Is the end of the world dawning? Let’s hope so!

While newspapers increasingly report cases of hysteria about the supposed end of the world on December 22 this year, they seem to be less aware of the crises that indicate what might be the real end of the world. What might lead to a total collapse of our world is not an age-old Mayan calendar and will not come with a lot of natural disasters and apocalyptic scenes. On the contrary, the spectacular End of the world rather should be understood as a collapse of a widespread social-economic and political system which is inherently self-destructive. The collapse of this system implies the end of the world as we know it and marks the need for the development of a new world system. Interpreted as such, the end of the world is not something we should be falling into collective hysteria for, but something we should hope for and even should actively strive for. Instead of letting panic prevail and starting to neurotically invent ways to save our individual existence, we should become active citizens that raise their voice against the atrocities and injustice of the current system and that together try to reclaim their collective human and civil rights. For those who do not know what I am talking about, let me give some examples. Europe’s economic system is on a brink of death. In the countries that are most affected by the financial crisis, like for example Portugal and Spain, in the last couple of years people saw a sudden and massive decrease in living standards. The middle-class people with a decent job lost their jobs and now are dependent on food banks and charity institutions to assure themselves with the most basic goods. The human cost of austerity measures in southern European countries is immense and highly ignored by the political leaders of the respective countries. On behalf of the austerity experiment that was invented to desperately try to solve the country’s debts problems, the living standards in some European countries reached the lowest point since many years. The dogma of austerity blinds leaders for its inherent contradiction. In order to solve debt problems, reducing expenses on the level of for example social security will obviously not bring a country stability, but recession. What happens when money is taken from the “common man” and pumped into the rich that are assumed to be able to increase investment and thus growth? As long as profit never flows back to where it should flow back to, the answer is: the common man gets poorer, the rich man becomes richer and the biggest loser is the country itself. In other words, the main problem is, to quote Will Huntington, that gains were increasingly privatized whereas losses were increasingly socialized. How could a wealthy and prosper Western world come to such an instability and get into such a fragile and unhealthy condition? The answer is that the ideology and beliefs that are at the basis of Europe’s economic system weren’t questioned enough on their effectiveness. What causes the financial crisis is ideological and thus structural. The free market and privatization were believed to lead to an ever increasing and continuous growth of wealth. You do not need to be a very clever mind to see, that a paradigm of eternal growth is not in line with the “laws” of nature. In this world, nothing grows endlessly. An economic system based on an ideology of endless growth, is doomed to collapse. Especially when this growth is not perceived in the light of the common good, but aims at the profit of banks and investors. What we have now, is a ruling 1 percent against a 99 percent that is facing an era of unemployment, decreasing living standards, increasing social injustice and disparity, and a lack of chances. What we have now is money which is up to 97 percent virtually non-existent (since it is debt-based money). What we have now is a crisis that will remain unsolved when leaders are not willing to take off their ideological blinds and keep on reciting the truth of their dogmas. The alternatives are out there; let this crisis be an opportunity to reinvent our world. But there is more to be worried about. Not only the financial system is shaking to its foundation, also our natural environment is showing the impact of irresponsible human behavior. This impact is mainly a result of the processes of industrialization, which is driven by – what a surprise – economic interests! Even if scientist are screaming out loud that we are running out of time in order to save our planet earth from a unchangeable environmental disaster, the most influencing leaders are still paying people to deny global warming and are refusing to sign any climate accord because a cut in carbon emission would mean a massive cut in national income. So while the earth is warming, any appeal for a change makes some leaders run because the place is getting too hot. It must be clear that who benefits highly from oil industry does not want to promote the use of sustainable energy but instead wants to increase the use of fossile fuels, even though it might be accompanied with high human and environmental costs. Though it doesn’t need much calculation or prophesying to foresee that in the end, we will all become losers in this game. But yet again, profit prevails over people and short-term gains prevail over long-term losses…. A third and last example is the apparent malfunctioning of our political system. Yes of course we live in a democracy. But wasn’t democracy designed to represent people’s interests and people’s opinions? Yes? Than why does many people are increasingly unsatisfied with the government? Exactly, because they feel that the democratic elected government doesn't represents their interests. How come? Because economic interests prevail over peoples interests and the well-being of a country is measured by the financial condition of the country. Our democracy has a deficit. This deficit comes into existence because traditional parties keep on occupying the political landscape. What we see happening now, is that in times of crisis those parties are more or less all converging to the center (conservative) right. There is no real alternative offered to this, therefore people are forced to vote for parties that “they don’t really like” (quote Chomsky). Although people feel like the democratic system is not working for the common man anymore and is no longer promoting the common good, they feel helplessly subjected to this political play. Although people feel that political parties are more concerned about their own interests or about the interest of a small minority, the democratic system is no longer a possible way of expressing this concern because there is no space for this kind of “dissident” beliefs in the traditional political landscape. This lack of creative space is what constitutes the real deficit of our democracy. This being said, it appears to me that there are multiple indications for the world as we know to have reached a stage of stagnation and heading in the direction of collapse. I argue that exactly this development should not make us passive spectators that see the world around us imploding on behalf of its self-made trap. Instead of spectators, we should become actors and take the opportunity to set an end to this world and to reinvent it as a world with a system that cares about the common good, that promotes social and economic justice and that has a political system which is capable of translating people’s needs into effective deeds. We are no longer a silent majority if we collectively speak out. The future of our world lies in our hands and not in those of a prophecy of some ancient civilization...

