France’s burkini psychodrama

Nice, August 23rd (photo: Vantagenews.com)

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Alhamdullilah for the Conseil d’État. It is not par hasard that the judges of France’s supreme administrative law court are nicknamed les sages (the wise men)—though the Conseil’s ruling yesterday striking down the anti-burkini municipal ordinance in seaside Villeneuve-Loubet—which will serve as jurisprudence for abrogating like ordinances in other municipalities—was an obvious no-brainer. It would have been truly stunning had the Conseil ruled otherwise, as, in point of fact, there is no serious argument for legally banning the burkini. None whatever. If a person—woman or man—on a beach in a free society wishes to wear a garment that covers the entire body minus face and maybe feet—or, alternatively, an itsy-bitsy cache-sexe concealing only that most intimate part, or anything in between—s/he has the right to do so. Point barre.

The psychodrama France has descended into over this fabricated issue has to be the most preposterous and irrational in the 25-odd years I have lived in this country—not to mention one of the more pernicious, in view of the overt Muslimophobia that has been unleashed by politicians and media alike. The spectacle of the Muslim women in Nice and Cannes—who were minding their own business and troubling no public order—being harassed and humiliated by the police was a disgrace, accomplishing nothing but the degradation of France’s image abroad and making the country look ridiculous in the process—and, one may also add, intolerant, racist, and sexist (yes, sexist France, as the latest hysteria over French Muslims concerns, as usual, only woman, with men, including the most bearded Salafist, naturally being free to wear any damned outfit they please in public space). And all over a piece of clothing that practically no one in France had heard of—and even fewer had actually seen—before this month of August 2016.

Numerous commentaries over the past two weeks on the absurd burkini affair have gotten it exactly right, e.g. the New York Times’s August 19th editorial—penned by sharp, Paris-based editorial writer Mira Kamdar—”France’s burkini bigotry.” Other spot on critiques of the anti-burkini crusade include public law professor Thomas Hochmann’s Le Monde op-ed (August 19th), “L’interdiction du ‘burkini’ est une faute juridique et politique;” Edwy Plenel in Mediapart (August 14th), “‘Un vêtement comme les autres’…;” political scientist Jean-François Bayart, also in Mediapart (August 18th), “La laïcité, nouvelle religion nationale;” and law professor Stéphanie Hennette-Vauchez, writing in Libération’s “Do you law?” blog (August 23rd), “Le burkini de l’état d’urgence.”

One may also profitably reread the invariably excellent Patrick Weil’s 2013 interview in L’Opinion, “‘Qu’on laisse en paix les femmes voilées’.”

French public opinion is, as one may expect, not favorable toward the burkini, with 64%, according to an IFOP-Le Figaro poll released on Thursday, opposed to it being worn on the beach. Majorities can be wrong, of course. Even if 94% were opposed, that wouldn’t suddenly make the masses right. Politicians, as one may also expect, have been indulging and stoking the fears of the public—naturally traumatized over the recent terrorist atrocities—with, not surprisingly, the unspeakable Nicolas Sarkozy, now on the campaign trail, leading the demagogic charge, demanding, entre autres, a legislative ban of the burkini—though Sarko knows full well, in principle at least, that any such law is impossible, that it would be nullified illico by the sages of the Conseil Constitutionnel.

Not to be out-Sarkozy-d, the insufferable Socialist Prime Minister Manuel Valls has likewise been gesticulating over the burkini, labeling it “a political project, a counter-society, based in particular on the subjugation of women” and, on his Facebook page yesterday, the expression of “a deadly, backward-looking Islamism” (un islamisme mortifère, rétrograde). Ouf! Even academic savants have been echoing these themes, e.g. emerita philosophy professor Catherine Kintzler, who, in an interview in Le Figaro (August 26th), called the burkini a symbol of “communautarisme” (mais bien évidemment; what else could it possibly be for any self-respecting defender of le modèle républicain français?) and “an ultra-reactionary, totalitarian political Islam,” that represents “an effort to stigmatize all Muslim women who refuse to wear it, who refuse to veil themselves, who refuse the uniformization of their lives.” No less.

And then there’s the well-known social scientist Philippe d’Iribarne, who wrote in Le Monde (August 19th) that the burkini is “unacceptable,” as, entre autres, it violates an apparent French “social norm that asks for a certain discretion in the public expression of that that distinguishes one’s social status or political or religious convictions.” Women who wear the burkini are imposing an alternative social norm, indeed a “projet de société,” so d’Iribarne has it: A “societal project,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Monsieur d’Iribarne suggests that women who wear the burkini and other Islamic articles of clothing do not really do so of their own free will, that they may “simply be seeking not to be bothered in the neighborhoods where they live, or wish to please their entourage, or are constrained to do so by their fathers or husbands, or fear burning in hell, or are perhaps militants of an islam de combat.”

This is one of the stupidest pieces I’ve read by an otherwise smart person in I don’t know how long. Fortunately Le Monde published an op-ed (August 24th), by Patrice Obert—president of the center-left association Le Courant des Poissons Roses—that critiqued d’Iribarne, explaining why it is “unacceptable not to ‘accept’ the burkini.”

Islamism, projet de société, counter-society, Islamic “cultural imperialism,” women being ordered by men, subjugation of women, fundamentalism, burkini-wearing women willfully seeking to provoke and shock…

Let me make an assertion: the legions of pundits, politicians, and other commentators and academic savants who have made these allegations and/or imputed hidden motives to the Muslims in question have not a shred of evidence to support their contentions. They have not a shred of evidence to refute the manifest fact—and, until proof to the contrary, I am asserting it as fact—that 99+% of the women who wear the burkini do so on their own volition—that no one has forced them into it—and that their motives have nothing to do with politics or trying to make a statement. The burkini-detractors could not credibly support their assertions if their lives depended on it.

And the threat to public order that the burkini supposedly constitutes, which was one of the stated reasons for the municipal ordinances? Read this interview with Radio France Internationale’s David Thomson, who has written a book on French jihadists, and tell me if the threat comes from the burkini-wearers or, rather, the actions of the burkini-banners themselves.

As for those who consider the burkini to be Islamist or reflecting of a rigorist interpretation of Islam, they have no idea what they’re talking about, as Salafi women would never go to a mixed beach or don such a piece of clothing that reveals the shape of their body—as the burkini does—in the first place.

But what if, for the sake of argument, some of the above allegations were at least partly true? As social scientist and friend Nadia Marzouki wrote on social media the other day

What if there *is* something political in wearing a burkini, in criticizing the French religion of laïcité, in not eating the French republican “soupe au cochon”, in performing alternative ways of life etc.? What’s wrong with being political?

Yes, if some Muslim women do, in fact, seek to make a statement in wearing a burkini, if they are indeed signaling that their religious faith is primordial in their lives, what of it?

And what about the burkini itself? Even pundits critical of the anti-burkini campaign have felt the need to assure readers that they do not approve of the offending swimsuit. Libération’s Laurent Joffrin thus editorialized (August 17th) that

one would have to have a particularly twisted mind to maintain that the wearing of a piece of clothing that covers all parts of the female body, including swimsuits, is merely a harmless fashion, or a vector of the emancipation of women. In the great majority of cases, it is a religiously ostentatious signifier reflecting a rigorous interpretation of sacred texts that relegates women to a secondary role.

