… always puts you in awkward positions.
In response to Fadela Amara’s recent talk at the University of Chicago (background here), a UC student (who didn’t attend) writes:
For the far-right, it is a matter of marginalizing an undesirable religious group, and for people of Amara’s ilk, it is a matter of imposing their views of freedom and liberty in a manner that undermines those very principles.
One always hears this. Despite the fact that in France, for instance, 82 percent of the electorate supported the burqa ban (the French Senate approved it 246 to 1), one is always informed that opposition to the burqa means one is a far-rightist.
The campus group that sponsored Amara’s talk responds:
[T]he burqa ban had widespread political support in France from both the left and right. It is simply incorrect to associate Amara with the French extreme right. A member of the Socialist Party for 23 years, Amara firmly considers herself a “femme de gauche.” A practicing Muslim, born of Algerian immigrant parents in a ghetto outside Clermont-Ferrand, France, Amara falls squarely in the category of those the National Front, the far-right French political party, would love to see deported.
June 5th, 2013 at 12:15PM
Anyone to the right of the writer or speaker is always far-right.