Racism, Reading and Responsibility: Securitization Theory, Systemic Racism in Security Studies and Methodologies for Excavating Foundational Flaws in Theories Online-only documentation to back-up our shorter piece: Racism and Responsibility – The Critical Limits of Deep-Fake Methodology in Security Studies: A reply to Howell and Richter-Montpetit Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan Introduction 2 Catch-22 x 3 3 1. How Not to Make an Academic Argument 4 Outright errors in Citation and Attribution 5 Unsupported Assertions 6 Guilt by Association 9 Failure to Consult the Relevant Sources 11 Not Understanding the Difference between What the Theory Does Not Do, and What it Cannot Do 12 Either you are with us, or you are with the racists 15 Twisting of Concepts to Serve the Charge of Racism – and destroying distinctions 20 Quoting against all principles 24 2. An evolutionary theory contrasting European desecuritization and African anarchy? 27 ‘Normal Politics’ – letting possible connotations overwrite actual text and theoretical structure 27 Europe 30 Africa 34 A historicist, evolutionary, teleological line drawn between two arbitrarily selected data points 35 3. Mimicking Mills 36 4. Security Dialogue: Some Serious Questions about Editorial Responsibility 43 5. Systemic racism and methods for attributing racism to a theory 47 Do they accuse us of racism? 49 Systemic analysis? Yes, please! 51 Finding out how a theory is constituted 54 6. Doing Securitization Studies of Racism: Actually Existing Analyses and Future Possibilities 57 Racism analysed with the help of Securitization Theory 58 Developing ST to better address racism – and generally to become a better theory 60 An empirical research agenda 63 7. Responsibility: Ethics of Reading, of Writing – and of Name-calling 65 Reading 67 Reading Hobbes (or not) 70 Certainly not reading Arendt 72 Writing 75 Critical Race Theory, maybe 79 Calling ST and us racist 81 Political Responsibility – and an invitation for rephrasing the disagreement 86 Conclusion 88 References 90 The present document is an online-only backup for the 4.000 word version by a related title in Security Dialogue. It is a long text - for three reasons. First, the article by Howell & Richter- Montpetit, which we reply to, contains an extraordinary amount of mistakes and falsehoods; second, we want to go beyond the negative task of responding to suggest some more constructive avenues for what could and should have been done in relation to racism and security studies as well as some more general methodological concerns raised by this affair, and thirdly, the issue we raise in the document about accusations of racism being hurtful and harmful (and in our view therefore libellous if - as in this case - unfounded) is not an abstract and rhetorical statement on our behalf, it has been an actual personal pain and professional disappointment that called forth a need to process this disheartening experience thoroughly. 1 Introduction Security Dialogue has published an article “Is Securitization Theory Racist? Civilizationism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack thought in the Copenhagen School” by Alison Howell and Melanie Richter-Montpetit (online 7th of August 2019; print Feb 2020, vol. 51:1, 3-22; doi:10.1177/0967010619862921); hereafter H&RM. This article makes strong claims about the “foundational role of racist thought in securitisation theory”. Allegedly, the theory is “structured not only by Eurocentrism but also by civilisationalism, methodological whiteness, and antiblack racism”. As the main architects behind Securitization Theory (ST), we are concerned to read about “the foundations of securitization theory in racist thought”. We are widely held to be responsible for founding this theory, and thus we must also be the ones who have placed this racist thought at the theory’s foundations.1 We are appalled by this on four grounds: 1. the toxic, libellous, and as we will show unsubstantiated, charge of racism that has been made against Securitization Theory (ST), and by close implication, us; 2. the deeply flawed, and at times pernicious, ‘methodology’ that purports to sustain this charge; and 3. the fact that what we have always thought of as a very good journal, has not only published such a questionable piece of ‘scholarship’, but also has failed to differentiate between the normal forms of academic critique on the one hand, and potentially libellous political accusations on the other, and not seen it as its duty to inform us beforehand, and/or give us a right of reply alongside the original article; and 4. the disastrous abdication of political responsibility involved in devaluating the concept of racism to something that 99% of the discipline can be charged with on the basis of bizarre conceptual and rhetorical manoeuvres, and thereby evacuating this important critical category of force at a time when racism is politically gaining power in diverse and destructive ways. We are, of