International Journal on Criminology Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2018 | Page 60

Syria: An Epistemological Obstacle
None of these individuals are either far-right militants or sympathetic to or
supportive of dictatorship. Some, such as the poet Adonis, have on the contrary
fought tirelessly against the state violence of which they have themselves been victims.
As for myself, over twenty years ago I was the first in France to seek to extend
Michel Seurat’s research into what he called “the barbarian state.” In a lengthy
article published in La Documentation Française, I provided a detailed description
of the methods and mechanisms via which, between 1970 and 1990, Hafez al-Assad
appropriated—through duplicity and violence—the entire Syrian state apparatus
for the benefit of his family and community. This text still remains—both in
France and abroad—one of the leading academic references on the topic.
I challenge anyone to find among my numerous writings, interviews, and
talks, the least support for the perpetrators—whoever they are—of the violence
committed in Syria and elsewhere, the least support for dictators, and the least
reference to the ideas of the far-right, to conspiracy theories, and to antisemitism,
which I have on the contrary strongly fought for the last fifty years.
I do not know which “social media” sites alerted the director of the Caen
Memorial museum to this meeting of “dangerous fascists.” I found one entitled
“Fighting Left” with the subtitle “Lefty and proud of it.” There are no doubt others,
but I have not seen them. There I noted the presence of two individuals who in
February 2016 demanded Ms Delphine Ernotte (chair of France Télévisions) to
fire Ms Samah Soula, presenter of the program Un Oeil sur la Planète [An Eye on
the Planet], on the grounds that they did not like one of her documentaries on
Syria, as they interpreted her description of the atrocities committed by jihadis as
implicit support for the Damascus regime.”
MICHEL RAIMBAUD AND ANAS ALEXIS CHEBIS
I
will give the final word to French ambassador Michel Raimbaud and Anas
Alexis Chebis, organizers of this symposium: “Liberty, sweet liberty ... No-one
could have thought that the symposium of November 26 organized at the Caen
Memorial museum by the Collectif pour la Syrie [Syria Collective] would go unnoticed,
as the Syrian war and the issues surrounding it are an ultra-sensitive subject
that provokes heated debate, but one that has never been presented to the public
as is appropriate in a democratic state.
For nearly six years we have heard just one version of the facts, and this
monolithism, which is almost unprecedented in the modern history of our country,
is deplorable and unacceptable. It says a great deal about the intellectual and
moral decay of our “elites.” Uniformity of thought is never a good sign, still less if
it is associated with a simplifying, disinformative, and untruthful narrative.
We do not seek to produce propaganda, but to offer a different reading, and
in any case to present a fairer and more balanced view of the facts and realities. The
Caen Symposium was canceled due to pressures that sought only to discredit its
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