Gary Younge spent 12 years in the USA reporting on the experiences of working-class, Black, and ethnic minority communities. We asked him to reflect on recent developments and how they might impact the UK and elsewhere.
It was Sivanandan (editor of Race and Class), who talked about Xenoracism, the form of racism connected to xenophobia, because they’re not the same thing. We’re seeing that on steroids in the US. The racial element of xenophobia has been made very clear. The only asylum seekers they want to take are white South Africans. At the same time, an Afghan man shoots a National Guardsman, and Trump says, “we’ve got to get rid of Somalis”,” which have gothas nothing to do with Afghanistan. Then there is the pressure he is putting on the Smithsonian around African Americans and the depiction of slavery.
What we are seeing is the rolling back of the advances of the civil rights era. This isn’t new, the Supreme Court’s been doing it for a while. It’s an intensification of that process, at a time when the Republicans have both houses of Congress, the presidency and the judiciary. Ultimately, what is taking place is militarised xenophobia and an anti-immigrant stance.
How can we in the UK stem the rollback of BLM achievements and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion policies?
Unlike America, which has had a massive state and nation-led quest for affirmative action, here it has been much more piecemeal, so the rollback has been much more partial. Put more broadly, we weren’t doing as well, so we aren’t doing as badly. It puts us in a different position. In 2007, I interviewed Angela Davis. We talked about a version of diversity which is a difference that brings no difference and a change that makes no change. I’ve framed equal opportunities as photo opportunities, as opposed to equal opportunities.
If you look at the last five years in terms of representation, there was a moment when there wasn’t a single white man running any of the parts of the UK. We had a black head of Welsh government, an Asian head of Scottish government, a woman head of NI government, and Rishi Sunak as prime minister. Plus, now we have Kemi Badenoch. So a long-awaited critique of what we actually wanted was always necessary. The notion of what diversity was for and what it meant was already being scrutinised on the left. Because we are after more equality, not different coloured hands on the same machine, operating the same system.
So should we be building our own response to the threat of fascism and far-right racism?
I see racism like a global language with lots of different dialects. British racism is a very specific kind of dialect. We are not in America; we have specific conditions. We don’t have their huge black middle class or their underclass to the same degree. Nor do we have their numbers or their history of migration. What we build will have to be different, and what we’ve proven, especially since BLM, is a capacity to clear a space but not a capacity to build on it. What BLM seemed to lack were institutions that could incubate that energy. That’s not exclusive to BLM. #MeToo or Occupy Wall Street showed it – you have these moments, but in the absence of any electoral representation, they don’t really find a home. If the Labour Party were in a different place, arguably, Occupy Wall Street could have found a home here. In a way, it did through Corbyn’s victory. It had to land in places where there were Black people with the capacity to push it; unions with the capacity to push it; establishments that were receptive to the pressure. To some extent, we’ve seen Reform build on that space as well, that anti-establishment, anti-elite rhetoric that doesn’t serve the interests of the people that they’re talking about, but builds on a cynicism and a resistance which actually started on the left.
Although we’ve been able to build on some of the spaces, is it time for a different approach? And what would that consist of?
We’re in a global moment right now. We’ve also had the hostile environment, Brexit, and a range of other issues, so it’s been choppy. This is a moment where Elon Musk is piping into massive meetings, the President of the USA openly advocating for things that would have been thought of as fringe. You look across the continent, and you’ve got the AFD in Germany, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, the fascists in power in Italy. Even in Ireland, we’ve seen an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment. You’re seeing a surge everywhere. It would be strange if it didn’t happen here.
That surge has intensified under a Labour government that’s not delivering. You have a change of government, but there hasn’t been a change of trajectory, emphasis, or policy. And people are hurting. They’re looking for someone to blame. They are looking for a serious change, and they’re not seeing that offered. We have to do something different. If only the thing that we do differently is more.
We need a broad-based, non-sectarian, anti-racist, anti-fascist movement that goes beyond the minoritised communities, because what we see in America is that it doesn’t stop with the Latinos or the Blacks. They will go for culture, go for unions, they will go for the very fabric of government itself. So we need a response that reflects that reality. One that talks very clearly in terms of an attack on our democratic rights, as well as our civil rights. Where possible, we are going to have to repair and reorient the relationship with some elements of the Jewish community, too, becauseit’s vital they are involved. It’s vital we create the kind of space that can include as many people as possible, particularly people who are going be targeted.
Can we look back at the 1970s and 80s and the way in which we turned back racists and fascists through the Anti-Nazi League, Rock Against Racism, and other initiatives? It was a much broader movement than we seem to have just now.
You can’t cross the same river twice, you know, because the river’s different and you’re different. But the energy and the strategy of mass broad mobilisations is what we need. In the 70s there were more institutions, stronger institutions on the left as well.
Then there are things that we have now that they didn’t have then, like cell phones and social media, that can mobilise large numbers of people at the drop of a hat. However, they don’t provide any institutional basis. We also have capacity within the black community and the Asian community that we didn’t have then. We also have more splintering. The threatwas less of a global one than it is now. Also, we had more trusted sources of information then.