I beg to differ, though this is admittedly a complex question. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, in an aptly titled column (August 25th), “France has a strange concept of feminism—and secularism,” opposed the burkini bans but did specify that

I actually agree with the critique of veiling. Whatever else it may be, it’s inextricably bound up, like the Orthodox Jewish dress code, with notions of female-only “modesty”—i.e., the acceptance of the female body as the site of sexuality, which must be concealed as a danger and provocation to men. If covering is just about faith, why don’t men do it too?

Yes, of course. These are old questions. We know it. Veiling, objectively speaking, does reflect patriarchy. What else is new? But at the risk of being provocative, I will argue that the creation of the burkini is, in fact, an advance for pious Muslim women, that it represents progress—and particularly for women in the Arab world itself and other Muslim majority countries. For these women, the choice is not between the burkini and a more conventional swimsuit, but rather between the burkini and either going to the beach fully clothed (hijab and all)—and, at most, wading into the water—or not going at all—and not because they are forbidden by men but simply because they won’t go, period. In a country like Algeria, there are a number of “family” beaches where women sunbathe in one or two piece swimsuits, but in long stretches of coastline one sees only young men. Women simply won’t go to these beaches. Gender relations in that society and cultural attitudes toward the body are what they are. If the burkini succeeds in bringing more women to these beaches and learning how to swim while they’re at it, well, tant mieux, n’est-ce pas?

As Saul Alinsky used to say, in order to change the world we first need to see the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. If patriarchy and conservative notions of gender among Muslims are going to change, it’s going to be brought about by Muslims themselves—gradually, one step at a time—and not by laïcard Frenchmen ideologically browbeating them.

And then there’s the inventor of the burkini herself, Aheda Zanetti—who has no ties to Islamist organizations or personal convictions of this nature (if she did, we would know about it)—who explained in a Guardian op-ed (August 24th), “I created the burkini to give women freedom, not to take it away.” The piece—qu’on peut lire en français—carries this lede: “The burkini does not symbolise Islam, it symbolises leisure and happiness and fitness and health.”

As for the burkini not symbolizing Islam, good point. One may bet that it will find a growing market among women of all faiths—or of no faith at all—and particularly in a country like India, where women traditionally do not wear swimsuits on the beach (those who actually go to one). À propos, the NYT has an op-ed (August 26th) by writer Jennifer Weiner on “The women who won’t wear swimsuits,” in which the burkini is not mentioned once. There are a lot of women out there—including a member of the older generation in my own family—who have never felt comfortable in a bathing suit. Just as there are certainly many men in France—perhaps myself included—who don’t like the rule in public swimming pools that men have to wear swim briefs, a.k.a. moule-bites. They feel self-conscious wearing the stupid thing. The burkini is probably not a solution for them but can be for women.

Back to the case of France, today’s Washington Post has an article on “France’s burkini debate: About a bathing suit and a country’s peculiar secularism,” in which the well-known specialist of French laïcité, Joan Wallach Scott, is quoted

For Scott, the greatest irony in the entire affair is that the burkini in fact embodies the achievement of a secular, integrated society.

The women who wear burkinis, she said, cannot be called oppressed. They are not the women subservient to a conservative Islam; they are the women who sit on beaches unsupervised by men, enjoying their leisure time in mixed social company.

But because of the same type of secularism ostensibly designed to foster equality among citizens, those same women could in fact be driven further from the social mainstream.

“It just convinces Muslims who are already feeling discrimination and alienation that indeed they’re right,” Scott said. “And that the French government is interested in getting rid of them, not in integrating them.”

In conclusion, check out the images of the burkini here and here. C’est chic, non? How can anyone object?

UPDATE: Jean Baubérot—the well-known sociologist and specialist of religion in France—was interviewed in Libération (August 17th) on the burkini affair. This passage is particularly interesting:

Cette polémique a été précédée d’une autre, en mars, autour de la «mode pudique», qui ne pose pas de problème dans d’autres pays occidentaux, par exemple en Angleterre. Pourquoi tant de stress ?

Les pays anglo-saxons ont une culture de la diversité, cultuelle et culturelle, plus forte. C’est Voltaire qui a écrit: «Un Anglais, comme homme libre, va au ciel par le chemin qui lui plaît.» En France, une mentalité «catholique et français toujours» perdure, une mentalité de l’unité. On parle encore de «la France une et indivisible» alors que, depuis la Constitution de 1946, «une» a été enlevé au profit de «indivisible, laïque, démocratique et sociale», et ça n’est pas pour rien! Or, culturellement, on a l’impression que ça n’a jamais été intégré, et «démocratique et sociale», on l’entend peu. C’est une conception de l’unité assez uniforme qui prédomine, peu inclusive de la diversité. Résultat, on ne sait plus séparer ce qui peut être dangereux de ce qui peut choquer mais peut être accepté par la démocratie. On ne met pas la frontière au bon endroit.

2nd UPDATE: Moroccan sociologist Abdessamad Dialmy—who specializes in sexuality, gender, and religion—has two pieces in Al Huffington Post that are worth reading: “Le burkini, un compromis anti-islamiste” (August 21st) and “Le burkini, entre féminisme blanc et féminisme islamique” (August 23rd). N.B. Dialmy is equally opposed to the burkini and attempts to ban it.

3rd UPDATE: The Forward’s The Sisterhood blog has a post (August 24th) asserting: “Seriously, what Orthodox [Jewish] women wear to the beach is no different from a burkini.”

4th UPDATE: Le Canard Enchaîné has a short piece in the latest issue explaining—in its trademark ironic style—why the burkini would not pass muster with those who adhere to a rigorist interpretation of Islam.

5th UPDATE: Robin Wright has a piece in The New Yorker (August 26th), “A court overturns a burkini ban, but not its mindset.” Money quote

The irony of the swimsuit crisis is that the laws—and their enforcement—shamed the Muslim women who want to participate in French society. “Tying the burkini to extremism is absurd. Actual Salafis are against the burkini because they don’t think women should be swimming in public in the first place,” Shadi Hamid, the author of “Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle over Islam is Reshaping the World,” told me on Friday.

Also see the article by Alissa J. Rubin in the NYT (August 27th), “From bikinis to burkinis, regulating what women wear,” in which interesting people are quoted.

6th UPDATE: Philippe Marlière, who teaches political science at University College London, has a must-read post on his Mediapart blog (August 26th), “La gauche de l’entre-soi et le burkini.” The lede: “Cet article revient sur les récentes controverses sur le port du burkini en France, montre la ligne de fracture qu’elles ont créée au sein de la gauche française, et réfute les arguments qui sont déployés pour justifier des attaques racistes et sexistes contre les femmes musulmanes.”

Marlière notes, entre autres, that the French left—which is almost entirely atheist and with an anti-clerical tropisme from another era (which is specific to France’s history; we’re not talking about universal values here), and that has been transposed to any public manifestation of religiosity—is an outlier among its progressive European counterparts when it comes to conventional Muslim veiling. On the European left—not to mention the left in the Americas, north and south—only in France does the sight of a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf provoke a negative reaction—and automatically excludes her from participation in a left-wing political party.

7th UPDATE: Here’s the official English translation of the Conseil d’État’s ruling on the burkini affair.

