Racism
‘Rishi Sunak is “Living Proof” a Prime Minister of Colour is No Evidence of a Britain Beyond Racism’
When Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister in 2022, Asian WhatsApp groups posted memes and messages marking the occasion.
One sent to me depicted Rishi Sunak, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, and King Charles mocked up in the original film poster for Amar, Akbar and Anthony – a 1977 Bollywood ‘masala’ movie.
It centres on the story of three brothers separated as children and then adopted and raised by Hindu, Muslim and Christian families. Masala films explored landmark issues of tolerance in Bollywood. And the pride of those sharing the meme was clear: look how far on race and diversity Britain has come.
Nearly a year-and-a-half on, the fallacy of this 'watershed’ represented by people of colour in positions of power has been exposed by Sunak himself.
In the wake of comments by former Conservative Deputy Chair Lee Anderson – baselessly and conspiratorially claiming that Sadiq Khan, who is Muslim, has handed the city to “Islamists” – Sunak removed the whip from the MP and said his remarks were “wrong”. But he refused to call them Islamophobic, something Khan (who, as the victim of the claims, is the best judge of how they were received) has been unequivocal about.
This refusal to condemn Anderson’s remarks as racist remarks matters.
Sunak’s response to the Anderson affair was that “any form of prejudice or racism” is unacceptable as that is not who “we are as a country”.
“We’re a proud multi-ethnic democracy, one of the most successful anywhere in the world,” the Prime Minister added.
But if Britain is the “proud multi-ethnic democracy” he describes, and one of the most successful at this "anywhere in the world", how can we explain that it has a Prime Minister who refuses to call racism what it is?
Following the furore, Sunak also said how proud he was to be the UK’s first Asian Prime Minister and that this had happened without note (reading between the lines, he meant objections from the Conservative Party). He is "living proof", he claimed, of Britain's success when it comes to race.
But if he is “living proof” of Britain’s success on race, how can we explain his refusal to call racism what it is?
The Conservative Party led by Sunak has been all too willing to normalise a political culture in which Lee Anderson felt it was acceptable to make such comments. While this may not have started with Sunak, he has been happy to either turn a blind-eye or indulge in the 'culture war’ now eating the party up.
As Peter Oborne has observed, Sunak appears to have a clear strategy faced with the prospect of a heavy defeat in the next general election: ‘other’ minorities and sow fear and division in order to tempt a hard-right base eyeing up the Reform Party. “It’s horrible politics which shames Britain,” writes Oborne. “Enoch Powell will be smiling in his grave.”
For the former political commentator of the Mail, the Telegraph and the Spectator, “there has been an understandable tendency for mainstream commentators to give Sunak an easy ride on the problem of Conservative racism on the basis that he himself comes from an immigrant family. I was initially minded to do so myself. But this argument no longer holds”.
It is an argument I believe never had any substance.
From the beginning of his tenure, Sunak has legitimised the use of racism as a political tool by the likes of Anderson, Suella Braverman and others.
In this way, the 'most diverse Cabinet in history’ does show how far Britain has come: having an Asian Prime Minister who refuses to call out racism but instead uses the example of his own personal success as an ethnic minority to suggest that we should be focused on these ‘bigger wins’ and not the ‘smaller losses’ exemplified by Anderson’s “unacceptable” comments.
But Sunak's experience as an ethnic minority is not representative of any experience but his own. The richest person to ever be Prime Minister, how many people in the country in general can relate to him? And how many other ethnic minorities – who are not a homogenous group – see their experience mirrored in his success?
Using its high-ranking politicians of colour as a shield against legitimate scrutiny of its record on racism, and how seriously it takes the issue, has become a strategy of choice for the Conservatives in recent years.
The logic seems to be that if Sunak, Braverman, James Cleverly, Priti Patel and others can pull themselves up their bootstraps and reach high office, all other ethnic minorities should be able to too, regardless of what we know or don’t know of their life circumstances. And if they don’t, that’s a personal failing – not evidence of any structural challenges they face.
Boris Johnson – who has written of “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” and Muslim women looking like “bank robbers” and “letterboxes” – knew exactly how to deploy the diversity of his Cabinet to deflect from questions about Conservative racism as Prime Minister.
When asked about new allegations of Islamophobia in his party by Tory MP Nusrat Ghani in 2021, he turned and pointed to his frontbench, where Priti Patel and others sat. “She talks about racism and Islamophobia,” Johnson said. “But look at this Government… look at the modern Conservative Party. We are the party of hope and opportunity for people across this country, irrespective of race or religion.”
Patel also referred to her own personal experience and success as an ethnic minority to answer questions about racism and the issues faced by other ethnic minorities.
“The fact you are sitting here speaking to me, a woman from an Asian minority background, shows we have such great opportunities,” she told the Daily Mail in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. “If this was a racist country, I would not be sitting where I am.”
Many have found the hard-right views of politicians such as Patel perplexing, given their ethnic minority backgrounds. Exploring the complexities of this in these pages previously, I have argued that they are right to not want to be ‘boxed in’ by their identities: that just because they are ethnic minorities doesn’t mean they should be 'more liberal’ on issues such as immigration.
But their motives for advancing such a hardline worldview also matter. The evidence base for the controversial Rwanda scheme, for instance, pioneered by Patel and ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, is not readily available and it is not clear why the Conservatives are making this policy a priority – beyond any culture war votes it hopes to win with it. When Patel’s successor at the Home Office, Suella Braverman, said it was her “dream” to see a deportation flight take off to Rwanda, it is legitimate to ask what is motivating these politicians.
And to question why they use their own individual experiences to dismiss the issues faced by groups of people of colour, who have very different lives and do not enjoy the same privileges.
By offering himself up as “living proof” of this country’s record on race, the Prime Minister exposed how he is happy to weaponise race when it suits, just like Lee Anderson.
