Britain’s race riots – Starmer is part of the cause
JVL Introduction
This powerful piece looks at the role that mainstream politicians and media have played in creating the climate that led to the race riots in Britain and the fear that has been re-engendered for people of colour and especially for asylum seekers. The ongoing othering of Muslims in particular has been part of mainstream discourse for decades. Jonathan Cook notes many examples but along with serious criticism of Tony Blair, he has a special focus on the role of Starmer, especially as part of his determination to trounce the Left in Labour, to declare his fealty to zionism, and to echo all too readily the racist tropes of the previous Tory (and other) administrations.
Starmer’s rhetoric, Starmer’s priorities and Starmer’s leadership are all part of the problem, offering no solutions to the deep and very real problems faced by poorer people in our society. Furthermore his emphasis on the police as the way to address the crimes is limited in the extreme, when Starmer advised all MPs and Councillors to stay home, even the Metropolitan Police Commissioner praised the huge community response to the threats on Wednesday August 7th. It may be worth noting that even Starmer’s hero Tony Blair said he would not only be tough on crime but also on the causes of crime, but Starmer seems uninterested in exploring, let alone addressing the causes of what we are now facing – something that people of colour have long feared.
Reproduced with permission of Middle East Eye.
LL
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Tue 13 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
Starmer's fingerprints - not just the Tories' - are all over Britain's race riots
In the UK, Islamophobia is so bipartisan, so normalised, that BBC reporters refer to anti-Muslim pogromists as ‘pro-British protesters’
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Thankyou for writing this Excellent piece.
The as yet inchoate Reform vote is nevertheless effectively concentrated and very favoured by the first-past-the-post system, whereas Starmer’s support is very shallow across wide swathes of his majority (lots of tactical voting, as in this Nrthumberland constituency). I wonder about ‘crackdown’ legislation e.g. criminalising ‘misinformation’, is a good idea? It could be used by incoming governments for different purposes.
In my personal opinion, as so often before, with the greatest possible respect which I can manage, the loathsome Starmer is consistently worse than useless.
Exactly right re Starmer who has a tin ear and little political nous. My husband assumed a gathering to counter the EDL inspired riots would light a touch paper and turn violent – perceptions born of a narrativepuy out by the political class and repeated via media. I was not so sure . When the big peaceful counter demos such as Walthamstow were organised, the statement was so heartening. I also thought I must admit, I bet there are not many Labour Party members there -(some yes) but largely they will all be people who went on the peaceful anti war in Gaza demos and people who have either never been in the Party, or been unjustly expelled from the Party since 2019 or left voluntarily because they could not stomach the anti-democratic trajectory taken by the rightwing soulless cult at the top. What it did highlight was that given Reform’s showing at the election, about 11 per cent of the electorate are misguided, neglected, abandoned and know no better – easily led by ignorant born again fascists, and 89 per cent are not. i am not complacent – but it was uplifting.
Blair/Brown’s New Labour used a collective guilt narrative of ‘Militant Islam’ and/or ‘Radical Islam’ to dehumanise their victims – the vast majority of whom had no connection to 9/11 or the Saudi Arabian cult that was responsible. The language of collective guilt, was taken up by violent racists and in more recent weeks, these rioters.
The US had two Women’s organisations which fought the lynching of African-American men – The Association of Southern Women Against Lynching (white) which worked in tandem with The Commission of Racial Cooperation (Black & a sub-group of the NAACP). They were fighting the largely KKK based conspiracy-slur that Black men were a threat to white women and this justified torturing them to death.
New Labour – Sarah Chapman in particular – used the same slur about Muslim men being a threat to women – flying in the face of the fact the statistical percentages don’t remotely back this up. Again, violent racists and more recently rioters have adopted this language.
We might also add what does it do for the status of people of colour if despite questions about their responsibilities for death and torture ‘dodgy dossier’ Alastair Campbell and Ed Balls can appear as supposed respectable media voices. Ed Balls had the nerve to complain that Zarah Sultana was ‘attacking’ him despite his shared cabinet responsibility for killings across the middle-east and for Blair’s torture regime. One of Blall’s collective responsibility victims – Fatima Boudchard was actually 5-months pregnant when she was kidnapped, strip-naked and chained to a wall for days on end. Despite her compensation and apology, those responsible are still treated as if their victims are sub-human and don’t matter. What could further fuel racism?
What a brilliant analysis Middle East Eye have delivered. Starmer will go down in history for the divisive and dishonest PM he has shown to be as well as being the PM who has been consistently on the wrong side of history. This country deserves better.
starmer is what he is. A person who with out any sort empathy whose values are more about himselve and his career.Sad that we have to put up with this man for 5 yrs