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PARTISAN REVIEW
line, which is eight thousand kilometers long, from Albanians and Kurds–
rather than with the various mafias and other types of organized crime at
work in Central and Eastern Europe. Naturally, the land of St. Francis of
Assisi, who would not deny a kiss to the most destitute homeless, is ready
to offer, in Rome, a hot meal to all the poor who care for it. But not much
thought has been given to citizenship rights. Actually, the Italian govern–
ment seems slow in recognizing the reality of Italy as the new El Dorado
and as a pole of attraction for immigration. Mter all, until a couple of gen–
erations ago, Italy was one of the world's main exporters of manpower. It
takes time to catch up with this unexpected situation. But even countries
such as France are slow formulating laws for
immigres
and
pieds noirs.
A per–
son born in France to immigrant parents does not automatically become a
citizen. He has to file an application by the time he reaches eighteen years
of age. In Germany the
Auslandergesetz,
or law on the citizenship of for–
eign persons, aims first of all at a "naturalization" of foreigners after a due
period of integration. The stress is on integration. In other words, no
allowance is made for foreign cultures.Just like in France with Jean-Marie
Le Pen, there is much fear of losing "racial purity." In the recent regional
elections in France, the non-racist right wing in several cases joined forces
with the extreme right wing of Le Pen. This was explained in terms of
pragmatic electoral opportunism. In fact, the attraction was, more or less
consciously, racist. Of course, nowadays nobody would accept the gross
Nazi racism and, even less, the crude biological racism of Arthur de
Gobineau. A new kind of racism, which might be called "differential" or
"cultural" racism is being developed. Pierre Andre Taguieff is perhaps the
most vocal representative of this trend. As I have argued in my book
The
Temptation to Forget
(Greenwood Press, 1994), this racism is based on a pre–
sumption of cultural asymmetry and pretends to be a "cultivated racism."
My feeling is that, apart from political alibis and tactical calculation, classi–
cal, or biological, racism is not much different from cultivated racism. They
mutually reinforce one another. Racist discriminations are always based on
a racist mentality. The non-established superiority of northern Europeans
and North American culture is insinuated into the debate on the citizen–
ship rights of immigrants. But cultivated racism is more subtle. At the level
of debate, the highest respect is paid to cultural differences. However, this
respect ends up by embalming the different cultures. All cultures are
respected, but each culture should keep its place and avoid any mixture,
that is, avoid what de Gobineau most hated,
Ie melange.
Fortunately, not all European social scientists share such views. Even
the most tradition-bound sociologists refrain from these extremes.
Nobody has forgotten that Max Weber was an ardent nationalist. He wor–
ried because "world politics was no longer made in Berlin." But at the
