As the unfolding DSK saga had barely begun, another racist hit the headlines in the form of the bizarre Lars Von Trier who during a Cannes Press Conference, proclaimed to understand Hitler and to sympathise with him to some extent, despite his upbringing as the son of adoptive Jewish parents (gee, thanks, Lars!). Drug-fuelled as it may have been, his rant was revealing at one particular juncture, when he said “I’m not against Jews… Well, Israel is a pain in the ass but…” In other words, Von Trier tried to right his antisemitism by dressing it up as anti-Zionism. This is as bad as the Zionists who accuse anyone who opposes them of antisemitism. It is reverse antisemitism, justified by anti-Zionism. And it’s not OK.

Stolen from the brilliant Steve Bell

So David Cameron has been given Marine Le Pen’s blessing. As the new head of the racist French party, the Front national, she says,

It is exactly this type of statement that has barred us from public life [in France] for 30 years… I sense an evolution at European level, even in classic governments. I can only congratulate him.

Marine Le Pen is right to point out that what used to be beyond the pale, is now acceptable speech. White Europeans everywhere are now ‘daring’ to say what they always thought about black people, migrants, and Muslims having been given the go ahead by their politicians. As Seumas Milne points out in the The Guardian, Cameron’s anti-Muslim racism is nothing new: “much of the ground for Cameron’s neocon turn was laid by Tony Blair and New Labour – and politicians such as Phil Woolas, who unsuccessfully tried to play the Islamophobic card to save his skin.”

In fact, this brave new world where, finally, Europeans can ‘call a spade a spade’ unites the right and the liberal (and many on the progressive) left. It comes at a very particular moment in the history of racism. Racism, ever chameleon-like, has always adapted itself to the political context in which it has been present. The status quo idea of our neoliberal age, with its stress on individualisation and personal responsibility, is that we are post-race. Past racisms have been accounted and even apologised for. If anyone continues to cry racism, it is because they have been unwilling to pull their socks up and avail of the opportunities that an overly tolerant, even guilt-ridden, society has thrown at them at every turn. Indeed, the real racism is that of illiberal minorities who refuse to assimilate – sorry ‘integrate’ – into our western way of life, and, so the story goes, benefit from the same freedoms as the rest of us. By making this ‘choice’, minorities – Muslims especially – dig their own graves. It is up to us to take the brave step and put an end to it.

So far, so familiar perhaps. However, what might put Cameron over the edge and unite him very much with the overt racism of a party like the Front national, is his explicit reference to white racism and his contrast of it to the practices (he didn’t quite say ‘racism’) of non-whites. To have overtly drawn the colour line, is indeed to place Cameron firmly in the camp of those who wish to score political points with those for whom crass racism still has significant political purchase. At least we know where he stands, which is more than can be said for the two-facedness of his Labour predecessor’s, has-been like my old University-mate Liam Byrne, whose racist policies during his stint as immigration minister I have blogged about before.

For what it’s worth, Unite Against Fascism have started a campaign against Cameron’s attack on multiculturalism. It is at the very least a start against a long and perhaps, in the short term at least, futile battle.

We need ‘a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.’

David Cameron has announced that the ‘doctrine of state multiculturalism’ has encouraged different cultures to live separate lives. He went on to say that, while we are quick to condemn white racism (really?), we are ‘too cautious’ when someone who isn’t white holds ‘equally objectionable views’.

Has Cameron been reading Christian Joppke’s Veil: mirror of identity? I presume not. However, both these privileged, white men are making the same argument: it is necessary to be illiberal and to curb the rights of ‘different others’, would be ‘separatists’ and ‘extremists’ in order to protect the greater good of liberalism, or what Cameron called ‘our values’.

He said it himself: we need ‘a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism.’ Adding to the doubts Cameron patronisingly expressed with regards Egyptians’ capacity for democracy this week, his comments on multiculturalism display all the racist assumptions of a ‘Schmittian liberal’ elite fearful of its own demise, yet determined to hold on at all costs to the fiction of their superiority. In that they still holds the reins of power, the news for those on the receiving end of their built-up liberal muscles is not good.

Excerpt published on the Muslim Council of Britain site

Ours is a righteous cause,” says Stephen Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) of the English Defence League, “Alright, OK,” replies Jeremy Paxman, anchor of BBC2′s flagship news programme Newsnight, “A lot of people are worried, I believe you.

The decision to invite the EDL to appear on Newsnight on February ahead of the its march on Luton planned for February 5, touted as the “the biggest demonstration in its 18-month history” according to The Guardian, was ill-informed. Those interested in engaging in the ‘no platform’ debate may do so. However, what was more striking about the Newsnight appearance was Paxman’s ultimate inability to counter the incendiary, anti-Muslim statements tripping off Lennon’s tongue. Inability or unwillingness?

