Re: ...in my opinion although apparently not in yours, the game has moved on from the black-white thing, which I know is of great concern to you, to the Zionist-Muslim thing, which I know also interests you.
Indeed, I'm afraid that the Zionist-Muslim divide is but the cultural rationalization of a racial, white/non-white divide... You wrote in your post #9514 that "...the Lebs, as they call them, are as white as the whites. So it's not just a racial thing, it's a more subtle prejudice and I argue it's a religious one." And I claim to the contrary that it's a RACIAL prejudice. Fifty years ago, at the height of the French-Algerian war, Frenchmen and Pieds Noirs too fought it out against native Algerians who were "as white as" the French. The rationalization, however, was different from today's Islamophobia: the Algerian FLN (led by Arab independentists) never cloaked itself in the mantle of Islam --it was a (geo)political struggle...
Talking of the French, I just heard this morning a report on French radio station France Inter that French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy insisted during his interview with Al-Jazeera(*) that the recent urban riots that upset France had nothing to do with Islam.... And remember that the French controversy on the Muslim scarf also affected the Sikh minority from India.
Finally, last but not least, the paragon of racial strifes itself: the US Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s that pitted whites against blacks --CHRISTIAN, PROTESTANT blacks! If over 15 million African Americans have converted to Islam in the meantime, racist white Americans have only themselves to blame....
You also claimed that "...to restrict non-white immigration... [is] but... one of the facets of the War against Terrorism," but the US wasn't waging any "war against terrorism" back in the 1900s when it restricted Asian immigration to the US --clue:
Message 21812770
So, my point, Searle, is that whites' rationalization of their racist schemes may change --to protect the whites' job market, to bring civilization to savages, to fight terrorism, whatever-- but the prime mover is always the same, namely, white supremacism... both at home and abroad. So far, only Asians have been successful at challenging the "white man's burden" and, accordingly, have shifted to a new geopolitical paradigm centered on China. Elsewhere, non-white peoples are still struggling to break free from the Euro-American yoke and, first among them, comes the Arab-Muslim world ( le monde Arabo-Musulman as we say in French). Unlike sub-Saharan Africa and South America, Arab countries enjoy both an educated elite capable of mastering the most advanced technologies AND valuable natural resources to pay for maintaining and developing them.
Sub-Saharan/Black Africa does enjoy vast and valuable natural riches as well, yet lacks the educated elites and a modicum of state apparatus to turn it all into a viable, prosperous civilization... Contrariwise, South America does have educated, European elites but doesn't have enough energy reserves (oil, gas) to build advanced, high-tech economies. But, more fundamentally, South America's lily-white elites don't feel it necessary to spread the wealth to their non-white underclass. Somehow, Latin America is but a miniature replica of the world's racial hierarchy: a white minority lording it over swarthy, drudging masses....
Gus
(*) Sarkozy defends record on Islam
Monday 19 December 2005, 0:04 Makka Time, 21:04 GMT
The French interior minister says that he has fought hard for the rights of the country's estimated five million Muslims and that recent riots had nothing to do with Islam.
In an interview with Aljazeera on Sunday, Nicolas Sarkozy discussed the three weeks of rioting by disaffected youths in French cities in October.
[...]
english.aljazeera.net |