In his refusal to call out Islamophobia, or acknowledge that his success is no answer to racism, Sunak laid bare the very reason why we need to keep talking about racism, the complexity of how it is used politically, and the reality that minority groups have very different experiences.
Fundamentally, it clarifies that representation and diversity is about a lot more than having people of colour in positions of power. At its best, it should be about rising above narrow political and personal interests and attempting to at least understand the lives of those with different experiences, regardless of whether they voted for you. Rishi Sunak’s Government is not interested in this.
His time as Prime Minister will have been shameful for its normalisation of a political culture in which the use of race as a tool of division was felt acceptable to allow.
‘Nothing Will Change for Muslims Unless there is a Reckoning with Britain’s Normalised Islamophobia’
Violence in the Middle East is often coupled with the increased use of the language of terror that is routinely associated with Muslims.
Palestinians are ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorists’. British Muslims are ‘extremist’, ‘terrorist’ and ‘misogynist’ who are now apparently “in charge of Britain”. The language of one reaffirms the other and consequently harm towards Muslims – whether Palestinian or British – is legitimised.
The increase in hostilities towards British Muslims as a plausible genocide is being enacted in Gaza is not coincidental; and it does not just arise from simple ignorance. It is embedded top-down by the very instruments that govern this country.
British Muslim communities live in an environment in which Islamophobia is omnipresent – both directly and structurally.
Despite only comprising 6.5% of the total population, Home Office data on hate crime shows that Muslims were the target of 44% of all religious hate crimes in 2022-2023. Islamophobia is also pervasive structurally, in the Labour market, in health and across society. This is the constant, the normal for British Muslims.
Throw in an eruption of violence in the Middle East, and the inflammatory language that accompanies it, and the risks to British Muslims are magnified.
It is therefore no surprise that in this context, the Islamophobia Response Unit (IRU) released shocking data recently revealing the sharp spike in Islamophobic incidents.
When directly compared to the preceding five-month average, incidents in October 2023 rose by 365%; by 325% in November; by 206% in December; and by 206% again in January 2024.
The first half of February is already showing a 301% increase in comparison to the previous five-month average.
These are shocking figures despite Muslim communities tending to be reluctant to report such incidents. Depressingly, the true figures may be much worse.
The incidents vary from silencing and censorship to verbal and physical harm.
Take Uzma, a successful executive with an impressive CV citing EY, PwC and Microsoft as past employers. She was banned from LinkedIn for what she believes to be her pro-Palestinian activism. She had a following of 80,000 supporters and more than five million impressions for her content. Uzma took the opportunity to use her platform to talk about the events in Israel and Gaza. Exercising her freedom of speech has cost her access to her livelihood and with little to no support from the platform.
Then there is the year 13 student who was pulled from his classes and interviewed by two teachers because he wore a Palestine badge. Was he Muslim? Did he go to mosque? Did he have a British passport? These were questions he was subjected to by adults that he should have been able to trust. All of them centralised his identity as a Muslim. And all served to spotlight his identity as a problem. This is not the isolated actions of two teachers, it is the result of legislation made by this state which embeds and legitimises the marginalisation of Muslims – even if they are children.
There is also the direct Islamophobia experienced by Muslims on a daily basis; individuals being harassed as they walk down the street or use public transport. One such case documented by the IRU involved a visibly Muslim person being spat at on a train then being goaded for not responding, which resulted in them being subjected to further racial slurs. Muslims engaged in the most mundane activities are deemed offensive by their very existence.
These are just three examples of many incidents that impact Muslims in all walks of life and in all settings. This cannot be a surprise given the normalisation, indeed the rewarding of Islamophobia within our political discourse.
Contrary to the easily identifiable Islamophobia of the right, Islamophobia transcends the political spectrum. You can be elevated to the House of Lords after running an Islamophobic campaign in the case of Lord Zac Goldsmith. You can hold positions in the highest office of the land in the case of Boris Johson. You can use it as a ‘get out of jail free card’ if you are the Speaker of the House who has thwarted the conventions of Parliament.
The returns on Islamophobia are undoubtedly attractive unless you happen to be a Muslim.
In that case, even holding positions of power does not immunise you from its presence as the experiences of Humza Yousaf, Zara Sultana, Apsana Begum or Sadiq Khan show.
When Islamophobia permeates societal structures and is propagated proudly in our political discourse, we cannot expect the harms that it inflicts on British Muslims to cease. The symptoms may present on our streets, but the disease has taken hold of those at the top.
Without a reckoning with the normalised Islamophobia in our political discourse, organisations like the Islamophobia Response Unit will never be out of work and British Muslims will never truly be safe.
Israel supporters shamelessly smear Bushnell with ‘dead jews’ claim. It’s an outright lie
US serviceman whose self-immolation resonated around the world did not say ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews are dead’, as multiple pro-Israel accounts have claimed
Supporters of apartheid Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestinian civilians have begun spreading a claim that Aaron Bushnell, the US serviceman who died this week after setting himself on fire outside Israel’s embassy in Washington, posted a comment to his Reddit account that ‘Palestine will be free when all the jews [sic] are dead’.
The image has been touted by accounts well known for dismissive and often racist commentary about Palestinians as a means of trying to justify Israel’s war crimes. ‘Comedy’ writer Lee Kern was one of the most prominent:
Kern not only propagated the fake claim but described the whole of Palestine as a ‘racist hate movement’
Kern described the whole of Palestine, not just a resistance group, as a ‘suicide death cult’
Writer Kern’s 2021 comment appears to have been deleted but was commented on as early as 2021 and he does not appear to have made a denial to the many times it has been thrown at him
A careful examination of Bushnell’s Reddit account by fact-checker Snopes, over a wider period than the two months ago that the image shows – including using a service that records deleted posts – showed that no such post had ever been made by Bushnell and the image is completely fake. A reverse image search also revealed no other instances before the image began to be circulated by propagandists.
