[lbo-talk] Street-fighting Days

[Seth Ackerman]

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> Many French leftists are very ambivalent and often confused about
> Muslims, as are many leftists here and the rest of the EU.


The French left is collectively ambivalent because secularism is, for 
historical reasons, a core value for them. I don't think it's "Muslims" 
they're ambivalent about. Championing the rights of Muslims in North 
Africa against the clash-of-civilizations rhetoric of the Right  was 
*the* defining experience of the postwar French left, like the civil 
rights movement and Vietnam rolled into one.

Seth