The Fists of Brexit
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‘It really annoys me when people intellectualise this and start talking about figures and polls..when we tell you racism isn’t an academic thing its a lived experience..why are we not listening to the visible minorities in this country, Polish people are being attacked, they’ve said so so I can not see why people are denying it’
– Comedian Ava Vidal on Channel 4 news
‘In its purest form, a newspaper consists of a collection of facts which, in controlled circumstances, can actively improve knowledge. Unfortunately, facts are expensive, so to save costs and drive up sales, unscrupulous dealers often “cut” the basic contents with cheaper material, such as wild opinion, bullshit, empty hysteria’
– Charlie Brooker for the Guardian
‘migrants have been weaponised to stoke fear and get out the vote for the leave campaign’
– Akwugo Emejulu, Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh
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A faith in the images painted by Leave campaigners lead to the championing of faulty statistics, silencing the reality they worked to stifle. The pressures on the public sector were placed on the shoulders of immigrants, allowing the impacts of the Conservatives’ austerity cuts to hide behind misrepresented figures. Murdoch’s Sun failed to mention what Britain gains in return for its ‘350m’ weekly EU fee. The false promise to redirect this fee into the NHS circulated around Britain faster than Farages’ UKIP campaign bus could. The picture of Britain forged by the Leave campaigners was erected through the muting of the points of view that the movement worked to attack.
To move through shock at the vote to Leave and accept that Britain’s identity is inseparable from its racist, homophobic and xenophobic past is to address the challenges of the present. Within national crisis it is people of colour, the LGBTQ and migrant community that suffer the most. The rapid succession of headlines deflect from the testimonies of those who have suffered attacks. Attention is easily tethered to the broader political spectrum. Leadership resignations, the revelation of lies, the fluctuation of the economic market distract from the need to openly condemn and show solidarity against the rise of fascist sentiments in real time. The ‘Go Home’ message scrawled on the Polish Social and Cultural Association and the petrol bomb destroying the Kashmir Meat and Poultry in Walsall happened within 3 days of one another.
The momentum of the Leave vote was fuelled by a black and white monologue – headlines clenching fists and providing the rhetorical ammunition for racist attacks. Marches, protests, conversations, questions and as Ava Vidal stresses, listening, will form a voice to counter the shouts of Britain’s rising fascists.
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.March for Europe 2/7/’16
Parliament Square
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florahastings.com 