Trump, Marine Le Pen and the Middle East: Lebanon against walls and divisions
The beginning of the Trump presidency has been characterised by the "babelisation" of American society. Each country pours out his hatred against an external enemy. The current global crisis has religious roots. At the heart of the chaos there is the Jihadi threat. The third world war cannot be won with drones, but with moderation and promoting rapprochement and discussions.
Beirut (AsiaNews) – With Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, we saw an episode in the babelisation of American society. With the development of the means of social communication, this will happen soon in all societies. Everyone speaks at the same time and no one understands others.
In signing its executive orders, President Trump could have consoled at least in words those wronged and demoralised by measures that left us dismayed. It is a question, as it were, of courtesy, civility, and knowing how to live.
He could have said that “it was a temporary measure. We are looking at new ways to vet immigrants - and we are a people of immigrants. Do not come to terrorise us. Instead, of this gentle approach, he delivered a blow.
The others, those offended by the order, could have tried to understand instead of complaining in the media, pouring a torrent of profanities and insults on the new president that marks the absolute hegemony of the media on opinions. This means trying to understand and correct if need be - as the justice system did - rather than giving free rein to a revolting animosity that first hurts Americans. “United we stand, divided we fall.”
A mechanism is broken. This is obvious. This torrent of hatred brings to mind Bob Dylan's song "A hard rain's a gonna fall", which Patti Smith sang in Oslo to console the royal court of Sweden in the singer's absence. Some see the expected rain in the Sixties song as a nuclear holocaust. It can also be that of disorder, chaos and violence.
Indeed, in the second half of the 20th century, we came close to nuclear war during the missile crisis between the United States and the USSR (1962). By a miracle, war was avoided. But world disorder, a social holocaust, has not. It makes the news bulletin every day.
Understanding the other means organising society in such a way that the other always has an opportunity to explain why his or her opinion differs from ours. Instead, we are submerged every day by a torrent of hatred, contempt, ignominy, demonisation of others. Every country has its share of hate speech. In Lebanon, it is Hassan Nasrallah who dishes out the most virulent version, targeting Israel and Saudi Arabia.
In fact, on a global level, we are witnessing a true apocalypse, that is to say a "revelation" with respect to what Nikolai Berdyaev – I apologize for quoting this philosopher whenever I open my mouth –, called 'the sanction of history on history', the collapse of a system. In the United States as in Lebanon, in France and elsewhere, something is no longer working. The locomotive has gone off the rails and is no longer working, and no one knows which button to restart the engine.
At the heart of the current chaos is the Jihadi threat to the world. The whole planet is plunged into a "third world war" that does not dare say its name, and whose incidents are fragmentary. Pope Francis thought and talked about it several times. Donald Trump in the United States and President Michel Aoun in Lebanon have said as much. Lebanon and the United States, France and Germany, and many other countries are involved on different fronts in the same “asymmetric war” whose battlegrounds are "states of violence" rather than well-defined territories, like classic frontlines in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Mali and elsewhere.
If economic reasons justify the construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, there is no doubt that this "asymmetric war" is the same that led Donald Trump to impose his recent discriminatory measures against migrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
President Trump as well as President Aoun and all the leaders of the world must be reminded that the response to the great Jihadi threat that precipitated the current crisis is not limited to police roadblocks, visa suspension, wall construction, to a relentless shadow war against the sleeper cells of terrorism. It must also take on a dimension that is both human and spiritual. To get the situation under control, we must understand what drives Jihadis to turn themselves into human bombs. Against their spiritual aberration, there must be a spiritual response, a reference to a spiritual reality.
For many contemporary thinkers, the current global crisis has religious roots. It goes back to the "death of God" announced by Nietzsche in the 19th century, that is, to the disappearance of the relevance of religious faith as a mode of understanding that structures reality and minds, to the irreversible divorce between faith and reason, to the break in the foundational links between two spheres that must remain autonomous, but not independent.
Yet, ever since Dostoevsky and even before, since Kierkegaard, a West capable of reflecting should have seen the signals of this apocalypse. The Russian novelist summed it up in this shocking phrase: "If God is dead, everything is permissible." But it is especially in the 20th century that this apocalypse has taken its full scope.
The desire for independence of reason with respect to faith has hammered the final nail in any moral scale other than utilitarianism, and delivered human beings to the whim of the market, to the exclusive and unique rule of profit and convenience. Prices drop? Let's destroy the crops. Too many human beings on the planet? Let us destroy foetuses. Too many constraints in religion? Let us enjoy without hindrance. Any anthropological science, without which we could no longer understand who we are, cannot grasp the ongoing spiritual struggle nor what is at stake: fragmentation, demythification, obscurantism.
In Lebanon, after Emmanuel Macron comes Marine Le Pen. The leader of the National Front came from one area of "asymmetrical war" to another. In France, the war has caused deaths in Nice, Reims, Lyons, and Paris. Over here, the latest victims fell in the New Year’s Eve attack against a nightclub in Istanbul (Turkey). Let us hope that the candidate in the French presidential election will not make the usual mistake of identity politics and address the "Christians of the East". In this case, we will have to answer her as we did with Trump who wanted to give them priority in terms of immigration: "No thanks! God forbid!"
We say no because it would be joining "dar el harb", the house of war. It would mean fuelling discrimination and extremism. Lebanon’s real strength, which we paid dearly to have, is not extremism, but moderation, openness to others, dialogue. It is with moderation, not drones, that the third world war will be won.
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