Fifty years ago, British politician Enoch Powell set the template for a racist neoliberal populism that has reached its apotheosis today. On April 20, 1968, British member of parliament Enoch Powell addressed a small meeting of conservative activists in a Birmingham hotel and called for the “re-emigration” of the million or so people of color…
The US intellectual class has failed to understand the racism at the core of Trump’s political project. The discussion is focused on two questions: Are Trump voters decent, salt-of-the-earth workers protesting their economic insecurity, or hate-filled Archie Bunkers? Are his transition appointments hateful bigots or mainstream conservatives? What both questions obscure is that white supremacy…
For the first time in British political history, a far-right political movement, fuelled by Islamophobia and nativism, has won in a national poll. Yet more than a week after the Brexit vote, Britain’s mainstream political commentators have been unable to state that simple fact. Instead, they see the vote as either a legitimate protest against…
Arun Kundnani, Scottie Hughes, and Kurt Schlichter discuss Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US.
The discourse over Muslims today resembles the manner in which Jews were vilified around a century ago. Since the 1970s, Muslims have repeatedly been stereotyped in the US as dangerous terrorists. But, over the last six years, a new fear of Muslims has gradually entered the conservative mainstream: that Muslims are taking over the United…
The shooting of three American Muslim students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this month has focused attention on anti-Muslim hatred in the US. The murder of Deah Barakat, 23, Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, and Razan Abu-Salha, 19, was initially ignored by mainstream media in the US. Only when large numbers of Twitter users started circulating…
In the early years of its “war on terror”, the US government developed an international system of secret prisons. Those suspected of being Muslim terrorists were secretly captured by the CIA or the US military and flown between these “black sites” in a process called “extraordinary rendition”. We now know that CIA officers used torture…
An interview with Tom Mills, co-editor of New Left Project. The ‘War on Terror’ is a phrase most closely associated with George W. Bush. How has this war been affected by the change in Presidential administration? By and large the Obama administration has continued the policies and practices that were dominant at the end of the…
This paper discusses the challenges of countering far-Right political violence in the wake of the terrorist attack carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in July 2011. With brief case studies of Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Belgium, it argues that classic neo-Nazi groups are being supplemented by new ‘counter-jihadist’ far-Right movements, which use…
Sheldon Adelson’s Super Pac funding has heavily backed Gingrich – and found him a firm pro-Israel and anti-Muslim ally. By donating $10m to the pro-Newt Gingrich Super Pac campaign, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of the richest men in the US, and his physician wife, Dr Miriam Adelson, have kept Gingrich in the Republican primary…