Ben Whitham
@drbenwhitham.bsky.social
Senior Policy and Research Officer at Refugee Action | Research Associate at SOAS | Assistant Instructor at Tiger Crane Kung Fu, London | Trade unionist, martial artist, antifascist. Views my own.
https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/ben-whitham
https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/ben-whitham
He admits "causing grievous bodily harm with intent, affray, wounding with intent and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm", while "victims include two babies and six other children". But it's still a "crash" and not an "attack", because whiteness.
November 26, 2025 at 11:53 AM
He admits "causing grievous bodily harm with intent, affray, wounding with intent and attempting to cause grievous bodily harm", while "victims include two babies and six other children". But it's still a "crash" and not an "attack", because whiteness.
We are quoted alongside other organisations that work with refugees here. The Home Secretary's plans for UK asylum policy, to be formally announced later this afternoon, will make this a dark day for people seeking safety in the UK, for our wider communities, and for human rights more broadly.
November 17, 2025 at 12:37 PM
We are quoted alongside other organisations that work with refugees here. The Home Secretary's plans for UK asylum policy, to be formally announced later this afternoon, will make this a dark day for people seeking safety in the UK, for our wider communities, and for human rights more broadly.
Just in time for panto season:
HE'S BEHIND YOU!
HE'S BEHIND YOU!
November 13, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Just in time for panto season:
HE'S BEHIND YOU!
HE'S BEHIND YOU!
The BBC happily calls anyone from swastika-waving, streetfighting American neo-Nazis to broadly liberal, one-nation Tory peers "conservative" but simply cannot arrive at a "clear definition" when it comes to democratic socialism?
November 5, 2025 at 10:13 AM
The BBC happily calls anyone from swastika-waving, streetfighting American neo-Nazis to broadly liberal, one-nation Tory peers "conservative" but simply cannot arrive at a "clear definition" when it comes to democratic socialism?
The Greek edition of Global Politics (with a slightly longer title than the English one) is out now!
November 4, 2025 at 2:33 PM
The Greek edition of Global Politics (with a slightly longer title than the English one) is out now!
I accept police & govt might think that, but that's not how far-right "reason" works. This policy of announcing a racial profile actually validates racist violence. Hard to elaborate within the character limit, but here's the long version! (yes I use linkedin to post essay-length political rants).
November 3, 2025 at 3:02 PM
I accept police & govt might think that, but that's not how far-right "reason" works. This policy of announcing a racial profile actually validates racist violence. Hard to elaborate within the character limit, but here's the long version! (yes I use linkedin to post essay-length political rants).
Well we know the colour of his skin and country of his birth because that was the information police deemed it most important to share yesterday, immediately upon announcing his arrest. Which is a terrifying indictment of how far the British state has capitulated to far-right political movements.
November 3, 2025 at 12:39 PM
Well we know the colour of his skin and country of his birth because that was the information police deemed it most important to share yesterday, immediately upon announcing his arrest. Which is a terrifying indictment of how far the British state has capitulated to far-right political movements.
Matthew Goodwin, who is still welcomed by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets, now explicitly promotes a white supremacism identical to Enoch Powell's ("the West Indian or Indian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman ... in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still")
November 3, 2025 at 8:37 AM
Matthew Goodwin, who is still welcomed by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets, now explicitly promotes a white supremacism identical to Enoch Powell's ("the West Indian or Indian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman ... in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still")
My contribution to the i's piece on "asylum crisis". It's not a crisis of "border security" but of people seeking safety suffering and dying at the border and in the asylum system. As they are mainly people of colour, it's also a crisis of racial justice. inews.co.uk/opinion/fix-...
October 29, 2025 at 8:42 AM
My contribution to the i's piece on "asylum crisis". It's not a crisis of "border security" but of people seeking safety suffering and dying at the border and in the asylum system. As they are mainly people of colour, it's also a crisis of racial justice. inews.co.uk/opinion/fix-...
"racism affects people on the level of perception, enabling them to hallucinate a reality that conforms to their predetermined expectations"
- Jackie Wang, "Carceral Capitalism"
- Jackie Wang, "Carceral Capitalism"
![Screenshot from a BBC News report: "Here in the heart of the Peak District, there is one main issue on people's minds: everyone in the laid-back spa town of Buxton, it seems, has a view on plans for a £100m redevelopment of the town centre.
