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To cite this Article Wieviorka, Michel(2005) 'After New Social Movements', Social Movement Studies, 4: 1, 1 — 19
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14742830500051812
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Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 4, No. 1, 1–19, May 2005
Correspondence Address: Michel Wieviorka, Centre d’analyse et d’intervention sociologiques (CADIS), EHESS,
54 bd Raspail – 75006 Paris, France. Fax: þ33 01 42 84 05 91; Tel.: þ33 01 49 54 24 27 or þ33 01 49 54 23 47;
Email: wiev@ehess.fr or Jacqueline.Longerinas@ehess.fr
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/05/010001-19 q 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/14742830500051812
2 M. Wieviorka
Domination
The working-class movement is the outcome of a relationship of domination; its origins are in
the factory and on the shop floor where the masters of labour reigned supreme. It is at its
strongest when this ascendancy simultaneously affects skilled workers whose characteristic is
their pride in their competence and who find themselves deprived of their craftsmanship, and
unskilled workers with no specific competence who tend to be proletarian in outlook and who,
by definition, are deprived of any positive relationship to their jobs. Historically, Taylorism, or
similar systems provided the best conditions for this type of simultaneous two-fold pressure
exerted at grassroots level by those in charge of the ‘scientific’ organization of labour. Even in
firms where these principles do not apply, in the working-class struggles which take place
there is always a keen awareness of confronting a social adversary who exploits and oppresses
workers in a direct relationship of domination.
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This sort of remark should not prevent us from envisaging a relationship between this
conscience, which is social, and the concrete forms of organization – mainly trade unions
and political action – with which it ultimately arms itself. Thus, in some of its
components, or at certain points in its history, the working-class movement is explicitly
and vigorously hostile to any relation with political parties; on these occasions, it is proud
of its independence – this was the case with direct action trade unionism, in particular.
But the principal model of its relation to the political sphere is not that of trade unionism,
which was at its peak during the birth phase of the working-class movement. It tends
instead to be characterized by the idea that to move from the social to the political level,
from social conscience to state power, a political party is required – an intermediary
which can assume various forms ranging from revolutionary or reformist, to communist,
social democratic or others. Workers have frequently been the main losers in this
relationship, which in fact has then tended to be reversed with their action becoming
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subordinate to that of a party. Lenin, in particular, was the theoretician behind these ideas
which he implemented with total disregard for the workers whom he described as, at best,
‘trade-unionist’, and incapable of going further than their short-term economic interests,
with the partisan avant garde being entrusted with the monopoly of the orientation of
action.
A Social Subject
Finally, the workers, whose actions set them in the context of a social movement
approach, do not define themselves as the mere outcome of ‘contradictions’, or of crises,
as is the wont of structuralism, a wide-ranging intellectual and political tradition
dominated by a form of Marxism. The worker has his or her own subjectivity which is
defined in social terms. S/he is class conscious, or aware of belonging to the working class,
expressions which refer to the meaning which workers may give to their action even if,
from a sociological point of view, this meaning can never be entirely restricted to
consciousness. Their subjectivity is defined in social terms on the basis of the relationships
of production and domination which are shaped there and the feeling which they have of
being deprived of the control of productive activity, or of any control over what is
produced.
From the point of view of the working-class movement, the worker is a subject – more
precisely a social subject – in the context of the reality of labour and its organization.
Nowadays, when we speak of distressing conditions of work or when we discuss the
harassment which some wage earners experience in firms, we do not think of them as
workers who are victims as such but rather as individuals perceived from the point of view
of the affronts to their personal, moral and physical integrity as individual human beings at
their most profound. This is quite different from envisaging the domination and oppression
which one might say produce a working-class consciousness. Furthermore, this explains
why, today, trade unions have difficulty in dealing with the affronts which affect a subject
defined as a moral being and no longer as a worker.
Five major characteristics form the basis of the paradigm of the working-class
movement as the social movement of industrial societies (cf. Touraine et al., 1984):
it operates within the framework of the nation-state, it challenges domination, the actions
associated with it are genuinely social, it rarely rises to the political level of its own accord,
and it is impelled by a subject which is also social.
