Film: Terror’s Advocate
When: 04.08.2011
Where: Vesterbro, Copenhagen
Who: Marianne, Honey’s friend, Joachim, Agus, Cathrine, Iben, Arendse, Oscar, Tina, Frauke, Peter, Karina, Marie, Honey and I
Why: In one week two incidents marked me one way or another. Tuesday July 19 I went to a meeting in the reading group “After Evil. A Politics of Transitional Justice” in Beirut and Friday Jule 22 a bomb exploded in the centre of Oslo and the brutal massacre took place in the nearby island, Utøya.
For the reading group we had to watch the documentary Terror’s Advocate and read chapter two in Robert Meister’s book After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights. The film adresses the complexity of terrorism through the controversial character of the lawyer Jacques Verges, who since the 1960′s has defended, among others, terrorists/freedom fighters, Second World War nazi war criminals and African dictators. On the one hand, we see Verges act against European consensus in an anti-colonial gesture (the documentary focuses especially on his strong ties with the resistance in Algeria and the Palestinian cause), but on the other hand he never succumbs to one discourse; the cases he defends simply do not add up to one homogeneous ideology.
A third point that came up in the reading group was how Verges aestheticizes law. This becomes visible when he openly talks about how he used the court room as a stage, as his stage. Two things that he himself underlines is that every person has the right to be defended and that he does not like individuals to be humiliated by a group in majority. If that were the case with his enemy, he would probably even defend him/her.
The chapter of Meister discusses the concept of winning in justice-as-reconciliation processes, the role of pain in human rights discourses, the (revolutionary) before and (the human rights) after 1989, and the relationship between victim, perpetrator and beneficiaries, among many other things. One point that is particularly interesting in this context is the uneasiness the unreconciled victim creates; the victim, who does not accept the reconciliation process and continues to struggle, maybe violently, and thus becomes a thread to the surrounding reconciliation consensus. On the one side there is the global and institutional discourse of human rights and on the other side there is the thread of the possible agency of one person or a group when acting on their own means and not through established political channels.
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There do not seem to be many links between the incidents in Oslo and Utøya and the film + the chapter discussed above. However, there are some affinities in precisely the act of reacting with violence to a political situation you do not agree with. That is probably why we are so disgusted by the Norwegian case, because it shows the uncontrollable rage that exists impersonated in our society by some extremist persons and groups.
When I wanted to screen Terror’s Advocate in my house in the light of what happened in Norway it was because I missed a historical and reflexive level in the media coverage and debate. And thus I felt a need, within the momentum, to exchange with friends and colleagues about what had happened. But not directly, because that seemed to close the discussion in disgusted wonder of how one can show such detachment as to cold-bloodedly kill young people face to face. The discussion we had was quietly reflexive, probably weighted down by the ungraspable nature of the Norwegian case and history of repression, resistance and political/diplomatic relations between Europe and the Middle East that the film reminded us about. We didn’t by far reach a conclusion, apart from sharing the desire to discuss and reflect. This may be the pacifist agency we can show right now. And in the context of Denmark something we ought to show having elections coming soon.
