In considering the continued popularity of Nigel Farage despite his alleged racism (Opinion, 15 December), Nesrine Malik concludes: “If he survives … it will be because there is now a little bit of his poison everywhere.” She is right. But not simply because racial intolerance has become newly contagious. It is because of a peculiarly British paradox: we abhor racists yet often excuse racism because we too often want to believe that only racists are capable of it.

But racism is no more dependent on racists for its existence than it is reliant on malice to find expression. Too few among the general public are cognisant of this and too many politicians appear to be ignorant of it, which is why so many can be wooed by a hardline anti-immigration stance without recognising the extent to which it employs racist tropes.

The likes of Farage, meanwhile, know very well that public scrutiny of racism is easily hoodwinked by face-saving talk of the “intention” of those implicated and the “benefit of the doubt” that this invokes on their behalf.

Until we are prepared to recognise how racism emerges from problematic behaviours and attitudes – however commonplace, jocular or inadvertently produced – we shall remain perplexed but complicit spectators to its rising tide. Or become one of the blameless, inaudible but inevitably violated groups it targets. It is not only poison we must be careful of, it is passivity.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk

Nesrine Malik misses a key point: demonstrating that the Reform UK leader held racist views actually reinforces his support. Racism never went away, it just kept its head down. As a white male living in a predominantly Asian community, many times other white residents confided their racist views to me, thinking I must share them. Now such views have become respectable again. Labour’s policy of feeding the tiger will lead to the beast coming back for more.
Dr Peter Purton
Southall, London

Nesrine Malik’s article on racism leads to the uncomfortable idea that democracy is OK as long as the good people can fiddle it to keep the bad ones out of power. Once it becomes genuinely democratic, you might find that the intelligent and virtuous are outnumbered on three fronts – by the stupid and virtuous, the intelligent and evil, and the stupid and evil.
Michael Bulley
Chalon-sur-Saône, France