Mark LeVine on Charlie Hebdo: Blame Capitalism and the West

Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com

Mark LeVine


"Decades of the combined onslaught of extreme capitalism and extreme religion have shaped a necropolitics of the oppressed that is the mirror image of the necropolitics of local and western governments, and the oppression and violence they've imposed."


UC Irvine professor and Al Jazeera contributor Mark LeVine has put together his usual blame the West gibberish on Al Jazeera. In this piece, the attacks in Paris are all attributable to colonization, capitalism and the West.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/01/charlie-hebdo-islam-cartoon-terr-20151106726681265.html

That's right. If you want to blame someone, blame France. Blame the US. Blame the West. Blame capitalism and colonialism. LeVine thinks he has found the Missing Connection when he brings out the fact that the Paris killers were of Algerian and Senegalese extraction-both ex-French colonies.

Of course! Why didn't we think of that before? Elementary my dear Watson.

Nonsense. Just how long does it take for a former colony to get its act together? The US was once a colony of England. It seems our Founding Fathers did a pretty good job of putting a functioning democracy together. No, it wasn't perfect because it didn't immediately abolish slavery, but it eventually did. In fact, it was the West that led the way in the 19th century in abolishing slavery.

But as to the question at hand, it is time that the blame be placed squarely on the backs of the murderers and the ideology that drives them to do it. After all, they tell us in their own words why they do what they do. Should we not take them at their word instead of engaging in self-flagellation?