Cast your mind back to the Vox Pops done in the days after the Brexit result. Remember those people who were jubilant because it meant we “could get rid of them now”. Get rid of the ‘Muslims’. And the ‘scroungers’ and the ‘bogus asylum seekers’. Think about those people.
Why did they think what they did? Why do they still think it now? Because no-one, not one peron with authority in politics or journalism has stood up for the benefits of immigration or multiculturalism since 2005 at the very latest.
I choose 2005, because it marked the departure of the Tories under Michael Howard for their ‘you don’t have to be racist to vote Tory, but it helps’ campaign under Amanda Platell and Lynton Crosby. Hardcore Australian white nationalism thought dead in this country since the 70’s.
It failed, of course, as it deserved to, but the transplanted flower of jingoism, allowed to flourish unchecked in Australia for decades, found soil it could invade like Japanese knotweed in its native land.
Because what was as bad as the Tories vice was Labour’s reaction. It created that tendency most obvious in the foetid, racist mind of Caroline Flint. It created that fear, that shame, that need to change the subject that spiralled downward for a decade into a racist mug.
A racist mug and an Edstone that should have been a nadir, but weren’t. A Prime Minister who pointed out a bigoted woman was a bigot and was forced to apologise to her for her own bigotry.
And for what? What did that arch-Appeaser Flint get as a reward for allowing the metastasis of racism? A well-earned defeat. What has Corbyn’s prating silence and toying with dogwhistles earned the ‘tireless campaigner against racism’? Exactly what it deserved.
So again, I ask you, think about those jubilant leave voters, who have sat and waited patiently for the ethnic cleansing they believed will be delivered for their promised land, who believe it is about to arrive. Who believe it is but days away.
What do you think they are going to do now? When every racist lie they were told about immigration that went unchallenged by politicians and journalists who just gave up on truth doesn’t deliver a land of milk and honey.
Think about what happens now. Think about Ireland in the Civil War. Think about Bosnia, Rwanda, Partition, Israel, Palestine. Think about those places and ask yourself, “what happens now?” Happy new year for 2020.
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