Angry White People
Angry White People: Coming Face-to-face with the British Far-Right is a non-fiction book by London-based writer Hsiao-Hung Pai. It was published by Zed Books in 2016. The book is about racism among Britain's white working class, with a focus on the English Defence League. The foreword was written by British poet Benjamin Zephaniah.[1]
Content
[edit]In the book, Pai interviews the anti-Muslim activist known as Tommy Robinson in his hometown of Luton. She finds his views on race to be similar to those expressed in mainstream British right-wing media and politics, rather than the overt racism of the British National Party.[1]
Pai expresses the view that the white working class face economic issues and contempt from the political elite. The book chronicles the history of Robinson's English Defence League (EDL), interviewing its members and members of opposing groups such as Unite Against Fascism.[1]
Reception
[edit]Hassan Mahamdallie of The Independent praised how Pai was able to empathise with the hardships of some white working class members of the EDL without sympathising with their political aims. He called the book an "enlightening, thoughtful and intelligent study".[1] In the Morning Star, Paul Simon praised an "almost ethnographic level of detail" in documenting how people from the community drifted towards the EDL.[2] Conversely, John Lloyd of the Financial Times found the book unbalanced, as it quoted figures from the organisation Cage while strongly criticising the Quilliam think tank.[3]
Musa Okwonga of the New Statesman found the book timely for its release during the 2015 European migrant crisis and reaction by anti-migration groups such as Pegida in Germany.[4] Lloyd instead pointed to the recent 2016 Brussels bombings and found it unfortunate that Pai had relied on sources by Arun Kundnani, who proposes that Western fear of Islamic terrorism is exaggerated.[3]
Rod Liddle wrote a scathing review in The Spectator Australia, calling the book "hideously mistaken on almost every page".[5]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d Mahamdallie, Hassan (3 March 2016). "Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right by Hsiao-Hung Pai, book review". The Independent. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
- ^ Simon, Paul. "Courageous investigation of working-class racism". Morning Star. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
- ^ a b Lloyd, John (24 March 2016). "'Angry White People', by Hsiao-Hung Pai". Financial Times. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
- ^ Okwonga, Musa (9 April 2016). "Why do white working class people turn to the far right?". New Statesman. Retrieved 8 December 2023.
- ^ Liddle, Rod (19 March 2016). "What makes the white working class angry? Twits like Hsiao-Hung Pai". The Spectator Australia. Retrieved 8 December 2023.