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Why socialists must love Notre Dame
The fire at the Notre Dame cathedral in April of 2019 was symbolic of what has gone wrong with the world since the end of the Cold War. The likelihood that the event was an accident, rather than terrorism, say, only reinforces my interpretation, given that from what is known so far, the ignition was due to faulty wiring or to cigarettes being smoked around the inflammable roof timbers, and given the ineptitude of the security staff when the alarm sounded. The people who are supposed to be in charge of keeping our social systems going are bumbling around, and their supervisors are mostly concerned with cutting costs so as to avoid having to ask the well-to-do to pay a little more in taxes. And our traditional institutions are collapsing — because of neglect, of attacks on their structures, and of their lost relevance.
The cathedral is a representation of many things, of course. Two primary symbolic meanings are the achievement of the medieval period and the national identity of the French people. It also stands for a religion that has a long history of violating human rights and for the power of the oligarchy to compel the labor of the working class. As such, at the time of the fire, I saw a number of my fellow leftists on social media saying that spending money on restoration efforts would be a waste of funds that could be used to aid the poor.
