Back then, racism was a furtive, guilty pleasure: deep down, even bigots knew their bigotry was ugly. No more.
Who is responsible for so misusing the term 'racist' that it's lost it's power, Aditya?
What was striking about last weekend’s march wasn’t the turnout, easily matched by some of the protests about Gaza. It’s the lack of shame, the brazen insistence on an Englishman’s right to make others feel small.
Aren't you 'an Englishman', then Aditya? Aren't you Lefties always telling us that if you're born here, no matter your background, you're English? Is that yet another Left lie?
It’s the normalisation of what was until recently considered malicious extremism. And a big driver isn’t the crowds down in the street, but the suits in our supposedly progressive government.Whenever confronted with violent prejudice, Keir Starmer coughs, splutters and takes the coward’s way out. He either pretends not to see racism or panders to it.
A Tim points out, some immigration can be positive, but the scale of it has changed a tad since the 70s.
But Aditya believes it's all Starmer's fault. See you do have something in common with those marchers after all!
Just over a couple of months ago, in small towns across Northern Ireland, migrants were burned out of their homes and a mosque was petrol bombed. The prime minister’s response? First and foremost, he deplored attacks on the police. Muslims deluged with hate and fearing for their lives got only a promise of “every step possible to keep you safe”. Stripped of rhetorical flourish, this is the bare minimum any citizen might expect from a state.
The bare minimum one can expect from a state is surely secure boarders and control over who comes in.
At the end of last month, Nigel Farage promised mass deportation of practically anyone seeking asylum in this country, even if it meant handing Afghan women over to the Taliban and sending Iranian dissidents to their deaths. To the press, No 10 didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow at the Reform UK leader referring to other humans as a “scourge” or an “invasion”. For the great unwashed, it posted the most extraordinary advert. “Whilst Nigel Farage moans from the sidelines, Labour is getting on with the job,” it read, showing an image of Starmer stamped with “removed over 35,000 people from the UK”. Why vote for the full-fat hatemongers when diet racists will do the job just fine?
I think referring to Labour's pitifully ineffective measures as 'racist' is a fine example of my initial point.
Starmer might observe how much of the UK would simply fall apart without migrants and their children – from your local hospital to the school to the care home. How universities are facing collapse without foreigns students and their bumper fees. He might even point out – imagine! – that migrants are human too, with their own lives and dreams for themselves and their families. We could get on to the legacy of empire, and about how the climate crisis and poverty force other populations to move.
Why do they move here? There are plenty of other countries, aren't there?
The Overton window is shifting further and further to the right. The ultimate price for that will not be paid by a politician, but by people far from power: an Ethiopian boy, perhaps, with no family, or an Asian kid looking out the window one evening.
This isn't Ethiopia so why should we care? And of course, by 'Asian' you don't mean Chinese or Thai, do you Aditya? You mean Pakistani.
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