Forbidden word of the day: “allochthone”

Our favorite radio essayist, M. Fouad Laroui, reports a strange story of linguistic politicization:  the banning, by Holland and Belgium, of the rather scholarly-looking and politically quite innocent word allochthone:

Un mot interdit

Now, allochthone is the antonym of autochthone, as you can tell by the prefixes, borrowed from Greek: allo- ‘other’, auto- ‘self, same’.  The root chthon- means ‘earth’ and appears in the learnèd English word chthonic.    Neither word is common in English, but autochthone is quite common in French.  Harrap’s defines it as ‘native’, and allochthone as ‘immigrant’.

Given its forbiddingly philological-Hellenistic hue, the word allochthone would seem as unlikely a target for political hysteria as, say, shibboleth or postlapsarian.   Yet such is the case today:  the word is legally banned;  anyone who uses it may be subject to punishment.

How did this come about?   As Laroui explains it,  the word itself is innocent enough but came to be soiled by the mouths that uttered it.   Just as, in America, the wingnuts came to use the term “liberal” (whose core meaning is something like ‘generous’) as a sneer-word, a hate-filled epithet, so the likes of Geert Wilders (of “scum villages” ill-fame) has used the Dutch version of allochthone invidiously, in his diatribes against immigrants.   And now -- just as they did in the “scum villages” affair -- the palladins of political correctitude have over-reacted and over-reached, with a tyranny that comes naturally to the self-righteous.

That the word is, von Hause aus, entirely blameless, can be seen in such passages as the following, picked almost at random:

Das Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau (SCP), eines der wichtigsten Beratungsorgane der niederländischen Regierung, hat am heutigen Tage eine Studie veröffentlicht, aus welcher hervorgeht, dass autochthone Niederländer von Zeitarbeitsfirmen bevorzugt werden. Während 28% der nicht-westlichen Allochthonen, die sich bei einer Zeitarbeitsfirma persönlich vorstellen, einen Job angeboten bekommen, liegt die Quote bei autochthonen Niederländern …

http://nlpolitik.wordpress.com/tag/allochthone/

Hmm… As an experiment, let us take a somewhat scholarly word, and see if we can similarly besmirch it:

“Donald Trump is nothing but a sniveling, low-down mercantilist !!!”

~

[Update 8 March 2015]  Fouad Laroui reports another editorialist’s call to suppress the use of a word:  in this case, islamophobie.   Docking a word, says Laroui, you cripple thought itself, “ce qui est propre de l’homme:   L’homme  nomme.”

Late Arrivals

In an earlier post, addressing quite a different problematics, we mentioned an anecdote from Die Traumdeutung (1900), in which Freud “offers  a curious general psychosociological observation, of the sort that is rare in his writings”.  The formulation may seem paradoxical, but indeed his strong-suit is depth, not breadth;  in the judgment of his own admirers, he was an acute analyst, but not a Menschenkenner.

The anecdote concerns his entering a railway carriage, and being frostily met  by a couple already “in possession”.   He does not mention anti-Semitism as a possible undercurrent in the incident, though it was in the back of my mind as I read it, owing to another railway-carriage anecdote, in which Freud  recounts finding the compartment stuffy, and opening the window (“Du weißt, daß ich immer nach frischer Luft lechze  und immer bemüht bin, Fenster aufzureißen, besonders im Waggon”), whereupon he was berated by the other passengers, in distinctly judeophobic terms.  (Brautbriefe, 16 Dezember 1883.)

Anyhow, I just now happened upon a passage in an extraordinarily well-written and psychologically insightful book, by another Jew of Mitteleuropa, Arthur Koestler, which suggests that the psychological observation can be made more general yet.  Koestler is remembering his long internment in a French camp during WWII.   The conditions (to the eternal shame of France) were those of utter deprivation, in which the men, simply to fit in the cramped space alloted them, had to sleep  all on their left side, or all on the right, and where sitting around a table was like solving a jigsaw puzzle.  Hardly a milieu in which to put on airs.  And yet -- such are the workings of our subconscious, of which Koestler is a keen observer :

All the time I was in Vernet, new prisoners kept on arriving.  We looked down on them  with the same patrician contempt for the newcomers  as travellers in a railway compartment have  for the people who get in at a stop in the middle of a journey.

