Liz Fekete
Biographic Data
| ID | 3602783 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liz Fekete |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liz |
| FAMILY NAME | Fekete |
| SIGNATURE | FEKETE L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Institute of Race Relations |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 457 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Europe, hypermilitarised policing and the authoritarian state
This piece contains edited excerpts from a larger report by the author, 'Paramilitary Policing Against the People: Colonial Continuities and the Challenge from Below' published by the Institute of Race Relations in 2025, which warns that paramilitary policing at borders, during civil unrest and against public protest now affects Europe's citizens and non-citizens alike, and racialised groups particularly. It explains exactly why such hypermilitar…
Anti-Palestinian racism and the criminalisation of international solidarity in Europe
In this polemic against state policies and sections of the mainstream media in France, Germany, Italy and the UK since 7 October 2023 in relation to Israel/Palestine, the author exposes the ways in which a concerted anti-Palestinian racism interacts with civilisational racism and the criminalisation of international solidarity. The piece, based on speeches and briefings by the author in 2023–24, foregrounds the attack on the Palestinian diaspora …
The hurricane from the Right
In Race & Class 65.2, two key articles examined the British war on woke (Hugh Davies and Sheena MacRae) and the role of Tory 'post-racial' gatekeepers (Rima Saini, Michael Bankole and Neema Begum). This commentary draws out the lessons for activists, from the two articles and campaigns on the ground, as to how far-right 'theories' and ideas are becoming mainstreamed by the media, politicians and academics
Civilisational racism, ethnonationalism and the clash of imperialisms in Ukraine
This article, developed from a panel speech on ‘Radical internationalism and shifts in the global order’ at the IRR50 New Circuits of Anti-racism Conference at King’s College, London, October 2022, takes issue with simplistic and partial positions surrounding Russia’s war with Ukraine. It points to the fact that we now have to reckon with a clash of imperialisms (of the US and Russia), the weaponising of local nationalisms and a reworking of Euro…
Shoot to Kill: Police and power in South Africa By Christopher McMichael
Who is behind the ‘war on woke’: An interview with Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola
Manufactured, divisive and destructive outrage over supposed ‘woke’ issues has long been building in the UK, fomented by think-tanks, media and politicians. To understand the relationship between culture wars in the US and the UK, the interests that lie behind them, and what can be learnt from US resistances to corporate donor influence, Liz Fekete interviews Ralph Wilson and Isaac Kamola, authors of Free Speech and Koch Money: manufacturing a ca…
Anti-fascism – a new horizon
In an extended version of a presentation on 3 February 2022 to the Stuart Hall Foundation’s fifth Annual Conversation on ‘Manufacturing Dissent: Moments of Solidarity’, the director of the Institute of Race Relations asks whether a refreshed anti-fascism, that tackles the global war against the poor, New Right ‘culture wars’, ‘total policing’ and the surveillance state, can act as an inspiration for diffuse struggles to come together into communi…
Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’
Following analyses in the US of the reaction to Black Lives Matter in the Blue Lives Matter movement and the recasting of the police as victims, the author explores similar tendencies in Europe, in the context of changes in territorial policing, new technology and enhanced police powers under neoliberalism. She examines how racism has become entrenched in policing as the rank and file are resituating themselves as society’s victims and organising…
Coercion and compliance: The Politics of the 'Hostile Environment
A roundtable discussion on the UK's 'hostile environment' policy (on making life so difficult and unpleasant for certain groups, they would 'choose' to leave) from new angles: the weaponisation of deterrence; how the psy-complex is helping to obscure the consideration of material conditions shaping human desperation; the exploitation of and life and death conditions for workers without rights; the difficult questions for BAME and other profession…
Reclaiming the fight against racism in the UK
In the light of highly politicised accusations of antisemitism against the Labour Party and its leader during the general election, the author argues for the necessity for activists to reclaim anti-racism. She shows how over a number of years the space for anti-racism has been shrinking. The professionalisation of anti-racism, especially around hate crime, has tended to shift focus from the social to the individual, from the institutional and sys…
Lessons from the fight against Golden Dawn
