Shifting demographic trends across the West, driven in part by new global migration and refugee movements, are creating both new discourses about race and forms of racism. In this essay, Etienne Balibar argues that today's analyses must examine anti-Semitism and Islamophobia together, as parallel manifestations of contemporary racism.
Over the course of the ‘Labour antisemitism’ controversy that has raged over the past few years, the party’s readiness to sanction or expel members who have expressed ‘anti-Jewish’ stereotypes has become the litmus test of its commitment to combating antisemitism. But, what are stereotypes, and are all stereotypes instances of animus towards the group in question?
After the BBC's Panorama documentary, the cries against the Labour Party of antisemitism have reached a new pitch. Yet to understand how the "crisis of antisemitism" has been manufactured, we need to look beyond the particular accusations themselves, and to how the left conceives of oppression.