-- Arthur Koestler, Scum of the Earth (1941 -- p. 129 of the 1991 reprint)

And indeed, in an entirely an-ethnic, humorous context -- Upon a stranger entering his largely empty railway compartment,

Claude gave him the brief unfriendly glance which the traveling Briton gives to the intruder on his privacy, and then ceased to recognize that he was there.

-- P.G. Wodehouse, The Purloined Paperweight (a.k.a. Company for Henry) (1967)

~

The problem is with us still, and that in acute form, at the level of the metaphorical ‘railway carriage’ of our own national existence:  the homeland.   The crisis is growing sharper;  we have treated it in our essay  “The Rise of la Racaille”.

What will not be obvious to Americans and Europeans today, worried about influxes from the Third World, how tightly the borders can be drawn.   Freud’s friend and biographer recounts how, in 1938, as Jones was aiming for an exfil, Freud and his family seemed “bent on staying in Vienna”, despite the long-gathering and by-now-imminent Nazi danger, since “he pointed out that no country would allow him to enter.  There was certainly force in this argument.”  For:

It is hardly possible nowadays  for people to understand  how ferociously inhospitable  every country was to would-be immigrants, so strong was the feeling about unemployment.  France was the only country that would admit foreigners with any measure of freedom, but on condition that they did not earn a living there;  they were welcome to starve in France if they wished.

-- Ernest Jones, Freud: The Last Phase (1957), p. 220

~ ~ ~

 

Late-Victorian analogue:

 

He had secured the corner seat  next the conductor, where his long legs made it difficult for anyone to get in;  and at all who passed him, he looked resentfully, as if they had no business to be using up his air.

-- John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906)

 

 

The Rise of «la Racaille»

Depopulation had begun in Italy and Greece  in the third century B.C.  … The Roman army was kept to strength  only through the recruitment of barbarians -- a practice that was destined to bring disaster.  The emperors invited immigrants from beyond the frontiers  to colonize Italy,  and even the uninvited joined them.

-- Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1968)

My favorite radio journalist (and this amounts to:  broadcast journalist, since I almost never watch TV) is Fouad Laroui.  Trilingual, tricultural, with a generous sense of humor and a keen eye.   Here is his latest, and well worth a listen:  Des villages pour la racaille.  (Be sure to learn French first, if you have previously neglected that detail.)

*

We suddenly find ourselves living  in unsettled times.

It is difficult to recall a time, since 1848 (when a wave of revolutions swept Europe), when there was upheaval across so broad a swath.  I do not yet say “revolutions”, since it is as yet unclear, whether these will prove to have been more than a popularly instigated palace coup (Mubarak’s gone, long live Sulayman:  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss  [cf. now this -- and now [3 IV 11] this as well], and also [22 IV 11 this) and the prelude to chaos or civil war:

Reform Lawyer Says Tunisia Risks Anarchy

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/africa/22tunisia.html?ref=tunisia

Qaddafi’s Son Warns of Civil War as Libyan Protests Widen:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/world/africa/21libya.html?scp=1&sq=tunisian%20lawyer&st=cse

But meanwhile, largely off-camera so far as the American public is concerned, recent events in the Maghreb -- including simply the breaking of political taboos -- are beginning to jiggle the perilous metastability of Europe.

Here is a mild, not to say mealy-mouthed view (typical of anything with dateline BRUSSELS):

In Unrest, Europeans Focus on Migration

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/europe/22migrants.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

For the full-bore, dead-center, shape-of-things-to-come version --  listen to Laroui.

