Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

" Colonialism as a form of violent foreign rule was legitimised by a racist ideology of European superiority ,’ says the board that greets you at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin." And so does interventions (military or otherwise today). They are ligitimised by "defending our values and way of life", "liberating women", "figting terrorism", "defeding gay peopleand "reforming Islam" Besides the colonial legacy, fundamental features of global capitalism are being avoided by those who point to colonialism. Uneven and combined development, exploitaion, domination of finance capital and class, international institutions, debt, aid, NGOs, etc are playing crucial role in perpetuating national domination as well as the global one.

Reassessing Foucault: Modern Sexuality and the Transition to Capitalism

"[W]ith  Macron the void is not in contradiction with fullness of content, even if at the present moment when he does have to show something to the outside world, the void is greatly preferable. For the substance is the oligarchy’s: this is the fullness of a class’s project to persevere, in the very moment that everything condemns it, testimony to an era that has perceptibly reached its tipping point. In these conditions, for the oligarchic substance to maintain itself in the face of — and against — everything else, it needed an empty candidate, a candidate who said nothing, for what truly had to be said would be too obscene to present openly: the rich want to remain rich, and the powerful to remain powerful. That is this class’s only project, and that is its candidate Macron’s  raison d’être . In this sense, he is the spasm of a system pushing back its own death. He is its final response, the only way of disguising a continuity that has become intolerable to the rest of society,

Should we vote?  "Fundamentally, we should be indifferent to this demand, coming from the state and its organisations. By now, we should all know that to vote is but to reinforce one of the conservative orientations of the existing system. Brought back to its real contents, the vote is a ceremony that depoliticises peoples..." — Alain Badieu

By the author of Fields of Blood — Religion and the History of Violence. The myth of religious violence and An interview with Karen Armstrong

The other side of/the contradiction in "civilisation" Agriculture had also introduced another type of aggression: an institutional or structural violence in which a society compels people to live in such wretchedness and subjection that they are unable to better their lot. This systemic oppression has been described as possibly “the most subtle form of violence,”   and, according to the World Council of Churches, it is present whenever “resources and powers are unequally distributed, concentrated in the hands of the few, who do not use them to achieve the possible self-realization of all members, but use parts of them for self-satisfaction or for purposes of dominance, oppression, and control of other societies or of the underprivileged in the same society.” Agrarian civilization made this systemic violence a reality for the first time in human history. K. Armstrong, 214, pp. 13-14

"Percy Schramm a montré comment les cérémonies du sacre étaient le transfert, dans l’ordre du politique, de cérémonies religieuses.  Si le cérémonial religieux peut se transférer aussi facilement dans les cérémonies politiques, à travers les cérémonies du sacre, c’est parce qu’il s’agit, dans les deux cas, de faire croire qu’il y a un fondement au discours qui n’apparaît comme autofondateur, légitime, universel que parce qu’il y a théâtralisation — au sens d’évocation magique, de sorcellerie — du groupe uni et consentant  au discours qui l’unit." La fabrique des debats publics