8th UPDATE: Benjamin Haddad, a French research fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, has an essay (August 30th) in The American Interest entitled “Behind the burkini.” The lede: “The overturned ban is not a religious issue, but the symbol of a broader political struggle.” Now Haddad is normally incisive in the analyses I have read by him but is in error on a number points in his piece here. E.g. he opines that

The fact is that many in France consider the aggressive display of this brand of Islamic fundamentalism in a public space to be a provocation, an intentional rejection of the French Republic’s long tradition of secularism, and an attempt at self-exclusion from the rest of the population.

As I have written above, the burkini has nothing whatever to do with “Islamic fundamentalism.” This is a phantasm. And no one who thinks this has a shred of evidence to defend the contention that even one single woman—une seule—who wears the burkini does so to provoke, to signal a rejection of secularism, is attempting to exclude herself from the rest of the population, or is an “Islamic fundamentalist.” This is a figment of the addled French imagination. (But then, even if a burkini-wearing woman did have these things in mind, eh alors? La belle affaire! Dans un pays libre comme la France, c’est son droit. Qu’est-ce que ça peut vous faire?).

And while the vast majority of French Muslims keep their faith privately and are peaceful citizens, this model of integration makes the country an inviting target for those who don’t.

What is this supposed to mean? How does one “model of integration” make a country a target for—what precisely?—more than another “model”?

To be clear, wearing a burkini is manifestly not considered a mandatory religious requirement by France’s overwhelmingly moderate Muslim population, who don’t wear it.

But no one has even hinted that the burkini is religiously required. Pour mémoire, the burkini is the trademarked product of an Australian fashion designer named Aheda Zanetti (see above), who created the garment for pious Muslim women—but also for non-Muslim women (why not?)—who wish to go to the beach but, for their own reasons, will not wear a conventional swimsuit. The burkini is, above all, a business proposition that aims to satisfy a heretofore underserved market.

À propos, how much would one like to bet that the burkini® under another name sells like hotcakes in Israel among Jewish women?

That the burkini may be worn free of pressure does not change the underlying message.

But what underlying message?! And sent by whom precisely? (and please give names). The notion that there is a message in the burkini is a collective French phantasm.

Please, there is no message here. No burkini-wearing woman is sending a message, even subliminal. This I promise you.

Moreover, the burkini, which was seemingly absent from beaches before this year, is seen as a mere episode in a broader pattern of every-day incidents in which republican principles are challenged by a radical minority constantly testing and pushing the boundaries of what is or is not acceptable. It is not a religious issue, but the symbol of a broader political struggle.

What “radical minority”? Who are you talking about? Please name names. And while you’re at it, please provide references of what this “radical minority” has written about the burkini.

The censure (and worse) of moderate Muslims who don’t observe Ramadan, the requests of community leaders for gender-segregated hours in public swimming pools, the pressure on women not to accept the care of male physicians even in cases of emergency, the refusal of children to listen in biology class or to learn about the Holocaust: These incidents don’t make international headlines but are becoming increasingly ubiquitous.

Such incidents have indeed happened but how do you know that they “are becoming increasingly ubiquitous”? In point of fact, you don’t know at all. There have been numerous anecdotes over the years of disturbing and unacceptable things happening—as there inevitably will be in a society of 65 million inhabitants—but the extent of this has not been established. Seriously, we really don’t know.

In June, a young Muslim waitress was attacked in the name of Islam in downtown Nice for serving alcohol during Ramadan.

A fait divers. It was outrageous and with the perpetrators meriting prosecution, but it was still just one incident.

But not reacting to the burkini also has its consequences and runs the risk of normalizing such practices.

But so what if the burkini is “normalized”?? In point of fact, it should be normalized. If the burkini succeeds in bringing more Muslim and other women to the beach, that’s a good thing, is it not? À propos, see the quotes above of Joan Wallach Scott and Shadi Hamid.

In the coming years, Europeans will continue to grapple with the tension between their liberal principles and the necessity of rolling back the hold of a radical minority.

But what “radical minority”?? Please give names of such radicals in France.

These attempts, however clumsy, deserve a more understanding reception than scorn and conceit.

Oy vey, the attempts by demagogic French politicians to “roll back” the hold of this imagined “radical minority” deserve not only scorn and conceit but disdain as well.

9th UPDATE: Christine Delphy—a sociologist and leading personality in France’s feminist movement of the 1970s—has an excellent tribune in The Guardian (August 29th) on “How a legal misunderstanding is fueling France’s witch-hunt of Muslim women.” The lede: “Of course, banning women from wearing what they want is illegal in France. The establishment claim they want Muslim women to achieve independence yet are depriving them the means to do so.”

Also see Delphy’s 20 July 2015 Guardian tribune, “Feminists are failing Muslim women by supporting racist French laws.” The lede: “If women’s groups see Muslims wearing headscarves as an oppressed minority, it should be a reason to embrace them and understand why, not collude in widening one of the worst rifts within French society.”

10th UPDATE: Nathalie Heinich—a sociologist and ideological warrior for the cause of laïcité de combat—has a virulent op-ed in Le Monde (August 30th), “Burkini: Il faut combattre le prosélytisme extrémiste et le sexisme,” in which she responds to the well-known sociologist Michel Wieviorka’s thoughtful tribune (August 26th) in The Conversation, “Panique morale autour du ‘burkini’.” Heinrich’s broadside has the merit of arguing that opposing the burkini concerns neither laïcité nor public order but is all about fighting against “an extremist, totalitarian conception of Islam.” Tout court. The piece is a doozy. E.g.

Dans le contexte de la France d’aujourd’hui (qui n’est ni celui des Etats-Unis, ni celui de la France d’il y a une génération), l’interdiction des signes religieux les plus extrêmes – la burqa dans les rues, le burkini sur les plages – ne doit plus être une question de laïcité: ce doit être un combat politique contre une manipulation de la religion à des fins d’ordre sexuel, moral, juridique, civique, voire guerrier.

En faire une question religieuse, c’est entrer dans le jeu de nos adversaires, qui utilisent cet argument pour imposer leur conception rétrograde de la citoyenneté – la soumission à l’ordre religieux – et de la différence des sexes – la soumission des femmes.

C’est pourquoi, dans le contexte actuel, l’affichage de comportements manifestant l’adhésion à une conception fondamentaliste de l’islam, tel que le port du burkini, ne relève pas de l’exercice d’une religion (va-t-on à la plage pour prier?): il relève de l’expression d’une opinion, et d’une opinion délictueuse, puisqu’il s’agit d’une incitation à la discrimination sexiste, qui en outre banalise et normalise l’idéologie au nom de laquelle on nous fait la guerre. C’est pourquoi le Conseil d’Etat aurait pu, aurait dû valider les arrêtés antiburkini, en vertu de la légitime limitation du droit à la liberté d’expression.

The wearing of the burkini is an “opinion délictueuse“… Translation: the expression of a “criminal opinion.”

Wow. That’s intense. Mme Heinich is lusting for blood.

