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Morocco World
4 days ago
- Politics
- Morocco World
The Colonial Grammar of Resistance: Taleb Sahara and the Paradox of Racialized Militancy
In the aftermath of decolonization, Frantz Fanon warned that the greatest danger to liberation movements was the internalization of colonial logics under the guise of resistance. Today, figures like Taleb Sahara illustrate a troubling mutation of this insight: militants of identity politics who, in the name of emancipation, reproduce the very epistemologies of racism, hierarchy, and essentialism that colonial power once used to dominate the 'native.' In this essay, I argue that Taleb Sahara represents a paradigmatic case of postcolonial racialized militancy that harnesses Eurocentric morophobia to define 'identity,' while simultaneously undermining the moral and ontological legitimacy of the very subject he claims to liberate. I. The Psychoanalytic Seduction of Purity Taleb Sahara's rhetoric is fixated on a fantasy of racial and moral purity, one that opposes the 'civilized Sahrawi' to the allegedly 'criminal' Moroccan. Drawing from Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, we see here a classic mechanism of projection and scapegoating. The abject Other — in this case, the Moroccan migrant — serves to stabilize a fragile Sahrawi self-image. This maneuver constructs identity through negation: I am Sahrawi because I am not Moroccan. Such boundary-drawing is a response to postcolonial anxiety — an attempt to fix identity in the face of historical fragmentation, hybridity, and geopolitical ambiguity. But this disavowal of the Other is a double bind. As Judith Butler reminds us, identity is never self-possessed; it is always relational, citational, and embedded in power. The Sahrawi subject, as articulated by Taleb Sahara, is only imaginable through the disarticulation of the Moroccan. This is not liberation; it is a psychic repetition of colonial race-thinking. II. The Racial Instrumentalization of the Migrant Taleb's claims — that Morocco 'exports criminals' to Spain as a form of hybrid warfare — echo right-wing conspiratorial narratives across the Global North. The irony is stark: in his attempt to demonize Moroccan statecraft, he borrows the exact racist discourses used by Vox, Rassemblement National, and AfD to exclude all North Africans from the European political imaginary. Here, Taleb joins what Paul Gilroy once called 'the new raciologies' — postcolonial actors who co-opt the biopolitics of race in service of ethno-nationalist agendas. By portraying Moroccan migrants as criminal by default, he reproduces the colonial trope of the 'unassimilable native,' whose very presence threatens the integrity of the Western state. This is not an anti-colonial critique; it is racial ventriloquism. What's more disturbing is Taleb's instrumentalization of state clemency — claiming that Moroccan prisoners pardoned near the end of their sentence are 'weaponized' as migrant criminals. He offers no data, no causality, only paranoid inference. His accusation is not just empirically hollow; it is conceptually perverse. It enacts what Edward Said called a 'travesty of liberation': deploying colonial frameworks of control and suspicion in the name of postcolonial freedom. III. Identity as Fetish, Race as Tool The contradiction in Taleb Sahara's position lies in the fact that while he invokes anti-colonial language — 'liberation,' 'resistance,' 'self-determination' — he does so by deploying the race card as a tactical weapon. But race, as Stuart Hall taught us, is not a stable ground on which to construct identity. It is a floating signifier, subject to the ideological work of power. Taleb's use of race as a tool — to divide, to criminalize, to stigmatize — reintroduces the logics of colonial racial classification into the bloodstream of liberation discourse. He is not dismantling the coloniality of power; he is repurposing it with new targets. This is identity as fetish — a reified, purified ideal that occludes the messiness, plurality, and shared histories of Maghrebi peoples. Postcolonial theorists from Achille Mbembe to Homi Bhabha have shown us that identity is always impure, always in process. To build identity on the foundation of exclusion is not only politically dangerous; it is philosophically bankrupt. It transforms difference into deviance, solidarity into suspicion. IV. The Political Economy of Morophobia Taleb's discourse cannot be separated from a broader European context in which morophobia — a racialized fear of Moroccans — is increasingly weaponized to shape migration policy and diplomatic alignments. His narratives are not isolated; they feed into a transnational economy of fear, one that seeks to devalue Morocco's partnerships and delegitimize its strategic role in Africa and the Mediterranean. But here's the contradiction: while Taleb accuses Morocco of using migrants as pawns, he himself instrumentalizes migrants as political symbols. He invokes the figure of the Moroccan prisoner, stripped of name, voice, or humanity, to enact a rhetorical performance of Sahrawi purity. The migrant becomes a cipher, a blank screen onto which fantasies of contamination, crime, and geopolitical conspiracy are projected. This is not anti-imperialism. It is a re-enactment of imperial power — now in the hands of the postcolonial militant. V. Conclusion: The Trap of Reactive Identity Taleb Sahara's rhetoric exemplifies the danger of what I call reactive identity politics: the construction of selfhood not through affirmative liberation, but through the negation of the Other. This is not a politics of becoming; it is a politics of boundary policing. As Fanon once warned, 'the oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.' Taleb has taken this one step further — he believes the worst about others in order to justify his own imagined virtue. But in doing so, he resurrects the skeleton of colonial race-thinking and dresses it in the clothes of resistance. True liberation does not require scapegoats. It requires solidarity, plurality, and the rejection of racial logics — especially when they are dressed as emancipation.
