The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has released a report in which it claims that policies to control immigration have caused a “rapid rise in racial violence”.
The Soros-linked think tank, whose director Liz Fekete attacked “anti-racist” group Hope Not Hate for discussing Pakistani grooming gangs, argues border control and efforts to crack down on illegal immigration are responsible for a wave of “hate crimes” across Britain.
Advancing the narrative that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union (EU) unleashed an “explosion of racist violence”, the paper’s foreword states that “whatever else Brexit means or does not mean, it certainly means racism”.
Author Jon Burnett argues that the media narrative surrounding post-Brexit “hate crimes” — that the number of reported incidents rose after the referendum, with Britain’s vote to leave the EU emboldening “hate” — absolves the state of blame.
“It was not a just a ‘spike’, a ‘jump’ or a ‘spate’, as the mainstream consensus has it. It is the literal manifestation of the political climate which sustains it,” he writes.
The document notes that the government has been active in opposing “hate crimes” and developing programmes to crack down on “hate”, but argues that by enforcing border control and cracking down on illegal immigration, the government is itself responsible for “hate crimes”.
The foreword states: “The struggle then is on two levels, both at once: against state racism and against ‘hate crime’.”
To advance this theory Burnett states that, based on the IRR’s consideration of just 134 incidents of “hate” seen in Britain, “much of the racist abuse that has followed the referendum result has had its gestation within policy measures which express the same aim”.
To back this up, he says “the racist assault of a homeless migrant, who is not deemed to be economically productive” has its origins in policies that try to prevent mass migration of groups which are major drains on British taxpayers.
Fgure 2 of the document shows policies and comments made by politicians that the author believes legitimised “hate crimes”. These include requirements to check legal immigration status of workers, the Prevent counterterrorism strategy, and a statement made by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2011 which condemned “Islamist extremism”.
In the paper’s foreword, 92-year-old Sri Lankan migrant and lifelong campaigner against “racism” in Britain, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, argues that laws to control immigration are “state racism” and that the government has “ma[de] nativism the state ideology”.
“In siphoning off racism and racial violence, which are socially-based, to the terrain of law and order, the government conceals its complicity in creating state racism,” he writes.
In the paper, which is titled “Racial Violence and the Brexit State”, it is implied that any kind of border controls at all encourage racist attacks, asserting that: “A nation state, which is … defined specifically to divide those who rightfully belong from those who do not, will by definition enshrine racism.”
In 2012 the institute’s director, Liz Fekete, penned a letter which attacked “anti-racism” body Hope Not Hate, for admitting that Pakistani grooming gangs are a problem.
Fekete slammed the group’s “uncritical” take on the Ministry of Justice’s statistics, which she says “are not scientific and neutral”, and blasts their assertion that the left in Britain and “anti-racists” are “too quick to try and silence any discussion” on the systematic rape, torture, and abuse of white children that it emerged has been happening in towns across Britain.
The organisation also produces “educational materials” for teachers designed to stir up resentment against white people. Among the implications and claims made in these teaching resources are that Europe is only safe, rich, and peaceful today because of slavery and colonialism, which the materials instruct is the cause of racism today.
Racism, and by implication white people, are responsible for all problems faced by ethnic minorities in Britain including with “employment, housing, education, policing and law enforcement” according to the IRR’s teaching resources.
An essay published by the IRR in 2012 condemns the media for reporting on racist violence against white people by ethnic minorities. One example given is a Daily Mail story headlined “Girl gang who kicked woman in the head while yelling ‘kill the white slag’ freed after judge hears ‘they weren’t used to drinking because they’re Muslims’”.
By reporting on such incidents author Ryan Erfani-Ghettani says the media is constructing a “false equivalence” between white on black and black on white violence, and encourages “far right” demonstrations.