The schizophrenic state

Drawing on Michael Herzfeld concept of cultural intimacy, here I would like to focus on what I call the “schizophrenic” condition of the Dutch state. Herzfeld defines cultural intimacy as “the recognition of those aspects of cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality.” This means, that the traditional narratives, myths and symbols on which the nation-state is built, need to be taken into consideration by the state but might at the same time on multinational level be perceived as “unmodern, backward,…”. This is the tension in which the nation state is constantly trapped. On the one side, because of the fact that nations are cultural constructs, in order to keep the nation together it needs to remember, reproduce and re-imagine its national identity over and over again. On the other hand, in order to remain trustworthy, it needs to keep on looking into the future and presenting itself as a modern-state. In order to justify their existence, modern states have to make a claim to represent a coherent people. This means that the state needs to construct itself through symbols of cultural familiarity, symbols that refer to a long history before the existence of the modern state. Only in this manner, the collective memory can be constructed. Those particular cultural practices, symbols, narratives are by definition not modern, because they are particular.

Because the nation-state is “ideologically committed to ontological self-perpetuation for all eternity” it needs to protect its identity. In order to be able to evoke an emotional adherence of the people to the nation-state, the state needs to draw on those key elements of identity that underlie the cultural intimacy. Connected to the obligation to keep the national identity intact on the level of self-perception and on the multinational level, an ongoing reinvention needs to take place. This reinvention partially evolves around what Herzfeld calls “structural nostalgia”. Structural nostalgia is “the means through which people – state officials and miscreants alike – see images of a lost perfection to try to explain away the sorry state of today’s power and especially the necessity of imposing laws or resisting them.” “Structural nostalgia allows citizens to protect their collective secrets –the basis of cultural intimacy – from the eyes of prying outsiders, they invoke images of a now-vanished condition of perfect social harmony and blame the outside world for the present state of moral disintegration.” This static image of a long-gone past and irrecoverable past plays an important part in present actions. “It legitimizes deeds of the moment by investing them with the moral authority of eternal truth and by representing the vagaries of circumstance as realization of a larger universe of system and balance.”

Although rarely acknowledged, the notion of cultural intimacy may help to explain several aspect of nation-state behavior on the multinational level. As I said before, in political action, the states always needs to take into account the necessary preservation of the contested national identity (cultural intimacy). When it doesn’t, the perceived misunderstanding of the state’s identity results in feeling of guilt and embarrassment and actions will be taken in order to restore the initial perception. This doesn’t only count for the outsiders view but also on the level of self-perception. Actions that are perceived as transgressing against the own moral standards or against the own cultural identity, will not be supported by the people and can count with protests and will also force the state to take action to restore the initial self-perception.

When we now turn our focus again on the emergence of right-wing politics in the Netherlands, what we see is that, against what we would expect, the presence of politics that act and argue against the key components of the state identity, do not result in the elimination of those discourses but rather in the welcome promotion of them. The Dutch state identity is based on the domestic commitment to “democracy, progressive values and multiculturalism”. It is an old habit that the Netherlands perceive themselves as a good example on the level of moral values for other countries. The power they try to have in the context of humanitarian action function as compensation for the lack of material influence. Thus, what builds up cultural intimacy in the Netherlands are concepts like liberalism, tolerance, multiculturalism, freedom,….The symbolic and mythical narratives of on which the nation is built all enhance those ideas. Furthermore, the structural nostalgia presents the nation’s past as an ongoing fight for freedom against foreign rule which tried to limit the liberties of the people.

Based on the key elements of Dutch state identity connected to the idea of cultural intimacy, it would logically follow that the emergence of right-wing politics in the Netherlands – because of its incongruence with abovementioned identity markers - would on the one hand be judged on multinational level and on the other hand be reacted against on the national level. As I mentioned before, the preservation of how the state wants to be perceived and wants to perceive itself is one of the major tasks. Therefore it is even more surprising to see that neither on multinational, nor on national level, the emergence of these politics has been convicted. On the contrary, they are even gaining more and more popularity. This asymmetry between the traditionally promoted values as the basis of the cultural intimacy in the Netherlands and the content of the emerging right-wing politics is what I call the “schizophrenia” of the nowadays Dutch state. Therefore it is important to ask why on the national or international level the emergence of these politics are not being perceived as something incompatible with Dutch state identity or behavior.
In my opinion this can partially be explained through the argumentation structures that right-wing politicians use to promote their politics. Even though right-wing politics in the Netherlands have a highly racist and differentialist character and are explicitly hostile against multiculturalism, it is not perceived as such. One of the main reasons for this is that the politics present themselves as a vehicle for the protection of exactly this essential(ist) national identity. The anti-Islam propaganda therefore functions in following way: Islam is perceived as an enemy to the very essence of the nation state identity, therefore in order to be able to preserve this identity, we need to eliminate Islam. This then, is not perceived as a racist statement, but as a necessary conduct. In doing so, actually the state acts against the basic elements of its own identity. Still, this resonates with people because those values that are proclaimed to be in danger are essential part of the cultural intimacy. To present Islam or migration in general as a threat to those essential values would imply this to be a threat to the stability and hegemony of the nation-state and the Dutch people.

