Culture-talk in anti-Muslim discourse both displaces and produces political meaning

Evidence

The ‘demographic time bomb’ at the heart of the Eurabian nightmare is fuelled by similar anxieties, even if its exponents tend to explain the looming threat in terms of an inevitable clash of incompatible cultural or religious values, rather than ethnic or racial ‘mongrelization’. The prophets of Europe’s coming downfall tend to deny any racial implications to their Islamic threat narratives, preferring to present the looming confrontation in cultural terms, but the endless references to the ‘East’ and Europe’s Muslim ‘neighbours’ reveal a different subtext. — Matt Carr, You Are Now Entering Eurabia, 81 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Organic and political traumas blur because both are blows against meaning — Catherine Malabou, The New Wounded: From Neurosis to Brain…, 4366; Cultural critique’s political effect is indeterminate and unknowable in advance — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2223; The clash-of-civilizations thesis displaced political conflicts onto culture (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial subtexts persist beneath cultural framing of anti-Muslim demographic anxiety #complicates (0.74) — Matt Carr, You Are Now Entering Eurabia, 81