Re: Why are you worried that the French students...

I find your analogy inapt. In what way is Polanski causing street confrontations with the police? In Britain, street violence is associated with the far right. I thought you were contesting the characterization adopted by some here of the French student protests as violent. Though (inconsistently?) you seem not to distinguish between confronting police and violence -- one may lead to to the other, but does that make them equivalent? One of Laclau's points is that violence will always lead to demands for order. Despite your rejection of Laclau, you often seem to me to echo him. Was the problem with the soixante-huitards that their violence provoked reaction (they knew this would happen), or that when push came to shove they lacked the stomach for an ultimate confrontation? Did you see Wes Anderson's film The French Dispatch? It's a take on 1968. Chuck recently linked to an essay by Raoul Vaneigem, who claims to be (or have been) a soixante-huitard. Does any of this interest you, or do you think anything beyond the limits of electoral politics is pure adventurism? Equating Zionism with racism may be a radical stance in the context of Anglophile electoral politics. But in a larger context isn't it blaming the Jews for what was an inevitability ever since British imperialism decided to rid Europe of them no matter the cost? You blame the Jews. You blame the Americans. Fine. But the British Empire placed the Jews in an untenable position (it did much the same thing to the Hindus and Muslims in India) and then Churchill threw his hands up and left Roosevelt holding the bag. The legacy of slavery is an American problem, one it refuses to confront. But the legacy of empire -- that's on you. hugzu ;-p