March 26 this year marks the fourth anniversary of the Saudi war on the nation of Yemen. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also a major participant in this assault, committing thousands of ground troops. This Saudi-Emirati campaign would not be possible without the unending supply of armaments, logistical and tactical support from Britain and the United States. It is no exaggeration to say that this war has inflicted untold misery and suffering upon the people of Yemen.

The United Nations has stated that this war has produced the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe with 80 percent of the Yemeni population requiring humanitarian assistance. Among that number are 11 million children – and the spectre of famine looms over the Yemenis. The UN estimates that 1.3 million children have suffered acute malnutrition over the last four years. Millions of Yemenis have been pushed to the brink of starvation.

The Saudi-Emirati war on Yemen has imposed a severe economic and trade blockade, resulting in the deterioration of the Yemeni economy. These punitive measures, which restrict imports, have hit the civilian population and driven people into economic misery. While the constant Saudi air strikes on the country have received strong criticism, the sea blockade of Yemen by the Saudis which is taking a toll on the fishing industry and on all those whose livelihoods depend on it.

In October last year, Saudi operatives in the Istanbul embassy murdered the Saudi Arabian dissident and Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. His gruesome killing was the subject of justifiable outrage, and prompted renewed examination of the Saudi war on Yemen. However, no less murderous are the numerous air strikes by Saudi forces on the people of Yemen, but these attract less outrage and media attention.

During the last week of March 2019, the Saudi forces carried out an air strike on a rural hospital in Kitaf, northern Yemen. The casualties included five children. The air strike, conducted by Saudi personnel flying American and British supplied fighter jets, disrupted the operation of the hospital and medical workers in providing health care for the sick and wounded. The Save the Children charity, which supported the hospital, condemned the attack as a violation of international law.

The Saudi-Emirati offensive against Yemen was launched to prop up the government of Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. The latter was installed by Riyadh in 2012 as part of a political settlement ensuring overall Saudi dominance in the internal affairs of Yemen. The nationalist Zaidi Shia Ansar Allah movement – the Houthis in common parlance – rose up in rebellion against this arrangement. Since the Saudi offensive, Hadi’s government has been in exile in Saudi Arabia.

The Emiratis, while being active participants in this war to crush the Ansar Allah movement and restore President Hadi, have been pursuing their own agenda in Yemen. The UAE has been striking out on its own, investing its considerable finances throughout the Middle East and also in Africa. The Emiratis increasing economic and military clout sometimes puts it at odds with their Saudi partners in Yemen.

The Emiratis have been quietly and busily constructing their own Yemeni proxies and burgeoning state in southern Yemen. Prior to unification in 1990, Yemen had been divided between the conservative northern Yemen Arab Republic, and the socialist-Communist state of the southern People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen. While the southern secessionist movement remained quiescent, it noted its chance to revive southern nationalism out of the chaos engendered by the latest Saudi war.

The Emiratis have sponsored, with armaments and money, the establishment of a Southern Transitional Council (STC) as a rival authority to the Saudi-supported government of Hadi. The STC provides security and stability for southern Yemen, and intends to reestablish a Communist-style system in the country. The Emiratis are strongly opposed to any such measures by the STC, and intend to acquire south Yemen as an economic colony of their own.

The patronage of the southern movement by the Emiratis is backfiring. Apart from their shared hostility to the Houthi movement, there is not much else that unites them politically. The Emiratis, for their part, have been building their own Yemeni militia groups, paid for and armed by them, with unquestioned loyalty to the UAE. Writing in The Guardian, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad elaborates the Emiratis measures to build their own networks, extending their power beyond their own borders.

The Security Belt is the name of the Emirati-supported militia that is resorting to brutal suppression of its opponents in the south of Yemen. This group has been accused by human rights organisations of torturing and brutalising their political opposition – which includes not only Ansar Allah members, but anyone opposed to the Emirati project in south Yemen.

The Houthis have managed to establish themselves as a governing authority in the north of the country despite the Saudi-Emirati offensive. The southern movement is now demanding that its push for a revival of the separate south Yemeni state be given its due consideration. If anything, the Saudi attack on Yemen has been a failure, because the political opponents of the Saudis are the only forces capable of exerting authority in their respective regions of the country.

