Notes on Freedom

There is a single response to the Paris attacks which alone is positive and worthy of defence: the affirmation of the value of the free life.

The day after the attacks, people instinctively started to gather in Paris and in towns and cities across France. When asked why, they said ‘to do something, to be with other people’ but most of all, ‘to show them that we’re not afraid’. These demonstrations formed in spite of the prohibition on demonstrations: police asked people to disperse but many refused to go. In Toulouse, thousands of people gathered in the main square in open violation of this order.

People responded to the attack on a city crowd by forming as a city crowd. They responded to the terrorists’ attack on the ‘abominations and perversions’ of modern life, on music, drinking and football, by affirming and seeking out these pursuits.

These ordinary aspects of the free modern life took on a kind of glow and heroism. Parisians posted pictures of themselves drinking outside in cafes and bars under the hashtag ‘JeSuisEnTerrasse’. They sought out the bars of attacked areas as a matter of principle, ignoring the government’s request to only go out ‘if absolutely necessary’. People posted their memories of the Bataclan (MonPlusBeauSouvenirDuBataclan), affirming the glory of music and lights and crowds, while a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist did a series celebrating the Paris of ‘music! kisses! life! champagne and joy!.

Before the England-France football match, the French manager said that after the attacks it might seem that football is an inconsequential thing, unimportant, but that actually it has become vital. The Radio France commentator said that football is the pursuit of a passion, the development of a skill, and the public enjoyment of this: ‘We will continue to go out – to live – to play football’.

This assertion of the value of these things in defiance of the terrorists was also a rediscovering of their value, in a culture that is so often cynical about ‘freedom, modernity, etcetera’. Forms of free culture and association are so often seen as shallow, consumerist, anti-social, polluting: every well-formed political ideology of our age appears to be set against those people drinking in bars or dancing to music. The extreme attacks of the terrorists, their absolute distain, develops out of a thread of culture within the West itself.

The public response shows that the elements of a free life have a universal value which people are willing to fight for. They will go out to bars, concerts and football matches, even if this means to put themselves at risk. They state the value of these things and defend them. Charlie Hebdo will continue to critique and satirise, mocking Islamic extremists (‘fuck them, we have champagne’) along with everyone else, though they are under daily threat.

Most incredibly, such affirmation was found even among some of those directly affected by the attacks, as with the Radio France journalist whose wife was killed in the Bataclan. He wrote a much-shared Facebook post addressed to the terrorists: ‘You would like me to be scared, for me to look at my fellow citizens with a suspicious eye, for me to sacrifice my liberty for my security. Perdu’, he wrote, saying of his 17-month old son ‘all his life this little boy will – in affront to you – be happy and free’. He told Radio France that his wife had had ‘enormous eyes’ and their son was born ‘with both eyes wide open’: the value was in pursuing ‘the difficult path of reflection, of reason’, of living with one’s eyes open, choosing and thinking for oneself.

There is a scene in The Narrow Road to the Deep North where an Australian camp prisoner faces up to ‘the grim strength, the righteous obedience to codes of honour that showed no doubt’ of the camp guard, and ‘could find in himself no equivalent life force that might challenge it’.

People are finding an equivalent life force in free life. However, this public response was notably different in tenor to that of the French government. The French state – as well as being preoccupied with those highly necessary tasks of investigating the attacks, pursuing fugitives, arresting suspects – has also struck another line: the assertion of executive power almost as a point of principle. The immediate response to events was a series of restrictions, which included not only bans on demonstrations, orders to not go out, but also declaring a state of emergency which gives prefects (local representatives of the executive) powers to declare curfews and to ban any event. All school trips have been cancelled as an order of the ministry of education.

At a local level, mayors and prefectures have been imposing restrictions upon daily life. At my son’s school in South-West France there is now a large orange sign on the door, announcing that parents are no longer allowed to enter the school and children must be deposited at the external door. Many of these assertions of executive authority appear pointless, a gesture: a terrorist could push his way past the middle-aged classroom assistant, or indeed merely attack the class of 3-year olds lined up by the external door because their parents have not been allowed to take them to their classroom. In practice, the restrictions imposed ‘against the terrorists’ are being imposed against people trying to gather in the streets or parents trying to enter a school. They are blocking everyday associations and free ways of relating to one another.

Therefore, after Paris we should be for freedom and for the free life – staked against the terrorists, the anti-modern cynics, and pointless assertions of executive power.