Absolutely.

If an American politician during the LA riots called the rioters “monkeys”, would the fact that he was talking about “rioters” make it not racist? By being obviously, explicitly racist, a statement comes to be universal. That is, one thing that’s so awful about racist slurs is that even if they are used against only a specific group of criminals, the slur implicitly labels every person of that racial/ethnic group as similarly “scum.”

I don’t necessarily disagree on the general point, but the analogy doesn’t quite hold up. Calling black rioters “monkeys” is using a racial slur against a class of people—it’s wrong to call rioters “monkeys” because it’s wrong to use racial slurs, period. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to call people “scum” (which I don’t think was originally a racial epithet against Muslims). Where it becomes wrong (and this is, I believe, Henry’s point), is when the word “scum” is taken by racists. Then, using the word has an entirely different effect than before.

Shorter Engels: Anatoly, Nathalie and Steven have been long on indignation and short on arguments. It’s rather strange that Tom Hurka thinks it “obvious” that they are right.

Someone says: “the Bush campaign is racist because it’s basically saying that Dukakis will let black males murder and rape white women.”

To which someone responds: “uh, no it’s not; it’s saying that Dukakis is too weak on violent criminals, not on black males in general.”

To which the rebuttal is: “well, that’s what the Bush campaign is explicitly saying; but implicitly, it’s playing on whites’ disproportionate (and racist) fears of black males.”

Similarly, Sarkozy is not explicitly smearing all immigrants; just the rioting ones. But he’s hoping that by tarring the rioters he can (1) insulate himself from racism while (2) supporting racist measures that target African immigrants as a class, thereby mopping up the extremist vote.

Do I have that right, Henry?

Anatoly appears to believe that this statement implies endorsement for the tactic of calling ALL African immigrants ‘scum’ (“as a class”). (#9, repeated at #22 and #30).

As usual, he’s wrong. Compare:

“Calling older children names is a silly thing to do on your first day at school.”

Does Anatoly think that this sentence is only advising a pupil against calling ALL older children names? If not, perhaps he ought to concede that his reading of Henry’s sentence is incorrect.

But can’t we agree that all “law and order” rhetoric from the sixties that explicitly used racist language was racism?

If an American politician during the LA riots called the rioters “monkeys”, would the fact that he was talking about “rioters” make it not racist? By being obviously, explicitly racist, a statement comes to be universal. That is, one thing that’s so awful about racist slurs is that even if they are used against only a specific group of criminals, the slur implicitly labels every person of that racial/ethnic group as similarly “scum.”

This is the thing I think that Kopel’s and Sarkozy’s defenders are missing. This is a really clear case of a politician using a racial slur to win votes. It doesn’t really matter whether he was talking about every single African immigrant or some rioters or just one – the slur still works on every person it could label.

As far as I can tell – definitely not hatred, rather Pat-Buchanan-like attitude: they don’t fit here and they cause a lot of problems. But with a little help from the ruling elite it can, of course, be easily transferred into hatred.

Tom – I haven’t read the original Figaro article; Kopel didn’t link to it. My broad take on this is that Sarkozy’s comment is partly aimed at making him look tough on crime, but is more importantly aimed at stealing Le Pen’s voters. There has been a vigorous debate on the French right over the last ten years about how to deal with Le Pen, with a lot of rightwingers wanting to steal his clothes through more vigorous anti-brownskinned foreigner rhetoric. National leaders, including, much as I don’t like crediting him, Chirac, have mostly held the line on this at the national level, although there has been some nodding-and-winking in local races. Sarkozy’s move has been pretty universally interpreted to my knowledge as a change in course, seeking to compete head-to-head with Le Pen on these issues and grab as many of his voters as possible.

Thanks for withdrawing the earlier snark.

But all you have demonstrated is that Kopel knew the statements were denounced for being racist—not that he knew they actually were. This is a fine distinction, but an important one—allegations of racism aren’t an uncommon method of argument even when untrue (again, I take no position on the French issue, not knowing the relevant background that well).

If you had simply made the points you made in the comment section in the original post, I don’t think there would have been much heat. Instead, you changed Kopel’s words into something blatantly racist, and then said “I don’t believe that Kopel is a racist.” But how could anyone read your original paraphrase and reach that conclusion?

[1] Kopel clearly knows the background here and is quite aware that Sarkozy’s remark was denounced for its racism when it was made – he specifically refers to these debates in his post.

[2] He still goes ahead and quotes the writers from Le Figaro to say what a brilliant move this was.

So in what sense on earth is it a smear to say that Kopel said that “calling young African immigrants ‘scum’ is a brilliant move” ? He’s explicitly claiming that an incident in which a French politician quite deliberately called African immigrants scum, borrowing language from Le Pen & co., was a brilliant move. He’s not saying that it was a brilliant move because it was a racist move – but I don’t claim that he was saying this in my post. He is saying that it was a brilliant move, and seems not to care especially that it was quite baldly racist.

(I want to withdraw my earlier snark to Anatoly btw – it seemed to me when reading the post that all this was blindingly obvious; apparently it’s not).

I don’t really mind you putting words into Kopel’s mouth to make his post look way more ridiculous and offensive than it was. I expect LGF-ish methods of this kind from some CT authors, based on past experience. It’s not surprising. What’s strange is that someone could be… misguided? enough to actually really think yours was an accurate paraphrase.

And, count me naive, I do think you ought to be able to admit the obvious fact that your paraphrase is very inaccurate, without resorting to willing willful stupidity on me, instead. Yes, I understand that you think Kopel wrote a very offensive post, that you think he gave his support to Sarkozy’s racist hate-mongering, etc. etc. It still has no bearing on the very simple fact that Kopel very clearly and deliberately talked of criminals and rioters (mentioning their origin, but still only of criminals and rioters), and you very clearly and deliberately paraphrased this into talking of young African immgirants as a class. Yes, I understand that you think that your LGF-like way of paraphrasing was employed here for the good cause. It still shouldn’t prevent you from being able to admit that it’s not an accurate paraphrase. Because it just very plainly is not.