Réflexion antimoderne sur le sort du monde-qui-l’a-échappé-belle

Au fait, vous en rappelez-vous? Il y a 3, 4 jours, le sort du monde basculait à Londres, centre de la civilisation, sous les terrifiantes attaques terroristes, — vous en rappelez-vous ? C’était si terrible et tellement affreux.

Il est vrai qu’entre temps nous sommes passés à autre chose. Le rythme des choses ne nous laisse guère souffler, en vérité. Aussi est-ce avec une certaine nostalgie, la nostalgie des temps passés et des jours enfuis, que nous lisons cette chronique de Simon Jenkins, du 4 juillet dans le Guardian, chronique persifleuse et critiqueuse de nos attitudes virtualistes et médiatiques face au plus grand défi jamais lancé à la face angélique de la civilisation occidentale.

Comme le temps passe.

«Don't panic. Stay calm. Don't play the terrorist's game. Show no fear or sense of disruption. Don't change your behaviour or way of life. Pass no laws curbing freedom. Just shrug and go about your normal business.

»Omigod! Now they are doctors! Wake the prime minister, round up the Arabs and order armoured helicopters. Stop the presses and clear the schedules. The fiends from outer Asia are cunning. They could be poisoning hospital drips. They could be lacing paracetamol and putting anthrax in Elastoplast. Declare another bomb “imminent”. Surround Heathrow with tanks, fortify Wimbledon, put blast blocks round Waterloo and ack-ack guns on Parliament Hill. Raise the threat level from critical to panic. On second thoughts make that totally hysterical.

»“Doctor Evil”, cries the Sun, demanding we “Rip up the hated human rights act”. “Docs of War”, chimes the Mirror, discarding “innocent until proved guilty”.“Terror cell in the NHS”, shrieks the Express. Nor is the rest of the media much better. Fed by anonymous security officials eager to boast of their successes, almost all reports have contrived to link the bombs with al-Qaida, 9/11, the NHS, mayhem and martyrdom.

»The public realm in Britain is in rampant retreat before terrorism, largely because politicians and the media feast on any story involving actual or potential violence. Politicians want to present themselves as calm and statesmanlike, yet visible, defenders of public security, as their poll ratings soar. Gordon Brown's “strength” rating jumped 14 points in a Times/Populus poll yesterday. The media can revel in fear journalism, throwing all sense of proportion to the winds and filling pages and airwaves with speculation as to what “might have happened if ...” and what “could yet happen unless ...”, scanning that horizon so appetising to every news desk: the worst-case scenario. The BBC re-enacts a Pythonesque sketch with a white-haired boffin igniting a can of petrol in a sandpit and remarking that it could have been a thousand times worse. The word suspect has become synonymous with mass murderer.

»The sanest person last Friday was the reviled Downing Street official who decided not to wake the prime minister at two in the morning to tell him of suspect cars in the West End. Nobody was dead. The police were on the case. The home secretary had been woken (a deed apparently vital to any anti-terror operation). Matters would be clearer by breakfast. Leave the poor man his sleep.»

Mis en ligne le 5 juillet 2007 à 12H56