Europe’s racisms vary nationally but share target-selection logic

Evidence

There are differences having to do with national and local specificities; with differing colonial, neocolonial, and postcolonial histories as well as with different experiences of empire; with weightier or lighter legacies of colonizing and scientific racisms; with distinct population presence or absence as a result of migration and refugee crises; with uneven modes of situatedness in relation to postindustrialization and globalization, different experiences of economic decline and reinvention, and contrasting standpoints in relation to World War II and postcolonial decadence and melancholia, resurgence and euphoria. Thus France’s particularist universalism and insistent assimilationism in the name of laïcité and stridently republican anti-communarisme can be contrasted with Britain’s conservative liberalism and resentful, melancholic, even decadent multiculturalism; the Nordic countries’ insistence on their historical homogeneity with much more porous if still paranoid Mediterranean societies; and Dutch (or Danish) traditions of repressive tolerance with German historical guilt or with persistent East European antisemitism and generally virulent anti-black and Muslimanic racisms. Post-Communist Eastern bloc deindustrialization and rampant neoliberalization dramatically ramified income inequalities, quickly lowering quality of life for many as it heightened expectations for social betterment. These developments thus festered the conditions for which almost invariably the visibly identified and vulnerable pariahs get picked out as the prompts. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 913

Categorization

• XREF: The economic-disruption festering and pariah-targeting resonates with the Frankfurt School finding that unemployment and status anxiety drive authoritarian targeting. — connects to: Racism’s expressions across Europe resist unified characterization — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3142; Each European nation expresses racism through its distinctive political tradition; Ethnocentric racism targets different minorities while sharing commensurable structures across nations — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2571 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Ethnocentric racism targets different minorities while sharing commensurable structures across nations #corroborates (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2571
• Racism’s expressions across Europe resist unified characterization #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3142
• Racisms form regional typologies tied to specific state formations but travel across borders #corroborates (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 347
• Each European nation expresses racism through its distinctive political tradition #corroborates (0.80)
• French racism was more consistent than other national racisms because it stayed antinational #qualifies (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 463
• Euroskeptic nationalism prevents a united European extreme-right racism #qualifies (0.70) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3145