Paul Gilroy always likes to be a little bit "disagreeable", as he puts it, not to say contrarian. And perhaps the bleak prospect before us requires a little discord, after all. It was in this spirit that he addressed the topic of 'black Britain' by arguing that he wasn't sure whether such a place really existed anymore. There is, he argues, no longer any sense of a distinctive black political community. In part this is because the idea of black people 'belonging' to the national community has been won. Some people responded to this by 'moving in' and accepting a multicultural 'British' nationality; some responded by 'moving on', trying to find new networks of solidarity internationally; some gave up, and 'moved out', with Carribean communities disappearing due to migration.

One also has to register the way in which expressions of racism have changed tack in response to gains made by black Britons in the 1980s. The BNP, though not in good faith, argue that they have 'no problem' with the children of hard-working immigrants who helped build the country in the 1950s and 1960s. They say their problem is with those recent immigrants who they claim, falsely, haven't contributed anything. Another response to the gains made has been the sense that somehow racism is no longer a issue, something that has been helped by the shift to religion as the main basis for social divisions, and also by the development of a 'cultural crust' in which black people are integrated into television and popular musical culture. Despite this - or perhaps because of it - casual racialisation especially on issues of crime continues to take place without arousing much controversy. Thus, The Sun labelled the murderers of Ben Kinsella "ignorant animals" - not human, in other words. Meanwhile the story of the murder of two French students, Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, was treated differently, with the headline "freed to kill". It was a story of failure in the government and prison system, not of barbarian criminals, despite the hours of torture that the killers put the students through.

Partly, what has happened to 'black Britain', says Gilroy, is that it has fallen to the same destructive political culture in which New Labour thrived. The proliferation of NGOs and think-tanks, standing as subsitutes for party and class organisations, meant that talented black intellectuals and activists were creamed off with the promise that the issue of racism could be 'managed' away. In this view, neoliberalism and privatization are not a problem, but rather are part of the new post-racial landscape in which those who led 'black Britain' in the 1980s could become careerists, entrepreneurs, using their oppression to participate in exploitative and racist practises. Baroness Amos, once an anti-racist, feminist scholar, could become a New Labour peer before taking a directorship in Titanium Resources, enriching herself on the bloody trade in tantalum that has contributed to destroying the African continent. Trevor Phillips can also ascend in New Labour's ranks and make money by advising Channel 4 during fall-out over Jade Goodie's racist remarks about Shilpa Shetty. A host of organisations devoted to supporting what might be called 'bourgeois rights' have been drafted into supporting the government, talking about the 'white working class' out of one side of their mouths and 'social cohesion' out the other side.

A new wave of occult managerialism has taken hold, with a preoccupation with the US as the 'future' of race relations. There are few attempts to work outside the official language. Anyone talking of racism is speaking in an arcane, jurassic-era language and can be dismissed. If they want to be taken seriously, they must master the new idiom of management-speak, specifically the terms of 'social inclusion', 'social exclusion' and 'social cohesion'. A particularly laughable example of this is the former editor of a black nationalist magazine called 'Alarm' (I don't think I recorded the name accurately), who has written a book called Me PLC, which tells readers that "your life is your business". Rather like one of those Victorian etiquette manuals, it functions as a neoliberal primer on how to live life as a corporation. It perpetrates a cruel trick on the unwary, as all such books do, persuading people that success is in their reach if only they adulterate their attitude toward the world.

Other dangers in the loss of 'black Britain' are the fragmentation of different 'ethnic' groups, such as during the almost pogrom-like Birmingham riots, twenty years after the Handsworth riots. New media, mobile messages, internet forums and so on helped to disseminate the idea that Carribeans were being ethnically cleansed by Asians, and carried some of the worst incitements. And the underlying situation, the demise of 'black Britain' and the yielding to a more polyglot, divisive racial situation, a polarised multiculture, is what has contributed to the sad reversion to the idea that the US is the future - why can't we have our own Obama? A point, Gilroy avers, that demonstrates a need to inquire further into how official US racism operates. It is precisely by integrating black people such as Rice into the national political leadership that the US state is able to justify its race crimes - during and after Katrina, for example. Rice herself said that she would listen to criticisms from Europeans when they had as much black political representation as America did. But Obama absolves people of the need to think for themselves, and alongside his wife, a valuable cultural asset in global counterinsurgency, fulfil a sort of messianic function (here, he recounts a story of a visit by Michelle Obama to a state school in the East End, with wowed reaction from students who were amazed at being hugged by her, gasping "it was mental!").

