War in Western Journalism: A Disjointed Utopia
Europe is no place for war.
Europe has remained relatively peaceful for more than two decades.
Democracies are less likely to fight wars.
Whether spoken out loud or simply implied, these are normative assumptions previously held by many political actors and commentators. In the last decades, Europe has often been perceived from the inside as a peaceful political space of deliberation and mutual aid. The EU has marketed itself as worthy of exporting its foreign policy as a model to be followed, all in an attempt to become the hegemonic normative power of world politics. Perhaps the ‘developing’[1] world was expected to regard Europe as a utopian space in regard to the lack of conflict and admire its strength in unity. The normative leader was supposed to safeguard the transnational international order.
Today, the continent is faced with the escalation of tensions in Ukraine which have been followed by a Russian invasion of the Eastern European country. As the conflict continues to grow in scale and intensity, a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in front of our eyes in several Ukrainian cities under intense Russian bombardment. This article is being typed on day eight of Russia’s war in Ukraine and it is safe to assume that the situation will further escalate. The utopia of a conflict free Europe is crumbling before our eyes as more than 1 million Ukrainian nationals are fleeing war and seeking refuge in European countries such as Poland, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania among many others.
Across Europe, the Russian invasion is perceived as both a humanitarian crisis of vast proportion and as an injurious ideational attack. The world leaders who stood behind military interventions in the Middle East, which saw populations around the world experience violent occupation and aggression, could now hardly confront the idea that such forms of conflict were occurring in the European space. Statements put out by various political actors heavily stress the fact that the great tragedy they see is not the loss of lives and the endangerment of over 44 million people. The focus is on the fact that Putin’s attack is an attack on European democratic values, on European peace and European people. The focus on the nature of the oppressed rather than the oppression itself implies that, had the invasion happened elsewhere, the response would have been vastly different. This is not only apparent through prominent discourses, but also through a side-by-side analysis of European foreign policy during the invasion of Ukraine versus during the 2015 Syrian Refugee Crisis. What is different this time? The easiest response is that there is no ‘othering’. No sentiment of ‘us’ versus ‘them’.
Let’s take a quick glance at various statements put out by world leaders as an initial response to Russia’s invasion. I have chosen to address a series of tweets produced by politicians on the 24th of February 2022, specifically statements posted on Twitter under their official accounts. So, what valuable insights do they have to offer? Let’s start with a presidential statement. “By choosing war,” Emmanuel Macron tweets, “President Putin has not only attacked Ukraine. He has decided to carry out the most serious attack on peace, on stability in our Europe”[2]. Ursula von der Leyen (European Commission President) shares similar sentiments: “Putin is trying to subjugate a friendly European country. He is trying to redraw the map of Europe by force. He must and he will fail”. Must Putin only fail when attacking European nations? That question remains open ended. Roberta Metsola, currently serving as the President of the European Parliament, adds to the discourse by tweeting that “today’s [Feb 24th] attack aims straight at our European model of democratic societies. This is what Putin fears and tries to undo. But in Europe, rules, laws & values count.” It is once again unclear if rules, laws & values count elsewhere or if they count to a different degree than they do in Europe. To what extent did they count during the 2003 invasion of Iraq? Thankfully, this particular issue is vehemently addressed by CBS correspondent Charlie D’Aagata, who stresses that “This isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan. This is a relatively civilised relatively European city”. BM Television France adds that “we are in the 21st century; we are in a European city, and we have cruise missile fire as though we are in Afghanistan or Iraq. Can you imagine!” One cannot help but wonder whether the Ukrainian and Russian citizens affected by the 2014 unrest in Ukraine had been made aware of the peaceful utopia which Western Europeans were taking for granted until last week’s events.
Regarding sentiments in mass media, a recent statement response by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association perfectly articulates the discriminatory, orientalist implications of the media coverage produced on the invasion of Ukraine. The statement responds to implicit bias in the coverage of war by various broadcasting stations. A striking quote that they reference belongs to Al Jazeera English anchor Peter Dobbie, who states that “what’s compelling is looking at them the way they are dressed. These are prosperous middle class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from the Middle East or North Africa. They look like the European family you would live next door to.” The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association rightfully points out the normalization of tragedy outside of Western spaces and the dehumanization of disadvantaged populations from the global South in the media. I would extend this idea and claim that there is an overarching tendency of Western politics to employ dehumanizing discourse while addressing conflict, both in journalistic spaces and in high politics, where the sentiment is more implicit, more subtle.
The racist undertones surrounding the discourse on violence are evident. Concerning attacks in Ukraine, media ‘personality’ Matthew Wright points out that the US has also used a thermobaric bomb before in Afghanistan, however “the idea of it being used in Europe is stomach-churning”. Such statements were rightfully met with extensive backlash in activist spaces. “In other words”, tweets Imraan Siddiqi, Executive Director at CAIR Washington, “these were meant for brown people, guys.” What is also evident is that orientalist bias runs so deep within Western media that such statements remain unexamined by broadcasting directors as their reporters continue to produce unconscious distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’. It is precisely a sheltered worldview, a perspective of people who understand very little of the world beyond their own reach and are unable to exercise empathy, which enables such discourses.
Referencing a video in which members of the UN Human Rights Council protest the occupation of Ukraine, Palestinian Correspondent for The Nation, writer, and poet Mohammed El-Kurd quotes a powerful statement on colonialism from 1955. This statement is what ultimately inspired this article and what for me personally shed light on the implications of current discourses: “at bottom, what he [the white man] cannot forgive Hitler for is not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the [workers] of India, and the [black people][3] of Africa. And that is the great thing I hold against pseudo-humanism: that for too long it has diminished the rights of man, that its concept of those rights has been - and still is - narrow and fragmentary, incomplete, and biased and, all things considered, sordidly racist.”- Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Colonialism.[4] Perhaps this profound reflection of Aimé Césaire can encourage us to reflect on the way we perceive the victims of conflict, to stand with the people of Ukraine because of their humanity, because they are people, and because human suffering is universally tragic and worthy of empathy regardless of its geographical coordinates. And it can occur even within the imaginary walls of Europe’s utopian fortress.
[1] The term ‘developing world’ here is a reflection of widespread Western media perspectives.
[2] Official Twitter translation from French offered by Google.
[3] Racially charged language has been substituted.
[4] Translated by Joan Pinkham. This version published by Monthly Review Press: New York and London, 1972. Originally published as Discours sur le colonialisme by Editions Presence Africaine, 1955.