After New Social Movements 5
that of Alain Touraine. Bell, using his own definition of the term, saw therein a form of
extension of industrial society much more than a new type of society, which was
Touraine’s view (Bell, 1974; Touraine, 1971). Whatever the case may be, with the
struggles inaugurated by social movements in the USA, France or Italy, the very concept
of social movement was applied to struggles sufficiently different from those of the
working-class movement in the previous period to justify speaking of ‘new social
movements’. In this second period, the material characteristics of the actors differed in
many confused, and therefore not always very distinct, ways from those of the social
movement of the industrial era.
an end to the borders between the public and the private spheres they intended to terminate
power relationships which until then had not even been discussed, quite simply because
they were ‘private’ and there was no need to present and debate them, far less oppose
them. This is how, for example, violence towards women was recognized. In other cases,
actors wished to indicate their distance from politics. The problem for many militants from
the counter-culture, for example, was not to gain access to power, and in particular state
power, but to invent new ways of living together. On several occasions the May ’68
movement students went past government offices deserted by the frightened occupants; in
no way did they have any intention of going in and taking them over.
But between believing ‘everything is political’ and totally rejecting politics, the most
striking thing about these actors is the way in which they were usually totally incapable of
distancing themselves from the ideologies of the times, which in all manner of versions, in
the last resort, called on them either to become prematurely institutionalized or else to
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submit to political projects and aims inherited from the past. In this latter case it meant
becoming more radical by adopting a revolutionary outlook and thinking of themselves in
the terms and categories of leftism. As a result, some did enter the political system:
political ecology, in particular, often became involved in politics while, at the same time,
the most innovating ideas were adopted to some extent throughout the political world, and
even beyond, as if the movement had moved from a status of opposition to one of
modernization. We even witnessed the appropriation by the opponents of the political
ecology of the 1970s, the top EDF managers (Electricité de France – a powerful public-
sector monopoly providing electricity), of some of the themes from campaigns. Now,
thirty years later, EDF has become a most enthusiastic supporter of the idea of sustainable
development. Others, however, became more radical, sometimes by opposing leftism and
revolutionary ideologies, and ended by losing the way or by becoming submerged by
them, at least in part. For example, the women’s movements often contributed to the
splitting of leftist groups in the 1970s. From within, they accused them of machismo and of
a lack of sexual equality in power structures but this also led feminists into difficulties and
some then adopted forms of radical politics which were not very far from those they had
opposed.
A Cultural Subject
The ‘new social movements’ are very interested in the subjectivity of the actors, both at the
individual and the community level. They no longer accept the model of deferred
gratification, the expectation of a better future; they wish to experience the social and
interpersonal relationships for which they are campaigning here and now. In some cases,
this may have given way to a quest for pure enjoyment and hedonism, in others the
implementation of communitarian utopias of which there are still some traces, in particular
in Germany where a few communities originating in this spirit are still to be found.
In other cases, action was based on a reference to the past and to traditions, rooted in a
history and culture which is to a large extent invented, or ‘cobbled together’ in Claude
Levi-Strauss’s well-known words. What this really meant was that the individual subject’s
propensity for forms of inventiveness or cultural creativity was enhanced, as was the
sharing of common values. The subject of the working-class movement was collective and
social, while that of the ‘new social movements’ could be individual and was definitely
resolutely as cultural.
