You have observed that Rastafari’s status as a religion has often been questioned. Some people do not think it is a real religion. Instead, they describe Rastafari as a form of protest or a counter-cultural movement. In what ways does Rastafari qualify as a “traditional religion,” and how is Rastafari similar to or different from other religions?

In many ways, Rastafari developed by contrasting itself to Christian traditions. It did so in a particular colonial context coming out of slavery. The critique was how could people who profess to follow Jesus Christ be so partial with their application of that faith? Christianity promotes peace, love, and brotherhood and sisterhood of humanity, yet at the same time, these people are visiting violence and oppression onto entire groups of people. This meant that often, Rastafari has resisted calling itself a religion because religion seems to be associated with hypocrisy.

Many Rastafari would call what they do a livity, not a religion. A livity is a way of life that is all about accentuating life over death, and you have to practice it every day, not just on Sundays or the day you go to church.

In the Caribbean, where Rastafari originates, and in the UK and America, where it traveled, certain Rastafari practices are considered to be illegal. But even where their practices are not illegal, Rastafari can still become oppressed due to their beliefs. For example, if your child has dreadlocks, and the school tells you that you have to cut off the dreadlocks because they are dirty, then you have no rights to rely upon. But if growing your hair in dreadlocks is one of your religious beliefs and practices, then you may be protected. Therefore, Rastafari counters itself to religion by identifying itself as a livity, but at the same time, Rastafari often uses rights laws, especially those on characteristics like religion, to try to protect against oppression.  

There is a bit of pragmatism involved. Many movements, including Rastafari, need a mix of ethical injunctions and pragmatic applications. Movements should use a combination of injunctions and applications as long as the applications do not undermine basic ethics.

You have previously written about the connections between populism and neoliberalism. More specifically, you argued that in the UK, neoliberalism has a racist or populist background to it and that Enoch Powell is a neoliberal in some sense. To what extent are neoliberal and populist economic systems similar or different from each other?

When people usually think about neoliberal ideology, they think about individuals who pursue their needs in the market. The system is based upon a spontaneous combustion of people wanting to sell or buy something, and this sets the market price. There are market logics that people accord to, and that allows neoliberals to talk about people as homo economicus who are fully rational and self-interested. The market is the most equitable and fair system, and states and governments should not get involved because it would degrade the system. Neoliberalism is supposed to be a fair system because it is all about the individual.

How can neoliberalism still have racist content if everything is about the individual rather than groups of people? Some of the politicians before or during the 1960s argued for economic systems similar to what we would now call neoliberalism. However, they also argued that only some humans can pursue their independent needs in an orderly fashion and take responsibility for their own decisions within the neoliberal economic order. They are not breaking the law, rioting, or trying to undermine the political order. When you look more closely, you find that people like Enoch Powell believed that only Anglo-Saxons have developed that propensity and that ability to be orderly and independent. Other people are simply too dependent upon their culture to become fully rational agents. For example, Powell claims that Indians are too communal, and communalism does not provide independence and personal responsibility for yourself. He also sees Black people as too diffident, anarchic, and riotous to be orderly. Some people in the world cannot be independent, while others cannot be orderly. Only white Anglo-Saxons can be both independent and orderly at the same time, according to Powell.

His prescription for neoliberalism is to purify society so that the only people left are the ones who have this genetic trait towards orderliness and independence. They are the only people who can be in a society that meets human needs, that is not wasteful, that lives within its means, and that can therefore be ethical. Although neoliberalism is ostensibly all about the individual, but when you dig into neoliberalism, the ideology judges the competencies of individuals to be orderly and independent. If you dig deep enough, you will even get into eugenics. 

Jumping ahead to the late 2010s, Trump and Brexit supporters believed that immigration and globalization have corrupted the deserving white working class and made it dependent, such that they can no longer be free individuals in a free-market economy. White people should not be dependent. To remake them and give them their just rewards, we need to get rid of immigration and close the borders. We need to purify the country. Then the white working class will become good, independent people again. It is not immediately apparent what the connection between racism and neoliberalism is because as soon as you talk about individuals, everybody thinks you are just talking about individuals. But what competencies an individual is supposed to display and demonstrate are often racialized.

Powell and others used the word individual in a loaded sense; it includes some people but not others. Even if you do not want to talk about race, the term “individual” in Western political theory usually means an independent property man. It usually does not encompass women or children. Individuals must stand on their own two feet, make their own decisions, and take consequences for their actions. Apparently, you cannot do that if you are a mother or if you have a communal culture, which Powell ascribed to Indians. 

Powell is a rather controversial figure in Britain; he gave a furious speech against immigration and was sacked from the Conservative Party leadership. How much was his opposition to immigration related to the belief that immigrants are communal or in some other way not befitting the label of the individual?

When people think about racism, they are likely thinking about white supremacism. But there's a flip side or another other face of racism, and this is something you might call white nationalism. It is saying that white people have a unique culture that gives them the ability to be individuals, to take account of their actions, and to stand on their own two feet. They do not want to take over the world. They also do not want anybody to come to their place under the sun to sully or degenerate white people. They just want to make sure that they can purify where they live, and they want to build walls to keep people from coming in from elsewhere. In addition, white nationalism is often accompanied by defeat; good things that were supposed to happen to white people didn't happen. 

