The Barbarian and Lévi-Strauss

“The barbarian is, first and foremost, the man who believes in barbarism,” said Claude Lévi-Strauss, the father of cultural anthropology, in his 1952 book Race and History, showing the impact of racial stereotypes on culture and social action. However, there is still an unfilled gap between Lévi-Strauss’ science and “common sense” philosophy. Although Claude Lévi-Strauss’ argument that races do not exist in the biological sense has been confirmed by genetic research, the cultural and social differences that generate racism have not died out. What is more, the current economic crisis — similar to the one in the period between the two world wars — fuels the fears that, in turn, bring all residual racism to the surface.

Racism and social hatred, often combined in a cocktail that is as ambiguous as it is dangerous, as proven by anti-Semitism during the last century, are an expression of the failure to understand or empathize with other people. This is why the old totalitarian slogan, “workers of all countries, unite!,” can be joined by “racists of all countries, unite!” And it wouldn’t be the first time! Periods of economic depression have given rise to monstrous political regimes before. But even more so than in the past, current events are not rooted directly in racism, but in the social and economic sphere.

For the extremists in Romania or the Sarkozists, the Roma people are not the problem: The real issues are criminality and insecurity. Just as it is not Obama’s “race” that is the issue for the American far right, but the state of the economy.

Tolerated, if not actually encouraged — and not just for electoral reasons, but as a reflection of wrongful convictions as well — racism tends to inevitably intensify political extremism.

From the obsession with removing the word “Roma” from the Romanian language and using the pejorative “gypsy” instead, to the problem of the “visible minorities” in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland or Sweden, to the claims of the tea party movement and the Mama Grizzlies, European and North American ultra-conservatives are dominated by the terrible fear of a barbaric invasion.

However, the so-called conservative revolution is, in fact, not that new. Not only Mussolini and Zelea Codreanu, but Hitler and Franco as well, announced popular conservative revolutions nearly a century ago. And their allies were somewhat similar to the instigators today: business circles affected by the crisis and scared of change, religious cults that reject science, and so on. The attempt to go back in time to the “golden age” of neoliberalism threatens to damage the democratic foundation of institutions. In the U.S., for instance, the tea party “revolution” places the Republican Party in a delicate situation in the coming mid-term elections. Will the party survive this extremist assault? Because, as 20th century history shows us, conservative revolutions generate radical forms of political regimes and fascism. And Romania was no exception.

This is why it is not the “no taxation without representation” slogan that takes center stage in political debates today, although it may seem so, but the so-called popular racism instead. Will the barbarian inside our citadel manage to impose the logic of conflict on the entire society once again?