Dieudonné: from anti-racist activism to allegations of anti-Semitism

Author(s):  
Jonathan Ervine

This chapter will show that career trajectory of Dieudonné raises many important questions about the limits of freedom expression and the extent to which it is possible to police offensive humour. Despite being associated with anti-racist movements in the 1990s, he has more recently come to be associated with the far right at a time when his stage shows and public declarations have become ever more controversial. Indeed, he has been convicted of inciting racial hatred following both performances and public declarations in which he has made anti-Semitic comments. This chapter will argue that the way in which Dieudonné foregrounds many of his stage shows by alluding to controversies in which he has been involved makes it increasingly difficult to separate Dieudonné the on-stage comedian and Dieudonné the polemicist.

Sociologija ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jovan Byford

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the continuity in the ideology of the Eastern European far right has been apparent in the extent to which the restoration of right-wing ideas was accompanied with widespread rewriting of history and the rehabilitation of contentious historical figures, many of whom, 40 years earlier, had attained notoriety for their antisemitism and fascist and pro-Nazi leanings. This article examines a specific example of postcommunist revisionism in Serbian society. The principal aim of the article is to explore the rhetoric of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic (1880 - 1956), a controversial Serbian Orthodox Christian philosopher whose writing includes overtly antisemitic passages, and elucidate the strategies that his supporters have been deploying to promote him and maintain his popularity while countering objections of antisemitism. The paper focuses on the way in which the controversy surrounding Velimirovic?s antisemitism was managed around the time of his formal canonisation in May 2003. The author argues that unlike the Roman Catholic and Protestant Christian denominations, eastern churches, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, have as yet not formally addressed from a doctrinal or ecclesiological perspective the problem of Christian antisemitism. Due to the unwavering traditionalism justifications and denials of antisemitism must be constructed in such a way that they present the bishop?s views as consistent with the prevailing secular norms of ethnic tolerance.


Author(s):  
Nancy M. Wingfield

This chapter explores a variety of issues central to the turn-of-the-century Austrian panic over trafficking. They include anti-Semitism, Jews as protagonists and victims, and mass migration in an urbanizing world, as well as why particular Austrian cities were associated with the trade in women. The chapter analyzes the government’s domestic and international efforts to combat trafficking, as well as the role bourgeois reform organizations played. It explores the relationship between the trafficker and the trafficked, arguing that these women and girls were not simply victims, but sometimes willing participants, or something in between, in order to sketch a more nuanced picture of turn-of-the-century “white slaving.” The term “trafficker” is employed to reflect the way sources (the state, journalists, reform groups) viewed the issue, not because it can be proved that the problem was as widespread as they claimed.


Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova

The chapter explores how notions of Jewish and Muslim difference play out in the history of communal violence in independent India. In doing so it will first interrogate the way in which trajectories of anti-Muslim ideologies intersect in India with Nazi rhetoric that harks back to Hitler’s Germany, and the (lack of) the memory of the Holocaust on the subcontinent. It will then discuss how the experiences of contemporary Indian Jewish communities both mirror and contrast those of Indian Muslims and how Indian Jews and the alleged absence of anti-Semitism in India have become a reference point in the discourse of the Hindu right deployed to mask anti-Muslim and other forms of intolerance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marios Chatziprokopiou ◽  
Panos Hatziprokopiou

Abstract This paper studies the ritual of Ashura as performed by a group of Shia Pakistani migrants in Piraeus, Greece, inscribed in the context of the financial crisis that is currently shaking the country and its socio-political implications, notably the rise of the far-right. Based on participant observation, we start by unfolding the discourses through which our interlocutors attempt to legitimise their religious practices, by connecting the Karbala narrative with the current political oppression of Shiite minorities, but also by articulating a poetics of similarity with equivalent acts of faith from the Greek cultural context, rather than arguments on multiculturalist difference. We then turn our attention to the way Ashura is portrayed by Greek art and media, and we unpack how the poetics of similarity and the politics of difference are presented from different viewpoints. Finally, we study how the interrelations between this migrant Shiite community and ideas regarding the “national self” are manifested in symbolic uses of blood—from murderous threats received by Neo-Nazi groups, to their rejected proposal for a blood-donation campaign parallel to the Ashura.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Behr

This article explores the metaphor of the scapegoat by offering a case study taken from the history of France at the turn of the 20th-century. The case is presented of a French army officer, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, whose wrongful conviction for treason created an international sensation and tore French society apart. The author outlines the general features of the scapegoating dynamic and applies them to the Dreyfus case. He sets out the flow of events from Dreyfus’s first trial through to the official declaration of his innocence a century after his conviction, illustrating the tenacity of the scapegoating dynamic when an entire nation is caught up in the process. The view is put forward that it was the dramatic intervention by the novelist Emile Zola in the Dreyfus case which arrested the scapegoating process. The author asks what the implications of this might be for group analysis. At the centre of the Dreyfus case was the fact of his Jewishness. The author depicts anti-Semitism as a deeply rooted set of assumptions based on myths about the Jews. He touches on the origins of these myths in early monotheistic theology and in the political ideology of the Far Left and the Far Right. An explanation is offered for the persistence of these myths in our culture, which may extend to our understanding of myths surrounding other peoples and societies. The author concludes with some reflections on the recurring nature of the scapegoat phenomenon.