The ongoing trial of sixty-eight members of Golden Dawn, a violent neo-Nazi political party in Greece, has been called 'one of the most important trials in contemporary Greek history'. Based on direct observation and insights from a trip to Athens in September 2019 to observe the trial, which coincided with the sixth anniversary of the murder of the anti-fascist rapper Pavlos Fyssas, this article documents the role that activists, lawyers and the…
Response to ‘Migration, solidarity and the limits of Europe’ by Martina Tazzioli and William Walters
Colonial continuities within managed migration
Responding to Vicki Squire’s critique in this issue of the United Nations Global Compacts on refugees and migration, the author argues that this process is in keeping with the neo-colonial approach to global mobility that has taken root since the 1990s. The EU’s complicity in Italy’s current migration agenda, particularly through its material support for the externalization of immigration controls to Libya, is examined. Italian interior minister …
Alt-America: The rise of the radical Right in the age of Trump
Migrants, borders and the criminalisation of solidarity in the EU
Europe's response in 2015 to the arrival of the largest forced displacement of peoples since the second world war, was not to attend to their needs but to securitise its borders and use laws aimed at people traffickers and smugglers, against those giving aid to the destitute new arrivals. This article focuses on a discussion at the launch of Humanitarianism: the unacceptable face of solidarity, between the Institute of Race Relations, NGOs, solid…
Lammy Review: Without racial justice, can there be trust
The author takes issue with the fact that a UK government review, under David Lammy MP (the Lammy Review), into the experiences of people of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds of the criminal justice system, though finding clear disproportionality, avoids all mention of institutional racism – a key finding in the 1999 Macpherson Report – preferring instead to concentrate on ‘bias’. Its recommendations for changes within the system will …
Free Movement and Beyond: Agenda setting for Brexit Britain
Barbara Harlow 1948-2017: A rose for the warrior
Flying the flag for neoliberalism
The author looks, in the light of the June 2016 EU referendum vote in the UK, at the apparent rupture between Eurosceptic nationalists and transnational neoliberal elites, examining also the interlinked decline in support for Social Democratic and Conservative mainstream political parties. She examines how ultra-nationalism plays out in different parts of the EU at a time of retrenchment, austerity, terrorism and insecurity - to fortify conservat…
Submission from the IRR to the Labour Party Inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, including Islamophobia
Following a number of accusations of anti-Semitism against British Labour Party activists, including former London mayor Ken Livingstone, an inquiry into racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia was instituted by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in May 2016 - to be chaired by Shami Chakrabarti (former director of Liberty). This article consists of the submission to the inquiry from the Institute of Race Relations which suggests the parameters within whi…
Our blood in the British economy: An interview with Sadar Ali Malik
Sadar Ali Malik, originally from Kashmir, was an early settler in Canning Town, East London. He was interviewed in 1990 about his experiences of work and community organising over the previous thirty years, recalling the harsh working conditions and describing the climate of everyday racism. Apart from becoming an active shop steward at Ford's, Mr Malik also formed the Canning Town Muslim Welfare Association and played a part in national communit…
Dockers Against Racism: An interview with Micky Fenn
This hitherto unpublished interview with left activist and trade union organiser Micky Fenn (1938-1996) was carried out in 1990. He recalls how he, as a member of the Unofficial Shop Stewards' Committee in the London Docks, dealt with fellow trade unionists' racism (even turning the racist vernacular to his own ends). The interview covers the critical episode which reflects the nadir of British trade unionism when, in April 1968, Dockers downed t…
Rethinking Border Control for a Globalizing World: A Preferred Future
Hungary: Power, punishment and the 'Christian-national idea
The spectacle of exhausted refugees being tear-gassed and held in metal pens in the summer of 2015 drew international attention to the nature of the Hungarian state. Under prime minister Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz, Hungary's southern borders have been militarised, the Constitution rewritten, the Constitutional Court weakened, welfare turned to forced workfare. This article examines how, despite being part of the EU, substantive democracy …
Rewiring fascists: Behind the cult of Exit
