With pressure mounting from the global Black Lives Matter protest
movement, Boris Johnson has put forward his adviser Munira Mirza to lead
a new commission on racial inequality. However, her appointment
undermines the commission before it has even started. Mirza has
previouslyexpressed
<https://www.spiked-online.com/2017/09/11/lammy-review-the-myth-of-institutional-racism/>scepticism
about the existence of institutional racism in the justice system and
has suggested that anti-racist “lobbyists and activists” have corroded
public trust. She has alsosuggested
<https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/theresa-may-s-phoney-race-war-is-dangerous-and-divisive#>that
Britain does not have a “serious problem” with racism. This comes as no
surprise: Mirza has long been associated with Spiked, an online magazine
increasingly well known for its contrarian takes on current events and
for its writers popping up in various places across the media landscape
with rightwing views.
Infamous for its right-libertarian and iconoclastic style, Spiked has
gained notoriety for arguing against numerous progressive positions, but
using a rhetorical style indebted to its earlier incarnation as a
Trotskyist group in the 1980s-90s,the Revolutionary Communist Party
<https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/may/15/weekend7.weekend2>(RCP).
With a combative tone, the magazine’s writers have routinely sought to
dismiss many political actions as not dealing with the “real” issues and
put forward their own solutions, which often correlate with a populist
right position. Previouslydismissed as a fringe group
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n13/jenny-turner/who-are-they>on
the outer limits of political discourse, more recently Spiked has become
an influential force in shiftingthe Overton window
<https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/what-overton-window>to
the right in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/fringe-1980s-communist-faction-no-10-attitude-racism-munira-mirza
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