"We're not racist, but..."

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One of the threads running through some reporting of the disorder in English towns and cities in recent days has been the strong denial by some of the participants that they are in any way racist or far-right in their views. Sometimes there’s a ‘but’ though, and in one case reported in yesterday’s Sunday Times, the ‘but’ was that in his town (Holyhead, for those who might be thinking Wales is somehow immune to what we have seen in England) “seven out of eight corner shops are owned by Muslims”. Now it is, of course, entirely possible that the person in question is an expert and well-schooled theologian, who has questioned all the shopkeepers concerned about their religious beliefs, and whose deep study of religious teachings has led him to the conclusion that buying his milk or newspapers from a Muslim is a serious threat to his own religion and culture which can only be countered by travelling to Liverpool to join an anti-Islam protest. It does seem rather more likely, however, that he has made a judgement about their religion from their appearance.

That does, though, leave unanswered the question of why anyone might see Muslims running shops as such a bad thing that it requires people to attack the most convenient mosque. Let us take it as read that at least some of those involved really do believe that there is nothing racist or right-wing about attacking anyone who happens to ‘look like’ a Muslim, along with their places of worship, their businesses, and places where they might be living, because to do so is actually defending Britishness, or what they assume Britishness to be, from the threat posed by ‘outsiders’. Where could such a belief possibly have come from? A major part of the answer to that question must surely turn around the way in which certain politicians have normalised terms like ‘invasion’ and ‘swamping’ in relation to migration. When the propositions that immigrants do not share ‘our’ values, and that immigration threatens ‘our’ way of life become part of mainstream political debate, why would anyone expect that those whose prejudices are thus validated would see such positions as being politically extreme? It would be unfair to accuse such politicians of egging on those participating in the violence, even if their ritualistic condemnations of it are invariably accompanied by a ’but’ of their own, in this case about failing to be sufficiently harsh with refugees. But not actively encouraging the riots doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t see the potential value to themselves in the ensuing disorder. There is, apparently, no evidence to support the widespread belief that Lenin coined the term ‘useful idiots’, but somebody did, and from the point of view of the far right the rioters fit the definition.

It isn’t only the rioters who are useful to the far right – immigrants also serve a similar function, albeit even less consciously. I’m not convinced that the far right themselves are always or necessarily racists. A belief that society should be run by authoritarians in the interests of the few does not in itself require the othering of any particular group. But ‘vote for me so that I can impose my will on you and concentrate wealth even further in the hands of myself and my friends’ isn’t exactly an election-winning slogan. Identifying and promoting conflict between groups in society, blaming some of those groups for the fact that others feel relatively poor or dispossessed, and then offering to resolve the situation in favour of one of those groups is a much more powerful way of achieving the same objective. Persecution of those who have been othered is more of a means to an end than an end in itself.

An authoritarian response to rioters looks and sounds like firm action, but also serves to strengthen the belief that authoritarianism provides solutions. Resolving the artificially induced conflicts is more about getting people to understand that the interests of the ‘useful idiots’ and the othered groups have more in common with each other than they do with the right wing authoritarians who are pulling the strings.