As part of the redevelopment, the River Wye, currently running narrow and shallow through the centre of town, is to be widened. When the plans were posted on one Facebook group, the first comment underneath read: "Open up the river, yeah so the dinghies can [head] straight to the hotel!"
Illegal immigration, perhaps, is the second-biggest issue on people's minds - even though there are very few immigrants in this Derbyshire town of 20,000 people, known for its opera house and grand Georgian crescent. It was such concerns that helped Reform UK win control of Derbyshire County Council in May.
The rise of Reform UK in the opinion polls, and the fact immigration is now the top concern for voters across the country according to YouGov, external, is not seen only in the places with most immigration. It is apparent even in small towns like Buxton, that has very little.
In May, Reform UK won in one Buxton county council ward and came a close second to the Conservatives in the other.
It is 250 miles from here to Dover, where the small boats arrive, and there are no hotels in Buxton housing asylum seekers.
In fact, the latest government figures show that in June, of the nearly 103,000 asylum seekers being accommodated across the UK, none of them lived in High Peak Borough Council, the area that covers Buxton. Yet six months ago, in the county council elections in Buxton, almost a third of those who voted backed Reform UK."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5q5aphkryddfhrwdtbnf6nlk/bafkreihkdcshk6xlvzewqfjkzzn5u7rzluk5vyohcubsrcsyl6alacayiu@jpeg)
October 28, 2025 at 11:16 AM
"racism affects people on the level of perception, enabling them to hallucinate a reality that conforms to their predetermined expectations"
- Jackie Wang, "Carceral Capitalism"
- Jackie Wang, "Carceral Capitalism"
For his (many) faults, Žižek's early work on ideology remains helpful for understanding our politics today. Robert Jenrick's comments, in this analysis, are a racist ideological statement aimed at "structuring symbolic space" so that others will perceive Black and Brown people as "excess" in the UK.
![Screenshot of a quotation from a book: ‘One of the fundamental stratagems of ideology is the reference to some self-evidence – ‘Look, you can see for yourself how things are!’. ‘Let the facts speak for themselves’ is perhaps the arch-statement of ideology – the point being, precisely, that facts never ‘speak for themselves’ but are always made to speak by a network of discursive devices. […] Discourse analysis is perhaps at its strongest in answering this precise question: when a racist Englishman says ‘There are too many Pakistanis on our streets!’, how – from what place – does he ‘see’ this – that is how is his symbolic space structured so that he can perceive the fact of a Pakistani strolling along a London street as a disturbing surplus? That is to say, here one must bear in mind Lacan’s motto that nothing is lacking in the real: every perception of a lack or a surplus (‘not enough of this’, ‘too much of that’) always involves a symbolic universe’. Source: Slavoj Žižek, Mapping Ideology (1994, page 11).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5q5aphkryddfhrwdtbnf6nlk/bafkreib6kff5xqvr5oc6pxfatqnsldfgmdw2rwsnw247l4cjq2phvnx3hu@jpeg)
October 7, 2025 at 1:24 PM
For his (many) faults, Žižek's early work on ideology remains helpful for understanding our politics today. Robert Jenrick's comments, in this analysis, are a racist ideological statement aimed at "structuring symbolic space" so that others will perceive Black and Brown people as "excess" in the UK.
After a horrific antisemitic atrocity that took two lives yesterday, the Met essentially commits to devoting more resources to arresting pensioners protesting genocide than protecting Jewish communities and "focusing on serious crimes"
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
October 3, 2025 at 7:39 AM
After a horrific antisemitic atrocity that took two lives yesterday, the Met essentially commits to devoting more resources to arresting pensioners protesting genocide than protecting Jewish communities and "focusing on serious crimes"
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
Pretty sure this has always been the philosophy underpinning British private schools (and consequently also the entire political, military, media, legal and business elite).
October 1, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Pretty sure this has always been the philosophy underpinning British private schools (and consequently also the entire political, military, media, legal and business elite).
The last line here might be easier to sell if Labour had itself done anything but launch further brutal assaults on living standards in more than a year in office. The two-child cap, disability benefit cuts, austerity for public services, no new wealth tax... where's the alternative economic offer?
