Watch author and activist Liz Fekete talk about her book “Europe’s Fault Lines – Racism and the Rise of the Right” on 29 March 2018, and read more about it.

Liz Fekete joined us in conversation with Ahmed Uddin to talk about her new book and her work on the rise of racism in Europe. The conversation was expansive and covered may issues including her critique of racialised policing prompting her to raise the question and challenge to decolonial scholars focussed on the university, “When are we going to talk about decolonising the police?“

About the author

Liz Fekete is the Director of the Institute of Race Relations and head of its European Research Programme. She has worked at the IRR since 1982. She writes and speaks extensively on aspects of contemporary racism and fascism, refugee rights, EU counter-radicalisation and anti-terrorism policies and Islamophobia across Europe, and is author of A suitable enemy: racism, migration and Islamophobia in Europe published by Pluto Press. Liz was part of the CARF Collective, and an expert witness at the Basso Permanent People’s Tribunal on asylum and the World Tribunal on Iraq. She is currently an associate of the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London, and the Border Crossing Observatory at Monash University, Australia.

About the book

An expansive investigation into the relationship between contemporary states and the far-right

It is clear that the right is on the rise, but after Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the spike in popularity of extreme-right parties across Europe, the question on everyone’s minds is: how did this happen?

An expansive investigation of the ways in which a newly configured right interconnects with anti-democratic and illiberal forces at the level of the state, Europe’s Fault Lines provides much-needed answers, revealing some uncomfortable truths.

What appear to be “blind spots” about far-right extremism on the part of the state are shown to constitute collusion—as police, intelligence agencies and the military embark on practices of covert policing that bring them into direct or indirect contact with the far right, in ways that bring to mind the darkest days of Europe’s authoritarian past.

Old racisms may be structured deep in European thought, but they have been revitalised and spun in new ways: the war on terror, the cultural revolution from the right, and the migration-linked demonisation of the destitute “scrounger.” Drawing on more than three decades of work for the Institute of Race Relations, Liz Fekete exposes the fundamental fault lines of racism and authoritarianism in contemporary Europe.

About the Chair

Ahmed Uddin is a senior manager at IHRC.