"We want our country back."
17/6/16 15:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
upsticksIs it even vaguely possible that a man living in Britain today could be pushed to the brink of murder could be pushed to murder by political debate and the political situation? I don't care where you come from; I don't care who you vote for; that's the question I've got. Can you conceive of circumstances in which somebody living in Britain today could be pushed to a point where they contemplate this sort of conduct?
And I'm afraid to tell you that I can (at eight minutes after ten). I truly can. If I was to be reading my newspaper every single morning and being told that my very existence was under siege from people I've never met and never seen, but keep getting told are coming here in their hoards; If I was open my newspaper or turn on my radio or my television set to hear that everybody who's coming here is a rapist and they've got their eyes on our women and we've got no chance whatsoever of protecting ourselves and unless we do this or do that or treat them like this or treat them like that then we're all doomed, we're all going to hell in a handcart; If I was being told that it's time to "reclaim our country" every time I got out of bed in the morning I'd begin to believe it, I think, if I didn't have the knowledge, and the insights, and the education, to know that it is not true.
We want our country back. From whom?
We want our country back. From when?
We want our country back. How?
We want it back from the twenty first century, do we?
We want it back from a world in which the movement of people and the movement of populations is as commonplace as the movement of products. We want to back from what, when? When we could choose the nationality of our next door neighbour? We want our country back? *scoffs*
It's nine minutes after ten.
Convince me if you can, that political debate in Britain in the last couple of years has not created an environment in which we find it easy to believe, or possible to believe, that this sort of violence, this sort of terrorism could unfold on our streets.
I don't know whether we should mention names. I really don't. I'm doing what I do with you every morning now: I'm just talking and waiting for you to join in. But the *sigh* mentioning of names is tricky on a day like today. I'm going to wait. I don't think it would be fair to focus specifically on individuals who I believe whip up the kind of hatred that may have contributed or indeed have caused Jo Cox's death. I don't know that we want to necessarily do that.
And yet there's another part of me now screaming out that you have to. What is the point of having these conversations? What is the point of having these conversations, if we're not allowed to say what we want and express what we fear? Why is it on days like today that people who've spent the last decade banging of about freedom of speech and being able to speak your mind without being shot down in flames, suddenly think everybody else who disagrees with them should shut up and go away?
What we do we learn from this... death? If, as is being reported, it appears to have been committed, at least in part, for political reasons. "How dare you politicise the death of a politician who has been killed for what appear to be political reasons?" say some people. "It's a mental health issue this, not an immigration issue, not a political issue." Well, I would come with you on that journey, if you'd tried to go on it when Lee Rigby was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic. When does it become terrorism?
James O'Brien on LBC, 17 June 2016
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2016/06/james-obriens-rant-on-the-murder-of-jo-cox-perfectly-captures-the-state-of-debate-in-britain-today/#
And I'm afraid to tell you that I can (at eight minutes after ten). I truly can. If I was to be reading my newspaper every single morning and being told that my very existence was under siege from people I've never met and never seen, but keep getting told are coming here in their hoards; If I was open my newspaper or turn on my radio or my television set to hear that everybody who's coming here is a rapist and they've got their eyes on our women and we've got no chance whatsoever of protecting ourselves and unless we do this or do that or treat them like this or treat them like that then we're all doomed, we're all going to hell in a handcart; If I was being told that it's time to "reclaim our country" every time I got out of bed in the morning I'd begin to believe it, I think, if I didn't have the knowledge, and the insights, and the education, to know that it is not true.
We want our country back. From whom?
We want our country back. From when?
We want our country back. How?
We want it back from the twenty first century, do we?
We want it back from a world in which the movement of people and the movement of populations is as commonplace as the movement of products. We want to back from what, when? When we could choose the nationality of our next door neighbour? We want our country back? *scoffs*
It's nine minutes after ten.
Convince me if you can, that political debate in Britain in the last couple of years has not created an environment in which we find it easy to believe, or possible to believe, that this sort of violence, this sort of terrorism could unfold on our streets.
I don't know whether we should mention names. I really don't. I'm doing what I do with you every morning now: I'm just talking and waiting for you to join in. But the *sigh* mentioning of names is tricky on a day like today. I'm going to wait. I don't think it would be fair to focus specifically on individuals who I believe whip up the kind of hatred that may have contributed or indeed have caused Jo Cox's death. I don't know that we want to necessarily do that.
And yet there's another part of me now screaming out that you have to. What is the point of having these conversations? What is the point of having these conversations, if we're not allowed to say what we want and express what we fear? Why is it on days like today that people who've spent the last decade banging of about freedom of speech and being able to speak your mind without being shot down in flames, suddenly think everybody else who disagrees with them should shut up and go away?
What we do we learn from this... death? If, as is being reported, it appears to have been committed, at least in part, for political reasons. "How dare you politicise the death of a politician who has been killed for what appear to be political reasons?" say some people. "It's a mental health issue this, not an immigration issue, not a political issue." Well, I would come with you on that journey, if you'd tried to go on it when Lee Rigby was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic. When does it become terrorism?
James O'Brien on LBC, 17 June 2016
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2016/06/james-obriens-rant-on-the-murder-of-jo-cox-perfectly-captures-the-state-of-debate-in-britain-today/#