Have no doubt: the campaign to sack Misan Harriman is part of an assault on black figures in public life |
I met Tommy Robinson once. It was 10 years ago exactly, during one of his many failed attempts to mainstream Islamophobia in British politics with a new “movement” called Pegida – a copycat of Germany’s far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.
There was little memorable about this “launch”, which as a social affairs editor for Sky News I was sent to cover, only to discover a pitiful gathering of a few blokes at a pub near Luton. The thing that does stand out in my memory is what Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said to me. “It’s the Muslims that are a problem,” he said. “But you’re all right. You speak English. You’re like us.”
Never has something intended as a compliment been so utterly offensive.
Pegida died quickly. But the sentiment stayed with me – the idea that rightwing men are the arbiters of whether black and brown British people are an acceptable presence in our own country. That is a notion that has only gained strength in the decade since, culminating this weekend when Robinson and his followers gathered to launch an attack of unprecedented viciousness against British Muslims, calling for “re-migration” – an idea otherwise known as ethnic cleansing.
Meanwhile, a more rarefied, superficially respectable group is launching a gentrified version of a similar sort of assault. Unlikely to be found fraternising with union-jack clad Robinson fans, their weapon of choice is the rightwing media – and their current target is Misan Harriman.
Harriman is a popular figure on social media and in British cultural life. Oscar-nominated for his film The After, he became the first black man to shoot the cover of British Vogue, and his images of the Black Lives Matter protests went viral and then global, becoming the starting point for a documentary film Shoot the People.
Some of his most........