What are the Defining Features of Racist Movements and Ideologies - Case Study Example

 Racist movements and ideologies, like any social phenomena, evolve over time. It is capable of either becoming more racist or the opposite or, simply transform into something different, say, in ideology, but altogether the same in the degree of bigotry. The dynamics follow the movement of the development of human civilizations. Throughout human history, the persistence of this phenomenon is demonstrated in how racist ideologies and ethnic conflicts have thrived. In the experience of various cultures such as those in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and America, an important fact is revealed – that racism or racist ideology is not universal and could take different forms at different periods and locales. For instance, the kind of racism that we know of today has actually evolved from the more recent period of Discovery and colonization – its own social, cultural and scientific characteristics. This was the point that has been put forward by several scholars. For example, there is George Mosse, who argued that racist movements are diverse and historically specific. David Goldberg, for his part, stressed that racism is multiple in form. To quote: There is no single characteristic form of racism. Racisms assume their particular characters and ramifications in relation to specific considerations of class constitution, gender, national identity, region, and political structure. But the character and implicature of each racism are also set in terms of its own historical legacy and the related conception of race’ (Racist Culture 1993) This paper will particularly focus on how the contemporary racism – as we know it – has evolved. This will be discussed by outlining the logical evolution of racism and racist ideologies from the Neo-fascist movement, the age of terrorism, information, among others. Background Scholars are actually divided with regards to when and how the concept of racism has emerged. One of the most important schools of thought, however, was that one given by historians who identify the period by which the concept of “race” was invented as the progenitor of the racist ideologies and movements. Milton Kleg (1993) particularly branded this development as tragic because when the concept of race was formed it highlighted the differences of peoples and has fueled the constant conflicts among ethnic and racial groups. According to Lulat (2008): The ideology of race is a system of ideas which interpret and defines the meanings of racial differences, real or imagined, in terms of some system of cultural values. The ideology of race is always normative: it ranks differences as better or worse, superior or inferior, desirable or undesirable, and as modifiable or unmodifiable. Like all ideologies, the ideology of race implies a call to action: it embodies a political and social program; it is a demand that something be done. (p. 543) Central to this racial dilemma was the assumption that the racist ideology is biologically determined. In this argument, there are two assumptions that form the linchpin of the biologically based movement/ideology: the first is that people can be classified into discrete, hierarchically ranked biological groups; and, secondly, differences among the races reflect the natural and/or ordained order and, hence, had to be eternally fixed. (Derman-Sparks & Phillips 1997, p. 15) This racist perspective is best depicted during the 1880s in the Jim Crow statutes in the United States, which mandated the segregation of blacks and whites or the classification of whites from nonwhite groups. Some examples of the law are cited by Ferrante (2005): It shall be unlawful for colored people to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the benefit, use, and enjoyment of white persons… and unlawful for any white person to frequent any park owned or maintained by the city for the use and benefit of colored persons. All marriages of white person with Negros, Mulattos, Mongolians, or Malay hereafter contracted in the State of Wyoming are shall be illegal and void. (p. 307) People have always speculated on the diversity and differences among people and the racial argument appeared inevitable and almost natural consequence of such curiosity. However, since these biological assumptions were introduced, there were no scientific, much less cultural, discoveries or evidences emerged that would help justify them and, instead, underscored how the whole biological argument is but a myth and fallacious. This, however, did not deter people and countries from continuing to believe in the biological argument in explaining human differences. This approach has actually empowered peoples to dominate others especially when the age of colonization commenced and the world has been brought closer together by the increase in racial interaction and trade. There was an increasing incidence of misunderstanding about race that often led to violence and bloodshed. Kleg underscored that this is particularly important in the United States experience wherein constant conflicts among ethnic and racial groups characterize its society because “many of the larger and poorer minority groups have been the objects of