The Island of Secular, Liberal, Democracy.

Involving myself in several debates this week with members of Hizb and their supporters threw up one consistent theme; secular liberal democracy oppresses Muslims, and so by advocating a return of Khilafah, they are in fact fighting oppression (nothing says ‘fighting oppression’ quite like ISIS beheading ordinary people). The obvious question then becomes; how does a system that advocates – according to Hizb’s constitution as drafted by al-Nabhani – the execution of the ex-Muslims (essentially, genocide), and the oppression of the LGBT community, whilst forcing non-Muslims to pay to uphold it and disallowing women from holding high office, get to be considered anything but oppressive?

The response was predictably deflective, the points raised were not addressed (save for the ill-informed “being gay is unnatural” argument often used to defend the hideous oppression of the gay community by religious supremacists), instead opting on far more occasions than I ever considered possible, to just keep insisting that secular, liberal, democracy is in fact an oppressive religion itself. Whilst I’ve argued the case for secular, liberal democracy on several occasions pertaining to the specifics – the veil, or sexuality, free expression, or the building of mosques – I thought I’d use this article to explain my fundamental reasoning behind why I believe secular, liberal, democracy is the opposite of oppression.

Let us imagine there are ten of us on a desert island. We propose to come up with a governing system. Two of the new inhabitants are Muslim. Two Atheist. Two Christian. Two Hindu. Two FutileReligion (my new faith for the purpose of this article). The ten on the island consists heterosexual people, homosexual people, bisexual people, men and women, lighter toned skin and darker toned skin, red haired, blonde haired, blue eyed, green eyed people.

When coming up with our system, we all agree that the green eyed people – on account of having green eyes – have no inherent right to state privilege, nor the blue eye’d people, nor the blonde haired people, nor those with light toned skin. If we were to suggest that green eyed people are entitled the distinct privilege of law making, we imply that no one else is capable. We imply the superiority of one eye colour, to the inferiority of all others. We do so, without any reasonable justification. We therefore not only chain the rights of others whilst privileging green eyed people, we also chain green eyed people who could have their lives improved by the ideas in the minds of the non-green eyed people for improving island living. It is an absurdity. We acknowledge the equality of all when it comes to eye colour. And so we must then ask; if we accept that one particular eye colour isn’t naturally privileged, nor do we accept that the island is naturally a white supremacist island, why would we presume one particular faith must be granted state privilege and supremacy? And if we do believe one particular faith should be permitted an inherent right to state privilege, whose religion shall it be?

Well, the FutileBelievers believe the state should be theirs, and so all Christians and Muslims should be executed immediately for their sinful religion, because FutileGod insists that they are in fact unnatural. We presume that if we call it “God’s law“, it somehow permits it a privileged position to control and punish according to its rules, even those who don’t consider it to be “God’s law“. According to the two Muslims, the state should be Islamic with everyone else paying jizya to uphold the system and that the three gay people on the island should be immediately executed, and the four women disqualified from high office. The four women and the three gay people aren’t given a say in this, because the Muslims automatically presume a right to control those lives, simply on the basis of their personal religious belief. Again, an absurdity. The Christians believe the system should be completely controlled by Christians, with no Muslim being allowed high office, they also seek to burn any condoms they find and your private sex life will essentially be handed over to the two Christians. Muslims don’t get a say over whether they are allowed power in this Christian state, they simply have to deal with being institutionally inferior to their Christian rulers, who have taken it upon themselves to declare supremacy. So, who in this scenario gets to enshrine their particular religion into the framework of state?

Contrary to Hizb and other religious supremacists bizarre notions of oppression, you may note that secular, liberal, democracy enshrines the right to believe whatever it is you choose to believe. It protects that right fully for the individual. No single sect can take that away from you, in a secular, liberal, democracy. It is not anti-religious, it is anti-religious supremacy and privilege. To achieve a state that enshrines religious privilege, and supremacy, requires force and it requires the institutional subduing of others. It is the definition of oppression.

Let us be clear; by privilege I mean the institutionalising of one belief – and so, the power of state handed to two people on the island at all times – into the framework of state; perhaps insisting that gender and sexuality of all inhabitants must be subject to the rules of one faith. I do not mean banning those people from invoking their beliefs when it comes to island debate. Simply, the institutionalising of one belief; The perpetual chaining of everyone to the dictates of the faith of those two. Who gets to make that decision? How might we expect the other 8 react, if the two FutileBelievers were to say “… right, we’re in charge, we now run this place. First thing’s first, all Qur’ans and Bibles are to be burnt“. I imagine they’d react in the same way Catholics reacted when Protestants permitted themselves state privilege and oppression ensued. Or how Shia react when Sunni permit themselves state privilege and oppression ensues. It is a recipe for perpetual oppression and inevitable conflict, because it relies on the oppressed staying quiet and resigning themselves to an inferior status, and history teaches us that if you chain people to the privileged few, those in chains will fight to break them.

We have a situation in which ten people are currently free and equal. Eye colour does not get to control other eye colours, hair colour does not affect our right to participate in society and to an individual life. We extend that principle to belief. The freedoms are equal to all. There are no barriers erected to our liberty. None of those people were born attached to the religious beliefs of any of the others. Therefore, the burden is on those seeking to chain others to their religious beliefs, to convince others to hand over their liberty to that particular belief. As of yet – not just on our island, but on the entire planet – no one has succeeded in convincing others to become subservient to the beliefs of one individual, through anything other than threat and force.

So, how do we develop this impasse into a framework of state? Well, we could all insist that our particular religion is deserving of institutionalised state privilege, that others must be chained to our supernatural beliefs, thus putting us in constant conflict with everyone else on the island who similarly believe themselves privileged, and everyone else subordinate. This is unlikely to end in anything other than violence, when those threatened with the rules of the faith of the other start to break the chains. Or, we could enshrine into the framework, our acceptance that we should all be free to practice our own religion where it does not encroach on the same freedom for others, and where our freedom on the island is not chained to the beliefs of anyone else. We devise a system that is constituted firstly to protect each other, from each other. That is the primary basis of a free and equal society. The freedom of Person A – regardless of sexuality, or gender, ethnicity, or faith – does not end where the religion of Person B begins.

