As the usual right-wing shit-stirrers - supported by a cabal of divisive, racist, far-right anonymous troll accounts, & dodgy more mainstream right-wing print & broadcast "media personalities" - distort the census data, the FT debunks the myths.
Godless damaged #neofascist grifter Nigel Farage claimed that “London, Birmingham & Manchester are all now minority-white cities”, & “only 46% [of Britons] now identify as Christian... a massive change in the identity of this country that is taking place through immigration”. 🤥
Unhinged Conservative commentator Douglas Murray, who has previously described London as having “become a foreign country”, echoed Farage in blaming the declining numbers of British Christians on immigration. Others talked of rising segregation & “no-go areas” on social media. 🤪
Almost all of these divisive & misleading claims are untrue, as even a cursory look at the data reveals.
First, there’s the fact that London (54% white) & Manchester (57%) are clearly not minority white at all, & Birmingham (49%) makes it under the wire by a hair’s breadth.
Farage & his fellow broken shit-stirrers must have been looking only at those who identify as both British AND white.
But if identifying as British is the key, why count only white Britons? (I think we all know the answer.)
We have data on the share of people in each region that have a British identity. In London, it’s 78% — & black & mixed-race Londoners are MORE likely to identify as British than the white population!
The dumb & divisive religious claims are even more risible...
The shit-stirrers' bullshit argument here is that “mass immigration” has hastened Christianity’s decline in Britain. Yet that decline has been driven overwhelmingly by white Britons, less than half of whom now say they are Christian, down from 69% in 2011 - a loss of about 7M. 😇
If preserving Christianity is crucial to “saving” Britain, we should examine Britain’s black population: 72% are Christian, half a million MORE than in 2011, & 60% of the NON-British WHITE community are Christian - a million added since the last census!
As for the views of contemporary Christofascists, as far back as 1995, less than a third of Britons thought being Christian was an important part of being British. By 2020, that had fallen to 20%! With cranks pushing Christ knows what twisted version of faith, I'm not surprised.
Finally, we come to the relentless bullshit warnings over “segregation” & “no-go areas”, which again prove unfounded.
While Christianity ranks low on the list of things Britons say one requires to be truly British, speaking the language ranks highest.
Drill down to even the most monoethnic of Britain’s non-white neighbourhoods, & a clear majority speak fluent English in every single one.
Segregation is one of many UK culture war terms terms imported from the US, applied liberally but incorrectly on this side of the Atlantic.
Racial segregation was legally mandated in the US south under Jim Crow, & the policy of denying financial services on racial grounds quietly extended similar practices.
While one in 40 US neighbourhoods are still highly segregated, fewer than one in 1,000 are in Britain.
There is, though, one point @jburnmurdoch concedes: the gobshites are right in implying that they are part of a minority group facing terminal decline: in 2006, only 10% of Britons thought that to be truly British you had to be white. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 3%. 🇬🇧👊
This thread quotes extensively from @jburnmurdoch's excellent article in the FT, linked at the top of the thread, supplemented by screenshots, additional quotes, & candid terminology added by myself for emphasis. 🙏
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English neo-Nazi who stabbed asylum seeker was a serial stalker.
Terrorist Callum Parslow was previously jailed for sending 10 women sexually explicit and misogynistic messages, and even targeted a black former GB "News" presenter.
A neo-Nazi terrorist who was found guilty last month of the attempted murder of an asylum seeker is a prolific online stalker who had previously been jailed and referred to the #Prevent counter-terrorism scheme.
Parslow was convicted on 25 October of attempted murder after stabbing an asylum seeker at a hotel in April. He was jailed in 2018 for targeting 10 women and girls with messages describing sexually motivated murder, torture and rape, and then changed his name after his release.
We hear A LOT about Small Boats & Migrant Hotels, but basic facts are often misrepresented.
Q1 When compared to EU countries plus Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein & Norway, where did the UK rank in 2023 by per capita asylum applications? (1st=most)
DON'T CHEAT
ANSWER to Q1:
When adjusted by population size, the UK received the 20th highest number of applications: 12.5 per 10,000 residents.
Q2 Where did the UK rank in 2023 in ACCEPTING/APPROVING per capita asylum applications?
(1st=most, 31st=last).
ANSWER TO Q2
Adjusted for population size, the UK ranks 10th: in 2023 we granted protection to 9 asylum seekers per 10,000 of our resident population.
Germany had 351,000 asylum applicants (compared to our 80,000), granting protection to 135,000 people (compared to our 62,000).
What if the 1% are deliberately manufacturing deeply polarised societies?
What if the differences between, for example, the "woke and anti-woke", Leavers and Remainers, migrants and non-migrants are deliberately exaggerated, or entirely manufactured?
What if the 1% remain powerful because they invest in the strategy of Divide & Rule?
For many reasons, including ignorance, desperation, trauma, stupidity & selfishness, millions of people respect & even vote for shameless, divisive, dangerously irresponsible sociopathic liars.
One way to account for this is to look at the gradual & shameless normalisation of lies & inflammatory speech. Another (related) way is to look at the role of ourselves and our media.
Professsor Ruth Wodak has spent decades examined the former.
A January amendment to the Online Safety Act 2023 allows for the prosecution of those who convey information they know to be false & “if the person intended the message, or the information in it, to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience”.
The #Southport stabbing was on 29th July. At 4.44pm on 30th July, Tommy Robinson posted a tweet to his more than 1 million followers on @X, referring to Muslims and saying "people need to rise up", and "our daughters are being butchered in dance classes".
Bernadette Spofforth, alleged to have been the first to tweet Southport disinformation on @X, was arrested on 8th August, but on 18th September police said that following an investigation... “no further action will be taken due to insufficient evidence.”
'The Left' can be defined on the basis of its 'egalitarian drive': its credo is to remove—also through state intervention—barriers that make people unequal, advocating equal rights & opportunities for all.
The following 🧵quotes extensively from the 2022 article 'Far right: The significance of an umbrella concept', by Andrea Pirro, published in Nations and Nationalism, a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers research on nationalism and related issues.
The Right is described as non-egalitarian, precisely because its models of political and social order are rooted in the necessity and legitimacy of institutionalised inequality.
Broadly, the right seeks to maintain a status quo whereby differences between people are entrenched.
I missed this story about Kevin Roberts - President of the Heritage Foundation & the man behind #Project2025, who has close ties to Truss, Patel, Oliver Dowden & Jenrick (who have all given speeches at the Heritage Foundation) - KILLING HIS NEIGHBOUR'S DOG WITH A SHOVEL!
“He was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly... he kind of lost it & took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, chair of the History Dept at the time.