To paraphrase the opening of the Communist Manifesto, a [new] specter is haunting Europe—the specter oÃ-fundamentalism. 1 These days the term" fundamentalism" is mostly applied to different forms of resistance to the West, ie Muslim fundamentalism. My use of fundamentalism refers to something quite different: legitimations of the West. More specifically, I use" fundamentalism" to refer to the neoliberal turn taken by many European (and American) states which re-imagine themselves in a neonationalist/imperialist fashion. They do so by forgetting their colonial past while turning their internal others into the only racist and fundamentalist sub-jects. Le Pen's ultra-right politics in France or the well-documented case of xenophobia surrounding El Ejido in Spain are two clear examples of the kind of ideological processes to which I refer. In this respect I equate fundamentalism with neoliberalism here. 2

I will focus on contemporary Spanish historiographical discourse and its central role in articulating this neoliberal, fundamentalist ideology. But before focusing on Spain, I would like to cite several French and German scandals in order to expose the general European scope of this fundamentalist ideology. I have chosen the public form of the" scandal," because a" scan-