(Further background to Wilders' proposal here:)
http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2824/Politiek/article/detail/1833354/2011/02/10/Nieuw-is-het-idee-van-Wilders-tuigdorpen-niet.dhtml

Laroui was translating Wilders' Dutch  with the term made infamous by Sarkozy.

*

It is difficult to find first-hand information about the Wilders incident.  We did eventually find this third-hand reference, on a blog:

Enfin, le Monde jette un regard sur les Pays-Bas, mais cette fois il s'agit d'une nouvelle rodomontade du populiste Geert Wilders, qui préconise l'installation, en bordure des grandes villes, de "tuigdorpen", littéralement des villages à racaille, où s'entasseraient tous les indésirables: récidivistes, personnes en attente de procès, ou en période de probation. Un système déjà appliqué dans quelques villes danoises.

Assuming that by “le Monde” he meant the well-known sheet  which enjoys a (partly undeserved) reputation as the French newspaper of record, I searched their site.  But met only stonewalling:

Aucun élément publié "depuis un mois" avec le(s) mot(s) ou expression(s) "geert et wilders" dans "tout l'élément" et classé par "pertinence".

There are genuine issues here which the European establishment -- both politicians and press -- are too squeamish to confront.  Which is why the public discourse winds up dominated by wackos like Geert Wilders.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[update 12 IV 11]
Re the renationalization of European countries
("Renationalization":  another term for le grand remplacement.)

[update 18 IV 11]
"The dignity train" 

France blocks Italian train carrying Tunisian migrants

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-tunisia-refugees-20110419,0,4474996.story

"Mais le convoi, baptisé «train de la dignité», n'a jamais quitté la gare..."
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2011/04/18/01003-20110418ARTFIG00444-train-bloque-a-vintimille-l-ue-conforte-la-decision-de-paris.php

[Update 25 VI 11]
Denmark (in an article that actually mentions the working class)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/world/europe/25denmark.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

[Update 30 VII 11]
A good-humored  cinematic treatment.
(Note the similarity to the Pied Piper of Hamelin motif.)

[update 200 BC]
"The Roman army was kept to strength  only through the recruitment of barbarians -- a practice that was destined to bring disaster.  The emperors invited immigrants from beyond the frontiers  to colonize Italy, and even the uninvited joined them."
-- Morris Bishop, The Middle Ages (1968)

[Update 3 Aug 2011]
Too tired to fight, they pass the torch.
(" Las des intimidations, Vinci a abandonné la gestion d'un parking dans un quartier sensible de la cité phocéenne à un groupe d'individus qui facture cinq euros le stationnement.") Selected readers' comments (chosen as much for linguistic interest  as anything else):

-----

Bientôt, les commerçants de Marseille payeront le pizzo, comme à Palerme .

--

Faut-il que les citoyens s'organisent en milices pour faire respecter un ordre dont l'État, que ce soit de droite ou de gauche, se fiche éperdument ?

--

Les voitures seront sans doute mieux protégés par cette "bande" que par les vigiles de Vinci ou que de la Police Municipale. Alors 5 euro pour un stationnement sans limitation de temps etezteeet avec c'est une aubaine

--

L'indulgence coupable prônée par certaines organisations angéliques est aussi en partie responsable de la faiblesse des forces de l'ordre. Et dire que le fond n'a pas encore été touché...

--

La France devient par endroits un far-west, un univers type mad max

--

Et pourtant des spécialistes hautement informés viennent encore clamer que l'immigration débridée rapporte plus à la France qu'elle ne lui coute.

--

Ce genre de faits divers, qui deviennent monnaie courante en France, sont un symbole de l'échec de la politique LAXISTE de Sarkozy, qui n'a été que la continuation de la politique laxiste du PS. Le plus rageant c'est qu'il a construit sa victoire en 2007 en promettant qu'il mettrait fin au laxisme chiraco-socialiste!!!!!

--

Marseille, c'est Sarajevo dans 20 ans, avec une force d'interposition chinoise, indienne, japonnaise, bresilienne et russe

--

quelle honte pour la France victime de toute cette bande de politicards intellos verreux

--

Faisons de Marseille une ville de garnison . Je conseille la légion . Ca se calmera rapidement .

