Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

by Akala

That England, a country not properly invaded since 1066 but which has invaded almost every nation on the planet, can have a party named the UK Independence Party win 13 per cent of the national vote in 2015 speaks volumes about collective amnesia and ability to distort the facts.

You would think that today would be a time that Europeans, particularly those on the political right, would be celebrating the spectacular domestic success of their model of capitalism, for never before in European history has healthcare, education, peace and prosperity been so widespread as it has in the era since 1945. Yet strangely we find not optimism and dynamism coming from the European right, but rather a lament for the supposedly dying continent and the inevitable ‘decline of the West’ and even, at the extreme end of now-acceptable paranoia, fear of an apparently imminent takeover by the Muslims.

The key question therefore becomes this: what happens once money no longer whitens?