Once individual liberty, to pursue our own goals, is protected through a constitutional framework, we can then all jointly involve ourselves in the political process. The structure of the democratic institutions – be them Parliamentary, or Presidential, direct or representative, comes next. We compromise on decisions that effect us all, we split power, we get it wrong at times, but we learn and we move forward, and our participation in the political process is in no way dependent on our belief, gender, sexuality, hair colour, eye colour, ethnicity, if we’re missing a toe on one foot, or any other biological trait. All of those are irrelevant to our ideas and our participation within society, and so the initial protection of us all is the only possible way to allow everyone our full potential without fear of repression. The burden is on those who seek to remove our liberties, to explain why we should be forced to give them up.

The 10 person society is run on the basis of compromise and free and open debate and discussion. We can inquire, scrutinise, and progress without our ideas and creativity and contribution withheld simply because we have a particular eye colour, gender, or sexuality. If you disagree with a policy, you are free to protest, to run for office on your platform, to scrutinise, to mock, to critique. This is as true for you, as it is for me. This is secular, liberal democracy. It isn’t a religion, and it privileges no single individual or belief above any other. It is the neutral protection of all, from all, and the freedom for all to participate in the process of state. The governing of state in no way inflicts restrictions upon your right to live according to your religion, where your religion does not damage the liberty of anyone else.

To believe secular, liberal democracy is oppressing you, is simply another way to say you believe your faith should be granted state privilege to harm the liberty of others. This isn’t oppressing you, this is denying your determination to oppress others. And on that charge, I absolutely agree, and that is exactly why liberal, secular democratic institutions are the only way to guarantee civil protections for all.

Republican hero Ted Nugent in his own words.

“If he is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!”
– Sarah Palin’s reason for endorsing Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas.

It’s been a terrible twelve or so months for the Republicans. An objective commentator might point out that the shift too far to the right, or to the left, will always spell trouble for a political party. Most voters are not looking to radically shift the direction of the country to either extreme, and so the more a party appears to offer such a shift, the more voters will turn away. Instead of addressing the issues that Republicans seem to have in connecting with anyone who isn’t a white, middle aged, Christian, heterosexual male, they instead have weirdly chosen to embrace that mentality of exclusivity. An extreme ideological mentality – moulded and set by overly paranoid conspiratorial ‘analysts’ like Limbaugh – that will without doubt see them fall further from electability and harm the party in the long run. Nowhere is this more pronounced than their odious courting and embracing of Ted Nugent by Republican Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaign in Texas.

So here is the GOP’s new hero, Ted Nugent, in his own words:

Ted Nugent in 1992 on anyone who wasn’t born in America:

“… Yeah they love me (in Japan) – they’re still assholes. These people they don’t know what life is. I don’t have a following, they need me; they don’t like me they need me … Foreigners are assholes; foreigners are scum; I don’t like ’em; I don’t want ’em in this country; I don’t want ’em selling me doughnuts; I don’t want ’em pumping my gas; I don’t want ’em downwind of my life-OK? So anyhow-and I’m dead serious …”

Ted Nugent on those fighting to break down barriers to gender equality:

“What’s a feminist anyways? A fat pig who doesn’t get it often enough?”

Ted Nugent on the murder of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin:

“Trayvon got justice.”

Ted Nugent’s letter to the girlfriend of a guy he’d met, who wouldn’t let him go hunting:

“I wrote her something and I said ‘Drop dead, bitch’… What good is she, trade her in, get a Dalmatian. Who needs the wench?”

Ted Nugent after explaining how he dodged the Vietnam draft:

“But if I would have gone over there, I’d have been killed, or I’d have killed all the Hippies in the foxholes. I would have killed everybody.”

– Instead, the ‘Patriot’ Ted Nugent worked up a plan to dodge the draft, whilst fellow Americans put their lives on the line.

Ted Nugent on rappers:

“MTV is a liberal lump of hippy snot. They are embarrassing. Those big uneducated greasy black mongrels on there, they call themselves rap artists.”

– Yes. The new hero of one of the two major political parties in the US, referred to people as “uneducated greasy black mongrels”.

Ted Nugent on what constitutes “real” Americans:

“You know what I’m on top of? I’m on top of a real America with working hard, playing hard, white motherfucking shit kickers, who are independent and get up in the morning.”

– In the same interview, and following this quote, when told that African Americans were just as hard working as white Americans, Nugent said:

“Show me one.”

Ted Nugent on President Obama:

“communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel.”

Ted Nugent and Confederacy nostalgia:

“I’m beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War.”

– The South. You know, the region fighting specifically to uphold the institution of slavery.

Ted Nugent on Hillary Clinton:

“You probably can’t use the term `toxic cunt’ in your magazine, but that’s what she is. Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country. This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro.”

Ted Nugent’s violent, misogynistic rant on what he’d like to do with his machine guns and women in politics:

“Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these [machine gun] into the sunset, you worthless bitch. Since I’m in California, how about [Senator] Barbara Boxer [D-CA], she might want to suck on my machine gun. And [Senator] Dianne Feinstein [D-CA], ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions? ”

Ted Nugent – having exhausted Confederate nostalgia, racism, and misogyny – now turns to repugnant homophobia:

“I got to tell you, guys that have sex with each others’ anals cavities – how can we offend guys that have anal sex?”

Ted Nugent solution to those people crossing the border from Mexico:

“In an unauthorized entry, armed, like they are right now, invading our country, I’d like to shoot them dead.”

Ted Nugent on Hillary Clinton:

“Our politicians check their scrotum in at the door. Even Hillary, but obviously she has spare scrotums.”

