“Foreigners Out!” — Container Europe

The European Union seems to be a safe container in the stormy waters of globalisation. However, the EU is often idealised as a liberal, political power without violence, striving for peace. I would argue with Orwell and Zizek, that in order to maintain peace, one needs a great amount of violence: “People sleep peacably in their beds  at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” (Orwell’s 1984).

And this is particularly true today: The violence to maintain the “security,” or “peace” within the EU is not only used (or better: misused) at its very borders (EU’s Frontex border guards for example), but deep inside the EU — in the middle of France or Germany, perversely enough.

I owe the title and the idea of this blog entry to Christoph Schlingensief, who once organized an art project in Austria. His idea: Via the internet, one could vote foreigners/refugees out of the country. They where kept in a Big-Brother-like container standing in the middle of Vienna. Is this the idea that grows in some Sarkozy-Sarrazin-Jones-infected brains? Deciding to throw people out because they are not intelligent or French/German/Christian enough? This might be the first right-wing populist idea inspired by X-Factor or Big Brother.

For all the recent examples (Quran-Burning plans, Sarrazin, Sarkozy)  it is the case that advocates of these self-named culture protectors don’t take the Shrapnell effect into consideration. With their actions, they might hit some persons who fulfill the cliché of being , for example, a violent fundamentalist, but they hit many more presumable foreigners accidentally — which leads to strong reactions that even cause more violence or ill-behaviour. A vicious circles, but I am not telling something new here…

But why to care about Sarkozy and Sarrazin? The debates in France and Germany going on at the moment create great counter reactions, so that I don’t even know which movement is stronger: the intolerant one (most commentators pretend this), or the liberal, multicultural one. Hopefully these are just the necessary discussions that take place every now and then, and which have the function to test and re-negotiate the West’s values of tolerance and towards multiculturalism.

Advertisement