Sciences Po university in Paris on Tuesday disinvited from a conference on Europe’s future the Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut who had been attacked several weeks ago by Yellow Vest protesters over his pro-Zionist views, BFM TV reported.
I defy you to find an opening paragraph more drenched in irony than that one.
The conference organizers, who had invited Finkielkraut to give an address on the topic, were discouraged by the amount of hate messages and threats they received, told the victim of an assault over his political views not to bother and issued a statement saying, “Security is our top priority and it’s preferable to take no risks.”
Reminds you of the joke about the three French homeland security levels of alert: Flee, Surrender, Collaborate.
The threats came mainly from Clement Meric, a group to the left of Kim Jong-un, who called for a demonstration outside the conference and issued a statement saying: “We cannot accept Finkielkraut’s ‘modern Europe’ and his islamophobic, racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric.”
And, naturally, if you deeply oppose another person’s view, you crash his event, or as Voltaire put it: “I disapprove of what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to shut your mouth.”
Alain Finkielkraut, 70, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is far from being a right-winger. In 2010, he was involved in creating a left-wing Zionist advocacy group named Jcall, to lobby the European Parliament on, among other things, the two-state solution. He initially even supported the Yellow Vests’ street protests. His problem is that he loves Israel – as was noted by his fascistic leftist attackers who told him (they used “dirty Zionist” but they meant philosopher Alain Finkielkraut) to “Go back to Tel-Aviv.”
Of course, the problem is not the fact that Alain Finkielkraut is another misguided European Jew who believes the next Holocaust couldn’t possibly happen. And the problem isn’t the leftist fascists or the right-wing fascists, take your pick. The problem is the institution of high learning which exhibited the courage of a slug in July. The university, mind you, recently canceled a conference on “Israeli apartheid,” which protesters also hated, because they suspected the speakers were about to claim Israel is not an apartheid state.
Flee, Surrender, Collaborate.