Scholarship and commentary on global politics, war and genocide
"Brexit is a phenomenon of organized racism, which remains a guiding thread of the regime to which it led." Exciting news: my study, Political Racism: Brexit and Its Aftermath, will be out at the end of March. The book develops an innovative general argument about the role of organized hostility in today's racism and the… Continue reading NEW BOOK: Political Racism: Brexit and Its Aftermath, out in March 2022
Read my latest now in Byline Times.
Many of Britain's leading antiracists have devoted themselves, over the last week, to refuting - and sometimes ridiculing - the racism denial of a new official report on 'racial and ethnic disparities'. This document is now notorious for the attempt of its chair, Tony Sewell (right), to put a positive gloss on the 'slave period'… Continue reading Sewell’s denialism is a problem of strategic, as well as structural, racism
Dr David Hepburn tells C4 News (3 April) ‘all our ICU patients are in their 50s or younger’ A central feature of the Government’s public health advice has been the idea that the over-70s, along with people with serious health conditions, are the ‘vulnerable’, ‘at risk’ group in the epidemic. Most younger people therefore believed… Continue reading As many younger people die, why did the Government minimise the under-70s’ vulnerability to Covid-19?
After a court judgment forced the government to remove more than half the people from the recent deportation flight to Jamaica, the prime minister’s press secretary said that the reaction to the case showed that 'certain parts of Westminster still haven’t learned the lessons of the 2019 election'. What this tells us is that for Johnson and… Continue reading Jamaica flight: Johnson/Cummings believe that symbolic racist cruelty will send the ‘red wall’ voters the message that the Government is on their side
In the German film Goodbye Lenin, a loyal supporter of East Germany’s Stalinist regime goes into a coma before the fall of the Berlin Wall and when she comes round, her son goes to extraordinary lengths to pretend that nothing has changed. In the story of the British Labour Party since 2015, a minor left… Continue reading Goodbye Corbyn, destroyed by the Brexit he evaded
Endemic racism in the two main parties is a serious problem, but could be dwarfed by the Tories’ strategic moves towards weaponising immigration and the fear of others, as in this new Facebook ad. Racism is widely recognised as a serious problem in the UK General Election, as shocking comments by individual candidates and party… Continue reading Towards Another ‘Turkey Week’? The Threat of Strategic Racism in the UK General Election
Boris Johnson is making liberal gestures on race and immigration - appointing the largest number of cabinet ministers of BME (black and minority ethnic) background, refusing to commit to cutting immigrant numbers after Brexit, even repeating his support for the idea of an amnesty for irregular immigrants. Some liberal observers see Johnson’s position as more… Continue reading Dominic Cummings’ appointment reminds that whatever liberal gestures Johnson makes on immigration, he is focused on winning an early election – and will reach for whatever dirty, racist weapons he needs
Genocide is generally conceived of as violence by centralised perpetrators, usually states and regimes, towards whole population groups. In the last two decades, however, there has been more emphasis on the typical complexity of perpetrator forces, including the roles of ancillary states, paramilitaries and even civilians. Few, however, have looked unremittingly at genocide from the… Continue reading Anatomy of a Genocide by Omer Bartov – review
The Spanish translation of my What is Genocide? is now out from Prometeo Libros, Buenos Aires. Many thanks to Victoria Cacares Mauri, the translator, and to Daniel Feierstein, editor of the Colección Estudios sobre Genocidio, in which the book appears.¿Qué es el Genocidio? is based on the original English text published in 2007. I have now completed a Second… Continue reading ¿Qué es el Genocidio?
Martin Shaw 