What a world we inhabit. The far right are baying at the door, and in some places, they’ve already broken in. They now sit in council chambers and even in Parliament itself. Their chief provocateur, Nigel Farage, is courted by much of the mainstream press and rarely challenged in his endless TV appearances. He uses those platforms to spread anti-migrant propaganda at every opportunity.
Just last week, one of his MPs, Sarah Pochin, said live on air that “it drives me mad seeing black and Asian people on TV.” Her wild claim, that people of colour are somehow overrepresented in adverts and programmes, is totally absurd. It’s especially bizarre coming from a party that spends almost every waking hour warning of an “invasion” and insisting that Britain is “full.” If that were true, then this supposed overrepresentation would in fact be a reflection of reality. The contradictions are glaring, but propaganda doesn’t need to make sense to be effective. It just needs to stick.
And that’s what makes this so dangerous. Many people who don’t follow politics closely will take in these messages without thinking, especially in the run-up to elections. The far right know this, and they exploit it ruthlessly.
At Majority Movement, ‘tolerance, respect, and opposition to all forms of racism and discrimination’ is built in, and our members work tirelessly to keep those principles at the heart of everything we do.
It’s up to all of us to keep having the hard conversations, to challenge lies, and to show that there is a better way. The Farage project persuades some people that they are a movement of the working class, but as we know it is just another corporate vehicle that would be even worse than the Tories and the Labour right combined. And that’s saying something these days.
There’s certainly work to do.
But we are many, and we are not powerless.
Let’s keep up the fight and not let ourselves become divided.
Remain united.