Pedagogy: A new youth engagement or social fascism?

First published 5 February 2010

The heading is not simply bombastic. Walter Lorenz – foremost pedagogy academic, and author of Social Work in a Changing Europe – asked:

Is social pedagogy essentially the embodiment of dominant societal interests which regard all educational projects, schools, kindergarten or adult education, as a way of taking its values to all sections of the population and of exercising more effective social control; or is social pedagogy the critical conscience of pedagogy, the thorn in the flesh of official agenda, an emancipatory programme for self-directed learning processes inside and outside the education system geared towards the transformation of society?(p. 93)

As Sunker and Otto in their book Education and Fascism. Political identity and social education in Nazi Germany noticed, social pedagogy was used by the Nazi’s as a way of social manipulation, to address and enforce their dominant ideology on to children. (Continue)

Hasn’t the fiscal stimulus argument won the day?

First published 23 January 2010

At the end of 2008 a European challenge had emerged – cash injection or hands on heads.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy who voiced his aggravation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for not implementing a measure of fiscal stimulus said, “While France is working, Germany is thinking.”

Merkel was actually remaining loyal to the “Stability and Growth Pact” (SGP), the purpose of which was to tune the euro so it would be able to compete with the US Dollar and strengthen the stability of the euro-zone. (Continue)

France and the Burqa

First published 20 January 2010

While Sarkozy in France has realised that the burqa ban will be harder to enforce than originally believed – and so, therefore, will be shelved – another group of angry right wing men (and women), this time in Britain, have decided the issue is for them, namely UKIP, and for not too dissimilar reasons to those that originally informed UMP’s plans.  (Continue)

The Counter-Hegemonic History of Islam

First published 4 January 2010

Islam is enemy No. 1 of much contemporary criticism, either by the angry EDL men on the street, to new atheists asserting that Islam is incompatible with Enlightenment societies, to critics such as Nick Cohen and David Aaranovitch’s’ with their claims to present Islamic bad boys (and girls) as the real threat to leftist sentimentalities.

But many of the targets taken by the above miss the mark, leaving the perception that Islam itself is the enemy. But this shortfall does not render left wing opposition to Islamism impossible. (Continue)

Zizek the Theologian

First published in the first quarter of 2010

The Marxist cultural critic Terry Eagleton, renowned for his much quoted review of Richard Dawkins’ 2006 bestseller The God Delusion, began his scathing tirade with the line; “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”

Of late, Eagleton has spoken of a fictitious character to whom he refers as “Ditchkins” a nomenclature that finds its etymology in the merging surnames of (Christopher) Hitchens and, of course, Dawkins. Along with his recent book Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate which aims to offer a ‘revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel’ – as one review describes – one might naturally assume that Eagleton is a no-holds-barred antagonist to atheism. (Continue pp. 87-91)

An Iranian Capitalism and the Search for Islam

First published January 2010

It was with observations on 9/11 that Slavoj Žižek made his formal introduction into the Englishspeakingworld of politics proper – quietly forgetting for the time being his presidential campaign inthe Republic of Slovenia back in the 1990. Never, however, has he been able to drop the grindingacademic axe; surprised as many commentators were that someone could come along and talkabout Hegel and coca-cola in the same breath, Žižek of late takes to marrying tenets of Lacanianpsychoanalysis with Donald Rumsfeld quotations. But something different, some new sea-change,seems to have occurred again with Žižek’s piece on Iran, ‘Berlusconi in Tehran’, published in theLondon Review of Books, that it is pure politics, that the mode of language is no longer wry butserious. Before, looking closely at Žižek’s texts, one knew that behind the comic references topopular culture there was a serious kernel, of which to use in critically dismantling areas of unseenterror in the usual functioning of the economy, now the wry guard has been shelved, and the comicsubterfuge is the preserve of the enemy itself – “Berlusconi’s capitalism with ‘Italian values’(comical posturing)”. (Continue)

The End of History and the Future of Regulation

First published 20 November 2009

In my opinion, that famous neo-Hegelian thinker Francis Fukuyama – the man responsible for the predication in the late eighties/early nineties that at the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end-of-history had loomed upon us, and it had shown free-market capitalism to be the victor over socialism – has gone from being a thinker of history, to an illustration of how exactly history has panned out. Allow me to explain. (Continue)

Afghan exit strategy: Ideas to the table

First published 17 November 2009

The issue of what to do in Afghanistan is not black and white, there are no simple solutions. Realistically the UK cannot continue to use the plans it is currently applying, the most dignified thing to do is allow a country to make its own mistakes. Further, it is not possible to pick up and go, too much infrastructural reliance is upon us, and in any case, it is not necessary to be pulling the strings of the government of a country for it to take the measures needed to create an army, for the purpose of guarding the Afghan province targeted by Pakistani extremists. (Continue)

Nick Griffin not alone in QT audience

First published 30 October 2009

It has been a week now since the BNP’s Nick Griffin made his disastrous debut on Question Time, and even his own members are calling for him to leave owing to his odious performance.

But he was not the only member of the far-right party in that studio who, instead of opening his mouth, should have burrowed down a hole and veiled himself away from public speaking forever.

The other party cohort who made his BBC-QT debut was one John Clarke. (Continue)

Over-compensating by turning pro-Israeli

First published 26 October 2009

My old psychology dictionary of terms informs me that overcompensation can be ‘a Freudian defence mechanism, whereby an individual attempts to offset weakness in an area of their lives by focusing on another aspect of it.

I thought back to those English Defence League marches, where 2 things are promised every time; that an Israeli flag will appear to show solidarity with Israelis over Muslims (like it was a simple choice between the two), and a couple of beered up scummies will produce the fascist salute (for examples see here and here). (Continue)