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The BNP's success reflects the new racism of our political culture

Arun Kundnani | 12.06.2009 07:54 | Analysis | Anti-racism | Sheffield

The election of two British National Party MEPs owes as much to new forms of racism in mainstream politics as to alienation from the Labour Party.

Over the last few years, much of liberal England has given up on the idea that racism is a significant social problem. Instead the real problem is taken to be social fragmentation exacerbated by multiculturalism. For every mention of institutional racism, we have heard a thousand references to the 'crisis of multiculturalism', 'Muslim self-segregation' and the need for 'integration'. Hence the official bodies established to tackle racism, however ineffectually, have been dismantled: the Commission for Racial Equality has been subsumed into a more nebulous Equality and Human Rights Commission, local racial equality councils have been pressured into reinventing themselves as promoters of assimilation and community-based anti-racist organisations have had their funding removed on the grounds that they cater exclusively to the needs of minority groups. Defending these trends, figures such as Trevor Phillips have argued that the real issue is not racism but 'separatism' and the solution is the imposition of a cohesive British national identity.

But racism did not go away - it simply changed its shape.[1] The terrorist attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, along with new forms of immigration, have been the pretexts for racism to reinvent itself. We should not be diverted from this reality by the fact that skin colour is no longer the sole basis for this new racism. Race was always socially constructed from colour; that today's racism, in new social conditions, takes culture or religion as its raw materials does not make it any less real for its victims. While Nick Griffin's BNP has been quick to understand this - and focus its campaigning on Muslims and asylum seekers - many liberals remain trapped in old thinking that, over the last decade, has repeatedly played into the BNP's hands.

In the newspapers, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim hysteria has been a daily diet. Meanwhile New Labour politicians have attempted to cover up the impact of neoliberal globalisation on the working class by borrowing nationalist rhetoric from the far Right. 'British jobs for British workers' was a BNP slogan before it was used by Gordon Brown. Years of New Labour borrowing from BNP nationalism has simply fuelled its steady rise, as New Labour's message and the BNP's have converged ever closer and issues of nationality, multiculturalism and immigration have dominated the political agenda. In New Labour circles, it is no longer 'polite' to point out that blaming immigrants for the housing crisis might be a racist argument, or even a mistaken argument. Instead, it is seen (patronisingly) as a legitimate expression of 'White working class identity'. 'Recognising' this identity then becomes a convenient alternative to actually providing proper council housing. Meanwhile, by exploiting the gap between New Labour's nationalist rhetoric and its globalist neoliberal policies, the BNP has gone from no elected representatives in 1997, to sixteen councillors by 2003, to two MEPs today - representing a party whose aim is 'restoring ... the overwhelmingly white makeup of the British population that existed in Britain prior to 1948'.

To interpret support for the BNP as a protest vote against New Labour for its abandonment of the White working class is therefore to see only part of the picture. For what the size of the BNP vote measures is not White working-class alienation per se but the extent to which that alienation has been co-opted by a right-wing politics of national identity. And that is not something that the BNP has been able to achieve by itself. Instead, centre-Left politicians and pundits have ably assisted for years.

Those who oppose the BNP will be most likely to reverse its rise if they now return to some home truths: Britain continues to have a problem of racism and the BNP's success is fuelled by racial sentiment across our political culture. For mainstream politics to continue to legitimise the BNP's anti-immigrant message, borrow from it or pretend it does not exist will prove to be counter-productive.

[1] A. Sivanandan - The contours of global racism  http://www.irr.org.uk/2002/november/ak000007.html

Arun Kundnani
- Homepage: http://www.irr.org.uk/2009/june/ha000028.html

Comments

Hide the following 6 comments

but

12.06.2009 11:52

The BNP vote dropped did it not? The only reason they got any seats was due to the bottom dropping out of the vote for the big 3.
The cash injection they will get is more of a concern. There is not a rise in racism. It does mean that the small minority of racists in our society will become more confident in expressing their ignorance and possibly becoming physically active.
Should this occur they will need to be dealt with in the traditional manner. ;)
(not saying that the state and its media aren't racist, that's nothing new though is it?)