Bushnell’s shocking protest has focused even greater attention on Israel’s slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The attempt by supporters of the slaughter to divert from his aim in his terrible protest by posting an outright lie about him after his death is shameful and entirely unsurprising.
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NYT ‘journalist’ who co-wrote ‘Hamas rape’ piece is IDF propagandist with ‘no journalism experience’
Anat Schwartz found to have liked racist and violent posts about Palestinians
Image: Wikipedia
A huge scandal has broken out in the US after the New York Times (NYT), one of the United States’ leading newspapers, was found to have run a major front-page story smearing Palestinian resistance fighters as using ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence co-written by an Israeli film-maker with no journalism background who served as a in Israeli military intelligence – and had ‘liked’ social media posts featuring racism and violence toward Palestinians.
Anat Schwartz co-wrote the already-discredited article titled ‘Screams without words’, which made lurid, unevidenced claims about rape and mutilation by Palestinians during the 7 October raid – claims that have already been furiously denied by the family of the victim who took up around a third of the piece, who further claimed that the authors had misled them about the purpose of their article and never mentioned supposed the rape of their daughter, which they say did not take place and for which there is no evidence.
Scrutiny of Schwartz’s record revealed shocking facts about her background and that of her second co-author, who is her nephew by marriage:
Quick bio I found: pic.twitter.com/WWMZqRh1py
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Now let's get to her co-author, who also didn't write beforehand Oct 2023… pic.twitter.com/x9gkZwIlv7
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
It is her nephew!
This is a post from her husband. pic.twitter.com/Sgtz4B6wlL— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Lead author Jeffrey Gettelman fares little better under scrutiny:
He admitted to it. pic.twitter.com/zibbbEby31
— Esha K (@eshaLegal) February 24, 2024
Schwartz, for her part, Schwartz reportedly ‘liked’ a post that talked about turning Gaza ‘into a slaughterhouse’ including the summary execution of prisoners and ‘violat[ing] any norm’:
Schwartz also ‘liked’ a post about the quickly-debunked ’40 beheaded babies’ claim – and the woman who took the photo of the ‘woman in the black dress’ that the article claimed falsely had been raped, said that the NYT’s authors had told her they needed to speak to her because it was ‘important for Israeli advocacy’, not for accurate journalism:
Lead author Gettelman said it was ‘not his job to gather evidence’ for the claims his article made:
Mondoweiss reported that Schwartz had served in Israeli military intelligence. The NYT has ‘launched an investigation’ and the paper’s staff are said to be split, with many outraged at the abandonment of journalistic standards.
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‘People in Ashfield are Sick of Hearing Our Community Mentioned Every Time Lee Anderson Makes a Prejudiced Comment’
The ex-mining town of Sutton-in-Ashfield was often a tough place to grow up – particularly if, like me, you came from a South Asian background.
Racism was an ever-present issue in my childhood. But I noticed as I grew up that it became less prevalent as the area, and country, became more diverse and tolerant. In my adulthood, the majority of people in Ashfield would treat me just like anyone else.
Since the election of Lee Anderson in 2019, I have witnessed a reversal of the progress on racism.
Anderson – who has had the Conservative whip suspended after claiming that London's Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has allowed "Islamists" to take over the city – has a long history of prejudice.
This includes blocking travellers from using a park. Being an active member of a Facebook group that supports George Soros conspiracy theories. Boycotting the England men's football team as they took the knee to raise awareness of racial injustice.
In fact, a quick search online of 'Lee Anderson racism’ will bring up a plethora of news stories and incidents from both his time as a Labour councillor and as a Conservative MP. One such incident, when he told asylum seekers to “f*** off back to France” brought back memories of people telling me to “go back to where you came from”.
What has made it worse is the deafening silence from the Conservative Party.
Rather than being reprimanded for such comments, Anderson was rewarded with the role of Deputy Chair. By doing this, Rishi Sunak gave racists and Islamophobes in this country a sense of vindication. It is something that strikes fear into people like me, who understand the devastating effects racism can have.
There has also been a vocal backlash against Anderson within the constituency, which has been heartening.
I have found great solace in various highly active Facebook groups that constantly call out his rhetoric for what it is. More recently, we have set up the Stand up for Ashfield campaign, which is part of the MP Watch network, to hold Lee Anderson to account and fight for a better Ashfield. People here are sick of hearing our community mentioned every time Lee Anderson is in the news for another controversial statement.
Anderson's comments about Sadiq Khan came in a week in which former Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed the UK was run by "Islamists"; and when ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss stood silent as Tommy Robinson was described as a "hero" by far-right activist Steve Bannon.
Lee Anderson has refused to apologise for his comments. He has since described his words as “clumsy” – but they were not “clumsy”. They were targeted and specific. He intentionally set out to cause division and stoke hatred, as he has done consistently since becoming an MP.
At times of heightened tension around issues of racism, I always put myself in the shoes of a 10-year-old version of me going to school. How will I be treated in class? Will the racist rhetoric trickle down yet again? Will I have racist abuse hurled at me on my way home?
Rishi Sunak must expel Lee Anderson and those others who have weaponised racism in the Conservative Party. I have experienced first-hand how devastating it can be to grow up in an area facing racist abuse. I thought those times were in the past. But it feels as if coming from an ethnic minority background is becoming increasingly dangerous in Britain today.
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The ex-mining town of Sutton-in-Ashfield was often a tough place to grow up – particularly if, like me, you came from a South Asian background.
Racism was an ever-present issue in my childhood. But I noticed as I grew up that it became less prevalent as the area, and country, became more diverse and tolerant. In my adulthood, the majority of people in Ashfield would treat me just like anyone else.
Since the election of Lee Anderson in 2019, I have witnessed a reversal of the progress on racism.
