There is nothing to fear but The Guardian itself. posted by Richard Seymour

The reduction of politics to a pseudo-psychoanalytic drama is not new. Zizek outlines the coordinates of this gesture in postcolonial studies: first, the reason we exploit and oppress others is because we don't tolerate their Otherness; second, the reason we don't tolerate their Otherness is because we haven't learned to tolerate the Otherness in ourselves. If only we learn to accept that we have that within which is radically Other, we will cease pushing migrants to the bottom of every available pile and then blaming them for being there.

A similar narrative is at work in The Guardian's slap-faced reaction to the French decision to reject the EU Constitution. "Fear eats the soul", it begins, which sort of takes the piss out of portentousness. The result is described, through citation, as a "masochistic masterpiece", and then:

It proves the old point that if you call a referendum on one question, voters will often answer on the basis of other, unrelated or tangentially related grievances. It is no exaggeration to say that the future direction of an EU of 25 countries and 455 million people has suffered grievous collateral damage in the battle for the soul of an agonised and unhappy France.

There you have it: Europe, once an enticing realm of social justice for the French, has now become a frightening Other; and the reason it is frightening is because the French people are internally divided, agonised, unhappy, shocked by the Otherness within. For the record, and just going by a vaguely detected linguistic tic, I think this particular leader was written by Michael White, The Guardian's timid political editor.

However, I wonder if there isn't a philosopher lurking there. Ask people one question, and they will frequently answer on the basis of another. True, but that's because they rightly suspect there is more to the original question than meets the eye. Suppose you approach one of my fellow Ulsterfolk and innocently ask "What's your religion?" Do you know, often as not you will get the reply, "who wants to know?" Similarly, go down South of the border and ask for directions to a particular destination, and the reply will begin, "Well, I wouldn't start from here. Go over there - it's nearer." It's che vuoi again - "yes, you are asking me this, but what do you really want?" Hence:

Q. Are you for or against Europe?
A. Why are you asking me that? I don't trust you. Get your hand off my wallet!

Or better:

Q. Are you with us or with the evil-doers?
A. No.

Charlotte Street summarises the perfectly excellent pragmatic reasoning behind such a response:

Deleuze, writing about Francis Bacon, suggests that the initial painterly canvas is not blank. Not for Bacon at least. It is already scribbled through with clichés and the dead weight of the history of painting. The painter must fend off this frozen scribble and win space and freedom for himself. Similarly, any piece of writing which enters the public sphere must presumably first budge and contend with the pre-existing encrusted ideas and the inertia of received opinion. It can therefore be thought to involve, where it does not simply confirm and slot into this pre-existing field, an act of low-level violence, a pre-emptive strike, or even just a sullen reproach.

'Fear' is a double-edged cynosure of political discourse. The Prime Minister, infamous for fatuously larding his prose with talk about "the fears of working families" in "a turbulent global economy" as if he were an intellectually stunted Anthony Giddens (which I suppose he is), also enjoys sharing his fears as the basis for legitimate political action.

The cheap recourse to accusations of nationalism (those bloody French with their tricolores and Gauloises) is also bifurcate, in tongue as well as effect. I'm not satisfied with A Gauche's suggestion that we treat nationalism as a form of economic self-interest wrapped up in the flag. Nor do I think Matt is right to hope for Europe to become a realpolitik counter-balance to the US. Actually, both arguments have something in common with the liberal shrieking that we're hearing at the moment, although I am accusing neither of that. In the first case, the assumption that nationalism expresses a very localised, fearful, unreflective, Hobbesian sort of self-interest against the more Kantian aspirations of European unity, is already inscribed in the liberal case for the EU. (Giscard D'Etaing, then, is our generation's Immanuel Kant?) In the second case, the notion that one super-imperialism should be replaced by two (with the attendant arms race and likely escalation of aggressive wars in each's 'sphere of influence') also forms part of the liberal-left case for the EU. Aside from that, it creates illusions of vertical solidarity, when what we need are new forms of horizontal solidarity, germinally represented in the World and European Social Forums. Anyone who has illusions that 'EU' is a more progressive and less imperial acronym than 'US' would do well to have a look at how the EU uses its present economic strength in the world . To butter, add guns, and you have US imperialism writ large.

No. What this cheap talk nationalism misses is that the liberal progressives have their own form of undeclared nationalism. While it is hard to imagine scores of them launching themselves at the barricades, star-spangled flags aloft, yelling "Long Live the European Union!", it is essentially a limp-wristed, drippish version of the appeal to an imagined community that activated the unifying forces in Italy and Germany in the 19th Century. It just happens to involve a more intellectually satisfying, multilingual, cosmopolitan community than most nationalisms do. In short, it is a form of nationalism that sits well with the liberal comportment: you know - open, inclusive, culturally experimental, bohemian. It is not 'open' to, or 'inclusive' of, Algeria, Egypt, Somalia or Pakistan, of course - 'they' may come in small numbers to work in our black markets while introducing new sumptuary and gustatory choices, but the liberal has no wish to share a polity with them. Imagine the bills we'd have to foot next time tsunami, or an earthquake, or a drought or a flood comes along!

No, down with European unity! Raise the red flag, not that pathetic, miserable blue thing with the circle-fucking stars on it. The liberal wet-dreams of an EU superstate are those of the rich and the white - well-heeled crackers pretending they're down with hip-hop. Down with the EU, down with capitalism and imperialism of every flag. For a Socialist Republic of Cairo, London, Baghdad, New York, Helsinki, Lahore, Belgrade and Caracas!

Well, you may say I'm a nutter. But I'm not the only one.

Update: I'm not the only one.