Lexicus
Deity
You are not actually responding to the argument I'm making because you are still reasoning from the implicit premise that racism must spring from phenotypical differences in a logically consistent manner.
Closing ranks: The onset of a clash of civilizations
- Thread starter aelf
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You are not actually responding to the argument I'm making because you are still reasoning from the implicit premise that racism must spring from phenotypical differences in a logically consistent manner.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The problem with statements like "Europeans are concerned about Muslim immigration" is, there's no such thing as "Muslim immigration", nor do any but a minority of conspiracy theorists really think about immigration in those terms on a day-to-day level. Immigrants do not come from Muslimland, bearing Muslamic mores and culture, they come from Algeria or Pakistan or Turkey or Syria, and the tensions originating which emerge are not between "Europeans and Muslims", as if these were terms that in any meaningful way describe how people live their lives, but between Frenchmen and Algerians, English and Pakistanis. (Which, I'll grant, are only marginally less ridiculous descriptions.) And, on an immediate level, people kinda-sorta know this, insofar as what they take offence to is not an abstract category of "Muslim", but whatever particular points of difference they encounter.
"Muslim" is an after-the-fact categorisation, a way of stringing local tensions into a grand (and grandiose) narrative of civilisational struggle, rather than a series of comparable but basically independent failures of public policy. So people take the Muslims they are familiar with, and whatever basket of stereotypes and prejudices they carry regarding these local Muslims, arbitrarily generalise these preconceptions from Timbuktu to Jakarta, and imagine that this invented fiction of homogeneity is proof of a monolithic Islamic civilisation, because that's just about good enough for them to convince themselves that the story holds. They're not getting all hot and bothered about immigrants because they're concerned about Islam, rather, they affect concern about Islam because they don't like immigrants.
Hannah Arendt observed the mistake of Weimar liberals in trying to engage with the claims of anti-Semites as if they were attempts to state an actually-existing truth, where in fact they were statements of what the anti-Semites needed to be true for them to get away with what they intended to do to the Jews. Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of boring white dudes yelling "oh, so everyone you don't like is a Nazi", I will fear no evil, because I think it's worth thinking about the narrative of "Europe vs Islam" in those terms.
revised about four hundred times within 20 minutes of posting, in case anyone happened to quote an earlier version.
"Muslim" is an after-the-fact categorisation, a way of stringing local tensions into a grand (and grandiose) narrative of civilisational struggle, rather than a series of comparable but basically independent failures of public policy. So people take the Muslims they are familiar with, and whatever basket of stereotypes and prejudices they carry regarding these local Muslims, arbitrarily generalise these preconceptions from Timbuktu to Jakarta, and imagine that this invented fiction of homogeneity is proof of a monolithic Islamic civilisation, because that's just about good enough for them to convince themselves that the story holds. They're not getting all hot and bothered about immigrants because they're concerned about Islam, rather, they affect concern about Islam because they don't like immigrants.
Hannah Arendt observed the mistake of Weimar liberals in trying to engage with the claims of anti-Semites as if they were attempts to state an actually-existing truth, where in fact they were statements of what the anti-Semites needed to be true for them to get away with what they intended to do to the Jews. Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of boring white dudes yelling "oh, so everyone you don't like is a Nazi", I will fear no evil, because I think it's worth thinking about the narrative of "Europe vs Islam" in those terms.
revised about four hundred times within 20 minutes of posting, in case anyone happened to quote an earlier version.
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That's because the problem has nothing to do with race, and nothing to do with religion. The Clash of Civilizations is between the liberal and the conservative. And all societies have some of both.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That's a funny way to spell "the proletariat and the bourgeoisie"!
That's a funny way to spell "the proletariat and the bourgeoisie"!
Haven't you been following politics? Not all the the proletariat are non-conservative. Not all the bourgeoisie are non-liberal.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Not everyone promoting the "clash of civiliastions" narrative is conservative, not everyone criticising it is liberal. I wouldn't expect to find any one line of division that explains everything.
