Tuesday, March 27, 2012

French colonial jingoism

"This is how France has become the leader of the ugly wave of anti-immigrant European racism. No, it's not only Le Pen. It's also President Nicolas Sarkozy. The man who served as interior minister, and in 2005 dubbed African antipoverty demonstrators as scum of the earth, was later elected to the presidency with the help of incitement. Of course, not before declaring with pathos in October 2007: "I was changed at Yad Vashem."  For years the colonialist spirit - which in Israel is called, with no little hypocrisy, "republicanism" - has served the French for the purpose of persecuting foreigners, even if they were born in France as its citizens. For quite some time the Jews have been serving as a fig leaf for this racism, because what is better than a Holocaust ritual for turning the "other" into a moral symbol in the war against the real others: Africans. Only here does the colonialist eternal fire meet up with the Israeli propaganda machine, which is fueled by a hatred of Muslims." (thanks Rachid)