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Seach Results for "markha" (10)

Markha Valenta on the Utøya island shooting

Markha Valenta on the Utøya island shooting

AUF Summer Camp on Utøya, 2010, photograph by Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking (AUF)  by Markha Valenta However nuanced, it is striking how little extant interpretations attend to the fact that Breivik’s most grotesque violence was not directed at Muslims or immigrants as such but at the youth members of the Norwegian Social Democrats. Anders Breivik may be…

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Elephants, Horses, and the Proportions of Paradise

Elephants, Horses, and the Proportions of Paradise

What does a perfect elephant look like? This was a question that occupied the Flemish artist Crispijn van de Passe II in the years around 1620. By then, several elephants had visited the European continent…

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‘This is the violence of the rational sadist state at a loss for how to use its power’

‘This is the violence of the rational sadist state at a loss for how to use its power’

by Markha Valenta Desperate to eject some refugees it does not want, the Netherlands is refining the art of radical deprivation. No single step, no single decision, no single action in this process is horrible. Yet the cumulative effect is grotesque. Some months ago, a group of refugees from East Africa and the Middle East…

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Out in Public

Out in Public

Poster for Sofie Peeters’ documentary Femme de la rue by Markha Valenta When Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, “the problem that has no name” was the problem of college-educated housewives sitting at home being bored to death.  Today, the “problem that has no name” is more widespread, more alluring and more aggressive.…

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A politics of purist nationalism is utterly unrealistic…

A politics of purist nationalism is utterly unrealistic…

Brothers Abdullah (L) and Umut Tagi, winners of the national Best Herring award. Leiden, Netherlands, 2012 by Markha Valenta The accounts, symbols and feelings that we have about national identity were largely imagined, created and popularized in the nineteenth century. The word ‘nationalism’ itself dates from the early nineteenth century and marked the increasing use…

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“My autonym is Bond, Jim Bond” by Evan Johnston

“My autonym is Bond, Jim Bond” by Evan Johnston

Goldfinger, United Artists, 1964 by Evan Johnston [BOND, JAMES]: alphabet, anatomy, [auto]biography is a character study conveyed through an index, a book length listicle-with-commentary of one of literature and film’s most distinctive characters. Author Michelle Disler starts with an alphabetical list of situations that Bond has been in throughout the Fleming novels (Approximate Number of…

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Most, except the Greek nationalists, are perfectly happy blaming the Greeks…

Most, except the Greek nationalists, are perfectly happy blaming the Greeks…

Wolfgang Schäuble by Markha Valenta So why are we in Europe going down the path of a deeply self-deceptive and hypocritical race to the bottom, where trans-European solidarity is a non-starter, since it can only be a barrier to a European political elite now intent on pursuing the next phase of our liberalization by means…

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‘Liberal secularism is on its way to becoming the new group-think’

‘Liberal secularism is on its way to becoming the new group-think’

by Markha Valenta The ritual slaughter of animals has become the last of many areas of contention that are changing the shape of our public domains. The way in which Islamophobia is becoming a part of our public ‘common sense’ has complex knock-on effects, not least for our Jewish minorities. The Dutch Party for the…

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Geert Wilders is not Liu Xiaobo

Geert Wilders is not Liu Xiaobo

by Markha Valenta Cas Mudde was quite right to point out recently how liberal arguments are being used in the interests of illiberal attacks on Muslims. However, in the Dutch case this reflects anything but a progressive national consensus It is rather striking, at first sight, to note how much the Dutch politician Geert Wilders…

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The Success of Islamophobia

The Success of Islamophobia

by Markha Valenta The success of Islamophobia in western Europe is both striking and disconcerting. How, after fifty years of the institutionalised nurture of human rights and anti-racism could an ideology of vicious discrimination gain such ground? Time and again, the Islamophobes seize the initiative and run with it: more often than not in the…

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