Is there a migration crisis in England? Yes, there is, says John Wight. And it’s not the fault of the migrants.
Van on fire during riots in Southport, England, on July 30, 2024. (StreetMic LiveStream, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0)
By John Wight
Medium
“Let no Irishman throw a stone at the foreigner; he may hit his own clansman. Let no foreigner revile the Irish; he may be vilifying his own stock.” — James Connolly
The series of race and anti-migrant riots that have been sweeping across England’s vast deindustrialised regions in the North West, North East, Midlands and Yorkshire have been ineffably ugly to behold.
Gangs of masked up men attacking hotels occupied by asylum seekers and trying to set them on fire, launching missiles at thin police lines, burning down libraries, attacking businesses owned by black and brown people, throwing Nazi salutes and launching broadsides against mosques: this is not Germany circa 1934 and ’35, it is England in 2024.
That the far right has been emboldened across England by Brexit in 2016 is now not in doubt. Brexit was never about democracy; it was about identity. It was about who is really British and who is really not. It was about who really belongs in England and who really does not. And it was about what it really means to be British and what it really does not.
Millions of poor working class whites in beleaguered communities across the North and Midland were told and believed that Brexit would solve all their problems. They were bombarded with anti-migrant and xenophobic propaganda by a clutch of rich white hate preachers and opportunists — Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson, etc. — and they believed it.
Nigel Farage, Brexit Party leader, in 2018. (Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
They were lied to.
Used as electoral fodder by the most reactionary section of the British ruling class and political elite, their focus was turned to an enemy they could see in front of them, among them, visible to the eye. Add to the mix a large sprinkling of base English nationalism and obscurantist tropes regarding the legacy of Winston Churchill and World War II, and what we are witnessing now was a crisis just watching for a spark.
This spark came with the horrific mass stabbing attack at a children’s play centre in Southport, just north of Liverpool, on July 23. The result was three infant girls killed and a community and country understandably and justifiably enraged. That the alleged attacker turned out to be a 17-year-old second-generation Rwandan migrant merely added to the rage already induced by the belief that initial police refusal to reveal his identity was down to him being a Muslim — someone who’d arrived on the shores of England on one of the migrant boats, whose existence has been cynically and effectively weaponised.
Is there a migration crisis in England? Yes, there is. Is it the fault of the migrants? No, it is not.
It is, this migrant crisis, the fruits of Western foreign policy stretching back decades. In other words, we, the West, destroy and destabilise countries across the Middle East and North Africa and those affected come to the West to escape the destruction. In this, these desperate and traumatised people are doing what any one of us would do under the same circumstances.
Migrants and asylum seekers are not pets to be lavished with the sanctimonious guff so beloved of a liberal intelligentsia the denizens of which have never known a day of economic insecurity. They are people whose arrival in increasing numbers has posed a challenge socially and economically for working class communities that have been forced to endure 14 years of brutal and unremitting austerity.
This said, the demonisation and dehumanisation of migrants and Muslims, both lumped into the same racist box, is the devil’s work. The real issue all right thinking people need to contend with is a capitalist system that has fashioned a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many. The result is millions of poor working class indigenous people being left afraid for the future and angry at the present. Living in communities that are screaming out for investment, dealing with under-funded public services, their anger is entirely justified. The problem is that it is being directed at the wrong target.
The amplification of cultural differences between different ethnic groups as a wedge issue by the right conceals the dire economic plight shared by all. Asylum seekers sitting in hotels are victims of the self-same neoliberal and colonial system as those who’ve been attacking them. The result is a ruling capitalist elite being able to sleep nights, knowing that their wealth and power will remain intact.
Poverty is the worst crime. Not only does it attack the body, it violates spirit. It sows despair and cultivates anger. That anger when directed at the actual source becomes a material force for good. When directed at the wrong source, as it has been these past few ugly weeks across England, it results in mindless thuggery.
The far right has never had it so good and learning the lessons of history has never been more critical than now. The far right has been confronted and defeated on the streets of England before and it needs, as a matter of urgency, to be confronted and defeated now. But in so doing, it is imperative that we do not let capitalism and its wealthy and privileged disciples off the hook.