8 M. Wieviorka
The era of ‘new social movements’ is behind us now. It corresponded to a transitional phase
between the working-class movement of yesterday and the ‘global’ movements of today,
between industrial society and the societies which we now refer to as network societies rather
than ‘post-industrial’ societies. The very idea of society is challenged. There has not been any
student movement for a very long time. Ecologists have either become institutionalized or else
radicalized in forms of leftism with no power whatsoever. What remains of feminism has
become primarily a combination of modernizing political pressure and intellectual or
philosophical reflection, which undoubtedly marks a turning point in the women’s
movements. Regional struggles have also changed; some have been caught in the vicious
circle of violence, others have become modernizing forces, or new political powers. Contrary
to a sort of sociological optimism, the ‘new social movements’ have not marked the entry into
a new type of society directly and distinctly; instead they constituted the beginnings of a new
set of social movements but ones which broke up too quickly or on which leftism wreaked
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‘Global’ Movements
At the end of the 1970s the working-class movement had lost its capacity to endow the
struggles of one specific actor – the workers – with universal meaning or all-encompassing
significance; it was no longer a social movement in our definition of the term. At the same
time, the ‘new social movements’ were falling by the wayside and, at world level, many
thinkers – sociologists and others – were wondering whether we were not embarking on a
period of social vacuum, with widespread individualism, or, yet again, a period characterized
by cultural fragmentation resulting from the emergence of all sorts of differences in the public
sphere. In both cases, whether it be a question of valorizing the theme of individualism or that
of tribalism, ‘post-modern’ thinking was based on the idea of an end to ‘grand narratives’ and
on the supposition that social movements were disappearing.
Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s it was often difficult to advance the notion of a
social movement to account for observable realities, though this varied across regions and
countries. The former social movements, the working-class movement, or even what
remained of the new mobilizations of the 1970s, had not entirely disappeared but what
remained had either been institutionalized and was consequently incapable of rising to the
level of historicity to challenge the overall control of the major orientations of collective
life, or else had been radicalized and was prepared, in particular, to take the form of
violence or of ideologies of rupture. The most visible assertions of identity seemed more
likely to lead to withdrawal into communities, or to be set in a context of sectarianism,
nationalism – even terrorism – than to have any relation with social movements.
Individualism was also gaining ground, sometimes in spectacular fashion.
However, we cannot content ourselves with the image of a world restricted to these
major trends – the institutionalization of former actors, radicalization, violence,
withdrawal of cultural actors into their identities; and widespread individualism. For, as
from the mid-1990s, novel figures of action began to assert themselves, some being really
new and others an extension of older initiatives.
Until the end of the Cold War, the world was structured at international level by the
conflict opposing the two superpowers, namely the USA and the Soviet Union. With the
fall of the Berlin Wall, we entered a new phase in which the economy seemed to reign
supreme and in which globalization became the key word. Thus we became aware of the
After New Social Movements 9
importance of NGOs and of new struggles taking place, often claiming to be ‘global’ and
refusing to restrict themselves to the framework of the nation-state, or yet again being the
outcome of a refusal to recognize the consequences of globalization on culture and social
life. Whether it be a question of the environment, human rights, or ‘another world’ form of
opposition to neo-liberal globalization, or yet again declarations of cultural identities
demanding their recognition, there were numerous struggles which belonged to a third
type of social movement and which we will call, like many other researchers before us,
‘global movements’. These struggles, when examined in detail, may present many
traditional aspects which at first sight seem to orientate them towards the past, and towards
the movements of the first and second type listed above; they also include sombre
elements, which may be alarming – like a tendency to violence. The concept of ‘global
movement’ leaves these various dimensions to one side, and concentrates on those aspects
in the struggles in question which correspond to the image of a social movement.
