Europe: The persistence of racism & the fascist threat. Golden Dawn’s MPs in the Greek parliament by KEVIN OVENDEN Below are the points, updated and a little amplified, I made in a contribution to the highly successful Unite Against Fascism conference in London on 2 March. The speech (and I’ve incorporated my summing up) was in a workshop with Petros Constantinou from Greece, Marwan Mohammed from France and Glyn Ford MEP from Britain, who all made extremely clear and thought-provoking contributions. 1) The rise of racism, anti-immigrant sentiment and of a spectrum of forces to the Right of the traditional centre-right in Europe is pronounced. It is not ephemeral. I want to outline: 2) When Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National first broke through in the Dreux by-election in 1983, most commentators described it as a temporary phenomenon comparable to the right-wing anti-tax rebellion led by Pierre Poujade (on whose ticket a young Le Pen was elected to parliament) that would, as in the 1950s, fade from view after a couple of years.
Islamophobia. C'est l'histoire d'un mec... L’extrême droite bat le pavé parisien. Participation en hausse pour le traditionnel défilé de mai. À noter cette année, un cortège unitaire du Front populaire solidariste et la participation de l’Œuvre française et ses Jeunesses nationalistes. Croix celtiques au début du cortège. © Julien Licourt L’extrême droite radicale a fait son défilé annuel, dimanche 13 mai, rue de Rivoli, à Paris. Les mots d’ordre étaient multiples cette année mais dans la droite ligne des appels des années précédentes. À savoir: “Pour la France, Jeanne d’Arc, contre la mondialisation et pour la mémoire de Sébastien Deyzieu”. La référence à Jeanne d’Arc revêtait cette année une importance particulière puisqu’il s’agissait du 600e anniversaire de sa naissance.
Quant à Sébastien Deyzieu, il s’agit d’un jeune militant nationaliste décédé en 1994 après une course-poursuite avec la police, en marge d’une manifestation qui avait été interdite. Une partie du cortège de Troisième voie. © Julien Licourt Julien Licourt. Sophia aram: Un article qui tranche ave... Dailymotion - Gros cons ? - une vidéo Funny | Frequency. Voter front national, une connerie. “On nous explique que ce sont des gens malheureux, qu’ils sont tristes. Du coup ils votent Le Pen pour manifester leur chagrin” S. Aram le 23 mars 2011 La vulgarisation de l’espace médiatique fait qu’en ces temps d’extrême droite dilatée, chaque commentateur émet sa petite musique dont l’objectif un peu fou consiste à endiguer ses poussées électorales.
Chaque fait, détail, geste méticuleusement disséqués au regard de ce que pourrait penser l’hypothétique votant du Front National. Tous les arguments alors se valent, lancés à l’encan, de la diabolisation à la dédiabolisation, du manque de fond ou de l’attitude trop ou pas assez pugnace des médias. Mais de toute manière, le sachant en “fronationalogie” évalue sans coup férir de combien de points (au dixième près) cette poisseuse particularité de la démocratie française va encore s’épaissir.
En expert F. Reste l’hypothèse irénique du vote protestataire, dont l’appareil frontiste servirait de réceptacle. S. Vogelsong – 23 mars 2011 – Paris. Front national : les “gros cons” et les “salauds”… Petite remarque à caractère historique… Hier, Sophia Aram dans sa chronique humoristique de France Inter a lancé à propos des électeurs du FN (après avoir passé un extrait sonore) : “Même si on n’a plus le droit de dire que ce sont des gros cons, c’est quand même pas mal imité, non ?”
Je ne porte aucun jugement sur son propos : l’humoriste a tous les droits. En revanche, la posture a rappelé quelque chose au modeste archéologue de l’observation du Front national… “…Car si Le Pen est un salaud, ceux qui votent pour eux sont des salauds…” (à 38″). C’était en 1992. Nous serons bientôt en 2012. Dans mon livre Le Front national en politique (Balland, mars 1992) comme dans ma thèse de doctorat, je tentais d’expliquer (lassitude…) combien la ‘tactique’ qui consiste à dévaloriser, stigmatiser, insulter, diaboliser, etc., ne pouvait et ne pourrait, à terme, tenir lieu de stratégie face au Front national.