They, ultimately, are the handmaidens of this crisis. We are reaping what they have sown
John Wight, author of Gaza Weeps, 2021, writes on politics, culture, sport and whatever else. Please consider taking out a subscription at his Medium site.
This article is from the author’s Medium site.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
I used to be on a women’s website called Spinster and it opened my eyes to UK residents and their inability to link up their problems to THEIR GOVERNMENT. I kept saying, over and over, “The cops serve the government, not you,” and then I’d hear a thousand complains against the cops. They hated Stonewall — the taxpayer-funded organization pushing transgenderism in every aspect of life — and when I said, “Forget Stonewall, it’s your government,” I’d hear a thousand complains against Stonewall. They can’t seem to connect the dots in a very basic way, that the government is the entity making their lives miserable and just giving them what they’ve given the people of other countries for hundreds of years.
And the racism! I’m sure these women thought of themselves as liberal and I cancelled my subscription when they immediately believed all the ethno-state propaganda after 7 October. No thinking, no analysis, just parroting the garbage fed to them by state media such as the Guardian and BBC.
In the dialectic of ‘far right’ and ‘far left’, for generations the right has done its best to obliterate the Left, exiling, jailing, even killing its leaders and censoring its expression in media and academia. The result is a dearth of leaders and teachers that contradict the way of the far right and leaves the people unmoored. Our hope is that not all ‘far left’ thinkers and activists have been destroyed.
Thanks to Consortium News and, Mr. Wight himself for a well-written and accurate piece.
Initially, I did begin to think the article was going to end up simply being an attack on the racists(which, although can be said to be justified as such venomous expressions of hate has no place in a decent society, would not have addressed the real issues and essentially been a diatribe about how people herd sheep) but thankfully it wasn’t. Instead it was a sensible account of the divide & conquer tactics regularly used against us ‘common folk’ and what better way to do that than by clashing extremely different cultures together against their will. Make one side really, really bitter at having their ancestoral homes and families utterly obliterated by the same culture they’ve been invited/stole into and you get your results guaranteed.
Our Great & Glorious Overlords rely especially on the ignorance of such race-borne hate and how so many in their populations naturally, albeit mindlessly, readily attach themselves to such an easy(it’s only flawed if you think about it) form of venting anger at how society is run. Roman elites didn’t call the common folk ‘The Mob’ for nothing.
Our Great & Glorious Overlords love playing us off against each other. It only helps their machinations against us.
Bringing in traumatised, angry and vengeful people who will and do think just like us(as in they too generally take the ‘easy’ hate-fuelled options as we do), who, like us, find out it’s nigh-on impossible to reach the true culprits of their pain are like Manna from Heaven for our ruling elites. It’s win-win all around for the social engineers.
Incidentally, I read about Kalergi a couple decades ago now and, whilst I thought the conspiracy highly plausible back then(simply down to being aware of the mindset elitism creates), I left it there in my mind.
Today, mainly thanks to the rise of ‘one world gov’ and ‘new world order’ attitudes in seemingly colluding government bodies around the world combined with their apparent eagerness to follow the WEF’s agenda of outright social engineering on a global scale(and damn anyone who disagrees!), I’m inclined to now be of the opinion it’s entirely real.
7 August: fear changes sides as massive protests defy the far right
The far right had threatened to assault dozens of immigration and asylum services on Wednesday, but instead of pogroms, there was an explosion of anti-racist opposition to fascism and solidarity with migrants and Muslims.
In most places on the far right’s hit list, there was no racist presence at all. At others, a handful of bigots turned up to find hundreds or even thousands of anti-racists determined to repulse them.
Tens of thousands of anti-racists organised by Stand Up To Racism (SUTR) defied calls from politicians and cops to stay off the streets. Instead, they did the right thing and took command of their local areas.
hxxps://socialistworker.co.uk/anti-racism/7-august-fear-changes-sides-as-massive-protests-defy-the-far-right/
There are a large number of Unity protests planned across Britain for this Saturday.
Ditto the US “migrant crisis” caused by the declaration and exercise of the imperialist Monroe Doctrine that has destroyed and destabilized countries across Latin America for the two centuries of its existence.
And double ditto the mainland Europe “migrant crisis” caused by US/NATO invigoration and incitement of the apparently ineradicable European colonial/imperial impulses that had “informed” US expansion from its inception and the super-continental, imperial mindset that led to the Monroe Doctrine … and its logical, genocidal consequences.
