Brigade of Bigots

Well, the events of last week certainly had the racists crawling out of the woodwork on social media, didn't they?  There's nothing like the murder of a right-wing Tory MP by a nutter who happens to be black to get the bigoted brigade foaming at the mouth.  You know the ones: their Twitter and Facebook profile pictures all suddenly change to that of the victim - who is their new 'hero' in the 'woke wars', despite the fact that they had never heard of them before thy were murdered, sorry, 'martyred' - and their names are followed by all those little Union Jacks and crosses of St George.  What seems to have really enraged them this time is that the alleged killer was being described as a British citizen of 'Somali origin', with them all bellowing as to how could he be British if he was Somali?  Well, obviously because he was born in the UK of parents originally from Somalia.  Rather like another of the bigots' heroes, British born but of Ugandan Asian origin Home Secretary Priti Patel (and that doesn't sound like a 'British' name, now does it?).  

Then his name was released, creating another 'storm' as it didn't sound British.  The message here is clear: you can only truly be British if you are white and your parents were British and you are called something like Smith, or Brown.  Not that any of these idiots actually have any conception of what, historically, 'Britishness' actually is - let's face it, by their criteria, if your name ends, say, -sen, then you are undoubtedly of Viking origin and therefore an interloper, descended from the bastards who intimidated our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.  Not that the Anglo-Saxons weren't interlopers as well, oppressing the Romano-British who were already here - and so it goes on.  You get the picture.  By and large, nationality is simply an accident of birth.  You ancestry, skin colour, religion and name don't make you any more or less British.

But this baying mob of ignoramuses was nowhere near as offensive as all the political opportunists who gleefully climbed on the bandwagon surrounding the murder of David Amess in order to pursue their own, long-standing, reactionary agendas.  Under the guise of being 'respectful' to his fallen colleague's memory, for instance, we had Mark Francois (is that a 'British' name?) calling for a social media crackdown because of all the abuse directed at MPs there.  Except that Amess' murder had sweet FA to do with social media - the suspect apparently has no social media presence whatsoever.  (And yes, I am going to keep referring to him as a 'suspect' and 'alleged killer' until he is convicted - it is, after all a fundamental principle of British law that one is innocent until proven guilty.  A principle which might well equally protect a Tory MP accused of rape and suspended during an investigation, from being publicly named.  Interestingly, the suspension of this unnamed MP, who had all charges dropped, coincided with a period of silence from Mark Francois.  Pure coincidence, obviously).  

Francois, truly an idiot amongst idiots and easily the most repugnant and boorish of Brexiteer bufoons, though, does come in for a lot of stick on social media.  Not that influences his attempts to censor the web, of course.  But we shouldn't be surprised by this sort of rank hypocrisy, it flows from the top downward, with the Tory party being in thrall to a leader with no apparent sense of morality, let alone principles.  It is embedded in our institutions and media.  Just consider this: Amess' attacker was black and apparently Muslim, who might, or might not, have been radicalised, so the killing was immediately dubbed a 'terrorist incident'.  Yet, when a Labour MP, Jo Cox, was murdered by a white man who was a member of extreme right wing groups, it was characterised as being the work of a mentally disturbed individual, rather than a politically motivated terror attack. Hypocrisy? Double standard?  Undoubtedly so, yet the UK media happily and obediently go along with it, never questioning the disparity between the two cases.

To go back to my original rant - I think that it is important to keep reminding ourselves that those raving racists and bigots on social media aren't representative of the population as a whole.  The majority of people don't engage with social media to any extent.  Indeed, it also important to remember that these bastards aren't even typical of the majority of those who are active on social media.  As I've noted before, in reality, it doesn't take that many actual users to form a mob on Twitter and the like.  A small number of bigots can stir a lot of shit and make a lot of noise very quickly.  More concerning are the mainstream media in this country which re overwhelmingly right wing and happily go along with the hypocrisy peddled by the government and ther lackeys.  But I doubt that we'll see the likes of Mark Francois calling for curbs on the Daily Mail any time soon.i