The European Commission is advocating Exit programmes for White Supremacists as part of its counter-radicalisation programme. The author critically examines the experiences of Sweden and Germany in using Exit with far-right extremists since the 1990s, and finds anti-racism itself being blamed by its practitioners who tend to see their clients as new victims. The programmes themselves have no effective evaluation mechanism of fascist disengagement…
Anti-Muslim Racism and the European Security State
Across Europe, the ‘war on terror’ is having a major impact on race relations policies. New legislation, policing and counter-terrorist measures are casting Muslims, whether settled or immigrant, as the ‘enemy within’. In the process, the parameters of xeno-racism, which targets impoverished asylum seekers, have been extended to Muslim communities. Islam is seen as a threat to Europe, which is responding not only with draconian attacks on civil r…
Enlightened fundamentalism? Immigration, feminism and the Right
Anti-immigration, Islamophobic and extreme-Right parties have long been a feature of European politics. But, increasingly, the views and policies promulgated by such parties are being absorbed into a process of governmental policy and decision-making dictated by the 'war on terror'. National security agendas overlap with the immigration control programmes of the far Right and integration measures imposed by governments reinforce Islamophobia. 'Mu…
The deportation machine: Europe, asylum and human rights
Issues of immigration, asylum and refugee rights have become targets for politicians of all persuasions across Europe, from social democrats to the far Right. Ever-increasing pressure, spear-headed by populist media and electioneering politicians, to reduce the numbers of those seeking asylum, to raise the bar for successful claims and return those whose claims have ‘failed’ has resulted in sustained abuse of human rights. Europe’s deportation pr…
Alt-America: The rise of the radical Right in the age of Trump
The Emergence of Xeno-Racism
L'A. nous fait part dans cet article de l'emergence de la notion de xenoracisme dans les societes occidentales. Plus que le racisme primaire, le xenoracisme englobe la criminalisation des refugies clandestins, particulierement ceux de l'ancienne zone d'influence sovietique. Les restrictions apportees au droit d'asile et aux droits de l'homme par les pays du G8 confirment cette nouvelle forme d'exclusion et discrimination sociale. ainsi, en Grande…
Migrants, borders and the criminalisation of solidarity in the EU
Europe's response in 2015 to the arrival of the largest forced displacement of peoples since the second world war, was not to attend to their needs but to securitise its borders and use laws aimed at people traffickers and smugglers, against those giving aid to the destitute new arrivals. This article focuses on a discussion at the launch of Humanitarianism: the unacceptable face of solidarity, between the Institute of Race Relations, NGOs, solid…
Hungary: Power, punishment and the 'Christian-national idea
The spectacle of exhausted refugees being tear-gassed and held in metal pens in the summer of 2015 drew international attention to the nature of the Hungarian state. Under prime minister Viktor Orbán, the leader of Fidesz, Hungary's southern borders have been militarised, the Constitution rewritten, the Constitutional Court weakened, welfare turned to forced workfare. This article examines how, despite being part of the EU, substantive democracy …
Europe against the Roma
The ancient hatred of Roma minorities is now being compounded in Europe by a post-austerity fear of the destitute 'scrounger'. Romani communities, many consisting of those forced by market economics and far-right politics to flee westwards from former 'eastern bloc' countries, facilitated in the latter 2000s by the free movement enabled by accession to the EU, now find themselves the victims of open hostility to 'foreigners' and state-sponsored r…
The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre
Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the Norwegian massacre, was motivated by a belief in a Muslim conspiracy to take over Europe. Extreme and aberrant his actions were, but, explains the author, elements of this conspiracy theory are held and circulated in Europe today across a broad political spectrum, with internet-focused counter-jihadist activists at one end and neoconservative and cultural conservative columnists, commentators and politic…
Accelerated removals: The human cost of EU deportation policies
As European countries implement policies of 'accelerated removal', the legal rights of migrants and 'failed' asylum seekers are being eroded and force is being used more often in their deportations. Certain groups, including the Roma, unaccompanied children, the elderly and ill as well as asylum seekers from many African countries, are being targeted for removal as readmission agreements are negotiated, and many deportations now take place to Afg…
Europe: Crimes of Solidarity