Gilroy, though perhaps a little melancholic, is not nostalgic for the 'black Britain' whose rites of passage he has just read. He is interested in escaping from the present impasse, and particularly from the drift toward a US-centric approach to solving the problems of racism and oppression. He suggests as a first solution the need to restore imperial and colonial history in Britain, but also particularly the history of the very struggles that made a 'post-racial' Britain a plausible fantasy. He argues that we need to root the present struggles over civil liberties and the CCTV state in past struggles over policing. And he maintains that we need to universalise the issues of oppression and exploitation - some may insist that class is the axis that universalises such questions, but Gilroy argues that despite his sympathy for this claim, there is no off-the-shelf class answer to the issues that we face today.

I think it's worth adding one thing, as a sort of postscript to a straightforward report. Gilroy, attempting to stay ahead of the game on racism and not get locked down in nostalgia or fetishism, has made sustained efforts to grasp the current structures of racist oppression as well as the resources for resistance - in After Empire and Between Camps, for example. He has attempted to deal with the issues raised by 9/11, and the 'war on terror'. But I notice that he doesn't really get to grips with Islamophobia in any convincing way. I think he takes the idea that what is at stake in such racism is 'religion' as such, far too seriously. On the other hand, there are reductionist temptations lurking in some antiwar analysis - ie, the idea that racism is driven by empire, rather than in the daily processes of capitalism as such. This is a mistake that Gilroy would never make. His attention to the details of 'ordinary' capitalist life - the experience of job markets, schools, prisons, culture, family life, etc - as well as with the ways these intersect with global issues, is one of the things that makes his current writing so vital.

Just checking in. Apologies for the few days of absence, but I have been ill, exhausted and also rather busy. I have been enjoying Marxism, though, and I will do a write-up of some of the talks and festivities at some point.

By far the best talk at Marxism yesterday was Gary Younge's discussion on Obama's election and the fall-out for the left, with much of the discussion following up on last year's assessment. One has to wade through mixed feelings. Testimonials of massive, spontaneous celebrations on Obama's victory in the US, and enthusiasm for his success in the UK, were supplied amply by speaker and audience alike. (I don't mind mentioning that there were a couple of speakers from the audience who were still out of their minds with Obamamania, or so it seemed to me.) Younge reported that in Chicago on the night of the election, cops drove up and down the streets yelling Obama's name through their speakers, while crowds stopped traffic. For days after the result, he swore, white people wearing Obama badges actually smiled at black people. Determinedly. Until they got a smile in return.

It is easy, and enjoyable, to mock this kind of mania. But it is also worth thinking about why it should be. Younge suggested one possibility: it has been a while since white people were asked, in a significant way, to be anti-racist, or to think that things could be better. And when asked, it turned out that there were more anti-racists than people might have suspected. It was a close-run thing: had it not been for Obama winning the mostly white state of Iowa, and proving that enough white Americans could get behind him, there were probably a lot of black voters in places like North Carolina and elsewhere who would have tactically backed Hillary. More importantly, Younge argued, there was a success worth celebrating. In a country with a disgraceful criminal justice system where one third of black males spends time in jail, proving that there could be a black president was important. Moreover, as he also pointed out, it was a comparatively progressive result, and not just because Obama is black - had black voters been asked to rally behind Condoleeza Rice, they would not have done so. Indeed, according to Younge, Obama's campaign marked a divergence - in presentation at least - from the trends in European social democracy and Third Way Democrats. He was not the DLC's man. He was not relying on 'Third Way' rhetoric. He raised expectations. And it was up to the left to gauge how much of the promise was purely symbolic, and how much was real; how far Obama would widen the margins for the left to operate in, and how much he would ultimately fuel cynicism about any progressive agenda by failing to deliver.

Some of us hoped that the frenetic popular activity during the election campaign could somehow be carried on into a movement to keep pressure on Obama. from the left. Younge reported that such hopes have, with some exceptions, not been borne out. Moreover, the success of the Obama campaign also makes it less likely that an independent class-based third party could emerge. So, with people demobilised, the pressure from the public is mainly passive - Obama knows he needs his popularity, and so has to offer something. The healthcare and climate change bills are inadequate, but are broadly in the right direction. Some parts of the stimulus package offer a modicum of support for ordinary Americans. There is some very mildly progressive talk of immigration reform, with pledges to reduce ICE raids and so on. I think one of the better moves recently has been from a right-wing Democrat, Senator Jim Webb of Virginia, who is pushing for a National Criminal Justice Commission to review the whole system and lower the appalling rate of incarcerations. I could be wrong, but I don't think such a move would have been feasible under the reign of Ricky Ray Rector's executioner.

