Malcolm James, Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex and Sivamohan Valluvan, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick delivered this lecture on 8th November 2018.

At a time when nationalism is being rehabilitated as the most likely custodian of political discourse, those who propagate a left alternative also seem wedded to the nation – in asserting control over migration, over defence, over security, and over how we imagine our everyday sense of community. In this open lecture, James and Valluvan discuss the relationship between the current crisis and xeno-racist nationalism, including an engagement with whiteness and the working class. They argue that a realisation of alternative left visions for governance must at a minimum start with the repudiation of xeno-racism’s hold on contemporary politics, and the left’s routine submission to its lustre.