After Nugent’s most recent vile Benghazi tantrum, in which he referred to the President as a “chimpanzee” and “subhuman mongrel”, Texas Governor, Republican Rick Perry said that he didn’t take offence at the comment, and:

“That’s Ted Nugent. Anybody that’s offended sorry, but that’s just Ted.”

– A few hours later, it would appear that Perry had a change of heart, when he then told CNN:

“That is not appropriate language to use about the president of the United States.”

– A bit of an odd choice of words. I’d suggest it’s not appropriate language to use about anyone, not just the President. It’s horrendously racist terminology.

The cynic in me might argue that Perry issued this second comment on the controversy, because Nugent’s ‘chimpanzee’ and ‘mongrel’ analogy is incredibly damaging to the Republicans, and to the campaign of Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott. It was perhaps Perry’s way of attempting to create distance between the Republican Party, and a horrifyingly racist, misogynist, homophobic, Confederacy sympathiser. Greg Abbott on the other hand, will be continuing to campaign alongside Nugent. It is frightening that in the US, in the 21st Century, Wendy Davis – a great advocate of women’s health rights – will almost certainly be defeated in Texas’s gubernatorial race, by a Republican candidate who has fully embraced a venomous human being like Ted Nugent.

The love affair between Ted Nugent and the GOP, reflects perfectly the hideous direction the Republican Party has taken in recent years. Indeed, Nugent is the personification of the Tea Party influence on the Republican Party; his violent, misogynistic, racist, homophobic rhetoric, subtly masked with conspiratorial (Benghazi) tones as its weak justification, is the very essence of the Tea Party. It is a brand new Republican Party falling over to the political extremes more and more by the day. It is therefore a Republican Party unlikely to win the White House again in a very, very long time.

A list of things gay marriage leads to….

When it becomes very clear that rational argument and debate is over; when one side has clearly won, the other side has two choices. Firstly, they can give up. They can admit defeat, and move on. Their argument wasn’t strong enough, the facts were not with them. The right thing to do, is to admit this. Secondly, they can choose to become hysterical. This is usually accompanied by presenting prejudice as factual. Conservatives, when it comes to the same-sex marriage debate have lost the argument. And so, they choose the latter option. They become hysterical. Fallacy after fallacy is employed. We are treated to their creative ingenuity on quite a spectacular level when attempting to present prejudice as factual. Allow me to summarise their creative arguments against same-sex marriage, and what legalising marriage for same-sex couples will inevitably lead to in the minds of conservatives:

A Marxist-Leninist coup designed to bring down British culture and government. here.

Marrying your dog: Here.

Marrying your brother or sister. Here.

A father marrying his son for inheritance tax purposes.Here.

A generation of barbarians. Here.

God destroying the World Here.

Marrying your computer. Here.

The legalisation of child molestation. Here.

Making destroyed children commit all sorts of terrible crimes. Here.

Gay propaganda Disney films. here.

Granting special rights to people who sleep specifically with St Bernards. Here.

The 2008 Financial crash. Here.

Michael Savage puking, continuously. Here.

‘Sexual anarchy’ that will destroy the soul of America. Here.

Marrying a lot of people. Here.

Everyone becoming gay and not having children, leading to human extinction. Here.

Churches forced to hire Satan Worshippers and Cross Dressers. Here.

Marrying a turtle, a goat, a duck, or a dolphin. Here.

Children’s minds being raped by a ‘homosexual mafia’. Here.

The normalisation of paedophilia. Here.

Poverty. Here.

The reason for the collapse of the Roman Empire and Weimar Republic. Here.

A lesbian Queen with an artificially inseminated heir. Here.

Strangely, none of this has happened in Canada, who legalised same-sex marriage in 2003 through the courts and 2005 nationwide. Perhaps the Marxist-Leninist, homosexual mafia like to wait over a decade before striking at the heart of the ‘soul’ of a nation and forcing churches to hire cross dressers.

Once all of these grievances have been aired in public, conservatives then tend to get defensive. They insist, after all of that, that they aren’t the bigoted ones after all. Their hysteria, leads to defensiveness. We are trying to silence them, they shout, as if the rhetoric of a Marxist-Leninist coup of crossdressing Priests represents a genuine threat. I guess it is a coping mechanism for subconsciously accepting that their hysterical arguments are intensely ridiculous. They insist that it is in fact the pro-same sex marriage majority – with our pesky historical and scientific facts – who are the bigoted ones, for not taking seriously the idea that gay marriage will lead to marrying a computer, or cross dressing Satan worshippers leading Sunday prayers, or a lesbian Queen with an artificially inseminated heir, or Jeremy Irons marrying his son, or a homosexual mafia raping children’s minds, or God destroying the World. And why would we not take those arguments seriously? They all seem mightily well thought out arguments to me. Hysterical conservatives. A gift that keeps on giving.

The Cry of “Islamophobia” & the right to blaspheme.

“This loathsome term [Islamophobia] is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”
-Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, Muslim, Ex-Cleric.

As someone who considers himself to be on the centre-left of the political spectrum, I am increasingly unnerved by creeping rhetoric on the left that seems to shut down debate, by silencing discussion with fallacy and insult. This isn’t the secular, liberal, discussion based democratic left that I believe in. Challenging authoritarian ideas and concepts – be them political or religious, with critique and satire, with criticism and poking fun – should be considered uncompromisable and absolutely necessary.

To highlight this, I got thinking about a recent online “debate” between Owen Jones and Richard Dawkins. Jones made quite clear in a recently reposted article in the Independent from 2012, that he stands firm on the side of Mehdi Hasan when it comes to what they term “Islamophobia“. This was reposted after Hasan’s spat with Richard Dawkins on Twitter yesterday. Dawkins wrote:

– An ill-judged, and inflammatory choice of words, no doubt. Interestingly, Dawkins has since made an apology and clarification. But I think Owen Jones is being curiously hypocritical, and himself guilty of fanning the flames of an undefined “Islamophobia” that he seems so keen to call out at every possible opportunity.