systematic discrimination and targets of hate violence because of their race.” (p. 65) Despite the modern and liberal principles by which its society operates, physical differences persist in determining the manner in which people are treated. For instance, skin color is pivotal in the opportunities given to an individual, starting from his education, welfare, as well as opportunities in life. It is interesting how the development of racism in America has unfolded. It has carefully navigated the changing times, effectively making itself relevant to people despite its inherent negativity. Neo-fascist movement and Racism An important variable in the racist ideology in America was the neo-fascist movements that emerged after World War II, when remnants of the Third Reich – stragglers of Hitler’s Germany trudged on, going as far as establishing the seed of a brand of racist ideology in America and in Europe during the 1950s. This was also called as Neo-Nazism. Kleg wrote: The rise of neo-Nazism may be attributed to the usual white supremacist beliefs along with a strong anti-Communist orientation left over from the McCarthy period of the early fifties… The stereotype of the Nazi Hun was being replaced by the blood curling, goose-stepping Communist. (p. 200) In Britain, the neo-fascist movement was able to found a political party British National Party (BNP). In 1992, this party created Combat 18, a neo-Nazi group formed in order to serve as self-defense group for the party after anti-racists groups have disrupted several of their activities. Combat 18 primarily used violence in order to carry out its mandate. It targeted left-wing bookshops, gay pubs, anti-apartheid activists, and mixed-marriage couples and later recruited an army of British skinheads. After a time, Combat 18 gained notoriety for its use of extreme violence, prompting BNP to distance itself from the group. In 1993, it separated itself from BNP, openly called itself a racist group and proceeded on launching its violent tactics. Currently, its most ardent supporters and members are neo-Nazi skinheads and football hooligans. (Atkins 2004, p. 67) The fundamental ideology that binds the white supremacists and racists groups together was the belief that: Whites are civilization builders who have created our modern world, both its technology and its art. People of color are civilization destroyers, most characteristically showing their essences in the social pathologies of inner-city populations. The races have separate origins, as explained in the theology of Christian Identity (a major influence throughout the White racist movement): Whites are the creation of God, who is white; people of color, whom they refer to as “the mud races,” have originated in the mating of Whites with animals. (Gerstenfeld & Grant, p. 172) What the neo-fascist movement was able to achieve since its roots after the war was the creation of some subculture in Western societies. This has been demonstrated in the story of Oswald Mosley, a fascist leader in Britain who advocated the neo-fascist doctrine and theory through his Union Movement. This group did not actually propose a categorical neo-fascism but occupied what can be considered as a differentiated position on the radical right. Several other groups would follow Mosley’s lead and the most successful of these in Britain was the National Front, an organization created by an amalgamation of diverse fascist and radical groups back in 1967. Membership to the organization ballooned to about 17,000 in 1974 but gradually declined during the 1980s. (Payne, p. 211) The neo-fascists use the ideological movement argument that purportedly seek to check the decline of racial or cultural purity as reflected in their penchant to launch activities peppered with themes that include “love of elitism, heroism and beauty, anti-materialism, vitalism, blood and soil, the regeneration of history and, in some cases, a tendency to dabble in paganism and the occult.” (Davies & Lynch, p. 108) When these neo-fascist groups faced a decline in political support, with their constant need to oppose, challenge and undermine existing authority, they continuously modify their ideology, which now came to be characterized by some degree of diversity as well as eclecticism. (p. 109) BNP: Right for Whites, etc. Other right-wing extremist groups that owe their existence to neo-fascist movements include besides NF was the British National Party. What is interesting in these organizations is that the advocate a pure unadulterated racist ideology. Elizabeth Carter, in her research on these groups, wrote: John Tyndall and Martin Webster, who assumed control of the NF in its heyday in the 1970s, both had their roots in the tradition of British neo-Nazism that originated in the pre-war Imperial Fascist League. They were concerned above all with the racial purity of Britain and warned against the degeneration of the British race brought about by the ethnic cross-breeding. (p. 35) BNP took after NF mainly because it was founded by Tyndall when he left NF in 1982. The party in its public pronouncements declared its condemnation for violence. However, it was known to have exploited riots that have been caused by the National Front and Combat 18 in their bids to