A gang of guffawing racists burn a cardboard replica of the Grenfell Tower, complete with nudge-nudge-wink-wink brown cardboard victims. Recently, too, a woman bludgeoned and battered by a dozen-strong mob for the crime of speaking Spanish. Muslim women on public transport with niqabs and hijabs ripped from them; spat upon, punched, beaten. Christ, Katie Hopkins even published demands in a national tabloid calling fellow human beings “cockroaches” and urging naval guns to mow down drowning immigrants. And didn’t get prosecuted. This is where we’re at – race-hate and literal incitement to commit a crime against humanity and no criminal conviction ensues.
All enabled by the ‘hostile environment’ and decades of utter hate, lies and poison about immigrants, refugees, Muslims, foreigners and the poor. Meanwhile, the real residents of Grenfell Tower – a place where class and race really do intersect – either burned to death or are still homeless while their arsonists remain free and at large. In government and the institutions of the state. While faking outrage at their white-trash bonfire tribute act.
Object to this, though, and the racist mob pile on calling you a ‘snowflake.’ While bigots without a shred of basic, human decency whine about their free speech. As if their freedom to hate, to bully, to intimidate should provoke no consequences. As if anyone objecting isn’t entitled to use their free speech in a vain attempt to stem the rising tide of inhumanity swamping cruel Britannia.
Foam-flecked proto-fascists get all misty-eyed about a piece of cloth, as long as it’s red, white and blue. They’ll swallow lumps in their throats while growing positively tumescent at the sight of a Brit soldier with a gun but empathy? Compassion? Genuine humanity for a non-white human being? Someone poor and desperate? Vulnerable? Terrified?
Not.
A.
Bloody.
Chance.
They contemptuously dismiss the outcry as ‘moral outrage’ while furiously triggering at a footballer, an Irish footballer, no less, refusing to wear a poppy. Snowflakes, indeed…
We need more moral outrage about the institutionalised hate of non-white, non-British human beings and the forgotten and despised on working-class estates all over the UK. And we need absolutely none about poppies, flags and nations.
Harry Paterson 