climber9 wrote:
I'm not sure that somebody with a subconscious bias against foreigners could be described as a 'far right nationalist activist'. [Yet again I feel that I have to point out that saying this does NOT mean that I sympathise with their views in any way at all]
Activists are those idiots who throw paint at mosques and campaign for the compulsory repatriation of everyone who isn't white.
I agree I should've worded that better. That's on me. What I meant to say is that a lot of individuals, regardless of whether or not they consider themselves racist, could have an underlying bias. There's nothing wrong with loving your heritage and focusing on your own as a priority, but it's concerning that a lot of people think this way. It makes me wonder why, if not propaganda, they make these assumptions about foreigners.
I have no sympathy whatsoever with bigotry. However, the knee-jerk accusations of racism that are made as soon as someone expresses an opinion that someone else doesn't like belittle the issue rather than highlighting it.
It's pretty much a fact that the leave campaign was constructed on bigotry, even if leave voters didn't feel like this was a key issue. Farage was the face of the leave campaign (Gove and Johnson were just leeches, in my opinion) and we know exactly how he felt in this regard. So not all leave voters were racist but I can imagine a fair enough amount were.
I support a particular policy. Without even being asked why I support this, I am a xenophobe, a racist, I don't like foreigners, I don't like working with foreigners, and I don't want foreigners living in this country [especially if they're Turks].
What would that policy happen to be?
I know that all this is b*llocks. My natural inclination now is to dismiss such slurs if made against anybody else unless I have first-hand experience of their bigotry. So maybe I think racism is less of a problem than it really is.
The problem with this is ignoring the nuances and subtlety of racism. Because people aren't directly bigoted, you can't assume they're not. Most of us realise these kinds of people when we hear them speak; the kinds that say, "I'm not racist, but...", "I don't hate women, but...", "I'm no fan of Hitler, but...", yet you would blindly take their word for it. It's hard to be racist these days, at least in some places. That's a good thing. It just means that most of them are now trying to cover themselves.
This is polarisation. In Trump's US, if you don't support his anti-immigrant measures then you're supporting terrorism. Here, if you want to leave the EU then you're a racist.
There's a big difference here; not supporting anti immigration policy isn't supporting terrorism because there's no direct link. People that don't support this can't be linked to supporting terrorism at all. If you want to leave the EU because of border control policy, that doesn't make you racist but it could. Look at the rise of hate crimes over the past few months and tell me with a straight face this isn't a problem.
The idea of the UK support services being available to everyone is great in theory [and probably makes people feel good!] but unworkable in practice.
One tiny example - the NHS ophthalmology service is geared to perform around 400,000 cataract operations a year. Throughout the EU there are probably fifty million people who need such surgery but who can't get it.
The NHS is strained because it's underfunded. The government needs to rectify this or just admit they want a full privatised service.
In the real world, are we going to offer treatment to an almost-blind Romanian and deny it to a not-quite-so-blind Mancunian? [I suppose I shall now be asked what I have against Romanians!]
No, because denial doesn't really happen. Delays do. Again, we need funding for the NHS to fix this problem. It wouldn't surprise me if our health services worsen due to us being out of the EU.
21 Aug 2018, 1:40 pm