Jones’s hypocrisy takes on two forms; firstly Jones does not react with equal anger at any negative mention of other religions or religious figures. And secondly, he jumps to the unquestioning defence of Mehdi Hasan, despite Hasan’s equally disparaging remarks in the past, aimed at all non-believers. There is a distinct air of hypocrisy about Jones on this, but even more so with Hasan.

Dawkins went on a similar attack against Mitt Romney in the run up to the 2012 US Election, and his Mormonism. Stating:

– And yet, there remained an eery silence from Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan on this. No cries of “Mormonophobia“. Similarly, as Trey Parker and Matt Stone released “The Book of Mormon“; a mockery of Mormonism, in musical form, Owen Jones registered no disgust. Apparently Mormonism is fair game. Islam though, we must never mention Islam negatively.

Owen writes:

– And yet, for all his apparent hatred of bigotry, another eery silence from Jones is brought to us, when we consider statements made (and very weakly defended) by Mehdi Hasan, in the past. For example, in 2009, Hasan gave a speech at the Al Khoei Islamic Centre, in which he quite openly states:

“The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality, not as people of no belief – people of “no intelligence” – because they’re incapable of the intellectual effort it requires to shake off those blind prejudices, to shake off those easy assumptions about this world, about the existence of God.”

In a separate speech, Hasan also said:

“We know that keeping the moral high-ground is key. Once we lose the moral high-ground we are no different from the rest of the non-Muslims; from the rest of those human beings who live their lives as animals, bending any rule to fulfil any desire.”

– Is this not something along the lines of ‘Kuffarophobic‘? Mehdi Hasan dislikes me as a non-believer, without knowing me, insisting that I must live like an animal, simply for not believing the same myths that he chooses to believe. He is insulting me as a person, not my ideas or my beliefs, just as a person. This is bigotry. As is practically every opening verse to almost every chapter of the Qur’an, that seeks to dehumanise non-believers, and notes we’re only good for eternal punishment in the flames of hell. How is this not bigotry also?

Are we genuinely claiming that Richard Dawkins suggestion of the irrationality of Mehdi Hasan, is at all different to Hasan referring to anyone who doesn’t fit his narrow view of what is correct, as “incapable of the intellectual effort it takes to shake off blind prejudices“? Hasan often argues that tarring all Muslims with the same terrorist brush, is wrong. And in this, he is quite right. And yet, he seems more than happy to suggest that all non-Muslims are a people of no intelligence. We live like animals. Hasan has concluded (and shrouded his conclusion in ‘faith’, as if that makes it acceptable), that I must live like an animal (though it should be noted, that he has since backtracked, and tried – very weakly – to explain his comments. I deal with that in another article). Is this not the exact same form of bigotry that both Jones, and hypocritically, Hasan claim to disapprove so vehemently of? Can you imagine their feigned outrage, if Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins were to say that Muslims were to all be considered animals, unintelligent, and immoral, as a whole? The Guardian would have a heart attack. Owen Jones would spend his day on Twitter telling us how he’s an Atheist but disapproves of such vile bigotry.

There is no referring to Stone and Parker as bigots, for mocking Mormonism. No Presidential address in which we’re told the musical is “in bad taste” as we were told the cheaply made anti-Islamic film was in bad taste. No referring to Monty Python as bigots for mocking the story of Jesus in ‘The Life of Brian’. Only the Christian Right jumped in to attack “Jerry Springer the Opera” for its display of a grown Jesus in a nappy. The musical won Laurence Olivier Awards. Owen Jones, again, eerily silent.

Would the same respect for free expression be accepted, for the portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad in a nappy? Given that Danish cartoons result in condemnation not only from Muslims demanding the execution of anyone associated with the publication, but also from liberals in Western countries, along with judicial inquiries, sackings of Ministers who supported the cartoons, and deaths… I’d suggest that a similar musical mocking Islam would not be met with the same respect. It is not just those of us who dislike Islam as a doctrine, who treat the faith differently from other faiths. So to, do those insisting on shouting “Islamophobia!” at every possible opportunity, shielding it from the treatment afforded to other ideas.

When States ban or openly discourage the challenging of one concept – such as the denying of the Holocaust – they are denying the Right of others to listen to dissenting opinions that might challenge us to inquire, and solidify, or modify our own perception of reality. It is almost criminalising the necessity to question. Why do I believe the holocaust happened the way it is consistently documented? I wasn’t there. I’ve heard about it from several sources. Shouldn’t I be given a plethora of ideas since I have no way of fully accepting just one, given that I wasn’t there to experience it first hand. By accepting the banning of unpopular, and offensive views, I am also harming the Right of others to hear a plethora of views and to educate themselves further. I am institutionalising a way of thinking that exists on the left of centre, whilst criminalising those on the fringes for saying words I do not like. This way, I become a slave to convention. I have learnt that this is unacceptable.

The word ‘Islamophobia’ is seeped in hypocrisy and inconsistency. It is a way to discourage free inquiry of ideas. To accept, without question, that this particular idea is off limits with regard criticism of any form. To suggest otherwise, gets us to the rather peculiar point in which even a cartoon of the Prophet, is “Islamophobic“, with people tending to focus more on how ‘offensive’ the cartoon is, than on the vicious and violent threats that it provoked. It is a victim mentality of the most irritating kind.

And yet, there is no balance by which those like Owen Jones pour scorn when certain undesirable features of Islam rear their ugly heads; Hasan’s speech for example. Or the fact that the Qur’an begins most chapters with a vivid description of how we non-believers deserve eternal torture. How is this not considered “Kuffarophobic”?
We can almost be certain of the scorn that would flow forth upon the writers, if a “Book of Islam” musical, were to be made in the mould of “The Book of Mormon”. There is no balance, no logic, just appeasement and a very twisted cultural relativist set of scales leaning dangerously to one side.