--

On peut dire, sans crainte de se tromper, qu'un tel événement sonne le glas de l'ordre républicain, de l'autorité de l'Etat, de la souveraineté nationale, et de l'intégrité territoriale. --- [Update 9 Aug 2011] For a picture of press coverage of recent events in London, click here.

*

Pour d’autres friandises

de la confiserie 

du docteur Justice,

consultez:

http://www.linguasacrapublishing.com/justice.html

[Update 4 Oct 2011]

And now this, re Bulgaria and the gens de voyage.  (En bref, on veut qu’ils voyagent ailleurs.)

http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2011/10/03/01003-20111003ARTFIG00730-poussee-de-fievre-antirom-en-bulgarie.php

Check out the reader commentaries.  One reader summarizes them thus:

J'hallucine vraiment lorsque je lis les commentaires.

Demain si tout cela continue, nous allons avoir une guerre civile en France.

A lire vos messages on se croierait sous l'occupation et entendre le discours du régime de Vichy.

-- [Update 13 Dec 2011]  

France experiments with political correctness  à l’américaine:

Sciences Po(pulaires)

First paragraph, describing the dropping of a key entrance exam, in favor of what America has the sobriety to call “”life experience””,  but which the grand école, figleafless, calls simply “personality”:

Sciences Po Paris continue à réformer ses examens d'entrée dans le sens d'une «discrimination positive» assumée par son très politique directeur, Richard Descoings. Dès 2013,son examen d'entrée en première année comportera

 une sélection sur dossier, davantage d'oraux et la suppression de l'épreuve de culture générale, afin de «diversifier son recrutement». Il s'agit désormais de miser sur la «personnalité» des étudiants.

Readers’ comments (again, chosen as much for linguistic elegance  as for political content):

Avant à Sciences-Po, on brassait du vent avec un certain enrobage de culture qui pouvait faire illusion, maintenant j'ai bien peur que l'enrobage tombe et que l'on brasse du vent avec le vocabulaire des cités.

---

Supprimer la culture générale pour diversifier le recrutement, pour favoriser les familles pauvres et une ineptie.

Quoi de plus accessible que la culture dans ce pays ? Avec la profusion de médiathèques,de musées et de théâtres abordables dans toutes les villes de France, la culture générale est le véritable témoin de la curiosité sur le monde, quel que soit son milieu d'origine.

Bien entendu, elle est une ouverture vers l'élitisme, ce qui est loin d'être un mal. La France se nivelle de plus en plus par le bas, le pouvoir est au mains des marchands de tapis.Bientôt tout le monde ne parlera plus que de football et de soldes. Quelle désolation

 --

[Update 2 III 12]

Les gens du voyage  expelled from a squat near Versailles:

http://plus.lefigaro.fr/article/versailles-roms-expulses-dune-caserne-20120301-787545/commentaires?page=1

Observe the tone of the readers’ comments.  This, from a nation that used to take pleasure in lecturing America about race relations.  ----

[Update 11 III 12]

The Presidential campaign looming, Sarkozy suddenly has second thoughts about Schengen:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2012/03/11/97001-20120311FILWWW00107-sarkozy-veut-changer-schengen.php#xtor=EPR-31-[flux-migratoires-nicolas-sarkozy-veut-reviser-les-accords-de-schengen]-20120311-[titre]

Again, the readers’ comments are barbed (I quote only from among the more literate):

Plus que Schengen, c'est le regroupement familial et les accords avec l'Algérie qu'il faut annuler !!!

