Finkielkraut and the Haaretz interview

Material compiled 01.12.2005 by Jens Tomas Anfindsen, editor, HonestThinking

There is some speculation circulating regarding whether or not the French-Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut apologized for what he said in the Haaretz interview.

Finkielkraut did, televised at Europe 1 (26.11), deliver an excuse for the hurtful effects that the interview had provoked, and signaled that he was discontent with the Haaretz’s editing of his statements. Above all however, Finkielkraut is enraged about a reportage of the interview which featured in Le Monde, and which, according to Finkielkraut, gravely and tendentiously distorted his views.    

In a response to the latter article, Finkielkraut gave an interview in Le Monde, “J’assume”, where he expands on what he meant and what he did not mean by what the Haaretz interview recounts.  Finkielkraut does modify some statements of the interview so as to de-ambiguate some tenets that had lent themselves to misunderstandings:

• Finkielkraut points out that his claim that the colonial slave trade could not be counted on par with the Shoah, does not imply a denial of the slave trade’s criminal and inhuman nature.
• Finkielkraut also rejects that he ever used the word “savage” to characterize the colonized people or their civilization.
• Finkielkraut denies that his ascribing some positive intentions to the French colonial project, like the spread of human rights and the establishing of judicial governmental institutions, was meant to deny or belittle any tragic consequences of the colonization.

Besides that, and importantly, Finkielkraut maintains the main thesis expounded in the Haaretz interview, namely that the rioting in France cannot be explained by reduction to socio-economic causal factors.

“I do not think there is a connection of cause and effect between the actual social misery of the suburbs and the burning of schools. Why this fury directed towards the symbols of the republic? We have to admit that a certain number of people detest this country.”

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