Most of this analysis is good. But the truth about Brexit is that it meant different things to different people: to some Like Farage and Johnson it was indeed about identity.
But to socialists of theBennnte tradition it was about sovereignty: EU members are simply not allowed to renationalise, to run budgetary deficits beyond narrow parameters or introduce the foundational reforms for socialist transformation.
Nobody onthe left voting in 2016 had aby excuse for not understanding what the EU had done to Greece and the PIIGS countries- those voting for Remain were, in effect, voting for neo-liberal ideology and the undemocratic powers of the EU Commission.
The Left needs to remember that the opposition that socialists have to racism is very different from the attitudes of neo-liberals and sponsors of union Busting and labour cheapening.
Thank you, Bevin! The author apparently has no knowledge of what you wrote. The UK’s communist newspaper was for leaving the EU and not for the reasons the author lists. Why should any country send billions of pounds to Brussels et al and get back less money and told what to do with it? The more countries which leave the EU the better for the entire world.
Just imagine if the US and UK and other imperialist nations quit being imperialist nations and instead of grabbing the resources of other countries, destabilizing them, impoverishing their citizens, or worse; gave them fair compensation for the resources imperialists seem to want to steal rather than pay for. What kind of world would it be if we paid fair prices for the resources belonging to other countries and had fair economic exchanges? If we just left Venezuela alone and let it become the powerhouse it was meant to be with their gold and oil reserves. Why cannot the land bless these people, that nation, with the kind of wealth that is natural to them and not stolen as the founding fathers of the USA did. This greedy gut behavior by all these supposed “elites” do not make them very elite to my mind. Do you think national leaders, left without interference in nationalizing their resources, could confer upon their populations the sharing of that wealth with improvements in health, education, and housing so that countries the British and US imperialists have left broken and in turmoil, were NOT SO COMPELLED TO MIGRATE ELSEWHERE.
“Just imagine if the US and UK and other imperialist nations quit being imperialist nations and instead of grabbing the resources of other countries, destabilizing them, impoverishing their citizens, or worse; gave them fair compensation for the resources imperialists seem to want to steal rather than pay for.”
That is what the Russia/China led BRICS+ nations are striving for. Russia ceased being an empire when they voluntarily dismantled the USSR and China ceased being an empire in 221 BC.
Spot on and well said: “The real issue all right thinking people need to contend with is a capitalist system that has fashioned a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many.”
Thank you John for your insightful analyses. I would add that any discussion of the results of excessive immigration cannot be complete without the mention of excessive population growth. It’s the shear number of humans all contending for a limited amount of necessary resources that is the common denominator in this equation.
Birth control is not just a women’s issue. It certainly cannot be addressed by a woman’s abortion right being infringed or a politician’s recommendation of weighting the vote of parents of multiple children! Birth control is a human issue that must confronted at every manifestation of excessive numbers of humans….such as mass migrations. I would suggest that the immigration of humans between countries be regulated to encourage a stable birth rate in every (and all) countries.
But the problem isn’t excessive human population growth, and the so called “excessive immigration problem” is completely the result of capitalist created inequality and war; the irrational private ownership and distribution of resources and goods and the subordination of production to private profit. I say that in the sense that one: there isn’t even a mass immigration problem and two: where people claim there is a strain on public services is due to what I’ve stated above. If they were to kick out all non whites tomorrow and block any migration, the NHS would crumple immediately as so many other vital services would and there’d still be a crisis of public services because of the continuing and deliberate cuts and privatisations that no less than Mr immigrant bashing Farage supports. This is a Thatcherite who feigns sympathy for a section of those he supported pushing into the muck, and he’s only “sympathetic” insofar as they gobble up his toxic racist poison.
I’ll tell you now, these thugs in the streets whether or not they’re causing arson right now, aren’t protesting that they’re short on goods: their own sympathetic videos they make of themselves reveal them to be bonafide racists like their fellow fascist trump supporters in the US. These have not been the same people protesting and opposing austerity, privatisation and wars.
even birth control is influenced by poverty: the poorer the community, the more children its multi-generational families will have. a primitive policy hoping to attain a ‘better’ future’: some of the children will grow up to be healthy adults (having survived a meagre diet, little available medicine and badly run health services) and perhaps some will make it through school. they might be able to find (badly paid) work, arriving at a certain degree of prosperity, to be (re)distributed among their poorer family members. and so on.
meanwhile when parts of society become more prosperous, with a fairly wealthy middle-class, overall birth rates will decline.
oh well….
