This interview is based on Ugo Gaudino’s book ‘Islamophobia and Translations of Securitization in the UK, France, and Italy’
Gaudino, U (2026), Islamophobia and Translations of Securitization in the UK, France, and Italy, Oxford, Oxford University Press: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/islamophobia-and-translations-of-securitization-in-the-uk-france-and-italy-9780197815441?cc=be&lang=en&
The interview was conducted by Reid Kleinberg
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The book is presented as a comparative analysis of how different political parties in Western Europe mobilize Islamophobia in security discourse and policy for political gain. You survey a number of cases in Western Europe and even the United States, mainly in the late 2000’s and 2010’s. But what is also striking and comes across is the richness of the intellectual history of Islamophobia and how Islamophobic discourse changes both over time and across space. To get things started, maybe you can set the scene by explaining some of the major benchmark strands or versions of ‘left-wing’ Islamophobia that come under focus in the book?
Many political parties in the West, located on the Right-Left political spectrum, frame Muslims as a potential threat to national security. While this discourse has more violent ramifications among right-wing parties and, especially, far-right groups, parties traditionally defined as centre-left have attracted less attention so far. However, parties that governed in the last decades, like Labour, the Parti Socialiste, and the Partito Democratico, substantially endorsed tougher policies on immigration (especially when coming from Muslim majority countries), counterterrorism and citizenship rights, often leading to a discriminatory impact upon Muslim minorities (like in the case of the British counter-radicalisation strategy, PREVENT). They often interpreted ‘security’ (an essentially contested concept) as an issue of law and order, surveillance and control, culture and identity.
Even if this reaction was partly dictated by the ‘long’ war on jihadist terrorism, the logic of left-wing Islamophobia is not exclusively an exceptional one. It is more ordinary, as it taps into a grounded history of ambivalence, orientalism and xenophobia towards non-white immigrants, particularly Muslims. As I focus on British, French and Italian centre-left parties, their ideological background differs: some references are more central in one country than in the others (e.g. secularism in France). What the parties show in common are at least two main common themes or tropes: that Islam is reluctant to accept secular ways of life and is premised on patriarchal and misogynistic assumptions, clashing with gender equality. These tropes sit comfortably with progressive strands of liberalism and left- leaning ideologies like social-democracy and socialism. These Islamophobic biases make the centre-left securitisation of Islam more intelligible for other party members and electoral audiences.
Can you explain the concept of ‘translation’ that you develop? How does it allow you to better explain how political parties enact their specific ideological versions of securitisation? Maybe you can clarify why translation should not be reduced to simply an instrumental and strategic tool for parties in electoral competition.
Translation means that political parties appropriate ideas that do not belong to their heritage and adjust them into a product more coherent for their interlocutors, such as party members and electors, who otherwise would not be persuaded. The process is inter-linguistic and intra-linguistic. When it comes to Islam (a potential security threat in the eyes of most Western parties), translation is relational – as it happens from right to left and from left to right – but not symmetrical – as the bulk of translation has happened on the Left. In the period under analysis, while right-wing parties appropriated liberal-progressive ideas to sugar-coat nativist and conservative policies, some centre-left parties adopted policies suggested and endorsed by the Right (e.g. border controls, strip of citizenship, criminalisation of NGOs, surveillance of Muslims); these policies were translated in the name of their referent objects, which are not religious, civilizational, or demographic ones, but more progressive ones – laïcité, human rights, democracy, gender equality, or the harmonious coexistence between different ethnic groups. Translation enriches securitisation theory as it shows that political parties put forward referent objects that do not correspond simply to state survival but to ideas ingrained in their history and ideology.
On your last question, I locate translations on a middle ground between strategic options and ideological consistency. From an ideological perspective, far-right parties translate progressive tropes to sanitise their image and enlarge their constituencies, but also because it responds to a ‘femo-nationalist’ and ‘homo-nationalist’ agenda oriented to save white sexual minorities from non-white reactionary Muslims. Likewise, left-leaning parties translate securitarian slogans from the Right to meet the increasing worries of public opinion (especially of electors who can potentially switch to the Right) and because of sedimented hostility against Muslims.
I learned a lot from your chapter on the Labour Party, especially about the early 20th century struggles of the Labour Party to strike an emancipatory and progressive tone on race and immigration- to put it mildly. Do you think it is fair to say the Labour Party has been historically consistent over time in its ideological pursuit of securitization of non-white British people?
