[lit-ideas] Re: French effiiciency spawns riots?
- From: Michael Chase <goya@xxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 17 Nov 2005 09:56:08 +0100
Le 16 nov. 05, à 17:37, Eric Yost a écrit :
MC: ...Broken off from their roots and with no particular way of
integrating French culture at any level other than the menial level of
their parents, these kids wound up angry and with nothing to lose.
EY: I am a nationalist (you would say jingoist) more than a globalist.
So I tend to see failures of integration as failures of a solid
nationalism. In other words, French society fails to see the
miserables as French, but rather views them as global riff-raff. You
mentioned global hip-hop as a particularly pernicious factor in the
unrest.
Isn't it the case that a comprehensive nationalism would take better
care of its miserables? And that globalism sees them as transient
migrant populations that can be left to fester for themselves?
I suspect you won't accept this argument, and would be interested in
learning why.
M.C. You're right that I wouldn't accept it. My basic reason is that in
my view, nationalism sucks, big time.
It would probably be going too far to say it is the root of all evil.
But not by much. Nationalism is the maginification to a nation-wide
scale of our most basic, and base, tendencies : egocentrism,
aggressiveness, machismo. It's the logical extension of that most
primitive human urge : to think we're better than anyone else. It leads
first to selfishness and disinterest in others, then to xenophobia,
then, in the worst cases, to fascism and desires for world domination.
The history of Soviet communism is a good example. It started as a
humanistic philosophy, intended to better the fate of the working
classes and based on the extraordinarily brilliant work of a great
scholar, Karl Marx. It was adopted and rigidified by Lenin, who was
less interested in theoretical subtleties than in the eminently
practical problem overturning a particularly brutal and repressive
regime, namely Czarism, and then organizing and defending the world's
first truly revolutionary state in the face of world-wide opposition.
But by the time Stalin defeated and killed, imprisoned or exiled
Trotsky and his Internationalist followers, the fate of Communism was
sealed : it was henceforth an international movement in name only, and
all its decisions and acts were from now on dedicated exclusively to
promoting the interests of the Soviet Union : that is, to nationalism.
Ironically, it was partly natonalism that spelled the end of the
Soviet Union : no longer Russian nationalism, but Ukranian, Polish,
Latvian, and Kazakh nationalism, to name but a few. And to what has
this new nationalism given birth ? To regimes awash in corruption,
economically and culturally bankrupt, rife with anti-Semitism and
anti-gypsy movements, in which reactionary theocracies collaborate with
brutal mafias and Nazi sympathizers are recycled as saints.
So goes the dialectic of nationalism. If this is the kind of future
Eric has in mind for France, may I respectfully request that he stick
it where the sun don't shine?
Michael Chase
(goya@xxxxxxxxxxx)
CNRS UPR 76
7, rue Guy Moquet
Villejuif 94801
France
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