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Recognition
The protests of ‘global’ actors may be very limited either in their demands or as a result of
being located in a small area: the inhabitants of a town, for example, campaign against the
pollution perpetrated in a specific area by a multinational firm where one of its factories is
10 M. Wieviorka
particularly harmful. But the element which makes them global is the awareness of the actors,
who know how to articulate a limited campaign with global vision, and who are able to link up
with transnational networks. They may challenge inequalities or social injustice, but not
always, or not necessarily. On the other hand, their mobilization always includes a key
dimension requesting recognition. The ‘global’ movements do not adopt the classical guise of
domination; they are not impelled primarily by a challenge to forms of exploitation; their
prime desire is to construct another world and to put an end to the various forms of contempt
and ignorance which leave them to one side. This perhaps explains why they have much more
difficulty than the ‘new social movements’ in the 1970s in defining a social adversary. It may
be that they consider they are campaigning against capitalism, but it is difficult for them to link
this anti-capitalist struggle to a class struggle in which the central character would then still be
the proletariat. They also often tend to make an enemy of the USA for reasons of anti-
imperialism, but also as a result of anti-Americanism; however, this transforms their action
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which then ceases to be a social movement and becomes a political movement. These may be
radical to some extent but are incapable of advancing the slightest constructive proposal since
it is then a question of waiting for the contradictions and the crisis of the system to play
themselves out. Yet again, they may challenge the action of the major international
organizations – the United Nations, the World Bank, and so on, or take on an individual
opponent during a specific campaign – like a firm, for example. But, on the whole, the image
of the ‘global movements’ is of a loose conglomeration campaigning against a vague,
impersonal and poorly identified opponent. As a result, they could hardly be further from the
working-class movement one century earlier, which was capable of challenging the masters of
labour in a fairly specific manner.
concerned than the ‘new social movements’ with the question of appropriating state power or
of endeavouring to impose any form of communism – in any event, the experience, and then
the collapse, of actual communism is a reminder of the outcome of these temptations.
However, these actors do frequently denounce the neo-liberalism of globalization in a
discourse of rupture, but it has no political follow-up and in fact sets these actors at a distance
from the social movement (at least from the point of view which we have adopted). On the
other hand, they do come nearer to it when they attempt to contribute to the reconstruction of
political spheres by pleading for more international mediation, particularly in economic and
legal matters. After all, the main outcome of the major anti-globalist meetings in Seattle or
Porto Alegre was to have put an end to the arrogance of the political and economic elites who
used to meet in Davos. From the political point of view, their prime importance is undoubtedly
due to the desire and the capacity of the actors – although these do have their limits – to
contribute to the construction of political and legal instances within which they could then
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possibly function as protestors. In other words, it is due to their desire and their capacity to
create the conditions of their own existence, far beyond the classical forms of states.
Anti-Social Movements
Whether it be a question of the working-class movement, the ‘new social movements’ or
‘global movements’, there is one danger which constantly threatens the analyst: that of
confusing a relatively abstract concept, a sociologically pure category, with real historical
phenomena – actual events – which may include this category but are also, of necessity,
interplaced with others. The social movement is a pure concept and is never apparent as such;
it always appears as one single dimension of action amongst others. For example, in practice, a
working-class strike may very well include a restricted number of social demands which may
be corporatist or sectional in nature, elements of political pressure on a government, aspects
which refer to the idea of an economic crisis, tendencies to violence and a social movement
component which may well turn out to be very weak in comparison with the others.
Moreover, in theory, a social movement is defined by the fact that it has not one, but two,
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aspects to it, namely the offensive and the defensive, which present themselves in extremely
varied forms depending on the situation or – in the same situation – at the point in time or even
the economic conjuncture. The offensive aspect of the movement corresponds to the actor’s
capacity to define a project, a vision or a utopia and, on the basis of a strong identity, to put
forward an alternative conception of community life. This aspect is more amenable to
negotiation than the defensive aspect of the movement in which the actor is concerned
primarily with not being annihilated or destroyed by the domination to which he or she has
been subjected and in which he or she endeavours to find a way of existing, living, surviving
and safeguarding body and soul, or his or her physical and moral integrity.
The conditions enabling a social movement to develop and fully articulate its capacity for
offensive action and the demands of defensive action are never perfect and, moreover, all
movements begin, develop and decline though their historical trajectory – which may be far
from smooth. The difficulties which they encounter are sometimes considerable and are
linked to the context (e.g. political or economic crisis) but also to their own resources. In some
cases, these lead to deviations, characteristic of varying stages of decomposition. These
deviations begin to loom on the horizon when the two aspects of the movement separate and
the different dimensions of material action are no longer integrated by the actor. This type of
multifarious phenomenon occurs more readily in times of economic crisis, when economic
difficulties rule out any hope of negotiation of wage claims, or when poverty becomes all
pervasive, thereby preventing actors from envisaging the projection of their own future in a
positive fashion. This is further enhanced by politically blocked situations, when social or
cultural demands have no chance of being dealt with politically, debated, or discussed, which
encourages actors either to withdraw into themselves or to become radical and violent.
