On Photographing the Far Right

In 1977, Chris Steele-Perkins photographed the "Battle of Lewisham", i.e. members of the far right National Front planning to march to London's city centre, the 4.000 counter-protestors and many police officers.

Steele-Perkins kept photographing the far right supporters in the following decades... shaved heads, White Power t-shirts and Nazi salutes. However, they only tell part of the story, as he points out:

"The far right is depicted in photographs as the burly boys because it's easy to do it that way. Skinheads shouting perhaps looks more intimindating than people with long hair shouting."

“The real problem is the people who don’t talk – the political classes behind it are really to blame. The others are just foot soldiers, some of whom are not too bright and just want to get into a rumble. […] This is where photography and representation have a problem, The message is maybe not carried in the picture in same way [if it doesn’t show a skinhead].” 

Chris Steel-Perkins

photographs by Chris Steele-Perkins via

Quoting Damon Albarn III

“I was brought up an internationalist and my dad’s dad was a conscientious objector. Both my parents were very much part of the sixties in their mindsets. I didn’t feel any sort of nationalism. I didn’t really understand what it was. I remember when I first went to comprehensive school, Scotland had been in the World Cup in ’78. I bought a Scotland top and went into school, and I got the s*** kicked out of me. I soon learnt about nationalism after that one.” That’s a true story. I didn’t know you weren’t allowed to support other teams. Literally, because it had never been part of my upbringing.”
Damon Albarn

YouTube Selection

::: Hollow Ponds: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Polaris: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Out of Time: LISTEN/WATCH
::: The Universal (Matera, 2019): LISTEN/WATCH
::: Everyday Robots: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Royal Morning Blue: LISTEN/WATCH
::: On Melancholy Hill: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Lonely Press Play: LISTEN/WATCH
::: Hostiles: LISTEN/WATCH

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photograph via

The Germ of National Interest (by Guy Verhofstadt)

When Jacques Delors said last week that “the germ is back”, he was not referring to the actual coronavirus but the germ of narrow national self-interest among European leaders.



Dutch Minister of finance Wopke Hoekstra even dared to suggest that solidarity among member states is impossible because of “moral hazard”.

While, just as with the migration crisis that hit certain countries harder than others because of their position on the map of Europe, this Corona crisis is one of “bad luck”. Countries who were hit first simply had less time to prepare for the storm than others. There is no moral superiority or predestination to be found in this crisis.
So how do we root out the germ of self-interest that blocks Europe today ? The answer is simple: with the supranational solidarity embodies in the European Commission. Playtime is over, so Ursula von der Leyen and her Commissioners better take out the big guns and follow in the footsteps of the Delors Commission. (...)

But more than communication, Europe needs real action now. A comprehensive three-way-strategy on a continental scale to overcome this crisis. First of all, on the sanitary level.
By putting in place a European response mechanism that is activated every time a serious health crisis emerges. Issuing clear mandatory guidelines on how to act: for people on a personal and family level and for national governments on which business to close temporarily.
At the heart of such a mechanism should be a single European Health Agency that is properly funded and has the mandate to act.
An agency that does more than just “coordinating” national efforts, but is able to take all emergency measures to keep Europeans safe, including the pooling of medicines and hospital equipment and the temporary closing (partially or complete) of our borders.

Secondly, the European Commission needs to launch a massive trillion “Stability and Recovery Package” to support our national economies, especially their citizens and their companies.
A package that must contain a wide range of tools going from special credit for investment over bridge loans for SME’s to a reinsurance unemployment scheme.
A massive package that will be financed by the launch of a European Recovery Bond as part of a renewed and enlarged European budget. (...)

Making the economic crisis in Europe much longer and much deeper than necessary. In 2008, we saved the banks from bankruptcy, it would be an inconceivable perversity if we would not do the same for the real economy and real people who are losing their jobs as we speak.

