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Racism and fascism - new material (20)

01 October 2011

Razzismo di stato. Stati Uniti, Europa, Italia, Piero Basso (dir.) La Società, Franco Angeli, Milan, 2010, pp. 630, €38. A collection of essays that analyses the rise of what it terms “state racism” in the West, with a special emphasis on the situation in Italy. The essays report key developments in the United States, Germany, Great Britain and France, with case studies including the situation in the Calais region, in the Spanish north African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, the treatment of Roma people in eastern Europe and the Swiss referendum against minarets. Basso argues that it is mistaken to merely accuse institutions of not doing enough to counter hostility and contempt for migrants or of fomenting these attitudes through incautious initiatives or acts. “Rather, the book’s central thesis is that the first propellant for the racist revival that is underway is institutional racism, and its first protagonists are precisely states, governments and parliaments: with their special laws and their public speeches, their arbitrary administrative practices, the racial selection between ‘good’ nationalities and dangerous ones, obsessive police operations and camps for internment”.

Inside the EDL: populist politics in a digital age, Jamie Bartlett and Mark Littler. Demos (November) 2011, 54 pages. Unlike the investigative journalism and political actions that undermined the violence and lies spread by the National Front and British National Party in an earlier period, this report surveys the English Defence League (EDL) by examining their supporters’ Facebook pages. This “new methodology” eschews the multi-disciplinary practices of anti-fascist activists who successfully acted with and within communities to confront the far-right and drive them from the streets. In this study, Facebook pages are perused and statistically analysed, allowing the authors’ to reach the conclusion that: “Although their demonstrations have often involved violence and racist chants, many [EDL] members are democrats who are committed to peaceful protest and other forms of activism.”