By Theodore Dalrymple
A thirty-five-year-old man of Tunisian origin injured five people in a frenzied knife attack in Marseille. First reports said that he was “known to the police”, without information about what he was known for.
It emerged that he was under a sentence of imprisonment for attempted murder but had appealed his sentence, so he was still at large. He had stabbed his nephew several times because he suspected that he was homosexual and suspected him also of having had sexual relations with his now-estranged wife.
An illegal immigrant, he married a woman 16 years older than himself. He was described as “a moderate Muslim”; his moderation manifested by excessive drinking and resorting to cocaine. He grew a long beard and shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he attacked the five persons in Marseille, but the anti-terrorist squad has not taken up his case.
He was shot dead by the police before he could stab more people, and I doubt many people will shed tears over that. But the report in the respectable and usually well-written conservative weekly, Le Point, shocked me. It said that the police had “neutralised” him, rather than that they had shot him dead.
Neutralised: that took me back to the days of my chemistry lessons when I added acid to base drop by drop to neutralise it or, vice versa, ‘til the litmus turned clear.
The use of the word “neutralise” suggests either reluctance to admit that the police had in fact killed the man, in case such strong language should reduce support of sensitive souls for the police, which given the nature of the magazine’s readership was unlikely, or, alternatively, that he was thought of as a kind of acid to be chemically neutralised, in this case by a dose of lead.
Much as he was to be reprehended, this man was still a man. He was killed, not neutralised. We ought not to indulge in semantic dehumanisation of the kind that totalitarian regimes indulge in.
First published in the Critic
One Response
When we say a person “passed on” instead of “died”, is that a “semantic dehumanization” too? When an official is announced to have been “relieved of his duties”, is he relieved to be relieved of them, or would he very much rather still be in the post, but the announcers are using the phrase in an attempt to be nice and not come across as taking pleasure in the action they’ve taken?
If you ask me, your take is somewhat adolescent. I think the authorities used the appropriate phrasing, and it’s totalitarian regimes that are more likely to be explicit in their descriptions of violent action taken against criminals and opponents.
On the subject of this suspect being a Muslim immigrant. You’ve been a writer for about how long he was alive, and for a good portion of that time have written numerous pieces (I’ve read – I’m guessing conservatively here – at least two dozen like it) that follow the formula you’ve used here: look at this foreigner and the outrage he committed. Look further at these details of his background and previous outrages he committed. Be outraged that he and other outsiders like him have been allowed in our midst.
If you’re dissatisfied with these outsiders, what work have you ever done to help them assimilate to your country and understand its history and values, even if a tiny minority and even if on a modest scale? Not a thing, I bet. You, and your friends, have spent a third of a century doing nothing other than be complainers. Complainers are jerks.