andrewwelsby

Most of the posts I write have in one way or another a political component – that’s with a small ‘p’. In fact, I don’t remember ever posting about local or national politics, with a big ‘P’. But the pairing by the UK government, by Kier Starmer in particular, of the atrocious, criminal stabbing of a Jewish worshipper with the genocide in Gaza, has left me feeling annoyed enough to write a short analysis.  

Now, I’m the first to acknowledge that this should be approached with care as it touches on trauma, identify and grief. I offer the utmost respect to the people of Palestine and with the communities and victims of the recent Manchester atrocity. But the conflation of the Manchester stabbing, and the Gaza atrocity also touches on power, ideology and hegemony. If we use Gramsci’s ideas as a critical lens, it can be revealed that the government seeks to naturalise certain narratives while reinforcing existing power dynamics and structures across national and international partnerships. This type of conflation silences dissent and delegitimises solidarity protest movements, while reproducing racist and colonial tropes and prejudices. Here’s how..

Hegemony refers to dominance or leadership exercised by one group over others. This happens not only through overt force or control, but more subtly through cultural, ideological, and social means.

The term is most closely associated with the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci, who used it to describe how ruling classes maintain power not simply by coercion (e.g. laws, police, military), but by securing the consent of the governed, ie, you and me, the common citizens. They do this by shaping what appear to be social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and ways of thinking so that their worldview becomes accepted as common sense or natural.

For example, in a cultural context, hegemony can explain how media, education, and institutions reinforce dominant ideologies, such as capitalism, patriarchy, or colonial narratives. The construction of these ideologies as social norms, based on common sense renders alternative perspectives as marginal, deviant, or invisible.

With this in mind, conflating the stabbing with the Gaza war reinforces current UK ideologies hegemonically.  To begin with, one such ideology centers on geopolitical alliances, namely, Western support for Israel and the broader framing of Israel as a frontline state in a global battle between so called democracy and terrorism. This ideological alignment shapes public sympathy by blasting the media with a linked news narrative eagerly pounced upon by the UK press, the majority of which in Britain is fairly right wing. The alignment also shapes and contributes to policy consensus, narrowing the range of legitimate debate and marginalising critiques of Israeli state violence or Palestinian resistance.

Hegemony works by naturalising certain narratives so they seem like obvious truth. In this case, the rapid linking of a local criminal act (the stabbing of a Jewish man in Manchester) to a distant geopolitical conflict (the Gaza war) operates as a hegemonic manoeuvre because it encourages the public to see the incident not as an isolated, local, criminal act, but as part of a larger, ideologically loaded story. Often a story framed around civilisational conflict, religious tension, or threats to Western democracy.

By repeating and amplifying this framing, media and political actors help consolidate a worldview in which certain groups (e.g. Muslims, Palestinians, or pro-Palestine activists) are coded as inherently violent or radical. This narrative then becomes “common sense”, even when the specific facts of the case don’t support such a connection.

The further hegemonic function of this conflation is made clear when it delegitimises pro-Palestinian activism. If violence in the UK is automatically read as an extension of the Gaza conflict, then expressions of solidarity with Palestinians can be more easily painted as dangerous, extremist, or antisemitic, even when they’re peaceful and grounded in human rights discourse. This delegitimisation narrows political space and discourages public support for anti-colonial or anti-imperial critiques.

Hegemony is deeply entangled with colonial histories. The conflation at play here often reproduces long-standing Orientalist tropes that associate Muslim or Arab identities with irrational violence. Such representations sustain a racialised hierarchy in which Jewish safety is treated as paramount (as it should be) but Palestinian suffering is minimised or made invisible , thus perpetuating colonial ideas of whose lives matter and whose violence counts.

So there you go.. the hegemonic dimension is not in the stabbing itself but in how power operates through interpretation, narration, and framing through media networks. Clearly the government are constantly shifting a narrative based on what the press want, and what rival political parties are framing. But by embedding the incident into dominant ideological frameworks, rather than treating it with factual precision, the discourse serves broader political ends. Those are reinforcing state alignments, disciplining dissent, and stabilising existing power relations.