Another morsel:

Il faut donc choisir son camp: non pas le camp des sectaires contre les «tolérants», mais le camp des partisans d’un islam respectueux des lois et des valeurs de notre pays – au premier rang desquelles l’égalité entre hommes et femmes et le droit pour celles-ci d’occuper librement l’espace public – contre un islam dévoyé, sexiste, intolérant, violemment prosélyte, et ­ ennemi des libertés car exerçant de puissantes pressions communautaires contre ceux et ­ surtout contre celles qui ne se plieraient pas à ses règles archaïques.

«Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté»: c’était bien un slogan politique, n’est-ce pas? Est-ce parce qu’il est ici question de femmes qu’on dénie la dimension politique du problème, au profit d’une dimension religieuse et morale?

Again, as concerns the burkini, all this is a figment of the French imagination. Mme Heinich & Co are seeing heavy symbolism in an article of female clothing that, until proof to the contrary, is not seen by the women wearing it. One thing that strikes me in reading viewpoints such as this is that women who wear the burkini or hijab are accorded no agency. They are seen as either passive victims living under the yoke of misogynistic men or as fanaticized zombies in the service of a totalitarian ideology. And they have no voice. I will wager that Mme Heinich and others who share her views have never engaged veiled Muslim women in dialogue or had the slightest interest in hearing them out. Veiled Muslim women are the ultimate Other. At minimum, there’s a lack of empathy here, not to mention absence of intellectual curiosity. I don’t relate to this way of thinking.

11th UPDATE: Gershom Gorenberg—The American Prospect’s Jerusalem-based senior correspondent—nails it in a commentary (August 31st) entitled “The beach movie of the absurd.” The lede: “The Burkini fuss isn’t just an embarrassment for France. Diversity is under attack across the West.”

12th UPDATE: Daniel Pipes, like that proverbial stopped clock, gets it exactly right on the burkini. And he links to a site selling “original kosher swimwear.” I rest my case.

13th UPDATE: The NYT (September 2nd) seeks out the views of Muslim women in France and Belgium—gives them voice—in an article (and that may be read in French translation), “‘The way people look at us has changed’: Muslim women on life in Europe.”

14th UPDATE: Libération (September 1st) has a meditation by Université Paris 1 philosophy professor Sandra Laugier, “SOS fantasmes.” Observing the negative reaction on social media to the all-female cast of the latest “Ghostbusters” movie, Laugier offers this

Ce déferlement de misogynie a trouvé un équivalent plus tragique en France avec le débat politique, virtuel et public, sur le droit des femmes musulmanes à choisir leur tenue de plage. Quelle que soit l’opinion ou l’affect qu’elles suscitent, le plus extraordinaire est que tant de gens se soient sentis autorisés à l’exprimer.

Comme l’indique déjà la façon de nommer ce débat («le burkini»), les femmes concernées sont les dernières qu’on va consulter sur la question, et il a été fort pénible ces dernières semaines de lire et d’entendre les uns et les autres, hommes en majorité, des femmes de pouvoir aussi, énoncer doctement ce que ces femmes musulmanes doivent faire, voire traduire ce qu’elles pensent et expriment par leur comportement.

It occurs to none of the burkini critics to solicit the viewpoints of the women who wear it…

In this vein, Laugier links to an important analysis by Université Paris 13 linguistics professor Marie-Anne Paveau, “Parler du burkini sans les concernées: De l’énonciation ventriloque,” posted August 17th on the website “La pensée du discours: La théorie du discours ouverte à de nouvelles épistémologies.”

15th UPDATE: Dominique Rousseau, the well-known professor of public law at the Université Paris 1, settles the legal/constitutional side of the question (September 1st) in Le Huffington Post, “Sous le burkini, l’Etat de Droit.”

Also see Etienne Balibar’s tribune (August 29th) in Libération, “Laïcité ou identité?” The lede: “Alors que le Conseil d’Etat vient d’invalider l’interdiction du burkini, il faut mettre fin au développement de la «laïcité identitaire». Cette conception, obsédée par le communautarisme en vient à construire un «communautarisme d’Etat».”

16th UPDATE: The Times of Israel has an AP dispatch (September 4th) on how the “French uproar [has created an] opportunity for Israeli burkinis.” One learns that Israel

home to large populations of conservative Jewish and Muslim women, has cultivated a local industry of modest swimsuits, and the full-body outfits that have caused uproar in France have been a common sight on Israeli beaches for several years.

On the uproar in France, the founder of one of the first Israeli modest swimwear companies rhetorically asked

“What does a woman do in France who wants to cover up for sun protection or who wants to cover up some scarring, or if she is a little overweight and she doesn’t want to wear a bikini?…It doesn’t make any sense that they are banning a specific type of modest swimwear. It’s very racist to me.”

As for Palestinian Muslims

Sahab Nasser sells SunWay burkinis at her lingerie shop in Tira, a mostly Muslim town in central Israel. She said she sold burkinis for four years before she finally bought one so she could accompany her three-year-old daughter in the pool. It has been life-changing for her and other Muslim women, she said, because previously they would stay out of the water while the men and children in their families would go swimming.

“The burkini has let (Arab women) go to the beach, spend quality time with the family, to go to mixed gender pools, to swim with their families and feel comfortable, without criticism,” she said. “Who said the bikini is the right look for the beach?”

Personally speaking, I prefer seeing women in bikinis, particularly if they have the body for one. And if they want to go topless, tant mieux (en tant qu’homme hétéro je ne vais pas être hypocrite là-dessus). But if women want to wear burkinis, no prob’. Laissez les gens vivre, bon sang !

17th UPDATE: Michel Wieviorka has a tribune in Le Monde (September 4th) responding to Nathalie Heinich’s unhinged diatribe (above), “La sociologie à l’épreuve du burkini.” The lede: “Afin de pouvoir légitimement intervenir dans le débat public, les intellectuels doivent s’appuyer sur des recherches et des faits établis. Non pas sur des opinions et des préjugés.” Money quote:

Le sociologue qui s’exprime sur le «burkini», puisque c’est le dossier qui nous occupe ici, devrait s’appuyer sur des recherches portant directement sur ce phénomène, ou sur des phénomènes proches – burqa, par exemple (je dirige des travaux de doctorantes sur ce thème): que signifie le port de ce vêtement islamique pour les femmes concernées? Quelles sont ces femmes, qu’ont-elles à dire? Quel est le sens du refus énergique du burkini: républicain? féministe? nationaliste? islamophobe? Quel est celui de la tolérance à son égard: républicain, féministe, naïf…? Chez qui? Etc.

Faute de s’appuyer sur des travaux solides, le sociologue perd une bonne partie de sa légitimité à intervenir, pour devenir au mieux un essayiste et plus vraisemblablement un acteur, ou l’intellectuel organique d’une cause, et non plus un analyste.

See also the tribune in Le Monde (September 6th) by IEP–Aix-en-Provence sociology professor Raphaël Liogier, “Contre les idées reçues sur l’islam, créons un ‘Observatoire des identités plurielles’.”

18th UPDATE: The well-known political science specialist of Islamism, Shadi Hamid, who is presently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Project on US Relations with the Islamic World, has a piece (July 20th 2017) in The Atlantic on “The Dilemma of the Burqini: Is there any right way to react to the swimwear?”

 

Sydney, Australia (photo: Aheda Zanetti)

Le 26 août, une si belle date pour les libertés. #1789 #2016

— Maitre Eolas ??

