Like a Thief In Broad Daylight

Every particular way of life is a politico-ideological formation whose task is to obfuscate an underlying antagonism, a particular way to cope with this antagonism, and this antagonism traverses the entire social space.

This is the lesson that not only refugees but all members of traditional communities should learn: the way to strike back at cultural neo-colonialism is not to resist it on behalf of their traditional culture but to reinvent a more radical modernity

When an ethnic group is prevented from expressing its identity in this creative way because it is under pressure to renounce it and ‘integrate’ itself into the predominant (usually Western) culture and way of life, it cannot but react by withdrawing into negative difference, a regressive, purist fundamentalism that fights the predominant culture, including by violent means – in short, fundamentalist violence is a reaction for which the predominant culture is responsible.

And this is why white liberals so gladly indulge in self-flagellation: the true aim of their activity is not really to help the others but the Lustgewinn brought about by their self-accusations, the feeling of their own moral superiority over others.

The only true emancipatory gesture is therefore to persist in the search for universality

In contrast to true fundamentalists, the pseudo-fundamentalists are deeply bothered, intrigued, fascinated, by the sinful life of the non-believers. One can feel that, in fighting the sinful other, they are fighting their own temptation.

However, political correctness is also grounded in a negative reference, parasitizing on the sexist/racist ‘incorrect’ Other – this is why the politically correct subjectivity is a mixture of eternal self-guilt (searching for the remainders of sexism or racism in oneself) and arrogance (constantly reprimanding and judging the guilty others).

In both cases, one’s victimhood is used as the justification for the racist treatment of one’s opponents, in line with the reasoning,