Anderson – who has had the Conservative whip suspended after claiming that London's Muslim Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has allowed "Islamists" to take over the city – has a long history of prejudice.
This includes blocking travellers from using a park. Being an active member of a Facebook group that supports George Soros conspiracy theories. Boycotting the England men's football team as they took the knee to raise awareness of racial injustice.
Lee Anderson’s claims that the Muslim Mayor of London has handed the city to Islamists is another unsurprising example of the political culture the Conservative Party has normalised, writes Hardeep Matharu
Hardeep Matharu
In fact, a quick search online of 'Lee Anderson racism’ will bring up a plethora of news stories and incidents from both his time as a Labour councillor and as a Conservative MP. One such incident, when he told asylum seekers to “f*** off back to France” brought back memories of people telling me to “go back to where you came from”.
What has made it worse is the deafening silence from the Conservative Party.
Rather than being reprimanded for such comments, Anderson was rewarded with the role of Deputy Chair. By doing this, Rishi Sunak gave racists and Islamophobes in this country a sense of vindication. It is something that strikes fear into people like me, who understand the devastating effects racism can have.
There has also been a vocal backlash against Anderson within the constituency, which has been heartening.
I have found great solace in various highly active Facebook groups that constantly call out his rhetoric for what it is. More recently, we have set up the Stand up for Ashfield campaign, which is part of the MP Watch network, to hold Lee Anderson to account and fight for a better Ashfield. People here are sick of hearing our community mentioned every time Lee Anderson is in the news for another controversial statement.
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Anderson's comments about Sadiq Khan came in a week in which former Home Secretary Suella Braverman claimed the UK was run by "Islamists"; and when ex-Prime Minister Liz Truss stood silent as Tommy Robinson was described as a "hero" by far-right activist Steve Bannon.
Lee Anderson has refused to apologise for his comments. He has since described his words as “clumsy” – but they were not “clumsy”. They were targeted and specific. He intentionally set out to cause division and stoke hatred, as he has done consistently since becoming an MP.
At times of heightened tension around issues of racism, I always put myself in the shoes of a 10-year-old version of me going to school. How will I be treated in class? Will the racist rhetoric trickle down yet again? Will I have racist abuse hurled at me on my way home?
Rishi Sunak must expel Lee Anderson and those others who have weaponised racism in the Conservative Party. I have experienced first-hand how devastating it can be to grow up in an area facing racist abuse. I thought those times were in the past. But it feels as if coming from an ethnic minority background is becoming increasingly dangerous in Britain today.
‘The “Dangerous Muslim” Trope is Being Weaponised to Avoid Scrutiny’
It’s not about the women and children being massacred in Gaza, it’s about Lindsey Hoyle and UK's elected representatives feeling scared. Somehow the House of Commons Speaker turned a motion by the Scottish National Party calling for a ceasefire in Gaza into a debate on who runs the country. According to former Home Secretary, Suella Braveman it is the “Islamists”.
It is a far-right trope that effectively defines Muslims in Britain as a 'Trojan Horse’. Braverman and her acolytes are now puffing out their chests, determined to face down this phantom menace to the democracy which they themselves have so readily undermined.
Lee Anderson turned his fire on London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, who he opined was being controlled by Islamists. Khan’s Muslimness has so offended Conservatives both in Britain and across the pond that, every few years, they accuse him of being in cahoots with undesirables. In their eyes, he is now nothing more than a puppet.
Braverman and Anderson have been joined by William Shawcross, the former extremism tsar who lamented that the Government had ignored the recommendations from his review of the counter-terrorism Prevent Strategy – a strategy considered by critics to be a mechanism to criminalise religious and political beliefs.
Shawcross cited the safety of the public, which he claimed is now at increased risk in the UK due to the war in Gaza. Official police statistics show that the arrest rate for the millions of people who have marched since October is lower than the Glastonbury Festival – a fact not reported in any mainstream media outlet.
Both in its timing and execution, the campaign by those against Palestine employed its 'dangerous Muslims' card in a manner that has left journalists on right-wing radio stations aghast at how possibly “orchestrated” it is.
Academic Ben Whitham has called it a well-crafted “racist tradition”. As he posts, “politicians and journalists have worked hard over many years to perpetuate the idea that British Muslims represent a fifth column and secret cabal plotting to 'Islamicise’ the UK”.
The lives of Palestinians are now a political game, whereby those supporting the idea that they should not be murdered and maimed are cast as the 'baddies’. This isn’t about the safety of MPs. Turning themselves into victims of a phantom threat is really a panic about their moral culpability in supporting the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza – aided and abetted by the media class.
This nexus was at work again this week in the spike in online articles and broadcast mentions of the word 'Islamist’ . The use of the word and its associated terms suggests that detractors don’t hate Muslims per se, it’s just the really, really bad ones they’re concerned about.
Yet time and again, 'Islamist’ is used when reporting on any issue in which Muslim voices are raised, leading to debates on safety and extremism.
Democracy is great, we are told, because alongside other things, it encourages citizens to voice their concerns on issues they feel strongly about. But if you do this as a Muslim, there’s a high chance you will be labelled an Islamist; an extremist; and, in the case of Palestine, an antisemite.
As a new study on the media’s use of language when reporting on Muslims concludes, Islamism is “represented as being totalitarian and as such is incompatible with democracy and other modernist values”.
The Government has made no secret of its disdain for Muslims for many years.
The Prime Minister and his Deputy can’t bring themselves to use the word “Islamophobia”. Conservative MP Paul Scully joined the chorus when he claimed particular areas of Britain with large ethnic minority populations are no-go zones, citing the heavily Muslim-populated Tower Hamlets in east London and Sparkhill in Birmingham. Again, 'no-go zones’ is a suspiciously coded phrase which most likely means areas people like Scully don’t like visiting as opposed to anyone actually being denied entry. The last time a newspaper printed such lies the press regulator ruled against the Daily Mail and forced it to publish a correction.