2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-39
Author(s):  
István M. Fehér

"Hermeneutical Considerations on Heidegger’s Black Notebooks and on the Revisiting of his Path of Thinking II. Starting with preliminary philological-hermeneutical considerations concerning the way Heidegger’s Black Notebooks can and should be dealt with, as well as concerning the question of what tasks may be derived from them for future research, the paper attempts to discuss the Black Notebooks applying a variety of methods and approaches. Themes that are discussed at more or less length include: Time factor and the formulation of our task; explanation and understanding or the way a philosophical path should be approached and dealt with methodically (hermeneutically); the theme related to “Heidegger and anti-Semitism” and the question concerning individuality; prejudices from a hermeneutical perspective and the way to deal with them; relapses and their philosophical explanation; insufficient and exaggerated sensibility; Heidegger and Hegel; equivocality and the dark side of the “formal indication”; Lukács, Scheler and the devil; Heidegger’s great being-historical treatises and their greatness; suggestions for a reconsideration of Heidegger’s way of thinking. – One important hermeneutical claim brought to bear on the various discussions is this: just as it would be inappropriate in our dealing with Heidegger’s texts to disregard Heidegger’s own self-interpretations, it would be no less inappropriate to consider those self-interpretations – which themselves call for interpretation – as telling us the sole and ultimate truth. This second part of the paper dedicates special attention to the question of re-examining Heidegger’s whole philosophical itinerary in the light of the Black Notebooks. Keywords: hermeneutics, being, history, interpretation, individuality "


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Grayston ◽  
Dave Chang

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in a critical sense in 1948 and continues to this day.  An understanding of this continuing dispute requires knowledge of its historical, political, religious, demographic, emotional and geopolitical dimensions, and of the way anti-semitism figures in how people engage in discussions of the Middle-East.  After sketching out these realities, we consider how disagreement over the framing of the past generates disagreement over visions of the future.  Drawing on the work of Jakob Feldt and Ilan Gur-ze’ev, among others, we highlight the challenges posed to educators in regard to how each of the two major narratives, Israeli and Palestinian, compete with the Other’s account of their shared and fractured history.  Using an incident involving the British Columbia Ministry of Education as a reference point, we explore the way special interest groups engage with the realm of public education, as well as the challenge of deconstructing conflicting historical interpretations.  The paper suggests some pedagogical approaches for moving beyond the contesting of histories and for the development of better-grounded student involvement with this complex issue.


Subject Austrian intra-government relations. Significance Austria’s ruling coalition enjoys strong and stable support for its stance on immigration and tax reduction and its support for greater member-state autonomy within the EU. However, controversial immigration proposals from the Austrian Freedom Party (FPOe), the far-right junior partner in the coalition, have provoked a backlash from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (OeVP). He is now under pressure to crack down on some FPOe officials because of apparent indirect links to the Christchurch mosque killer. Impacts Austria’s relationship with Israel will remain uneasy, as Israel associates the FPOe with anti-Semitism. Austria is highly unlikely to join the UN migration pact while the FPOe is in government. Foreign intelligence agencies will be reluctant to share information with Austria as the FPOe controls the defence and interior ministries.


2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-116
Author(s):  
Richard Drake

This essay looks at two recent Italian books about the evolution of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). Drawing on archival materials, the books trace the conflict between the radicals and the reformers within the PCI's ranks, a conflict that gave way to violent splinter groups that regarded the PCI as too staid and conciliatory. As the far left took a violent turn in Italy in the late 1960s, it paved the way for the spasm of grisly far-left and far-right terrorism in Italy in the 1970s and early 1980s. The books lend weight to the view that the PCI, through its exaltation of Communist revolution and its demonization of the Christian Democratic establishment, facilitated the emergence of extremist groups that perpetrated more than 8,400 terrorist attacks in the latter half of the 1970s.


2003 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-430 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Barthélémy

This article is concerned with the way in which media routinely achieve their task of reporting on an issue that may last for several months. The present study is based on the first months of the coverage by a British newspaper, The Guardian, of an emergent crisis between Austria and the rest of the EU governments as a result of the entry of the far right into Austrian government. The analysis focuses on the way the time dimension is practically used in the media text, with a view to rendering intelligible whatever happens under the auspices of a common system of relevances and interest.


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