What Is The World Coming To?

So there’s nothing sacred left in the world?
“Quatorze Juillet” [14^th July] used to be a date that served as an unquestioned, very eloquent, symbol of the struggle for freedom across the entire world.

It was evocative.
The day of “The Storming of the Bastille”.
The day in July 1789, when prisoners, arbitrarily incarcerated by the French aristocracy in the foul dungeons of a prison called the “Bastille”, were set free by ordinary folk drawn from the Parisian populace.

The day that marked the high point of the “French Revolution”.

Louis The Sixteenth was the French King deposed by this Revolution, and although the Revolution was eventually robbed of its lofty objectives, the day has, ever since, been used to threaten absolutist rule, wherever it has existed.

Whenever power is concentrated in the hands of one man and his sycophantic coterie, “The Storming of the Bastille” is used to illustrate the fact that no matter how docile a populace might appear to be to those who oppress it, there comes a time when the yoke of oppression is torn asunder and the people, by their own hands, liberate themselves.

Liberté. (Freedom) Fraternité(Brotherhood) and Egalité(Equality) formed the battle-cry of the people, as they ransacked the domiciles of the opulent French aristocracy and carried off their occupants to the guillotine, where they were summarily beheaded.

The events of 14 July 1789 were so bloody and terrifying that the Day has been transmuted into a metaphor that warns dictators that the use of popular power is irresistible as well as inevitable, against corruption and authoritarian rule and that unless they democratised their regimes, they too would fall in the manner in which the French King and his courtiers came to grief.

So, one would have thought that “revolutionaries” of whatever hue and colour would find something to inspire them in the inspiring events of 14 July 1789. But apparently that’s not the case. For on 14 July 2016, as many as 84 people were mown down in Nice, France, as they watched fireworks and other events to celebrate the French National Day.

It is, of course, too early to ascertain the motives of the lorry driver who carried out the atrocity in Nice. But even anarchists admire something in the historic principles and objectives of the French Revolution, and it is difficult to fathom why anyone who wants to change the current political situation in France – or even merely to protest against it – would choose this famous day that is sacred to many, to carry out an atrocity.

The way and manner of the atrocity itself was gruesome beyond comprehension. The terror began a little after 20:30 GMT on Thursday, 14 July 2016, shortly after thousands of people had watched a firework display on the seafront in Nice. There had been a mood of celebration and the crowd had enjoyed an Air Force display during the evening.

The BBC reported that “As families strolled along the city’s renowned Promenade des Anglais, a large white lorry careered at full speed towards them. The vehicle mounted the kerb then went back on the road, zigzagging for up to 2km (1.25 miles), as the driver intentionally drove into the crowd. Police finally managed to bring the lorry to a halt near the luxury Palais de la Mediterranée Hotel.” By that time, scores of people lay dead or had been seriously injured.

Some reports said the driver of the lorry opened fire on people in the crowd. Police fired back and the driver was eventually shot dead. He was later identified locally as a 31-year-old man of Franco-Tunisian origin, by the name Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel. He was said to have hired the lorry two days earlier, from a rental in Saint-Laurent-du-Var, a town to the west of Nice.

The French News Agency, AFP, spoke to several neighbours of the driver. They described him as “solitary and quiet, who always took his bike up to his apartment.” One neighbour said he did not seem to be a religious person and often wore shorts. A family in the four-story building said he never returned their greetings.

French president François Hollande arrived in Nice on Friday 15 July 2016, where he held a meeting with security officials. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, and interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve were also at the meeting.

The Nice attacks were condemned by religious and political leaders across the Muslim and Arab world. Egypt's Grand Mufti lambasted “saboteurs who follow Satan (who will) be damned in this life & in the hereafter.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by the popular Saudi cleric, Sheikh Salman al-Auda, who said the killer would be cursed by “God, his angels and all human beings.”

Tunisia said that the attacker, who police said held joint French-Tunisian citizenship, had committed an act of “extreme cowardice”. A statement in Tunis said Tunisia expressed solidarity with France against the “scourge of terrorism”.

As expected, the leader of the racist “Front National” Marine le Pen, used the attack to score political points against the French government's response to terrorism. She told Le Figaro: “Considering the new nature of terrorism, which is now a terrorism of opportunity, that's to say without hierarchical structure, the urgency is to attack the ideology on which this terrorism is based.

“And in this space, nothing has been done, absolutely nothing – no reintroduction of double punishment, nor depriving people of nationality, nor the closure of Salafist mosques … nor the banning of certain organisations. In truth, we are not at war. For the moment, we are in a war of words.”

Increasingly, the repressive measures advocated by the Front National and similar organisations spread across Europe will become impossible to ignore, as the European populace rails against senseless murders like the one in Nice, or the one in a Paris nightclub that preceded it. Yet, the more repressive European countries become, the more such attacks will escalate.

Truly, the world of 2016 cannot bear analysis.
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By CAMERON DUODU
www.cameronduodu.com