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Lettre aux escrocs de l’islamophobie qui font le jeu des racists. Charb. Les Échappés. 2015. The Weekly, as the Socialist Workers Party template set out, was known for its “provocative and racist attacks on Islam”. Norman Finkelstein tried to create an industry out of this holocaust. He declared that the paper was not satire but “sadism” and compared it to the anti-Semitic Nazi Der Stürmer. An apparently anti-racist alliance, Unite Against Fascism(UAF), held a special session at their AGM on why “je ne suis pas Charlie.”This hostility has not died down. ‘Rules’ for satirists appeared – which Charlie had apparently broken. It should have targeted the “powerful.” Will Self judged that satire ought to “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”. Literary critics, enforcing these new Aristotlean unities of satirical style – breached no doubt by Rabelais, Hogath’s drawings, and the plebeian Viz comic, not to mention early Soviet anti-religious propaganda – have tried to establish their decree. (1) We could call it ‘satirical realism’. Even cartoonists joined the would-be Zhdanovs of correct caricature. As have authors. Charb, supporter of the Front de Gauche and the Parti Communiste Français, was editor of Charlie Hebdo since 2009, after the rightward moving Phillipe Val had departed for France-Inter (with President Sarkozy’s blessing). His Lettre – a 92-page pamphlet – looks at political and social context to the word, Islamophobia (Islamophobie – identical to the English one, in meaning, if not in use): the most important of the, many, charges against Charlie. He explores its ambiguities, and the false politics that it is embedded in. If he is polemical, then the booklet is a polemic. If it is heartfelt, we can appreciate the emotion all too well today. https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/lettre-aux-escrocs-de-lislamophobie-qui-font-le-jeu-des-racists-charb-review-article/ Andrew Coates _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