As a conclusion, because of the fact that tolerance and freedom are seen as constitutive elements of national identity and are therefore constitutive for the cultural intimacy of the Dutch nation-state, the protection of those values is the most important task in order to preserve the stability and hegemony of the nation-state, even if this implies action which character is opposite from the promoted values. Secondly, because Dutch cultural identity is based on above-mentioned political values, the in-group sentiments draw on those values. In order to be part of the cultural identity and share in the cultural intimacy, the sincere integration of migrants / Others in Dutch society equalizes the adoption of those political values. As long as Islam is presented as incompatible with those political values of the cultural identity, the integration would be perceived as inherently impossible. This makes the Dutch nation-state radically schizophrenic, promoting and protecting multiculturalism, tolerance, equality and liberalism through a right-wing politics which is vehemently intolerant.

Keeping up appearances: the politics of visibility and the symbolic expression of religious identities

I want to discuss how the public sphere is contested through images that are controlled and transformed on behalf of specific political agendas. Specifically I want to focus how the symbolic expression of religious identity is suppressed or violently transformed in the public space. Everything that is in the realm of reality we perceive as real. The things we see we give ontological meaning or we interpret them as reflections of objective truth. For example this chair I am sitting on right now, I will not doubt about its ontological substance or its real existence because I can sense (see and feel) it. This chair though is, without me being aware of it, connected with my beliefs, convictions, perception and ordering of reality. There is more than what we see, because our view is constantly influenced by unconscious “discriminative” decision and perception. There are things we see and there are things we do not see because we do not want to see them. In this context, a lot of ways of denying truth can be found: closing your eyes, eliminating messages, constructing and transforming images. Internally, this is what we do every minute. Externally and very concrete this takes place through media, which constantly transforms and shapes images. They present what people want to see and hide what should not meet the eye. This is what I call the politics of visibility.

By eliminating what should not be seen, the public sphere becomes contested. As I said before, we believe that the things we see belong to the realm of the Real. Following this logic, what we do not see, can be kept out of the realm of reality. Keeping something invisible is a way of pushing it to an imaginary space, a third space. Even if we do know that it exists, as long as it is not visible, we might as well not know it. This is a basic human condition. People tend to believe their eyes. “I only believe it, when you show it to me.” This is the basis of a very important biblical narrative about Thomas who didn’t want to believe the resurrection of Christ, until he could sense the wounds of Christ (feel and see). Ask yourself the question: “What do you believe more, your eyes or my words?” If you believe in an invisible reality despite the absolute different character of reality, this belief underlies a radical logic of optimism or resistance. As Zizek sees it, this “disavowing the Real” is “the most elementary metaphysical gesture”. But this radical rejection of reality is not what I want to focus on here.

Rather I want to talk about how the politics of visibility have a discourse-constructive character. In a severe Foucauldian way, this represents how knowledge/truth is created through power/politics. This being said, a similar logic plays an important role in the discussion on symbolic expressions of religious identities in a multiconfessional and multiculturalist society. What ought to be seen and what ought not to be seen? Which level of visibility of symbolic expression is allowed? Do we really want to have a visibility of multiple identities in our public space? In this discussion I like to introduce the concept of “heterotopia” because I believe that the concrete symbolic expression of multiple religious identities (in for example religious buildings, the veil, etc.) can function as discourse-challenging symbols/places in the way heterotopias do. The heterotopia is a "totally different" arrangement of space that is absolutely other to the normal space.
Heterotopias have the power of representing social reality, but also of challenging and overturning them. They turn the rules that prevail somewhere else upside down.

To give an example, the opposition to the building of religious buildings (whether it concerns the discussion about mega-buildings or "normal" mosques) could be analyzed in a new way with this concept of heterotopia. Religious buildings in post-secular space represent social and urban diversity (do we want cultural diversity to be that visible?), but on the other hand also challenge our post-secular space (because it questions the level of secularization) and overturns the reality of egalitarian accessible secular space (because it constitutes a sacred space, which is only accessible under restriction of membership,...). In other words: the symbolic expression of religious identity in multicultural society reflects the objective truth of a multiconfessional reality (and do we want that?) and it questions the secular space (are we as secular as we pretend?). That is the main reasons why symbolic expressions of religious identities are suppressed: they question the secularity (where we believe in so much) in a very disturbing way.

Something similar can be said about multiculturalism. The paradigm of multiculturalism has sadly not (never?) been interpreted as the co-existence of different symbolic expression of religious identity. This is the result of a semantical confusion of the concept of secularization. What originally should have functioned as a vehicle for multiculturalism became an overarching ideology which bears in itself the failure of multiculturalism because it depicts secularism as a condition of integration in a modern Europe. This is the fundamental tension within the secular multiculturalist project. Or to say it in Habermas words: “equal ethic liberties require political secularization but forbid the political overgeneralisation of the secularized world view.” The failure has been to let secularization become an overarching world view. As a result of this confusion, the symbolic expression of religious identity has been falsely interpreted as an adherence to traditional/fundamentalist/protectionist religious identity, which is incompatible with liberalist project of equal/tolerant multiculturalism. Therefore: instead of seeing different symbolic expression of religious identities as expression of sincere self-understanding and non-competitive with other symbolic expressions, the decision has been made to try to create a neutral public sphere, suppressing all “radical” expressions of identity from public space.

