If we don't act now, we have already signed democracy's death knell

If there's one thing to be learnt from 2016, it's that the concept of democracy is faltering. First we had the Brexit vote; a situation where large chunks of the population made an uneducated decision based on disinformation, and in many cases gave them license to unshackle their inner bigot. Now we have a real estate mogul being elected into the fabled job title of "the most powerful man in the world" and white supremacy is being propelled into the political mainstay. Meanwhile, an estimated 11,000 Americans voted for a dead gorilla to become the president.

As much as it pains me to say it, I prefer to see Trump in the White House than another Clinton presidency. Hillary is an efficient maniac, whereas Trump is an incompetent one. I also think I speak for everyone reading this when I say a world war with Russia is generally best avoided, something which would have been far from guaranteed if Clinton had been elected.

The most worrying aspect about Trump's victory is, like several other events which have occurred in recent years, further fuel has been pumped into the veins of racists and extreme nationalists worldwide. The French presidency is up for grabs in the spring of next year, and I am wholly expecting the vulgar Marine Le Pen and her xenophobic Front National to triumph. This is made all the more likely by the fact that half of the French people are currently petrified or disgusted by anyone wearing a hijab.

It's not just the US and France that is embracing authoritarian ideology either; fascist parties are on the ascent all over Europe and anti-immigrant/Islam rhetoric is only becoming more animated. As in America, the racist right can and will be defeated in Europe. But we must start grinding them back into the dust now. With every victory or event that provides them with encouragement, intolerance will only grow stronger if it doesn't receive a reaction.

I am in no way suggesting that democracy should be eradicated, but if we keep electing lunatics and hatemongers to the forefront of politics then what future do we have. I despise all forms of fascism but I would rather have a benevolent dictatorship, if there is such a thing, than to see a consortium of supremacists rule over us all. Trump is not the worst candidate to become president but his victory should serve as a bitter warning.

A new and sinister era has been ushered in

Originally posted on 29th June 2016.

The warning signs that we are entering a new epoch have been a long time coming, but the events which have occurred in the last few weeks have hurtled us towards it. The epoch I speak of, is one where casual racism and extreme nationalism rules and dictates the political weather.

If you've been living under a rock and haven't noticed, just take a look at the hate reports that have come flooding in over the past few days. Polish-origin schoolkids get cards calling them “vermin”, who must “leave the EU”. A halal butchers was petrol bombed in Walsall. A BBC reporter was called a paki in her home town. A TV correspondent notes that within five minutes three different people shout, “Send them home.” Neo-Nazi stickers being posted all over Glasgow. An 11 year-old girl racially abused in Sussex. Another child being told to go back to Romania, in the girls toilet at a school. More Nazi graffiti being daubed on walls in Belfast. Numerous people saying they voted to leave the EU to "keep the Muslims out". I've even seen someone post that their sister was racially abused and assaulted on the day we voted for Brexit. The list goes on.

No surprise, then, that anti-Muslim abuse soared by 326% last year. But this isn't just about Islamophobia anymore. The fetid build-up to the referendum and the result itself, has brewed a multi-headed attack; not just on Muslims, but anyone else who looks like their ancestry hasn't dwelled in England for the past 500 years. It's tempting to say, the solution would be to just legalise the execution of any human filth caught spouting racial abuse, on the spot. Although they don't deserve anything better than that, the catalysts for such wretchedness runs much deeper.

As it always has, xenophobia trickles down from the top. This is what happens when influential politicians and prime-ministerial wannabes (you know who I'm talking about), sprinkle their campaigns with the seeds of intolerance and bigotry. They don't just sprinkle it, they outrightly indulge and encourage their vulgarity. In times of uncertainty, there is always a place for a scapegoat. Disabled people had their benefits cut and were labelled as skivers by ministers last year, que a rise in hate crimes against people with disabilities. This time, the intensity has been cranked up and now, not just immigrants, but anyone who looks like one of their ancestors was an immigrant, has been made a target.