The tropes now being launched against Britain’s Muslims are no longer obscure fringe talking points –they are being thrust into the mainstream by Conservative politicians and the right-wing media, irate at seeing mass protests in support of the Palestinian people. The Telegraph, a pillar of Britain’s right-wing media long hostile to any Muslim protest, front-paged the absurd allegation that Islamists were now running the country.
The next time a frustrated Brit has to endure cancelled trains or can’t get a GP appointment, or an entire council goes bankrupt as many are predicted to do, remember: it’s the Muslims who have done that.
More concerning is the fact that the kind of rhetoric that was routinely found on the pages of right-wing publications now has a broadcast presence, on the likes of GB News and TalkTV.
This is not mere 'news’ but polemic against British citizens. At a time where much of the population continues to face the challenges of a fall in living standards and the destruction of institutions, there are few if any solutions being offered to them.
Instead, they are being served an enemy.
Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship – review
In Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship, Iliana Sarafian challenges established scholarly practices that attempt to define Romani identity, instead exploring how individuals navigate societal constraints with agency and resilience. Deftly combining ethnographic research, anthropological theory and personal reflection, this is an essential read for understanding the complexities of lived Roma experience, writes Martin Fotta.
The past decade has seen the publication of several high-quality monographs in various languages focusing on the lives, histories, and experiences of Romani people. While several have provided new insights into social processes, deconstructed existing preconceptions, or both, rarely has a book so subtly yet vehemently demanded that readers rethink their habits of thought about classical topics in Romani-related scholarship. This relatively short book by Iliana Sarafian, a talented anthropologist of Romani descent, does precisely this; it asks scholars to stop ruminating on who the Roma are and the character of ethnic boundaries, instead urging them to focus on how Romani individuals thrive within constraints and how they attempt to create spaces of survival for themselves and their families. It calls for exploring “experiences from the margins of Roma-ness” (98), but without presupposing to know what the core of Romani culture is.
Experimental in style and voice, Contesting Moralities is located within the ongoing effort to decolonise academic knowledge. The book is unique, however, in how the push to redefine the terms of representation in academic discourse is combined with solid ethnographic grounding and a commitment to anthropological theorisation. Weaving in self-reflection and personal narratives, it sheds light on broader social processes – on how racism, historical legacies, cultural traditions and social dynamics intersect in the lives of Romani individuals. It foregrounds individuals’ agency and the multifaceted nature of Romani experiences.
Weaving in self-reflection and personal narratives, [the book] sheds light on broader social processes – on how racism, historical legacies, cultural traditions and social dynamics intersect in the lives of Romani individuals.
The book is based on research in two pseudonymous Bulgarian Romani neighbourhoods – Radost and Sastipe – as well as in various state and non-state institutions. Sarafian is open about how practical circumstances and her position as a Romani woman influenced her research. For instance, she was assigned the role of a daughter when she first settled among non-kin and shut out from conversations of sexuality and intimacy among married women, as ignorance on such matters is expected from unmarried young Romani women. She does not treat these moments as constraints, however, but uses them as an opportunity to ponder social processes and patterning.
Sarafian is open about how practical circumstances and her position as a Romani woman influenced her research.
The main theme running throughout the book examines how Romani subjectivities are moulded by the state and its policies as they interact with values, practices, and relationships of kinship. The book focuses on a set of selected sites where the state has tried to interfere with Romani kinship, some of which are highly politicised and visible in everyday discourse: assimilation policies, control over fertility, disciplining of motherhood, and education of children. The book documents the scope of the state’s intervention and its violence past and present. “[T]here was no child in her Roma neighbourhood not going to some form of pansion [orphanage or a boarding school],” one of her research participants observes about life under the state socialism (85). The book charts the clash of state and kinship moralities and the contradictions this generates “inside” kinship relationships. It also documents various ways through which kinship resists the state or assimilates its initiatives.
Kinship, however, is not treated as a cultural artefact or tradition. Rather, the point that Sarafian tries to convey is that Romani kinship is oriented toward the future: weddings serve as communal projections of the potential for a better future, and childbearing reproduces this projection in the form of children. The concomitant aspect of this focus on becoming is Sarafian’s careful tracing of personal agency and capacity to aspire, even in moments where these could be the least expected, such as early marriages. At times, this struggle for self-determination is shown to be self-defeating. Such is the case of children, who take it upon themselves to protect their siblings and families from discrimination and racism, but in the process become further alienated from the educational system.
Romani kinship is oriented toward the future: weddings serve as communal projections of the potential for a better future, and childbearing reproduces this projection in the form of children.
The book is also a meditation on how, for people like Sarafian – who, in a move reproductive of antigypsyism, are sometimes dismissed as “Roma elite” – involvement in scholarship or activism becomes a mode to pursue authenticity and reflects their concern with the survival of Romani people. This dynamic generates its own contradictions, however. It threatens to co-opt Romani activists and scholars into co-constructing a figure of vulnerable and impoverished “hyper-real” Roma that would be legible to the state or development agencies. For many, in the context of racism and exclusion, these might be the only viable alternatives to achieve self-realisation while simultaneously connecting to their communities and responding to expectations from their families; for Sarafian, the book also becomes a way to connect with her family and community and to comprehend their position in contemporary Bulgaria. In a surprising twist, after she had been denied a job as a nurse at a local hospital, moved to work for an NGO, and then shifted to academia, Sarafian came to see a structural continuity between Romani activists, herself, and a woman who managed to become a doctor, but ruptured all relationships with her kin in the process: “I wanted to visit Ekaterina in Sofia to share that she was not alone, that there were other Roma who had managed to navigate the world within and outside of the Radost neighbourhood” (79).
