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<b><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blackagendareport.com/paris_attacks_white_lives_matter">http://blackagendareport.com/paris_attacks_white_lives_matter</a></small></small></small></b><br>
<h2><strong>The Paris Attacks and the White Lives Matter Movement</strong></h2>
<h3><strong>by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka</strong></h3>
<p>November 18, 2015<br>
</p>
<p><strong><em>“The white supremacist ideology and world-view,
normalized and thus unrecognized by most, has become a form of
psychopathology.”</em></strong></p>
<p>I received a message from one of my friends in Lebanon who asked
with feigned curiosity why the U.S. media only gave a passing
reference to the bombing in Beirut before turning to non-stop
coverage of the attacks in Paris. Of course, like many of us she
already knew the answer – that in the consciousness of the White
West there is a premium on the value of White life.</p>
<p>Acknowledging this fact is neither new nor should it be
particularly controversial. Its obviousness is apparent to anyone
who is honest. We saw it in the response to the Charlie Hebdo
attacks where the world (meaning the White West) engaged in a
gratuitous expression of moral outrage against terrorism. But that
outrage against terrorism didn’t extend to the two thousand
Nigerians who were murdered by Boko Haram the same weekend that a
massive <a
href="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/the-charlie-hebdo-white-power-rally-in-paris-a-celebration-of-western-hypocrisy/">rally
in Paris</a> took place to condemn the Charlie Hebdo attack. At
that rally not one word of solidarity or condemnation of terrorism
in Nigeria was expressed by the speakers or the thousands gathered
that day. </p>
<p><strong><em>“Non-European life simply does not have equal value.”</em></strong></p>
<p>What my friend and all of us who have been the victims of the
selected morality and oppressive violence of Western civilization
over the last five hundred years have come to understand is that
non-European life simply does not have equal value. </p>
<p>How else can one explain the complete lack of attention to the
humanity of the victims of ISIS attacks in Beirut and in Bagdad
the day before or the lack of concern for the lives of the over
7,000 people in Yemen murdered by the Saudi Arabia dictatorship,
with U.S. and NATO support?</p>
<p>And is it unfair to suggest that it is the diminished value of
life of the lives of people in the global South that allows
supporters of Bernie Sanders to dismiss his support for U.S.
war-mongering policies in the global South?</p>
<p><strong>The Liberal Roots of White Supremacist Psychopathology </strong></p>
<p>In the classrooms of Western universities and occasionally in
civic courses in high schools, students are introduced to the
ideas of liberal humanitarianism that are supposed to characterize
the core values of the European enlightenment. The enlightenment
is supposed to represent the progressive advancement of all of
humanity by the thinkers of Europe who, of course, represented the
leading edge of collective humanity.</p>
<p>But what is not sufficiently interrogated in these classes is the
fact that while these grand theories of “mankind’s” inherent
equality, rationality and even “perfectibility,” were being
discussed, those theorists had already arrived at a consensus.
This consensus was on the criteria for determining which
individuals and groups would be recognized as having equal
membership in the human family, what Hannah Arendt referred to as
those people who had the “right to have rights.” According to the
criteria, women and the non-European world were excluded or
assigned to a lower order of humanity. Eurocentric academicians,
still a hegemonic force in the West, don’t historicize the “great”
humanitarian theories of Europe and critically juxtapose the rise
of those theories with the concrete practices of European powers.
Those practices involved the systematic slaughter of millions of
Indigenous people throughout the America’s and the African slave
trade that made Europe fat and rich and allowed for the creation
of a class of intellectuals freed-up from the struggle to earn a
living and able to engage in the higher contemplations of life. </p>
<p><strong><em>“Women and the non-European world were excluded or
assigned to a lower order of humanity.”</em></strong></p>
<p>However, Eurocentric liberalism was never just confined to the
academy. It became the hegemonic ideological force that embedded
itself in the culture and collective consciousness of the Western
project and with it the de-valuation of non-European life and
culture. In other words, the white supremacist ideology and
world-view, normalized and thus unrecognized by most, has become a
form of psychopathology. It is the cognitive dissonance that Fanon
talks about regarding white supremacy as part of the colonial
mindset and what James Baldwin refers to as the “lie of white
supremacy” that has distorted the personalities, lives and the
very ability of many white people to grasp reality.</p>
<p>However, the contradictions in the spheres of ideas and culture
are not the real threat. The construction of a Western collective
consciousness that is unable to cognitively process information
and consider knowledge beyond the assumptions of its own
world-views and values is dangerous enough, but the ease with
which humanity is stratified with Europeans and their societies
representing the apex of human development is the real threat
because that belief has resulted in the rationalization for the
crimes of colonialism, slavery and genocide, and the politics of
permanent war. </p>
<p><strong>The White Lives Matter Movement writ large, played out on
the international stage </strong></p>
<p>Despite the spirited defense of the positive aspects of
liberalism from John Rawls to radicals like <a
href="http://inthesetimes.com/article/18605/breaking-the-taboos-in-the-wake-of-paris-attacks-the-left-must-embrace-its">Slavoj
Zizek</a>, the racist and sexist contradictions of liberalism
was once again confirmed by the obscenely disproportionate
response to the attacks in Paris that once again demonstrated that
liberalism is no more than a racist ideological construct posing
as trans-historical philosophy.</p>
<p>However, let me be clear, my critique of the moral hypocrisy of
the West should not be read as a rationalization for the horrific
crimes committed in Paris a few days ago. </p>
<p>The intentional murder of non-combatants is a recognizable war
crime that can rise to the level of a crime against humanity and
should always be condemned with the perpetrators brought to
justice. That legal principle is based on the moral principle of
the equal value of all life and everyone’s human right to life.
The defense and enforcement of those principles requires, however,
that all states and groups be subjected to the same legal and
ethical standards and that all are held accountable.</p>
<p><strong><em>“Some states – like the United States – proudly claim
their ‘exceptionality,’ meaning impunity from international
norms, as a self-evident natural right.”</em></strong></p>
<p>But in the context of the existing global power relations, crimes
committed by Western states and those states aligned with the West
as well as their paramilitary institutions escape accountability
for crimes committed in the non-European world. In fact some
states – like the United States – proudly claim their
“exceptionality,” meaning impunity from international norms, as a
self-evident natural right.</p>
<p>And in that sense, while the victims of the violence in Paris may
have been innocent, France was not. French crimes against Arabs,
Muslims and Africans are ever-present in the historical memory and
discourse of many members of those populations living in France.
Those memories, the systemic discrimination experienced by many
Muslims and the collaboration of French authorities with the U.S.
and others that gave aid and logistical support to extremist
elements in Syria and turned their backs while their citizens
traveled to Syria to topple President Assad, became the toxic mix
that resulted in the blowback on November 13. </p>
<p>Although a number of the dead in Paris are young Arabs, Muslims
and Africans, in the global popular imagination, France, like the
U.S. (even under a Black president), is still white. </p>
<p>So in Iraq the Shia will continue to <a
href="https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/">die in the
thousands</a> from ISIS bombs; the Saudi’s will continue to
slaughter Houthi’s with U.S. and NATO assistance; and Palestinian
mothers will continue to bury their children, murdered by Zionist
thugs in and out of uniform, without any outcry from the West. CNN
and others will give non-stop coverage to the attacks in Paris
because in the end we all really know that the lives that really
matter are white.</p>
<h5><strong><em>Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer
and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at
the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and
editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report.
He is a contributor to </em></strong><strong>“Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence”<em> (Counterpunch
Books, 2014). He can be reached at </em></strong><a
href="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/"><strong><em><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em></strong></a></h5>
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