I think there is evidence that Labour has been ideologically consistent in showing a substantial ambivalence, rather than a constant race to securitize racial differences. Labour – which is a broad church, so it includes progressive factions that contested, if not de-securitized Islam and immigration – swings between endorsing multicultural policies and pursuit of racial justice, on one side – see the Race Relations Acts (1965, 1968), the rhetoric of liberal cosmopolitanism cherished by the first Blair, the Equality Act (2010) – and suspicion towards ethnic minorities, on the other – particularly evident in the post 9/11 border and counterterrorism measures. The recent securitisation of Islam during the war on terror can be read as a continuation of the discourse and policies used to regulate Black and brown immigration from the Commonwealth. It could be counter-argued that there is discontinuity across the different historical periods when Labour governed (in the 1920s, 1960-70s, 1997-2010 and now with Starmer); it could also be added that Islam became a relevant frame to discuss immigration only after the Rushdie Affair (1989), whereas in previous decades the diversity between white and non-white was framed in racial and cultural rather than religious. These points are valid, but still, some tropes and patterns have not changed across time. For example, the ideas that, if non-white arrivals overcome a certain threshold of tolerance, race relations in Britain would be put under strain and become less balanced, or that reluctance to stem the flows could result in a severe electoral backlash in some conservative areas; that Islam poses a threat to freedom of speech and women’s dignity. Using this less nativist rhetoric, Labour has long translated restrictive policies expected more from the Right, more accustomed to seeing ethnic minorities as a cultural and religious problem rather than looking at their structural socio-economic marginality.
The book is very enthralling in how it zooms in on national security as a domain where center-left political parties are prone to contradiction between their professed political values and their policies and actions. New Labour simultaneously emphasized liberal universalism and initiated the stringent 2000’s anti-terrorism laws; the post-Mitterrand French Socialist Party continued to preach republicanism and the importance of national community while neo-liberalizing the economy. I’m reminded of how American politics tends to maximize the political contradictions of the West, for example the Biden Administration and its insistence on projecting the rules-based international order while simultaneously dehumanizing Palestinians (Muslims or otherwise). Do you think these contradictions are sustainable for the European centre-Left? Or does something have to eventually give?
This is a question that puzzles many scholars working on the topic: should mainstream Left parties head towards centrist positions or satisfy the requests of constituencies asking for more socialist and progressive alternatives? Multiple answers can be given, according to the national contexts, each with unique windows of opportunity (think only about electoral and party systems), the kind of electoral appointment, as well as the agency and positionality of the speaker. In this respect, it is important to remember that the book also touched upon the internal contradictions of the centre-left: while some party cadres and factional leaders flirted with right-wing narratives (e.g. “security as the first freedom”; “Muslims as demographic threats”) and policies (e.g. state of emergency, citizenship removal, criminalization of NGOs), other factions refused these talking points and called the party to move leftward again – with mixed results. This shows that the process of translation is collective: without sufficient internal consensus, importing ideas and measures from outside might generate intra-party contestation and resistance. Translating Islamophobic agendas in the name of a principle allegedly shared by a party might not resonate with how some very party members and MPs interpret the same principle – for instance laïcité in the Parti Socialiste.
Personally, I would like to see the centre-left moving towards more progressive and coherent positions on the fight against racism and xenophobia. I don’t express here an electoral strategy perspective (although Labour could learn some lessons from the recent Gorton-and-Denton by-election…) but more of a normative judgement. It is, at least, encouraging to see that the Parti Socialiste and the Partito Democratico current secretaries are less infatuated with third-way politics, neoliberalism and security recipes, compared to the period scrutinized in the book. Likewise, Pedro Sanchez’s PSOE seems to be quite popular among European left-wing sympathizers, especially for his position on Palestine. Still, other countries like the US under Joe Biden, Germany under several coalition governments, and Denmark’s Social-Democratic government (new ‘progressive’ model of migration governance) show that it is still timely to talk about a “Great Moving Right Show”, to say it with Stuart Hall.
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Ugo Gaudino is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Sussex, where he is researching how religious and political actors tackle Islamophobia in the West. He completed my PhD in International Relations in 2023 (University of Kent) with a thesis on the translation of Islamophobia from the Right to the Left in UK, France and Italy. He published a monograph, a co-edited book and three articles in journals of politics and international security. His research interests include critical approaches to security and terrorism; Islam and Islamophobia in the West; history and ideology of political parties; conspiracy theories.
Reid Kleinberg is a political theorist and Visiting Fellow with the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. His doctoral research explored the history of French nationalism and contemporary populism. His current project examines the political theory and history of transnational radical political movements in the 1960’s North Atlantic and the British experience of counterinsurgency. Reid has published with Crime, Media, Culture; Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory; and Theory and Event; and Aisthesis.
Ugo and Reid are members of the RPRN
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