Rien n’a changé. Bien au contraire. C’était vrai hier. Ça le sera toujours demain… Classes moyennes ou classes populaires. The rise of the Radical Right. In the first of a three part series, Dr Geoff Davies considers the worldwide shift to the political Right since the 1980s, and how traditional conservatives have now become radicals. There has been a world-wide shift to the political Right, beginning about 1980 and since then becoming progressively more extreme. This Rightward drift may have been interrupted in the recent elections in the United States, but it may well accelerate in Australia if the Coalition wins in September. Already there has been serious damage to our social fabric, our democratic institutions and our legal and human rights, with rather less economic benefit than is usually claimed.
The prospect of a conflicted, authoritarian, and regressive Australia therefore threatens. The radical Right’s policies have clearly failed, politically and economically. Independent Australia will be publishing this essay in three parts. [Read Part Two: Causes of the shift to the right] [Read Part Three: Consequences and prospects] The rise of the Radical Right (Part Two): False economics. In this second part of his three part series, Dr Geoff Davies looks at the causes of the dramatic political shift to the Right since the 1980s, along with its flimsy basis. [Read Part One: A dramatic shift to the right] [Read Part Three: Consequences and prospects] There has been a dramatic shift to the political Right compared with the postwar decades, and what is now called Right is radical rather than conservative. The shift was driven substantially by a concerted long-term campaign by market fundamentalists.
So-called balance now is well to the Right of Menzies. Labor abandoned its constituency to join the Right. What has caused the dramatic political shift to the Right in Australia and elsewhere since around 1980? The conventional answer would be that we all realised free markets really are the best organising principle for society. It is not true that free markets have been economically successful. So, the swing to the Right was not driven by the strength of the evidence. The rise of the Radical Right (Part Three): Australia today. In this final part of his three part series, Dr Geoff Davies surveys the current political scene, including the disarray of the Labor Party, from a longer perspective. [Read Part One: A dramatic shift to the right] [Read Part Two: Causes of the shift to the right] There has been a dramatic shift to the political Right compared with the postwar decades, and what is now called Right is radical rather than conservative. The shift was driven substantially by a concerted long-term campaign by market fundamentalists.
So-called balance now is well to the Right of Menzies. Labor abandoned its constituency to join the Right. Although the Right remains politically powerful, its policies have failed. The rise of the Right was the result of a long-term campaign by neoliberals and their wealthy sponsors. Neoliberalism is based on an absurdly abstract and unrealistic theory, and its application achieved only mediocrity followed by disaster. My own first-hand observation is not atypical. Add We need YOU! The perversion of social democracy in Australia - The Drum Opinion. Find More Stories The perversion of social democracy in Australia Amy Mullins The somewhat under-recognised British historian Tony Judt (1948-2010) delivered a landmark lecture in 2009 called, ‘ What Is Living and What Is Dead In Social Democracy?
' In it he raises remarkably poignant and palpable points regarding the origin, the flourishing success and the latent decline of the social democratic tradition. What is most haunting is just how closely Judt’s observations can be applied to the nebulous operation of social democracy in Australia today and its place within its local ideological home, the Australian Labor Party. I don't think I'm taking a great leap in saying we all have an intuitive feeling that Labor has a pervasive inability to communicate its policies to the public. "The Australian Labor Party is a and has , to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields. " Email Share x del.icio.us Digg Kwoff StumbleUpon. The Leader of Oz: No heart, no brain, no courage. So after stalling on climate change, pushing boatpeople offshore and declaring billions in cuts to maintain a budget surplus at all costs, the Prime Minister has now announced a crackdown on welfare recipients .
The last discernible difference between Julia Gillard and John Howard has now finally been extinguished. Of course I exaggerate: There are in fact two major differences between Gillard and Howard. 1) Howard actually believed in what he was doing; and 2) Under Howard we would have actually had an emissions trading scheme by now. So let us recalibrate our earlier position: Julia Gillard, a Labor Prime Minister who once claimed to be a socialist, now, with the help of the Greens, sits to the right of John Howard.
Now that’s a thought. Gillard’s speech to the Sydney Institute this week was perhaps the most dull and lazy piece of reactionary politicking yet from a Government that has set all previous records for dull and lazy reactionary politicking over the past nine months. Down and out in Centrelink and NewStart - The Drum Opinion. Find More Stories Down and out in Centrelink and NewStart Malcolm Farnsworth The first welfare rort I ever perpetrated took place inside a Job Network provider’s office. Like all cheating, it started with a small lie, so small that it seemed churlish to resist.
The justification was simple enough. I was something of an oddity at this establishment. Many of the "clients" at this place were middle-aged, unskilled men retrenched from a closed down factory. It was a confronting experience to get to this moment. My experience of social welfare had always been from a position of strength. My welfare experience had been characterised by tax concessions, rebates and deductions. But the Job Network version of welfare was different. The Centrelink worker I spoke to was considerate, courteous and, dare I say it, dignified.