Irish Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Racing's failure to amend gambling Bill indicates sport is reaping betting industry's reputational whirlwind
Back in the day, the late politician, writer, chef and dog-food salesman Clement Freud would go to Ballybrit to write about the Galway races. He once stood incredulously behind then taoiseach Albert Reynolds in a queue to bet with the Tote. He tried, and failed, to imagine then British PM John Major doing the same. Sigmund's grandson felt the Irish approach to gambling was much healthier. That was when politicians of all kinds wanted to be seen at the Galway Races. It smacked of an elbow-to-elbow egalitarianism that played well publicly. But there was more to it than that. Reynolds genuinely liked his racing and having a bet. Other political heavyweights across the spectrum were the same and having various ears in Government that spoke racing's vernacular was valuable to the sport. But that was then and now is different. It will be a rare politico that shows up at Ballybrit next week. Even if they're interested in the gee-gees, and it seems many aren't these days, the legacy of the 2008 economic crash, particularly the infamous Fianna Fáil tent, makes Galway 'off brand' for much of the political brass. There's also the reality that queuing to have a bet is a Freudian slip that mightn't play nearly as well as it used to. For that, racing can blame gambling corporations that spent years exploiting the unpoliced badlands of digital betting for enormous profit. Ruthlessly pushing algorithms that restrict those rare creatures able to make betting pay while preying on compulsives who can't, these conglomerates sowed the wind that's reaping a reputational whirlwind. An activity once viewed as attractively louche has an increasingly tacky vibe. READ MORE The consequence of that was stamped all over how racing went to war with the Government over its new gambling legislation and lost. Dire warnings were given about the impact of a ban on gambling advertising on day-to-day coverage of the sport here. In a sector where unanimity on anything is rare, this was a rallying call, but one comprehensively rejected by Fianna Fáil Minister James Browne who pushed through the long-awaited and needed Bill. Time was when an exemption for something all of racing felt so strongly about would have been regarded as just a phone call away. One of the game's heavy hitters would take care of it. Maybe such calls to the Government were made, but they didn't work. Browne was backed to the hilt. Politics takes its cues from public opinion, and years of unrestricted opportunism by gambling firms have had their impact. Just how uncertain a future racing faces on the back of a wild west gambling industry, finally getting legislatively roped, was underlined recently when the Racing Post interviewed new Gambling Regulatory Authority of Ireland chief executive Anne Marie Caulfield. The former principal officer of the Department of Public Expenditure was sure-footed until she rejected claims about an intrinsic link between racing and betting and any impact on advertising. 'I remember Alex Higgins walking around the snooker table with a well-known tobacco branding in the background and they, as a sport, found another way forward,' she said. 'I do think there are other opportunities there and a way forward if they're explored.' Something inside a lot of racing people fell on its side reading that. A comparison between betting and smoking isn't comparing like with like on any number of levels. That the person in charge of policing the gambling sector doesn't seem to appreciate that is a worrying sign of shifting official sands. Because the reality is that, however much one mightn't like it, racing as we know it is intrinsically linked to betting. Caulfield's comments recalled the 1989 movie Let It Ride, where Richard Dreyfuss is on a roll at the track until his angry wife turns up, asking: 'I mean, really, I don't see why you people can't just watch the horses run around the track and not bet on them.' Cue widespread merriment and Dreyfuss's wonderfully pompous response: 'Because there is no racing without betting.' The days of putting officialdom right on such a point with a quick phone call appear to be in the past. Broad political commitment to the Horse & Greyhound Fund remains intact. But popular momentum towards the gambling industry is only going one way and it means any special consideration for the sport inextricably caught in its wake risks sliding too. Such comments by the gambling regulator only reinforce that worry. The Ballybrit betting ring will generate an average of more than €1m per day during next week's action. Photograph: Inpho Much of the Galway festival's appeal has always revolved around betting. It still does to an extent. The Ballybrit betting ring mightn't bankroll the sport any more, but it will still generate an average of more than €1 million per day during next week's action. Galway also still attracts almost 10 per cent of Irish racing's annual attendance figures. Last year's official tally of 116,374 