cultivate support. Bagguley and Hussain (2008) observed that BNP singled out Muslims as its chosen enemies, claiming to offer “a radical alternative to the mainstream parties who have abandoned white working class areas,” and that it actually considered the violence during the riots “as its best opportunity in years to put its anti-immigration views into the political agenda, asking for Belfast-style peace walls to divide Asian and white communities in Oldham and a boycott of South Asian businesses.” (p. 3) A citizen supporter of BNP in an electoral exercise has been quoted in Times saying: I voted for BNP and I don’t worry who knows it. Everyone in the street voted for them. This morning I feel like someone is actually fighting for white people of Oldham, for their rights. (cited in Bagguley & Hussain, p. 3) BNP has toned down its rhetoric recently. When party activist Nick Griffin, for example, took the helm of leadership in 1999, he started repositioning BNP as a party of racial nationalism and social justice, that supposedly would build a responsible movement that “becomes the focus of hopes not just of the neglected and oppressed white working class, but also of the frustrated and disoriented traditional middle class.” (Atton 2004, p. 72) NF and BNP have their counterparts elsewhere in Europe as well. For instance, there is the case of the German NPD, which also promoted classical racist ideologies. The NDP, however, demonstrate the potency of the way ideology evolve in order for the organization or the movement to remain significant. According to Carter, “admittedly, the importance of the party attaches to the white race has been toned down in recent years, with echoes of biological racism being eliminated from its public programme in favour of greater emphasis on the importance of German Volk. This moderation stems mainly from the party’s fears of being outlawed by the Federal Constitutional Court for exhibiting anti-democratic behaviour.” (p. 35) Racism and Terrorism Perdue (1989) in his discourse on terrorism said that it is “a label of defamation, a means of excluding those so branded from human standing” (p. 4) making it the in the league or within the same tradition of racism – the ideologies in the service of domination. In its notorious lynching and whipping activities, the Ku Klux Klan was depicted in a horrifying account of their activities: These lynching were meant to terrorize the black population and keep it quiescent and under white control. Many of the victims were burned alive, chained to iron stakes that had been driven into the ground; others were hanged. The lucky ones were shot soon after the burning or hanging began; there are many accounts, however, of desperate men crawling from the flames and being pushed back in. The newspaper accounts are grueling, the cruelty astonishing. Bodies were slashed; fingers were cut off. Often the victim’s testicle or penis were cut off. (Ezekiel 1995, p. 311) Like the neo-fascists, the White supremacists, terrorists tend to oppose and stand against the way and lifestyles of Western society. So terrorism attracts those individuals who would be highly supportive and identified with racism. Today, as revealed in Chris Stout’s research, an analysis of many of those people who would be identified as belonging to a racist organization and are terrorists at the same time, demonstrated common themes in their experiences: that they all suffered unresolved trauma and that they are thirsting for some mimetic violence membership and acceptance offered by the tightly-knit terrorist organizations in order to compensate for their identity disorders and low-self-esteem. For instance, “the racist ideology that white supremacist groups espouse offers a venue for traumatized individuals to seek revenge for abuse and bullying that they experienced.” (p. 80) It is easy to understand how terrorist organizations could offer some refuge or outlet because the secretive and violent characteristics of these groups tend to satisfy many social and psychological needs such as the offering of an identity, the brotherhood and community as well as the level of protection and the sense of excitement. The existence of the Klan up to this day and the resurgence of support it experienced during the 1990s with the candidacy of Klansman David Duke in Louisiana, highlight how racism is embedded in Western societies like America. The US is home to several neo-Nazi groups, and hundreds of skinhead groups today, all of them active and involved in crimes of assault and hundreds of murders that transpires in the country annually. (Stout, p. 81) An interesting insight was posited by Bjorgo and Horgan (2009) in this respect. It is their contention that racist ideology, for those joining terrorist organizations, is often adopted afterwards “as a consequence of rather than a cause for joining the group” and that “similarly, those who quit the group usually do so because continued membership in the group appears unattractive and is no longer fulfilling their social and psychological needs.” (p. 47) This last variable demonstrates the type of change that happens in the perspective of a terrorist/racist as reflective in the tendency of these individuals to severe ties with their organizations for