The vagueness of the term allows for it to be – oddly – linked to racism. This happened recently when Maajid Nawaz posted a cartoon of the Prophet, and was told he was playing into the hands of the EDL. I’d argue that it is those who demand special treatment for their faith, shielding it from criticism and satire, that not only play into the hands of reactive groups, but actually created the hand of the EDL in the first place. Grouping hostility and blatant racism and hate toward people (like non-believers who live like animals), in the same category as criticism, satirism toward ideas is dangerous for discussion and for the health of that idea where it exists in a secular framework upon which all ideas are up for the same treatment. It is also quite absurd.

It is not just a right, but an absolute necessity to criticise and satirise all ideas and concepts – religious or political – that seek control over the lives of others.

Racism, like sexism, is the institutional perpetuation of social privilege based on biological differences. There is no doctrine involved. To claim racism, alongside Islam, is like claiming a deep hatred for all people with brown hair, if we learn that most Muslims have brown hair. It is absurd. My contention is simple; to push discussion, criticism, satire, ridicule of an authoritarian idea – be it religious or political – out of the public sphere of acceptability, has the opposite effect. It creates a taboo, and it is latched onto by dangerous fanatics like those of the EDL, who undoubtedly do mix their dislike for a faith, with racism and Nationalism.

I doubt we would be degraded as bigots, if we were to mock or criticise the doctrines of conservatism. I see no difference. If you find criticism of Islam to be offensive, yet similar criticism of Christianity, or liberalism, or conservatism to be perfectly acceptable… it is you with the problem, not us.

I am quite unaware of what doesn’t constitute “Islamophobia“. Is it okay for example, to suggest that Islam, like Catholicism, is inherently homophobic? In fact, Hasan himself in an article on gay marriage, writes:

“As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia.”

– Irony at its finest. Homosexuality isn’t an ‘idea’. Islam is an idea. Sexuality is a natural spectrum much like eye colour, or hair colour, or skin colour. Consider a white supremacist saying: “As a white supremacist, I struggle with the idea of being black, but I oppose racism“. Irony.

Is it okay to simply argue that Islam is misogynistic (as I believe it is… as I believe Christianity is)? Is it okay to suggest that a secular UK is no place for horrendously patriarchal Shariah courts? Is it racist to say that punishment for apostasy or blasphemy, is unfathomably wrong? What qualifies as “Islamophobic“? Is it hate, or violence aimed at Muslims individuals? Is this not better defined as anti-Muslim hate (which I don’t deny exists)? Or is it distaste for the idea of Islam itself? If we are to alienate criticism of Islam as a concept or as doctrines, is this not a form of positive discrimination that has the opposite effect of what it sets out to do?

If we are to use the suffix “Phobia” to refer to criticism or mockery also, then we can also call out many religious doctrines and their adherents for being Feminismophobic Democracyophobic, Americanophobic, Westophobic? Most chapters of the Qur’an begin with a vivid description of how we as non-believers deserve nothing but torture. Is this not Kuffarophobic? It’s certainly horrifically bigoted.

It is my belief, that the freedom to satirise, mock, criticise, as well as question all authoritarian ideas, including all religions that themselves are openly critical of how those outside the faith live their lives, is the cornerstone of a progressive, and reasonable society. Indeed, the freedom to criticise authoritarian ideas is essential. These ideas include the freedom to satirise and criticise and question deeply held political ideals, including my own. We must not allow religions to be free from satire, nor criticism, simply because it is cloaked in ‘faith’. To close them to criticism/satirism by using State controls and violence, means that the idea becomes taboo, humanity cannot progress the idea, and it gives the idea an authoritarian above what it is reasonably justified in having, over the lives of not just its followers, but those who don’t wish to adhere to its principles. This is dangerous.

The openness by which ideas are debated, satirised, and critiqued, is the most important way in which their adherents are taken seriously, become integrated, and viewed equally to all others. This is different entirely to discrimination (demanding deportation of Muslims, or removal of rights that we all enjoy is quite obviously anti-Muslim hate, as is any suggestion that a Muslim shouldn’t be President of the US or Prime Minister of the UK, this is different from satire/criticism of the concept of Islam) If however, their adherents demand a special dispensation and protection from the treatment that all other ideas are open to, or seek to silence through dismissive and damaging rhetoric, then inevitably, they are treated suspiciously.

It is absolutely right for all to be free to question and to criticise and ridicule the idea of Islam; as it is right for all to be free to criticise and ridicule every faith and every idea, especially if that idea is authoritarian outside of the private life of the individual believer. This includes criticism and ridicule of Atheism, includes evolution, includes Conservative, includes Liberalism, includes Christianity, includes Mormonism, includes Communism, includes Capitalism. Islam is not, and should not be shut off from that, nor should it in any way, be linked to race from either the far right, or the far left. It is an idea. It deserves to be treated like every other idea. Those who shout “Islamophobia” at any hint of a dislike for Islam, lose all credibility the moment they do not apply the same criteria to the satire and mockery of other ideas, or when they seemingly refuse, or make excuses for people like Mehdi Hasan and his repugnant comments on non-believers.

The State of the Republicans: 2013

The end of the Romney campaign ushered in a new era for the Republicans…. apparently. They insisted they must change. Their appeal must broaden. Their hate-filled, politics of over-the-top Glenn Beck style fear had to go. They had to be presentable. Change or die! The old days of a Party of old, white, male, Christian, heterosexual, angry-at-everyone-who-isn’t-EXACTLY-like-them, funded by big corporations had to go. And so we were informed that a new breed of Republicans would appear. Ready to present a reformed GOP to the electorate. They were radically different from their predecessors.

So how’s that going?