Corporate thuggery and unbridled greed lead to no good. The police states will protect the wealthy as long as they can, but when a society unravels it becomes uninhabitable for everyone and lawlessness prevails. Soon there will be no safe place for anyone to go to, rich or poor.
Anyone who has done a lot of traveling can see that the countries with the toughest immigration laws and not the targets of migration are the happiest and most stable countries.
You are overlooking the Zionist angle in the anti-muslim pogroms. The criminal with a fake name whose followers are at the forefront of this racism is directly funded by Israel and American and Canadian anti-muslim zionists.
hxxps://www.timesofisrael.com/why-are-us-pro-israel-groups-boosting-a-far-right-anti-muslim-uk-extremist/
I’m with you, Pat. I think the chaos being pursued by the ruling class is being pushed by the ethno-state. I can’t imagine the reasoning because there is no reason in such thinking, but my representative (Jared Golden, 2nd District of Maine) — bought and paid for! — was against border controls and I have no doubt he is doing the ethno-state’s bidding.
The issue is the 21st century focus on multiculturalism versus assimilation. Multiculturalism breeds ethnic ghettos. In the 20th century and earlier, ethnic ghettos were viewed as a familiar and safe environment for 1st generation immigrants to establish themselves while sending their assimilated 2nd generation children out into the wider population. Today, people are encouraged to hold onto their ethnicity without assimilating, which leads to multiple generations staying in the ethnic ghetto.
It’s also an issue of measured, controlled, immigration complete with naturalization requirements (assimilation) and a wide-open free-for-all of uncontrolled immigration where the very first act of migrants upon crossing the border is to break the country’s immigration laws, which leaves them as ‘illegal/undocumented’ aliens and reinforces the desire to self-segregate into ethnic ghettos. And the press doesn’t help by their constant conflation of the two.
Lastly, there is a point where some start to fear cultural erasure. In 1960, ethnic Englishmen/women accounted for 98% of the population of London. Today, they account for 37% of the population of London. I don’t think it is illegitimate for them to wonder whether their children or grandchildren will even have a place in the nation’s capital. Just follow the trend line. Assuming a linear relationship, London figures to be around 10% ethnic English by 2100. At what point does the English ethnicity just cease to exist? Would this same kind of cultural erasure be OK if it were a European ethnic minority displacing a dominant native population? How is it any different from what happened in the Americas from the 16th to 19th century?
99% of this commentary is excellent and on the mark. The author writes multiple times that there IS an immigration problem, and shows who and what created it. But then he writes that “…the far-right never had it so good…”. Really? That’s hard to assimilate.
The thugs are criminals, and need to be prosecuted, but the conditions that triggered their collective mobilization haven’t disappeared, and I doubt that any among them would share the author’s perspective.
we should try to figure out who’s bankrolling the violence – would it really be Islamic organisations and those who are keen to integrate and create a better future for their families?
Times of Israel – “Wealthy Jewish Americans Daniel Pipes of @meforum, nina rosenwald of ASM, David Horowitz of Horowitz Center funded UK Islamophobic thug Tommy Robinson” – …It suits the UK Jewish community to have the spotlight on others and not the evil racist genocide still taking place in apartheid Israel to say nothing of the blatant efforts of nutter yahoo to use the stupid goyim to crush those resisting his efforts to achieve greater Israel.
hxxps://www.timesofisrael.com/why-are-us-pro-israel-groups-boosting-a-far-right-anti-muslim-uk-extremist/
That’s as may be. But sooner or later it will be their turn to be crushed.
Spot on! The only thing these people seem to know is chaos, and they love creating it.
What’s rarely mentioned is that glaring fact of 30-40 years of neoliberalism (embraced by both parties) and what it’s done to people, especially “up north”, where the ruling elites rarely visit apart from holidays. A similar silence reigns in the USA, where people who have had their lives turned upside down and inside out are smeared as deplorables by the elites, who refuse to see what’s breaking the country apart. Excellent article!
