However, this is a white, Eurocentric perspective that fails to account for the impact of centuries of colonialism on people from former colonies and on those subjected to racialisation.
The consequences of empire extend far beyond explicit racism and violence to include media representation, access to citizenship, surveillance, and so much more.
In his latest book, L’ombra lunga dell’impero: Voci afrodiscendenti tra razzismo sistemico, colonialismo e resistenza globale (In The Long Shadow of Empire: Voices of African Descent Amid Systemic Racism, Colonialism, and Global Resistance), Angelo Boccato details the far-reaching consequences of empire, emphasising that it is not just a remnant of the past, but a present force that continues to shape who is free and who remains subordinate.
Boccato is an Italian-Dominican journalist living in London. His articles address human rights, migration, and the far right, and have been published by numerous international platforms including The Independent, Columbia Journalism Review, and Byline Times.
But why shadow? The book’s title stems from a promise: “The empire remains the shadow and the central theme of this work, (is) both to recount the injustices and crimes of the past and present, and to understand how to build resistance for the present and the future.”
Boccato blends journalism with social critique. Across sixteen chapters, he examines the colonial legacy—both visible and hidden—while consistently featuring Black and Afro-descendant voices: journalists, experts, and scholars. This gives agency to people often treated as subjects of a story rather than its tellers.
In The Long Shadow of Empire is the culmination of more than ten years of research and extensive fieldwork on empire’s legacy. Given Boccato’s detailed analysis of postcolonial racism, it’s worth outlining each chapter’s themes to show the book’s scope.
The book opens with Brexit, then chapters 2–4—the empirical core—examine migrants’ lives in Paris, Milan, and Rome. Chapters 5–6 look at racialised voices in UK, Italian, and French media, while chapter 7 covers Europe’s uneven welcome of refugees during the war in Ukraine. Chapter 8 traces empire’s grip on daily life, from racial profiling to AI surveillance. Chapters 9–10 turn to Palestine, and 11–12 track the far right and culture wars in Portugal, Germany, and the UK.
Chapter 13 explores global inequality through passports and climate change, 14 remembers victims like Abdul “Abba” Guiebre and Stephen Lawrence alongside Black Lives Matter, 15 links British and Italian colonial history to racism today, and 16 closes with a call for a new Black narrative.
When The Battleground contacted Boccato for a brief conversation, the journalist explained that in writing In The Long Shadow of Empire, he drew heavily on the growing body of literature in the United Kingdom on empire, focusing on how it has shaped today’s societies and on the denial of its existence.
For this reason, Britain is the book’s starting point.
Brexit and Culture Wars
Living in England, Boccato begins with Brexit. The 2016 referendum gets analysed through the lens of imperial Britain.
Such a connection might not be obvious at first, since Brexit is often linked solely to the European Union. However, Boccato explores the history of “Take Back Control,” the Leave campaign’s mantra, which refers to reclaiming the UK’s sovereignty.
On this point, Boccato emphasises different elements of the campaign. On the one hand, “the defence of borders” promoted by Leave supporters, who described the UK as being at the mercy of uncontrolled migration flows; on the other, the use of discriminatory and hateful language in the media and in political debate.
These are direct consequences of a colonial mindset that found its ultimate embodiment in the politics of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who spearheaded the Brexit referendum, and today leads the far-right Reform UK party.
According to the Italian journalist, the British poll represented a great success “from the perspective of the culture wars, leading to the global galvanisation of the far right”, which then secured a second victory in 2016: the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.
On this point, Boccato tells The Battleground that the election was “a scenario considered unlikely at the time that eventually came true”.
That year, far-right parties exploited the dynamics of populism on both sides of the Atlantic, using a similar “people versus the elite” narrative, even though their leaders often belonged to the establishment.
Brexit proved that “changing the dynamics of subsequent elections” is possible, according to Boccato. For this reason, the real merit lies in its contribution to the culture wars which “are stoked by conservatives and the far right on issues ranging from the fight against ‘woke’ culture to minority rights”.
This requires no real effort from those who instigate them. In fact, they promise no economic measures or complex political choices. Instead, the focus is on zero-cost investments capable of maximising support by acting as a sounding board for society’s worst instincts.
During the lead-up to the referendum, the press played a decisive role, with right-wing media successfully shifting public opinion. Decades of Eurosceptic reporting, targeted digital disinformation, and polarising rhetoric framed the European Union as a threat to British sovereignty and fundamentally shaped the Leave victory.
Much like Brexit, right-wing media outlets have historically played a role in portraying migrants in the UK through a racist perspective, and they continue to do so. Boccato calls for a change in how certain individuals and dynamics are depicted.