The book’s style replicates its focus on the unfinished and ambiguous nature of social forms and processes, as well as the open-endedness of people’s aspirations. Rather than following one case study throughout the book or even through a chapter, each chapter is organised around a series of ethnographic stories and viewpoints. Some readers might find such a narrative approach difficult and desire some kind of synthesis or resolution. However, this is a deliberate writing strategy: “[W]hat there is still to say goes beyond the limits of this book” (101). The juxtaposition of fragments propels Sarafian’s description, sharpens her analysis, and invites future interpretations. Through ethnography, by highlighting particularities of various identifications or adding caveats to descriptions of kinship and state moralities, she constantly tries to re-articulate those social aspects that make a difference, often in ways she had not anticipated: “I found spaces, stories and examples of the everyday that challenged my preconceptions about Roma identifications” (11).
The chapter on education […] makes visible how any state effect is produced: in day-to-day interactions, in the intermeshing between institutional actions and everyday racialisation
My main objection to the book is that the state often comes across as a monolith. The only exception is the chapter on education, which makes visible how any state effect is produced: in day-to-day interactions, in the intermeshing between institutional actions and everyday racialisation, and in how teachers, directors, and schools translate policies, respond to economic constraints, and in turn shape the educational outcomes, and thus the futures, of Romani children – for better or worse. The book would have been much richer if such an approach had been reproduced in other chapters.
Sarafian is unapologetic and does not try to hide her motivations: “I wrote as I did because of the idiosyncrasies that have shaped me” (98). The result is a timely, readable book and an essential example of Romani autoethnography. Unlike Black autoethnographic writing, this genre remains underdeveloped in Romani-related scholarship, even in its critical iteration aimed at amplifying marginalised voices and empowering communities through challenging established forms of knowledge production. Contesting Moralities will therefore be of interest to those keen on understanding the complexities of being Romani in different contexts and to anyone interested in critical commentary on pressing social issues.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image Credit: Brum on Shutterstock.
Scottish Green Minister Brands Lee Anderson and Conservative Right ‘School Bullies Who Love Punching Down’
A Co-Leader of the Scottish Green Party, serving in the Scottish Government, has hit out at Conservative “school bullies” who “can't see a marginalised, vulnerable minority without instinctively wanting to punch down”.
Patrick Harvie MSP – the first openly bisexual leader of a UK political party – made the comments to Byline Times in a meeting of UK Green Party leaders in London on Monday.
It came after Lee Anderson lost the Conservative whip over the weekend for his claims that Islamists had "got control" of London through its Muslim Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Responding, Harvie said: “Clearly for some on the right, it feels as though they haven't emotionally moved on from being school bullies, and they can't see a marginalised, vulnerable minority without instinctively wanting to punch down.
“There are others who simply see this as an opportunistic agenda: to try and divide people against one another and as a way to court controversy [or] shallow popularity.”
Harvie alleged that there is a double standard about how politicians and the press treat antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“It doesn't take a genius to imagine how they would respond if somebody on another part of the political spectrum had talked about Jewish people as having some sort of conspiratorial influence," he told Byline Times.
"That would be immediately condemned as antisemitism, and rightly so… Islamophobia needs to be acknowledged and then condemned in the same way,."
He named individuals like Anderson and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, alongside ex-Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick and quickly ousted Prime Minister Liz Truss as showing “ just how extreme they’re willing to go”.
All of them have courted the hard-right over the past year, some with an eye to securing the leadership of the party. Liz Truss spoke at a pro-Trump conference in the US last week, staying silent while former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon praised English Defence League founder Tommy Robinson as a hero.
Braverman has made similar comments to Anderson in claiming that Islamists now run the country, though she did not name an individual as being responsible as Anderson did with Sadiq Khan.
Jenrick has been accused of deliberately inflaming tensions after claiming immigration threatens to “cannibalise” the compassion of the British public.
Harvie told Byline Times that "we've got a much bigger problem than just political parties" and that there also needs to be a "proper discussion in the UK about media regulation".
Asked what that might look like, the Glasgow MSP said it could involve a “fit and proper person test” to ensure that those who owned UK media outlets were responsible individuals.
“We’ve seen pretty blatant examples of explicit, far-right rhetoric from the likes of GB News for example. [Take] the fact that Ofcom are failing to regulate the promotion of outright conspiracy theories, and lies… as though freedom of speech is about the freedom to tell lies.
“Freedom of speech is precious and that's why we can't allow it to be subverted and to suddenly have the freedom to denigrate minorities of vulnerable people. So, we've got a much bigger problem than just political parties."
The same applies to social media firms, which he said had been “taken over by toxic forces” – referring to Elon Musk’s takeover of X (formerly Twitter).
Last August, a man was arrested and charged after using homophobic rhetoric when challenging him. Harvie told Byline Times: “[Social media hate is] not just something about people's worries, it spills over into real life.
“We've seen the case of Brianna Ghey for example – a court judgement found transphobia was one of the motivating factors... Trolling people on social media [is not] just a laugh. It [creates] real world harm, and that's going to continue to get worse if we don't get to grips with the problem.”
Asked if he feels safe as a politician in Scotland, amid mounting fears over the attacks on political representatives, he added: “Relatively. I question that more than I used to.”
Harvie spoke at the event to promote the Greens ahead of this year's general election, in which his colleagues in England are hoping to increase their number of seats, from one to three or four.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
‘The Normalisation of Politically Expedient Racism: Rishi Sunak Cannot Call Out Something He Has Been Complicit In’
The Prime Minister’s response to claims by his party’s former vice-chair that the Muslim Mayor of London has let the city been taken over by “Islamists” has been to refuse to acknowledge the racism of his comments. Instead, he repeated a well-worn statement: that the UK is the “most successful multi-ethnic democracy in the world”.
These words do nothing to address how and why Conservative politicians have normalised a political culture in which racist dog-whistle politics is still seen as acceptable. Not reasoned discussions about extremism – but emotionally-charged and racially-activating comments designed to provoke controversy, hate and division.
