[D66] Badiou: The Racism of Intellectuals

[Antid Oto]

http://guavapuree.wordpress.com/2012/05/06/badiou-the-racism-of-intellectuals-translation/

Badiou: The Racism of Intellectuals (translation)
Posted on May 6, 2012 by guavapuree

below is a provisional translation of Alain Badiou’s article “The Racism of
Intellectuals” published May 5, 2012 in Le Monde.

—-

The Racism of Intellectuals

by Alain Badiou, philosopher, dramatist and writer

The extent of the vote for Marianne Le Pen is surprising and overwhelming; we
look for explanations–The political class comes out with a handy sociology: the
France of the lower classes, the misled provincials, the workers, the
under-educated, frightened by globalization, the decline in purchasing power,
the disintegration of their districts, and foreign strangers present at their
doors, wants to retreat into nationalism and xenophobia.

Besides, these are already those French “stragglers” who were accused of having
voted “No” in the referendum on the draft European Constitution– One opposes
them to the educated, urban modern middle classes who are the social salt of our
well-tempered democracy.

Let’s say that this France “from below” {Joe Publique Francais?–GP} is in these
circumstances the donkey in the fable, the scabby and mangy “populist” from
which comes all the Le Pen evil. That said, this political-media resentment
against “populism” is strange. Could democratic power, of which we are so proud,
be allergic to one’s worries about the people? Democratic power being the
opinion of these very people, and also more. When asked “are policy makers
concerned about what people like you think?” the entirely negative response “not
at all” increased from 15% of the total in 1978 to 42% in 2010! As for the total
positive responses (“Very much” or “somewhat”), it declined from 35% to 17% (for
this and other interesting statistical indications, refer to the special issue
of La Pensée, “Le peuple, la crise, et la politique” by Guy Michelat and Michel
Simon). That the relationship between the people and the state is not a
trustworthy one is the least we can say.

Must we conclude that our state doesn’t have the people it deserves, and that
the somber Le Pen vote certifies this democratic insufficiency? To strengthen
democracy would require the government to elect another people, as Brecht
ironically proposed…

My thesis is rather that two other culprits should be highlighted: the
successive leaders of state power, both the left and right, and a significant
body of intellectuals.

Ultimately, it is not the poor of our provinces who have decided to limit as
much as possible the basic right of workers in this country, whatever their
nationality of origin, living here with their wives and children. It is a
socialist minister, and then all those of the right who have rushed into the
breach. This is not an undereducated rustic who proclaimed in 1983 that the
Renault strikers – in fact mostly Algerian or Moroccan – were “immigrant workers
(…) agitated by religious and political groups which are based on criteria that
have little to do with the French social realities “.

It was a socialist prime minister, of course, to the delight of his “enemies” of
the right. Who of us had the good sense to say that Le Pen actually speaks to
real problems? An Alsatian militant of the Front Nationale? No, it’s prime
minister Francois Mitterrand. This is not the stunted population of the rural
interior that created the detention centers that imprison, without any real
right, those who are also deprived of the opportunity to acquire legal papers of
their presence here.

This is not the frustrated immigrants in the outskirts of our cities  who made
the order, heard across the world, to issue French entry visas at the rate of a
trickle, all while boosting eviction/deportation quotas that must at all costs
be carried out by the police. The succession of restrictive laws that attack
freedom and equality of millions of people who live and work here under a
pretext of otherness, this is not the work of “populism” unleashed.

At the helm of these legal crimes, we find the state, plain and simple–All
successive governments, since Francois Mitterrand, and then relentlessly
thereafter. In this area, and these are just two examples, the Socialist Lionel
Jospin made known the moment he came to power there was no question of
abolishing the xenophobic laws of Charles Pasqua; the socialist Francois
Hollande indicated that the regularization of the undocumented would not be
decided under his presidency moreso than under that of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Continuity in this direction is clear. It is this stubborn encouragement of the
state that shapes the ugly racialist opinion and reaction, and not vice versa.