You could add to that list, but you could also compose another, lengthier one, outlining the ways in which Obama has pursued a right-wing imperialist foreign policy, and pandered to ruling class interests. The current, more conciliatory posture of the US in the world takes us back to Clinton-style imperialism, with an attempt to restore the US as the 'indispensable nation'. The absence of some Bush-era excesses, in the context of escalation in Afghanistan and the bombing of Pakistan, are "small mercies, indeed". You could add another list of Obama's compromises and betrayals on even his most limited progressive agenda. Whether there is a 'net' amount of 'progress' over the next few years, however, isn't the only point of interest. Younge points to the emergence of an electoral coalition that will give the right some cause for reflection. The increase in turnout among black voters and Latin Americans, and the coalition with left-wing whites, especially unionised whites can provide, should it prove durable, a check on the kinds of racist dog-whistling that characterised the McCain-Palin ticket.

There were some good lines as well. Obama's solicitous efforts to win over white voters by avoiding too explicit association with African Americans made him "The Incognegro". The Euston Manifesto group were casually satirised as "the white boys' fight club". Asked about the right-wing argument that Obama's success proved that black people could succeed, he reminded people of the presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey on thanksgiving: "so you see, if this turkey can make it, there's no excuse for the rest of you." I paraphrase. Anyway, just to remind you, I'll be speaking on Monday morning, 10am at the Friends Meeting House main hall, with David Edgar, on the topic of 'left-right defectors'. Be there, or be a filthy apostate running dog of capitalism.

In 1989, when the 'foulard' controversy first arose in France, the bicentennial celebrations of the revolution provided a political, intellectual and moral context for those who wanted to suppress the wearing of the Muslim headscarf. Ernest Cheniere, the headmaster who precipitated the row by expelling three Muslim girls for refusing to remove the garment, justified his decision in terms of a need to defend the republican principle of laïcité, the separation of civil and religious affairs. These girls were not poor students, not did they have disciplinary issues. They simply insisted on wearing their headscarfs. But according to Cheniere, this was a form of proselytism inimical to the Republican tradition, consecrated in a 1905 law establishing the separation of church and state. In fact, he later claimed, the wearing of such garments was part of an "insidious jihad". Sizeable sections of the left intelligenstia supported his claim, as when philosophers writing in the left-wing Le Nouvel Observateur asserted that since the school was the foundation of the Republic, the destruction of the school (by admitting the wearing of religious garments) would undermine the values upon which the nation was built.

The Conseil d'Etat ruled against Cheniere and there were numerous legal challenges. But Cheniere was not just any headmaster. He was a headmaster with political ambitions that went beyond who did what with the petty cash tin. In 1994, as an elected deputy for the department of Oise, representing the right-wing Raillement pour la Republique, he raised the issue again, launching a bill to ban all 'ostentatious' religious clothing. This failed at the time, but it is notable that such was the language used to justify later restrictions aimed at Muslims. In 2003, after Chirac had been elected in a presidential contest between himself and Jean Marie Le Pen, it was Socialist deputy Jack Lang who would bring it up again. Sarkozy was the interior minister at the time. A committee was convened to consider banning conspicuous religious garments in the schools.

The feminist writer Joan Wallach Scott, discussing the affair in The Politics of the Veil, notes that it was at this point that the media focused on the story of two girls, the Levy sisters, who had converted to Islam and chose to wear the hijab. What was interesting was that they were under no social pressure to convert. Their parents were atheists, and the father didn't approve of their conversion. But, seeing the hysterical media response, he suggested that his children might decide for themselves if they wanted to abandon their faith. He expressed astonishment at the attitude of the 'Ayatollahs of secularism' who wanted to boss his kids about. That this was the chosen symbol for the media campaign was telling. It would seem to indicate something about the complexities of faith, and of identity. It would seem to tell against the simplistic wisdom according to which the 'foulard' (or 'le voile' as it was increasingly called) is imposed by a patriarchical family. It certainly doesn't support the spurious racist conspiracy theory that Islamist troublemakers are simply using the garment to create "Muslim ghettos" and advance a state of conflict with "the West". But that isn't how it was received, and the ensuing debate corroborated the ultimate decision to ban the headscarf in French schools - a net loss for personal liberty, and for secularism at that, which was cheered as much by the far left as by the far right. It didn't maintain the state's neutrality as regards religion; it essentially said that Islam is incompatible with the Republic. It increased the state's interference in personal affairs. The justification for such interference was that the headscarf was too conspicuous a symbol of Islam, and therefore a kind of proselytism - not just for Islam, it was claimed, but for jihad. As Scott puts it, the garments are seen as "enemy flags" in the Republic.