Deviations occur more rapidly at the time when the movement is taking shape or, on the
contrary, at a time of historical decline, when it is weak and vulnerable, its maturity long
past. At this point, the movement is fragile, lacks confidence in itself and its capacities, and
is more attracted by premature institutionalization on the one hand, possibly by
compromising with the authorities which it has been opposing and, on the other hand, by
violent forms of rupture behaviour such as refusing to talk and to negotiate. This is why
one should not necessarily contrast the institutionalization of a movement with the
manifestations of angry and violent forms of behaviour on the part of those who claim to
represent it. These are two different ways of expressing the same thing – the difficulty
which the movement is experiencing in integrating its main dimensions in a conflict with a
high level of project, and its tendency to self-destructuration.
After New Social Movements 13
But, even when destructured, a social movement must not be confused with its inverted
image – the anti-social movement which is its reverse, negative expression.
Global Anti-Movements
We can speak of an anti-movement when each of the elements by which a movement may
be defined is deformed, inverted and perverted. In this case, the universal nature of the
action that was intended to transcend the restricted interests of the actor is replaced by
sectarianism. The challenge of an adversary, even weakly identified, gives way to the
definition of an implacable enemy who may, if the need arises, be racialized or made to
appear diabolical, treated like a superman or an underling, possibly both at once. The
conflictual relationship between actors becomes a pure power relationship, a rupture
which can be annihilated only by violence, war, destruction and, in some cases, self-
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destruction. In Carl Schmitt’s terminology, all that remains is a friend or foe relationship.
It is possible to distinguish three figures of the anti-movement, each of which corresponds to
one of the three types of movement which we have described. We can illustrate this remark
with the case of terrorism. First, among other experiences, terrorism, when it claimed to speak
in the name of the working class in its extreme left, anarchist and above all Marxist-Leninist
forms, was an anti-movement of the working-class movement. In several countries this had
a real impact on industrial society at its formative stage or, on the contrary, its decline, and
is, from this point of view, an inversion of the working-class movement. Second, and also
among other experiences when terrorism shaped the undefined expectations of young people,
particularly in Italy, combining working-class themes and references to unfulfilled cultural
demands did, at least partly, produce a sort of inversion of the ‘new social movements’. And
third, a phenomenon such as the Aum sect in Japan, which became known after it released
Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway in 1995, now seems to have inaugurated the era of global anti-
movements which we are going to consider in more detail along with two other phenomena:
the transformations of international terrorism which has become ‘global’ with radical Islam
and the 9/11 attacks in 2001 in the USA, and the present-day return of anti-Semitism.
One point should be stressed: globalization may explain the formation of anti-movements
but the latter are not necessarily themselves ‘global’. Throughout the world today
globalization is indeed a powerful factor in cultural fragmentation and in the reinforcement of
social inequalities, and these phenomena may give rise to all sorts of anti-movements: sects,
for example, communities which turn to extreme violence, do not in themselves have the
slightest connection with the ‘global’ approaches of classical social movements which
disintegrate and invert to such an extent that they resemble social movements.
In this case, globalization provides us with guidelines for analysis of actors who may
themselves remain confined within a limited, possibly national, space. The factors which
influence action are global, but the action itself is local and cannot be linked to
transnational dimensions.
The characteristic of the two phenomena which are going to be considered, terrorism of the
bin Laden type and contemporary anti-Semitism which, moreover, is sometimes linked to it, is
therefore to be at one and the same time impelled by globalization and be in themselves global.
