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“Frankreich ist Weltmeister”, says Der Spiegel. But it’s only football
OK, I’m boring. And this is the last time I will say this: football won’t change the world. But don’t criticise me for being depressed when, after 20 years, the lesson is not learnt and the same garbage is talked – and it’s being talked by the very people who propagated it last time. Tonight the French Ambassador to the UK proclaimed that the new word is “diversity”, France is now a “diverse” country like its football team and, following the example of its football team, is unified in its diversity. It’s a new reality, a new beginning.
Exactly 20 years ago, after France won the World Cup in 1998, the buzzword was one that had only been used before to criticise “the Anglo-Saxons” but was now used to describe the new France that had emerged from a football match: “multicultural”. It didn’t last. It couldn’t last. The French Republic never did “multicultural”. It can’t do it without a massive political and cultural shift, amounting to a revolution, in its Republican psyche. If you come to live in France from elsewhere you are told to forget your former culture and “assimilate”, Frenchify yourself. Unify = Frenchify. As a result Mehmet, a French Kurd, told me in 2000, “We’re not really talking about integration, we’re talking more about … assimilation. There’d be a problem going back [to Kurdistan] for many people, a problem of readapting. In fact, some people are ashamed of their Kurdish origins.” His friend Rusen agreed: “Assimilation, adaptation, these are what we have to work with.” So a couple of years after France’s great “multicultural” moment, the fascist Front National came second in the first round of the presidential elections.
And now? Just under 20 years after French-Algerian Zinedine Zidane scored the winning goal for France in 1998, Emmanuel Macron, seeking election as France’s new president, let fall his opinion that women of African origin in France had too many children. So here we go again and I doubt if “diversity” will last as long as a couple of years. But back then, although the Front National won the first round of the presidentials, they lost the election decisively at the second round. Today, however, we live in different times: we face a fierce political battle with an internationally resurgent far right, whether it’s in the shape of Trump, Bannon, the Front National, the Italian Interior Minister, the far right of the Tory Party or the disturbing and disturbed Tommy Robinson. Until we’re fully engaged with that, no amount of football will change the world.
The Trump-May axis
I have just watched the news about Trump’s latest executive order – banning Muslims for 120 days and Syrians apparently permanently. Then on comes Theresa next to Turkey’s President Erdogan, failing to condemn Trump (“America’s immigration rules are a matter for America and the UK’s immigration rules are a matter for us”) and, after securing a £100m fighter deal with Turkey, failing to condemn Erdogan for locking up more journalists than China. Her latter failure defended by her spokesperson later, and on roughly the same grounds used in the Cold War era: Turkey is a valuable ally in the fight against _________ (fill in the gap).
By coincidence, and before I heard the Trump news and the news, basically from her own mouth, of Theresa’s support for him and Erdogan, I had just this afternoon read the late Harold Pinter’s description of his encounter with the US ambassador to Turkey in 1985. He had gone to Turkey with Arthur Miller on behalf of International PEN to investigate allegations of torture and persecution of Turkish writers. He wrote afterwards:
“We met dozens of writers. Those who had been tortured in prison were still trembling but they insisted on giving us a drink, pouring the shaking bottle into our glasses. One of the writers’ wives was mute. She had fainted and lost her power of speech when she had seen her husband in prison …Turkey at this time was a military dictatorship, fully endorsed by the United States.
“The US Ambassador, hearing of our presence … gave a dinner party at the US embassy in Ankara in honour of Arthur [and] they had to invite me too. [At the dinner Pinter had an argument with an embassy political councillor and then] Arthur rose to speak … He discussed the term democracy and asked why, as the United States was a democracy, it supported military dictatorships throughout the world, including the country we were in? ‘In Turkey,’ he said, ‘hundreds of people are in prison for their thoughts. This persecution is supported and subsidised by the United States. Where,’ he asked, ‘does that leave our understanding of democratic values?’ He was as clear as a bell. The Ambassador thanked him for his speech.”
A few minutes later, wrote Pinter,
“I saw the Ambassador and his aides bearing down on me. Why they weren’t bearing down on Arthur I don’t know. Perhaps he was too tall. The Ambassador said to me: ‘Mr Pinter, you don’t seem to understand the realities of the situation here. Don’t forget, the Russians are just over the border. You have to bear in mind the political reality, the diplomatic reality, the military reality.’ ‘The reality I’ve been referring to,’ I said, ‘is that of electric current on your genitals.’ The Ambassador drew himself, as they say, up to his full height and glared at me. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘you are a guest in my house.’ He turned, as they also say, on his heel and his aides turned too. Arthur suddenly loomed up. ‘I think I’ve been thrown out,’ I said. ‘I’ll come with you,’ Arthur said, without hesitation. Being thrown out of the US embassy in Ankara with Arthur Miller … was one of the proudest moments of my life.”
Theresa wasn’t thrown out. She fully endorsed Erdogan. No surprise. But what we need to find when faced with Trump in America and Theresa May over here is the courage to resist and the determined, unremitting, no-concessions clarity of argument of the Miller-Pinter partnership back then. All of us. Because if we can’t, the future doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Do you really want to hurt me …?” – Trump says Yes
According to The Guardian today (see below), he cancelled a rally in face of a student demonstration because of “safety concerns”, although it’s not clear the police were worried enough to cancel and much of what The Guardian calls “mayhem” was caused by Trump’s own supporters using racial abuse against black and Hispanic demonstrators (these Trumpite supporters no doubt saw themselves as the advanced guard, readying themselves to build the wall against Mexico).
The very idea of a Trump rally at the University of Illinois in Chicago was enough in itself, of course, to provoke a demonstration: Trump of all people having a rally in “one of the most diverse [universities] in the country”. There would have been something wrong if the students hadn’t demonstrated. They were right to protest, and they aren’t the problem – Trump is.
For me the quote to note comes from Trump himself at another rally, when protesters were being removed. It sets the tone for a Trump presidency: “Part of the problem”, he said, “and part of the reason it takes so long [to kick protesters out] is nobody wants to hurt each other any more … There used to be consequences. There are none any more.”
So beware: if he gets to be President we’ll all have “safety concerns”.
Bob Mouncer's blog 