--

Pourquoi renégocier Schengen ? La solution la voici, la voilà :

Prix du Barbelé militaire, la bobine de 60 m Ø 2,7 mm : 16.00 EUR HT (sans crampillions, ces petits clous qui piquent quand on s'y pique). Calculons, pour arrêter l'immigration : 16,00 euros les 60 mètres ; Frontières maritimes et terrestres de la France : environ 5 600 km, soit 5 600 000 mètres. Coût en barbelés : 93 333 rouleaux de 60 mètres, soit 93 333 X 16 euros = 1,49 millions d'Euros. Sachant que l'immigré est capable de cisailler le barbelé, il faut 1 (un) gendarme tous les trente mètres, soit 189 666 gendarmes. Salaire moyen d'un gendarme au mois : 2 000 euros Coût d'un gendarme à l'année : 24 000 euros (hors cotisations sociales et primes) Comme il faut trois gendarmes par jour (il font les 3x8), coût total des gendarmes pour empêcher les immigrés de cisailler les barbelés : 13 655 952 000. Coût total pour arrêter l'immigration : 13 655 952 000 + 1 490 000 = 13 657 442 000. Un peu plus de 13,6 milliards d'euros. C'est pas cher et ça vaut le coup et même le coût.

--

Pas possible de réviser le dernier traité Merkozy mais par contre pour Schengen pas de problème !!! Comme quoi la mauvaise foi...

--

Décidément N Sarkozy n'en fini pas de copier le programme du Front national... Ceci dit, si je fais confiance à Marine Le Pen pour mettre en pratique ses propositions, ce n'est pas du tout le cas pour N Sarkozy. Comme disait ma grand-mère, chat échaudé craint l'eau froide

------------------------------------------- 

 [Update 8 April 2012]

Dati fustige le "mépris" de Hollande

[Update 28 IV 2012]

http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/2012/04/27/01016-20120427ARTFIG00636-deux-agents-de-police-blesses-a-istres.php

Attirées dans un get-apens, les forces de l'ordre ont été prises à partie. Sept personnes ont été interpellées.

Deux policiers ont été blessés et sept personnes ont été interpellées dans la soirée de mercredi lors d'une violente altercation dans le quartier des Échoppes, à Istres (Bouches-du-Rhône).

Vers 21 h 30, les policiers d'Istres ont d'abord été alertés pour une fuite de gaz dans ce quartier proche du centre-ville. L'incident s'avère factice, mais, peu de temps après, les forces de l'ordre sont rappelées pour un prétendu différend entre riverains. Les agents constatent que cette alerte est également sans fondement. Lors de cette seconde intervention, plusieurs individus commencent toutefois à s'en prendre aux policiers. Tristement courant dans certains quartiers sensibles, le guet-apens ne fait plus de doute.

========== 

[Update 27 May 2012] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-africa-refugees-20120527,0,4865471.story  

 === [Update 4 June 2012] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/firebomb-african-refugees-jerusalem.html === [Update 9 Aug 2012] Expulsion des Roms: --> «c'est cette colonne de fumée noire toxique qui s'élève du camp » quand des câbles sont brûlés pour récupérer le cuivre  ...

==
[Update 28 IX 12]
 

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2012/09/28/97001-20120928FILWWW00310-des-marseillais-brulent-un-camp-de-roms.php?m_i=IlHIhba_9BkOUzv6LTNqJf30IFiCwGaHxykTzT4Ma53tqfkIM

Des Marseillais brûlent un camp de Roms

==
[Update 20 X 12]
A favorite party slogan: “Get the Stench out of Greece.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/anti-immigrant-golden-dawn-rises-in-greece/2012/10/20/e7128296-17a6-11e2-a346-f24efc680b8d_print.html

[Update 3 XI 2012]

Afflux massif de Roms de Serbie et de Macédoine

http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5317350

[Update 22 XI 2012]
Laroui himself calls for tougher measures against illegal aliens:
http://www.medi1.com/player/player.php?i=5335949
even though "beaucoup de belles dames vont jeter de hauts cris".