the same motivations that they have had when they joined. This can be explained in the case of a young racist who joined a terrorist group for the transformation, identity and status accorded to him by such membership. In the event that he would leave, motivations would most likely be triggered by dramatic breaches and transformations. It is for this reason why anti-racist group’s attempts to focus on ideology and values in their drive to prevent youths from joining racist groups or encourage members to quit such groups are highly ineffective. An excellent example is the criminal youth gang called the Danish Green Jackets, which turned to racism back in the 1980s. The group was popular and notorious in the early part of the decade but it started to deteriorate sometime in 1987 and 1988. Central to this development was the strategy employed by the American law enforcement. Bjorgo and Horgan recounted: In coordination with youth workers, the police managed to jail the more ideological hardcore Green Jackets, thereby isolating them from the wider group of followers. The youth workers concentrated their efforts on this outer circle, offering jobs and job training, help to find apartments, leisure-time activities and other forms of assistance. Quite a few got girlfriends and children, and new loyalties thereby replaced ties to the gang. (p. 45) As the decade came to close, Green Jacket was so severely disintegrated that it became less of a menace and more of an insignificant issue in the racism and extremist politics. This case underscore a dimension in racism and its ideologies reflecting how their potency and attraction could be tempered by more compelling factors in such a way that their effect are diffused over time or immediately, depending on the attack on it by specific authorities and institutions. New Racism The biological argument for racist ideologies are structured in three fundamental notions: 1) that people can be classified into categories according to their physical characteristics; 2) that a close relationship exists between physical traits and characteristics that include language, dress, personality, intellect and athletic aptitude; and, 3) the physical attributes like the color of the skin and the texture of the hair can reflect and explain how people behave, serving as a major determinant in how people are born unequal. (Ferrante p. 306) Whether it is because the biological argument for racism has been exhausted and proved fallacious or that there are just such diverse types of racism that defining them requires the construction of several meanings, that a new school of though in explaining racism emerged – the cultural argument. The idea is that race is a cultural phenomenon and a cultural construction and that racism and its ideologies must be examined in a perspective of culture as some environment that breeds social conflicts. One of the academics that advocate the cultural theory was Gilroy. He explained the position in these words: We are fully aware that the ideological status of the concept “race” qualifies its analytic use. It is precisely this meaninglessness which persistently refers us to the construction, mobilization and pertinence of different forms of racist ideology and structuration in specific historical circumstances. We must examine the role of these ideologies in the complex articulation of classes in a social formation, and strive to discover the conditions of existence which permit the construction of “black” people in politics, ideology and economic life. (cited in Robotham 2005, p. 45) The point that is being expressed by the above statement seems to be the reasoning that race or racism cannot be theorized under some universal or standard point of view. The reason for this is that racist ideologies are commonly shaped by the historical environment, particularly the social conflicts and struggles in a particular period. Put in another way, race aggravates specific structural phenomena within a period in historical timeline, resulting to a distortion or an error of gargantuan proportion. Robotham is of the opinion that the cultural argument has its roots in the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment concepts that dispel the differentiation of humanity: “Divisions of race, culture, nation and class obviously exist but these do not have the same ontological status as the category ‘humanity.’ The latter is real but the former are cultural constructs – discourses – distorting the real.” (p. 46) The cultural school of thought in the explanation of racism underscores a development in the modern racist ideologies. When in the past the biological reasoning took the center stage, culture and its mechanisms were being increasingly used by racists to construct and espouse their ideological arguments. This development has led to the empowerment of racists today because culture allows them to change to their advantage the differences and similarities into some form of universal law of nature. Culture is pivotal in constructing a collective identity, it is crucial in the discourse of social differences. Racism – through culture – became a darker version of nationalism that proved to be highly successful tool in repressing and eroding the bases of other forms