Racism and poverty go hand in hand. It's easy to sell the "it's all immigrants fault" to people who don't have a great deal and walk down Grimsby high street everyday seeing everything close down. What I will say to that is there a lot of people who aren't poor, who have had good long lives, have benefited from cheap houses and still seem to think immigrants are the blame for all their hardships and lap up the ******** the Daily Mail comes out with. My parents for example along with my Aunt's and uncles. These people benefited from the war their parents fought in and the change those parents demanded when that war was over, yet paint themselves as victims to the lefty elite blah blah blah. I have no sympathy for that perspective and call it out whenever someone like my dad goes on about "all our problems are down to Pakistani taxi drivers robbing red diesel"
I'm from a working class but pretty conservative background, self employed Maggie loving parents, military service, Rugby player, shooting, Fisherman. I used to be very pro Brexit even having proper rows with certain people on here (not the crappy wumming rubbish harry tries to initiate) about it so I understand people's viewpoint on voting reform because a decade ago I would have voted UKIP despite being married to a Pole. It's easy to listen to simple answers to complicated questions and because people like Farage are not polished politicians that does have an appeal to some people, I'm not saying that I agree with that but it's unfortunately true.
Because of growing inequality Reform and other far right groups are winning the culture and social media war and until the mainstream parties and media start taking this seriously we will see this continued move to the far right. It's not the first time this has happened, growing up in the 80s, seeing National Front marches, in the 00s seeing BNP councilors elected but the difference now is social media, yes you had the right wing ranters on Radio and the Daily Mail has always been there but social media had magnified everything. Twitter is a ******* **** pit as is most comments sections on YouTube. It's also been exploited by foreign governments who want to destabilise this country, how is it that siding with Ukraine or getting vacancies is all of a sudden such a controversial thing? Simple, social media is intentionally flooded with contrarian views designed to cause mistrust and bad feelings.
The progressive parties in the UK and Europe (couldn't give a **** about America) need to start getting their messages out there and as much as it will upset some people they need the likes of an Alistair Campbell to spin this stuff and go toe to toe with these idiots on GB News. They also need to forget about people like my parents because they will never vote Labour so why bother.
(I mean Lyn Jones)