If this Corona crisis grows into a new sovereign debt crisis, we cannot say we did not see it coming. However, what we did not see coming, but what will perhaps require the biggest pushback is the loss of democratic values and personal freedoms during this crisis.
These are golden days for law enforcement and wannabe dictators. Viktor Orbàn, to give only one example, has been eroding the rule of law and democracy for years. Now, under the pretext of the COVID19 pandemic, he launched an additional authoritarian power grab this week, closing the Parliament and ushering in unlimited rule by decree.
Up until now, the EU has issued only lukewarm challenges to him. Also here, it is time for the von der Leyen Commission to get real and to act.

It’s clear that Europe’s intergovernmental patchwork does not work in times of crises. Not during the financial crisis of 2008, not during the sovereign debt crisis of 2012, not during the migration crisis of 2015 and – unsurprisingly – not today during the Corona crisis.

Therefore it’s time that the Commission adopts a much more pro-active approach than today.
The Commission must take on more responsibility and more power, because in the end that is needed: a fundamental shift away from loose coordination in the Council – permanently weakened by the germ of national self-interest – towards real and decisive action trough the European Commission, a Commission accountable to both: the member states and the European citizens.

This is yet another crisis for Europe due to the inept and inefficient response from its member states. If we do not drastically change our political architecture, this might very well be its last crisis, the beginning of the end of the European project.

(...) it’s time for radical change, time for a fundamental shift, away from those who are unable to solve crisis after crisis after crisis, to those who are capable and willing to do so in the interest of all European citizens.

Guy Verhofstadt

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photograph via

Coronavirus Pandemic: Close Your Eyes

"What culture do you identify with?", people ask me sooner or later, mostly during the stage of small talk as my mother is from X, my father from Y, and I was raised in Z. "None, all of them and more, their synergy, depends on situation, varies with surrounding, don’t know, don’t care, it’s complex …". It‘s only small talk, so, why bother. Often, my reply is the shortest option that sounds okay to me: European.



As a European, I also used to like the idea of the European Union, this "peace project" linking Europeans through values they share, protecting minorites and vulnerable groups, insisting on equal treatment for all regardless of a person’s nationality, gender, culture, disability, blablabla. Except in difficult times.

10.779 people have died of this virus in Italy, 756 in the last 24 hours alone, a whole generation of nonne and nonni is gone. According to doctors, dying of the coronavirus is as if you were drowning while fully conscious, alone, isolated, no family around, no good-bye, no funeral, cities are running out of coffins. Italy is suffering, facing an abyss, urgently needs help and has asked for it. The European Union closes its eyes. Cuba sends doctors, China sends doctors and equipment more than once, Russia sends supplies, Albania sends doctors, Somalia is sending doctors, Israel shows solidarity when Jerusalem and Tel Aviv lighten up with Italian flags, so does Bosnia and Herzegovina - none part of the EU.
The pandemic brings to light the best and the worst in humans: lacking solidarity, nationalism, ageism, ableism. Jean-Claude Juncker once said: "Europe fails when egos prevail." Well?...

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photograph (c) MLM

A World of Enemies

“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism always insists that its own people is surrounded by “a world of enemies,” “one against all,” that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.”
Hannah Arendt (1951)



photograph of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) via

The -ism Series (35): Femonationalism

The term "femonationalism" was coined by Sara Farris and refers to the phenomenon of European nationalist, right-wing parties advancing "their anti-Islam agendas in the name of women's rights" despite their traditionally antifeminist politics and "their lack of concern with elaborating concrete policies of gender equality (and occasionally LGBT rights) within an otherwise xenophobic rhetoric". The message is that Muslim males are a danger for Europe because of their oppressive treatment of women and that Muslim women are victims of non-western patriarchy. In fact, Muslim men are instrumentalised "in order to advance their own political objectives" (Farris, 2017).

