John Oliver Went On An Immensely Cathartic Sweary Rant About ISIL And Paris

Tragic events like the terrorist attacks in Paris on Saturday present a conundrum for news and current affairs shows the tend towards the light and the humorous; it’s difficult to turn tragedy into comedy, especially so soon after the fact. Jon Stewart set the bar in this regard during his time at the Daily Show; he famously gave an emotional and impassioned defence of New York and America after the September 11 attacks, and strategically deployed his wit in a brilliant, furious condemnation of racial injustice and police violence in the wake of the murder of Eric Garner.

Last night, it was John Oliver’s turn to navigate his show and his audience through a tragedy that doesn’t bear laughter. Last Week Tonight‘s format means the show can’t devote the time or resources to breaking news events in the way the Daily Show could, but Oliver nonetheless managed to harness the helplessness and anger that’s pervaded since the Paris attacks and use them to provide some much-needed catharsis.

A quick fact-checking note: what happened a few days ago was not “the deadliest attack on [French] soil since WWII”, as Oliver claims. That dubious honour goes to the Paris massacre of 1961, where scores of Algerians were beaten to death or thrown from bridges into the River Seine in attacks ordered by the head of the French National Police.

The massacre went largely unacknowledged and censored in France for decades; it was only in 1998 that the French government acknowledged the killings, the same year the Parisian police chief who ordered the attacks, Maurice Papon, was convicted of crimes against humanity for his role in the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps in WWII. Largely due to the paucity of media coverage or investigation after the attacks, the number of Algerians killed in 1961 remains unknown, with estimates ranging from 40 to 300.