Rishi Sunak won’t say whether he believes Lee Anderson, who lost the Conservative whip following his claims about Labour’s Sadiq Khan, was driven by racism in making the remarks.
But he has pointed to how proud he was to become the UK’s first Asian Prime Minister and how this had occurred without it being of note.
“That’s because we have a way of doing these things, of respecting everyone, and at the same time ensuring that everyone integrates into our community and subscribes to a common set of British values,” he added. And that’s why… racism or prejudice of any kind is completely unacceptable.”
These are the same vague lines we hear every time issues of race become a ‘flashpoint’; when underlying realities briefly catch the attention of politicians and media outlets usually only too willing to refuse to engage.
But claims about Britain’s ‘better nature’ do nothing to address a political culture in which issues such as Islamophobia are seen as a way to advance political capital – and specifically how the Conservative Party has been at the forefront of its normalisation.
Conservative peer Baroness Sayeeda Warsi – the first Muslim to serve as a Cabinet minister in David Cameron’s Government – has spoken many times in recent years of how she doesn’t recognise the elements of her party taking this route. For her, Anderson’s comments showed how the Conservative Party sees Muslims as “fair game” and “convenient electoral campaign fodder”.
Anderson's comments are also indicative of a deeper, perhaps narrow but emboldened, current within the party that has never been afraid to vocalise such sentiments – from the very top.
It was the former Conservative Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, who wrote of “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” and Muslim women looking like “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”.
His Vote Leave campaign, which Johnson led with Michael Gove, claimed Turkey would soon be joining the EU and was unafraid of peddling a xenophobic and anti-immigration message during the Brexit Referendum.
Accusations of institutional Islamophobia in the Conservatives – including most recently by the vice-chair of the influential 1922 Committee, Nusrat Ghani – remain unscrutinised, even if dismissed by the party.
At the top of Sunak's priorities is the controversial Rwanda scheme, ruled unlawful by the UK’s Supreme Court, which was initiated by former Home Secretary Priti Patel (a policy one seasoned and senior Brexit-supporting Conservative MP told me was “the concentration camp scheme”).
Patel’s successor at the Home Office Suella Braverman – who Sunak was happy to bring back into government when he became Prime Minister – has made a number of inflammatory statements during her tenure and since, including falsely claiming that child grooming gangs in the UK are “almost all British-Pakistani” (despite the Home Office’s own research finding that the majority of offenders are white).
These are just a few examples, from the Conservative Party itself, which have contributed to a culture in which Lee Anderson had no qualms about claiming that the London Mayor has handed the cities to Islamists.
Then there are the elements within the party only too willing to stand alongside the likes of Nigel Farage and his friend, alt-right strategist Steve Bannon – who has baselessly ‘predicted’ that there will be a nationalist uprising in Britain to install Farage as Prime Minister.
Whether these dog whistles are sounded for political capital with the public at large, with Conservative Party members in the country, for reasons of leadership ambitions, or in the myopia of a ‘culture war’ perpetuated by politicians and media outlets far detached from the actual views of the vast majority of people in this country, the effect is the same: the normalisation of the weaponisation of hate.
In 2021, Peter Jukes and I spoke to former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve on Byline TV about how such a culture was being normalised by his party under Boris Johnson, who had expelled him and a number of 'One Nation' Conservatives.
“If you are pandering to people’s prejudices, because it is a way of getting short-term fixes, to your lack of policy and your being a shambles, it’s inevitably going to take you down this road,” he said.
“As an MP, people come in [to see you] and feel angry or unhappy or upset and want change. And, generally speaking, the Conservative Party has seen itself as absorbing this, by acting as a check and moderator.
“If you decide to no longer be a moderator, because it suits your short-term agenda, to cover-up for the shambles, then that’s the route down which you’re going to be pushed.”
Downing Street is today be briefing that “we don’t tolerate any anti-Muslim hatred in any form” – once again ignoring how it has normalised a political culture in which anti-Muslim dog whistles have been tolerated for far too long.
The truth is that strategically deployed racism has long been seen as a political tool. Rishi Sunak, as our first Asian Prime Minister of a party that has normalised its use, cannot call out something he has been complicit in.
Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis – review
In Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis, Alberto Toscano unpacks the rise of contemporary far-right movements that have emerged amid capitalist crises and appropriated liberal freedoms while perpetuating systemic forms of violence. According to Dimitri Vouros, Toscano’s penetrating, theoretically grounded analysis is an essential resource for understanding and confronting the resurgence of reactionary ideologies.
Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. Alberto Toscano. Verso. 2023.
Observing the leftwing populism that emerged after the 2007 financial crash, a perceptive critical theorist may have predicted that this hope-inspiring movement would quickly be reintegrated into the neoliberal order. They might further have predicted that a counter-revolution would arise in the vacuum left by the failed leftist movement and as a reaction to continuing economic difficulties. Indeed, in the last decade the rise of the populist right has been both steady and near universal.
[Toscano] sets out to explain why the spectre of the extreme right is not merely haunting us, but gaining political purchase across the globe
In Late Fascism, Alberto Toscano, who has been instrumental in the resurgence of Marxist and materialist sociocultural analysis over the past twenty years, offers an important theory of fascism for our current historical juncture. He sets out to explain why the spectre of the extreme right is not merely haunting us, but gaining political purchase across the globe. The measured, lapidary style of Toscano’s argument, which draws on the 20th century’s “rich archives” of antifascist thought (155), most of it Marxist or marxisant, treats the deep, structural aspects of the political often ignored by other analyses. He does this by leaning on a style of literary-philosophical excavation and elucidation more often found in classical critical theory like that of Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin.
