Racism, radicalisation and Europe’s ‘Thin Blue Line’

Abstract

Following analyses in the US of the reaction to Black Lives Matter in the Blue Lives Matter movement and the recasting of the police as victims, the author explores similar tendencies in Europe, in the context of changes in territorial policing, new technology and enhanced police powers under neoliberalism. She examines how racism has become entrenched in policing as the rank and file are resituating themselves as society’s victims and organising on an ever more extremist agenda. Police excesses are explained away and impunity extended to officers. At the same time, police are assuming the right to a special role and status in society that is not allowed to other agencies or public servants. In some instances, this has spilled over into collusion and collaboration with militarised far-right groups. The penetration of the far Right into policing is compounded by the dehumanisation within policing culture which stigmatises the ‘undeserving poor’ and emphasises threats to social order and governance as arising from marginalised black and ethnic minority communities.