So, what can we do? Very little, unless we decide to burn the establishment overnight. That being unlikely, we need to prevent these quasi-fascist fuckwits, on all levels, from producing any more fertile ground. The referendum has been a masterclass in 'divide and conquer' tactics - I don't think the nation has ever been so carved up in my lifetime. But this must stop now. Without sounding a little bit sensationalist, hyper-nationalism and economic turmoil have had cataclysmic ramifications before. We are only a few false moves away from allowing that to happen again.

The EU is rotten but leave now and the Tories are left unshackled to mutilate the state

People are outraged that we may pay the EU up to £350 million a week. But if you mark the box next to Leave on Thursday, that statistic will be miniature in comparison to what your vote will entail.

It takes only a little perspective to offer some clarity in the gloomiest of situations. As both factions of the referendum campaign vamp up for the final days, millions of people will be voting to leave the EU, for completely delusional reasons. I appreciate that many of you don’t take an interest in day-to-day politics, but what is being sold to you by the plutocratic trio of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage is a scam.

The focal argument for Brexit is that all the money being pumped into the EU will come flooding back into our public services. However, that money being paid to the EU is the least of a grim barrage of figures which are a slap to the face. Since they were elected in 2010, the Tories have been busy selling off public assets at an exponential rate, with the Royal Mail and the NHS being two of the most notable casualties. The latter now has a record deficit of £2.45 billion – the biggest overspend in its history and is a direct result of struggling to cope with a major budget squeeze. Many of the leading Brexiteers are on record as wanting to privatise the NHS. The fate of our health service really couldn’t be any more transparent if we vote to leave.

Another ugly statistic is the £555 billion the Chancellor George Osborne has racked up in debt, since he took office in 2010. To add insult to injury, Osborne has already warned of £30 billion more cuts to the NHS, schools and other public services, in the event of Brexit. The government’s actions raises two questions: how can anyone trust them to rebuild these public services with money we’d be saving from the EU, when they’ve already been working so hard to dismantle them? Secondly, where has all the money that has been stripped from our public assets gone? The first can only be answered by voters themselves but I’ll tell you where all this wealth has vanished to; our government hands a minimum of £93 billion to businesses and corporations each year – a transfer of more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. Just to put that into comparison, £1.2 billion is spent every year on benefit fraud, an argument which is supposedly one of the strongest for leaving the EU. Believe it or not, there’s a reason why we live in a country where the richest 20% now hold 105 times more wealth than the poorest fifth.

Leaving the European Union carries a price working-class voters literally can’t afford to pay. You only need to look at what the Tories have done in the past, without EU regulations, to see how they will act in the future. In 1981, the Thatcher government reluctantly agreed to introduce into British law obligations imposed by the European Union Acquired Rights Directive. This would protect the jobs and pay and conditions of employment of workers on transfer from one employer to another. However, the Tories excluded six million public servants when they introduced the regulations. The 10 years that followed were a privatisation frenzy, an auction on who could pay the least to the fewest, as tens of thousands were left with no protection on transfer. After years of campaigning and a shameful decade of mass privatisation, the workers took their case to the EU and won. As Paul Mason noted in a recent column, the likes of Johnson, Gove and Farage have fought all their lives for one objective: to give more power to employers and less to workers. Make no mistake, these men have absolutely no intentions of maintaining our rights at work if we leave the EU.

Perhaps the gravest threat to our society is the looming menace of TTIP. If you’re unfamiliar with this acronym, TTIP is the transatlantic trade and investment partnership and has two main strands: one is regulatory cooperation, which means standardising the laws on either side of the Atlantic. The other is investor-state dispute settlement, permitting companies to sue governments through an offshore tribunal if a law threatens their profits. If we vote to remain in the EU there is still no guarantee the deal will be prevented, but if we do leave it will certainly increase the chances of it being conceived.

