The same week he told Marine Le Pen she isn't tough enough against Islam, Darmanin, the French Minister of the Interior, ordered the dissolution of the extreme right Génération identitaire

This is not a contradiction, but the interplay between liberal and illiberal racisms 1/

Extreme right groups like GI are used to demonstrate the liberal racist's credentials as mainstream and even anti-racist: Darmanin was "scandalised" by GI's actions and a number of other groups have been dissolved lately

This is reminiscent of what is taking place in the UK 2/

... where extreme right groups are finally under the spotlight.

Much is said about fighting those groups and 'ideologies', but this serves often as an alibi to justify the government (and media's) own use and mainstreaming of (liberal) racism 3/

1. We are not as extreme as they are and in fact we fight them
2. They tap into legitimate grievances we must address

This also ties to 'very fine people on both sides', core to Trump's euphemisation of his supporters' racism, but also the current approach in the UK 4/

False equivalences are drawn between the extreme right and the broad left and mythologised antifa - while the argument usually starts with the ER, if often turns to how anti-fascists and anti-racists are the real fascists and racists --> see the dumb free speech moral panics 5/

Liberal articulations of racism are not simply constructed in opposition to illiberal and extreme forms though. They are also couched in a traditional liberal language, and twisting of otherwise potentially and traditionally progressive values.

Free speech is a great example 6/

But you can also think of women's rights used to target racialised Muslim communities, as if 'We' (or other communities) have achieved equality

Laïcité in France is another obvious example - we are not racist, we are against all religions, but not really...

7/

Because liberal racism places itself in opposition to illiberal articulations, and couches its exclusionary framework in otherwise progressive terms, it appears as reasonable and mainstream and difficult to counter without being made to sound extreme 8/

This ties is to the counter-hegemonic war some intellectuals on the extreme right devised in the 70s and 80s, borrowing directly from Gramsci: to achieve political power, you must first achieve cultural power

9/

For them, it was imposing their ideas as common sense through a discursive reconstruction

It's been hugely successful and the left itself has often fallen for it: think of laïcité, the 'white working class' or so called 'left behind' constructed to push reactionary ideas 10/

Anyway, I'll stop here but if you're interested, you might want to check out the book @aaronzwinter and I wrote on these issues:

Reactionary Democracy: How Racism and the Populist Far Right Became Mainstream

https://www.versobooks.com/books/3173-reactionary-democracy