Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

“[W]hether demographic, democratic or cultural, the central tropes of the ‘looming crisis’ approach are monolithism—migrants are African for Smith, Muslim for Caldwell, Mexican for Huntington—and scale: the unprecedented numbers that are about to set forth.” Some figures are crucial to dispel myths and misconceptions. “[T]he latest figures for international migrants—defined as those who have been dwelling for at least a year outside their country of birth—is just over a quarter of a billion, or 3.6 per cent of the global population. Around 60 per cent of these are ‘labour migrants’, roughly 20 per cent are people displaced by war, repression or natural disaster, while 6 million are international students. “[O]ver half the cross-border migrants in Europe—44 million, out of a total 87 million—come from other European countries, mainly in Eastern and Southeastern Europe; ‘irregular’ arrivals by land and sea totalled only 189,000 in 2022. “Economic migration has grown and changed, but the ...

A very good piece “To understand the flammable situation at which the pyromaniac far right has taken aim,  we need less mass psychology and more political economy .”

Ukraine is mentioned, but Israel and Palestine, according to Katya and the BBC , have no relation to the EU imperialist policies. 

“Rather than dividing the right from the left, migration splits both right and left formations internally. Upon gaining power, the only way for both left and right to resolve this tangle of contradictions is through hypocrisy: to adopt practices that contradict public proclamations. In reality, whoever is in government, it is always the labour market, in turn determined by relevant legislation, the business cycle and the geopolitical situation, that determines migration policies . Barbed wire

Pertinent. “This re-barbarization of the outsider takes the form of liberal sensibility. In learned discourse it takes the form of appropriating the anti-orientalist theses of Edward Said: in this way orientals, especially those who describe themselves, quite implausibly, as postcolonial, in objective complicity with fundamentalist priests of authenticity, merge into the vicious cycle of this discourse of singularity; orientals are thus reorientalized in a traffic of mirror images between postmodernists and neo-orientalists speaking for difference, and native orientals ostentatiously displaying their badges of authenticity, in a play of exoticism from outside and self-parody from the inside. I have shown this in various writings to be a species of false memory, of invented memory marketed like the retro features of the 1996 Vespa. In this context, the discourse of culturalist specificity – instead of that of economic and social inequality and inequity – devolves into a post-1989 postul...

The pandemic may have subsided, but the epidemic of ‘identity culture’ carries on. Reactionary nationalism is openly expressed in comments

How French politics has ended up being a politics of culture. Excerpts from Daniel Zamora’s article on Catalyst The shift is due to the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and alternatives to capitalism. In a post-ideological France, class struggle has been displaced onto the terrain of identity. Politicians, media commentators, and scholars from both left and right all seem to agree that the French political debate has been contaminated… What they’ve been labeling ‘Americanization’ is a certain kind of identity politics they believe is threatening French republicanism.  Despite Macron’s professed disdain for identity politics, his alternative can scarcely be construed as anti-identitarian. To understand this state of affairs, we need to look at the recent history of identity in France, a history that begins not with woke concepts colonizing French universities but rather with the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and ...

“French politicians spend little time discussing socio-economic issues. The most polarised debates revolve around  culture wars . In France, they focus on immigration, Islam and its alleged threat to  laïcité  and French republican values, culture and education. There are constant attacks on ‘ Islamo-Leftism ’ and ‘ woke culture ’. These strengthen the hand of the far Right, which traditionally thrives on those issues.” A creature of the ‘French establishment’

Violence against the unwanted, the unwashed, the invaders, the illegal

“Jean-Daniel Lévy, managing director of Harris Interactive, which conducted the poll, said: “Overall, the French have the same views as those that were expressed by the generals. Researchers say that support for Le Pen in the army has been running at just over 40 per cent, which is not far off the level in the wider population given the far-right’s support among the young and the relative youth of active soldiers. In the police, support exceeds 50 per cent.”

Beyond Exceptionalism

  Why Trump gained support among minorities

A Part of Denmark

"Get Brexit done" has won! Related: The UK is more regionally divided than any comparable advanced economy. Our analysis finds stark regional differences in productivity, income, unemployment, health and politics. We are not the only country to have regional divides, but our regional inequalities in productivity, income and health are far worse than in any comparable country.  

Two weeks ago, an Italian student at an elite university told a language teacher: "immigrants are incompatible with the Italian society."  I immediately thought of how my iPad port is incompatible with my canon camera's lead.  Hostile Environment How Immigrants Became Scapegoats

" A pact between M5s and the PD carries all manner of dangers for Italy. Should a deal between them prove impossible, the country faces early elections and a likely huge mandate for Salvini. This would finalise the Lega’s capture of the conservative middle classes, while reducing Berlusconi’s old party, Forza Italia, to a mere rump entity after its quarter-century domination of the right. Victory would also propel the Lega’s march into the once hostile southern regions." Oh, those "middle classes", the engine of progress!    Why Italy is heading for crisis once more

This is a good picture of Britain's political-economic situation There is a historical background prior to 2016 and the crisis that led to Brexit. "There was now a clear division between those leaders who represented the interests of big business and the City of London wanting ‘free trade’ and a big role in the EU and rank and file Conservatives who    represented small businesses and the narrow nationalist and racist elements in small provincial towns. They wanted no truck with ‘Europe’ and harkened back to ‘good old days’ of a white imperial Britain ploughing its own furrow – something, of course, that had disappeared even before the UK joined the EU. This division was heightened by the bulk of the ‘popular’ press, whose moguls were either Australian-Americans like Rupert Murdoch, or aristocratic empire believers like the Rothermeres or the Barclay brothers." The analysis also includes the impacts of "no-deal Brexit" on business and labour. A crucial ar...

Britain's National Breakdown Over Brexit (Written before Johnson became PM)

"The border in this sense is a very recent, twentieth century form of racial sovereignty. It is no more inevitable or natural than the existence of concentration camps. The fact, however, that it feels natural, that it has achieved the appearance of 'the way things are', that it seems inevitable, is an indication of how powerful the ideology is." The border as political fantasy

This is what "left" means according to the BBC. A mother of two, she came to power with a traditional centre-left focus on stronger welfare policies but also a promise to be tough on immigration. Last year she announced plans to place a cap on "non-Western" immigration including refugees and family reunions, to be voted on every year in the Folketing. She also proposed sending asylum seekers to reception centres outside the EU, for example in North Africa, for their requests to be processed. — the BBC Denmark has taken part of the American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. One needs to add the economic policies Mette is advocating.