathy other people have for the victims, actually – is as unctuous as it is hard to watch. That strange desire to have the love of strangers will make people do bad things, like pander to sentiments just because they’re popular.
Beware of these sorts of emotional plays. Like the terminally sarcastic, before you know it, you’ll find yourself believing your own nonsense.
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