This kind of 'laïcité' is therefore a curiosity. A particularistic universalism; an aspect of exclusionary nationalism that supposed internationalist embrace; a form of reaction and authoritarianism that some revolutionaries are willing to support; a harrassment of women of colour that so-called feminists endorse, etc etc. That it takes as its cue the legacy of Jules Ferry and the Third Republic - the high tide of French colonialism, the civilizing mission and kulturkampf in Northern Africa - is to be expected. Today's civilising mission is directed just as much against the indigenes.

It's worth noting that as this discussion has been reheated again and again, some British liberals and conservatives have looked across the Channel with envy. That such low politics, such vileness and stupidity, could be expressed in such grandiose language is a prospect that leaves these people breathless. Thus, from the liberals, Tories and 'decents' to the most reactionary elements in British politics, Sarkozy's broadside against the burqa has been a ralling cry over the last week or so. Now, Sarkozy was only last year on speaking terms with the Roman patriarch and floating the idea of "laïcité positive" in which religion might re-enter the public sphere. He was talking about his Christianity and his godliness as though he were the American that he obviously wants to be. But he is also someone who made his name with inflammatory attacks on Muslims in the banlieues back in 2005, which he promised to "karsherise". He knows perfectly well that from Le Pen to the left-republicans, there is a broad coalition of French voters that is deeply hostile to Islam. So, here he is baiting the burqa. And here we are, surrounded by the dim and the devious who cheer him on. And, as a speaker at the recent launch of 'Kafa' - a campaign against Islamophobia - noted, such racism toward Muslims is the cutting edge behind which every other form of racism follows. Islamophobia is correlated in the polls to other kinds of prejudice such as hostility toward asylum seekers and 'economic migrants'. The BNP are certainly using it in this way, and their supporters and voters largely seem to get this. The people who don't get it, or don't want to get it, are those who think you can flirt with 'progressive' Muslim-bashing today and not wake up with a more racist and fundamentally nasty society tomorrow.

Oh, I know, this is so last week. It's over already. The twittering has stopped, the protesters have been beaten into retreat, the Youtube videos aren't being uploaded at the same frequency. This week is all about celebrities turned zombie. Still, indulge me for a moment. This image of Ahmadi the pious populist, I think, arises in part from a certain spectacle positioning. After all, the corporate media find it difficult to construe someone as an enemy without also implying that they are some kind of 'commie', one of those heretics who rejects the sacred wisdom of property rights, free markets etc. The election commentary, with its condescending subtexts about Ahmadinejad's ability to win over the ignorant poor by tossing sacks of potatoes their way, surely reflected this. And anyway, it is not within the media's repertoire to explain the underlying divisions in Iran's ruling bloc, or to give anything but a crayola account of the class politics of elections. Partly, I suspect, such crude plot devices is what drove Juan Cole to dismiss the issue of class in his own analysis. Some belated analysis worth paying attention to, then, includes this discussion of labour under Ahmadinejad; this discussion of privatization and accumulation in Iran; and this useful discussion of the elections from the Middle East Research and Information Project.

The main point that arises, I think, is that the division that has been posited between a kind of socially conservative resource populism on the one hand, and a socially liberal austerity programme on the other, is not adequate. The more that comes out about the elections, the more it is clear that they exposed a raging war in the ruling class over political ascendancy and property, with relatively minor differences on other matters exaggerated. The second point is that the right-wing bloc behind Ahmadinejad has tended to use anti-imperialist rhetoric to justify the most naked transfer of wealth from the public sphere to capital, particularly to more influential players in the bazaari class and state-affiliated capitalists. They shake their fists at Washington just as they're about to go further toward neoliberalism than even the IMF proposed. And they justify it by referring to the need to break the sanctions imposed by Washington. This policy is obviously designed not to enrich the poor or sustain them in the long term, or strengthen their bargaining power as workers, but specifically to reduce their long-term wealth and purchasing power by redirecting a larger portion of socially produced wealth to a specific sector of the capitalist class. Ehsani et al are far too soft on Mousavi in their discussion (Ehsani called Mousavi's programme 'social democratic' on a mailing list, which I think is about as credible as Hamid Dabashi's claim that the man was a hardline socialist). This appears to stem from their assessment that the faction backing Ahmadinejad are uniquely dangerous and authoritarian, posing far greater dangers to democracy and labour than even the crooked neoliberals supported by Rafsanjani. Their tone may be unduly alarmist, and their approach to the elections is not one I share, but it is hard to argue with the overall analysis.