‘Global’ Terrorism1
In the 1980s there was a profound change in terrorism. Until then, it was primarily either
strictly political, on the extreme left or the extreme right, and, in that case, set in a nation-state
14 M. Wieviorka
context, or else national, in which case it endeavoured to create the nation-state which its
actors dreamt of. Then came the end of the Cold War, the historical decline of the working-
class movement, the rise of neo-liberalism and the transformation of violence. It became
either more infrapolitical than hitherto, and then tended to be economic in nature, concerned
with acceding to money more than to state power; or, when religious in nature, it became
metapolitical, beyond politics, with a global vision as regards space and an interest in the after-
life as regards time. The outstanding phenomenon, from the Iranian Revolution onwards, was
the assertion of political Islamism and its terrorist dimensions.
But if we have to speak of a global anti-movement, for Islamic terrorism, this is not so
much on the basis of the events of the years 1980 – 90 as on a consideration of the year
2001 and the paradigmatic, if not founding, event constituted by the terrorist attacks on
11 September 2001, or ‘9/11’.
This terrorism is ‘global’ for the following reasons. Its protagonists are not necessarily
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the direct expression of living, warm communities but, for example, are people whose
political and economic situation has deprived them of all hope: the young Palestinians who
put on belts containing explosives to go and blow up a bus in Israel are not involved in
‘global’ terrorism because they are in a situation which is extreme – as it is – but classical.
On the other hand, the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks are cut off from the everyday reality
of those on whose behalf they claim to speak; they do not have direct contact with them
except through their acts and via the media when these acts are successful. Their space is
the planet, whether it be a question of their personal trajectory or of their terrain of action.
They were born in Egypt or in Saudi Arabia, they went to Sudan, they trained in
Afghanistan and in Pakistan, they went to Germany to study, have lived in English and in
France and they learned to fly planes in Florida. They are not accountable to anybody
except themselves and their group; they have no roots amongst the people. The most recent
attacks in Morocco, Bali, Turkey, Spain, and elsewhere lead us to think that the ‘global’
nature of the action indicates a sort of articulation, which varies from one situation to
another, between aims or goals which are global and religious – similar to those evoked by
Huntington, for example, set in a context of a clash of civilizations – and local concerns
set in the context of the policies of the countries attacked, and in projects for the
destabilization of a particular government and a specific regime. The 2004 attacks in Saudi
Arabia seem to offer an illustration of this observation: they can be understood only by
crossing the global dimensions of the aims of al Qaeda with the characteristics specific to
the political situation of the country.
The ‘global’ nature of contemporary terrorism also refers to its mode of operation,
which appears to be through highly flexible, global networks – similar to capitalism –
networks which know how to connect with each other and how to disconnect. This ‘global’
nature is also due to the skilfulness of its actors in financial matters – bin Laden was even
said to have profited from speculating, before 11 September 2001, on the financial and
stock exchange consequences of the attacks which he was preparing. Terrorism is also
global in the type of relationship which it maintains with the state: it is no longer a question
of subordination – as in the period when sponsor states used terrorist actors almost like
mercenaries, to carry out illicit or covert activities by controlling and sometimes
manipulating them – but one of subjugation, as al Qaeda did with the Taliban state, or else
of settlement in regions where there is almost no state – for example in tribal areas.
The ‘global’ nature of terrorism at the moment is also due to its meanings which are as
worldwide as those of the movements in favour of another world, of which it is in some
After New Social Movements 15
respects a sort of inversion and from which it borrows some of its concerns (the struggle
against exclusion in the name of the dominated or the impoverished, against American
imperialism, and so on).
And, if we have to describe such terrorism as an anti-social movement, it is really
because it does give a distorted, inverse image of a social movement. It ceases to be
the protagonist of a conflict to become the promoter of forms of behaviour which break the
movement. It acts as if confronted by an enemy and not by an opponent. It transforms the
social relationship of which it claims to be the highest form of expression into a total war
with no limits. It is important here to understand the subjectivity of the actors. They do not
appear themselves as sadists, in terms of cruelty, even if they do carry out the most horrific
acts including in front of the camera; nor can their actions be reduced to forms of
calculation, or to strategies and therefore to something purely instrumental. They are not
nihilists – quite the contrary – they are hyper subjects, subjects who overload their action
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with a plethora of meanings, to the point of defining issues which, in certain cases, go
beyond life on this earth. Some of them are therefore ready to go as far as self-destruction
in suicide, becoming martyrs, which is a very good indication of the extraordinary amount
of meaning they confer on their acts.
