The French are reeling from successive terrorist strikes but panicked moves in local print and broadcast media to stop publishing photos — and in some cases even names — of the ISIS-motivated attackers smack of a deliberate campaign to close the nation’s eyes to the reality of deadly jihadism in its midst.
Of course, all civilized human beings are revolted to see smiling selfies, photo IDs, and Islamic State-circulated propaganda videos of the barbaric young men who beheaded an elderly priest saying mass in a Normandy church, or killed 84 in Nice, 130 last November at the Bataclan and on the café terraces of Paris, and 17 from the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket massacres in January 2015.
Yet the publication of such material, rather than constituting “post-humous glorification” is better described as obligatory identification of who France is fighting. The public has a right to know who is trying to wage war on “miscreants” “infidels” and “apostates” in the name of a so-called Islamic caliphate.
The French and the rest of us should therefore name and shame the terrorists and not shy away from outing them as we would any mass murdering criminal. We members of the fourth estate can always do better to honor the victims and condemn their assassins — however it is not the job of journalists and media outlets to self-censor.
Moreover, rendering the killers invisible would be highly unlikely to deter wannabe terrorists because the “heroization” process already takes place via social networks, encrypted messaging apps, and throughout Islamic State’s highly sophisticated and targeted digital communications operations.
There is no wishing away the terror threat by blacking out the names and faces of the killers. The move is akin to rewriting history like Winton Smith working for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984.
In September, the Hollande Government may even make it illegal to identify attackers post-terrorist disaster, as lawmakers line up to scold the media for naming the men threatening the everyday way of French life.
It is all very grand, pompous Gallic statist stuff that is patently ridiculous given the availability of such information across the internet and in the foreign press.
The black out is of a different order but is reminiscent of the great Cologne New Year’s Eve cover-up, when German police, authorities, and press didn’t want to report that girls subject to mass sexual harassment and assault testified their attackers were foreign men speaking Arabic and deliberately targeting the local female “fresh meat.”
France’s current wave of knee-jerk censorship points to an alarming “look the other way” response to the mounting European — and particularly French — threat of ISIS-motivated terror.
Most worryingly, such measures are a diabolical gift not only to Marine Le Pen’s extreme right, baying for vengeance after the series of attacks. They also give succor to her fellow conspiracy theorists, many of them on the Islamo-leftist end of the spectrum, who believe these terrorist attacks are spun by the media and/or invented “Zionist plots.”
The best French experts on radical Islamist terrorism like Wassim Nasr or Jean-Charles Brisard all acknowledge that the hero worship and “starification” of terrorists occurs online in the cyber “jihadisphere” among the ISIS fanboys on Telegram and more recently Facebook Live. These 3G jihadists don’t need the mainstream media to affirm the “Jihadism idol” contest they run on their messaging channels and news agencies.
“The role of journalists is to inform,” says Nasr, author of Etat Islamique, le fait accompli (Islamic State, the fait accompli) and France 24’s regular commentator on terrorism. “It’s not for us to let down our guard and give in to the siren calls of fear. All decisions take in the heat of the moment are bad ones.”
Instead of “not mentioning the war,” the political mainstream must defeat the arguments of the racists and extremists profiting from public outrage. The best way to do that is to be tough, honest, and open about the problem of jihadism in French society.
We need to know who these people are and how they got to the point of mercilessly murdering civilians: that they are the “boys next door” even in quiet Normandy villages, who in the majority of cases are Muslims of North African origin who have become radicalized to the point of carrying out terrorist crimes.
The self-corrective tendency underscores what author Jean Birnbaum says is a “religious silence” around Islamist terrorism.
After the horrors of Nice and Normandy, it is more urgent than ever that genuine defenders of liberalism and open societies in France and across the world stay true to their values.
