On January 19, 2015
© By John Arkelian
In the aftermath of recent murderous events in Paris, one can only feel profound revulsion. What can possibly be in a human being’s mind to prompt him to take other lives with such casual, cold-blooded brutality? And how can anyone professing to be religious, commit such horrors with (what they believe to be) the name of God on their lips? “Allahu Akbar!” (“God is Great!”) shout those in the act of bloody murder, grotesquely oblivious to the monumental blasphemy of their words and actions.
Wonderfully perceptive, literate, and erudite, the late Polish essayist and foreign correspondent Ryszard Kapuściński described the poisonous characteristics of extremism so adeptly back in 1993 that his words sound as though they were written to describe the brutal violence perpetrated in Paris in January 2015.
“Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world. The first is the plague of nationalism. The second is the plague of racism. The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism. All three share one trait, a common denominator – an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits only its sacrificial victims. Every attempt at calm conversation will fail. He doesn’t want a conversation, but a declaration that you agree with him, admit that he is right, join the cause. Otherwise you have no significance in his eyes, you do not exist, for you count only if you are a tool, an instrument, a weapon. There are no people – there is only the cause. A mind touched by such a contagion is a closed mind, one-dimensional, monothematic, spinning round one subject only – its enemy.”**
Such is the foe of civilized man. How then does civilized man respond to violent extremists, to the monomaniacal savages who perversely purport to wield hatred, terror, and murder as though they were the instruments of justice and devoutness? Kapuściński’s next words should prompt us to caution:
“Thinking about our enemy sustains us, allows us to exist. That is why the enemy is always present, is always with us.” **
We need to take care that we do not succumb to a symbiotic relationship with those who want to harm us – each side needing the other as its implacable foe, a mortal enemy that must be crushed at all costs. If there is no reasoning with terror; there is the hope that better education and vigorous outreach can dampen its supply of new adherents. Maybe we need to consider limiting how many new immigrants we import from places whose history and culture are more likely to make some of their expatriates susceptible to the siren call of extremism. Maybe we should ensure that we do not import large numbers of immigrants from places with alien ideas or retrograde norms faster than our society can digest them. Maybe we just need to work harder at assimilating newcomers into Western culture and norms. Maybe we need to find better ways to counter the ideological indoctrination that finds a receptive audience among the dispossessed, the dysfunctional, and those otherwise neglected on society’s fringes. Those who feel included in society, surely, are less likely to strike out against it in violence.
Gradually, but relentlessly, putting in place the devices of a police state (surveillance, warrantless searches, imprisonment without trial, torture, assassination of real or perceived threats, and creeping infringements on free speech), as the West has been doing ever since 9/11, is to admit defeat – to subvert our own societies from within and destroy what’s most precious about them. That is the terrorist’s goal: We must not do his destructive work for him. There are tried and true criminal investigation and prosecution mechanisms in place to combat terrorism. Terrorists commit crimes – shocking crimes, yes, but crimes nonetheless. Let our criminal justice system and law enforcement agencies use the normal implements that have always been at their disposal to respond to this threat. The ordinary implements of our legal system are more than adequate to deal with the particular crime of terrorism.
Instead, there’s talk in Canada (and elsewhere) about further restricting core human rights – by lowering the evidentiary threshold required for criminal investigation or prosecution; by ever greater surveillance (which already unconstitutionally catches in its universal net every law-abiding man, woman, and child); by diluting the essential requirement that a search warrant be issued by a court before a person or premises be searched by the state; or, alarmingly, by employing some kind of “preventive detention,” locking-up potential threats before they can hurt us. Such measures are anathema to a free people. If those intent on violent crime merely conspire to commit it, they are subject to the reach of our criminal law: It is more than capable of dealing with them – without extraordinary police powers or unconstitutional deviations from our most fundamental human rights and freedoms.
In the aftermath of the murders in Paris, it became popular to declare “Je suis Charlie” (“I am Charlie”), in reference to the cold-blooded slaughter of editorial cartoonists at the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo” and the murder of mere bystanders at a grocery store. But, ‘Qui est Charlie?’ (‘Who is Charlie?’), after all? We are right to defend freedom of speech – including the freedom to criticize and lampoon political and religious figures. Such speech (nowhere more so than in the fine art of political cartooning) can inform, console, or critique. Sometimes it can be scathing. Sometimes it can sting, sometimes deeply offend. But it is invaluable in a free society. And, if we are willing to sometimes offend the minority, we must likewise tolerate speech that offends the majority.
Arresting the controversial (and ostensibly obnoxious) French comic Dieudonné M’bala M’bala for utterances that apparently seemed to sympathize with the terrorists’ murder spree seems inconsistent with our impassioned rally to the cause of free speech. Committing violence, or simply advocating it, is a crime – not free speech. Likewise, shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theater as a prank is not a protected form of free speech. One person’s freedom ends when it causes actual harm to another person. But that leaves us with much speech that is ignorant, deplorable, or prejudiced. Provided that such speech, as noxious (and possibly hateful) as it may be, stops short of advocating violence or other criminality, it is to be protected. Freedom for decent people means extending freedom (of thought and speech) to those who are indecent.
A free people cannot afford to sacrifice core freedoms in the spurious name of greater security. And spurious it is, too. No amount of arbitrary state power will completely protect us from the danger of an extremist cabal or a lone crazed gunman intent on violence. If we sacrifice freedom for security, we will end up with neither. Further, we have far more to fear from the incremental moves toward police power trumping civil rights than we do from the terrible (but ever so remote) possibility of being killed by a terrorist. Lest we forget, police in Toronto corralled (or “kettled”) and unlawfully detained scores of law-abiding citizens, among other egregious human rights abuses, during the G-20 conference held there in 2010. That happened despite our constitutional guarantees (in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms), despite a mature legal and law enforcement system, and despite supposed systems of oversight and accountability. (To date, Toronto’s chief of police, Bill Blair, has, shamefully, been excused from testifying about his role in authorizing such gross excesses.) If the safeguards failed us then, as they manifestly did, how much more probable is it that the feeblest safeguards extant in the realm of counter-terrorism and surveillance will signify for nothing at all? Meaningful oversight and public accountability are all but illusory in the murky world of state surveillance and counter-terrorism measures. That’s why Canada, of all seemingly benign places, was complicit in past unlawful U.S. “rendition” of prisoners to secret interrogation sites abroad. That’s why Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were, for a time, handing over their prisoners to local authorities who were very likely to torture or kill them. If we honor the metaphor of “Charlie,” we must stand fast against the seductive temptation to give away our core values and our inalienable human rights.
John Arkelian is an award-winning author and journalist with a background in international and constitutional law, criminal prosecutions, and diplomacy.
Copyright © 2015 by John Arkelian.
**Quotations are from “Imperium” by Ryszard Kapuściński (page 248); translated from the Polish by Klara Glowczewska. (Vintage International, N.Y., 1995) Originally published in Polish in 1993.