 [Update 23 XI 2012]  

Des immigrés très courtisés par les indépendantistes

Ayant étudié le précédent québécois, les indépendantistes catalans  ne veulent rien laisser au hasard, et font campagne  jusque dans les mosquées.

http://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2012/11/23/des-immigres-tres-courtises-par-les-independantistes_1795168_3210.html

[Update 31 I 13]

Roms : le retour des bidonvilles de la honte

Au sud de Paris, dans le camp de Vigneux, 800 Roumains s'entassent dans les immondices et la boue. Le maire se dit abandonné et la préfecture tergiverse. En France, ces migrants sont maintenant des dizaines de milliers.

[Update 6 III 14]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/world/europe/spain-struggles-to-halt-migrants-at-two-enclaves.html?hp&_r=0

MARCH 6, 2014

“There are 40,000 people in Morocco who are waiting to cross illegally into Spain, and 40,000 more at the border between Mauritania and Morocco.”

15 migrants drowned off Ceuta as they tried to swim around a sea wall marking the enclave’s border.

Rajoy’s conservative Popular Party, which has a majority in Parliament, rejected demands from opposition parties to set up a parliamentary committee to investigate the Ceuta drownings. The refusal came even after the government admitted, after initially denying, that the police had fired rubber bullets into the water.

a metal netting system would soon be added to reinforce the perimeters of the enclaves.

Madrid is also negotiating with Morocco on a change of law that would allow the authorities to turn back illegal migrants almost immediately, once they entered Spanish territory. At the moment, when these migrants enter the territories, they cannot be legally expelled and must be processed the same way economic migrants or asylum seekers are on the mainland.

The refugee center in Melilla is now home to about 1,300 migrants, almost triple its planned capacity. To help alleviate the problem, Spain this week transferred about 100 migrants, some of whom had been in the Melilla center for as long as three years, to the mainland.

[Mise à jour, 11 mai 2014]  “Guardian Angels” redivivus:

http://www.bvoltaire.fr/damienrieu/generation-identitaire-ressusciter-civisme,59505

The "Femen" group has its own, quite distinct, immigration policy:
http://fr.novopress.info/167508/femen-appelle-les-francaises-sucer-se-faire-lecher-branler-doigter-pomper-niquer-autant-detrangers-quelles-peuvent/

[Mise à jour, 28 Oct 2014]  Trouble in Calais.
http://www.nzz.ch/international/ein-neonazi-profiliert-sich-1.18412750?extcid=Newsletter_28102014_Top-News_am_Morgen

[Update 16 April 2015]  They don’t want them either:

Thousands flee after South Africa mobs attack immigrants

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/africa/south-africa-anti-foreigner-attacks/

Anti-immigrant attacks kill 5 in Rainbow Nation

Thousands of people have sought refuge in temporary shelters in South Africa after mobs with machetes attacked immigrants in the city of Durban, leaving at least five people dead.

And, a remarkable observation from a man on the ground, not widely reported.

South Africa's police minister echoed the president's comments during a press conference on Wednesday.

"I can tell you now that this so-called xenophobia is not that. It's more 'Afrophobia.' It's ideologically driven. But we are on top of it. We are in control and are handling the situation well," Police Minister Nkosinathi Nhleko said during a briefing on the attacks.

"It is African-on-African. It is not on other nationalities," said Nhleko.

http://www.newsweek.com/south-africa-grapples-resurgence-xenophobic-attacks-322625?piano_d=1

Beleaguered immigrant in Durban

Ponder that.

Good Guys/Bad Guys

In this complex and conflicted world, at least there are two theatres in which the moral choices are clear:  Libya and Ivory Coast.

(1)  In Libya, a hated dictator confronts the struggling unarmed forces of freedom (normally referred to as “civilians” in media accounts).  The world universally condemns the former, and provides military support to the latter.  The saga, as it is told to us,  has, it would seem, drawn hundreds of brave Libyan-Americans to head back to the old country  and put their own bodies in harm's way:  actions reminiscent of the International Brigades against Franco.  The rebels, clad in shining armor, and motivated only by the principles of Madison and Jefferson -- oh wait.  Maybe not.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/02/135072664/professor-in-libya-a-civil-war-not-uprising

If Professor Prashad is correct, we have no more business intervening in what would be basically a sectional dispute, than in, say, Katanga when it rebelled against the rest of Congo. -- O wait, there was Western intervention there, by the slippery-slithery Belgians, for their own worst reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Katanga#Congolese_independence_and_Katangan_secession

(2) In Ivory Coast, a spotlessly conducted election produces a clear winner, the result ratified by a host of international observers.  But the incumbent ignores the election results (“le président sortant  refuse de sortir”).   The winner, refraining from violence, awaits the material support of the international community, biding his time with a rereading of The Federalist Papers.