So disturbing…
The real issue all right thinking people need to contend with is a capitalist system that has fashioned a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many.
Exactly. And kicking off in British towns during August is the same as marching on Westminster at weekends. Futile.
The creators of the problems are nowhere near.
They lit the fuse and stepped back, to their tropical holidays and country homes.
While immigration may have cause small problems for people, huge problems have been festering for decades, all caused by the ultra-wealthy. Why do you think there are so many immigrants? Is it possible because of the war and resource extraction that the NATO countries are subjecting poor countries to? Is it possible that in order to destabilize other parts of the world to make resource extraction easier for western corporations, the policies of the elites might be driving that emigration-immigration cycle? Then on top of that, is it possible that the Corporate-Owned-News is focusing people’s attention on the immigrants so that you don’t pay attention to the wealthy who created these problems? Who sets the wages of working people, is it possible that it is the wealthy? Poverty for the many so that there are riches for the few. If you want to turn things around, stop blaming liberal or conservative workers, stop blaming the poorest people including the immigrants and come together to fight the real enemy, the extremely wealthy. They have set the world up the way it is, not the immigrants.
Well made point. There IS A MAJOR CAUSE, and you named it. The rules by which the CIA and MOSSAD operates do not exist for them or their corporate masters and IMF supporters. When the world comes to see past the fog of lies and deceptions it may be too late to save the planet or ourselves, but see the truth, we will. Those drones and those gun barrels will be aimed right at the legions of poor in the world that the elite feed on.
Correct. But funnily enough, although the establishment pay no attention to well ordered, peaceful demonstrations, almost one million marching in London against the Iraq war, they do start to worry when the masses get out of control. The poll tax riots in 1990 led to the end of the tax (although it resurfaced later as council tax).
Maybe these riots might focus the minds of the establishment.
Except the poll tax riot was a working class expression. This is nothing of the kind as it targets the working class. It’ll work to shift politics even further to the right by a labour government that is already further to the right than the preceding Tory government (that was already the furthest right) and building up more of a police state that will come down harder on the working class; no doubt when the working class really moves these fascist thugs today will be ready to render their services to the State against socialist minded workers.
Spot on analysis. I was just having this same discussion yesterday with a brit. But like so many dumbed down other brits he was adamant it was just wanton destruction by thugs. He couldn’t grasp the concept of poverty and its resulting anger and frustration. And of course the MSM has a hand in promoting rascism with their inflammatory headlines regarding immigrants. The likes of Suella Braverman in government, planning ridiculous planeloads of asylum seekers to Rwanda didn’t do the UK any favours either. A waste of money.
hxxps://twitter.com/bmay/status/1819988274300997762/photo/1
“But like so many dumbed down other brits he was adamant it was just wanton destruction by thugs.”
In reality what they are is the English version of Trump supporters – it was noticable at their London rally a couple of weeks ago that a large number of Trump banners and Israeli flags were in evidence – that’s a clue.
Basically, you have high-profile racists like Nigel Farage, ‘Tommy Robinson’ and a lot of the Tory party all focusing – obsessing, you might say – on supposed migrant takeovers. Then you have Starmer who, deciding he needed the racist vote, started parrotting them.
Below this you have a number of committed racists. Not so many as you might think (or as many as they’d like you to think !). Its well known that far right protests bus in their mates to make local protests appear bigger than they are.
And at the bottom you have the local cannon fodder, who are basically just up for some violence, especially if they think they can claim some kind of political legitimacy.
Looking at the charge sheets of those arrested so far makes depressing but unsuprising reading : all the previous convictions for violence, thieving, drink or drug offences – nothing you could logically blame on migrants – but they will.
When it comes down to it, the violence comes from people who are violent a-holes. The same people who wreck childrens playgrounds or smash shop windows for no reason. They do it because they like to do it. But as a political protest ? Nah – just wanton destruction by thugs.
I suppose that makes me a dumbed-down Brit as well ?
So you’re going with Trump supporters are just violent thugs? Really! Thugs like the retired Fire Chief killed at the attempted Trump assassination in Ohio. Or the emergency room surgeon ,also at the rally, who tried in vain to save his life.