Society has become afraid of the synchronic expressions of religious identities because (once again) 1. They show the not-totally-secular character of Western European public space. 2. Interpreted in a competitive way they are a reflection of the failure of multiculturalism. Therefore it is thought that it is important to keep up appearances and try to eliminate all symbolic expressions from the public sphere. There are multiple things that should not be seen. This is also because of the normative power of the expression of multiple identities: if you allow the visibility of different symbolic spaces, this creates a reality/truth to which you need to adapt. This concretely means: if on the level of visibility and expression you allow co-existence of multiple expressions of identity, you need to implement this in your politics. In order not to admit that we do not really want to have entirely sincere multicultural policies, the only thing that needs to be done is to remove the visibility out of the realm of the Real.

Therefore what cannot be pushed away entirely or the emergence of symbolic expressions as a result of suppression, like mosques, veils, crucifixes, sacred places function as heterotopias for this idea of neutral and secular public sphere and are post-secular confessions for the inherent deficiency of multiculturalism. The problem of multicultural failure is not the fact that cultures do not go together or that the different expressions of religious identities are inherently incompatible, but that failure is imbedded in the interpretation of it. The multicultural policies are not tolerant, not neutral, but trying to Christianize and secularize traditional expressions of religiosity. I can only conclude with following statement. The nowadays politics of visibility concerning the symbolic expression of religious identity constitute a form of cultural occupation. As every kind of occupation, this ultimately results in defensive identities. If the opportunity to express your identity on a symbolic level in public sphere is taking away from you, doing so will become a violent act...

Q(&A)

There are so many incidents, where the total absurdity of the human mind has been his own model. There has been so many before us who fought for justice and love. Those who fought were killed, those who opposed succumbed to their resistance. Those who reconciled with the injustice and those who did injustice remained in injustice. They became the untouchables, "the impassible, the untouchables. They distanced themselves, not content, but not in rebellion.

For what reason? For what purpose? What is the meaning of the downfall of the warrior, what is the meaning of the death of the righteous? Ultimately, there is no less to fight for now then before. There is a greater scope for sincere thoughts, there is a sincere larger space for dissenting views. But there is no real room for a fundamental dissatisfaction with the order of things. But I wonder: what do we need more than this counter-voices that speak from the sidelines of the injustice? People who ask and those with a critical mind. Is there more to it than those who are driven by the spirit of the vision of the contrary?

Where is the change in a human life? Where is the change under this heaven? Change on a large scale is almost a metaphysical happening, an event that regulates itself. But change on a small scale, perhaps, is that within our reach? "Seed from morning until night, do not let your hand rest, because you do not know if the seed one or the other, or each time will germinate." And is it also true that everything great has ever started small ? Humanity does have a humanity to ultimately make a difference and we also see that we change. But what is changing to man is not his nature, what has changed is his ability and his creativity, which changes his mind and, especially, his environment and living conditions. But does something fundamentally changes about what we really are? Apparently we should retrospectively conclude: it does not. Why this status quo?

Christian-secular roots and multicultural deficit

Abstract. Lately it is often stated that multiculturalism has failed. But is it true that a multicultural society based on equality of culture, religion, nationality, etc. has proven to be Utopian? With no doubt the public space is increasingly buzzing with voices that question multicultural integration and talk about European identity, national identity, Islam vs. the West, etc. This paper will discuss why the multiculturalist project ended up in an apparently bigger quest for national identity and in an increasing culturalist Manichaeism. The idea that there is an apparent deficit in the multicultural paradigm was picked up on by several right-wing populist parties throughout Europe. These parties adopted a narrative on the incompatibility of Western European and national culture with what is perceived as “Islamic” or "immigrant" culture. By reference to the propaganda from the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders, this paper focuses on this discourse and analyses why these ideas are so widespread accepted in a country traditionally perceived as the best example of how to implement multiculturalism and sustain a tolerant society. In this manner, this presentation will try to show that the way in which the right-wing populist parties connect the narrative on the multicultural deficit with the narrative on Christian and secularist roots of European or national culture is one of the main reasons for their electoral success.

Introduction

Since Weber proclaimed that on behalf of the rapid industrialisation and modernisation of society we were heading towards a religion-free society, for years this idea seems to be the hidden consensus among academics. If modernity increases, religion would disappear from the public sphere. In line with this paradigm, many scholars have for example been discussing the functional differentiation of society. The theory of functional differentiation implied that religion would lose his role as an overarching signifier and would become a subsystem in society among many other subsystems like politics, economics, etc. The loss of the grand religious narrative would not only mean a decrease of religiosity, but would drive religion to the private sphere. In other words, in a modern age religion would become a set of private beliefs. Nevertheless as history evolved, this thesis became falsified. Religion didn’t move to the private, it stayed in the public sphere fighting for its influence. It even became clear that the resurgence of religion in the public sphere should be perceived as one of the markers of our century.

Nowadays society according to Beaumont and Baker, is “caught in a series of contradictory dynamics, including simultaneous and dialectical processes of secularisation alongside the growing deprivatisation of faith and it re-emergence as a shaper of cultural, political, economic processes.”[1] Even though more and more attention has been paid to the re-emergence of religion in the public sphere, it stays widely unrecognised. Therefore the main goal of my research is to bring back into discussion two “tabooed” themes: on the one hand the important role of religion in nowadays politics and international relations and on the other hand nationality or national identity as still one of the most important identity markers which is increasingly used in nowadays politics.
During the past two decades, the radical right has re-emerged as an electoral force in Western Europe and this re-emergence has often been explained as a result of the increasing global migration, the deficit of democracy, the economic situation in Western European countries, etc. Against all those theories, I will try to show that right-wing populism in Western Europe is a specific form of post-secular and post-Christian nationalism and that its electoral success can be explained through the way in which this politics use narratives on national identity connected with the secular-Christian roots of European culture. In this paper I will specifically focus on the interconnectedness of this narrative on identity and the secular-Christian roots as primordial identity marker with the idea of the multicultural failure. Several right-wing populist parties have picked up on this idea that multiculturalist society has failed and are depicting this failure as a logic result of the multiculturalist leftist ideology that intends to equalise all cultures and identities and doesn’t pay attention to the importance of national identity. I will discuss this with a concrete example from the right-wing populist Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.