In response to increasing activism in support of migrants and asylum seekers across Europe, EU governments are seeking to criminalise acts of solidarity, in a number of different ways. Laws against the assisting of illegal migration - originally intended to target traffickers - are being deployed against those offering humanitarian support, such as accommodation or healthcare. And politicians who take a public stand in defence of migrants and asy…
Foreign nationals, enemy penology and the criminal justice system
In recent years, European governments have introduced a series of measures aimed at clamping down on foreign nationals within criminal justice systems. Such measures have included policies of automatic deportation on completion of prison sentences of a certain length, harsher sentencing, prison segregation, and restrictions on access to citizenship and rights to permanent settlement. This article argues that such measures constitute a separate cr…
Reclaiming the fight against racism in the UK
In the light of highly politicised accusations of antisemitism against the Labour Party and its leader during the general election, the author argues for the necessity for activists to reclaim anti-racism. She shows how over a number of years the space for anti-racism has been shrinking. The professionalisation of anti-racism, especially around hate crime, has tended to shift focus from the social to the individual, from the institutional and sys…
Lammy Review: Without racial justice, can there be trust
The author takes issue with the fact that a UK government review, under David Lammy MP (the Lammy Review), into the experiences of people of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds of the criminal justice system, though finding clear disproportionality, avoids all mention of institutional racism – a key finding in the 1999 Macpherson Report – preferring instead to concentrate on ‘bias’. Its recommendations for changes within the system will …
Detained: Foreign children in Europe
The EU's target-driven and draconian deportation policy towards asylum seekers and undocumented migrant workers has a shocking but little heeded impact on minors, whether the children of asylum-seeking families, separated/unaccompanied minors seeking refuge or the children of sans papiers. The detention of children whose only crime is their parentage is now commonplace across Europe and often in contravention of international law. The harm done t…
Victims, the 'urban jungle' and the new racism
Anti-fascism or anti-extremism
Anti-extremism frameworks, now utilised in policy and academic circles, are masking the multi-dimensional and pan-European nature of contemporary fascism and the role of the state. The author argues that the threat of fascist violence across Europe is now very great. Yet anti-fascists are being prevented both by the new narratives on cumulative extremism, which tend to equate threats including those from Right and Left, and by state security poli…
Europe: Speech Crime' and Deportation
Throughout Europe, reforms to immigration law are being introduced which effectively tie rights to citizenship and residence to limitations on freedom of speech; the penalty for breaching these is, increasingly, deportation. So far, these measures have only been applied to Muslims, usually religious leaders, held to have made inflammatory or offensive statements -! offences which could be dealt with under existing public order law. But the use of…
The Terrorism Act 2000: An Interview with Gareth Peirce
In 2000, a new Terrorism Act, incorporating the broadest ever definition of terrorism and giving police and prosecutors freedom to arrest almost anyone involved in some way with refugee solidarity work, was passed. Then, on 29 March 2001, under the first order made under the Act, twenty-one organisations were proscribed through provisions which allow for the banning of organisations which the home secretary believes are involved in terrorism, or …
UK commentary: Europe for the Europeans: East End for the East Enders
Anti-Palestinian racism and the criminalisation of international solidarity in Europe
In this polemic against state policies and sections of the mainstream media in France, Germany, Italy and the UK since 7 October 2023 in relation to Israel/Palestine, the author exposes the ways in which a concerted anti-Palestinian racism interacts with civilisational racism and the criminalisation of international solidarity. The piece, based on speeches and briefings by the author in 2023–24, foregrounds the attack on the Palestinian diaspora …
Popular racism in corporate Europe
The human trade
Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’
Following analyses in the US of the reaction to Black Lives Matter in the Blue Lives Matter movement and the recasting of the police as victims, the author explores similar tendencies in Europe, in the context of changes in territorial policing, new technology and enhanced police powers under neoliberalism. She examines how racism has become entrenched in policing as the rank and file are resituating themselves as society’s victims and organising…
