Is the Facebook French Flag Trend Unwittingly Supporting the ISIL Agenda?
By Shoshana Fine and Zahra Jilani
Columbia University
New York
Following the tragic terrorist attacks that took place in Paris on November 13, Facebook users are showing their ‘support’ by superimposing the image of the French flag over their profile picture.
Facebook is asking its users to "change your profile picture to support France and the people of Paris." In a meme-like response in France and beyond, many have transformed their on-line persona to embrace the patriotic tricolored symbol without reflecting upon what this image signifies and its possible repercussions.
Flags are quintessential markers of national identity; they reinforce a sense of national consciousness and create an imagined political community that defines its own identity in relationship to the Other. In using nationalistic symbols as a common-sense response to terrorism, is Facebook inadvertently supporting the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ binary thinking that is at the core of the ISIS agenda?
Why are people finding solace in nationalism? This response is not unique to Friday’s tragic events, similar shows of instinctive flag-wielding solidarity followed the 9/11 attacks. These ubiquitous displays of nationalism feed into the policies that in the name of security and freedom further polarize humanity into Huntingdon’s civilized and uncivilized worlds. Like the French flags that have swamped our Facebook profiles, President Obama has adopted his own hierarchical rhetoric at the G20 summit in Ankara when he said: “The killing of innocent people based on a twisted ideology is an attack not just on France, not just on Turkey, but it’s an attack on the civilized world”.
Mr Obama, where are the borders of this civilized and uncivilized world? It would seem somewhere between France and Lebanon considering the disparities in media response to the consecutive Beirut and Paris terrorist attacks.
Instead of pursuing justice for the victims of the Paris attacks, this flag-touting civilizational discourse is fueling a security culture that legitimizes violence and vengeance against the enemy. In the context of the so-called war on terror this enemy is often amalgamated with ‘the Muslim world’, whereby terrorism is read as a quality of Islam alone and all Muslims have become potential terrorists. This plays straight into the hands of ISIL, which thrives on tension between the ‘Muslim’ and ‘Western’ worlds.
Far from being an inclusive symbol, the Facebook French flag’s nationalistic message exacerbates the East-West dichotomy so dear to both the ‘war on terror’ and the ISIS ideology.
(Shoshana Fine is a Phd Candidate in political science at Sciences Po Paris and a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Zahra Jilani is a co-founder of the Swat Relief Initiative, an NGO fighting terrorism through education in rural Pakistan)
