‘Xenophobia is a matter of power’

Poet and novelist Tabish Khair’s latest book, The New Xenophobia, decodes how capitalism is linked to xenophobia in context of the recent economic and refugee crisis in Europe. He analyses the fear of the “stranger” in historical and socio-economic context. He argues that this exaggerated fear and hatred of the “stranger” results in their curtailment and even elimination at times.

The New Xenophobia explains how xenophobia is linked to power and capitalism and what makes contemporary xenophobia “new”. While old xenophobia is “monstrous and quickly identifiable”, new xenophobia — seen in the context of power and capitalism — is less visible. He also examines the three “isms”— racism, nationalism and Nazism — that are commonly associated with outbreaks of xenophobia.

Khair’s book Muslim Modernities analysed the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, the Iraq war, Danish Prophet cartoon controversy objectively and his novel How to Fight Islamist Terror from the Missionary Position focused on how Muslims are perceived and judged and how one kind of Muslim judges another. The New Xenophobia offers a fresh perspective on the rise of ethnic, cultural, and religious politics in today’s age of globalisation.

Excerpts from the interview

Isn’t xenophobia natural, since it’s a version of fear

Fear is natural, but xenophobia is not just fear. It is an exaggerated and excessive fear. Just as it might be natural to fear snakes — though one could argue that one should be able to distinguish between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes, etc. — but ophiophobia is an exaggerated and abnormal fear of snakes. Ophiophobics might not just fear snakes but also anything that resembles snakes, like a rope.

By definition, a phobia is not just a natural fear, but an exaggerated and abnormal one. Moreover, as I illustrate in my book, human society consists of strangers; strangers are not always feared. But xenophobia constructs some groups as particular types of strangers who should be feared and hated. This has to do with power, an unfair bid at power. Sometimes groups that were “friends” once are constructed as detestable strangers to be feared, hated and eliminated. This is a very complex matter, not just a natural fear, because human social consciousness is a very complex matter. I illustrate in the book that xenophobes create a façade of natural fear, which is misleading, to hide their bid for power. You argue that “xenophobia is a rational matter”, but don’t you think that this fear or discrimination of “the stranger” is an emotional response

What I meant is that many critiques of xenophobia see it as an emotional reaction. But xenophobic sentiments are often reasoned out too. So xenophobia, like any other complex human response, contains both what we call emotion and reason. Moreover, I argue in the book that finally xenophobia is not a matter of either emotion or reason only; it is a matter of structures of power.

Xenophobia is evoked to empower the in-group over the out-group, partly because the real structures of fear, oppression and confusion are not addressed.

We see a rope and we shout snake and strike it. Or, as happened during Nazi times, we construct a people (say, “Jews”) using the image of dangerous, sneaky snakes — and we strike at the people. That is xenophobia. You write that “new xenophobia” is mainly restricted to Europe. Is that because of the economic crisis or the “refugee crisis” which is being given the loaded term “migrant” crisis. New xenophobia is pronounced in those circles that reap the most benefits from neo-liberal high capitalism, where most of capital does not exist as cash but circulates as numbers and most of capital is not invested in any material production or trade. One of my points of departure is to see xenophobia as a matter of power — it is used by “in-groups” to exert their power over “out-groups” — it follows that forms of xenophobia will change in societies where power has grown more numerical and more abstract than ever before.

In European welfare states, this is compounded by the fact that these welfare states are rich because their capital circulates with very little impediment all over the globe, but they cannot permit global labour the same kind of freedom — this is contrary to the classical definition of capitalism as “free circulation of capital, goods and labour”.

The refugee crisis is a much smaller thing (most refugees are staying in neighbouring countries and NOT “coming” to Europe). But it can be used to illustrate my point: the refugees are mostly victims of old forms of xenophobia in places like Iraq and Syria (religious oppression, sexism, bodily discrimination and threat, etc.), but they are often considered abstract “economic migrants” (not refugees, as you rightly point out) in Europe — because the stranger that high capitalist European xenophobes fear more is the worker entering their artificially protected welfare spaces.

In your book you write that “no one’s a racist”, then how does racism still exist Is it that Eurepean countries are ghettoising the migrant population because they form “cheap labour”

Racism is a form of old xenophobia. It has not disappeared. For instance, I find many Indians and Arabs more racist, in the old sense, than most Europeans today. And it has not totally disappeared even in European welfare states. But old forms of racism are relatively rare in developed, rich European states; current European reasons for keeping out “foreigners” are abstract and abstractly economic, not overtly racist in most cases. You are not kept out because you belong to another race, but because you will take away jobs, etc. So, in that sense, “no one is a racist” in these countries, but of course, xenophobia persists, and sometimes impacts on the old victims in new ways.

Prophet cartoons, France’s ban on the burqa and veil, Hungary saying that it will not accept large-scale Muslim migration , you say, are instances of “new xenophobia”. While you argue that capitalism is the main cause of xenophobia, does revival of religion add to it

The way religion is being “revived” has a lot to do with capitalism today. Where would Wahhabis be without rich Saudi Arabia Where would the Christian right in America be without its funding and its “white” economic privileges Would the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria continue to get the funds it needs and smuggle out the oil it smuggles out without a “global” capitalist system where the flow of international capital is left almost unchecked Religious fundamentalists sometimes portray themselves as opposed to some aspects of global high capitalism, but they are knee-deep in its mud and their “remedies” point to the past because they have no real solution for the future. Hence, the seemingly “feudal” and reactionary character of most kinds of religious revivalism, also in India.

What about national identity

Too many books have shown how “national identity” is constructed and imposed. People have the right to decide what sort of society to live in, but no society has stayed fixed or will stay fixed. It has to be a democratic decision that takes into account the international sources of one’s “national” wealth and power. That is what xenophobes — including religious and nationalist ones — are not willing to do. They are not searching for honest answers; they feel scapegoats will suffice.

Is Europe becoming a closed society for outsiders

I wish to stress this that much of Europe contains some of the most open and least xenophobic people in the world. For every xenophobic German or Frenchman, there is at least one German or Frenchman who is open to strangers, including Muslims. This is a high ratio. And many of the others are not necessarily xenophobic but bewildered by what they cannot understand. There are people like that everywhere. My book is a bid to make them understand, as well as I can.