Skip to main content

Posts

The Ministry of Nostalgia Or Keep Calm and Carry On – the sinister message behind the slogan that seduced the nation " The power of Keep Calm and Carry On comes from a yearning for an actual or imaginary English patrician attitude of stiff upper lips and muddling through. This is, however, something that largely survives only in the popular imagination, in a country devoted to services and consumption, where elections are decided on the basis of house-price value, and given to sudden, mawkish outpourings of sentiment. The poster isn’t just a case of the return of the repressed, it is rather the return of repression itself. It is a nostalgia for the state of being repressed – solid, stoic, public spirited, as opposed to the depoliticised, hysterical and privatised reality of Britain over the last 30 years."
Where Were the Post-Hebdo Free Speech Crusaders as France Spent the Last Year Crushing Free Speech? "A full year later, it’s still common to hear supporters of western militarism falsely accuse portions of “the left” of having sanctioned or justified the attack on Charlie Hebdo  solely  on the ground that they refused to cheer for the content of Hebdo’s ideas."
" Mainstream media and politicians are in any case stoking pre-existing anti-Muslim racism and further strengthening the smear campaign against refugees: the Minister President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hannelore Kraft, has stated that criminal, foreign offenders must be deported. And on the broadcasting network Sat1’s breakfast show, we hear the demand to “defend our values, way of life and beliefs” against “Muslim men”. Meanwhile, the relative silence about the vastly numerous male bystanders in the crowd speaks volumes, as does that as well as over a hundred police officers present at the scene who did nothing to intervene in order to protect the women victims , despite the fact that there was even an undercover policewoman among them, is speaking volumes."