Historical background of right-wing populist parties in the Netherlands

Right-wing populism in the Netherlands is not an entirely new phenomenon. During the twentieth century, populist parties have – sporadically – appeared in the Dutch party system. The difference with the quite solid position that the new right-wing populist seems to have nowadays is that those parties never stayed for a long period of time. It was only at the beginning of the twenty-first century that more and more populist parties entered the political stage. Especially since 2006, the electoral success of Geert Wilders Freedom Party is the clearest sign for the radical change of the traditionally political space. Nevertheless, Wilders success cannot be seen independent from the previous rise of Pim Fortuyns star in 2002.

For decades, the Netherlands has been governed from the centre, consisting of a stable coalition of between two and four parties from the centre-right or centre-left. The increasing electoral success of right-wing populist parties thus implied a total redefining of the political landscape. The ability to cooperate despite difference and make decisions on political level is represented by the poldermodel. The poldermodel stands for the ability of the system to always achieve consensus between parties and to form coalitions. This consensus decision-making is perceived as something „typically Dutch‟. With the rise of populist parties, starting with the Pim Fortuyn List (Lijst Pim Fortuyn) and followed by the PVV, this harmonious poldermodel seems to lose stability and a new division between left and right seems to emerge. The 2010 conquest of Wilders‟s PVV resulted in a right-wing instead of centre-right government and dealt the deathblow to the stable polder-politics in the Netherlands.

Pim Fortuyn who was a columnist and a former sociology professor, founded his party List Pim Fortuyn after he was expelled from the newly formed party Liveable Netherlands (Leefbaar Nederland). His party could immediately count with a big electoral support. But Fortuyn would never see the success of his party, because he was murdered on the 6th of May 2002, shortly before the elections. The LPF won 17 percent of the vote which equals 26 of 150 seats in the parliament. In the subsequent elections four years later, Geert Wilders would enter the party system. One needs to notice that in the years passed, the popularity of the populist decreased heavily and because of that it was even more surprising that Geert Wilders entered the stage. Wilders, who originally was part of the Liberal Party, founded his Freedom Party on Feb 22 2006 as a statement against the discussion about the Turkish EU-membership. In the 2006 elections, Wilders received 5,9 percent and nine seats. The initial appeal of his party was quite similar to the LPF but more radical concerning immigration and integration. Four years later it became clear that Wilders had been able to collect a stable and extensive electorate behind him and had clearly become more popular. Wilders Freedom Party was the big winner of the 2010 elections with gaining a total of 15,5 percent and 24 seats, coming close to the amount of support that the LPF had gathered in 2002. Since that time there has been a lot of effort to explain this quite sudden rise of right-wing populism in the Netherlands but most theories tend to only take the decline of the traditional party into account or blame the traditional parties not to be able to supply an answer to the demands of the electorate. In my opinion rather than analysing the systematic or structural deficits that might influence the rise of right-wing populism, it is interesting to look at another level and questioning what is the content of these politics that resonate with the electorate and why it resonates more than the traditional party politics.


Post-secularism

As I mentioned in my introduction, there were a couple of academics forty, thirty years ago, claiming that it was time to bring religion to his grave, dug by modernity. Years later, almost all of them decided to revision their thesis. As Casanova for example points out correctly, the loss of function and the trend towards a higher degree of individualisation didn’t imply the loss of influence of religion in political and personal sphere.[2] This conscience resulted in the formulation of the so-called post-secularity thesis. In the post-secular society, religion maintains a public influence and substantial relevance.

When we recognise this post-secular situation, we need to pay more attention to the possible role of religion in politics. In concrete terms this means that it is important to look for the influence of religion in different fields of research like politics, economics and international relations. Furthermore, this means that we need to take the power of religion and religious communities serious when reflecting on politics, urban space, migration, communities, etc. In my opinion we also need to take this serious because I believe that the increasing presence of religious power in the public sphere opens a space for discourses on religion-based reactive identities. This kind of reactive identity is a contested identity in order to distinguish between what is the “self” and what is the “other”. When this kind of religion-based identity construction is connected to the national identity, like it is done - as I will show - in the new right-wing populist parties, it gets very tricky.

Post-Christianity

In connection to this, the secularisation thesis also implied that Christianity in Western Europe would be the kid that would get thrown away with the bath water. This idea is strongly connected with the conviction that Western European culture and history is characterised by some kind of glorious evolutionary ascent of moral success story. This narrative depicts European culture/history as a historical process beginning with classical Greek civilisation, Roman law and Christianity passing through Enlightenment secularism and with having its culmination in the “End of history” a la Fukuyama with liberal democracy, capitalism and the rule of law. Even if the secularisation thesis might be revisioned, this idea hasn’t been. On a societal level, Christianity is still perceived as an influence factor that belongs to the past, not to the present. But it is exactly this historicising view on Christianity that in my opinion constitutes a fertile soil for the reification and essentialisation of Christian identity. As a result, Christian identity is seen as an invariable constitutive element of European culture and as such is used as another identity border.

