The poison of white identitarianism

Not too long ago, the most prominent force driving an ugly racial identity politics was the ‘progressive’ or ‘woke’ left. The main opposition to this movement tended to take a classically liberal form. It was driven by those concerned about the left’s overzealous celebration of minority groups to the exclusion of others, and their willingness to crush equality and free speech in pursuit of supposedly progressive goals.

But over the past year or so it has become increasingly clear that a vocal minority opposes wokeness for very different reasons. They object not to identity politics or to the suppression of free speech, but to what they see as a woke attack on white identity.

A mishmash of primarily online political subcultures have emerged over the past few years, vociferously defending white identity. It shares striking similarities with woke identitarianism. These advocates share so-called progressives’ racial essentialism, their obsession with identity and their conspiratorial mindset. Some have called this emerging movement the ‘woke right’, others the Very Online right. Either way, anyone who values liberal principles should be concerned.

These new rightists’ nihilistic resentment, indeed their racial identitarianism, is in danger of being passed off as a ‘legitimate grievance’ by the broader right – as an understandable response to successive governments’ failures on immigration; as of a piece with more general public concerns. At the very least, there is a hesitance among some conservatives to call out these toxic views.

Of course, many ordinary people do have reasonable concerns about migration. Our leaders have allowed unprecedented numbers of people to enter the UK, despite having no democratic mandate to do so. Businesses have become dependent on cheap migrant labour, which suppresses wages and discourages investment in the training and upskilling of British workers. And the pace and scale of migration has overwhelmed infrastructure and services, putting enormous strain on already strained resources. Furthermore, a lack of robust integration policies has exacerbated social tensions and fuelled conflict.

But identitarian rightists are not expressing legitimate concerns about immigration, governance, the economy, fairness and social cohesion. They are criticising immigration on the dubious grounds that it is a means to dilute white British culture, through the sheer weight of non-white numbers. This is the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory – a crackpot fixation once found only in the darker corners of the internet that is now being increasingly mainstreamed. Indeed, one proponent of right identity politics delivered a public lecture earlier this year, presenting migration as the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of white Brits and warning that they are due to become ‘a minority in their own homeland’.

Some argue that such extreme right-wing views are niche and shouldn’t be given undue attention. It’s certainly true that, as polls indicate, most people have no truck with this racial worldview. Reform UK, the right-wing populist party that has been smeared as ‘hard right’ by its critics, has explicitly rejected ethnic nationalism in favour of civic nationalism – to the shrieking disappointment of the right-wing identitarians.

But to dismiss the emergent identitarian right as an insignificant minority would be to make the same mistake as many liberals and leftists once did. They dismissed wokeness as being limited to pesky, pink-haired university students, and subsequently proved unable to resist its mainstreaming.

Indeed, during the peak woke years of 2020 and 2021, when BLM was on the march throughout public life, mainstream liberals and leftists failed to challenge absurd demands such as ‘defund the police’ or sweeping generalisations that ‘all white people are racist’. Fear of ostracism, coupled with a desire to avoid giving ammunition to the right, led far too many to remain silent. This allowed ‘progressive’ identitarians to dominate left-wing politics, alienating ordinary people and providing an easy target for critics.

A similar dynamic now appears to be at work on the right: the reluctance of mainstream conservatives to challenge far-right identitarian rhetoric risks allowing it to fester unchecked. For instance, claims that a multiethnic society is inherently destructive are not only factually incorrect, but also alienate people of goodwill who support cultural integration rather than segregation.

Some are willing to take a stand, however. Reform leader Nigel Farage has been keen to draw a line between his party’s populist politics and those of the identitarian right. His recent efforts to rebuff the racial identitarians have been criticised, unsurprisingly, by those who think the party should obsess over ‘demographic change’ and stop saying mean things about Tommy Robinson. Apparently, Farage is betraying his anti-establishment credentials. The polls would suggest Farage was right to ignore these critics. Reform is polling at record highs. Ordinary people clearly don’t spend their days worrying about the ‘great replacement’.

Still, we shouldn’t be complacent about this ideology spreading beyond attention-seekers on social media. Socioeconomic conditions in the UK and the West more broadly have created a fertile environment for extremism to flourish. Long-term economic stagnation, combined with the collapse of traditional sources of community and meaning, have left many people feeling hopeless and looking for new narratives of belonging and identity. And some, especially some young people it seems, are looking to the identitarian extremes for answers.

Needless to say, the challenges we face as a society will not be solved by incel-adjacent anons on X, or blue-haired drones on Bluesky. We must protect free speech while calling out the new racial identity politics of both the left and the right. The path forward lies in rejecting both the reactionary dogmatism of the ‘progressives’ and the nihilism of the white identitarians.

Inaya Folarin Iman is a spiked columnist and founder of the Equiano Project.