One of the marks of fascism is to amalgamate seemingly incompatible positions. Indeed, it is a complex phenomenon, “scavenging the ideological terrain for usable materials”, including many currents on the left (155). Toscano does not follow mainstream political theory in conflating fascism with totalitarianism, command economies, and brute force. He argues that late fascism is “disanalogous” with historical fascisms. Instead, he focuses on the implicit forms of violence and repression – colonial, racial, sexual, and gender-based – that inform late fascism. This kind of hidden violence becomes especially noticeable, and acute, when capitalism faces financial and other crises.
As well as developing the idea that reactionary ideologies emerge out of capitalist crisis, notably as the co-option of working-class movements by the right as soon as the opportunity arises, Toscano notes the role capitalist exchange relations play in the epistemological foundation of fascist-adjacent ideologies. Yet the most original thesis in the book is that the touted freedoms of liberalism and free-market capitalism are also appropriated by late fascism. In fact, late fascism is only nominally attached to liberal ideals such as “individual action” and “free speech”. Its claim to be on the side of the individual and their political agency is clearly false, its objective really being to reproduce prior forms of subjection and create new forms of subjugation. Jessica Whyte has also suggested a similar dissimulation in the neoliberal support for human rights.
The rapid rise of this ideology may also be tied to online culture, although Toscano avoids elaborating on the political ramifications of this development. Instead, he gives a historical outline of classical Marxist arguments against reactionary thought and movements. As the subtitle of his book indicates, understanding the ideology of the far right must include a theory of the systemic reproduction of colonialism, racism and sexism. Toscano writes, “Whoever is not willing to talk about anti-capitalism should also keep quiet about anti-fascism” (158). Yet understanding fascism as a tendency within capitalism that merely continues what critical theory calls “identity thinking” is part of a critical venture “inseparable from the collective forging of ways of living that can undo lethal romances of identity, hierarchy and domination that capitalist crisis throws up with grim regularity” (158).
Understanding the ideology of the far right must include a theory of the systemic reproduction of colonialism, racism and sexism
Four key ideas explain late fascism. Firstly, it “cannot be understood without the “fascisms before fascism” that accompanied the imperialist consolidation of a capitalist world-system”, namely, the political and economic domination of the world by Europe, peaking in the 18th and 19th centuries, made possible by the material exploitation of its various colonial strongholds. Secondly, it can only be understood “across axes of race, gender and sexuality”. Thirdly, it includes the “desire for ethnonational rebirth or revanche stoked by the imminence of a threat projected as civilizational, demographic and existential”. Lastly, it involves “the production of identifications and subjectivities, desires and forms of life, which do not simply demand obedience to despotic power but draw on a sui generis idea of freedom” (156-57). These four aspects of late fascism are developed in some detail with a breadth that will satisfy anyone interested in the history of antifascist thought and resistance.
Each chapter provides a different window onto the ideology of fascism and explains why understanding it is imperative. The first chapter looks at the temporally destabilising aspects of fascist ideology, with its archaisms, anachronisms, and wrong-headed projections of majestic, uncorrupted futures. The second focuses on the dynamics of capitalism and race, mainly how the Black liberation struggles of the 1960s provide a template for understanding the racial nature of capitalism, with its continuing repression of minorities and punitive carceral system. The third chapter provides an overview of how the populist right appropriates the classical liberal understanding of individual freedom and toleration for its own purposes. It inverts such individualism, supporting the dominant narrative of equality; namely, the freedom to accumulate property and social power (the latter being skewed along racial and sexual lines, ie, white, male or heteronormative).
The fourth chapter, the most difficult, looks at the political subterfuge manifested by the “real abstractions” within a totalised exchange society. The references to Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Henri Lefevbre are especially illuminating. These latter two authors argue that capitalist ideology views everyday social relations upside down, as first pointed out by Marx in his theory of commodity fetishism and alienation. The central point is that the ends of capital and profit are prioritised over labour, the labourer being merely a commodity on the market, and ensuring capital accumulation.
Toscano demonstrates how the ‘scavenger ideology’ of fascism, which draws on Romanticism, political decisionism, a fascination with technology, and even socialism, is a pressing danger.
The fifth chapter deals again with temporality but this time through the philosophical understanding of “repetition”. Toscano singles out and censures Martin Heiddeger’s fundamental ontology”, which is concerned with “being” and the naturalised historical subject, as leading to a reactionary, “counter-revolutionary” politics. Toscano demonstrates how the “scavenger ideology” of fascism, which draws on Romanticism, political decisionism, a fascination with technology, and even socialism, is a pressing danger. This danger is magnified by its ability “to weaponise a kind of structured incoherence in its political and temporal imaginaries, modulating them to enlist and energise different class fractions, thereby capturing, diverting and corrupting popular aspirations” (110).
Based on a reading of the writings of the Italian Germanist and mythologist Furio Jesi, the sixth chapter deals with the far right’s version of the philosophy of religio mortis, a fascination with myth, sacrifice, and death, but updated for a technological (and now digital) era. Drawing on the idea of a “micropolitical antifascist struggle”, as found in the works of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, the last chapter deals with the ambivalent erotics of fascist ideology, arguing that the libidinal introjection of violence reinforces various forms of social power. Here, Toscano also draws on the feminism of Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, claiming that the Nazi “antipolitical politicization of women” (148) resonates with current modalities of “fascist feminism” that seek “to violently secure and affirm a normative, if not necessarily heteropatriarchal, figure of woman, and which invests desire and libido in its narratives about the imminent threat of the erasure of women and even feminism by ‘gender ideology’ and ‘transness’” (150).
Toscano’s archaeology of 20th-century antifascist theory is an essential springboard for understanding the current political moment. It is a boon for those thinkers and activists interested in human emancipation and the struggle for real, rather than merely abstract, freedom. It alerts them to the threat posed to such projects by that deeply prejudicial ideology that arises alongside capitalism in crisis – late fascism.
This post gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, or of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Image credit: Alexandros Michailidis on Shutterstock.