(@Maitre_Eolas) August 26, 2016

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National anthems: The Top 10

With the Olympics Games underway, those watching will be hearing numerous national anthems. Having followed the games myself over the decades, plus other international sporting events (World Cup, etc), I’ve heard a lot of anthems. Most make no impression on me but a few are really nice, even beautiful. So on the occasion of the Olympics here’s my personal Top 10, with the best renditions I found on the Internet. I can see why patriotic sentiments are stirred in nationals of the listed countries when hearing their anthem. Even I’m moved by most of them. Voilà:

10. SPAIN: Marcha Real

9. ITALY: Il Canto degli Italiani

8: NETHERLANDS: Het Wilhelmus

7. ISRAEL: Hatikva

6: UNITED KINGDOM: God Save the Queen

5. INDIA: Jana Gana Mana

4: RUSSIA: Gosudarstvenný gimn Rossijskoj Federací

3. SOUTH AFRICA: Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika—Die Stem van Suid-Afrika

2. GERMANY: Deutschlandlied

1. FRANCE: La Marseillaise

I’ve said it countless times and will say it again: La Marseillaise is the greatest national anthem in the world. The version linked to above—with the first three stanzas, sung at the end of last month’s Bastille Day parade, at the Place de la Concorde—may be the best I’ve ever heard (and with accompanying video). Here’s another version, which people will be familiar with. N.B. The version of the German anthem linked to includes the now taboo first stanza (only the third is officially sung), but the video is great. As for the Indian anthem, one will almost never hear it at an international sporting event—cricket and field hockey excepted—which is too bad, as it’s beautiful. The great Russian anthem: the video I linked to is a tad kitschy, as one will note. The South African: this one really moves me (the first part at least).

If the European Union were a nation, its anthem, Ode to Joy, would definitely make the Top 10.

Likewise with L’Internationale, which, if it were the anthem of a nation, would also be near the top.

Algeria’s Kassaman: the score and cadence are too martial for my taste.

And The Star-Spangled Banner? It’s okay. Doesn’t particularly move me, though. I am not filled with frissons patriotiques when I hear it. It would probably make my Top 20 but definitely doesn’t the Top 10.

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Sports and communism

I’m sort of following the Olympics, watching a bit on TV, keeping up with the medals table. I’ve read about the Russian doping scandal over the past couple of weeks. Am not surprised the Russkies got off with a slap on the wrist. The affair recalled a good Czech film I saw last year, Fair Play (in France: Sur la ligne), about state-organized doping of athletes in Czechoslovakia during the communist era (and that was likewise in the other eastern bloc countries). Here’s a plot summary culled from IMDB

The 1980s in Czechoslovakia. The young talented sprinter Anna (Judit Bárdos) is selected for the national team and starts training to qualify for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles (before the Soviet decision to boycott). As part of the preparation she is placed in a secret “medical program” where she’s getting doped with anabolic steroids. Her performance is getting better, but after she collapses in training, she learns the truth about the drugs. Anna decides to continue her training without the steroids even though her mother (Anna Geislerova) is worried that she won’t be able to keep up with other athletes and might not qualify for the Olympics, which she sees as the only chance for her daughter to escape from behind the Iron Curtain (her parents having been dissidents and her father living in exile in Vienna). After Anna finishes last in the indoor race, her mother informs the coach (Roman Luknar) that Anna had stopped using steroids. They decide to apply the steroids to Anna secretly, pretending it’s nothing but doses of harmless vitamins.

The film offers what is certainly the most accurate cinematic treatment one will find of state-organized doping in communist countries: of the collaboration of doctors, oversight of the secret police and the party, and the pressure that was brought to bear on the athletes to comply—e.g. access to higher education and other resources, post-sporting career employment—and particularly if the athlete’s family was already politically suspect, as was Anna’s in the film. In short, it lays bare the overall insidiousness of the really existing socialism of the Soviet bloc countries. The pic did well at the box office in the Czech Republic (it has yet to open in the US or UK). The reviews in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are good. Trailer is here.

Not all was dodgy or somber in the Soviet bloc sports scene, it should be said. Last year I saw the terrific documentary, Red Army, by American filmmaker Gabe Polsky, about the saga of the HC CSKA Moscow ice hockey team, nicknamed “Red Army”—that formed the core of the national team the Soviet Union fielded in international competition—mainly from the 1970s to the early ’90s. The Red Army/USSR ice hockey team may well have been the best ever in any sport—and, under the yoke of the legendary slave-driver coach, Viktor Tikhonov, no doubt the most militarily regimented. The national team regularly blew away the competition in international sporting events (though was shocked by Team USA—then comprised of college-level amateurs—at the 1980 winter Olympics in Lake Placid, in what was one of the biggest upsets in the history of sports). They were amazing. One does not need to know a thing about ice hockey or have the slightest interest in it to find the documentary riveting and all-around excellent—critics in France and the US/UK alike gave it the thumbs way up—as it’s about politics, the Cold War, and the Soviet Union in his waning years as much as it is about sports (see the trailer here). Among those interviewed throughout the documentary are two of the USSR national team’s great players, Vladislav Tretiak and Viacheslav “Slava” Fetisov—the latter, along with others on the team, going to the US and Canada in 1989 and after to play in the NHL—and the journalist Vladimir Posner, who was a fixture on American television in the 1980s, as a slick, English-speaking spokesman for the Soviet Union.

Did the Soviet hockey players take anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing drugs? Probably, though in that they would not have differed from their counterparts in North America.

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France: Surrendering to terror

That’s the thrust of the title of an opinion piece in the New York Post—a press organ I do not normally link to favorably—by Nicole Gelinas, a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Here it is

This weekend, New Yorkers enjoyed their first of three Summer Streets weekends. Saturday, the city closed Park Avenue to cars, letting walkers and bikers take over. Paris, though, canceled its own summer streets on the Champs-Elysées Sunday.

The retreat is a victory for the thugs who have terrorized France for a year-and-a-half — and it shows other potential murderers that they, too, can change the world with a knife or a truck.

In February, Paris officials said they would close the famed avenue to motor traffic once a month during the summer. “I wanted . . . to re-appropriate an avenue like this one so that people could walk around, stroll with their families and ride bikes,” said Mayor Anne Hidalgo in May.

Tens of thousands of people enjoyed a once-in-a-lifetime view of the Arc de Triomphe from the middle of the cobblestoned thoroughfare. Business owners, too, said the strolling would help sales.

Such a boost is badly needed: Tourist numbers and spending have fallen sharply after terrorists killed 130 people last November.

But after an ISIS sympathizer with a truck killed 85 people on a pedestrian waterfront in Nice on July 14, Paris canceled the August event.

Paris and other cities and towns, on the French government’s advice, have canceled other festivals, including concerts, sports, open-air movies and star-gazing. In northern France, the city of Lille canceled a massive September flea market that it has hosted since the Middle Ages — and that it hasn’t canceled since 1944.

Paris might cancel its “techno parade,” too, in September — a nearly two-decade-old event that fills the streets with music freaks from around the world.

Why such an extreme reaction? First, manpower. Officials note the “fatigue of the police” as they’ve fortified targets like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre and train stations with more officers with long guns.

“We are in a situation of war,” said the defense minister about the cancellations. “We must forbid activities” if they can’t be secured.

