The radical right is once again using the fact a food retailer has begun selling halal meat as an excuse to allege “creeping sharia law.” In October, M&S announced that it was to become the first major food retailer in the UK to launch a range of own-brand halal ready meals. Available in 36 stores… Continue reading “Halal Hysteria: How Outrage About M&S Ready Meals Co-opted Radical Right Rhetoric”
My new book, “Reconfiguring Islamophobia: a radical rethinking of a contested concept” (Palgrave Macmillan) marks a decade since the publication of my first book on the topic (“Islamophobia”, Ashgate). Through the lens afforded by the phenomenon of Islamophobia, it is an understatement to suggest that much has changed in that decade. For instance, it was… Continue reading “Reconfiguring Islamophobia and the Radical Right: a decade in retrospect”
Within the context of our policies for Integration, Hate Crime and the Prevention of terrorism, do we need a “Hateful” Extremism policy at all? In October the results of the Extremism Commission’s review of the Extremism Strategy were published. The “Challenging Hateful Extremism” report is critical of the Government’s approach to countering extremism thus far… Continue reading “The UK’s “Hateful Extremism” report: more muddled thinking on an already over-crowded pitch”
While Christianity is on the decline in Europe, the effective co-option of Christian ideas and emblems among the radical right is continuing unabated. The recent publication of the British Social Attitudes Survey offered dismal reading for the Church of England and British Christianity more broadly. As Polly Toynbee put it in The Guardian, the findings showed that Christianity in… Continue reading “How the Radical Right Co-Opted Religion”
Hermeneutical injustice is defined as the inability to communicate and/ or understand one’s own social experience, owing to a lack of concepts available in society used to define the experience. For example, before Carmita Wood’s introduction of the concept of sexual harassment, individuals were incapable of understanding and communicating this social experience and the significant… Continue reading “Hermeneutical injustice and the far right?”
Prioritising free speech above the harms that extreme speech may cause has dominated the moderation strategies of social media platforms. Note: This piece was originally published at Scroll.in as part of a series on Extreme Speech Online, edited by Sahana Udupa, Elonnai Hickok, and Edward Anderson. The author thanks organisers of a workshop in… Continue reading “Debate over regulating right-wing extreme speech online must shift to harms such speech can cause”
To date, the notion of gateway organizations has in the most part been used to help explain processes of radicalization in relation to Islamic extremist Islam. Since September 11, 2001, the radical right has been on the rise in terms of popularity and reach across Western states. The 9/11 attacks, the subsequent war on terror… Continue reading “Gateway Organizations: Understanding the Lure of the Radical Right”
Over the past ten years, the UK has seen significant shifts on the far right. As the prospect of parliamentary representation by the neo-fascist British National Party petered out in 2010, a new wave of anti-Islamic protests and direct action initiatives swept the country. Over the same period, we have seen the rise and fall… Continue reading “Local policy responses to anti-Islamic protest in the UK need to consider both exclusionary and inclusionary approaches”
In October 2018, the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) took to the streets of London in their thousands to protest against issues such as “returning jihadists” and “rape gangs”. Keen to stress they are not racists but concerned members of the public, a grassroots movement who simply want to be heard, they claim the voice… Continue reading “Catalyst or Catharsis: Inside the DFLA Secret Facebook Groups”
The old adage claims that as soon as something is removed from the internet, it pops up somewhere else. Britain First, founded in 2011, is an organization that describes themselves as a “patriotic political party and street movement” with “pro-British”principles. They claim that they aim to protect British and Christian morality and campaign against the… Continue reading “Far-Right Hate Group ‘Britain First’ (That Trump Retweeted) Joins Extremist-Friendly Gab”