Leitkultur, roots and heritage

The increasing level of global migration resulted in an increased multiculturalism and multiconfessionalism in Europe. As I mentioned before, the pluralist character of society culminated in an increasing quest for identity. A lot of voices were posing the question which elements constitute the identity of Europe. The resources for the reconstruction of national or supranational identity are to be found in collective memory, history, mythical narratives, symbols, etc. We can see this process of reconstruction of national identity emerging in the context of the growing pluralism of society. This reconstruction is based on national symbols, national myths and talks about the common grounds and the common cultural roots. As a result of this reconstruction of identity, the idea came up that there exists something like a “Leitkultur” in Western European culture. This Leitkultur is linked to dominant values coming from an idealised past. The roots of European culture are humanist, Christian, secular, etc. and are not chosen randomly as might be thought. The emphasis on the Christian-secular and humanist roots of European culture are chosen to make a clear statement against the increasing migration from Islamic countries.

The culture of these countries is in the same way perceived as a homogeneous entity and connected to the idea that this culture is theocratic, non-secular and therefore incompatible with the values on which European culture is based. In order to be able to integrate in this culture, assimilation to European values is essential which in this case means the rejection of the religious identity. This is a very strong statement, but there is not enough awareness for the fact that the claim about “Leitkultur” is an anti-religious claim. Post-Christian Europe has given up its institutional Christianity, but therefore reinvented Christianity in terms of realisation of Christian heritage. This realisation means an essentialisation of the Judaeo-Christian identity of Western European nations and provides necessary drawing of identity borders as a reaction to the growing Muslim presence in society.

The paradigm is following: if you want to be European, you should assimilate to the Christian-secular values of our society (whatever this might mean) and since Islam isn’t compatible with neither secularism nor Christian-humanist values, the only way to assimilate (integrate?) is to give up your religion. Furthermore this results in a strange asimilarity in the interpretation of concepts. You can be Muslim, but you should not adhere to Islam. My thesis is, that in the very conception of European culture as based on aforementioned roots, there is no place for Islam or for being Muslim at all. To overcome this problem, some scholars like for example Bassam Tibi have been looking for the possibility of something like an “Euro-Islam”. These concepts believe in the parallelism of two identities, being Muslim and being European at the same time and refer to the Indian situation in which is claimed that they have been able to create a situation where you can be Muslim and Indian at the same time. In my opinion this generates several problems.
The idea of drawing identity borders is in itself not a negative process but starts to have negative consequences when it is linked to a feeling of superiority or with the underestimation of the “Other”. The concept of an „indigenisation „of Islam in European culture is difficult. Doesn’t it do injustice to the very essence of Islam? Doesn’t this indigenisation really means a „Christianisation„ of Islam? I am not sure if this is the solution or the solemn way to achieve a integration of Islam in European culture. The idea of an Euro-Islam is in my opinion still dominated by a „Master-Slave“ dialectics and I believe that this dialectics always bears a lot of conflict potential in it. Integration might be easier achieved when both sides adopt an almost “culture relativist” acceptance of the other. Only then, the defensive and reactive answers in the form of extremism and populism as a result of the sensed threat to identity might decrease.

Nationalism / national identity

A second tabooed feature of right-wing populist politics I want to focus on is national identity I already touched upon before. In the last couple of decades a certain resurgence of nationalism became apparent. One can see a widespread (re)construction of national identity which functions as an identity border drawn against the “other”. This development might come as a surprise for some academics in the same ways as the apparent resurgence of religion. On behalf of a traumatic past and because of the globalisation of economy, the internationalisation of political institution, etc. nationalism has been declared an antic artifact. But for Hobsbawn “The urge to express ones identity, and to have it recognised tangibly by others, is increasingly contagious and has to be recognised as an elemental force even in the shrunken, apparently homogenising, high-tech world of the end of the twentieth century.” This resurgent form of nationalism is characterised by different features like for example the fact that nationalism is not necessarily an elite phenomenon but “nowadays is more often than not a reaction against the global elites”. Furthermore, this contemporary nationalism is “more reactive than proactive, it tends to be more cultural than political, and more oriented towards the defense of an already institutionalised culture than towards the construction of defense of a state.”
The resurgence of nationalism shows a different type of nationalism, namely a cultural expression of it. Cultural nationalism does not aim to preserve the nation-state, but to regenerate the national community by creating, preserving or strengthening a people’s cultural identity when it is felt to be lacking or to be threatened. The cultural nationalist regards the nation as a product of its unique history and culture. Cultural nationalism perceives the nation as distinct on behalf of the its culture which is the essence of the nation. This kind of cultural nationalism can be perceived as a defensive reaction against the sensed loss of national autonomy and sovereignty as a result of the increasing globalisation and supranational organisation. But there is more. The reinvention and reification of national identity based on cultural roots and heritage are mediated through myth memories and national symbols in Geert Wilders politics. As I will discuss later, we can see a neo-ethnic interpretation of national identity and a re-emphasis on national history, symbols, etc. From the ethno-symbolic perspective, this could be perceived as a form of nationalist practice.

