All the way from Trump to Abdullah Anzorov
Europe remembers the Islamist threat whenever there is an attack. The rest of the time, Europeans, and no doubt Americans too, forget this latent risk which may be silent for months or years, but which always reminds us again of the lethality of the threat of radical Islamism. Although this situation is regrettable, as we all agree that it exists and should be fought to reverse it, this is not the worst thing. The most surprising thing is the lack of courage to face up to it, the dangerous tendency to conceal or relativise the bloody acts that continue to strike the Western way of life, its principles and its moral primacy.
On Saturday October 17, the day after the horrific attack on a Parisian teacher, the best-selling printed newspaper in Spain did not carry on its front page any reference to the revenge beheading of the French teacher. The major national issues arising from the coronavirus pandemic took up most of the space on that front page in which many of us missed any reference to the murder, hidden somewhere between the reform of the judiciary, the rise in Spain's public debt and the 15,000 positive cases recorded the day before, the worst figure of the whole pandemic in our country.
Not a single reference on a front page which, on the other hand, called attention to five news items or reports related to the risk which, according to the newspaper's editorial line, the United States and the world would run if Donald Trump was re-elected president of the leading power. The editorial headlines were about the totalitarian danger of Trump, about a virus called racism that is intrinsic to the Republican candidacy, about Trump's white and supremacist nationalism, about the indignation of American culture with the sole possibility of the billionaire remaining in the White House, and about the opposite of the odious Trump's leadership from the universal benefactor Biden. The danger to the planet is Trump's presidency, not the French high school terrorist who murdered and decapitated a history professor for having shown Muhammad cartoons in the Freedom of Expression class, the publication of which had triggered the attack in which ten people died in the magazine's editorial office, crimes for which a trial is now being held at the Paris court.
In addition to the extreme care taken by the European authorities to confirm the Islamist attacks until hours or even days have passed, the understandable and moving but innocuous response of concentrating in silence while singing La Marseillaise or the tolerance of discriminatory rules against women and religions considered "infidel" by radical Islam, now the irrelevant attack must be added. A single mortal victim is not enough to steal the limelight from the danger of the end of the world represented by Donald Trump, the most hated president. Even more than the murderers themselves? The answer is up to each of us.
The horrifying circumstances of this attack, along with the coldness of young Chechen Abdulllah Anzorov in dismembering his victim in the street, were not sufficient to compensate for the meagre balance of casualties when it came to assessing the news, one more of those that are cornering Western society against those who wish to destroy it. What occurred at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine is a terrible blow to French secular pride, yet another sign that relativism is neither sufficient nor appropriate for defending citizens against the threat of their enemies. Samuel Paty, the murdered and beheaded professor, is the martyr. And the terrorist of the French institute is far worse than Trump for peace in the world; however, to understand this, one has to read between the lines in the media or even value that which fails to be highlighted.