If you’re still not worried, you only need to look at what happened in Romania. The government of Romania halted the production of a gold mine and swiftly found itself facing a massive lawsuit from a corporate mining giant in a secret “court”. The corporation has said it may seek up to $4 billion in "compensation", which is half of Romania’s annual public healthcare budget. If TTIP is passed through, such cases could become commonplace in Britain. It will almost certainly eradicate every democratic process in this country and will be a death knell for the NHS and other public services. Yet David Cameron is calling for "courage" to push it through. Do you really think he'll hesitate with Brussels out of the equation?

Brexit would also have a hugely detrimental effect on the environment. Overbearing private corporations would exploit the situation to demand the repeal of the Climate Change Act, the dismantling of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and push for even more fracking than is already currently in prospect. They would also urge for the removal of any remaining measures to encourage renewables, energy efficiency and community energy. The record of the Brexit cheerleaders offers no reassurance that they would resist any of this. Furthermore, the EU has provided us with a number of environmental benefits, including cleaner beaches, more rigorous action on air pollution and increased protection for UK nature. All of these advantages handed to us would likely to be wiped away.

The referendum has brought the worst out in some people, with casual racism and xenophobia rearing its ugly head and piercing the surface of our political discourse. The Leave campaign is the primary culprit and in recent weeks they have produced some truly odious propaganda. In the wake of the Orlando shooting on June 12^th, they fabricated a shameful piece of racist scaremongering, claiming that “Islamic extremism is a real threat to our way of life” and we face an “Orlando-style atrocity” if we don’t leave the EU. The master of chicanery, Nigel Farage, then went one step further. He unveiled a poster illustrating a vast queue of desperate refugees, with the headline “Breaking Point”, in a demonstration of his expertise at whipping up racial hatred. The poster was eerily reminiscent of one deployed by the Nazis.

Last week, the boundless torrent of fear and hatred which has been pumped into the veins of this EU debate reached boiling point. Thomas Mair, a far-right extremist, murdered Labour MP Jo Cox in her constituency, while shouting “Britain First”. It is still unclear whether or not he was referring to the far-right group of that name, although it is now known he had ties with neo-Nazi organisations. Atrocities like these aren’t caused by the overnight invention of racial superiority, but by the gradual evolution of a noxious political climate. Just as we like to talk about the radicalisation of Islamic extremists, the catalysts for this racial extremism need to be named and shamed; tabloids such as the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Sun, far-right groups like Britain First and outright neo-Nazi groups like National Action, as well as many individual members of our political institutions and media. Poverty, low pay and the sanctioning of benefits are not caused by immigrants; they are a direct result of the ideological austerity fermented by this Tory government.

The truth is, there is no right or wrong answer on the EU referendum, although even if we remain we face a punishing few years until we have a change in government. However, I can confidently say that affairs are going to get much worse if we decide to leave. The EU has become a gerrymandered dinosaur, which allowed the most left-wing government in Europe plunge into financial chaos. But it still offers the British public protection on many levels. One major criticism of the EU is that it failed to block the Tories’ trade union bill, which would stem the flow of political funding to opposition parties. Even though it didn’t prevent the bill, it raises the question, why would you want the country’s security to be left solely in the hands of these people? The trade union bill, after all, is a gleaming example of things to come in the event of Brexit.

A post-Brexit government would be sculpted in the images of Johnson and Gove, and everything they have ever achieved suggests they would turn Britain into a Thatcherite’s wet dream. It may have escaped your notice, but on numerous public appearances in recent weeks, David Cameron has been attempting to soak all the blame being fired at the Conservative party onto himself. Forget divisions within the Tories’, the Prime Minister’s subtle ploy is to ensure the legacy of his party remains intact for many years to come. This can’t be allowed to happen. You won’t be getting your country back if you vote to leave, you’ll be seamlessly placing it into the hands of the most right-wing government seen in years.