The government has to pick what it most wants to protect — the big tourist sites, but also its Paris Plages, artificial beaches along the Seine where locals who can’t get out of the city can sunbathe.

And, two weeks after two 19-year-olds, also claiming solidarity with ISIS, killed a priest as he said Mass at a Normandy church, more guards have been stationed at churches, too.

In a narrow sense, France’s government may be right. Responsibility for public safety is a heavy burden. And defying killers would backfire if they did mow down dozens on the Champs-Elysées — sending visitor numbers plummeting even further.

But we shouldn’t pretend that the closing of the avenue is a minor concession to the times. Events like this are fun — but fun that serves a purpose.

For more than a decade, Paris has been changing its approach to the streets — taking space for walkers and bicycles and away from cars and trucks. These changes have often started with temporary events — closing a road along the Seine as an experiment, and then keeping it closed after people can see that it has cut pollution and noise.

Paris’ re-engineering of the streets has saved dozens of people from dying in car crashes over the years. In fact, Paris’ pioneering work has helped save hundreds of lives worldwide.

New York took many of its own “traffic-calming” ideas, like pedestrian plazas and bike lanes, from Paris, sharply cutting crash deaths. (Paris also had bikeshare nearly a decade before New York did.)

London, too, now has summer-streets closures. A “free cycle” bike ride two weeks ago attracted so many people that bicyclists caused congestion for each other.

Control of the streets is also symbolic. Hitler made a show of marching down the Champs-Elysées — as, later, did Charles de Gaulle.

Ceding the streets now because Paris needs fast-moving cars and trucks as a buffer between walkers and killers, then, is an ominous development, not just for Paris, but for the world.

And, in the long term, it won’t work: Cities depend on crowds of people on foot. Lose crowds, whether by decree or because more attacks keep even more people away, and the terrorists really have won.

So, whether you like summer-streets festivals or you sit in traffic stewing about them, you should feel dismay at this summer’s Champs-Elysées surrender.

The number of events cancelled on account of three terrorist attacks over the past two months—that killed 88 persons and involved exactly four perpetrators—is greater than those Gelinas mentions. In addition to the Braderie de Lille—the biggest flea market in Europe, which goes back to the 12th century—events cancelled include Lille’s annual semi-marathon the first weekend of September, the music festival in Berck (Pas-de-Calais), the Prom’Party in Nice, the Marseille Ciné Plein Air, fireworks displays in Collioure (Pyrénées-Orientales) and numerous other localities throughout la France profonde (including a big one in La Baule), the Jasmin Festival in Grasse, the big pyrotechnic festival in Avignon, The Cover music concert Mulhouse, and a whole host of events in and around Paris, among others. Tens—indeed hundreds—of millions of euros lost, millions of tourists cancelling their visits, and a country plunged into ever greater moroseness.

Pour mémoire: The atrocity in Nice was indeed that—an atrocity—but the perpetrator was one man; the stabbing death of the two police officers in Magnanville on June 13th was carried by a single, mentally ill man. The July 26th Saint-Étienne-des-Rouvray attack, which was committed by two young men, involved a single violent death apart from the murderers. This is insane. That these incidents, horrible as they were, involving precisely four men could bring France to its knees—and with politicians of major parties all but calling for a suspension of civil liberties—is beyond comprehension. One thing that is nigh certain is that there will be more such attacks in the coming period, and with France descending into ever deeper hysteria. There won’t be an end to it anytime soon. The Islamic State has won. C’est affligeant.

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Will she win?

[update below] [2nd update below] [3rd update below] [4th update below] [5th update below] [6th update below] [7th update below]

Yes, of course she will. Her post-convention “bounce” has been significant, as everyone knows, and while the numbers may possibly dip in the coming weeks—or, more likely, may not—it is more than unlikely that Trump could turn it into a horse race, let alone take the lead, barring some mega-revelation about Hillary. And even then. One has likely seen the latest poll from Georgia, that has Hillary leading Trump by four points. If this is at all accurate and the numbers hold—i.e. if Georgia is in play—then this thing is over. The only question is the scale of the landslide.

To know that Trump is all but toast—that he is, in the words of a top aide to Mitt Romney in 2012, “a neutron bomb that has gone off in the Republican Party“—one may merely read the latest commentaries by conservative pundits, most decades-long Hillary-haters, e.g. Peggy Noonan in the WSJ (August 4th), on “The week they decided Donald Trump was crazy.” Money quote

Here is a truth of life. When you act as if you’re insane, people are liable to think you’re insane. That’s what happened this week. People started to become convinced he was nuts, a total flake.

WaPo’s Charles Krauthammer said much the same in his column (August 4th), “Donald Trump and the fitness threshold”

This is beyond narcissism. I used to think Trump was an 11-year-old, an undeveloped schoolyard bully. I was off by about 10 years. His needs are more primitive, an infantile hunger for approval and praise, a craving that can never be satisfied. He lives in a cocoon of solipsism where the world outside himself has value — indeed exists — only insofar as it sustains and inflates him.

Krauthammer’s equally right-wing colleague, George F. Will, has been on anti-Trump tear of late. In his column (August 3rd), “Trump’s shallowness runs deep,” he makes this pertinent observation

[Trump’s] speeches are, of course, syntactical train wrecks, but there might be a method to his madness. He rarely finishes a sentence (“Believe me!” does not count), but perhaps he is not the scatterbrain he has so successfully contrived to appear. Maybe he actually is a sly rascal, cunningly in pursuit of immunity through profusion.

He seems to understand that if you produce a steady stream of sufficiently stupefying statements, there will be no time to dwell on any one of them, and the net effect on the public will be numbness and ennui. So, for example, while the nation has been considering his interesting decision to try to expand his appeal by attacking Gold Star parents, little attention has been paid to this: Vladimir Putin’s occupation of Crimea has escaped Trump’s notice.

Trump’s words on geopolitics, and particularly on America’s NATO allies, prompted the Trump-loathing Über-conservative blogger-commentator Erick Erickson to fire off an incendiary broadside, aimed at Trump-supporting fellow conservatives, on his website The Resurgent (August 4th), “Donald Trump can go to hell and if you defend his statement, so can you.” Aïe!

And then there’s David Brooks’s latest (August 5th) on the GOP’s “70-year-old man-child” candidate, which is worth quoting at length

Trump has shown that he is not a normal candidate. He is a political rampage charging ever more wildly out of control. And no, he cannot be changed.

He cannot be contained because he is psychologically off the chain. With each passing week he displays the classic symptoms of medium-grade mania in more disturbing forms: inflated self-esteem, sleeplessness, impulsivity, aggression and a compulsion to offer advice on subjects he knows nothing about.

His speech patterns are like something straight out of a psychiatric textbook. Manics display something called “flight of ideas.” It’s a formal thought disorder in which ideas tumble forth through a disordered chain of associations. One word sparks another, which sparks another, and they’re off to the races. As one trained psychiatrist said to me, compare Donald Trump’s speaking patterns to a Robin Williams monologue, but with insults instead of jokes.

Trump insults Paul Ryan, undermines NATO and raises the specter of nuclear war. Advisers can’t control Trump’s brain because Trump can’t control it himself.