‘Global’ Anti-Semitism
Seen from France, more assuredly than in any other society, the contemporary hatred of
Jews is not a continuation of modern anti-Semitism, strictly speaking. It has undergone
changes and assumed new forms to the point that a discussion has begun as to whether we
should continue to speak of anti-Semitism (see, for example, Weill, 2003), anti-Judaism
(see Milner, 2003) or even of a new type of Judeophobia (see Taguieff, 2002).
By considering the way in which the present forms of hatred of Jews are displayed today it
does seem to me to be possible to speak primarily about a ‘global’ phenomenon.
To say this is, in the first instance, to admit that the sources of hatred of Jews are today
simultaneously global, and therefore transnational and localized, in particular at a national
level. We thus recognize a link between the most general, world-level aspects and those
which refer to a specific, limited situation. For example, this means that an analysis of the
attempt to set fire to a synagogue in the Parisian suburbs takes into account both local
factors and international factors, particularly those in the Middle East.
The globalization of anti-Semitism is based on a two-fold compression of time and of
space. It amalgamates elements originating in historically distinct categories and merges
these without arousing the slightest criticism from its propagandists. There is room for
everything: accusations of ritual crimes as in the far-off times when Christian anti-Judaism
was prevalent in Europe; overdone references to the Protocol of the Elders of Zion, this
invention emanating from the imagination of the Tsarist regime at the beginning of the
twentieth century; a revival of the classical, racial themes of modern anti-Semitism which
were at their height between the end of the nineteenth century and the Nazi period;
revisionism and negationism minimizing or denying the gas chambers and the genocide of
the Jews; denunciation of the ‘shoah-business’ from which the Jews are said to make
money and which is said to constitute the State of Israel’s largest source of income, and
more.
At the same time, globalization owes a lot to the electronic technologies which ensure
instantaneous circulation, but also the stocking throughout the world of texts, sounds and
16 M. Wieviorka
images for propaganda: here, the Internet and television are complementary, though the
Internet demands a more active approach on the part of the receiver.
The globalization of anti-Semitism has a centre, the Near East, more precisely the
Israeli – Palestinian conflict, and its organization is based on challenging the existence of
the State of Israel. But it includes religious dimensions, Islamic in particular, which set the
hatred of Jews in a context of a metapolitical conflict at world level which is not
particularly polarized on the State of Israel alone. Thus there is an enormous gulf between
al Qaeda – for whom the Palestinian cause is not an absolute priority and for whom global
terrorism is both at world level and embedded in all sorts of local situations – and the
Palestinian Hamas movement which remains profoundly nationalist and therefore
localized.
But if there is globalization it is because world-level approaches are grafted onto local
approaches. In France, to remain with this case alone, anti-Semitism at the moment feeds
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and by taking the place of true adversaries: bosses and capitalists who exploit people,
political authorities who dominate, press magnates or journalists who manipulate the
news, and so on. The Jews are thus portrayed as diabolical, with innate qualities attributed
by nature; they are enemies and not adversaries. Instead of clashing with them, being
involved in a negotiable, conflictual relation, we are involved in a war, a struggle to the
end with an enemy who has to be got rid of, destroyed and wiped out. As far as anti-
Semitism is concerned, there is no common ground on which to establish a relationship
with the Jews; they have to leave the arena by means of assimilation, departure or
annihilation.
Anti-Semitism is also an anti-social movement in so far as it directly replaces an
impossible movement. We see this, for example, in our ongoing field research in a
working-class area in Roubaix, an industrial town in crisis. The young people of
immigrant origin are particularly anti-Semitic when they themselves suffer from racism,
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discrimination and are confined to ghettos and excluded. Their hatred of the Jews declines
when their social difficulties are taken seriously.