Every now and again, I hear about a new website offering free e-books. You will forgive me for the fact that, without fail, I first scour the site anxiously to see if someone has uploaded my book. This is pure vanity on my part. No one would waste their time, and if they did I should likely have the person flayed and generously doused in salt and vinegar before forcing them to appear on Britain's Got Talent. Well, I'd probably meditate on that image before telling myself to get a grip. In fact, I should be flattered, not pathetically worried about whatever marginal (and probably non-existent) loss of sales resulted. But this thought arises because of the growing profile of devices like 'Kindle' and other pda-like e-book-reading technology. We are told, somewhat pontifically, that the age of the printed book is over. That soon a great portion of our current consumption of wood-producing florae will be finished, resolved and absolved, by a technological fix. I look forward to any innovation that will reduce the clutter about my house, never kind the carbon footprint. But I remain sceptical nonetheless.

Here's the explanandum and explanans. I find myself buying a copy of a book that I know I can read for free as an e-book on, say, Gutenberg or any number of less august websites. This despite the fact that I have decent computer, and a pda device as well. I can re-format the text if I like, add pictures at a stretch, save it as a word document or convert it to pdf. There's a vast array of free open-source software that will enable me, provided I will invest a small amount of time and effort, to do more or less what I like with a document. Yet, I still go and get the Penguin classics edition of Pride and Prejudice rather than take a few moments to download, perfectly legally, a text file of the whole work. Why? John Sutherland has pointed out that the printed novel or book has some technological advantage that e-books and equivalents can't emulate (as yet). Just for example, you can use your opposible thumb to flick back and forth between pages. You can write notes in pencil where you feel like it, underline if you want to, fold page corners to mark a place - all in a very easy, manageable and physically satisfying way. Now, I know you're going to say that these functions can be replicated or simulated in the e-book reader format - true, but far more burdensomely. With a printed book, you can insert yourself anywhere in the text in a split second. You can dip in and out, use the index, find a page number in very speedy systems of reference that actually don't work very well with reader technologies. The tactile aspects of reading which we take for granted just don't seem to be assimilable to the current in-your-face interfaces.

There is also a sense in which the e-book reader profanes what was holy. Once, however much a book was mass produced, and was as commodified as a packet of biscuits or a VHS cassette, all one had to do to bless it with the seal of the author's pure presence and authenticity was to get him to sign it. (I have repeated this operation a few times, and you'd be surprised by how many people are called 'eBay', 'Seventeenpoundsisabitsteep' and 'Justfuckingsignityoutwat' - all Tibetan names, apparently.) Now, I suppose, they'll simply superimpose a scan of the author's signature on a limited range of the downloadable e-books and punt them for 2% more. If that happens, I'm just going to call it a day, loves. Without that occasion for intercourse with the Ordinary People, I'm lost, and so are they. Anyway, the point is, that isn't going to happen, because e-books are mostly crap.

The attempt to drown the protests in rivers of blood have reportedly led to a "massacre" in Baharestan Square, outside the Iranian majles, today. Tens of thousands of basiji reportedly surrounded hundreds of protesters in this small square, and battered them, then opened fire on them. It's not just basiji - multiple reports indicate that young men without uniforms were given batons and let loose. How much of this is true is obviously impossible to tell, but given that dozens have been killed so far, the worst would not be surprising. The regime probably believes it has this situation locked up, for now. And maybe it does: who would dare to guess that protesters will continue to keep putting themselves through this? But the fact of having to resort to this level of brutality is indicative of a state in deep crisis. Police have been nicking protesters and parading them on television with confessions blaming the Western media for leading them astray. This would imply that the Iranian state has roughly the same idea as US neoconservatives - that democracy and protest is somehow the a cultural peculiarity of the 'West', which can only be imposed on Iran from without.

Various statements of solidarity with the protesters are being circulated. The NPA are pledging to join protests to show solidarity with the people and travailleurs of Iran. On the anti-imperialism front, I would draw attention to this statement by Venezuelan socialists. There also is an intervention by Slavoj Zizek, which has been circulated by Iranian academics, and is published here. I don't need to restate my scepticism about Zizek's broader politics, nor do I agree with every last word or emphasis. However, I do think it makes some very important points, perhaps the most important of which is that anyone on the left who doesn't see an emancipatory dimension in the protests is politically defunct. The bloodless lack of enthusiasm for what is manifestly a democratic movement in some of the commentary reflects not anti-imperialist sensibilities so much as political timidity. The key here is universality: these protesters are no different from those who have been beaten or killed in Genoa, in London, in LA, in Athens, and everywhere that the state is challenged by a democratic movement and responds in this way. Their case for solidarity is not diminished by the fact that they live in a society that has been threatened by imperialism. On the contrary, it means we ought to redouble our efforts.