(...) by encouraging a rhetoric of division, or a Manichean splitting of the political and ideological debate into one counterposing "US" (white, European, western, Christian, civilized, "women-friendly") to "Them" (nonwhite, non-European, non-western, Muslim, uncivilized, misogynist Others), right-wing nationalist parties have everything to gain.
Farris (2017)

This is a classical dilemma, when anti-sexism is played out against anti-racism. It’s something Black feminists in the US wrote a lot about in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to debate: how can we denounce sexism in our communities, when we know that could then be used to attack Black men? There is no easy answer. We need to support in every way the possibility for women of any community to denounce sexism wherever it presents itself. The question we should ask is: are we really enabling this? How can we support the struggle of these women, in this context of incredibly harsh and rising Islamophobia? The struggle against racism and sexism must go hand in hand.
Sara Farris

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- Farris, S. R. (2017). In the Name of Women's Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism. Durham: Duke University Press.
- photograph (Afghan women walking along a street in Kabul, 1962) via

Quoting Arthur Schopenhauer

“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)



“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

“For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?”
Arthur Schopenhauer

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photograph by Robert Frank (1962) via

National Crowd Symbols, by Elias Canetti (1960)

The following excerpts are taken from Elias Canetti's "Crowds and Power". "Crowds and Power" is considered to be his major work and an outgrowth of his interest in mass psychology, the emotions of crowds, the psychopathology of power, and the allure of fascism. Canetti (1905-1994) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981 (via).



"Most attempts to find out what nations really are have suffered from an intrinsic defect: they have been attempts to define the general concept of nationality. People have said that a nation is this or that, apparently believing that all that mattered was to find the right defmition; once found, this would be applicable to all nations equally. They have adduced language or territory, written literature, history, form of government or so-called national feeling; and in every case the exceptions have proved more important than the rule. It has been like clutching at some adventitious garment, in the belief that the living creature within could be thus grasped.



Apart from this seemingly objective approach, there is another, more naïve one, which consists in being interested in one nation only one's own-and indifferent to all the rest. Its components are an unshakeable belief in the superiority of this one nation; prophetic visions of unique greatness, and a peculiar mixture of moral and feral pretensions. But it must not be assumed that all these national ideologies have the same content. It is only in their importunate appetite and the claims they make that they are alike. They want the same thing. but in themselves they are different. They want aggrandisement, and substantiate their claim with the fact of their increase. There is no nation, it seems, which has not been promised the whole earth, and none which is not bound to inherit it in the course of nature. All the other nations who hear of this feel threatened, and their fear blinds them to everything except the threat. Thus people overlook the fact that the concrete contents of these national claims. the real ideologies behind them, are very different from one another. One must take the trouble to fmd out what is peculiar in each nation; and do it without being infected by its greed. One must stand apart, a devotee of none, but profoundly and honestly interested in all of them. One should allow each to unfold in one's mind as though one were condemned actually to belong to it for a good part of a lifetime. But one must never surrender entirely to one at the cost of all the others.

For it is idle to speak of nations as though there were not real differences between them. They wage long wars against one another and a considerable proportion of each nation takes an active part in these wars. "What they are fighting for is proclaimed often enough, but what they fight as is unknown. It is true they have a name for it; they say they fight as Frenchmen or as Germans, English or Japanese. But what meaning is attached to any of these words by the person using it of himself? In what does he believe himself to be different when, as a Frenchman or a German, a Japanese or an Englishman, he goes to war? The factual differences do not matter so much. An investigation of customs, traditions, politics and literature, could be thorough and still not touch the distinctive character of a nation, that which, when it goes to war, becomes its faith.

Thus nations are regarded here as though they were religions; and they do in fact tend to tum into something resembling religions from time to time. The germ is always latent in them, becoming active in times of war.

We can take it for granted that no member of a nation ever sees himself as alone. As soon as he is named, or names himself, something more comprehensive moves into his consciousness, a larger unit to which he feels himself to be related. The nature of this unit is no more a matter of indifference than his relationship to it. It is not simply the geographical unit of his country, as it is found on a map; the average man is indifferent to this. Frontiers may have their tension for him, but not the whole area of a country. Nor does he think of his language, distinctly and recognisably though this may differ from that of others. Words which are familiar to him certainly affect him deeply, and especially in times of excitement. But it is not a vocabulary which stands behind him, and which he is ready to fight for. And the history of his nation means even less to the man in the street. He does not know its true course, nor the fullness of its continuity. He does not know how his nation used to live, and only a few of the names of those who lived before him. The figures and moments of which he is aware are remote from anything the proper historian understands as history.