Coercion and compliance: The Politics of the 'Hostile Environment
A roundtable discussion on the UK's 'hostile environment' policy (on making life so difficult and unpleasant for certain groups, they would 'choose' to leave) from new angles: the weaponisation of deterrence; how the psy-complex is helping to obscure the consideration of material conditions shaping human desperation; the exploitation of and life and death conditions for workers without rights; the difficult questions for BAME and other profession…
Victims, the 'urban jungle' and the new racism
UK commentary 2: The anti-fascist movement: lessons we must learn
UK commentary: Police (1): The cover up
Police (2): The image-makers
UK commentary: Racist violence: meeting the new challenges
UK commentary: Fay Weldon: radical heretic or social puritan
UK commentary: Europe for the Europeans: East End for the East Enders
Report of the European Committee on racism and xenophobia: A critique
Belgium: The Racist Cocktail
Europe: From refugee to terrorist
The human trade
Blackening the economy: The Path to Convergence
Popular racism in corporate Europe
The surrogate university
Why we should say no to proportional representation
How the German Press Stoked the Lübeck Fires
The Terrorism Act 2000: An Interview with Gareth Peirce
In 2000, a new Terrorism Act, incorporating the broadest ever definition of terrorism and giving police and prosecutors freedom to arrest almost anyone involved in some way with refugee solidarity work, was passed. Then, on 29 March 2001, under the first order made under the Act, twenty-one organisations were proscribed through provisions which allow for the banning of organisations which the home secretary believes are involved in terrorism, or …
The Emergence of Xeno-Racism
L'A. nous fait part dans cet article de l'emergence de la notion de xenoracisme dans les societes occidentales. Plus que le racisme primaire, le xenoracisme englobe la criminalisation des refugies clandestins, particulierement ceux de l'ancienne zone d'influence sovietique. Les restrictions apportees au droit d'asile et aux droits de l'homme par les pays du G8 confirment cette nouvelle forme d'exclusion et discrimination sociale. ainsi, en Grande…
Peoples' Security Versus National Security
Commentary
Anti-Muslim Racism and the European Security State
Across Europe, the ‘war on terror’ is having a major impact on race relations policies. New legislation, policing and counter-terrorist measures are casting Muslims, whether settled or immigrant, as the ‘enemy within’. In the process, the parameters of xeno-racism, which targets impoverished asylum seekers, have been extended to Muslim communities. Islam is seen as a threat to Europe, which is responding not only with draconian attacks on civil r…
The deportation machine: Europe, asylum and human rights
Issues of immigration, asylum and refugee rights have become targets for politicians of all persuasions across Europe, from social democrats to the far Right. Ever-increasing pressure, spear-headed by populist media and electioneering politicians, to reduce the numbers of those seeking asylum, to raise the bar for successful claims and return those whose claims have ‘failed’ has resulted in sustained abuse of human rights. Europe’s deportation pr…
Enlightened fundamentalism? Immigration, feminism and the Right
Anti-immigration, Islamophobic and extreme-Right parties have long been a feature of European politics. But, increasingly, the views and policies promulgated by such parties are being absorbed into a process of governmental policy and decision-making dictated by the 'war on terror'. National security agendas overlap with the immigration control programmes of the far Right and integration measures imposed by governments reinforce Islamophobia. 'Mu…
Europe: Speech Crime' and Deportation
Throughout Europe, reforms to immigration law are being introduced which effectively tie rights to citizenship and residence to limitations on freedom of speech; the penalty for breaching these is, increasingly, deportation. So far, these measures have only been applied to Muslims, usually religious leaders, held to have made inflammatory or offensive statements -! offences which could be dealt with under existing public order law. But the use of…
Detained: Foreign children in Europe
The EU's target-driven and draconian deportation policy towards asylum seekers and undocumented migrant workers has a shocking but little heeded impact on minors, whether the children of asylum-seeking families, separated/unaccompanied minors seeking refuge or the children of sans papiers. The detention of children whose only crime is their parentage is now commonplace across Europe and often in contravention of international law. The harm done t…
Political science (59 works) · Sociology (52 works) · Law (39 works) · Law (34 works) · Politics (31 works) · Criminology (21 works) · Racism (20 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (12 works) · Populism, Right-Wing Movements (12 works)