[Updated]
Here is a meticulous, historically informed post on the French riots by Doug Ireland, who rips up the rightist Sarkozy but also Tariq Ramadan. Money quote, about Sarkozy’s vow to “Karcherise” the Arab ghettoes:
“Karcher” is the well-known brand name of a system of cleaning surfaces by super-high-pressure sand-blasting or water-blasting that very violently peels away the outer skin of encrusted dirt — like pigeon-shit — even at the risk of damaging what’s underneath. To apply this term to young human beings and proffer it as a strategy is a verbally fascist insult and, as a policy proposed by an Interior Minister, is about as close as one can get to hollering “ethnic cleansing” without actually saying so. It implies raw police power and force used very aggressively, with little regard for human rights. I wonder how many Anglo-American correspondents get the inflammatory, terribly vicious flavor of the word in French? The translation of “karcherise” by “clean” just misses completely the provocative, incendiary violence of what Sarko was really saying.
**Note: An earlier version of this post contained the words “stealth-Islamist demagogue” to describe Tariq Ramadan. I have excised this intemperate and imprecise phrase, but I point readers to this critique of Ramadan by the French Marxist Yves Coleman.
Comments are closed.