For example, according to the journalist, “When it comes to stabbings in the UK, for instance, these are often described as ‘black-on-black crime’, a racist cliché that erases other contextual factors.”
However, when crimes committed by whites, such as those widespread among the working class in Glasgow in the 1990s, were discussed, the label ‘crimes amongst white people’ was not used.
The award-winning journalist and writer Ismail Einashe tells Boccato:
Since the so-called migration crisis of 2015, we have witnessed excessively negative coverage in the British media. The narrative tends to be dehumanising, and migrants and refugees are framed in very simplistic, binary terms (as either victims or perpetrators) never as human beings with fully formed stories. I believe there is a truly deep-seated problem in the way the media portray these people, which has an impact on their experiences in the UK. We know that following events such as the EU referendum, there has been a rise in racist attacks in Britain.
The Importance of Inclusive Representation
We live in a multicultural and complex world where white, upper-middle-class men mainly produce news. This creates a narrow, ethnocentric view of reality that clashes with the growing multiculturalism of Western societies.
According to In The Long Shadow of Empire, it’s time the press reflected this:
In an ideal world, information should foster an informed community, aware of the reality in which we live, without acting as a megaphone for irresponsible and racist politicians, for hate speech, or, more generally, without descending into the lowest form of demagoguery, elevating the discussion rather than reducing it to the level of social media exchanges and old-fashioned barroom banter.
To support his argument, Boccato cites examples of excluded journalists, such as the aforementioned Einashe. Conversely, he also recounts experiments that have bucked the trend.
For example, #CambiareRAI (ChangeRAI) was a digital activism and email-bombing Italian initiative launched on social media to call on RAI, the Italian public television service, to improve minority representation, combat stereotypes, and promote more inclusive and respectful language across its television programming.
In 2021, RAI faced a massive backlash over its use of blackface, which it eventually banned. This occurred after years of protests from Afro-Italians over skits on the network’s celebrity impersonation competition, Tale e Quale, where contestants regularly darkened their skin to portray Black and minority artists.
Another Italian example is DOTZ.media, an independent publishing project and media company founded in 2022 by journalist and video maker Sara Lemlem, which aims to combat misinformation and discriminatory language in Italian and European journalism.
In France, Le Bondy Blog is a well-known independent French online media outlet, founded in November 2005 during the riots in the Parisian suburbs. Its main purpose is to give suburban residents a voice and portray French society from a pluralistic, inclusive perspective, far removed from mainstream media stereotypes.
Even in multicultural contexts such as the United Kingdom, representation remains limited, according to Boccato, because “there is an ethnic and class filter: journalism is often reserved for white people with a private-school education (Oxford or Cambridge), who view reality from a privileged vantage point”.
“The solution is to truly open newsrooms to people from disadvantaged classes and underrepresented ethnic groups, but at the moment I don’t see much political will in that direction, “ he added in our interview.
The Press Has Done Enough Damage Already:
“At the time, migration was still a hot-button issue in the run-up to that year’s European elections,” Boccato writes in In The Long Shadow of Empire, in reference to 2016, “partly due to the damage inflicted by a journalistic approach that was very often insensitive to the conditions of migrants, which ended up fuelling a distorted perception among the public”.
To deepen his understanding, he travelled and observed directly how media portrayals, politics, and postcolonial racism affect migrants arriving in Europe.
In 2019, the journalist went to Paris, where he contacted Yann Manzi, founder of Utopia 56, a French grassroots volunteer organisation founded in 2015 to support displaced persons, refugees, and the homeless.
Utopia 56 operates independently of state funding and coordinates volunteer activities that provide emergency shelter, material assistance, medical transport, and legal support for vulnerable groups. Founded in Brittany to oversee volunteer work at the Calais “Jungle” migrant camp, the NGO has since expanded to serve multiple French cities, including Paris, Lille, and Toulouse.
Bocatto then moves to Fondazione Arca, an organisation founded in Milan in 1994 to provide help to people living in conditions of severe poverty, social marginalisation, or homelessness. Last but not least, he recounts the story of the Baobab Experience, a prominent grassroots NGO in Rome that provides vital humanitarian aid, legal advice, and medical support to migrants, asylum seekers, and vulnerable individuals.
The organisation operates largely on the streets and near major transport hubs like Tiburtina Station. “All these realities step in to make up for what politics doesn’t do,” Boccato tells The Battleground.
At the end of In The Long Shadow of Empire, Angelo Boccato states that to raise awareness of Black and racialised people, who often come from former colonies, “we must therefore carry out a huge effort to liberate our words, our voices, and our stories, to create that arena of ideas where we can build that struggle and dream and structure the revolution that is needed”.
His book already represents a significant journalistic contribution.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
