ethno-religious revolt

[anna balint]

It is disappointing not only that Finkielkraut suspects an ethno-religious
background of the events,  the failure of the analysts in describing
the revolt phenomena in France is quite general. Most of the authors
apply their former theories to a new subject, like Baudrillard looks
like he tries his media theory  and his notion of banality
in a new context, Zizek remembers some movies from the seventies,
and eighties of the last century and has an opportunity to refer to
the pscychology of self-destruction. Nothing but intellectual
clichés  proliferate in these texts.
The ghetto revolts in Paris are probably part of global phenomena,
they have probably many things in common for instance
with the upheavals in Los Angeles and Atalanta in 1992. They are
related probably not just to poverty, unemployment, racism,
and urban hopelessness,  the unequal distribution of political power
and economic resources, but also to the new economy, where
the unequal distribution  knowledge is relatively more relevant in the  
contexts
of the shift of needs of the advanced economies .
It is normal  that if the principle of homogeneity of the mass society  
created by the
industrial revolution and consumer socities is fading in the knowledge  
society,
the cultural, ethnic, educational heterogenity and  diversity gains  
importance.

In Hungary similar processes are going on as in France, but without
  immigrant questions and ethno-religious background. There is also no
notable racism directed against immigrants in Hungary, however there
are attempts to eliminate poors, homeless people,  victims of a structural
poverty from the center of the cities, and to push them towards the  
periphery
or towards the countryside.
The public opinion luckily opposes quite strongly these attempt to create
a bande sanitaire between advantaged and strongly disadvantaged
parts of the population. Even most of the habitants of the very central
supercity of Budapest agree to cohabitat with some 3o.ooo homeless poeple.
It is another question that whole regions of the country fell into poverty.