Sunday, June 19, 2016

The real fear

 ...“It’s not your fault” is an incredibly seductive argument. “It’s theirs”. Because there’s always a ‘them’. Always. That’s easy. “You’re not being treated fairly. We have too many people. That’s the problem.” And the argument becomes who has a right to be here…
….That’s the point where we start debating which people have rights and which people don’t. And it’s based on who was here longest. And when you start basing it on that, you start basing it on where you were born. And somehow, we let them say that wasn’t racist. “It’s not racist to want control over immigration!” “It’s not racist to say they should go elsewhere!” “It’s not racist to want to stop them coming here!” “It’s not racist to say they should be sent back!” And the message has become more seductive and more powerful. And it’s overtaken logic and it’s based purely on emotion… the problem is that the emotional argument is an impossible one to win.
 …Gove says “people have heard too much from experts”. Yes. They’re exhausted and frustrated and angry and afraid. They want control back. And the good talkers who have no problems lying and no problems creating hatred and fear tell them “this is how you get control back”. And we’ve had a right wing media that has been telling us for decades that immigrants are the problem and Europe is the problem…
 …My fear is that we treat people as ‘other’ and as ‘wrong’ and as ‘they shouldn’t be here’ and as something other than people…."
Taken from here

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