Well, in November 2012, the residents of Texas’ first district re-elected Louie Gohmert for a fifth term in the House of Reps. If the Republicans are intending to break from the past, surely we’d expect Gohmert to perhaps be a little more moderate than his more radical Tea-Party-esque contemporaries. That’s what we’d expect. However, when asked about his opposition to any gun control legislation, Gohmert gave this rather odd answer:

“In fact, I had this discussion with some wonderful, caring Democrats earlier this week on the issue of, well, they said “surely you could agree to limit the number of rounds in a magazine, couldn’t you? How would that be problematic?”

And I pointed out, well, once you make it ten, then why would you draw the line at ten? What’s wrong with nine? Or eleven? And the problem is once you draw that limit ; it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman any more, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody has a love for an animal?

There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.

– You read right. In a discussion about gun control, Gohmert managed to take a shot at same-sex marriage, by employing the insufferably weak slippery slope fallacy. I cannot work out which is more impressive; his ability to link gun control and same-sex marriage… two completely separate issues that in no way overlap, or his intense lack of sensibility in recognising that there is no reason to believe a slippery slope with either of the issues he’s commenting on. I could equally say “If we let women vote, what next, letting camels vote?” or “If we ban cocaine, why not ban cough medicine? Where does it end!!” It’s absurd and it is baseless. He isn’t the only Republican to use this fallacy recently. John Cornyn, the new Senate Minority Whip said:

“It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right…. Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”

– Yes. the Republican Senate Minority Whip has just compared a loving couple wishing to express that love via marriage, and wishing only to be considered equal under law….. to a man marrying a turtle. That’s the standard of top Republicans in 2013.

Back to Gohmert. The man who tried to link gay marriage to gun control, also claimed that the liberals are going to make Churches:

….hire whatever Satan-worshiper, whatever cross-dresser you think might be immoral, that’s against your religious belief. You are going to be forced to abandon your religious beliefs, and we’ve been seeing that with some of the requirements under Obamacare.

– Yes! Someone had to say it! Obamacare is simply a mask to make Churches hire cross-dressing Satan-Worshippers! It’s SO obvious. Wake up America!
The fact that this man gets the privilege to vote on gun legislation; a vote on the safety of your children in school, would be laughable if it weren’t so utterly terrifying.

Bobby Jindal won a 2nd term as Louisiana Governor in 2011. Since then, he’s been rather excitable at promoting misleading figures to promote an agenda of fear. Whilst one fifth of all residents of Louisiana lack health insurance, Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid expansion, claiming it would cost Louisiana $1bn over the next ten years. Quite where he gets this figure from, I’m not sure. Especially given that a Department of Health Report noted that Louisiana would actually save around $400mn over the next ten years, by expanding Medicaid. He appears to have invented his own figure, to scare people. Despite this, and despite a petition signed by…

Advocates for Louisiana Public Healthcare.

Advocacy Center.

Capitol City Family Health Center.

Capital City Alliance.

Citizens United for In-Home Support.

Coalition of HIV/AIDS Nonprofits and Governmental Entities.

Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation, Harvard Law School.

Children’s Defense Fund-Louisiana.

Children’s Bureau of New Orleans.

DEAF Louisiana.

Doctors for America.

Depression & Bipolar Support Alliance, Northeast Louisiana.

Health Law Advocates of Louisiana.

HOPE For Homeless.
Along with 30 other groups, and countless more individual signatures….. Jindal refuses to expand Medicaid.

And then there is the apparent darling of the Republicans new bid for power in 2016; Marco Rubio.

“We’re bound together by common values. That family is the most important institution in society. That almighty God is the source of all we have.”

– Here, Rubio is subtly promoting the myth that America was founded a Christian nation, and that religion must be considered part of the fabric. A subtle hint that non-belief, cannot be considered an American value. Thus, in a single, tiny quote, we see the saviour of the Republicans alienate anyone who isn’t slightly obsessed with ‘God’ being a key component to Patriotism. So that’s 15% of Americans who claim no religion. That’s a lot of people to alienate, for a man promoted as the key to solving the Republican Party’s problem of appealing to minorities. Rubio is following the conservative trend of telling people who should and shouldn’t qualify as ‘American’. This in itself, is divisive.

Rubio also still appeals to tradition when dealing with same-sex marriage, insisting that marriage cannot be redefined. Seemingly ignoring all evidence that the current definition of marriage, is just one that has evolved over time, based on modern Christian understanding of the term, and differs from other cultures entirely. So, that’s gay people alienated, as well as non-believers.

Brand new Senator for Senator for Arizona, assuming office in 2013, Jeff Flake also doesn’t like the idea of two people in love getting married. Whilst despising ‘big government’ and the intrusion of the State into people’s lives, Flake voted in favour of a Federal Marriage Amendment, Constitutionally banning same-sex marriage. For someone so obsessed for getting government out of people’s private lives, Flake seems more than happy to use government power to ban love.

Back to Rubio. As well as not particularly liking gay people, Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act, stating:

“I have concerns regarding the conferring of criminal jurisdiction to some Indian tribal governments over all persons in Indian country, including non-Indians.”

– Essentially, a non-Native American male being tried under the law for sexually assaulting a Native American woman, concerns Rubio, because he doesn’t trust Indian Tribal Governments. And yet, he puts his full faith in the States to fund programs properly:

“These funding decisions should be left up to the state-based coalitions that understand local needs best.”

– So trustworthy are local areas in dealing with domestic abuse cases, that due to budget cuts, the Topeka, Kansas City Council and Mayor actually repealed the Domestic Abuse law, in a bid to start a bit of a war with the County Prosecutor. This came about after Shawnee County D.A Chad Taylor, moved to stop investigating domestic violence entirely due to budget cuts. This meant that the City of Topeka would have to take up the cases, which they couldn’t afford to do either. So their Council voted to repeal the domestic abuse act. Which, forced it back into the hands of Shawnee County. Taylor said:

“My office now retains sole authority to prosecute domestic battery misdemeanors and will take on this responsibility so as to better protect and serve our community. We will do so with less staff, less resources, and severe constraints on our ability to effectively seek justice.”

Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence said:

“I really do not understand this. It’s really outrageous that they’re playing with family safety to see who blinks first. People could die while they’re waiting to straighten this out.”

– All of this comes down to budget cuts. Shawnee County DA Chad Taylor refused to prosecute domestic violence cases, after facing a 10% budget cut, despite half of all cases being domestic abuse cases, which increased substantially in the past three years, without any extra funding from the County. How very trustworthy! Interestingly, Rubio voted against the Budget Control Act in 2011, and the Fiscal Cliff 2012. Rubio evidently trusts the localities to make funding decisions, which is much easier, if those localities don’t have any funds in the first place.

Rubio isn’t the only Republican with odd reasons for voting against the Violence Against Women Act. Steve Stockman, Representative of Texas’ 36th District announced his shameful reasons for voting against:

“This is a truly bad bill. This is helping the liberals, this is horrible. Unbelievable. What really bothers—it’s called a women’s act, but then they have men dressed up as women, they count that. Change-gender, or whatever. How is that—how is that a woman?”

Stockman also voted to repeal Federal laws that ban guns in schools. Why so? Well, given that among his campaign contributors are the ‘National Association for Gun Rights’ and ‘Gun Owners of America’, it perhaps isn’t that surprising that Stockman feels the need to put their interests above the safety of children. Just to make sure we all understand where his allegiances lie, here is incredibly ridiculous, almost comical campaign bumper sticker, tweeted for the World to see, by the man himself.

– I’m not sure if Stockman is calling for semi-automatic rifles to be inserted into the vaginas of every pregnant woman. I wouldn’t be surprised.

The scientifically illiterate are still abundant in the Republican Party. Marco Rubio once announced that he didn’t know if the Earth was made in 6 days or not, and that we’re never likely to know. But Georgia’s 10th District Rep. Paul Broun (planning to run for Senate in 2014) and, quite horrifyingly, serving on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology once took Rubio’s toying with Creationism one step further:

Earth is about 9,000 years old, it was created in six days as we know them”

– Broun also said of embryology, genetics, evolution, and the Big Bang theory:

“they’re lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

– Broun also said of climate change:

“Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”[

– Echoing his scientific illiteracy, Broun gives us enlightening views on politics, when brief mention of a National Security Force by President Obama, before the 2008 election:

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force, I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may _ may not, I hope not _ but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism. That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

– Yes. A US Representative, thinks the Earth was made in 6 days, evolution is a lie from the pit of hell, climate change isn’t man made, and convinced President Obama was going to create his own Hitler Youth, to take over America and create a Marxist haven.

Now to move on from bat-shit crazy, to slightly less crazy, Paul Ryan. The spritely Paul Ryan. You may think he’s irrelevant as a symbol of this great new era for Republicans, given that his ticket lost the Presidential election. But let’s not forget that Ryan is the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, in 2013. A pretty important position. He’s also Wisconsin’s 1st District House Representative. He looks young, he seemed fresh, he wasn’t the grey haired typical old Republican. Nor was he the gun tottin’ Sarah Palin slightly vacant Republican. He was paraded on the networks as a hero of fiscal conservativism, brave to speak out against Obama overspending! His brand new House Republican Budget released in March this year, which the brave, fiscally conservative hero claims will:

“end cronyism, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse and returns the federal government to its proper sphere of activity”

– So it is worthwhile to note that the anti-big government, pro-deficit reduction Paul Ryan voted for the two Bush tax cuts (both considered a great failure, and added significantly to the deficit), the $700 bailout of the banks, and the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, whilst voting against Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Most of Paul Ryan’s economic voting record, has added significantly to the National deficit.
His House Republicans Budget, unveiled by Republicans on March 12, noted that $931 billion of the creatively accounted $4.6tn apparently savable over the next ten years, will come from counting the savings from ending the Iraq and Afghanistan wars…. wars that Paul Ryan voted for in the first place. Economically, Paul Ryan doesn’t know where he stands.
Socially, despite absolutely no evidence to back up its claims, in 2009 Paul Ryan cosponsored the ‘Sanctity of Life Act’. A very odd little Act that sought to protect fertilised eggs, stating that the eggs:

“shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood”

Ryan also believes that abortion, in all cases, including rape and incest, should be made illegal, and States given the right to criminally prosecute women who have abortions, including for rape and incest.

Before being elected as Senator for South Carolina in 2013, Tim Scott was House Representative for South Carolina’s first district. During his time in the House, Scott cosponsored a truly horrifying Bill that would deny food stamps to poorest families, if a family member was taking part in strike action. The right to strike – a key component of a democratic society – used by the weak against the powerful, used to secure freedoms and security for generations, Tim Scott voted to essentially end. Threatening the poorest people in society; you either strike, or you eat. Scott is also convinced that the private health care system in the US is the greatest in the World, and that the Health Reforms of 2010 should be repealed. This is no surprise given that one of his main campaign contributors, has been Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the health insurance company. Among other campaign contributions, he has received donations from Goldman Sachs. Tim Scott is a politician, for the wealthy, by the wealthy. The Insurance Industry Candidate.
Speaking of complete contempt for the less wealthy, Mark Meadows, a member of the January 2013 intake for The House, and Tea Party favourite, representing North Carolina’s 11th District voted against the Sandy Relief Fund.

Dean Heller, the Senator for Nevada, who will hold that position until 2019, voted against the Health Care Reform, and against Fair Minimum Wage Act. Heller has also voted against subsidising renewable energy, whilst voting to support development of oil, gas and coal…. two of his top campaign contributors, are Alliance Resource, and Murray Energy…. two coal companies.