course, concerned about the implications of this charge for ourselves, our students, our institutions and our colleagues. But we are also concerned about the implications for our discipline that an article of such poor academic quality and problematic political content can be published in one of our leading journals. This has implications not only for the academic integrity of IR, but also for the type and quality of debates that will define the discipline for the next decade and more. We are frankly resentful at having to waste our time and energy debunking accusations that, since they have no firm foundation, should never have been published in the first place. We have better academic things to be doing with our time and energy. But such toxic and unsupported charges cannot be left to stand unanswered, and if there is any benefit in this whole sorry affair, it might be to give a wake-up call to the discipline about the dangers it faces in the post-truth world. Charges like this have traction regardless of whether they are true or not. Ironically, in a very securitisation- like logic of all-means-justified, we have met arguments in the current context where other scholars don’t believe that the critique is valid, and yet think it is good that it is made because of the importance of fighting racism. The case therefore raises questions of the ethics of reading and writing – and how to address a challenge like racism that cuts across our object of study and our own scholarly community. Is the challenge of racism of such a special nature that it demands sacrifice of academia’s traditional rationale, its dedication to the pursuit of knowledge and understanding through the use of clear and systematic methods of analysis and argument? A license for personal 1 Strangely, this observation has been highly controversial. Security Dialogue has tried to prevent us from saying that we were accused of racism, because only our theory was. We address this in section 5. (The persistence of this effort from the journal can be quickly observed in the lengthy correspondence between us and the editors, which we believe should be made publicly available. The editorial team of Security Dialogue, however, does not agree to this transparency.) 2 defamation in the name of a higher cause is, in our view, likely both to make academia a much more unpleasant and dysfunctional place for all parties2, and to make it less able to intervene effectively in the public sphere on important matters like racism. In what follows we look first at the H&RM article itself, exposing it as a catalogue of methodological and conceptual errors so grievous and blatant as to void its claims. As separate sections (2 and 3), we address specifically their two main claims: that the theory is structured around a call for ‘progress’ from African anarchic securitizations to European, civilised, liberal and reasoned de- securitization; and that it builds on ‘social contract’ theory anchored in Hobbes and ‘state of nature’ thinking. Then, we ask some serious questions about the responsibilities of academic journals like Security Dialogue when they publish unsubstantiated accusations like this. Next, we present a few of the studies that have actually applied ST to racism and suggest a few more possible avenues for research. And finally, we ask how can and should IR take on the problem of structural or systemic racism? We conclude that H&RM’s article opens a false and dangerous path for IR, and that it will do much more harm than good in addressing the problem of structural racism in the discipline. While some sections (4, 6 and parts of 5) go beyond a reply to H&RM, the other sections are mostly refuting their ‘analysis’. Therefore, the division of labor should be clarified: Section 1 is about specific illegitimate techniques such as guilt by association, errors of citation, and reasoning excessively from absences in a text, i.e. roughly logical and formal errors. Sections 2 and 3 are about their two most substantial arguments, the two clearest lines of reasoning, i.e. substance. As part of section 5 about methodology, we show how they hide behind an analysis of ‘systemic racism’ that isn’t there and violate principles for ‘excavating’ what is constitutive of a theory. Section 7 demonstrates mistaken readings and misleading writing, and because discussed in terms of responsibility, this section points to their political failure in relation to the very real menace of racism. Our short reply in SD is structured differently, so readers who have read that first, will find familiar passages in different parts here, but mostly in sections 1, 2 and 5 Catch-22 x 3 Responding to H&RM’s attack is complicated by three ways in which our defence almost unavoidably will be used against us for further criticism: First, critical scholars in general, and anti-racists in particular, are very conscious of practices of marginalisation and exclusion – often real, but by now also a well-established figure easily awakened.