Thread by @DerbyChrisW

THREAD

The Tory manifesto pledges to protect the counter-extremism industry, but the counter-extremism industry is snake oil for racists.
1/11

Just like phrenology in the 19th century and Robert Wilson Shufeldt’s racist quack science of the 20th century was used against black and Indigenous peoples, ‘counter-extremism’ is a pseudoscience that exists to demonise and belittle Muslims.
2/11

Even this Islamophobic Tory government, which has forced our nurseries into Orwellian pledges to uphold ‘British values’ and inform on toddlers, has given up trying to define ‘extremism’.
3/11

The counter-extremism industry, which is a vast Islamophobia-laundering scheme, deserves ridicule and contempt, not government protection. telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/0…
4/11

The Tories want to force public bodies to ban BDS (boycott, divestment & sanctions) campaign against apartheid Israel. But Palestinian human rights activists have called on us all to join them in BDS. It worked against apartheid South Africa and can work against Israel too.
5/11

Charles Cunningham Boycott, whose name was given to the tactic, was a hated English land agent known for evictions of vulnerable Irish tenants in the 19th century. Boycott is a legitimate abstention from buying from or dealing with an institution for moral/political reasons.
6/11

How fitting that the party of slumlords and billionaires wants to stop us from boycotting their far-right friends in Israel. The Tories say BDS damages 'community cohesion', but the real threat to community cohesion is Tory Islamophobia.
7/11

Their party is led by a man who wrote an Islamophobic novel in 2004 praised by The Observer as ‘a jolly political squib’. theguardian.com/books/2004/oct… 
8/11

Irrespective of what the Tories plan to do, it is the right of every citizen and public body to respond to the Palestinian call to boycott Israeli goods and interaction with organisations and individuals engaged in reputation laundering for Israel.
9/11

BDS is an inclusive protest action that we can all get involved in. A future Labour govt must catch up.
10/11

The Labour Party's policy is 30 years out of date. Labour should ensure public bodies comply with a call for BDS and start pressing for a one-state solution, i.e. uniting historic Palestine, which is the only credible solution to this long-standing injustice.
11/11