Manifesting in the Wake of Charlie Hebdo

02-16-2015

By Etienne Tassin

“To substitute violence for power can bring victory, but the price is very high; for it is not only paid by the vanquished, it is also paid by the victor in terms of his own power.”

-- Hannah Arendt, “On Violence,” in Crises of the Republic

Hannah Arendt warns us against two confusions that have the potential to ruin our understanding of politics: the confusion of power and violence, and the confusion of (political) success and (military / armed) victory.

During the weekend of January 10-11, 2015, millions of people gathered in France and across the entire world to demonstrate their rejection of terrorist violence. In their rallies, they were responding to the assassination of cartoonists and journalists of a French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, an iconoclastic weekly that had published caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. These demonstrators were also responding to the assassination of the hostages taken in a kosher grocery store by another terrorist claiming his affiliation with militant Islamic jihad. Firmly opposed to the use of armed violence by terrorists, the people of the world united together in silent and nonviolent reflection. On one side, Kalashnikovs; on the other, pencils, paper, and the supportive responses of cartoonists from around the world. On one side, corpses; on the other, a swirling mass united by their rejection of violence.

[caption id="attachment_15396" align="aligncenter" width="526"] "Liberte! Charlie!": Unity March Draws 1.3 Million in Paris (Source: Gawker.com)[/caption]

In demonstrating, in manifesting, making themselves and their beliefs manifest, those who sympathized with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks helped reveal a power that is infinitely superior to that of weapons. A power beyond all violence, that is, the secret of politics. It is the heart and the meaning of politics, whereas violence is, by definition, anti-political and destructive of political power. “Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.”

What creates the power of the people is not so much the gathering or the numbers (the quantity of gathered persons) but rather their acting together (the quality of those actors). It is not the force people can exert against another force but how they exercise and, in the process, what they reveal of their freedom, of their desire for freedom. It is not their capacity to command or to be obeyed (to act upon) but their capacity to give birth to themselves, to renew themselves as a people through their power to act with. The only appropriate response to the armed violence of the few is the manifestation of the people by themselves, their own demonstration.

Therein resides their political success—not a victory acquired by weapons at the end of a contest of strength, but success obtained by the tangible proof that the people continue to survive those attempts that seek to negate their freedom. The manifestation of the people is the demonstration of freedom insofar as a plurality of people acting together creates political power.

[caption id="attachment_15397" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Charlie Hebdo victims paid tribute to in special issue of Spirou magazine (Source: The Independent)[/caption]

Following Arendt, we must therefore distinguish between three types of power: “people power,” whose strength resides in the capacity to act in concert without violence and that is qualitative in nature; “state power,” which rests upon opinion and is quantitative inasmuch as it requires the approval of the majority; and finally, the “potential power” of a minority resorting to violent means. In this instance, fear is the instrument that attempts to create the necessary silent complicity of the people.

For all three types of power, the attitude of the people decides which one will prevail. The people may act in concert and demonstrate their power by themselves, or they may not act and instead acquiesce, thereby consenting to the power of the State. As a third option, the people may be scared and silenced, in which case they may confer to violence a power that it does not have on its own but that it acquires through the silence of a stupefied people. This is why Arendt claims that only the people’s support lends power to the institutions of a country, or, in other words, that there is a fundamental ascendency of power over violence.

The minority who use terrorist violence therefore need to manufacture the type of people required to establish their power. They can do so through terror by producing a servile and silent people, in which case their support will be weak. But they can also use indoctrination and ideology to produce a fanatic and verbose people whose support will be loud and clear. Generally speaking, terrorist groups use both methods: terror reduces to silence, and the silence of a people who cannot speak to one another or act together opens the door to a desire for servitude that is, in turn, justified and reinforced by indoctrination. A people who cannot speak or act freely is not a people in the sense that Arendt speaks of. It is a mass, the breading-ground of fanatic terrorism. It is upon this type of destruction of the people that totalitarian systems draw their strength, and it is this same type of destruction of the people that is sought by terrorists today.

[caption id="attachment_15398" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Demonstrators rally together in Paris following the Charlie Hebdo attacks. (Source: Open Society Foundations)[/caption]

In this sense, we understand the political weakness of armed groupuscules: they have no peoples behind them, no peoples with them, and not even peoples yet to come ahead of them. They have already lost their war, should it even lead to thousands of victims, because their murders will never give birth to a free people. At best they can crystallize fanaticized crowds that have nothing to do with a political people.

Never will a power be born from their crimes since their crimes terrify, reduce to silence, and pave the way for the desired servitude. The contrast with a people struggling against oppression is absolute. In this case, violence may be inevitable but is abandoned as soon as freedom is established. The contrast is also absolute with the manifestation of a people who, although wounded by terrorist crimes, gathers together to act in concert. This people has already won by proving, through nonviolent action, that they exist, which is to say that they are free and powerful.

On a cold weekend in January, the peoples of Europe gave this proof.

(Featured Image: Thousands gather in Paris for a solidarity march following the Charlie Hebdo attack. Photo: Getty Images)