Nationalism, Mobilisation, and Racist Politics

Abstract

This chapter explores the development of ideologies about race, nation, and identity and their impact on the broader political transformations around race and immigration that are the focus of this book. From this starting point, we move on to highlight the role that forms of nationalist and racist ideologies play in the formation of the politics of race and racism in the wider society around us. Although much of the attention has been focused on the activities of neo-fascist political groupings such as the National Front, the British National Party, and the English Defence League, we argue that there have also been efforts to articulate ideologies that articulate an ethno-nationalist politics that distance themselves from the racist political languages utilised by such movements. We then move on to explore more closely the development of movements and ideas that seek to speak to the interests of the white British majority by re-imagining the nation through race. The concluding parts of the chapter address the evolution of changing forms of racism in the context of the first three decades of the twenty-first century.