September 29, 2025 at 12:56 PM
The last line here might be easier to sell if Labour had itself done anything but launch further brutal assaults on living standards in more than a year in office. The two-child cap, disability benefit cuts, austerity for public services, no new wealth tax... where's the alternative economic offer?
The press didn't write an article blaming "illegal migrants" for "strain on our public services" (directly contradicting his previous view that "poor public services are not the fault of migrants ... they're political failure") and publish it in a notoriously racist rag, though. Keir Starmer did.
September 25, 2025 at 8:58 AM
The press didn't write an article blaming "illegal migrants" for "strain on our public services" (directly contradicting his previous view that "poor public services are not the fault of migrants ... they're political failure") and publish it in a notoriously racist rag, though. Keir Starmer did.
Want to know how far-right views got mainstreamed to the point that we just had the biggest march organised by fascist and white supremacist groups in UK history? Exhibit A: Living conditions in asylum hotels are awful (some of which even reported in the article) but the BBC chose this headline.
September 23, 2025 at 2:01 PM
Want to know how far-right views got mainstreamed to the point that we just had the biggest march organised by fascist and white supremacist groups in UK history? Exhibit A: Living conditions in asylum hotels are awful (some of which even reported in the article) but the BBC chose this headline.
"Completely different" except both love to scapegoat, criminalise and deport refugees, refuse to tax the wealthy as public services collapse, deny trans people's rights, snatch welfare from kids and disabled people, endorse thinly veiled white nationalist sentiment, do nothing on climate crisis...
September 16, 2025 at 9:13 PM
"Completely different" except both love to scapegoat, criminalise and deport refugees, refuse to tax the wealthy as public services collapse, deny trans people's rights, snatch welfare from kids and disabled people, endorse thinly veiled white nationalist sentiment, do nothing on climate crisis...
Truly disgusting stuff, and re-confirms that this government are truly even worse than their predecessors on migration and asylum. Vicious, racist, cruel and cowardly policymaking to chase imagined votes they will never win. Unforgivable.
September 2, 2025 at 10:46 AM
Truly disgusting stuff, and re-confirms that this government are truly even worse than their predecessors on migration and asylum. Vicious, racist, cruel and cowardly policymaking to chase imagined votes they will never win. Unforgivable.
"Stars - spectacular representations of living human beings - project this general banality into images of permitted roles. Specialists in apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects people can identify with to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations they actually live"
August 27, 2025 at 8:22 AM
"Stars - spectacular representations of living human beings - project this general banality into images of permitted roles. Specialists in apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects people can identify with to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations they actually live"
The UK remains absolutely determined to prove that "Children of Men" was a blueprint for government rather than a dire warning about our trajectory. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
August 26, 2025 at 5:41 AM
The UK remains absolutely determined to prove that "Children of Men" was a blueprint for government rather than a dire warning about our trajectory. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
We were among those closing offices due to the elevated far-right threat. One of the more disturbing aspects of this was how unsurprised many people were to hear it. The normalisation of the violent fascist threat to refugees and charities is incredibly dangerous. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
August 24, 2025 at 8:24 AM
We were among those closing offices due to the elevated far-right threat. One of the more disturbing aspects of this was how unsurprised many people were to hear it. The normalisation of the violent fascist threat to refugees and charities is incredibly dangerous. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
Racist tropes and abuse directed at people seeking asylum, indulged and appeased by the Labour government and actively encouraged and instigated by the Conservative and far-right opposition, are a threat to all people of colour in the UK, and ultimately to all hope for a more just and equal society.
August 20, 2025 at 8:33 AM
Racist tropes and abuse directed at people seeking asylum, indulged and appeased by the Labour government and actively encouraged and instigated by the Conservative and far-right opposition, are a threat to all people of colour in the UK, and ultimately to all hope for a more just and equal society.
The extent to which far-right racists and their interests have come to dominate and drive politics and policy in this country - thanks to capitulation, or more often active enabling, by mainstream political parties and media - is truly disturbing.
August 13, 2025 at 6:28 AM
The extent to which far-right racists and their interests have come to dominate and drive politics and policy in this country - thanks to capitulation, or more often active enabling, by mainstream political parties and media - is truly disturbing.