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what the general position is--i'll route this through the situation in france, which i know better--you have the rise of far right political movements like the front national in response to problems to do with the status of the nation in the context of the e.u. (among other things, but for simplicity's sake, and because once again i post while on the run). the basic dynamic of their politics in this regard is to force a definition of the nation around religious/ethnic criteria by using the question of nroth african immigration and--in particular--the persistence of islam within these populations--how it has worked in france is that the north african population is defined as an internal other, with religion and race being the wedge. the result of this move (as it circulates publically, through the press coverage of actions, through the pluralism of coverage) is that france, say, gets defined reciprocally--france is white and catholic--the question of french identity gets re-articulated on those grounds. in a situation characterized by an increasing defunctionalization of the nation-state, this argument resonates because it speaks to anxieties that operate at a number of registers (economic, social, etc.) by condensing them around matters ot identity articulated in these terms.
it looks like something parallel is happening in the netherlands, and that it forms a kind of context for thinking about all this--in this reading, the agressor discursively is teh far right. they are the parties who draw the lines, they are the parties who set up the kind of "culture clash" view.
i do not think anything about what ustwo has been posting is adequate as an explanation for what is happening--instead it is simple recapitulation of the logic particular to these neofascist groups as if that logic explained the situation in general.
that is an outline of my position.
what i find fascinating is how easily american conserrvative ideology dovetails into what is understood as neofascist ideology in france (again becaue i know the situation there best).
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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