He also cannot be contained because he lacks the inner equipment that makes decent behavior possible. So many of our daily social interactions depend on a basic capacity for empathy. But Trump displays an absence of this quality.

He looks at the grieving mother of a war hero and is unable to recognize her pain. He hears a crying baby and is unable to recognize the infant’s emotion or the mother’s discomfort. He is told of women being sexually harassed at Fox News and is unable to recognize their trauma.

The same blindness that makes him impervious to global outrage makes it impossible for him to make empathetic connection. Fear is his only bond.

Some people compare Trump to the great authoritarians of history, but that’s wrong. They were generally disciplined men with grandiose plans. Trump is underdeveloped and unregulated.

He is a slave to his own pride, compelled by a childlike impulse to lash out at anything that threatens his fragile identity. He appears to have no ability to experience reverence, which is the foundation for any capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self, to want to learn about anything beyond self, to want to know and deeply honor the people around you.

N.B. These are the assessments of conservative, Republican-voting commentators. The bottom line: there is no way—not a snowball’s chance in hell—that the American electorate will send a man to the White House who is manifestly mentally ill. That Trump is this is obvious to anyone who doesn’t get 100% of his or her information from Fox News, right-wing talk radio, and/or the American Internet réacosphère.

On sources of information, writer George Saunders, in his long, must read article in The New Yorker last month, “Who are all these Trump supporters?,” had this observation

Where is all this anger coming from? It’s viral, and Trump is Typhoid Mary. Intellectually and emotionally weakened by years of steadily degraded public discourse, we are now two separate ideological countries, LeftLand and RightLand, speaking different languages, the lines between us down. Not only do our two subcountries reason differently; they draw upon non-intersecting data sets and access entirely different mythological systems. You and I approach a castle. One of us has watched only “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the other only “Game of Thrones.” What is the meaning, to the collective “we,” of yon castle? We have no common basis from which to discuss it. You, the other knight, strike me as bafflingly ignorant, a little unmoored. In the old days, a liberal and a conservative (a “dove” and a “hawk,” say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper, and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional. (As a proud knight of LeftLand, I was interested to find that, in RightLand, Vince Foster has still been murdered, Dick Morris is a reliable source, kids are brainwashed “way to the left” by going to college, and Obama may yet be Muslim. I expect that my interviewees found some of my core beliefs equally jaw-dropping.)

Not that there’s symmetry between LeftLand and RightLand. One is delusional and unhinged, the other is not. No need to specify which is which.

As for Trump’s fans, certain observers have said that we need to listen to them, to hear them out, try to understand where they’re coming from, maybe feel their pain, alienation, and anger. Right. I’ve done that, with Saunders’s piece and others. And I’ve had enough of reading about those people. The NYT video of the crowds at Trump’s rallies, which everyone has seen by now, was it. These people are politically and morally depraved. Erick Erickson, referenced above, did well in telling them to go to hell, as did Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce in so many words, in a July 14th tirade, in which he correctly asserted that “anyone who supports Donald Trump is a traitor to the American idea.” Allen Clifton—a Texas-based blogger and co-founder of the Forward Progressives website, both unknown to me before today—has a commentary (August 5th) that gets it exactly right. It begins

When it comes to Donald Trump’s campaign, I’ve honestly reached a point where I have to remind myself that this is a legitimate Republican presidential candidate who may very well become our next president. This whole circus has become so outrageously bizarre that it’s hard for me to mentally grasp the reality that tens of millions of people are actually supporting this buffoon.

Before this election, I typically avoided calling people “stupid” for supporting a particular presidential candidate. In 2012, I might have thought Mitt Romney had no business being president, but I didn’t feel as if someone had to be mentally unhinged to support him.

However, when it comes to Trump supporters, I have no qualms in saying I completely believe that someone has to be an absolute imbecile to think he should be our next president. I’ve never seen a candidate blatantly treat his supporters like bumbling idiots — yet they love him for it.

His entire campaign has been a joke. I’ve often said that Donald Trump is what the comments section of a right-wing blog would look and sound like if it could run for president. All he’s done his entire campaign is tell his hostile, rabid and ignorant supporters exactly what they want to hear, even if most of what he’s been telling them hasn’t contained a shred of truth.

Though I feel a tweet he sent out late Thursday evening perfectly exemplifies how factually devoid and delusional his entire campaign has been:

To read that tweet and the rest of Clifton’s spot-on piece, go here.

Précision: We’re talking here about Trump’s die-hard fans, who will stick with him even if he literally shoots someone on Fifth Avenue. But a certain number of his supporters, even in the famous white working class, have been soft and are now falling away. Not everyone who voted Trump in the primaries was an idiot. Some of these voters are realizing—if they haven’t already—that they’ve been played by Trump, that his promises on trade and the economy are worthless, that he is not a credible messenger for his populist discourse. Perhaps some knew it all along but were consciously casting a protest vote. Sending a message to the Republican and Democratic Party establishments alike, something like that. I am reminded here of a poll that was taken in France after the 2002 presidential election—the one that saw Jean-Marie Le Pen, in a shocker, overtake Prime Minister Lionel Jospin in the first round to square off against President Jacques Chirac in the second ballot two weeks later—in which fully half of Le Pen’s voters said that they would not have voted for him had they thought he had any chance of actually being elected (Chirac won with 82%). One may hypothesize that some of Trump’s dropping numbers may be attributed to this, to some of his voters getting cold feet when they saw him running neck-and-neck with Hillary in the polls after the RNC.

Now, for the sake of argument, what would happen if, by some crazy turn of events, Trump pulled even with Hillary in the final stretch of the campaign—and despite bailing out of the debates, which I consider likely (as he knows she’ll shred him into little pieces)—and looked like he had a serious chance of winning? At the risk of provoking the paranoia of Trump and his supporters, one may be sure that America’s Deep State—particularly in the military, intelligence, and foreign policy establishments—will pull out all the stops to prevent this, beginning with the leak of his tax returns to Julian Assange—or, if he’s in cahoots with Trump, to another outlet. And if that doesn’t do the trick in sinking Trump, the “Deep State” will come up with something else. They will do all they can to insure his defeat. And if it comes down to that, I wish the powers-that-be well in their efforts.

To push it further, what would happen in the unthinkable, utterly unlikely event that Trump pulled off his three state strategy (FL-OH-PA) and won a 273-265 Electoral College victory? Answer: chaos and unprecedented constitutional crisis. First, his narrow EC victory would certainly be accompanied by a decisive defeat in the popular vote. Seriously: it is beyond inconceivable that Trump could possibly overtake Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in what will certainly be a high turnout election, with over 130 million voters going to the polls. 65 million Americans—or even 60—are not going to vote for Donald Trump. The legitimacy of a narrow Trump EC victory would be rejected by a very sizable portion of American society, and would more than likely prompt a sufficient number of Trump electors—it would just take three or four—to break the faith when the Electoral College meets on December 19th and throw the election to the House—which would generate a legitimacy crisis of its own. The shock in the UK and among British elites after the Brexit vote—and consequent fallout in financial markets—would pale in comparison to what the US would experience in such an event.

