The hypocrisy of Kemi Badenoch

I have felt the same confusion when Alice Weidel, AfD’s co-chair, pushes policies of mass deportation and opposition to gay marriage because she supports ‘traditional’ family setups. This is not unusual for a candidate for the AfD but Weidel is gay and in a civil partnership with a woman, who is Swiss-Sri-Lankan and they have two adopted children. I have no clue whether she plans to deport her partner if she were to get into power or not, but learning this information blew my mind, considering her and her party’s politics. 

Badenoch and Weidel can take comfort in that they are not alone. From Marine Le Pen in France who is hoping her party will see a boost this year as the current government is in disarray to Georgei Meloni, Italy’s far-right premier. Meloni’s platform of xenophobia and opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion won her an election, so why can’t it happen elsewhere? It seems to be the hope in Germany. The AfD have a small, but steadily growing support base in Germany, polling at 20% and on track to gain seats in the Bundestag, the biggest gain for the far right since World War II.

In recent years, the far right has had a makeover. It is no longer only white heterosexual men who do Viking cosplay and want to enact a Handmaid’s Tale nightmare on women. But because of this rebrand, the theories we have around identity politics and alignments need to shift. We are always moving away from presuming all women or all people of colour are a monolith but there seems to be little recognition of the increasing number of female politicians who sound like their male counterparts from ten years ago. Trump’s reelection demonstrated this, as 45% of women voted for Trump, with 39% of Latina women also voting for a candidate who, famously, wants to deport many Latinos and has numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him. 

Why are there so many people who have, historically, been oppressed by the far right, joining the far right? It is not as though white supremacists have exactly cared for women’s rights. For many, a return to traditional setups where women are housewives and mothers is the ideal society. Yet, some align with women such as Le Pen, Meloni and Weidel. 

There is no simple answer, but all of these women have in common is the populist belief that Western Europe is the pinnacle of rights and there needs to be protection from the rest of the world and the Global South which is backwards and a threat to an egalitarian Europe. By instilling the fear of the ‘other’ as not only a threat to cultural hegemony but a threat to progress, we see how arguments for liberal rights and equity are twisted to fit the narrative of the far right that immigrants are a danger to those rights. 

Think of the arguments to ban the burqa and hijab in France. The arguments are often placed in the view that it is native women in Europe who are liberated, and it is the migrant, usually black or brown woman, regardless of her origin, who requires liberation. By banning what they would see as a patriarchal custom imported by evil brown men, this liberation is achieved. Oh, and maybe deporting some of those scary men would also help. When Badenoch is discussing ‘alien cultures’ she does not count herself of her family because she is from a background of liberation – liberation, that is from the backward ideals of the global south and embracing the liberal egalitarianism of Britishness and Englishness.

Does the right care about women’s rights? Perhaps, in the sense that they care more about protecting the rights of native, usually white, women. Of course, with the number of second and third-generation immigrants, who are native has changed. Hence perhaps why Badenoch sees herself exempt when there are discussions around getting rid of all the immigrants. In the US, again, we see parallels, with interviews with immigrants and the children of immigrants seemingly not getting that calls to remove birthright citizenship would negatively affect them too. It doesn’t matter how you came in, a lot of people want you out.

Stirring up panic over migrant criminals and Pakistani grooming gangs plays into the incorrect idea that there are immigrants who will just be incompatible with the norms of European society. Consequentially, only mass deportation of these people is the only solution to protecting and promoting a safer society. Never mind that we have seen time and time again that anyone and any man, regardless of origin can commit sexual crimes against women. Gisele Pelicot’s case demonstrated that in spades. 

Feminism, for the right, is now a done project. Liberation for women has reached its peak in the West. So, therefore, the women at the helm of these parties and movements can weaponise their identities and rail against what they see as ‘real’ problems. Usually, those problems tend to be multiculturalism. I would reject this conclusion, considering pay equity is not yet achieved in most of Europe and Britain, there is a femicide crisis that grows year by year and reproductive rights are being curtailed all over the place. 

Returning to the question as to why they are part of the right and increasingly joining, it is not so much the why that we need to question but the consequences of what we will see by having more women as leaders in far-right movements and politics. Their identities as women are covers for the movement’s goals of disenfranchising numerous groups of people and so it will be interesting to see how many other women, children of immigrants are drawn in. I can only say that I’m not convinced but the increasing number of people convinced is concerning.

This harmful twisting of liberal ideas being used to keep people out is an insidious undoing of the work feminism has done to promote inclusivity and demonstrates why the rise of populism is not something that can be wished away. It needs to be fought in the press and at the polls.