The larger unit to which he feels himself related is always a crowd or a crowd symbol. It always has some of the characteristics of crowds or their symbols: density, growth and infinite openness; surprising, or very striking, cohesion; a common rhythm or a sudden discharge. Many of these symbols have already been treated at length, for example, sea, forest and com. It is unnecessary to recapitulate here the qualities and functions which have made them crowd symbols. They will recur in the discussion of the conceptions and feelings nations have about themselves. But it must be stressed that these crowd symbols are never seen as naked or isolated. Every member of a nation always sees himself, or his picture of himself, in a fixed relationship to the particular symbol which has become the most important for his nation. In its periodic reappearance when the moment demands it lies the continuity of national feeling. A nation's consciousness of itself changes when, and only when, its symbol changes. It is less immutable than one supposes, a fact which offers some hope for the continued existence of mankind."

(via)

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photographs via and via

Albert says...

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."
Albert Einstein



photograph via

The -ism Series (14 + 15): Patriotism + Nationalism

"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
George Bernard Shaw



Patriotism is defined as positive feelings toward one's own group, nationalism as negative feelings toward other groups. In the 1980s, Feshbach et al. wondered if positive feelings toward one's own group automatically led to negative feelings toward others or if the two constructs differed in quality. A factor analysis revealed two relatively independent factors which the authors labelled patriotism and nationalism: Patriotism focused on feelings about one's own country (e.g. "I love my country.", "I am proud to be American."), nationalism on the feelings of and a need for national superiority (e.g. "In view of America's moral and material superiority, it is only right that we should have the biggest say in deciding UN policy.", "Other countries should try to make their governments as much like ours as possible."). Their findings also suggest that nationalism is associated more strongly with a competitive (and militaristic) approach to the world while patriotism shows a more cooperative (and peaceful) approach. The results show parallels to Adorno et al.'s differentiation between the "healthy patriotic love of one's own country" that is not associated with prejudice against others and "ethnocentric patriotism" which is associated with prejudice and resembles Feshbach's nationalism (Druckman, 1994).



Duckitt points out that ethnocentric patriotism is associated with insecure group identification, i.e., the more insecure individuals feel in the groups they belong to, the more unhealthy their relationship to others and the stronger their need to distance their groups from others. This notion challenges the assumption that ingroup and outgroup attitudes are completely independent and not related to each other. Other authors define nationalism as a more complex form of patriotism  (Druckman, 1994). While former studies used to see nationalism as a continuum of intensiveness, younger studies rather distinguish on the basis of quality, i.e., aim to identify different types of nationalism. Staub differs between blind and constructive patriotism, Westle between traditional nationalism, democratic patriotism and postnationalism, Knudsen between national chauvinism and system legitimacy, Hjerm between ethnic, civic and pluralist national identities, Blank & Schmidt distinguish ethnic nationalism from democratic patriotism - just to mention a few concepts (Blank et al, 2001).



Nationalism is xenophobic. It concentrates on minorities and immigrants and in a certain way is a latent mechanism of boundary maintenance. It is characterised by blind support for the nation and correlates positively with the derogation of "others". Cohrs argues that patriotism per se is neither good nor bad and that its consequences depend on the values and norms. There is still the question whether it is really possible to have positive patriotic feelings withouth having nationalistic sentiments. Scholars are still working on a theoretical and empirical distinction between the two constructs nationalism and patriotism (Latcheva, 2010).


"There is no way like the American Way": People in Louisville, Kentucky, queuing for food and clothing in front of a relief station during the Great Ohio River Flood in 1937

- Blank, T., Schmidt, P. & Westle, B. (2001). "Patriotism" - A Contradiction, a Possibility or an Empirical Reality? Paper to be presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops. "ECPR Workshop 26: National Identity in Europe", 6-11 April, 2001, Grenoble (France).
- Druckman, D. (1994). Nationalism, Patriotism, and Group Loyalty: A Social Psychological Perspective. Mershon International Studies Review, 38(1), 43-68.
- Latcheva, R. (2010). Nationalism versus patriotism, or the floating border? National identification and ethnic exclusion in post-communist Bulgaria. Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology, 1(2), 187-215.
- photos via and via and via and via