We live
in a world of without ideals. The world gets viewed through a prism without -isms.
As the French go for a wee stroll through the Place de la Republique, Francois
Hollande hopes the locals don't use it as an opportune moment to clobber him
over the head with a rolled up copy of Charlie Hebdo for being
the most disappointing leader of any republic since Richard Cromwell.
'Tumbledown Dick' (a useful moniker for the current Monsieur President), is a
symbol, to my limited understanding, of the failure of republicanism in
England. This despite the best efforts of the beneficiaries of the aforementioned
failure, the House of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, to aid the cause.
Later on,
during a march to reaffirm French national unity and reiterate traditional
French values of liberté, egalité, fraternité, the politicians of Europe will
be at the forefront of that march: Hollande, Merkel and himself from Castlebar.
What each has in common is that none of these figures actually stands for
anything. They are symbols of the dull muddling through, that takes precedence
over inspired thinking. In such a world, language changes and adapts to suit
the needs of the people using it. The media, being platforms of communication
using language, provide the discourse and mediation. What is unsettling has
been the supplanting of ‘terrorism’ over the last years with the abridged word
'terror'. Bush 2 (not a fan of sequels at the best of times, but this was a
doozy) embarked on a 'War on Terror' following the 9-11 attacks. This week
again the Paris attacks, replete with hashtags and anodyne debate, was branded
the Paris Terror Attacks, the BBC leading the charge to change the meaning of
words and concepts through subtle change.
So what?
Close enough? Not at all. Terror is an emotion, a feeling; a sensation when in
a place of danger, in peril, like when you are about to be cornered at a party
by someone whose entire conversation will consist of what point on the public
sector pay scale they're on and your wing-person has mysteriously vanished to
find drink. Or hide in the loo.
Terrorism, however, is
part method, part ideology. Was Bush engaging Navy Seals to clear the Bogeyman
from under his bed or seek out the perpetrators of an unprecedented attack on
the US by zealots who used terrorism
as a means of furthering their warped viewpoint? Or both? Similarly, the real terror of
an attack on the freedom of speech, which the attacks of Paris come to
symbolise, is the fuzzing at the edges of language and the truth it tells. To
allow inexactitude renders free speech useless. When an –ism here or there is
abandoned for base feelings; unformed emotions that are to be mediated and
groomed, and to be done in the fuzziest and scariest of ways through official
discourse.
Whatever
about the merits of satire, a concept we in Ireland sporadically toy with
before deliberately confusing it with silly voices, it has at its core the bravery
to say exactly what you mean in all its savagery. The writers and cartoonists
of Charlie Hebdo, like Jonathan Swift, like TW3, like the late lamented Scrap,
and Martyn Turner all have in common the ability to use language exactly.
This is the
bravery to say what you mean using language in its exactitude. In a world where
unequivocal ideology has attacked our vague little world, it should be met with
the power of clarity.