What a pathetic, thoughtless ,simpleminded analogy . Good grief TDS has really got a hold on you.
“So you’re going with Trump supporters are just violent thugs? ”
No – what I said was British violent thugs admire Trump – and Israel.
Not everyone protesting is a violent thug, some are just normal people, exercising their democratic right to protest (about immigration). Not all Trump admirers are violent thugs, some people want to challenge the status quo of the Uni-parties and Trump and Farage are the only ones, on the surface, doing that – I accept the reality may be different.
The problem is that the establishment is tarring anyone and everyone who supports a different narrative to theirs as ‘violent thugs’, which is absurd.
This is the same approach as taken by the state to Covid and Climate protestors. No discussion, no dissent, we are right you are wrong. At the very least, any intelligent person should be suspicious of such an approach.
“In reality what they are is the English version of Trump supporters “
Seems clear to me that’s what you declared! Is it Trump’s fault that he and his supporters, were appreciated by that English crowd . Trump’s populism is undeniable. Clearly the difference is MAGA supporters have never indulged in violence. Never. In fact they are your average hard working American who deplores that type of behaviour. With one exception, which I’m sure you’ll reference in response. All I’ll say about that is it was clearly infiltrated with government provocateurs and the actual truth has yet to be officially closed on the matter.
There are too many trying to find some way of justifying these fascistic and pogrom riots and effectively smearing the working class as racist (ignoring that the working class isn’t the sole property of “whites”). There are a troubling number of comments right here doing the work of Tommy many names and Farage – possibly these are just fascist trolls spreading themselves far and wide to conjure this image that the majority of the west are racists and make themselves feel bigger.
Being in the UK I can tell you, these far right thugs have almost no interest in the real social problems causing mass distress: war, capitalism, austerity etc. I have the misfortune to know sympathisers of these thugs on the street in person – they voted Boris Johnson; they supported thatcher and support what she did to the working class; they support the genocide in Gaza; they vent their venom towards socialists or communists and trade unionists, and obviously anything they call “woke”.
They are not against immigrants because of economic reasons as some shame faced racists like to initially hide behind: like some commentators on here, they oppose non-whites plain and simple and fume over anyone brown skinned or as they call them – Muslims, which includes those living in Britain over many generations.
That all said, I believe all the main parties bear responsibility for this foul racist political climate; deliberately pinning blame for social misery on the “foreigner” while themselves and their corporate and military paymasters being the main architects.
At the moment I’m heartened to see the anti genocide protests outweigh these few hundred rioters, and anti fascists have typically outnumbered the racists, but the working class needs to respond and settle this before some more effective fascist movement is built and before these thugs kill someone. The fear is what are the fascists planning with this incitement and what is behind the timing?
And let’s not forget the basic fact underlying the issue. 200-300,000 people entering the UK every year for at least the last decade. The numbers cannot be hidden they are impacting every single community in the UK.
So lets say 300,000 people entered the UK last year.
How many of them were, for example, students or on short term work contracts – temporary residents in other words ?
Now lets consider that official figures show 532,000 people migrated FROM the UK in 2023.
Its noticable that those preaching against immigration never seem to consider the temporary aspect and definitely not the emigration figures.
Nice try.
The figures are, my estimates, based on the, official, Office of National Statistics and represent net migration, ie. those entering minus those leaving, eg.
“Long-term net migration (the number of people immigrating minus the number emigrating) was provisionally estimated to be 685,000 in the year ending (YE) December 2023
…
Following a period of growth since 2021, the provisional estimate for total long-term immigration for the YE December 2023 (1,218,000) was broadly similar to the YE December 2022 (1,257,000), with non-EU arrivals accounting for 85% of the YE December 2023 figure
…
Non-EU immigration for work-related reasons increased from 277,000 in the YE December 2022 to 423,000 in the YE December 2023, replacing study as the main reason for long-term migration;”
See:
hxxps://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/bulletins/longterminternationalmigrationprovisional/yearendingdecember2023
Just a thought….perhaps those emigrating are sick and tired of the direction Britain is taking and are abandoning a sinking Britannia. I can’t verify that but let’s just say it’s a strong likelihood. My English cousin who moved to Calgary Alberta( I’m born in London England) moved here for precisely that reason. And by his telling he’s not the only one. Best move he ever made were his words.