As this war enters its fifth year, we cannot continue to pretend that we in the West are innocent bystanders. The Saudi assault on Yemen would not be able to continue were it not for the constant pipeline of armaments from the United States and Britain. Five British elite special forces commandos were injured in a gun battle in Yemen at the end of March. Questions are being asked in London as to why British troops are deployed in Yemen.

British and American forces are deeply involved in the Saudi campaign against Yemen; British commandos on the ground in Yemen provide intelligence and direction for Saudi air strikes. British military cooperation with Riyadh continues unabated. Let us stop pretending that this war is occurring in some far-away country about which we know nothing.

The former Archbishop of Canterbury and current chairperson of Christian Aid Rowan Williams stated it plainly when he wrote that the UK’s complicity in this Saudi war on Yemen must end. The catastrophe in Yemen, while directly caused by the Saudi-Emirati war, is enabled by Britain and the US acting as willing accomplices. We must step up our efforts to expose the criminality of this predatory war.

The Christchurch mosque attacks have received international coverage, and there has been an overwhelming and encouraging outpouring of compassion, sympathy and solidarity for the victims of this atrocity. The racist murders of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch constitute the worst mass killing in New Zealand’s recent history. While the motivations and ‘manifesto’ of the Australian-born racist killer are subjected to rigorous examination, it is worthwhile noting that his ideology is not out of place in today’s toxic political climate.

The Washington Post, examining the racist murders in Christchurch, noted that Australia has been a fertile ground for the growth and dissemination of Islamophobic culture and ideas. Ghassan Hage, an academic at the University of Melbourne, observed that Islamophobic ideas have been circulated by rightwing, Murdoch-owned publications for many years. Murdoch’s News Corp media company has been peddling Islamophobia for decades. These publications normalise extremist and racist ideas, and provide rightwing online communities with a sense of legitimacy.

The racist murderer in Christchurch made no secret of his political ideology – that of white supremacy and neofascism. His self-described ‘manifesto’ recycles the same anti-immigrant and Islamophobic themes that form the main talking points of the European and American ultra-right. He referenced the Norwegian racist killer, Anders Breivik, and the latter’s 2011 mass murder motivated by white supremacy and hostile to immigration.

Interestingly, the ‘manifesto’ of the Christchurch racist murderer contained numerous references to the Crusades and Crusader battles. He was attempting to rationalise his actions as purely self-defensive, and motivated by a desire to counter Islamic ‘invaders’. This notion of Muslims and Islam as ‘invaders’ pervades not just the ultra-right, but informs mainstream media commentary as well. Scrawled onto his machine gun were neofascist symbols and slogans.

The portrayal of European Christendom as a bastion of white Christian harmony fighting off hordes of Muslim invaders is a popular notion among the online communities of the far-right; it is also very simplistic and tailored to meet the requirements of today’s anti-immigrant politics. In fact, as much as the Crusades have come to dominate popular stereotypes of the Middle Ages, multiethnic and religious cooperation across the ethnic/religious divisions were a common feature of Middle Ages life.

Historical accuracy, however much commendable is not the goal of the Islamophobic Right. What concerns us here is how seemingly fringe ideas have become powerful motivators for lethal terroristic behaviour. The ideas in the ‘manifesto’ have been circulating for decades in the mainstream corporate media. The Australian conservative political establishment – embodied by former prime minister John Howard – vilified refugees, migrants and in particular Islam as ‘invaders’ intent on undermining the allegedly ‘Christian’, white Anglophone values that underpin the Australian state.

Current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, while he was immigration spokesperson in 2013, suggested that anxieties about Muslim immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment be cultivated and used for electoral purposes. His condemnation of the white supremacist murderer of Christchurch sounds hollow, given his track record of fully supporting Islamophobic ideas and measures.

Jason Wilson, writing in The Guardian newspaper, elaborates that Islamophobia and racism have been ratcheted up in popular culture and media discourse throughout the last few decades. Islamophobia has basically been adopted as a plank of Australian foreign and domestic policy. Racism in Australian society did not begin only in the last few years, of course. But with the Australian government’s active endorsement of and participation in the American-driven ‘War on Terror‘, a singular and exclusive focus on Islam as the official enemy has dominated political culture.

