Racialised political discourse as public pedagogy in the UK and Germany: the sanctioning of racial violence and reproduction of European whiteness

This paper explores the causes of anti-immigration riots via comparison between the riots in Southport, UK, in 2024, and those in Chemnitz, Germany in 2018. While previous research on anti-immigration riots has tended to focus on the role of the far-right or competition for resources, we find that in both cases examined here, in fact, mainstream political discourse normalises racism and legitimates racial violence. We conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of politicians’ speeches, media commentary and policies relating to citizenship, migration and race in the years preceding these riots. To better understand the effects of mainstream political discourse, we interpret it as public pedagogy (Giroux 2000). This enables an understanding of political discourses as having pedagogical force that allocates racially polarised subjectivities to the population and lends political agency to those engaging in racialised violence. This comparative analysis allows us to examine the pedagogical role of political discourse in reproducing racial hierarchies and silencing systemic racism under the guise of far-right extremism or class-based deprivation. Drawing on theories of global white supremacy (Allen, 2001) and European whiteness (Blaagaard, 2008) we argue that the riots provide insights into the current nature of deeply embedded and structural white supremacy in both countries.