Regardless of whether we leave the EU or not, a financial crisis is probably around the corner. It was reported only two weeks ago, that the megalomaniacs and government overlords of Britain had taken £65 billion out of the British economy in just March and April alone. Our chancellor has created a gargantuan debt and this country faces grave repercussions. This should serve as a final warning to vote remain, so the Tories at least have some restrictions on their venomous assault on the state. If we leave, they’ll be left unshackled to run riot in a manner we haven’t seen since the 1980’s.
We should then seek to replace those in government at the next possible opportunity.

Our democracy is broken but to win it back we must work with democratic forces across Europe, not by cutting ourselves adrift. The EU may never be rebuilt and if that is the case there will be a time to leave. But that time will be when we have a measure of stability, when we have a Labour government.

When does an immigrant stop being an immigrant December 2014

This is the question Haji Jaba challenges the right-wing factions of Britain. Jaba is the Imam at the Al-Madina Jamia Mosque on Waterloo Road, Middlesbrough. When I spoke to him recently he asked of those who are pursuing a mass exodus of migrants, amidst the immigration storm which has thrust into British politics this year, this question. Which leaves you to think, does racism still exist in society? 

For whatever reason, and most would say because of UKIP's emergence to the scene, the debate on the UK's immigration policy has been omnipresent throughout the penultimate year to the general election. It has resulted in the largest parties such as the Conservatives and Labour into altering their immigration policies. If the debate is effecting the heavyweights to this extent, what precipitation is it having on the smaller parties such as the right-wingers? It seems to be having the desired effect as popularity for UKIP has soared and the extreme Britain First has gained notoriety.

The enduring problem in Britain that Jaba believes is that a “severely unenlightened minority feel like they must have a constant adversary, an ethnic or political group to differentiate from”. Over the course of the last thirteen years, it has shaped up to be the Islamic community to take the role of the antagonists in the UK. I say the last thirteen years because it appears this newfound hatred of Muslims among far right-wing sectors began to stem following the 9/11 attacks. However, over the last year or so events which have occurred have caused tensions to reach boiling point.

The first of which transpired on 22 May 2013.  British soldier Lee Rigby was mowed down by a car and then stabbed and hacked to death in the street, by Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, two British Muslim converts. The incident caused a nationwide uproar, with popularity almost simultaneously increasing for right-wing groups such as the EDL and BNP. On the day of the killing I visited a friend’s house as it was making breaking news, and his mother declared she was joining the EDL in protest to Britain’s stance on Muslims. This was also one of the first instances in which right-wing groups used events such as this as a totem to rally support against the apparent threat of ‘Islamification’ in Britain.

It is not out of the ordinary for sane people to lurch towards an extremist point of view, as a result of them being so shocked or frightened by the actions of other extremists. In the fifties, unions organised marches in London against immigrants from the Caribbean they feared would take their jobs. Admittedly, that wasn’t ‘Islamification’ but it was a protest based on race/colour. The film my beautiful launderette examined the racist attack on a Pakistani man in London and was made in 1985.  The Jam’s anti-racism 1978 single “Down at the Tube Station at midnight” was about an attack on a Pakistani man by jack booted right wing thugs. Clearly racial divisions were an issue then just as they are once again now.

Racial tension which developed following incidents such as that last year only seem to have been exasperated in 2014. This boils down to two factors; the immigration debate and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. As already mentioned, this has led to a surge in fame for UKIP and smaller right-wing factions. Haji Jaba believes the media is partly to blame for this. He said that “After World War 1 the large German population in Britain came under heavy criticism and received lots of abuse from the British public; then when Hitler came to power in the thirties he used propaganda via the media to turn the population against the Jews; now the British media are doing this to Muslims.”

