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Showing posts with the label racism

The Racism of Anti-Racists: Bourdieu, Said, and Inverted Orientalism

“On one hand, we have the symbolic violence of intellectual gatekeeping, where certain voices—usually elite, often Western—decide which suffering is legitimate and which resistance is ‘too Western’, ‘too liberal’, or ‘not authentic enough’. On the other, we have the remnants of Orientalism living on in reverse: an unwillingness to confront tyranny when it wears traditional clothes or speaks the language of anti-imperialism. “Bourdieu showed us how elites define what counts as legitimate knowledge. Said exposed how empire produces false knowledge in order to rule. But what neither could have fully foreseen is this third form: where knowledge cloaked in anti-imperialist jargon becomes a tool to delegitimize resistance .” Here is an example: Tariq Ali cannot being himself to go beyond 'geopolitics' to sociology . There is not a single mention of the Iranian society, power relations, repression, etc., and how all that is related to 'geopolitics'. 

Germany's Reckoning With Its Past is No Longer a Model

“[O]ver time, Holocaust memory in Germany progressively transformed into a policy of unconditional support for Israel. What was once an example of historical reckoning has become a framework that, in my view, contributes to the erasure of critical perspectives and enables actions that contradict the very principles of justice and accountability that this memory was meant to uphold. “The focus on the Holocaust, while important, has overshadowed or minimized the memory of colonialism, creating a tension that became more apparent after October 7. “This ‘aporetic’ memory politics is the premise for ignoring the colonial dimension of Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. In the German and Western European discourse, Netanyahu is depicted as the representative of the Jews as victims. Therefore, Palestinians are not a dispossessed people, but a new embodiment of antisemitism. “Germany is today complicit in the genocide in Gaza, just like France, Italy, and the UK. However, Germany’s ...

The Great Camouflage by Suzanne Césaire

Note there is an error here: “In keeping with the patriarchal norms of colonial and Caribbean life, Suzanne’s own ambitions came second to Aimé’s, who eventually became the first president of Senegal.” Aimé Césaire was never a president of any country. I have emailed the editors to rectify it. Uncensoring the subconscious

Quote of the Week: Pure Colonialist, Nationalist and Chauvinistic Racism

Israel has reached an unimaginable peak of evil. And indeed many people all over the world find it hard to imagine that this is so… The only possible conclusion must be that Israeli evil has nothing to do with Judaism and that what is manifested in Israeli behavior is not Jewishness. It is pure colonialist, nationalist and chauvinistic racism and should be treated as such.“ — Nurit Peled-Elhanan , Israeli academic and author

Academic Complicity

“The Western world’s last settler-colonial regime, committed to an ideology born in nineteenth-century Europe, remains remarkably adept at diffusing a story that erases Palestinian humanity,  including in the realm of higher education . Most students, however, no longer buy this Eurocentric erasure – nor does most of the global population.”

It Isn’t About the ‘Bread and Butter’ Issues

As ever, the ‘legitimate concerns’ brigade includes a well-heeled faction of the lumpencommentariat, such as Carole Malone, Matthew Goodwin, Dan Wootton and Allison Pearson. Notably, however, these ‘concerns’ aren’t about the ‘bread and butter’ issues that many leftists seem to think will defuse racist agitation: as I’ve said many times before, it isn’t the economy, stupid. What the two recent moral panics have in common is the coprological image of matter out of place: borders and boundaries eroding and people being were they ought not to be. As was proven when the court revealed that the suspect is a British minor and the riots persisted, it doesn’t matter what ‘the facts’ are: we can’t ‘fact-check’ this phenomenon into oblivion. It would be instructive to ask one of these ‘whiteness’ or ‘Englishness’ rioters what they would have done had the suspect been white. One of the rationalisations of rioters claiming not to be racist was that, because the suspect killed children, he was not ...

Documentary: Frantz Fanon – Black Skin White Mask

 But why a British actor as Fanon? Related A review of Concerning Violence

On the Western Media and the Erasure of Palestine

“The fact that the Western media only uses the register of violence to speak on Palestine feeds on a co lonial, racist, patriarchal, and capitalist discourse that aims to justify the Israeli settler colonial erasure of Palestine. While violence against the Palestinians is specific, it does not occur in isolation from what is happening elsewhere in the world. Black and brown people are racialized everywhere in Europe and North America, and that racialization contributes to the demonization of Palestinian people.” What ‘the West’, and its media, work tirelessly to hide