See below:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 12:49 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: RE: Electoral Dilemmas Re: Color of Anarchism
>
>
> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
> >My working definition of racism is:
> >
> >"Racism is an ideology that elevates the social construction
> of racial
> >difference to a primary place in human relations, and
> assumes a hierarchy.
> >It was developed to claim superiority of White people over
> people of color
> >based on the false idea that race is a fixed and immutable
> essentialist
> >reality. Racism + discrimination + power/privilege = racial
> oppression. The
> >overwhelmingly hegemonic form of racism in the U.S. is White
> supremacy, but
> >other forms exist in other countries. Racism can exist anecdotally in
> >oppressed groups, sometimes as a backlash response to the
> oppression."
>
> What do you make of what Balibar & Zizek call neo-racism, which
> replaces racial hierarchy with racial separateness - drawing
> perversely on multiculti notions of diversity and autonomy? I.e., no
> one's better than anyone else, but the races just weren't meant to
> live together?
>
> Doug
Well, to quote Doug Henwood from 1999: "it's symptomatic of where rightwing thought & propaganda are going; they've left the Bell Curve way behind."
Some sectors of the right still embrace biological racism, many others have embraced cultural racism. Both claim that it is essentialist. The cultural racists are split as to whether or not a person can transcend race by adopting culture. The Promise Keepers is an example where it is OK to be Black or Hispanic as long as you adopt White versions of Protestant conservative evangelicalism.
Buchanan is an example of a biological racist posing as a cultural racist.
Telos is an example of former leftists embracing right-wing cultural racism via de Benoist.
Just because what Balibar & Zizek (& Wallerstein, & others) call neo-racism is not really totally new, it is silly to dismiss it without analyzing how influential it has become in ideological discourse. The European New Right is an example, with the Third Position representing the neonazi version.
I agree with Arendt that racial nationalism is the doppelganger of fascism. So racial separatist forms of racism make me nervous. I do think the these versions of racial separatism need to be taken seriously.
-Chip