was down on 2023 but still reflects hefty public interest in a cherished annual summer ritual. Some of what will go on next week still won't be particularly healthy or logical. And little of it will impinge on most people's enjoyment, whoever they are. Something for the Weekend All five starters for tomorrow's King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes are Group One winners, even Continuous, the pacemaker for Jan Bruegel. It makes for a tactical puzzle and one where jockey Mickael Barzalona has to compete with a one-dimensional run style for his mount Calandagan (4.10pm). But if it comes down to a finishing burst, the French star still looks the one. Emit (2.50pm) was hung out wide in Royal Ascot's Hampton Court on his last start and is upped in trip for tomorrow's Marble City Stakes at Gowran. He's top rated and the apparent Joseph O'Brien number one.
New Indian Express
5 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
The academic who gave ideological credence to VS' inner-party struggle
KOZHIKODE: Left ideologue M N Vijayan wrote an article titled 'Aravum Kathiyum' (File and Knife) on the eve of the 18th state conference of the CPM held in Malappuram in 2005, which sought to present the revolt within the party led by V S Achuthanandan as an ideological struggle. Ironically, the faction led by VS suffered a jolt at the conference with all his candidates who contested to the state committee tasting defeat. But the communist leader didn't stop there, and continued his fight against what is termed as the 'right deviation' in the party. It was Vijayan who lent an ideological dimension to the struggle and prevented the fight from stooping to the level of mere rivalry for power. 'Communists hold conferences not to listen to eulogies, but to sharpen their weapons and to open eyes with ideological debates,' wrote Vijayan in the Mathrubhumi article, which the party found very embarrassing. 'It is not the communists alone but the mankind as a whole who will be the losers if the party takes a right turn… The left-secular forces in Kerala wish that CPM, which has a large mass support, does not lose its character,' it added. Like many others, Vijayan also thought that VS was fighting the battle to preserve the real communist trait of the CPM. A die-hard Freudian, Vijayan's journey to CPM started with his talk on 'Marx and Freud' at Government Girl's High School in Thalassery in 1985. Till then, Vijayan was confined to psychoanalytical studies that provided deep insights into the worlds of writers including Kumaran Asan, Vyloppilli, Basheer and Changampuzha.
Spectator
18-07-2025
- Health
- Spectator
Trump's right, there's power in positive non-thinking
Though I'm no fan of Donald Trump, time and again I'm delighted by the alternately crazy and sane things he says, and the way he knows the difference; he's the antithesis of our politicians, who say crazy things they sincerely believe are sane. This week he spoke to the BBC's Gary O'Donoghue, who asked him about the Pennsylvania assassination attempt. As the BBC reported: When asked if the assassination attempt had changed him, the president conveyed a hint of vulnerability as he said he tries to think about it as little as he can. 'I don't like dwelling on it because if I did, it would be, you know, might be life-changing, I don't want it to have to be that.' Elaborating, he said he liked 'the power of positive thinking, or the power of positive non-thinking'. I've believed in the power of positive non-thinking for a long time, and at the ripe old age of 66 it's bounced me through heart-breaking incidents which would have floored a lot of other people – or at least been an excuse for a fully catered pity-party over on Facebook. Of course, one gets the usual misery-buckets muttering about how one is 'in denial' – but that's one of the few ways the poor saps get their kicks, in my experience, so it would be mean to deny them it. There's growing evidence to show that the stiff upper lip is the superior way to tackle life's little speedbumps. A study from the University of Cambridge claims that 'the commonly held belief that attempting to suppress negative thoughts is bad for our mental health could be wrong' after 'researchers at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers worldwide to suppress thoughts about negative events that worried them, and found that not only did these become less vivid, but that the participants' mental health also improved.' It seems obvious, doesn't it? As Professor Michael Anderson put it: We're all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and wellbeing perniciously. The whole point of psychotherapy is to dredge up these thoughts so one can deal with them and rob them of their power. In more recent years, we've been told that suppressing thoughts is intrinsically ineffective and that it actually causes people to think the thought more – it's the classic idea of 'Don't think about a pink elephant'. Suppressing thoughts even improved mental health among participants with likely post-traumatic stress disorder. In general, people with worse mental