'Islamofobie grijpt snel om zich heen in Europa'

Door Pepe Escobar, Asian Times, 22 oktober 2010

Dit artikel is te onkritisch ten aanzien van de politieke islam, in het bijzonder jegens Tariq Ramadan, die Escobar helaas met grote instemming citeert, maar het is tevens interessant en beslist een eye opener (voor de ernst van de situatie) om de ontwikkeling eens te bezien vanuit het standpunt van een intelligente journalist van niet-Westerse (Braziliaanse) komaf - al slaat de ietwat betweterige (zie ook het vingertje op de foto hierboven) Escobar zijn van dik hout gezaagde planken op meerdere plaatsen mis; zo kan bijvoorbeeld hoge werkloosheid of een ander economische-crisisverschijnsel geen verklaring zijn voor de opkomst van Fortuyn en Wilders in Nederland en besteed hij te weinig aandacht aan het falen van de gevestigde politiek inzake problemen door slecht geïntegreerde immigranten.

Aanvulling 30 december 2014: Escobar werkt in elk geval dit jaar voor Poetins propagandakanaal Russia Today (RT), wat zijn integriteit en geloofwaardigheid bijna helemaal ondermijnt.

Aanvulling 2023:Escobar blijkt een met fascisten heulende antisemiet te zijn. Einde aanvulling.

Zie ook:

Slavoj Zizek: Why Far Right and Xenophobic Politicians are on the Rise in Europe
Zizek geïnterviewd door Amy Goodman, Democracy Now / Alternet, 27 oktober 2010

Zizek: I really am worried about how the far right is setting the general political agenda, even while being in the minority.

(...) Sorry if I shock someone, but I think we do need what Germans call Leitkultur, leading culture. Just it shouldn’t be nationally defined. We should fight for that. Yes, I agree with right-wingers. We need a set of values accepted by all. But what will these values be, my god? We neglected this a little bit. You know that it’s not just this abstract liberal model: you have your world, I have my world, we just need a neutral legal network—how we will politely ignore each other.
(...) My second point would have been that it’s absolutely crucial how this anti-immigrant explosion is linked to the withdrawal of leftist politics, especially in the matters of economy and so on. It is as if the left, being obsessed by the idea that we shouldn’t appear as reactionary in the economic sense, that is to say that "No, no, no, we are not the old trade union representatives of the working class, we are for postmodern digital capitalism" and so on. They don’t want to touch the working class or so-called lower ordinary people. And here right-wingers enter. Do you know, the horrible paradox is that, apart from some small leftist fringe parties, the only serious political force in Europe today which still is ready to appeal to the ordinary working people are the right-wing anti-immigrants? So you see, we, the leftists, we have no right, absolutely no right, to take this arrogant view of offended tolerant people who are horrored—no, we should ask the question, how we enabled what is going on.
(...) If you want to protest, the only way to do it effectively in Europe is [through anti-immigrant nationalist parties]. So I think it’s a matter of life and death for a slightly more radical left to emerge.
(...) this is, I think, part of a global process of what I call the disappearance of the—what philosophers like Kant called the public use of reason.
(...) It’s not only this concrete problem—big companies controlling, through money donations, universities. It’s something more fundamental going on. It’s a well-organized, all-European campaign to turn us scientists, human or natural, into experts. The idea is, we have a problem—let’s say oil spill in Louisiana—oh, we need experts to tell us how to contain it. We have a public disorder, demonstrations; we need psychologists and so on. This is not thinking. What universities should do is not serve as experts to those in power who define the problems. We should redefine and question the problems themselves. Is this the right perception of the problem? Is this really the problem? We should ask much more fundamental questions. 

Foto's: Pepe Escobar (boven) en Slavoj Žižek