Secondly, Trump would not be able to govern. Another comparison with France and the 2002 election: a few months after that one, I advanced a hypothesis to a haut fonctionnaire—specifically, a member of the Cour des Comptes—with whom I was acquainted that if Le Pen had won the presidential election, the grand corps de l’État—the men and women who run the French state and are seconded to ministerial staffs—would decline to collaborate with his administration, the shameful experience of the Vichy regime—and disgrace of the French state—very much in mind. He agreed, saying that he would not serve or collaborate with a Le Pen presidency, nor would his other colleagues, so he believed. Such would certainly be the case with Trump in the White House. With the American “Deep State,” indeed the entire Washington establishment—civil service, media, think tanks, you name it—hostile to him, Trump wouldn’t be able to do a thing. He would issue executive orders and throw temper tantrums but nothing would happen. One can barely even imagine him trying to fill the six thousand vacancies in the top echelons of the federal government. It would be crazy and impossible. The Banana-Republicification of the United States.

But this is politique-fiction, as it’s not going to happen.

All sorts of people have been wondering about the reaction of Trump’s supporters if he denounces his inevitable election loss as the product of fraud and rigging, fretting over the prospect of civil unrest, or worse. GMAB. When Trump gets pummeled on November 8th and denounces fraud and rigging— though without a shred of evidence—what, pray, are his brigades of dead-ender yahoo supporters going to do? Riot in the streets of Oklahoma City and Chattanooga? Launch an armed insurrection? N’importe quoi! The most they’ll do is unleash a torrent of incendiary tweets. The institutions of American democracy will withstand that.

So what’s a Republican voter appalled by Trump to do? Borrowing again from the French experience, there are two options. One: do what left voters did in the second round of the 2002 presidential election, which was to vote en masse for the right-wing Chirac—whom left voters had long despised, even calling him an outright fascist in the early years of his political career—to bar the route to Le Pen. Left voters went to their polling stations and just did it. GOP voters can just do it too: vote Hillary. Option two: do what many left voters—myself included—may well end up doing in round two of the presidential election next May, which is to vote blanc, i.e. drop an empty envelope into the ballot box. Not vote for anyone. In the US, that would mean passing on the presidential race and voting only down-ballot. Or, alternatively, voting for Gary Johnson. Le choix est clair.

Readers who are still with me will note that, after 2,700 words, I have hardly discussed Hillary. This has been all about Trump. It’s been all Trump all the time. Trump’s ability to monopolize media coverage is simply breathtaking. Since the end of the DNC nine days ago the US politics posts on my social media news feeds have been 95% Trump, with Hillary barely an afterthought. E.g. the bizarre New York Post cover photos of Melania in the nude, which were clearly authorized by Trump: the only manifest purpose was to keep the focus on Trump and divert attention from Hillary, even if the photos would not be well-received on the right.

The sharp anthropologist Sarah Kendzior has a fine essay in Foreign Policy (August 3rd) on how, win or lose in November, Trump’s “toxic legacy will live on.” And that toxic legacy will include the unabated rise of white extremist and hate groups, the linking of economic discontent with white populism and ressentiment, and the continued debasement of the media, for whom Trump has been so lucrative to their declining bottom lines. As Kendzior says

When the Trump train grinds to a halt, mainstream outlets will see more lost funding and more layoffs, leading to poor coverage of the new administration and an even more fractured political discourse. The media has learned that the exploitation of violence, riots, and bigotry brings clicks and cash. This is not a new lesson — as the old saying goes, “if it bleeds, it leads” — but the 2016 campaign has shown the mainstreaming of extremism to be uniquely lucrative.

On Hillary: in addition to dominating Trump in the polls, her personal popularity numbers are now in the mid 40s (RCP presently has it at+43/-53, with Trump at +33.8/-60.8). As Bernie Sanders voters continue to coalesce around Hillary—and with Bernie issuing strong statements supporting her—her numbers are sure to rise a few points more. A certain number of Hillary haters will cease hating (and regardless of clumsy responses she gives to time-wasting questions from reporters on the irrelevant email business, which will be a non-issue by the fall).

Let me recommend just two articles, both by Vox’s Ezra Klein: “It’s time to admit Hillary Clinton is an extraordinarily talented politician” (June 7th) and “Understanding Hillary: Why the Clinton America sees isn’t the Clinton colleagues know” (July 11th). The latter one is particularly worth reading. I do believe that Hillary Clinton, in the uncertain event she obtains a working majority in Congress, has the potential to be a great president.

And in case one missed it, see these two pieces from June: “The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen,” by a writer named Michael Arnowitz, and “I was one of the most ardent Hillary haters on the planet…until I read her emails,” by Karoli Kuns, managing editor of the Crooks and Liars website.

Three final links. Do check out writer David Auerbach’s lengthy but most interesting essay (July 26th) in the academic blog Crooked Timber, “Donald Trump: Moosbrugger for President.” And definitely don’t miss the piece in Vox (July 18th) by the indispensable Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, “The Republicans waged a 3-decade war on government. They got Trump.” And if one has not seen Jane Mayer’s amazing article in the July 25th issue of The New Yorker, “Donald Trump’s ghostwriter tells all,” read it. Now.

À suivre.

UPDATE: Cognitive linguist George Lakoff, who teaches at UC-Berkeley, had a must read piece in HuffPost, dated July 22nd, on “Understanding Trump,” or, more specifically, on understanding Trump’s supporters. Hint: it’s about the authoritarian personality.

2nd UPDATE: If one is still interested in the Hillary email affair and wants to read just one piece on it, then see Fred Kaplan’s in Slate (July 6th), “The Hillary Clinton email scandal was totally overblown.”

If one wants another piece, go to Eli Lake’s Bloomberg View column (July 5th), “The conservative case for letting Clinton skate.”

3rd UPDATE: A friend has sent me a post, dated July 31st, on Slate’s language blog Lexicon Valley, devoted to a single sentence Donald Trump uttered in a speech in South Carolina ten days earlier. Watch or read it and marvel. Sarah Palin is almost Demosthenes in comparison.

4th UPDATE: Reihan Salam, the youthful, thinking-outside-the-box conservative intellectual, has a column in Slate (August 4th) on one possible upside to the Trump phenomenon, which is how “Donald Trump is liberating the GOP from its most deeply held beliefs.” The lede: “He’s against the Iraq war. He’s for big government spending. He’s anti–Wall Street.”

I’m dubious, though, as Trump is against (or for) something one day, then for (or against) it the next. He has no fixed beliefs or positions on anything. And it’s rather unlikely that the GOP will modify its tenacious positions on issues like taxes and “small government” just because of Trump—and particularly if he suffers decisive defeat in November.

5th UPDATE: Vox’s Matthew Yglesias had a piece on July 28th, before Hillary Clinton’s DNC speech, observing that she “is bad at speeches for the exact reasons she’d be a good president.” Among the factors that make her not a great orator, but would an effective president, is the value she attaches to collaborative work. Interesting argument, and no doubt valid.

6th UPDATE: New York magazine writer-at-large Rebecca Traister had a good article, dated May 30th, that I missed at the time, “Hillary Clinton vs. Herself: There’s nothing simple about this candidacy—or candidate.”

7th UPDATE: Claire Malone, a senior writer for FiveThirtyEight, has a feature article, dated July 18th, on that august website, entitled “The end of a Republican Party: Racial and cultural resentment have replaced the party’s small government ethos.”

 

 

 

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