ABSTRACT
This chapter takes its cue from one of the hate-speech incidents that took place after the UK voted to leave the European Union in June 2016. It examines the performative formation of a white nationalist subject who polices urban infrastructures in order to seek out and expel the non-white, not-quite-white, or non-national Other. The first part of the chapter enquires into the whiteness of Brexit. Building on Sara Ahmed’s account of passing, it proposes a reading of post-referendum hate crimes as strange encounters, in which the nationalist subject passes as white while passing the stranger as non-white. The second part maps these encounters against the recent historical context of anti-terror campaigns and Islamophobic tendencies in the wake of the 2005 London bombings. The third section contextualizes current iterations of racist speech with a view to governmental and legislative manoeuvres that have led to the formation of British citizenship as implicitly white and highly exclusive on the one hand, and to the creation of disposable and deportable populations within the nation on the other hand. The conclusion problematizes white liberal and anti-racist positions in the current political climate.