While the notion of a ‘foreign invasion’ of Australia by immigrants has a long and sordid pedigree, we can look to recent commentary to find recycled examples of this xenophobia. It was not too long ago when Andrew Bolt, a leading blatherer of the Australian conservative commentariat, was complaining of a ‘foreign invasion’ by immigrants in one of his regular columns. By inciting racial hatred in his writings, Bolt was giving a veneer of respectability for xenophobic and racist viewpoints. In this particular case, he vented his anger against Jews. It is not difficult to see that moral panics about ‘foreign invasion’ can transfer across ethnic and religious groups.

While the Labour governments of Rudd and Gillard denounced expressions of open racism, they did not challenge the underlying logic of the bigotry. Labour governments have presided over and encouraged the spread of Islamophobic bigotry, if only in more subtle ways than their conservative counterparts. With every move rightwards by the political establishment, the so-called sensible ‘centre’ does nothing to distinguish itself from the conservative drift.

Muslim migrants as ‘invaders’ has gained normalised acceptance in the toxic political culture of Western nations. The Trump administration in the United States, and its co-thinkers, have long demonised immigrants – in particular migrants from Muslim-majority countries – as a threat to be countered. The ideas expounded by the Christchurch racist murderer are not unusual among members of the US congress and rightwing punditry. Former chief of staff for Trump and Alternative Right political operator Steve Bannon, regularly cites the anti-immigration novel The Camp of the Saints as an inspiration for his politics. The novel, written in 1973 by Jean Raspail, depicts a fictional invasion of Western Europe by dark-skinned migrants.

The Christchurch mosque shootings have produced a national conversation, in Australia, about the ideas and ideology that drove the white supremacist killer to take human life. Greg Barton, a professor at Deakin University, notes that we must all be vigilant about the toxic political culture which allows racist hate to flourish. Professor Barton is correct to point out the online subcultures of white supremacist hate in which persons such as the racist killer in Christchurch could become radicalised.

However, this is only one side of the story. We need to examine the political trajectory of the last 18 years, focusing exclusively on the ‘war on terror’ and Islamist groups. With this narrow outlook, the racist killers such as the one in Christchurch have flown under the radar, so to speak. Intelligence agencies have subjected Muslim communities to constant surveillance and police actions, and their resources have greatly expanded since the beginning of the ‘war in terror’ in 2001. White supremacist ideas, aided and abetted by willing politicians, have made their way into the mainstream.

It is commendable to condemn the Christchurch mosque attacks, but mere platitudes are not enough. We need to stop the Islamophobic rhetoric emanating from the corporate media and conservative commentariat. With Muslim communities worldwide experiencing dehumanisation with the ‘war on terror’ campaign, white supremacy has shown itself to be a powder-keg of violence, stoked by mainstream politicians. The racist murderer in Christchurch is responsible for his own actions – of that there is no doubt. But we cannot ignore the complicity of the political establishment that allowed his ideology to grow.

In February 2019, US Coast Guard officer Christopher Paul Hasson was arrested by federal authorities. He had been plotting to carry out terrorist acts against US Democrat politicians, socialist groups, journalists and media personalities. Hasson, a self-confessed white nationalist, had the presence of mind to compile a spreadsheet of targets, which included Senator Ilhan Omar (D), a black Muslim, and “Sen blumen jew”, an anti-Semitic reference to Senator Richard Blumenthal (D).

Hasson was inspired by the Norwegian racist killer Anders Breivik, from whose manifesto Hasson quoted. Stockpiling weapons, and steroids to beef up, Hasson was driven by ideas of instigating a race war in the United States. Steeped in the literature and online propaganda of the white nationalist Right, Hasson intended to carry out mass killings in the hope that ‘whitey would get off the couch‘, to use his words.

He conducted internet searches regarding the location and movements of US politicians he deemed to be a threat, monitored their security arrangements, and absorbed racist and white nationalist literature in online forums. In 2017, in the aftermath of the racial violence at Charlottesville, Hasson wrote that a whites-only homeland in the United States was necessary to preserve the future of his people.

He corresponded with other neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States, and followed the workings and ideas of European neo-fascist and ultra-rightist parties. Denouncing those whites who accepted racial integration and equality as ‘race traitors‘, he expounded his apocalyptic views of a race war that would result in the extermination of non-white peoples and the establishment of a white homeland.