I also don’t believe it to be unknown that Nicolas Sarkozy and his gang were
constantly on the forefront of cultural racism, raising high the banner of
“superiority” of our dear Western civilization and voting in an endless
succession of discriminatory laws whose wickedness appalls us.

But finally, we fail to find a left that rises up in opposition with the
strength demanded by such determined reactionaries. The left even often stated
that it “understood” this demand for “security”, and voted without emotion for
such flagrantly paranoid decisions as those aimed at expelling from public space
any particular woman because she covers her hair or her body.

The left’s candidates announce everywhere they are leading a ruthless fight, not
so much against the corruption of the capitalists and the dictatorially ascetic
budgets as against undocumented workers and recidivist juveniles, especially if
they are blacks or Arabs. In this area, both the right and left have trampled
every principle. It was and is, for those who are deprived of papers, not a
State of law, but the state of exception, the state of non-law. They are the
ones who are insecure, and not wealthy nationals. If we were, which God forbid,
be resigned to deport people, it would be better that we choose our rulers
rather than the very respectable Moroccan or Malian workers.

And behind all this, for a long time, for over twenty years, who do we find? Who
are the glorious inventors of the “Islamic menace”, which according to them is
in the process of disintegrating Western society and our beautiful France? Who
but the intellectuals engaged in their infamous task of fiery editorials,
twisted books, and rigged “sociological surveys”? Is this a group of retired
provincials and workers in de-industrialized towns who patiently erected the
whole affair of the “clash of civilizations”, the defense of “republican pact”,
the threats to our beautiful “secularism”, the “feminism” outraged by the daily
lives of Arab women?

Isn’t it unfortunate that only the leaders of the far right (who only pull the
chestnuts from the fire) are interrogated– without ever exposing more often the
overwhelming responsibility of those on the so-called “left”, and more often the
teachers of “philosophy ” rather than the supermarket cashiers– why not those
who passionately argued that the Arabs and blacks, especially young people, are
corrupting our educational system, perverting our suburbs, offending our
freedoms and insulting our women? Or that there were “too many” in our football
teams? Exactly as one use to speak of Jews and “{insert racial slur here}‘s”–
that because of them eternal France was threatened with death.

There have been, of course, the emergence of fascist splinter groups labeling
themselves as Islamic. But there are just as well fascist movements labeling
themselves in defense of the West and Christ the King. This fact does not
prevent any Islamophobic intellectual from incessantly praising our superior
“Western” identity and to arrive at lodging our admirable “Christian roots” in
the worship of secularism–And Marine Le Pen (one of the most fierce
practitioners of this religion) has finally revealed the kind of political
kindling that spreads its flames.

In truth, it is the intellectuals who invented the anti-working-class
{antipopular} violence, particularly directed against the inner city youth,
which is the real secret of Islamophobia. And it is governments, unable to build
a civil society of peace and justice, who delivered the foreigners, and the
first Arab workers and their families, as fodder for disoriented and fearful
electorate. As always, the idea–no matter how criminal–precedes power, which in
turn shapes the opinion that it needs. The intellectual–no matter how
appalling–precedes the minister, who constructs her followers.

Books–no matter how disposable–arrive before propaganda, which misleads instead
of instructs. And thirty years of patient effort in writing, invective and
clueless electoral competition find their dismal reward in tired minds as in the
voting herd.

Shame on these successive governments, who all competed on related themes of
security and the “immigrant problem”, so as to cloud the fact that they
primarily served the interests of the economic oligarchy! Shame on the
neo-racialist and crudely nationalist intellectuals, who patiently covered over
the void left inside the people by the temporary eclipse of the communist
hypothesis with a layer of nonsense about the Islamic menace and the ruin of our
“values” !

It is they who must now account for the rise of rampant fascism, whose mental
development they have ceaselessly promoted.

———–

link to original at lemonde.fr
http://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle-2012/article/2012/05/05/le-racisme-des-intellectuels-par-alain-badiou_1696292_1471069.html