Although Paxman countered Lennon’s characterisation of Islam as a religion or culture that promotes violence, rape, pimping, and homophobia, by asking whether this is representative of Muslims as a whole and suggesting that a minority among all communities engages in these activities, he makes no attempt to decouple the link between something being called ‘Muslim culture’ and violence, sexism and homophobia. Anyone sympathetic to the notion that Muslims are more likely than any other group to be responsible for such behaviour would not have ended the programme believing that there might be another side to the story. The reason for Paxman’s ineffectualness is not, I believe, because he is actually an Islamophobe but that there is a convergence between the EDL’s position, as expressed by Lennon, and general public consensus which is based on the position espoused by political leaders. The common sense is that there is something that is intrinsic to Islam (and hence Muslims – although the two are far from being the same) which leads them to be more sexist, homophobic or violent than the rest of the population.

This is classic racialization: stereotypes about a particular group of people (often clumped together in a homogenising mass that ignores the internal differences among them) are naturalised and made to stand for them. We are thus no longer able to see Muslims without perceiving the stereotypes about them that abound. The debate I participated in on Wednesday night at the Brighton Dome was a case in point. The majority of the panel and the audience was against the proposal that EU countries are right to ban the wearing of religious symbols (75% of the audience polled) and thought that the bans were actually about Islam per se rather than religions in general. Nonetheless, the representative of the Humanist Society, Peter Cave, represented the belief that in fact represents the majority in society at large – that allowing the wearing of the burka, for example, is a slippery slope towards honour killings and forced marriages. In other words, a simple choice to dress according to a particular interpretation of religious belief was linked directly to the ability to kill another human being. Needless to say, as indeed Paxman was meekly attempting to point out on Newsnight, if this type of argument was made about another group in society, it would not go down as easily. Kudos therefore to the audience at the Dome for largely rejecting it!

Both Lennon and Paxman are mired, therefore, in the contemporary logic that discursively separates between racism and the objection to practices associated with a racialized group; in this case, Muslims. A postracial agenda that relativises the significance of racism and increasingly portrays it as ‘reversed’ – enacted by minorities against an embattled and cowed white majority – has become entrenched. It is within this hegemonic consensus that attacks on Muslim people of the vile nature expressed by Lennon become banalised and palatable: there is, nothing, it is argued unique to Muslims that mean they deserve greater protection against slur and attacks of this kind. Postracialism artificially puts everyone on an equal footing by discounting the relevance of colonialism, racism, immigration, and the contemporary civilizational discourse that pits Islam against the West. Muslims, in this vision are not only responsible for more of the violence in society, but their status as a minority group has afforded them unjustifiable protection; it is time now to unveil (pun intended) them and their true intentions.

Postracialism masquerades under the guise of equality to deliver the most pernicious form of racism, one that is purposefully disingenuous. Lennon’s discourse, and Paxman’s easy capitulation to it, demonstrates how widespread an acceptance of the postracial agenda has spread. The EDL talks the talk of equality and diversity, integrating the language of tolerance and inclusivity: everyone who abhors what Muslims are purportedly doing to British society – Sikhs, Hindus, Jews and gays included – are welcome to join. What acceptance of this discourse and the fact the EDL does have prominent members of all of these groups do is to dismiss the degree to which a certain form of racism has today become compatible with a commitment to diversity and tolerance.

While theorists of ‘culturalist racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Martin Barker and Verena Stolcke, were taking note of how far right-wing parties were using the language of multiculturalism to make them more politically palatable, the current status quo is slightly different. The EDL’s diversity-speak emerges from contemporary racial arrangements: diversity and exclusion complement rather than oppose each other. Under current arrangements, representing a certain form of acceptable, or ‘good diversity’ (not rocking the boat, being secular – or at least not Muslim, shedding the excesses of your ethnic particularism…) can be painted as acceptable. However whoever diverts from the, albeit ever-changing, script of ‘good diversity’ quickly falls into the category of ‘bad diversity’ (the religious, the radical, the angry, the economically useless, etc.). Where you are on the spectrum can change (Muslims were not construed as a particular problem prior to 1989), and that is the convenience of racism today: it is essentially drawn up around shifting inclusions in and exclusions from ‘good diversity’. However, the lip-service paid to diversity itself shields us – the EDL included – from being condemned as racist because, it is suggested, one need only reject ‘bad diversity’ and become ‘good diverse’ subjects for the spotlight to be taken off. The fact that the dividing lines between good and bad are constantly being redrawn is rarely drawn attention to, but it is this that should make us wary of the postracial agenda and its utility in facilitating the persistence of racism.

“Lentin’s book is not only an accessible survey of scholarly writing on the nature of racism but is also a powerful intervention in its own right.”

Arun Kundnani of the Institute of Race Relations, and author of the excellent The End of Tolerance, has written a thoughtful review of Racism: A Beginner’s Guide here.