Vigilant Whiteness: racism, transphobia and the mainstreaming of far-right politics in Britain

Abstract

Far-right agendas have moved to the centre stage of politics. Here, we examine how registers of difference are crafted within reactionary movements in the UK. We analyse social media activities and interviews with individuals who gained a public profile by advancing far-right agendas. Racist and transphobic discourses thereby fulfil parallel functions: both operate via projected scenarios of biological contamination and criminal transgression. They draw on amalgamations of colonial registers of biology and culture and normalize roles such as ‘threat’ versus ‘protector’. Racialized and gendered ‘Others’ are imagined as contagious, invasive, transgressive and dangerous species. Cisgendered Whiteness, in contrast, materializes via projections of vigilance, watchfulness, protection, and guardianship. These projections have political-economic implications for the distribution of rights and resources. Thus, the mainstreaming of far-right agendas nurtures combative and belligerent political subjectivities that centre cisgendered Whiteness. We also discuss how this notion of Whiteness becomes conditional, e.g. visa vis Europe’s borderlands.