Culturalist Racism

Now we discussed this border drawing of national identity against Islam in right-wing populist politics, we still need to answer the question: what kind of beast is this? Since I like to be a bit provocative, I will state that the anti-Islam discourse which is more widespread and sadly not only linked to right-wing populism can emerge so easily because we believe that we have learned from the racist tragedy during the Second World War. We are very aware of racist discourse and there is done a lot of effort to avoid racism in public space. The problem is that we should not think of racism in a monolinear way, but rather as being able to diffract like light diffracts through a prism. In Foucauldian terms I think of racism as a discursive practice which is characterised by a certain logical structure. We can think of the anti-Islam politics as a discursive practice with the same logic as the “old-fashioned” biological racism. In short: racism doesn’t need to be linked to biological race to be racist.

The anti-Islam racist discourse is a masquerading discourse. Luckily there is more and more attention for this different form of racism, calling it “cultural(ist) racism”. This kind of racism as I said before, essentialises values of the own culture against values of the other culture. This results in statements as “people are equal, cultures are not.”. And: there is no problem with Muslims, but with Islam. The cultural racism, racism without races, is as Pierre-Andre sees it “differentialist racism” Differentialist racism sees a culture as uncommon and impossible held common; it maps the differences instead of the possible commonalities. A second problem is that the anti-Islamic discourses are not only a part of “ordinary peoples thinking, but also involves the academic, political and elite sphere. I will call this racism “meta-racism”. As meta-racism, anti-Islamic propaganda is seen as an objective reaction to a factual situation. Negative reactions on Islam are perceived as a legitimate reaction on an overflow of Muslims in society. This of course, is not the fact at all. Still, if intelligentsia, politics and elite keep on claiming this overflow, a lot of people get the idea that the subjective resentment has an objective root and is therefore legitimate. We do not live in a post-racial era.

Othering and neo-colonialism

The making of normative distinctions based on cultural criteria result in the production of the Other. In this discussion it is the Islamic Other that is produced through the alignment of a homogeneous European culture. We could say that this alignment of group identity there is a two-sided neo-ethnic interpretation of identity. With neo-ethnicity I mean, according to Olivier Roy, the construction of an ethnic group, which previously did not exist as such through a limited set of differential patterns isolated from a more complex and diverse cultural background. In right-wing populism and in a lot of mainstream media as well, Islam is perceived as a totalised unity of communities and forces which are radically distinguished from the equally totalised, Christian or secular, liberal and democratic West. These opposites are described dichotomous and are giving positive predicates to the West and perceiving „the East‟ as something negative. Differences for example are seen in terms of: modern-retarded, enlightened-traditional, rational-emotional, etc. Those discourses do not pay any attention to the diversified nature of Islam and Muslim presence in Europe neither to the diversified nature of European culture. As for Christianity, in Islam the differences are national, generational or depending on class and education. But right-wing populist discourses reduces this historical, cultural and social complexity and an interesting question is why those „reductionist‟ discourses, are resonating at large with peoples anxieties, feelings, fears and opinions about non-Christian religiosity in society.

The perception of the „East‟ or the „Arab World‟ as a monolithic „other‟ is not as new as might seem. One of the most important contributors the analysis of the perception of the West towards an „East‟ and vice versa, is Edward Said. He discussed those topics in the perspective of Western European colonialists. Said understood this practice of „monolithic perception‟ as the epistemic violence of the West. The colonial Orientalism contained images of odalisques and „strange-looking‟ men. The current neo-Orientalism has leading images like: burka-wearing women and Mosques. This perception and the conception of the „Orientalist Other. is only possible because of an equal conception of an „own. European „Occident.. This Neo-Orientalism or neo-colonialism is linked with occidentalism. Occidentalism is a word with different meanings, but for our discussion here and intertwined with the discussion of Neo-Orientalism, we use the critical terminology of Coronil and Mignolo. For them, Occidentalism is a form of euro-centrism and a construction of a hegemonic „Self.” And this is, in my opinion, exactly what his happening in the discussion about national and European culture.

The multicultural deficit in the perception right-wing populist parties

Now I will come to the last part of my talk. I want to focus now on how multiculturalism is perceived in the right-wing populist parties and how the idea of a failed multiculturalism emerged. Furthermore I would like to link this whit he aforementioned concepts and try to show that it is exactly this linkage that provides these politics with a very strong appealing character which leads to the support of a highly emotional electorate and therefore to electoral success. Multiculturalism according to Geert Wilders is something that destroys the roots of the national culture. The idea is that the liberal multiculturalist Left can me made responsible for “selling” the national culture to the multiculturalist project in which it lost its original strength and became weak among the pluralism of cultures. Therefore, because of this weakening of national culture on behalf of multiculturalism, it is multiculturalism that fosters the Islamisation of Europe. In the same linked with all that has been said above, it is the culturalist argument which lies beneath the insult to multiculturalism. Cultures in a culturalist perspective are not equal. Therefore, as multiculturalism tried to see all cultures as equal, it was doomed to fail. Right-wing populist politics like Geert Wilders party politics explain the apparent failure of multiculturalist integration not on the level of policy-making but perceive this failure as an inherent logical result of the presumed relativist nature of the multiculturalist project.

Conclusion

By means of a conclusion, there are a few points I hope I have been able to make. First of all, the emergence of right-wing populist parties in the European political landscape and especially in the Dutch political space and the way in which those parties use religion as a constitutive element of national identity on the one side and how they oppose this identity to the religious Islamic identity, show that religious plays an increasingly important role in the public space. Therefore I state, that the post-secular and post-Christian space is partially responsible for the smooth emergence of these party politics.

Furthermore I tried to point out, that the way in which the national identity is reconstructed through narratives on cultural roots and in connection to national symbols, myth memories, etc. are an ethno-nationalist practice and the right-wing Populist Party politics of Geert Wilders should therefore be considered as a branch of nationalism.

