Reflections On Anti-Semitism by Alain Badiou

Author:Alain Badiou
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781781682265
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2013-08-06T04:00:00+00:00

CONCLUSION: AN IMAGINARY SOCIOLOGIST?

As we can see, the ethno-cultural sociology of Emmanuel Brenner has no explanatory value in the analysis of ‘anti-Semitism’, ‘racism’ and ‘sexism’ in the school environment, but rather confers an appearance of scholarship on xenophobic prejudice, in the same way that Molière’s doctors dressed up their stubborn ignorance and murderous impulses in Latin words. So there is nothing new under the sun, apart from the fact that today, ethno-cultural ideology is articulated in an unprecedented fashion around the two watchwords of ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’ and ‘defence of Zionism’. Looked at more closely, however, Brenner’s sociology is perfectly compatible with a foreign policy which is hostile to the state of Israel. As witness the French far right, which has always combined its particular anti-Maghrebian xenophobia with overt hostility to Israel. In this sense, it is even very likely that if French citizens of Maghrebian origin are blamed for the anti-Semitism of French society, French anti-Zionism, relieved of this burden, will be that much freer in speech and action. As far as the ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’ is concerned, it is clear that Brenner’s sociological thesis has nothing to say about it, given that it is not based on anything but anti-Maghrebian prejudice, and dispenses with any analysis. By refusing to use the appropriate tools to discern expressions of anti-Semitism in the school environment, it is unable to recognize this behaviour and therefore to combat it. It is particularly revealing that Brenner bases himself on testimonies that are in some cases quite fanciful. But what most strikingly refutes the idea that the ideological reaction Brenner champions can in any way help the ‘struggle against anti-Semitism’, is the salience of anti-Jewish prejudice in the identitarian and ideological framework on which his own thesis is based, as we have emphasized. The singularity of Emmanuel Brenner, none the less, in the field of so-called ‘communitarian’ ideology, is his concern to offer an analysis that distinguishes him from his peers, so that he substitutes for the ‘Islamo-leftist’, ‘Islamo-communist’ or ‘Islamo-progressive’ adversary of Trigano, Finkielkraut or Taguieff, a kind of Islamo-LePenism on which he alone has patent rights, thereby warding off all the more securely any ideological affinity with a French far right that remains too far outside the pale:

It seems, rather, that we should speak of an anti-Semitism as reactionary as ever dressed up in new guise … Anti-Semitic Islamism is ideologically close to the far right. The alliance between these two tendencies is not a passing coincidence, it is an agreement on fundamentals. Both spill into a common apologia for identity and roots. Both equally stand, despite appearances, for the same refusal to integrate foreigners in France … This is why the man who is regularly presented as Arabophobic, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is on the contrary very close to the Arab world in general. In 1990–91, during the first Gulf War, Le Pen was Saddam Hussein’s firmest supporter in France. Thirteen years later, he was again on Hussein’s side in staunchly opposing the US and British war in Iraq.

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