health symptoms at the outset of the study improved more after suppression training – but only if they suppressed their fears. This directly contradicts the notion that suppression is a maladaptive coping process. Of course, all the misery guts out there will moan that the scientists involved in this jolly experiment are most likely 'in denial' themselves; misery loves company, and as they generally only attract the company of other miseries, it's a vicious circle-jerk of communal caterwauling which is often effective in drowning out any empirical research or common-sense consensus which may arise. We all have friends who appear to get a high from parading their lows; we've all read the stats about educated young women being the most anxious when you'd think it was uneducated old men who had the most to be anxious about in the current climate. Though ostensibly they're worrying about politics, this worrywart tendency often carries into their private lives. When you see groups of men together, they're usually having a laugh; when you see groups of women sitting together, they're often moaning about men – sometimes what's wrong with the ones they've got, and sometimes how they don't have one to moan about. I don't ever recall sitting around with a group of girls moaning about the wrongs men have done me; if you don't like the one you've got, go and get another one. And if you moan about men to women regularly, you're probably a lesbian and afraid to face the fact. Give it a whirl, why don't you – it's fun, so long as you don't talk about your feelings too much, in which case you'll be back on the misery merry-go-round in no time. Though I favour living life on the light side with a minimum of introspection, I allow for a bit of misery in the arts. From Morrissey to Brief Encounter to Madame Bovary, if I can find a piece of art that will leave me feeling good by feeling bad, I'm all over it. Is this how I manage my emotional equilibrium (give or take the odd suicide bid) – by a kind of lyrical bloodletting? Whatever the reason, I thoroughly recommend it – along with the great Stoic quote, for when trouble befalls, from Marcus Aurelius: ''It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.' No, you should rather say: 'It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearful of the future.' Because such a thing could have happened to any man, but not every man could have borne it without pain. So why see more misfortune in the event than good fortune in your ability to bear it?' I believe that it was Socrates who said that 'the unexamined life is not worth living' – but then the old fool also said that 'no one does wrong voluntarily'. Looking around at the morass of self-pity, which is bankrupting us financially and intellectually, I'd say that it's the over-examined life which isn't worth living. Those of us who exercise President Trump's power of positive non-thinking are the ones who exhibit a resilience which is sorely lacking.
The Herald Scotland
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
'Period parody run riot' The 39 Steps Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Pitlochry Festival Theatre Neil Cooper Four stars John Buchan probably couldn't have predicted what liberties maverick film director Alfred Hitchcock would take with his 1915 novel, in which dashing Richard Hannay takes flight to Scotland after a night at the theatre throws him into a world of intrigue and adventure. Hitchcock too might have raised an eyebrow regarding how writer Patrick Garland transformed his 1935 big screen adaptation into a pocket sized stage pastiche requiring just four actors to do the business. Garland's irreverent hybrid of Hitchcock and Buchan's creations has run and run for two decades now and counting. Ben Occhipinti's new Pitlochry Festival Theatre production breathes fresh life into a show that has tremendous fun with the existing material while managing to put a personal stamp on things. This is led by Alexander Service as Hannay, who flaunts his character's matinee idol looks with a nice line in self parody as he flees from his bachelor pad that has just acquired a murdered German fugitive as part of the furniture. READ MORE: The panoply of skullduggery and accidental romance that follows sees Blythe Jandoo too play assorted leading ladies with similar lashings of style, charm and comic strip satire aplenty. This is especially the case with Pamela, who ends up in an involuntary clinch with Hannay on the train to Scotland in order to help throw the cops off the scent, then later spends the night with him in handcuffs. Chris Coxon and Stephanie Cremona keep things rattling along as the show's self styled Clowns, changing hats, coats and accents in rapid fire succession as assorted pulp fiction spies, Highland hoteliers and the Mr Memory vaudeville turn that sets things in motion. All this takes place on Liz Cooke's sliding doors set featuring a mini revolve and a track that allows miniature trains and Highland sheep alike to speed their way home. The end result sees a Freudian dream team forever in motion in a period parody run riot.