Thirdly, I believe that the depiction of the multiculturalist project as a project that “sold” the national identity and which enables the growing Islamisation of national culture and the way in which this is connected to the importance of the preservation of national culture, is an important element that needs to be taken into account when explaining the electoral success of these parties. Because of its emotional appeal, the ethno-nationalist interpretation of national culture and the emphasis on preserving the national culture in opposition to the “dangerous” Islam, leads to a high resonance with the electorate.




[1] J. Beaumont & C. Baker, post-secular sicties. Space, theory and practice, continuum international publishing group, London, 2011, p.5.
[2] J. Beaumont & C. Baker, post-secular sicties. Space, theory and practice, continuum international publishing group, London, 2011, p.5.

ego-litarianism

On the nexus of neoliberalist economical dreams and social reality, we find a disturbing asymmetry. For those elites who intend to gain from the single European market, a frontier-free Europe is an attractive and progress-sounding idea. The social reality nevertheless, for many people comes with a heavy cost. Where on a economical level, policy-makers are stressing the need for more cohesion and concrete measures to tackle the dislocating effects and social exclusion created by the integration process, the logic of the single market contradicts these ideals. The asymmetry between positive perceived cohesion on an economical level and an increasing polarization and dislocation on social level as a result of supra-national egalitarianism, is the contradiction at the heart of modernity that underlies the European Union.

While European integration may symbolize supra-national cohesion, modernity and the transcendence of nationalist attachments, it also breeds insecurity and encourages new identities (ethnic, religious) which are often just as regressive and chauvinistic as the nationalism which the EU claim to be substituting. By undermining the centred nation-states it has encouraged the rise of submerged peripheral nationalisms and protectionist movements. And by shifting the boundaries across and between European states - al in the name of economic rationality, a bigger market or the free movement of capital an labour - it has intensified those processes of social dislocation and anxiety.

Lost in transition

Today I visited the Urban Migration Film Festival at UCL. Some reflection in the aftermath...

There is a central problem about migration: we are used to hear about migration connected to numbers, statistics,

policies, etc. The goal of the festival was to show the different representations of migrants and migration through different media. Those representations in documentaries often differ from the way in which migration and migrants are spoken about in mainstream public discourse. Cinematographic representations of immigrants have the possibility to get closer to the migrant reality. By using a different format, it is able to open minds and eyes for the other aspects of this complex reality. Instead of seeing migration as a singular process of a black, single man, it shows that everybody can be a migrant and that migrants are people who remain in transit.

The trajectory of the migrant is difficult to categorize, and every trajectory is different. What remains the same for all migrants though, is the fact that the trajectory has a transformative process. What the documentaries try to do is not only to get inside of head of the migrant and show the migrant reality from a different perspective (from the other side), but it also tries to be a political tool in order to give a voice to the voiceless. After seeing the movies, the question remains if the documentaries really managed to meet those goals. In my opinion, the documentation of migrant reality from the perspective of a non-migrant camera, is somehow still influenced by hierarchies and power relations. It is difficult or almost impossible to go beyond the descriptive observing position for a person who does not share the migrant experience.

The symposium consisted of three big thematic parts: journey, transition and negotiation. In the first part, the movies generally focus on how the migrants are influenced by the environment they transverse. The central problem is the representation of otherness. Even if the documentaries try to overcome the gap between the distinction between the Self and the Other, the way in which the migrants are represented, still are representation of radical Otherness. The only way of bridging the gap is to tell the story from the immigrant point of view, not from the point of view of the one who sees the migrant coming. But how to go beyond polarizing perception? How to be able to see immigration as a natural movement of human beings? It would be a very liberating idea to try to expand our concept of immigration. We move everyday, from home to work. We also move homes within the same city. We are on the move constantly. Everyone migrates, immigrates. It would be a strong idea to try to see movement as a natural process and in depicting the immigrant as a person moving in our direction, we could go beyond the polarizing view of Self and Otherness that bears so much structural violence.This point of view would have the potential to change some of the power relations.

In the second part, the documentaries focused on transition, which means the integration from the homecountry into the guest country and the problems that are related to that. An important conclusion can be made about this, the migrant experience is connected to a huge loss. It is not only about the loss of homeland, people, family, but is also about the loss of hope and expectation. What we see is that reality is always different from what we expect it to be. The migrant experience is characterized by a two-sided myth. On the one side there is the myth of arrival, which depicts the guest country, the opportunities and the chances as something ideal. When people immigrate, reality always comes different. The immigrant is exposed to structural and cultural violence, injustice, etc. On the other hand there is what you could call the myth of the return. The possibility of being able to return to the home country if the situation in the guest country would turn out unbearable.The problem is that home is also never the way you left it. Home moves like the migrant moves.

This two-sided myth becomes also very visible in the last session of the festival about "negotiation". In this part, the different documentaries try to show the difficulties and the possibilities of engaging with the new culture and establish an exchange of home culture and new culture. This negotiating is for a big part connected to some assimilation, it asks people to give up some of their cultural identity for the sake of integration. Still, full assimilation is not possible and would be a violation of individuality. At this point, an immigrant person will feel somewhere in between there home culture and the culture of the guest country. The unknown becomes known but stay strange, but the known becomes unknown and strange. In this way, one could say that the immigrant is caught in transition. Or maybe even lost in transition...