Letters

DECRYING HOW ANTI-FRENCH RACISM IS USED TO INTERFER IN THE US ELECTIONS BY FOX NEWS.
FUNDAMENTALLY IGNORANT OSTRACISM, UNJUSTIFIED HATRED, NASTY CONSEQUENCES:


To O'Reilly, "O'Reilly Factor", Fox News:

Bill:
You decry the French president as an "enemy of America", making "anti American" speeches. Once again, you ask all Americans to boycott all French products, and, in a very American way, you offer them pecuniary rewards to encourage them to do so, as if you were in the Old West, and going after the bad guys. But for you, to be a bad guy, one just needs to be French. You do all this with great seriousness and barely controlled anger, complete with rolling eyes. You provide no justifications commensurate with the gravity of your accusations and actions.

Just as Osama bin Laden decides what "anti-Islamic" is, you decide what "anti-American" is. Neither of you, men of God, bother with significant factual justification for your violent utterances, as you urge your followers to go out and hurt people on the ground of nationality. Gods need no justification. People who are into hate crimes are too busy hating, they have not enough energy, time or inclination left to justify themselves. That makes your mind's modus operandi similar to bin Laden's.

Like bin Laden, you do not bother with the lives of the thousands of Americans you may kill with your hysteria, grounded as it is in your hormonal imbalances, or your pocketbook, which prevent you to think in depth about the consequences of your actions. Indeed, if they followed your exalted leadership, Americans would not be vaccinated against the flu this winter, and more would die from O'Reilly than from bin Laden. Pasteur-Aventis, a French company, is de facto the sole provider of flu vaccine for the USA in 2004-2005. Pasteur-Aventis is providing the USA with 55.4 million vaccine doses (other providers have only 2 million doses). Hopefully most Americans will not follow your jingoistic command, and try to commit suicide to satisfy your anti French megalomania. In 1998, 65,000 Americans died from the flu, in spite of the vaccine.

The French army did not join in the invasion of Iraq, but it is involved in the "war against terrorism" just as much as the American army. Not only is the French army fighting in Afghanistan, but it is engaged in several conflicts (such as Ivory Coast, and the border of Darfur, Sudan) where the US army is not. One cannot be all things to all people all the time. Moreover, the occupying army of the West in Kabul, Afghanistan, is the Eurocorps, commanded by a French general. It is not the US army. Your (hateful) propaganda employer, Fox News, never mentions such facts. Is it because Fox News view such facts as "anti-American"?

Do you also know that the French, meanwhile, are busy dismantling dozens of American nuclear weapons at Cadarache, in Provence, turning them into fuel for the USA? The USA have bombs, not fuel, so the French are providing the US with know-how to convert the former into the later. In 2005 the French will build a multi billion dollar plant on US soil to dismantle thousands of dangerous American nuclear weapons, the ultimate Weapons of Mass Destruction. There were no WMDs in Iraq, as the French knew all along, having satisfactory intelligence, so, instead of going to Iraq to find them, they go destroy them where they are, in America. The French will help turn the world greatest arsenal of WMDs into electricity. Not satisfied with forgoing all mental enlightenment of French origin, are you going to ask Americans to boycott all light, because it will soon be contaminated by French origin? Would you be even more hysterical, if you knew all these things?

Your avowed preoccupation is to fight America's enemies. But France has fought the same enemies for centuries. The French, in their affection for all things American, have even not only forgiven, but forgotten, the help America provided Nazism with until Hitler declared war to America, although this was a most troubling, and cruel piece of history which has never been fully investigated. In light of your manifest bias and agitation when evoking France, your self satisfying insistence that you are not a man of hate rings as hollow as Hitler's insistence that he was a man of peace. Ultimately what is the insufferable crime of the French? Having a different intelligence? You complain that president Bush does not do enough against the French "because he needs French help". Are you then saying that Bush needs anti-Americans?

In a wider context than the one you advertise, of course, your irrational hatred becomes an extremely rational strategy. Fox News, having deployed all the anti Kerry propaganda it can muster without losing credibility, you decide to "play it to the base" (as you yourself said in the same anti French diatribe of October 8, 2004) by running against France as a proxy against Kerry's less nationalistic approach. Hitler and his minions used the Jews and the French, that way exactly. The Nazis made the Germans mad against the Jews, and the French, so they would vote for the "strong" nationalistic leader, and against all "enemies" of "Germany". The fact that neither the Jews, nor the French were really enemies of Germany had to be dismissed first, with a violent campaign of hatred, complete with rolling eyes and a crazily distorted view of reality (reminiscent of your activities). The fact that you hide your true political meta motivation makes you look like a liar manipulating the masses to get them where they would not like to go if they knew the bigger picture. The Germans came to regret the tribal rage the Nazis swept them with.

Something most wrong with this world is the increasing mass of people who prefer hatred and ostracism to justification and understanding. That is the problem with Muslim terror. Your hatred of all things French is a dubiously amusing version of the same problem, the sadistic enjoyment of unbridled tribal hatred. This has real consequences. Anti-French sentiment has grown by leaps and bounds in the USA, making daily life difficult. Your anti-French rage is completely out of proportion with any justifications you ever provided for it. But why would you need justifications anymore than Mr. bin Laden does? You both know God. You advertise on TV that you believe you ingest God by eating a cracker. Perhaps this causes you indigestion, and you feel divine rage thereafter. This does not look much different from Mr. bin Laden's certainty of conferring with God when he kneels on a carpet. Hopefully the world will learn not to take seriously people such as you both, who are crazy with God, and mad against those who think there is something wrong with the way you establish your certainties.

I am sure that you view your tough guy approach as what America needs to deal with its enemies. Hopefully, someday, you will be dismayed to realize why deeper minds view the weak way people like you think as the crux of the problem. To use, as you do, the fascist reflex of making people angry and fearful, so that they group up as one mental block, and strike whoever is handy, such as ally, friend, and parent France, is no way to exhibit the intelligence we need to fight fascism, and especially religious fascism. Your misguided patriotism is hurtful to both France and America, and you are certainly incapable yet of the level of reasoning ability this civilization needs to survive. There is a need for a dialogue between the French version of civilization, and the American one. I hope you calm down, ask questions, and elevate yourself. Anti-French ostracism is not the way.

Somewhat condescendingly, but regretfully so,
Patrice Ayme

Berkeley, California, October 8, 2004.