racism

On 9th June the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) reported that "[a]t least 70 Iraqi refugees have been rounded up in the UK over the last few weeks", in preparation for deportation.

... As of 21st June, it seems that there will be 72 people on the flight... it is clear that the UK's government's insistence on undertaking deportations to Iraq flies in the face of advice from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which states that:

"Iraqi asylum applicants originating from Iraq's governates of Baghdad, Dyala, Ninewa and Sala-al-Din, as well as from Kirkuk province, should continue to benefit from international protection… Our position reflects the volatile security situation and the still high level of prevailing violence, security incidents, and human rights violations taking place in this part of Iraq."

"The UK government is aware of UNCHR's recommendations but does not share our assessment of the situation in Iraq."

Those due to be deported on the 21st June will all be transported to Baghdad. Individuals who have spoken with some of the detainees have stated that some of them are under the impression that they will subsequently have to make their own way to their onward destinations. This directly contravenes the UKBA's stated policy of "mak[ing] arrangements for those who require onward travel to their home towns, and this includes those travelling to the Kurdistan Region." [6] A number of those due facing deportation have reportedly said they do not know how they will get home; furthermore, several of those people being deported come from those very areas to which the UNCHR has advised people should not be returned.

On today's market, we find a whole series of products deprived of their malignant property: coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol. And the list goes on: what about virtual sex as sex without sex? The Colin Powell doctrine of warfare with no casualties (on our side, of course) as warfare without warfare? The contemporary redefinition of politics as the art of expert administration as politics without politics? This leads us to today's tolerant liberal multiculturalism as an experience of the Other deprived of its Otherness – the decaffeinated Other...

After righteously rejecting direct populist racism as "unreasonable" and unacceptable for our democratic standards, [our governments] endorse "reasonably" racist protective measures or, as today's Brasillachs, some of them even Social Democrats, tell us: "We grant ourselves permission to applaud African and east European sportsmen, Asian doctors, Indian software programmers. We don't want to kill anyone, we don't want to organise any pogrom. But we also think that the best way to hinder the always unpredictable violent anti-immigrant defensive measures is to organise a reasonable anti-immigrant protection."

I think there is a failure in this standard, liberal, multicultural vision, which means every ethnic group, whatever, to itself, all we need is a neutral legal framework guaranteeing the coexistence of groups. Sorry if I shock someone, but I think we do need what Germans call Leitkultur, leading culture. Just it shouldn’t be nationally defined. We should fight for that. Yes, I agree with right-wingers. We need a set of values accepted by all. But what will these values be, my god? We neglected this a little bit. You know that it’s not just this abstract liberal model: you have your world, I have my world, we just need a neutral legal network—how we will politely ignore each other.

My second point would have been that it’s absolutely crucial how this anti-immigrant explosion is linked to the withdrawal of leftist politics, especially in the matters of economy and so on. It is as if the left, being obsessed by the idea that we shouldn’t appear as reactionary in the economic sense, that is to say that "No, no, no, we are not the old trade union representatives of the working class, we are for postmodern digital capitalism" and so on. They don’t want to touch the working class or so-called lower ordinary people. And here right-wingers enter. Do you know, the horrible paradox is that, apart from some small leftist fringe parties, the only serious political force in Europe today which still is ready to appeal to the ordinary working people are the right-wing anti-immigrants? So you see, we, the leftists, we have no right, absolutely no right, to take this arrogant view of offended tolerant people who are horrored—no, we should ask the question, how we enabled what is going on.

What I’m trying to suggest is that war is not what we think it is, when we hear all these reports about soldiers and generals and strategies. War includes the whole population. War is fought on civilian ground. And in all modern wars, civilians are the primary casualties of war, much more so than soldiers. And we ignore that completely.

Also, war is a guy thing. Men fight with each other. Then they sit down at the table, negotiate some kind of power sharing agreement, and go on jockeying for that power relationship as they rule the country. But all the while, they go on raping, murdering, displacing women and children, so that when men end war and say, "Now we have peace," war is not over for women. The war against women goes on, to such an extent that today, if you look at the demographics, we are short 60 million women in this world who have been killed and lost in war.