Posts Tagged ‘racism’
Griffin was right about one thing
Nick Griffin was right about one thing: Churchill would have felt at home in the BNP.
The appearance of Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nartional Party, on BBC Question Time on October 22, 2009 has led to massive debate across the UK. Those in favour of freedom of speech advocated for Griffin to be allowed on the programme in the interests of exposing him. Those opposing said that there should be no platform for fascists and that Griffin and the BNP would only benefit from the publicity, no matter what was actually debated. I agree with the latter position and have always done so. Rare words of sense were written by Gary Younge in the Guardian reminding us that the other panelists, in particular Jack Straw, as the representative of New Labour is as guilty (if not more so) of encouraging racism in Britain as Griffin, especially considering Straw’s incendiary 2007 remarks on the niqab and the direct link between this and rising Islamophobia.
The panelists on Question Time were literally falling over themselves to show themselves to be tolerant and non-racist in the face of Griffin’s blatant racism. However, the mechanisms they chose to do this by resorted to the tried and tested recourse to patriotism (critiqued by Paul Gilroy in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack with regards the Anti-Nazi Leagues in 1987). Read the rest of this entry »
The Demographic Winter
Proponents of the notion that European populations are falling in to decline because of the increased birth rate among the ‘wrong type’ of people are gaining influence. There is a close link to be observed between these types of arguments and those of populist writers such as Christopher Caldwell who, in Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, links culturalist arguments about the danger posed by Islam to Europe to demographic ideas, seemingly inspired by Gobineau, about the ‘bastardization’ of the European race. More on my approach to the return of biological racism can be found in Chapter 4 of Racism.
Racism Reviewed
“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.