Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

"Salvini is attempting to mould an aggressive Catholicism around a hyper-masculinised personality cult. The crucifix and the rosary become emblems of far-right Crusader-style military erotica, to be wielded by real men against the limp humanitarianism of Pope Francis who has spoken out on behalf of refugees and, most famously, in 2013  lamented ‘ the globalisation of indifference’  at an open-air mass in  Lampedusa, held against the backdrop of the hulks of shipwrecked migrant boats." Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology if Fascism comes to mind. White supremacy, racial patriarchy: two sides of the same coin

"This is the Orientalism of an era in which Western liberalism has plunged into deep crisis, exacerbated by anxieties over Syrian refugees, borders, terrorism and, of course, economic decline. It is an Orientalism in crisis, incurious, vindictive, and often cruel, driven by hatred rather than fascination, an Orientalism of walls rather than border-crossing. The anti-integrationist, Islamophobic form of contemporary Orientalism is enough to make one nostalgic for the lyrical, romantic Orientalism that Mathias Énard elegizes, somewhat wishfully, as a bridge between East and West in his 2015 Goncourt Prize-winning novel,  Compass .  If Orientalism has assumed an increasingly hostile, Muslim-hating tone, this is because the “East” is increasingly inside the “West.” This is a clash not of civilizations, but rather a collision of two overlapping phenomena: the crisis of Western neoliberal capitalism, which has aggravated tensions over identity and citizenship, and the collapse o...