I departed with a card and number, a number that stays with me in perpetuity as far as I can tell. Now here I was the next day explaining my circumstances to a total stranger. X. A vote for anarchy. The political philosopher Jacques Rancière would like to encourage the disruption of the normal order that is real democracy. Julian Baggini hears his campaign If you rage against the growth of consumerist individualism, the dumbing down of education in the name of widening participation or the shallow hedonism of modern life, you're probably just expressing a deep-rooted hatred of democracy.
That's the provocative thesis of Jacques Rancière, one of France's leading political philosophers, who challenges head on the tendency of leftist intellectuals to combine a professed concern for the masses with a haughty dismissal of virtually everything the masses actually think or do. You'd be in good company, though. Rancière claims that hatred of democracy - a phrase he uses as the title of his latest book - is as old as politics itself. "I got my idea of democracy from Plato, from the greatest critic of democracy," he says in his staccato, effervescent English.
Jean-Claude Milner : Les penchants criminels de l'Europe démocratique. Jacques Rancière. Jacques Rancière (born 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris (St. Denis) who came to prominence when he co-authored Reading Capital (1968), with the structural Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.[1] Life and work[edit] Rancière contributed to the influential volume Reading Capital (though his contribution is not contained in the partial English translation) before publicly breaking with Althusser over his attitude toward the May 1968 student uprising in Paris; Rancière felt Althusser's theoretical stance didn't leave enough room for spontaneous popular uprising.[2] Since then, Rancière has departed from the path set by his teacher and published a series of works probing the concepts that make up our understanding of political discourse, such as ideology and proletariat.
Influence[edit] Selected bibliography[edit] Rancière's work in English translation Further reading. Hatred of Democracy. I read Ranciere's Hatred of Democracy yesterday. There is something appealing in his discussion of the scandal of democracy, although, ultimately, I'm not convinced of his underlying thesis. What's appealing? Ranciere's emphasis on chance (he gets here via a reading of Plato). The drawing of lots attests to a form of government that allows a role for chance, that is, for those with no claim to rule actually to rule. Ranciere argues, then, that democracy is well understood as a law of chance.
I find this idea quite provocative, and, yes, a scandal. It reminds me that insofar as there is no entitlement to govern--complete idiots have as much right to rule as anyone--democracy has this wonderfully irreverent core (I'm tempted to call it democracy's 'being there' in an effort to cite the Peter Sellers film somewhat against the grain in which it is typically invoked). But, Ranciere links this chance to equality in a way I don't quite get. Their power must become a political power. Rancière, for Dummies. By Ben Davis Jacques Rancière, The Politics of Aesthetics, 116 pp., Continuum, 2006, $12.95. The 66-year-old French philosopher Jacques Rancière is clearly the new go-to guy for hip art theorists. Artforum magazine’s ever-sagacious online "Diary" has referred to Rancière as the art world’s "darling du jour," and in its recent issue, the magazine itself has described digital video artist Paul Chan as "Rancièrian" -- as an aside, without further explanation, no less!
For anyone looking for a primer, Rancière’s slim The Politics of Aesthetics has just been published in paperback. Rancière has the undeniable virtue, for the esoterica-obsessed art world at least, of being something of an odd duck. The Politics of Aesthetics is a quick and dirty tour of a number of these themes. Politically, Rancière favors the concept of equality. Back-to-back with this "esthetics of politics," in Rancière’s thinking, is a "politics of esthetics" itself. BEN DAVIS is associate editor of Artnet Magazine.
Dealing with the Real Anders Breivik. How, exactly, could a right-wing terrorist convince liberals he was, in fact, a right-wing terrorist? It’s a question Anders Breivik no doubt ponders. Remember, before embarking on his murderous mission, Breivik compiled and distributed a lengthy manifesto, precisely to dispel any mystery about his motivations. Now, he stands in the dock, giving military salutes and explaining, again and again and again, about why he did what he did. Yet, somehow, liberal pundits and politicians refuse to listen. Breivik talks politics – and then the pop psychologists dredge through his biography for eccentricities to explain his actions away. That response seems itself almost pathological, an obsessive refusal to acknowledge that Breivik might represent what he claims, that he’s not a weak-minded isolate bewitched by ‘World of Warcraft’ but an experienced far-right activist acting to advance specific political goals.
Most of all, the dime store diagnoses obscure just how widely Breivik’s ideas are shared. The 'lessons' of Breivik.