双语阅读英语外刊精讲：对城市时尚潮人的警告(附音频)

2018-12-23 14:53:00来源：酷学英语

　　If this describes you, beware. This book by French geographer, Christophe Guilluy, will make you fret and question your moral integrity. French “bo-bos” are largely responsible for the dislocation of the country's social and economic fabric, Guilluy asserts in Le Crepuscule de la France d'en haut (“The twilight of upper France”). His analysis, he says, applies to all western societies.

　　Widening inequalities have favored the emergence of a new bourgeoisie living in dynamic urban centers, at the expense of smaller towns, suburbs and the countryside. According to Guilluy, these economic disparities help explain the populist wave that has materialized in the election of Donald Trump as US president and the UK's Brexit vote. In France, Marine Le Pen, the far-right National Front leader, is predicted to qualify for the presidential runoff next year.

双语阅读：英语外刊阅读精讲(附音频) .

　　“The system does not rely on the elites only but also on an important part of the population, a new bourgeoisie, that resides in large cities and that supported all the economic choices of the elite for 30 years,” he writes. The novelty is that these new bourgeois have “seized power” by enunciating “morally superior” principles: they back globalization in the name of tolerance, openness and multiculturalism, describing critics as “backward-looking” or “racists.” In effect, they have allowed a system to thrive that only works for them. Indirectly, Guilluy says, they have contributed to wrecking old industrial bastions.

　　They – we? – are hypocrites: they advocate ethnic and social diversity but send their children to private school. They are in cahoots with a traditional rightwing bourgeoisie in agreeing globalization is a good thing.

　　What next? Guilluy predicts a revolution. The “citadels” could be besieged. “Paradoxically, it is at a time when they [upper, or bourgeois, France] are prevailing, by occupying the political, academic and media space that they are losing their legitimacy within the working classes, which form the majority.”

　　The author's anti-capitalist leanings are clear: and no solution is outlined. The book has been criticized for its lack of original data-gathering and analysis. Some of the anti-establishment lines read like FN slogans. But Guilluy's description of Parisian hipsters is spot on, and his warning strikes a chord. What if western societies are on the verge of changing paradigms on globalization, free trade, free movement of people and democracy? It is time to listen to the dissenting voices.

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