Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Arguable, but very interesting. An interview with the author. Here are the main arguments in case you cannot access the article . “Constant emphasis on racial and ethnic disparities diverts public attention from the growing class divide in the West between the college-educated overclass and the working class. The nation-state is the only unit of government that has been able to mobilise extra-political popular sentiments and national identity to improve the condition of the majority of people, not just an oligarchy or aristocracy. The actual ruling class in the US and similar Western democracies is not a tiny number of freakishly rich individuals, or heirs and heiresses, but the top 10 or 15 per cent of the population – almost all of them with college diplomas and often graduate or professional degrees. I was criticised for arguing in  The New Class War  that education, not income, is the major dividing line between classes in the modern West.  There are two working class...

“ In this perverse upending of the very meaning of decolonization, to decolonize France is to rid the nation of the immigrants who are “colonizing” it . Paradoxically, the most vocal advocates of decolonization today are not formerly colonized subjects, but the nativist guardians of the borders of France against the purported invasion of immigrants.”

Race, Labour and Citizenship

  We shouldn’t be surprised by the chaos

 The Slippery Domain of Integration

“ In France, the mostly working-class descendants of postcolonial immigrants from North and Sub-Saharan Africa   were the first victims of the economic crisis that began in the 1980s, and were subjected to segregation, whether in accessing housing or jobs or in their contacts with the authorities (racial profiling by the police). Given the growing importance of questions of identity in French public debate, it’s not surprising that some young people express their rejection of a society that has no room for them by stressing their personal identity — religion, country of origin and race (defined by the colour of their skin). The poorest are deprived, for socioeconomic reasons, of resources that would let them diversify their social connections and affiliations. We will never understand the world we live in if we forget that social class, defined in terms of economic and cultural capital, remains the determining factor to which other dimensions of identity are tied.” —Stéphane Beaud ...

The Australian way

"The killer clowns offer the oligarchs something else too: distraction and deflection. While the  kleptocrats fleece us , we are urged to look elsewhere. We are mesmerised by buffoons who encourage us to channel the anger that should be reserved for billionaires towards immigrants, women, Jews, Muslims, people of colour and other imaginary enemies and customary scapegoats. Just as it was in the 1930s, the new demagoguery is a con, a revolt against the impacts of capital, financed by capitalists." From Trump to Johnson: nationalists are on the rise — backed by billionaire oligarchs

Unpatriotic propaganda by The Guardian against our "thriving liberal democracy" and "tolerance" And this is only public racism, i.e. racism by people who have courage. Who knows about the hidden one. Racism rising since brexit vote, nationwide study reveals

"Ms. Merkel, for all her power and influence, is just one politician. Germany’s new political crisis runs much deeper. It stems from an economic system that has resulted in stagnant wages and insecure jobs. The erosion of Germany’s postwar settlement — a strong welfare state, full-time employment, the opportunity to move up in the world — has created a populace open to messages and movements previously banished to the fringes." It doesn't matter who replaces Merkel. Germany is broken. A background analysis German capitalism

  Spain's turn "In every [European] country about ten per cent of the population are secretly fascist bastards." — Paul Mason The (neo)liberals (the free marketeers, the war criminals, the So-called Socialists, the technocrats, the "Democrats", etc, have  created some shit and now someone has to clear it away. 

UK "Bad girls" in Holloway Prison

On veiling or unveiling, again France Choice?

Tales of Two Londons

Britain The racists won. So are they happy now?

"Hooliganism came relatively late to Russian football, emerging in the early 1990s as a self-conscious copy of the decades-old English example – with its vicious firms, favoured clothing labels and racist chants." The rise of Russia's neo-Nazi football hooligans

Crossing divides

Working to rule

"The point I try to make in that article is that the debate on whether Jews should be accorded full political rights in 1840s Prussia presents some striking similarities with the debate on Muslims’ integration into French society today. More precisely, my point is that the French state’s demand that religious minorities (and let’s be frank, Muslims in particular) respect the principle of secularism in the public space is reminiscent of Bruno Bauer’s position on the Jewish Question. Bruno Bauer believed that the Jews deserved to be granted political rights only if they stopped being Jews and embraced Enlightenment thought. In other words, he conceived of political emancipation as a kind of award that individuals receive only if they renounce their own religious identity and embrace the identity that the secular state deems as appropriate. Likewise, the French state demands that Muslims get rid of their religious/cultural practices if they want to show willingness to integrate into...

Attacks on "populism" seek to enshrine the idea that there is no alternative