Verbose
Deity
No, they have been racialised as "nomads", which brought an entirely different kettle of fish compared to the Germans or Portuguese. Primarily because they were originally racialised as a landless nation. They weren't the only thus ostracized group of course.
If not, we would be talking about them as "Rumanians" or "Czechs" of whatever. ("Finns" actually, fairly common up north.) But we are precisely NOT doing that. And when French media for a while was talking about a problem with "Rumanians" coming to France to beg at street corners, Rumania protested — these people were no such thing...
So no, they have NOT been racialised in the sense that might be the case with Germans or Portuguese.
Well if the opposition to Muslim immigration springs not from any phenotypical discrimination but rather from cultural tension, I think it's a very distinct thing than what is generally understood as "racism" in the US.
That's a lot of words to say some very obvious stuff. What you (perhaps deliberately) failed to mention is that people, even most European people, do use Muslim as a categorization group. It's just that it may mean different things in different countries. In France when they talk about Muslim immigration they usually mean people from the Maghreb, and these people do have a lot of common cultural traits (even if of course there's a lot of variety, as there is inside any country or region). In Germany or the UK when people talk about Muslim in everyday speech they probably mean different groups. But that doesn't mean that most people don't use this categorization. They do, which is why, when asked, most Europeans say they are opposed to Muslim immigration. This is a fact, though one leftists don't like to acknowledge as it kind of short-circuits their cartoonish understanding of the world.
Not seeing how the fact that the Roma are nomad changes anything. Sure, there's more hostility to them than to Germans or Portuguese (or anyone else, including Muslims). I didn't say otherwise. I was just pointing out that the American reduction of European opposition to immigration being in fact an opposition to brown people is ridiculous and wrong.
aelf
Ashen One
Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is more fuel for the fire, feeding both sides' view of a conflict between the Islamic and the Judeo-Christian worlds. And I doubt it was a completely random whim on Trump's part.
Does anyone still doubt that a clash of civilizations is beginning?
Does anyone still doubt that a clash of civilizations is beginning?
Senethro
Overlord
Nah, I reckon it was. Its his one trick for shifting attention.
If there is one thing that will unite the Republicans and Democrats in Congress behind an AR-15 toting, cigar smoking, golden space-marine-suit with (muscle breastplate) wearing, combover-bloing in the breeze, with the American flag in his other hand, sitting astride a Velociratptor Donald Supreme Leader Trump... its a war breaking out between Israel and any Middle-Eastern/Muslim/African/they-look-like-Arabs-so-close-enough nation. It will be deja-2001 all over again
In other words... I really hope not.
Adelson really knows how to pull his strings. Flatter him the right way and he'll flatten anything for you.
Lexicus
Deity
It isn't really, though, because the key point is the essentialism. Muslims are seen by the right as an inherent Other whose bad characteristics spring in deterministic fashion from the essence of being Muslim. The more sophisticated takes (e.g. the likes of Sam Harris) are very clear in how they see the problems with Islam as in some sense essential to its nature, while the problems with Christianity, Judaism, and other religions are discussed in very different terms.
The only clash of civilization I see beginning is the one between the civilization of the super-rich and the civilization of everyone else.
aelf
Ashen One
That may be the underlying conflict in society, but the rich and their working class fellow-travelers have successfully created another one that the world will be fighting.
I see you've been to the movies recently
As a matter of fact, for the second year running I've watched a film 24+ hours before you did, which should crown me King of the Nerds.
But it's an opinion I've held for a long time.The Iran-Iraq War, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the old ‘Malaysian insurgency‘, etc. have served as great excuses to sell arms, foodstuffs, medicines, fuel and whatever else to the parties to the conflict at obscene profit margins.
But it's an opinion I've held for a long time.The Iran-Iraq War, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, the old ‘Malaysian insurgency‘, etc. have served as great excuses to sell arms, foodstuffs, medicines, fuel and whatever else to the parties to the conflict at obscene profit margins.
To your first point... All Hail,
Dilly DillyAs to your second point... yes... again Dilly Dilly
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
I have a "Clash of Civilizations" going. The Zulu's just built the statue of Liberty and went Fundy.