As of January 24, 2024, cannabis has been decriminalized or legalized for medical or recreational purposes in 38 U.S. states and in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and a few other countries. Legalization is of great interest to Rastafari because cannabis is used as a sacrament in its rituals. What are the implications of decriminalizing cannabis for Black self-determination and for building an economy based on moral values rather than market logic?

Cannabis is an incredibly popular herb across the world, and a lot of local economies are supported by cultivating, selling, or consuming cannabis. Cannabis is very widespread, similar to coffee, tea, or alcohol. Cannabis was only made illegal in the late 1800s. Cannabis is a sacrament in Rastafari, so Rastafari followers are at risk of being arrested and jailed for practicing their religion. Rastafari wanted to gain rights, arguing that if Catholics were allowed to consume bread and wine as their sacraments, then Rastafari should be allowed to consume cannabis as their sacrament.  

The push for decriminalization by Rastafari has had broader consequences, and it contributed to other people wanting to decriminalize cannabis. There is a generation of people who grew up listening to Bob Marley and others,  who came to see cannabis as a culture or a lifestyle. They have done so in part because Marley’s reggae songs have strong Rastafari messages in them. Rastafari’s struggles to practice their faith contributed to broader cannabis decriminalization, but it also created a counterculture element. The problem with that is that when you decriminalize or legalize, you also open the doors to commercializing cannabis. Many people will now grow cannabis, not just for livelihood or as a sacrament, but also to sell it for profit.

According to Rastafari practice, there are particular ways to grow or consume cannabis with other people. Similarly, there are particular ways to sell cannabis; Rastafari charge a price that is not necessarily as much as they can get; they have these moral compulsions to treat cannabis as special, rather than just another commodity to make as much money as possible out of it. Legalization is tricky because it leads to commercialization, which risks undermining the moral economy that often underpins cannabis. There is a tension between the benefits and drawbacks of legalization.

An important Rastafari belief is repatriation, the idea that to escape captivity, the African diaspora should return to Africa. At the same time, Brexit was partly motivated by the desire to keep migrants and their culture out. How do you reconcile aspirations to return to Africa versus building multicultural societies in Europe and elsewhere?

Whose problem is that to fix? There have always been people who think that others who are not like them should go back to where they come from. This sentiment is certainly prevalent today. A project that seeks to repatriate Black people to Africa could be compared to a white nationalist desire to purify the West. However, the difference is the voluntary nature of Rastafari repatriation. In Rastafari, moving back to Africa is voluntary and is done in pursuit of what people consider to be justice and reparation. None of these things are present in the white nationalistic vision of repatriation. In other words, it is not symmetrical. And if there is an asymmetry, then would you want to stop people from having the right to move away from a place because you want to preserve some form of multiculturalism in that place? If so, what is the worth of multiculturalism?

It is important to bear in mind whether repatriation is voluntary or being forced down the throats of people. There's a word in the West that people often use, expatriate. Westerners who move abroad are called expatriates, but people from outside the West who move to the West are not called expatriates. There is one standard for the West and one for the rest. Who would meet the standard of an expatriate, and who could not? Would you call a Rastafari who repatriated to Africa an expatriate?

In theory, whether someone is an expatriate depends on whether they still identify as being from or belonging to the country where they came from, as opposed to becoming a citizen or national or the country they are residing in. However, you are more likely to find a Briton living in India calling themselves an expatriate rather than the other way around. There is not necessarily symmetry in how different people conceive of moving around the world: some people can move more freely in and out of different countries than others. When we are talking about multiculturalism, we need to think about that asymmetry because it tells us something very important. Often, multiculturalism is hard-won.

In addition, most African societies are incredibly multicultural. They have many different languages, cultures, and traditions. Those Rastafari who live in Africa, in countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, or South Africa, bring another bit of culture to that country, so they contribute to the multiculturalism of those countries.

Today, it is very unacceptable to be openly and explicitly xenophobic. Nevertheless, in the last few years, nativism and populism have been gaining popularity, and there have been more incidents of racism and prejudice. Rastafari’s calls for repatriation have also been criticized as a ridiculous hope. How do you stay optimistic during these times, and how difficult is it to defend the progress already made?

I do not think it's about having hope but about how different generations live. At the moment, younger generations tend to be less concerned with racial segregation, ethnic differences, and gender and sexual differences in terms of identity. They also seem to be much more agile and with much more common sense. There are lots of people with different backgrounds and ideas, and I am one of them. As human beings, we are effectively hard-coded to live with differences. Most people in the world speak more than one language, and just because they speak more than one language does not mean that they speak one of those languages worse.  

It is anti-human or incredibly synthetic and artificial to try and make people live in bubbles without a difference. If you sit in a room for an hour with four people who you think are all the same as you, it will not go very well; differences will inevitably arise. This is a rule of politics: every country has its parties, and each of those parties consists of different groups. Each of those groups includes different individuals, and in each individual's head, a different person is talking. It is not hope; it is just humanity, and humanity is well disposed towards dealing with difference.

In addition, whilst there is incredible partisanship in politics, if you talk about basic values, instead, you will find far more agreement than disagreement. If humanity is still around in one hundred years, we will laugh about how much we currently existentialize over differences.