Jaba was born in Middlesbrough in 1961 and has lived in the town his entire life, but said he still gets called an immigrant and receives prejudice based on his appearance. It was at that point he asked “when does an immigrant stop being an immigrant?” He then added, “Unfortunately because some people always want to have an enemy or someone to oppose these national front groups will continue to exist, just as they have throughout the last few decades.”

Nonetheless he feels that racism is kept to a minimal in towns and cities, but on the outskirts of the towns in more rural areas racism is still very much alive. As well as being the Imam at his local mosque Jaba is also a landlord and a gas fitter. He therefore often has to travel to the likes of Brotton, Skelton and Guisborough on the outskirts of Middlesbrough for work. He said in these places the locals have a completely different attitude towards migrants. He is still subject to racial abuse when in the area, having being called “a member of Al-Qaeda” or “Bin Laden”. The only explanation he can give for this is that the people from these areas do not often come in contact with anyone of Asian descent, and so therefore stereotype him as the extremists that are depicted in the media.  

However, those who are compelled to hold xenophobic attitudes are far from restricted to rural areas. Earlier this year it was revealed that 1,400 children were subjected to appalling sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, by gangs of mainly Asian men. This inevitably and justly led to a media frenzy over the story and did nothing but expand support for the right-wingers, in particular the EDL. They were quick to demonstrate a protest which resulted in them attacking police and luring out the most intense of the right-wing factions; three different Nazi groups were spotted at the protest.

As well as Rotherham, the EDL have also conducted protests in Manchester, Newcastle, Birmingham, Luton and Middlesbrough over the last year. During their march through Middlesbrough, certain members of the EDL contingent chanted “scum, scum, scum” at some passing Asian men. They were also spotted throwing glass bottles and a firework at another group of Asian men, one of whom had a child on his shoulders. Based on this one would come to the conclusion that these small-minded folk are far from confined just to seeing Muslims being portrayed on the television.

However, to get a balanced view on the situation I spoke to the Regional Organiser of the North East EDL faction. Although I asked them fairly judicious questions such as whether the party’s support has grown in light of recent event this year, and what their views on immigration are, he did not reply to them and merely outlined what the EDL’s ‘fight’ was. He said, speaking of a small group of Muslim extremists who mocked the sacrifices of service personnel during a homecoming parade in Luton that “these actions reflect other forms of religiously-inspired intolerance and barbarity that are thriving amongst certain sections of the Muslim population in Britain. These include the oppression of women, the molestation of young children and the committing of so-called honour killings.”

Baring the Regional Organiser’s comments in mind, I live in a predominantly Muslim area of Middlesbrough and I have seen no criminal activity in the time I’ve lived there, let alone heard about some of the accusations he has said are brewing in these communities. In comparison, the estate of Grove Hill located just a few hundred metres down the road, which has a considerable white population, is notorious for being a ‘rough’ place to live. I know where I’d feel safer.

The Regional organiser went on to say, “British Muslims should be able to safely demand reform of their religion, in order to make it more relevant to the needs of the modern world and more respectful of other groups in society.” Now I don’t know about you but I find this comment pretty disrespectful. Why should Muslims have to alter their religious concepts because it doesn’t agree with the intolerant? I’ve never heard a Muslim ask a Christian extremist to revamp his views because they don’t agree with it. The vast majority of the Muslim population are peaceful people who go about their day-by-day activities without affecting anyone.

I also asked them about the behaviour of some EDL participants during the protest in Middlesbrough towards Asian men, and whether are not they considered themselves to be a racist party. The Regional Organiser refused to comment on either, only stating that the group were not ‘political’ or a ‘party’. Whatever that means. In conclusion it would appear that, although the hierarchy of the EDL factions try to avoid causing offense in stating what their motives are, and not particularly well, racism is still piercing its ugly head through the surface of our society. Whether or not they only exist in certain contingents of right-wing groups is still to be seen, but there is no doubt that the xenophobes are still alive and kicking amongst us, and still do not understand when an immigrant stops being an immigrant.