The sources of this anti-Semitism are clearly ‘global’ since they include world-level and
transnational dimensions along with local dimensions against a background of the history
and changes in French society; in what way is it global in its own right? It is because in the
minds of its protagonists its context goes beyond the confines of the nation-state. The
hatred of Jews is not hatred of a group living in France or whose impact would only be
perceptible on French society; it targets a whole in which the State of Israel and the Jews of
the diaspora form a single entity which is considered to be an integral whole and to which,
in some situations, the USA can be added. The hatred is expressed – and here we find the
theme of the subject – in the name of a victim with which one is identified in the young
Palestinians of the Intifada, or the radical Islamists of al Qaeda – it becomes difficult to
distinguish between the suffering of the one and the other. The Jews are then accused of
having moved from the status of victim to that of guilty party, and the suffering of the anti-
Semitic actor is constantly stressed here; they suffer, they are victims or identified with the
victims of the time. The hatred of Jews is more especially sensitive to international news
and events; according to Ministry of Justice statistics, the peaks in anti-Semitic violence
coincided in 2002/03 with important events in the Middle East (though this does not seem
to be as true today). Today’s anti-Semitism not only denotes the crisis in the nation-state,
which is weakened by globalization in a general way, but also makes it worse. It is
obviously not an accident if the problem is particularly significant in state schools which,
in France, come under the Ministry of National Education (so much so that a recent
publication took as its title: ‘The Republic’s Lost Lands’; Brenner, 2002), which is a way
of saying that in France the state schools are having difficulty in fulfilling the promises of
the Republic). The schools are indeed finding it increasingly difficult to live up to the
proud motto of Liberty –Equality –Fraternity. There are acts of violence targeting Jews,
but also questions about what is being taught, especially when the history of the Second
World War and the Shoah is concerned. These reveal that these state schools are not
meeting the expectations of young people of immigrant origin who, generally speaking,
realize that they are victims of inequalities which the school reinforces and aggravates;
they would like to learn about slavery and colonization at least as much as about the
Shoah.
One could say similar things when considering anti-Semitic acts which have taken place
abroad, such as the terrorist attacks in Tunisia, Turkey and Morocco: obviously these have
18 M. Wieviorka
an impact on the Jews in France who feel threatened and affected, concerned by them; they
know that they are part of a transnational approach.
Conclusion
An approach to globalization should include anti-movements which are themselves global.
These anti-movements are the darkest aspect of globalization. But, as we have seen, they
also have a positive side to them; they also include ‘global’ movements, of which the most
important example today is unquestionably the movement for another world. The
sociology of globalization should not only study globalization, its geo-political impact, its
modalities and its impact on the economy, on culture or on social inequality. One of its
major challenges is undoubtedly also the exploration of movements and anti-movements,
or, more precisely, the dimensions of movement and anti-movement of struggles which
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challenge globalization, but which also shape it because they themselves act at a global
level – they are themselves global.
Social anti-movements are not the defensive dimension of social movements but their
contrary, and often their enemy. Instead of promoting a social or cultural identity, they are
champions of some abstract entity, essence or symbol, and speak in the name of a purity or
homogeneity. Instead of defining an adversary, they have one or several enemies, and
search for and try to eliminate scapegoats, traitors or spies; they give the impression of a
collective paranoia that has no bounds. Instead of building relationships with other actors,
agreeing on the principle of debates and negotiations, they champion absolutes, and adopt
do-or-die attitudes. And if they appear in an arena where social movements also exist, they
will try to destroy these movements, and fight against them: Bin Laden is a real enemy for
alter-globalist actors, even when he speaks in the name of social justice and equality, and
in fact because he uses the same categories as alter-globalists. Anti-movements sometimes
appear through changes that modify a social movement, or in a context where they appear
at the same time. They may either fight with social movements in the same political and
social arena, or come before or after them, when they are weak and too new or too old.
They are part of the same story and, therefore, of the same framework of analysis.
Translated by Kristin Couper
Note
1. For further details, cf. my new preface to Wieviorka (2003a).
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