We have a similar problem of a Labour Party that’s not delivering. The difference is that we have a more fractured polity now. Whenever the next election is, there will be, in England at least, five viable parties and in Scotland and Wales six. So you’re looking at the prospect of parties winning elections with 22, 23, 25% of the vote. This underlines a decline in legitimacy. Starmer won with a landslide and just 20% of the eligible vote. Corbyn went down in flames with more votes.
I imagine you’d agree that Labour’s current response of aping some of Reform’s talking points on small boats and so on, is just feeding the fire of anti-immigrant rhetoric? How do you view this situation?
I would not expect this version of Labour to say what I would say.But if we take, for example, the flag, then there was something that Starmer could have said to the tune of: “Look, some people express their patriotism through flags, some do it through civic contributions, some just wear it in their hearts or on their sleeve if they play for England. But when you take that flag, and you wave it in front of a mosque, or you wave it in front of an asylum seeker’s hostel, and you threaten to burn it down, you’re desecrating that flag.”That is not something that I actually believe, given where that flag’s been in the world, but it’s something that would have positioned him as a critic of that moment. Instead, he said, “I’ve got loads of flags.” And then Yvette Cooper said, “I’ve got even more flags.” And at no point did they put a stop to it. So when he criticises Reform for being racist, it’s like two bald men fighting over a comb.
They’re not doing the Rwanda plan, but they’ve gone to fascist Italy to find out how they’re doing things. They’re taking things from Denmark that are appalling. They are doing a kind of pick and mix of bigotry, as though asylum seekers were the problem. As though people coming in small boats rather than limousines are the problem. Labour has a huge majority. This is not necessary. It’s counterproductive. It’s bad politics because what it does is feed Reform, it doesn’t feed Labour.
There could be a social democratic story, a we’re all in it together, around the NHS. Look who built the NHS, look who has kept us moving in transport. Instead, they have made a decision to go down a Powellite route, while at the same time condemning the racist violence, but then putting the racism into legislation and into policy.
The Palestine solidarity campaigns and the way in which they’ve galvanised the broad popular movement against Islamophobia could be tapped into, or are there difficulties here?
There is an overlapping story that one can tell about colonialism, racism and bigotry. For all of the ways in which we talk about our defeats at the moment, it is important to realise, while we have not stopped the war in Palestine, that the movement has won over the country to a pro-Palestinian position… against considerable odds, against considerable opposition, against criminalisation. The movement has been incredibly effective to the point that the government looks delusional, locking up priests and pensioners and so on.
There is certainly something to be learned in terms of the resilience and the spirit of that movement. But I wouldn’t graft one movement onto the other. Because there would be a range of people with whom I would not agree about Palestine and Israel, but who I would agree with about fascism, and I would want them involved in the fight against fascism.
This is the current challenge for the left and beyond. It’s about trying to overcome some of the differences within the movement. We’ve got our work cut out. We cannot afford a kind of narcissism of small differences to get in the way.
How far is deprivation amongst the white working class a direct cause of racist populism, as some claim?
No, I think they are part of that coalition. I don’t know that they’re a senior part of that coalition, but they are certainly a part of it. That argument can be overdone.
If we look at the US and Trump, it was mostly wealthy people who voted for him, but certainly non-educated white people were a significant part of his coalition. Plus a section of Hispanic men, particularly.
With Reform, people who are suffering are a significant part of their coalition, but they’re not the only part. There’s a significant cleavage in age and in region.
One of the major things fuelling this crisis globally is the fact that living standards are stagnating and even falling. That our welfare systems are crumbling and that there are easy and ready scapegoats.
I think it’s possible to walk and chew gum at the same time with this situation. I think it’s possible to make the economic arguments and to make the arguments against racism at the same time. And indeed, to make the case that racism makes it harder to actually make the economic changes we need. That when they’re finished with the asylum seekers, who do you think they’re coming for? When they’re finished with the Muslims, who do you think they’re coming for? We can argue that a rising tide will lift all boats.
I don’t think that in some communities, that’s necessarily a message that will land straight away, but it’s never going to land if you don’t make it. We have to make the case.
Our emphasis at the moment has to be on movement building. More than party building.
I don’t think we have the time or capacity to build a party that will be able to resist this electorally. I do think we have the time and the capacity to build movements that will start to turn the tide.
Do you see parallels or echoes between the 1930s and today? They’re certainly getting louder and more resonant. But you sound positive about the idea of broad movement building. So do you feel optimistic and encouraged by developments that make you feel we can roll back the situation?
There’s a difference between being optimistic and being delusional. But I see how the young are mobilising. I see optimism in the fact that the Greens are, at certain moments, out-polling Labour. That there were hundreds, maybe more than hundreds, who did convene at Your Party. The persistence of the pro-Palestinian movement.All of this suggests that there is an appetite for something better. Something more than we have now. The challenge is to make that count.
In a range of ways, an awful lot of what’s going on with support for Reform and elsewhere is a cry for help. People are really struggling to pay their bills and feed their kids. An obscene number of children have grown up in relative poverty, an obscene number of pensioners in relative poverty. People want action, they want answers, and they’re not getting them from the mainstream, so then they’re going elsewhere.
Racism’s not new in this country, so of course it’s going to infect their disappointment.
People need hope. So this wouldn’t be the time to offer them pessimism. You have to find the shards of hope and put them together.
Gary Younge is a professor of Sociology at Manchester University. He was speaking with Mike Davis.