Apparently you’re a “ far right thug” if you express those concerns. I hope you don’t run to X if you live in the UK . The government is formulating new offences concerning a broad interpretation of hate speech and inciting violence. Even just retweets will be severely punished according to Heir Starmer.
Wow, quite a superficial analysis. No mention of the ongoing grooming gangs scandal that has rocked the UK for the past decade, no mention of the huge unsustainable spike in migration in recent years, no mention of related crimes and social problems, and no mention of the fact that two-thirds of these migrants settle in low-income, working class neighborhoods. The fact is, mass migration and failed integration policies are destabilizing the United Kingdom and all of Europe, and the elitist politicians who carry out these policies are shielded from the effects because they don’t live in the areas that are most affected. It’s therefore easy for political and media figures to dismiss the protests as “far-right thuggery” and dismiss the legitimate concerns that are fueling them.
No mention of the similarities to the perhaps less out-in-the-open US shenanigans, and the politicians who are the direct cause behind them!
Isn’t this comment but one example of some of American journalism’s hypocrisy?
“No mention of the ongoing grooming gangs scandal that has rocked the UK for the past decade”
I must take strong issue with this statement. It is precisely this type of inflammatory language that has led to the current situation. Please have a read of this regarding a Home Office report into the matter.
hxxps://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/15/child-sexual-abuse-gangs-white-men-home-office-report
Likewise, it is not mass migration and failed integration policies that are destabilizing the UK (or Europe but that is another subject) but the politicians who you correctly called elitist, who shamefully exploit ‘the other’ to carry on with their ‘divide and rule’ which pits poor against poorer, whilst in the case of the past Tory governments robbing the public coffers to reward their cronies and donors, leaving the country trashed.
One, in particular, Nigel Farage who I hesitate to call ‘a politician’, is responsible for much of the vile rhetoric against immigrants and with his usual ‘weasel words’ used your phrase “legitimate concerns” himself after the first outbreak of rioting.
The police were unable to name the suspect who killed the little girls as he was under 17 when he was arrested. Social media from a certain quarter leapt on this to conclude the suspect was an immigrant who had arrived in the UK on a ‘small boat’. His identity was released a few days before his 18th birthday, and it turned out he was a second generation Rwandan immigrant born in the UK. I think we can probably safely conclude there are mental issues involved rather than ‘Islamism’ or ‘terrorism’.
IMHO it is indeed ‘far right thuggery’. The declining standard of education and the increased influence of the MSM and social media has resulted in huge numbers of ill educated people living miserable lives, lacking any analytical thinking, who seize on the vile outpourings of the likes of Farage and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (who prefers to be called ‘Tommy Robinson’ for obvious reasons, and who by the way has contributed to the current situation but fled the UK when a warrant for his arrest was issued and who is currently alleged to be with his family safely sunning himself in Cyprus…).
You completely oversimplify this phenomenon by disparaging Nigel Farage and pointing solely to “ far-right thuggery”. Farage ,if you actually listen to what he says instead of reading those who put their spin on what he says
isn’t against immigration or immigrants. He’s against unfettered , illegal immigration that is obviously unsustainable. Farage wouldn’t at all agree with your conflation with “ Robinson”. And neither do I.
Obviously there are opportunist “ yobs” who just love to fight and destroy. These are the same hooligans who plague football matches across Britain and Europe. But they are merely a symptom of a society that has lost its way economically, politically and socially. I’m ??, 73 yrs young and once had dreams of returning to my birth country to live out my remaining years.
To the tranquil, historic countryside where manners and politeness were once a given. Like queuing for buses and trains. Yes a bit of fanciful nostalgia that died long ago , if it ever really existed at all except in the movies .
That dream is now officially at an end. ?? as imperfect as it is , is where I shall stay.
It appears that if you use an imoji it comes out as ??. The confusion is noted and I won’t use them in future . I used the Canadian flag instead of spelling it out.
And if you’re Victor Orban and you declare that your country is traditionally conservative and Christian, that your country took no part in the wars of USUK, and you don’t want floods of migrants, you are a fascist. The treat we all live with now: the actual fascists declaring other people fascists.