From calls for “remigration” to the insistence that Rishi Sunak cannot be English, ideas and arguments that even two decades ago were confined to the fringes of politics are now part of mainstream debate.
In this talk, Kenan Malik traces the story of how this happened by looking at three interconnected strands: the embrace by the far-right of arguments for cultural pluralism; the rise of identity politics and its seizure by racial thinkers; and the erosion of the firewall that had existed for much of the postwar period between far-right and mainstream debates about race and immigration. He explores also the ways in which the resurgence of contemporary antisemitism relates to that of the new racism.
Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster, and a columnist for The Observer. His latest book, Not So Black and White (Hurst, 2022), is a history of ideas of race and identity. Previous books include The Quest for a Moral Compass (Atlantic Books, 2017), a global history of ethics, and From Fatwa to Jihad (Atlantic Books, 2010, updated 2017), on the Rushdie affair and its legacy.