Antipathy migrates between target groups within one nation’s recurring cycle of hate

Evidence

My grandmother was Jewish, and during World War II people in Liverpool painted swastikas on her front door. This is not the first time that this has happened in this country. It is just that the group haters’ new focus is on Muslims. Before it was the Jews, people from Afro-Caribbean countries and the Irish. I am from an Irish background from Liverpool, apart from my grandmother who was Jewish. I used to get comments like “oh you are with the IRA” but now it’s like “you are a terrorist”.’ (Sarah) As indicated above, Islamophobia can be understood as a ‘new’ form of racism, which can be attributed to Islamophobic attitudes as well as to racist sentiments. — Irene Zempi and Imran Awan, Islamophobia, 154

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’: cross-cultural moral panics over dress and belonging as recurring targets of the same nativist machinery.
• SHARE: The ‘IRA to terrorist’ swap in one Liverpool family’s memory is the kind of detail one specific history-minded friend would love.