Category: Society

The bogeyman of English politics of the late 1960s was Enoch Powell, and Hanif Kureishi has written a masterful article on the effect of Powell: Knock, knock, it’s Enoch. It’s well worth reading.

Like Kureishi, I was a teenager in 1968 when Powell gave his Rivers of Blood speech. Like Kureishi, I was born in Britain, although unlike Kureishi, I was white. So even though I was appalled at what Powell unleashed, I was never the target of white racism. Ironically, I am a child with immigrant blood – my mother’s side of the family has maternal roots in 19th Century India. As I’ve written before, my great-aunts and great-uncle were clearly Indian (as can be seen in the photograph below), and my mother remembered the casual racism directed at her father when she was a young girl.

Perhaps because of what my mother remembered, I was brought up without being conscious of the fact that racism existed. I also grew up on the Isle of Man, and I only recall ever seeing one black person in real life as a child; he worked at one of the hotels during one summer season. I was more struck by the fact that his bicycle had a real radio on it, than by the fact that he was black. Nonetheless, racist attitudes existed in the wider society, and I must have subconsciously been aware of them. I recall one incident that happened when I must have been 11 or 12, and visiting my aunt and uncle who lived in Tottenham. I was walking along a London street and saw a very expensive car – it was either a Rolls or a Bentley – and being rather impressed by its beauty. Then, the owner and his family appeared and got into the car. They were black, and from seemingly nowhere, the thought popped into my head: “how have the likes of them got a car like that?” I stopped in shock, absolutely appalled at what I had just thought, and horrified that I could think such a thing. Despite my parents care and attention, racism had snuck in and lodged itself in my brain.

It’s an insidious thing. Look again at that photo of my great-uncle George above. The uncle that I was visiting in Tottenham looked just like a whiter version of George. By his, and my mother’s, generation, their Indian origins had faded enough so that they could pass for white. He lived in the same terrace house where he had grown up. Tottenham became a multicultural melting pot, and during the 1960s contained a large population of African-Caribbean people. I became very aware during that time that my uncle and aunt had racist attitudes towards their neighbours. I would often bite my tongue in their presence. Lovely people, but with that side to them that I found very difficult to deal with.

As Kureishi writes:

Appealing to the worst in people – their hate – is a guaranteed way to get attention, but it is also fatal. Powell talked in whole sentences and was forever translating Herodotus, so was known for his cleverness. But he wasn’t smart enough to resist the temptation of instant populism for which he traded in his reputation. Racism is the fool’s gold, or, rather, the crack cocaine of politics.

Forty-five years on, and it’s still happening. We have Nigel Farage and UKIP in the UK, and Geert Wilders and the PVV here in the Netherlands.

Kureishi again:

Britain survived Powell and became something he couldn’t possibly have envisioned. He was a pessimist and lacked faith in the ability of people to cooperate with one another, to collaborate and make alliances. The cultural collisions he was afraid of are the affirmative side of globalisation. People do not love one another because they are “the same”, and they don’t always kill one another because they are different. Where, indeed, does difference begin? Why would it begin with race or colour?

Racism is the lowest form of snobbery. Its language mutates: not long ago the word “immigrant” became an insult, a stand-in for “paki” or “nigger”. We remain an obstruction to “unity”, and people like Powell, men of ressentiment, with their omens and desire to humiliate, will return repeatedly to divide and create difference. The neoliberal experiment that began in the 80s uses racism as a vicious entertainment, as a sideshow, while the wealthy continue to accumulate. But we are all migrants from somewhere, and if we remember that, we could all go somewhere – together.

I hope we can survive Farage and Wilders as well.

A couple of years back, I blogged about Nina Paley’s short animation: This Land is Mine. Two years on, and nothing seems to have changed in that part of the world. The only winner, as Nina pointed out, is the Angel of Death.

Gedogen is one of those (many?) Dutch words that is somewhat difficult to translate. On the face of it, it means to tolerate, permit, suffer and allow. However, there is something lurking behind those straightforward definitions; an additional layer of meaning that indicates that the tolerance, the permission and so forth are granted, well, perhaps not grudgingly per se, but perhaps almost in spite of the thing that is being tolerated. There’s a sense of turning a blind eye to behaviour that, strictly speaking, is illegal, or should not be condoned, but which one tolerates out of a sense of liberalism and of a sense of “live and let live”.

Someone who has been the beneficiary of much gedogen is the Dutch populist politician Geert Wilders. He, on the other hand, exhibits near zero gedogen for his targets: immigrants, Muslims and Moroccans.

We’ve just had elections here in the Netherlands for the town councils (the Gemeenten), and Wilders’ party fielded candidates in just two places: The Hague and Almere. During the campaign, Wilders went on record as saying that voters in The Hague should vote for a city with lower taxes and, if possible, fewer Moroccans. As a result, one Labour candidate (Fouad Sidhali) tweeted a comparison of Wilders to Hitler, a statement he later withdrew after criticism from senior Labour officials, saying the comparison had been unjustified.

I found it fascinating to observe the media and politicians exhibiting gedogen towards Wilders by focusing on Sidhali’s tweet, rather than the initial remark by Wilders. It was as though Wilders was the injured party, rather than Sidhali, who had probably responded with understandable exasperation over yet more of Wilders’ xenophobic rhetoric.

Wilders then (oh so predictably) responded by saying Fouad Sidali’s rethink was sensible but that ‘it would have been more sensible to leave for Morocco’.

And so it goes. Geert grins under the grace of gedogen.

But perhaps a line has now been crossed. During last night’s after-election celebrations in the Hague, Wilder asked his supporters ‘and do you want more or fewer Moroccans in your city and in the Netherlands?’ To which the crowd chanted ‘fewer, fewer, fewer’. ‘ We’ll arrange that,’ Wilders said with a faint smile (or was it a smirk?) when the chanting died down.

I would like to think that people are beginning to think that enough is enough, and that the emperor has no clothes, other than rags of xenophobia and racism. We will see what happens during the European elections in May.

One of the bloggers that I make a habit of reading is Norman Geras. That is, until last Friday, when I found an entry on his blog from Jenny Geras (his daughter) saying that Norm had died that day.

Another voice of reason stilled. Here’s his obituary. It’s worth reading to get a sense of the man, and of course you can still read his writings on his blog.