Are You a Political Racist?

Political Racism is a term I have used off and on for decades. It is my observation that political fighting between opposing parties will often use language more associated with racists when they group people by skin colour and spew hatred at them.

In modern times, the word race is often used to define people of a common background, genetic group, or, most famously, by skin colour.

Of those, the last is most interesting, because it has no scientific basis behind it. Just because two people might have a similar shade of skin does not make them part of the same group other than the great Human Race.

The pseudo-science behind that is quite sickening, and I won’t go into it here.

However, it does link back to the earlier use of the word Race — to when it was used to describe a group that had some commonality. For instance, the “Race of Saints,” or “The Race of Bishops.”

In the same way, it could be used to describe the tribal nature of today’s politics — the Race of Capitalists or Socialists, perhaps. The Race of Liberals. And it works just as well when it comes to political parties.

Indeed, it works particularly well with political parties since if they are nothing else, they are a tribe. They sound like tribes, act like tribes, have all the attributes of a tribe (elders, workers, etc), and are defensive like a tribe is.

When someone uses a phrase like “Tory Scum,” they are invoking racial language — the language of the racist. They are grouping everyone together who is a “Tory” and declaring that they are all scum, simply because they are part of the Tory Tribe, the Tory Race.

You only have to dig through a few political “debates” on Twitter (sorry, X) and you will soon have a collection of racial tropes. The test is to simply — substitute the name of the party or believer in a political dogma with the word “Jew” or “Black” and see what it sounds like.

I am without doubt that those who use such language would be shown to be racists in other contexts, if they felt they could get away with it. It takes a particular kind of hatred to group people together and wish harm on them. If a person is capable of such hatred, then who else will they hate?

So yes, there are political racists.