            Then something strange turns up:  a thousand corpses in a single village, which is held by our spotless democrat.  And oddly, that very village was also protected by hundreds of UN troops, who -- their noses buried in the collected works of Alexander Hamilton -- didn’t notice a thing.   So far, my perusal of the mainstream media has produced no enlightenment; the whole thing is a mystery.

            The only hint of an explanation I stumbled on in Le Monde.  Not, to be sure, in the actual articles of that worthy journal,  notorious for euphemism and underreporting, but in readers' comments.   They may not know what they are talking about;  but since theirs is the only attempt I have encountered so far, to illuminate the problem, I reproduce them here:

Je me pose la même question. Dans l'article il est écrit que c'est dans une mission catholique que les persécutés se sont réfugiés... Petit rappel: Ouatarra est musulman et Gbabo a représenté la communauté catholique. d'où l'extrème pudeur des journalistes.

--

"Tout semble indiquer qu'il s'agit de violences intercommunautaires."  Expression codée de la langue de bois médiatico-politique, utilisée pour les massacres de coptes en Égypte : l'élément "inter-" signifie "entre" et évoque un lien de réciprocité, ce qui est l'effet recherché. Mais comme il est difficile ici d'imposer l'idée de réciprocité quand on a un massacre de populations civiles par des militaires, on ne saura pas à quelles "communautés" appartiennent les massacreurs et les massacrés.

--

C'est à cause du méchant Gbagbo que le gentil Ouattara (ancien directeur délégué à l'Afrique du FMI, il ne peut être que très très gentil) laisse ses hommes commettre massacres et exactions. Tout le monde le sait bien, il y a toujours un méchant coupable de tout   et un gentil pas même responsable de quoi que ce soit. Gobez, gogos, gobez.

Where the truth lies, I do not know.   But in both stories, a voracious consumer of the principle television and newspaper media  will not have been presented an explanatory background of the story -- one which is at least hinted at (correctly or not) in a two-minute radio spot, and some amateur comments buried in a foreign newspaper.

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[Update 4 IV 2011]:  So now France, its appetite not sated, but whetted, by its Libyan adventure, has fired on Gbagbo's home and palace.
Here, incidentally, is the prize for which all sides contend, as they converge on Abidjan.

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The case thus resembles the important one in Tunisia, which we commented on here.

*

Meanwhile, Tunisia itself, suddenly become a beacon of democracy to the world, has been overwhelmed with an inrush of immigrants seeking relief from poverty and oppression at home -- principally from southern Italy, groaning under the yoke of persistent underdevelopment, the Mafia and the Camorra, and that Berlusconi buffoon:

http://fr.euronews.net/2011/04/03/italie-tensions-et-casse-tete-autour-des-immigrants-tunisiens/

Oh wait! No.  It’s an outrush of emigrants.  To Italy.

Oops.

(*Sigh*)  Well, at least we may close with some good news.   Tunisia and Egypt, brother beacons, celebrated their solidarity with a match amical:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ismJAlOK5y1KiOKe1pHa0KnFdUXg?docId=CNG.f17ccd186019bcbb974a684d2c765d47.1e1

Oh, wait ….

~     ~     ~

Nota bene:
The larger editorial point in all this, is not the travails of the individual lands, which indeed have my deepest sympathy, but the way in which much of our media  resembles Top 40 radio, pumping out pop tunes, which the public whistles, blissfully unawares.