Why Nick Griffin should not be allowed to speak at Trinity College

BNP's Nick Griffin gets pelted by eggs
BNP's Nick Griffin gets pelted by eggs

As of now, the leader of the British National Party Nick Griffin is scheduled to debate the question of whether multiculturalism has gone ‘too far’ in Trinity College’s Philosophical Society on October 20.

I have written many times about the problems with policies of multiculturalism – which, let us remember (though called ‘intercultualism’ in this country), is the state’s knee jerk response to what it perceives as the problem of difference, brought about by immigrants. Multiculturalism, I have argued, is not about fostering and upholding ethnic pluralism, but rather about racial states legislating for national homogeneity and supremacy, accepting only what Alana Lentin and Gavan Titley call in their new book ‘good diversity’, one that does not challenge (white, Christian, settled) privilege.  Euro-multiculturalism is rife with contradictions. It speaks of integration yet limits immigration, legislates against veiled women and Muslims praying in public, outlaws what it considers harmful practices such as forced marriages, without providing protection to trafficked women or offering asylum to women whose children are in danger of female genital mutilation. Continue reading “Why Nick Griffin should not be allowed to speak at Trinity College”

Norway: It’s multiculturalism, stupid

breivikMuch has been written about the implications of the horrible massacre in Norway. After the initial automatic knee jerk assumption that the murderer must have been an Islamist terrorist, the discovery that he was one of Norway’s ‘own’ – albeit an extreme right wing white supremacist – sent shock waves throughout Norway, whose mourning was so dignified and full of quiet determination.

I want to make a three key points about the lessons of this atrocity which cost the lives of 76 people. Firstly, European states and societies need to get over their post 9/11 automatic assumptions that ‘terrorist’ acts are always perpetrated only by Islamists. Such assumptions lead to the racialization of Muslim and Arab-looking people, and to tighter immigration, asylum and travel controls throughout Europe, and, as in this case, miss the point entirely, at a heavy cost of innocent lives. Continue reading “Norway: It’s multiculturalism, stupid”

Crisis racism and ‘cultural circumcision’

Like everyone else, I was appalled by the revelations of Prime Time Investigates on Monday 30 May about the impact of the cuts on disabled people and their carers. So appalled that I felt unable to watch the whole programme. I was distressed by the stories of the parents of a Downs’ Syndrome boy going hungry because the mother’s carer’s allowance was cut by €16 a week; of the woman who had to wait more than a year for an MRI scan leading to her back deteriorating beyond the possibility of operation; and of the mother who had to carry her adolescent son upstairs for a bath – the son’s scoliosis beyond operative repair because the waiting list was simply too long. Continue reading “Crisis racism and ‘cultural circumcision’”