of particularity like ethnicity and individuality. Today, the narrative of the racist ideology in the context of culture became markedly different from their forms say during the 1930s. In this period, the racist propagandist is an organization’s strategy whiz or an amazing orator. But our modern racist has evolved into an amalgamation of rock star, speaker and street crusader. Take the case of the white noise music and the racist/extreme nationalist counter culture that has flourished in the recent decade. Jeffrey Kaplan observed that “a study of the choreography of the White noise concerts makes it evident that the singer walks stiffly like a speaker back and forth over the stage. He is the high priest of a ritual celebration, the leader who controls the public in the very same way the National Socialist speaker of the 1930s did.” (p. 345) The white Power music is an example of the cultural mechanisms co-opted by racists that empower their movements to propagate. In Sweden alone, this genre claims an astounding 30 percent market share, unarguably generating immense wealth that could finance racist initiatives. (p. 345) In addition to this, technological advancement also provided a friendly and encouraging environment for modern racists to perpetuate their own “culture.” The Internet is a single crucial tool in this area. It is not just a mere publishing platform for racist propaganda because it allows for quick, convenient and real time access to people wired to each other through their computer terminals. Technology has provided the resources for racists and fascists to digitally build some racist culture in cyberspace that transcend boundaries, time and space, allowing racists to interact without the need to converge on a specific location and having to meet each other face-to-face. Legislating Against Racism Needless to say, racism has been so embedded in contemporary society that eradicating them proves difficult, with their constant evolution and the existence and introduction of the enabling variables such as technology and culture. This is the reason why legislation is crucial in effectively eliminating the seemingly multi-headed hydra that adopts with every stroke dealt to kill it. Existing laws could not simply keep up with the changing trends and patterns of racist ideologies and activities. There is a need to continuously build, construct and enforce anti-racist policies especially within the wider social and political environment in a given period or time. This is demonstrated in the British experience, wherein policies initiated by the radical left local authorities, trade unions and other non-governmental organizations effectively tackled racism. For instance, there was the case of the Macpherson Inquiry, tasked by the British government to investigate the death of Stephen Lawrence and the failure of the Metropolitan Police to solve the murder appropriately. The result of the inquiry revealed how racism became institutionalized in the law enforcement system preventing the police from protecting the citizenry equally. This led to the creation of the Racial and Violent Crime Task Force within the Metropolitan Police Service. This was based on the 70 recommendations that aimed to curb racism in British society. These recommendations included education and stricter compliance with enacted statutes on the racism. For the part of the newly created task force, it has helped to change the British law enforcement practices leading to notable successes recently. Conclusion It is important to note that based on the outlined development of modern racism, science did not provide the basis for the persistence of racial ideology. That is why the biological argument for racist ideologies have been entirely left out today in the racists desire to be significant. It was social change that had defined, driven and propped up much of the arguments for modern racism. In this respect, it becomes easier to understand how racism and its ideologies have evolved and adopted. The cultural school of thought seems to explain and express appropriately the dynamics of this phenomenon especially in the context of today’s society characterized by high-technology and unrestrained capitalism and freedom. It offers people and, certainly, policymakers, the perspective to perceive texts, meanings and behaviours that are peppered with biases, interests, embedded values that characterized the racist social groups. More importantly, it allows for the identification of appropriate measures and policies that could effectively deal with the type of racist ideologies that we have today as demonstrated by the strategy of effective anti-racist legislations. References Atkins, S. (2004). Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group. Atton, C. (2004). An alternative Internet. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Bagguley, P. and Hussain, Y. (2008). Riotous citizens: ethnic conflict in multicultural Britain. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Bjorgo, T. and Horgan, J. (2009). Leaving terrorism behind: individual and collective disengagement. Oxon: Taylor & Francis. Carter, E. (2005). The extreme right in Western Europe: success or failure? 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