UK Politics
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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
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Last summer's riots were far-right anti-immigration riots, not riots about standards of living.
I think it's a mistake to handwave general anger and discontent from citizens and to put the entire blame on the symptom.
Where are all the far right groups being organised? Is it in the wealthier areas where people are able to live? Or is it in the regions that are being hardest hit by austerity? Right wing groups latch onto anger that people have due to their quality of live deteriorating. They divert the anger towards their own populist agenda, and people will fall for it as it feels tangible and achievable, even if it won't do a god damn thing. Crumbling infrastructure? Must be the migrants who are also using that infrastructure. Oh the building was sold off to a foreign investment firm? Oh the employees who maintained that infrastructure are now paying exorbitant rates for housing? Nah, that's far too complex of a problem to tackle.
Wealth inequality will continue to grow, and the government isn't doing anything to truly tackle it. To think that anti-immigration sentiment exists entirely in a vacuum is naive and I think extremely dangerous, as you risk alienating those who are being hit hardest by this inequality. This will only get worse, and you can't bury your head in the sand forever.
You sound like you're trying to justify the rioting.
"A riot is the language of the unheard" - Martin Luther King Jr
If you believe violent rioting against people already seeking asylum is an ethical way to be heard then I, and the majority of this country are happy for you to be silenced behind bars.
That's an extremely bad faith interpretation of what I said. It's the exact opposite of what I'm saying, and I'm unsure if this is an elaborate troll/gotcha, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant no ill-will.
My entire point is that focusing on the symptom, in this case the the rioting and the racism, is short sighted and is prone to create reactionary takes that dismiss the concerns that lie beneath. That dismissal will only further antagonize and drive people further towards populist movements, and I don't think that's the smart thing to do. We should not be driving people towards these movements, but rather offering them a tangible and real way to alleviate the root cause of their discontent, catch it before a populist preys upon it.