Free Thinking - Patriotism: Alain Finkielkraut, Karim Miské
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2016
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
At the end of a year which has seen Britain vote for Brexit, the rise of political parties claiming patriotism in other European countries and a sense of national pride being invoked by politicians in Russia and China - Free Thinking hears from some of the key thinkers exploring these current debates.
Our week long focus begins in France where Philip Dodd talks to the public intellectual, Alain Finkielkraut and the novelist and film-maker Karim Miské. Alain Finkielkraut is a member of the Académie française, a council of 40 greats elected for life. In France his books are best-sellers but his views about integration and French identity have led to clashes. Finkielkraut's father survived deportation to Auschwitz. In his own career he has taught at universities in USA and France and his books have explored topics including French colonialism, Jewish identity, the internet and the decline of French culture.
Karim Miské is the author of the award winning novel, Arab Jazz, and of an essay, N'Appartenir which charts his search for a sense of belonging in contemporary France.
Producer: Zahid Warley.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
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| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. Hello and welcome to |
| 0:33.4 | the arts and ideas download from the free-thinking team at the BBC. |
| 0:46.0 | On tonight's programme, Alan Finkelcroat, the most controversial and combative figure in French intellectual life, |
| 0:53.9 | on the new global battleground, patriotism, which consumes all three free-thinking programmes this week. |
| 0:56.5 | Look where you will, patriotism's there. |
| 0:58.9 | It helped to drive Donald Trump's victory. |
| 1:06.7 | The new Austrian president says his victory shows patriotism and progressivism can be reconciled. Marine Le Pen in France says the choice is between patriotism and globalisation, and the new UKIP leader says his target is the patriotic working class. |
| 1:18.9 | But patriotism is never a matter of narrow politics. It's also a cultural question, what we love, what and how we teach it, and who we see as us. |
| 1:30.0 | This evening, we zoom in on France, where post-the-terror attacks, arguments over patriotism |
| 1:36.3 | have only intensified. We have two interviews, both recorded in Paris. Later, we talk to |
| 1:42.3 | Alain Finkelcat about his despair over Muslim |
| 1:45.7 | integration and his loyalty to French civilization. |
| 1:50.2 | I'm myself, devenu patriot, much more recently, when I've seen the France attack and |
| 1:58.3 | made in question. Patriotism for Finkelcroat then |
| 2:01.5 | springs from his sense that France |
| 2:03.8 | and his idea of France are under threat. |
| 2:08.3 | But we begin elsewhere |
| 2:09.9 | with the novelist and filmmaker Karamiske |
| 2:12.8 | who came to international fame |
| 2:14.8 | with his Parisian crime novel Arab jazz. |
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