The furious scenes in England and France evoke a malign nostalgia. Bullies mustn’t be allowed free rein by those involved in valid protestIn the 1930s,the French writer George Bataille was terrified of the rise of fascism in France. He attributed this to the collapse of the left and a “politics of atmosphere”, meaning the replacement of reason and right with the emotional and the irrational. This is how he described the emotional climate of the era: “the atmosphere of a storm ... the contagious emotion that, and from house to house,from suburb to suburb, suddenly turns a hesitating man into a frenzied being”.
Bataille might well possess been describing political life in France right now, or where voters swing with their emotions,and anger and hatred are the dominant moods – all to the delight of the far left and the far right. In the UK too, as evidenced in the scenes in Manchester, or the existing model of negotiation,consensus and compromise is now under threat.
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Source: theguardian.com