Domestic terrorism offences

At the time of writing, Hasson has been charged with drug and illegal firearms offences, but not domestic terrorism. Documents filed with the federal court set out the white supremacist views that Hasson expressed, and the stockpiling of weapons for the terrorist acts he intended to commit. This is a glaring omission, and speaks volumes about the hypocrisies which underlie our conversations about terrorism.

A perpetrator of Islamic or Middle Eastern background would have received saturation coverage in the corporate media. There would be panels of self-proclaimed experts analysing the alleged ideological origins of the perpetrator’s actions in the philosophy and teachings of Islam. Hasson is a typical example of an ever-growing, yet under-examined, menace of ultra-right terrorism.

Thomas Cullen, the US Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, wrote of this rising and serious threat of white supremacist terrorism. Cullen writes that not only have hate crimes risen significantly over the last two years, murders committed by groups and individuals associated with the far-right have increased dramatically. A hate crime is defined as a violent act against a victim because of the latter’s race, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

Hasson is not an isolated example. The Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) documents in its yearly hate crimes report that there has been a 30 percent increase in active hate groups over the 2014-2018 period. The incidence of hate crimes and terrorist acts has not only increased, but the majority have been perpetrated by groups from the far-right. Entitled Rage Against Change, the report elaborates how white nationalist ideas have been popularised not only by Alt-Right followers, but also by the Trump administration.

Enabling violent nostalgia

Since his 2016 election campaign and rise to the White House, Donald Trump has enabled the spread of extremist ideas, allowed attacks on the achievements of the civil rights movement, and used his political office to launch tirades against racial and ethnic minorities – accompanied by a good dose of misogyny and homophobia. Nostalgic for a mythologised past of white supremacy, the Trump administration has done its utmost to expound the underlying logic – if you can call it that – of bigotry and prejudice.

When Trump and his colleagues demonise refugees, Muslim immigrants, and Hispanics, they are actively cultivating the misleading notions of non-white immigration as a threat to the majority white population. By cultivating hysteria about the purported influx of Hispanic immigrants at the US-Mexico border, Trump is manufacturing a crisis, and recycling long-standing white nationalist paranoid fantasies about a racial influx.

Portraying whites as victims in this racially-paranoid worldview is not an invention of the Trump campaign, but has a long pedigree in the white nationalist Right.

The Turner Diaries

While Trump is careful not to suggest that all-out race war is inevitable, he does insist that a mythical ‘racism against whites’ is a socially significant force in American politics. The idea of an apocalyptic race war, brought on by a tyrannical combination of anti-white discrimination and liberal cosmopolitan elitism, is nothing new in American society. Prior to the rise of the Alternative Right, there was The Turner Diaries.

That last statement is not my own, but rather comes from an article in The Atlantic magazine. A self-published political dystopian novel, The Turner Diaries tells of a fictional white supremacist guerrilla fighting in a white nationalist uprising which leads to the extermination of the non-white population in the US, and eventually throughout the world.

Published in 1978 by American white supremacist and neo-Nazi William Luther Pierce, the Turner Diaries has achieved a kind of Bible-status among the white nationalist Right. The themes elaborated in the novel have inspired terrorist actions in the US, including the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

The novel elaborates how ‘race traitors’ are disposed of as enemies of the white race, along with African Americans, Jews, Hispanics and other minorities. This book, rather than extolling a bygone era of slavery, the hooded bedsheets of the Klan and goose-stepping Nazis, shifted white nationalism onto a futuristic perspective. It provided a blueprint for white nationalist action, and served to unite previously fractured groupings.

The tone of the novel is lurid and violent – with misogyny and anti-Semitism dripping from its pores. While a bad book, its impact cannot be underestimated – it has become a seminal text in the canon of racist hate literature. It has served to inspire terrorist violence, and has spawned a veritable genre of racist literature. A hero fighting against the odds is not a new idea in American literature – but Pierce gave it a white supremacist spin.

While the focus of terrorism discussions has been narrowed to groups such Islamic State, Al Qaeda and similar outfits, the growing threat of domestic ultra-rightist terrorism has been ignored. We need to confront the ideology that had produced distorted and violent racial-war fantasies of Hasson and his co-thinkers.