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THE world has just lost an economist. Bernard Maris, who wrote under the name Oncle Bernard (Uncle Bernard) in Charlie Hebdo and was one of the five journalists killed last Wednesday, had the guts to change his mind publicly – always admirable.
He announced in a column last year: "I voted yes to Maastricht, yes to the Constitutional Treaty; now I think we have to leave the eurozone.” He saw the strong euro as a disaster for France, and the main factor responsible for the destruction of its industry. He said: "It is never too late (even if it is late) to recognise we made a mistake.”
Maris, author of a book on Keynes, graduated in economics in Toulouse where he became a university professor, said a Guardian writer on January 7. “At the time of his death he was teaching economics at the University of Paris-VIII and was on the board of Charlie Hebdo.
“He was also a frequent television debater on economic issues, on which he had a reputation for being anti-globalisation. He was a former scientific adviser to Attac, the international movement working for social, environmental and democratic alternatives in the globalisation process. Earlier in his career Maris was a lecturer in micro-economics at the University of Iowa and at the central bank of Peru.”
He doesn’t sound like your bog-standard economist to me – and we can’t afford to lose people who see things from a different angle, people who offer fresh insights on the more baffling aspects of the global and local economy.
I happen to be reading The Middle Sea, a history of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich, which is full of massacres perfidiously committed in the name of various religions – in most cases contrary to the core tenets of those religions.
It’s a reminder that killings like this (or the Oklahoma bomb blast, which killed 168, or the Norwegian massacre, which killed 77) usually hang their hats on religion only in combination with other factors, as Mark Juergensmeyer writes: “That happens only with the coalescence of a peculiar set of circumstances-political, social and ideological – when religion becomes fused with violent expressions of social aspirations, personal pride, and movements for political change.” (Terror in the Mind of God) Religion provides a rationale for pathology.
It was good to see the Muslim community, here and in France, immediately disowning this act in the strongest terms. It is utterly wrong to equate this act with Islam, as scholar of religion Karen Armstrong pointed out in a Guardian article: “These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.” (July 2005)
No matter what your argument is, violence is no way to win it.“Violence,” as Isaac Asimov wrote in Foundation, “is the last refuge of the incompetent,” only resorted to by those unable to imagine a more constructive tool for resolution. (“Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists provoked it”, too many people are saying – really? Death is the correct – the only – way of fighting ideas you disagree with?)
Acts such as this call on us to do two things. The first is to distinguish between terrorists and the faith or even the cause they espouse. (I loved the response of Sydneysiders to the Lindt café killings: #illridewithyou, messages to the local Muslim community, offering to ride public transport with them in solidarity if they felt threatened; some thinkers believe the Charlie Hebdo killings were meant to polarise French society – it is up to all in France not to let it, through campaigns like this, perhaps).
The second is to guard freedom of expression with all our might, bearing in mind “…the advantages of free speech in enforcing accountability, empowering citizens and promoting national debate and discussion,” as Anton Harber put it in 2008.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” said George Orwell. That right is a profoundly important guardian of our other rights.
Often the things people don’t want to hear are ugly – like hate speech against women or racism, or perhaps cartoons such as those in Charlie Hebdo. Violence is never an acceptable solution. No. We need to actively use our own freedom of expression to attack and vanquish them. This is something I feel we don’t do enough; local comments sections are often stuffed with racist comments, for instance, and I believe one way of dealing with that would be if the many silent people who disagree (especially white people), broke their silence to say so. (And black commenters could and should shame any hate-speakers too.)
And the business world needs to take a stand, too, as Zapiro said on January 8 in the Mail & Guardian online: “… I think that political leaders, corporate leaders and corporations in general should really start standing up more than they do against the narrowing of freedom of expression… A general assertion of media freedom would help the broader populace to really understand that media freedom is indivisible.”