Miserablist


whoever you vote for....

12.06.2009 23:14

New Labour already forcibly repatriates 'non-British' people and puts them in 'holding camps' - any difference from BNP policy is purely coincidental.

miseriserablist


Let's not be silly about this

13.06.2009 08:45

> any difference from BNP policy is purely coincidental.

I'm no fan of Nu Labour but you're overstating your case here ever so slightly. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Concerned of Halton Moor


Faulty statistics

13.06.2009 14:39

"The BNP vote dropped did it not? The only reason they got any seats was due to the bottom dropping out of the vote for the big 3"

That assumes that BNP voters were more likely to turn out to vote than others, which there isn't much evidence for.

That's why election results are analysed by percentage.

Observer


More complex

13.06.2009 17:23

It's more complex than Observer says. It's no good looking at percentages unless you count the percentage who didn't vote. What happened was a huge swing to NOT VOTING and all (or nearly all) parties -INCLUDING THE BNP- saw their votes fall. It's just that the BNP vote fell less drastically than those of NuLabour, Tories and LibDems. Overall, they didn't persuade people who hadn't voted for them before that they were an alternative to the others. They lost votes. They just didn't lose as many as the others. An equally valid conclusion from that could be that BNP voters are stupider than voters for other parties.

"Share of the vote" figures are very misleading, especially on a turnout as low as this was. If only 2 people thought it was worth voting and one of those was for the BNP that's a 50% share, but the figure would be meaningless. One thing which struck me was the seemingly very large number of spoilt ballot papers. Is this up or down as a percentage of all those registered to vote? Don't know. You don't get breathless BBC analysts announcing a 10% swing to spoiling ballot papers, do you?

Having two MEPs is hardly a step forward for the BNP per se. How many people had a clue who the MEPs for their constituency were before these elections? Most people, it seems, weren't even aware of the proportional system and didn't realise that each (huge) constituency has a whole bunch of MEPs of various parties, races, and degrees of bullshit and venality. MEPs have bugger all power or influence anyway.

But they do get lots of money. As Miserablist says, the real worry is that substantial amounts of dosh now fall into fascist laps and the BNP has been rescued from the financial shit that was otherwise likely to cause its implosion.

The result of this election fest which worries me most is the installation of racist and homophobic bigot, Peter Davies, as executive Mayor of Doncaster. Unlike the MEPs, he has real power over people's lives and is already starting to throw his weight around. His mayorality may eventually collapse through his own ignorance and stupidity, but it's essential to give that process a vigorous shove. All out for Doncaster Pride on August 8th (whatever your own sexuality)!

Fascism can only be defeated in our daily lives and our communities. Waking up every few years for an electoral firefight (i.e. the UAF / Searchlight tactic) simply allows their poisonous influence to grow in the gaps and is bound to fail. It also allows the likes of Peter Davies to slip into power whilst we're all focused on uncovering the nazism of Griffin, Brons etc. I'm not saying that's not important, but I'm afraid we've all let Davies slip round the back while we were looking the other way.

Any comments from Donny?

Stroppyoldgit


Anti Muslim hysteria?

20.06.2009 18:53

When socialists refer to "anti-Muslim hysteria" in the tabloid press what excactly are they talking about? Do they mean those stories about rabid Muslim clerics who preach hatred and death to non-believers and Jews?
Oh right of course because we shouldn't object to Muslim extremists preaching hatred and death to people who don't believe the same as they do because it's racist right?
Objecting to the rabid rantings of nutjobs like Abu Hamza is "playing into the hands of the BNP and the far right". Oh yeah.
What socialists are going to be campaigning for after the BNP's victory is more restrictions on press freedom. The message from the socialist left is "Don't ever criticise rabid Muslim clerics because that's playing into the hands of Nick Griffin!",

Dan Factor
mail e-mail: danfactor@lycos.com


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