Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Good! Unsurprisingly, one of the most significant impacts of the  Guardian ’ s series is to reaffirm the laziest tenet in the liberal worldview: horseshoe theory. Its adherents hold that the further one drifts on the spectrum, left or right, one is bound to end up at a point which converges with the other extreme. What other conclusion could you draw from this treatment of “populism,” a singular phenomenon that sees in the anti-Roma marches of Hungarian post-fascists Jobbik and the anti-gender violence demonstrations of Spanish leftists Podemos essentially the same thing? The Guardian's Populism Panic

In an interview with Al Jazeera in October last year, he said: "It was such a different world then. Britain was a different country. It was a country with a heart. We have lost some of our early love for each other. "And today, 'immigrant' is a dirty word, it's ridiculous." Harry Leslie Smith

Capitalism, democracy, climate, war, “globalism” and “national statehood” are off the agenda while purists ineffectually worry about the “niceties of national and international asylum law”. Reinventing the Anti-Immigrant Wheel

The end of May?

What, then, explains Brexit? Mass immigration is another fear across the EU, and it was whipped up in the UK by the Leave campaign, in which Nigel Farage was a conspicuous speaker and organiser, alongside prominent Conservatives. But xenophobia on its own is by no means enough to outweigh fear of economic meltdown. In England, as elsewhere, it has been growing as one government after another has lied about the scale of immigration. But if the referendum on the EU had just been a contest between these fears, as the political establishment sought to make it, Remain would have no doubt won by a handsome margin, as it did in the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence. There were further factors. After Maastricht, the British political class declined the straitjacket of the euro, only to pursue a native neoliberalism more drastic than any on the continent: first, the financialised hubris of New Labour, plunging Britain into a banking crisis before any other European country, then a Con

Opportunist Populism: On Italy's Five Star Movement

Italy's Ides of March

Italy " Social phantoms always emerge in moments of crisis. Hatred of the foreigner is the result of a lethal cocktail of bad politics, irresponsible information and economic crisis. Now in Italy all bearings have been completely lost and a climate of endless electoral campaigning has triggered a chain reaction that no one seems able to keep in check: the entire political campaign is focused on the subject of immigration." Keep silent. Don't talk about it

With Whites, Jews, and Us, Houria Bouteldja launches a scathing critique of the European Left from an indigenous anti-colonial perspective, reflecting on Frantz Fanon's political legacy, the republican pact, the Shoah, the creation of Israel, feminism, and the fate of postcolonial immigration in the West in the age of rising anti-immigrant populism. Drawing upon such prominent voices as James Baldwin, Malcolm X, and Jean Genet, she issues a polemical call for a militant anti-racism grounded in the concept of revolutionary love. Such love will not come without significant discomfort for whites, and without necessary provocation. Bouteldja challenges widespread assumptions among the Left in the United States and Europe - that anti-Semitism plays any role in Arab - Israeli conflicts, for example, or that philo-Semitism doesn't in itself embody an oppressive position; that feminism or postcolonialist theory is free of colonialism; that integrationalism is a solution rather than a

Austria In my last holiday I met an Austrian woman who was spending 6 weeks in Thailand. She had replaced all of her teeth there. She is chauvinistic, but she claims she is not racist. She thinks that "there are too many Muslims in Austria!" "Muslim men taking welfare money and doing nothing all day long!" "A big damage is taking place". The woman herself is not working and gets 500 per month for her 18-month-old daughter. She has been in Mexico, Peru, Argentina and other countries. She didn't know that Londoners elected a Muslim as a Mayor. (Ko Samui, June 2017) Meanwhile, our close friend Saudi Arabia has been the main criminal behind a one million case of cholera in Yemen (a figure by the ICRC). This is not a bad thing in reality. Less Yemenis will make it to Europe. Therefore, Europeans shouldn't worry too much about the rise of nationalism and neofascism!

Désenchantement des maghrébins au Québec

The Singing of Marseille

Labour and immigration

To understand 'brexit', look to Britain's tabloids

Immigration will remain a toxic issue until Britain faces up to its colonial past

France: the choice

I am crying for these middle class people

Is France's Marine le Pen far-right? This is a good analysis.

Why the system will still win

After Brexit, here we have another product of neoliberalism (a form of capitalism). So far the effect has been in the two most aggressive countries where neloliberalism have been implemented.  " Trump has won because a (just) sufficient number of people are fed up with the status quo.  Apparently 60% of voters asked at the polling booths reckon that the country “is on the wrong track” and two-thirds were fed up and angry with the Washington government – something Clinton personifies. Like the vote of the Brits for Brexit, against all expectations, a sufficient number of voters in America (mainly white, older and in small businesses or working in failing industries in smaller central US states) have overcome the vote of the youth, the more educated and better-off in the big cities.  But remember hardly more than 50% or so of eligible voters turned out to vote.  A huge swathe of people never vote in American elections and they constitute a sizeable part of the working class.