Let our response prove Edward Bulwer-Lytton's great quote: “The pen is mightier than the sword”.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
He announced in a column last year: "I voted yes to Maastricht, yes to the Constitutional Treaty; now I think we have to leave the eurozone.” He saw the strong euro as a disaster for France, and the main factor responsible for the destruction of its industry. He said: "It is never too late (even if it is late) to recognise we made a mistake.”
Maris, author of a book on Keynes, graduated in economics in Toulouse where he became a university professor, said a Guardian writer on January 7. “At the time of his death he was teaching economics at the University of Paris-VIII and was on the board of Charlie Hebdo.
“He was also a frequent television debater on economic issues, on which he had a reputation for being anti-globalisation. He was a former scientific adviser to Attac, the international movement working for social, environmental and democratic alternatives in the globalisation process. Earlier in his career Maris was a lecturer in micro-economics at the University of Iowa and at the central bank of Peru.”
He doesn’t sound like your bog-standard economist to me – and we can’t afford to lose people who see things from a different angle, people who offer fresh insights on the more baffling aspects of the global and local economy.
I happen to be reading The Middle Sea, a history of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich, which is full of massacres perfidiously committed in the name of various religions – in most cases contrary to the core tenets of those religions.
It’s a reminder that killings like this (or the Oklahoma bomb blast, which killed 168, or the Norwegian massacre, which killed 77) usually hang their hats on religion only in combination with other factors, as Mark Juergensmeyer writes: “That happens only with the coalescence of a peculiar set of circumstances-political, social and ideological – when religion becomes fused with violent expressions of social aspirations, personal pride, and movements for political change.” (Terror in the Mind of God) Religion provides a rationale for pathology.
It was good to see the Muslim community, here and in France, immediately disowning this act in the strongest terms. It is utterly wrong to equate this act with Islam, as scholar of religion Karen Armstrong pointed out in a Guardian article: “These acts may be committed by people who call themselves Muslims, but they violate essential Islamic principles. The Qur'an prohibits aggressive warfare, permits war only in self-defence and insists that the true Islamic values are peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. It also states firmly that there must be no coercion in religious matters, and for centuries Islam had a much better record of religious tolerance than Christianity.” (July 2005)
No matter what your argument is, violence is no way to win it.“Violence,” as Isaac Asimov wrote in Foundation, “is the last refuge of the incompetent,” only resorted to by those unable to imagine a more constructive tool for resolution. (“Charlie Hebdo’s cartoonists provoked it”, too many people are saying – really? Death is the correct – the only – way of fighting ideas you disagree with?)
Acts such as this call on us to do two things. The first is to distinguish between terrorists and the faith or even the cause they espouse. (I loved the response of Sydneysiders to the Lindt café killings: #illridewithyou, messages to the local Muslim community, offering to ride public transport with them in solidarity if they felt threatened; some thinkers believe the Charlie Hebdo killings were meant to polarise French society – it is up to all in France not to let it, through campaigns like this, perhaps).
The second is to guard freedom of expression with all our might, bearing in mind “…the advantages of free speech in enforcing accountability, empowering citizens and promoting national debate and discussion,” as Anton Harber put it in 2008.
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” said George Orwell. That right is a profoundly important guardian of our other rights.
Often the things people don’t want to hear are ugly – like hate speech against women or racism, or perhaps cartoons such as those in Charlie Hebdo. Violence is never an acceptable solution. No. We need to actively use our own freedom of expression to attack and vanquish them. This is something I feel we don’t do enough; local comments sections are often stuffed with racist comments, for instance, and I believe one way of dealing with that would be if the many silent people who disagree (especially white people), broke their silence to say so. (And black commenters could and should shame any hate-speakers too.)
And the business world needs to take a stand, too, as Zapiro said on January 8 in the Mail & Guardian online: “… I think that political leaders, corporate leaders and corporations in general should really start standing up more than they do against the narrowing of freedom of expression… A general assertion of media freedom would help the broader populace to really understand that media freedom is indivisible.”
Let our response prove Edward Bulwer-Lytton's great quote: “The pen is mightier than the sword”.
*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on twitter.
