Social media. These people have always existed, but they had no real idea of realising how many people shared their views. Previously it was just their mates down the pub. Felt pretty isolated. Now they can see solidarity on social media and feel emboldened by it, fed lies by the right wing poster boys like Farage and Robinson.
Bollox.
How did we get here? Farage, mainly, and Cameron.
The far right has existed in the UK for donkey’s years. During the war it was Mosley and his crew gathering crowds. Once the Windrush generation started landing it boiled down to simple racism – those people don’t look like us, so let’s blame them for everything that’s wrong in our lives. And there were riots, people charging police, burning down buildings both in support of and fighting racism.
20 years ago Nick Griffin was still seen on TV, as the not-quite-acceptable-but-let’s-show-him-anyway face of “alternative views”. Then we stopped seeing him and his ilk for a while.
Then Farage started getting airtime, David Cameron decided the best way to avoid losing voters to Farage’s (not actually electable) crew was to legitimise his views on immigration, racism and so on, and the rest is history. Overlay that on top of an economy and country that has been absolutely driven to the wall by the Tories over the last 14 years and we have a lot of people feeling much worse off than they were, with fewer opportunities than they had, seeing others getting richer and richer; being told that it’s down to people “coming over here stealing what’s yours”.
To be clear, nobody has stolen NHS beds – the government just didn’t invest in them. Nobody’s stolen your job (unless you clean toilets for cash with no job protection), companies have just taken the money and given it to shareholders. And although events like this are absolutely shocking and appalling and horrendous to see, as we saw in Southport, it’s less about immigrants than lunatics of any background/ colour/ beliefs.
But the people whose opportunities and feelings of agency have been taken away from them have been told for the last decade that it’s OK – nay, right – to blame it all on immigrants, and that the best way to show their disapproval is take to the streets. Social media is a channel; but it’s the Daily Hatemail, the Express, GB News, Farage, Yaxley-Lennon, Suella Braverman that have the recognition and voices to make this acceptable.
