The New Right and the Intellectual Elaboration of Ethnic Europe: from Racism to the Politics of Differentialism

Abstract

The controversy over the demands of Islamic schoolgirls in France to don veils in public schools evolved from a local debate concerning the propriety of displaying cultural distinctions in public into a larger, the-oretical issue focusing on the principle of tolerance in liberal society.l On the one hand, France’s particular tradition of national republican-ism and its integrationist notions of citizenship could hardly be defined as liberal. On the other hand, liberalism itself is ambiguous on the question of ethnic demands in the public sphere. In fact, the liberal tradition rests on a secular concept of citizenship and a clear division between the public and private spheres.2 Several theories of radical democratism have tried to demonstrate the incompetence of liberal democracy to deal with ethnic demands.3