The Price of Paris: Oppression and Intolerance in the Free World

The events in Paris this spring were unfortunately all too familiar in the 21st century. I think in some corners it is still perhaps a bit shocking that events like the storming of Charlie Hebdo and the killing of civilians do not actually take place more often than they do.

In my line of work, this is the foundational conundrum of secret success: intelligence communities around the world actually do a stellar job of ferreting out literally hundreds, if not thousands, of ideas, intentions, and full-on strategic plans meant to wreak havoc and create terror on the streets of various cities. Preventing them is their solemn duty. Crowing proudly about them is not. And so we are stuck in a world where any time something like this happens we wring our hands and rend our garments, wondering what our world is coming to and why we cannot protect our people better when in fact we already are protecting them. There is a price free societies pay when it comes to ‘compromised security’ that no authoritarian or theocratic dictatorship usually ever has to worry about.

And that is a crucial issue: the price of freedom. It is uttered so often in the West it has almost become a cliché, which is a shame, for it hides a very important distinction between the societies that honor and adore principles of freedom and more conservative societies that not only don’t trust their own people, their leaders usually don’t trust themselves or their inner circles of power either. In this particular context, the distorted interpretations made by particular radical Islamist groups – to feel emboldened to kill civilians, to take incredible leaps of logic from the Koran to dictate what constitutes ‘proper’ behavior, to feel justified in forcing their beliefs as the only system of right and wrong – these are what so many in the West are having a hard time reconciling. The West has spent over a generation in earnest trying to ameliorate the historical hypocrisy that prevents it from being a truly inclusive society and that makes its cultural mosaic mythology just that: mythology. The events surrounding and leading up to the police protests across many American cities today prove that quite readily. But there is something powerful and affirming and simply HOPEFUL about societies that can actually ‘engage and rage,’ as I like to call it: no one with a thoughtful and erudite mind can ever sincerely call the West a perfectly equal and truly fair society. What it is, however, is a place where people can vehemently and even violently disagree. But that violence never percolates to such a level that the very foundations of society collapse in on themselves because of mutual ignorance, prejudice, hatred, resentment, and cynicism. I do not find Western civilization perfect at all, but the possibility to ‘engage and rage,’ without fear of state collapse, is in fact a uniquely stellar quality that should be modeled within all societies. But, alas, that quality is not found within all societies and a large reason why is too often ignored, leading to a second crucial issue: the insecure and fragile egos of intolerant men with power.

The main problem with societies that have no accountability and no system of redress to rectify injustice is that people (usually men) with power are able to take their own personal weaknesses, rationalized through fabricated and flawed logic, to tyrannize those who do not suffer from the same insecurities. For example, I am a great admirer of the general Islamic principle of physical modesty and not being vulgarly or rudely sexual. It is easily arguable that contemporary Western societies have indeed gone a bit overboard in terms of sexual liberation: this is now a world of instant communication where ‘chats’ turn into ‘selfies’ which turn into ‘nudies’ which turn ultimately into empty and fleeting exchanges of shallow social interaction. It is one thing to be standing on the position of modesty, however, and quite another to terrorize women because you feel you are not able to control your own inappropriate urges and/or are worried about the innate sexual baseness of your own gender. Which, no matter how ardently so-called radical clerics declare it, is exactly how the world should see a command that compels women to shield themselves entirely from the eyes of men ‘in order to save men from themselves.’ This is not a command that preserves modesty, for modesty is most certainly achievable with other forms of reasonable dress. This is also not a command that sanctifies the proper relations between men and women, for proper social etiquette and communication should not have to mean a woman cannot be physically seen in public by a man. No, all of these so-called edicts are really just a command about men, by men, in fear of men, while glorifying the lowest common denominator of male behavior. These particular radical Islamists are, in essence, saying that since they themselves cannot be trusted with their own urges, WOMAN must be compelled to save MAN from itself. In so doing she saves herself from inevitable harassment, intimidation, and rape (because, apparently, the natural carnal instincts of men are to do these vile things, whether their conscious minds or moral hearts agree or not). People may not immediately see the connection between sexist violence and cultural violence, but the motivational roots are one and the same: they both emerge from pathetic intolerance fused through men willing to use violent power to impose their own visions of tyranny, whether that be sexual or social, while desperately trying to not look into their own psyche’s mirror.

This is what is so egregious and, quite frankly, semi-pathological. Society is never advanced when the rules institutionalized for said society pander to not just the lowest common denominator but the basest of human character. Instead of looking to religion to elevate above basic instincts and evil thoughts, radicals like the ones who attacked Charlie Hebdo are fetishizing their own flaws, giving up the battle for personal evolution and redemption as it were, and demanding instead that society simply learn to be subjugated by oppression willingly. And women, more often than not, bear the brunt of that burden. Citizens of Western society should not wring their hands trying to ‘understand the other,’ as so many try to do in the aftermath of such horrific crimes like Paris. Instead it might be better to remind all that in a world of freedom and liberty everyone is indeed entitled to hold their own opinions but no one is entitled to force those opinions onto others. Especially when those opinions are not just against freedom and common sense but are in fact hindering the proper social and sexual evolution of men in general. If what you believe is heinously violating and uncivilized, based upon personal fears and insecurities, then masking those weaknesses under the false guise of flawed logic, corrupt power, and mutated faith does not make the beliefs ‘legitimate.’ It makes you a social-sexual despot. Free societies do not benefit themselves by tolerating despotism of any kind. Free societies must not be so enamored with their own principles that they empower the very people who wish to bring an end to that freedom. In the end it should not just be engage and rage, but also endure and evolve.

Dr. Matthew Crosston
Dr. Matthew Crosston
Dr. Matthew Crosston is Executive Vice Chairman of ModernDiplomacy.eu and chief analytical strategist of I3, a strategic intelligence consulting company. All inquiries regarding speaking engagements and consulting needs can be referred to his website: https://profmatthewcrosston.academia.edu/