So, gay marriage leading to marrying an animal, Church’s having to hire crossdressing Satan-worshippers, manipulating figures to suit an agenda, a refusal to expand Medicaid to help the most vulnerable, evolution a myth from the pits of hell, refusal to protect victims of domestic abuse, including transgendered people, a desire to see women who have been raped imprisoned for having an abortion, guns in schools funded by the gun lobby, Obama trying to raise an army to enforce a Marxist Utopia, anti-renewable energy, candidates wishing to disenfranchise poor people and their right to strike, and wishing to repeal health reform whilst taking campaign contributions from the wealthiest insurance companies in the country.

This new Republican breed sound, and act, and speak, eerily familiar to the old breed.

Aidan Burley and the curse of the nasty Party

The Olympic opening ceremony was a spectacular representation of the progress from industrialism to, well, Dizzie Rascal apparently. I adored it. There cannot be many more years go by without Danny Boyle not becoming Sir Danny Boyle. Boyle’s opening ceremony expressed progression. He not-so-subtly directed the audience left ward. Though it seems to have angered the Right Wing. And rightly so. It was a kick in the teeth to everything they stand for. It was a display of the achievements of the Left in this country. Tory MP Aidan Burley tweeted during the opening ceremony with the following:

This is the same Aidan Burley who was sacked as Parliamentary Private Secretary after attending a Nazi themed stag party, in which he himself hired Third Reich outfits and toasted the groom with nazi salutes. Burley’s credibility as a political commentator to be taken seriously, is hardly rousing.
Unfortunately for Burley, the NHS (opposed by the Tories), Welfare (opposed by the Tories, at every level), and union advancements to fairer work conditions (opposed by the Tories), minimum wage(opposed by the Tories) and maternity pay(opposed by the Tories) is modern Britain for the majority of the people living here. It isn’t champagne, nazi themed stag do’s and taxpayer funded moat cleaning for the majority. It is multicultural, it is black, white, gay, straight, female, male and everything else. It is dole queues, and a lack of hope – largely the result of the policies of his Party. It isn’t just a golf course is Kent with wealthy businessmen and a group wank over their new yacht. I cannot imagine Burley is going to last much longer as an MP.

Boris Johnson has said there was nothing left winged about it, Cameron has called Burley an idiot for suggesting it. They are both wrong. Burley is right. It was left leaning in nature. That’s why I loved it. To suggest the glorification of the NHS, of union advancements and of the suffragettes were not left leaning, is to suggest that the Tory Party had either supported all of those things, or played a part in them. This would be disingenuous and they know it. It works to the Tory Party’s advantage if they show how much they just love the NHS, if they keep quiet and reluctantly support the show of union advancement. Why let them have that? They achieved none of it. They fought it at every opportunity. So yes, the Olympic Opening Ceremony declared what every decent Brit cherishes; and none of it came from the Conservative Party.

So everyone from the far left to the Prime Minister weighed in on this, attacking Burley for his tweet, and telling us all how wrong he was. That he should apologise. An embarrassment to the Tory Party. And I think that’s a mistake we on the Left make far too often.

Burley is a Tory that has contempt for anyone that isn’t like him. But he isn’t alone. He is a regular Tory. They all think like him, the rest of them just have the sense to stay quiet. Or, Burley just has the balls to say exactly what he thinks. This is troubling, because come election time (as in 2010) the Tories can present themselves as new, cuddly, loving, ‘compassionate conservatives’, that the NHS is safe in their hands, that their budget will deliver growth and help for ‘hard working families’, that the likes of Burley do not represent the whole Party; because any outward display of their true colours is quickly silenced, not just by their Party superiors, but by the left. We demand apologies. This is in fact the British Left shooting themselves square in the foot, because it allows the Tory Party to engage with mass thought and mould communication around it. If we did not complain so loudly, the Tory Party would doubtlessly show themselves for the awful bigoted bunch of over privileged toffs that they have always been, rendering them unelectable. We now know that the NHS was not safe in their hands. We now know that listening to the advice of Britain’s biggest businesses when they supported the Chancellors plans to cut, cut, cut, was a massive lapse of National judgement in collectively believing they wanted to actually help the country rather than line their own pockets…. we know this, because it has failed miserably. We now know that they had planned to raise VAT yet cut Corporation tax and other wealthy taxes. We now know that many of their associates working for them keep their money in offshore accounts whilst shamelessly attacking anyone on welfare. The attacks on welfare are easy. These people do not fund the Tory Party, so they are unneeded; the country hates benefit cheats, because the media completely over hypes the situation, whilst the biggest cons – the tax avoiders who fund, work for, and appear in the cabinet (see George Osborne) sit comfortably dividing and conquering. But…. let them speak, their one weakness, their regressive attitudes to absolutely everything, and they will fall.

Burley later attacked the decision to allow Dizzee Rascal to perform. He wasn’t sure why we allowed rap music to feature. A further attack on multiculturalism. Clearly Burley isn’t aware that Dizzee Rascal has four number 1 hits, a Mercury Music award, NME awards, BET awards, has worked to encourage youth voting, and is internationally known. This isn’t an obscure musician. This is a guy who epitomises a certain age group, a certain social and economic background, and has shot to the top. He is also from the East End, not far from the Olympic village. A global musical star, from that area. Seems like the right choice to me. Who would Burley choose instead?

The two fundamental belief that drive everything the Tory Party stand for, that I despise are:
1) The rich are ‘job creators’.
2) Unless you are white, heterosexual, English born, and have a mind for business, wearing a suit the moment you were born; you are different, and different = wrong.
Give them the opportunity, and they will express both of these dangerous ideas time and time again. They will play on prejudices to make sure their obvious bigotry is somewhat clouded – i.e- mention constantly how awful people on welfare are. Deflect the negativity onto those who have no real political representation. And it works, because a pessimistic population has no time to look into these claims, as everyone is working more, for less, thanks to Tory economic policy.

The Tories are rather good at covering their inherent prejudices. If we take the case of Chris Grayling, the Minister for Work and Pensions; this man is a compulsive liar. But he backtracks. Or his lies are just forgotten; glossed over by the Tory spin machine. Usually compulsive liars; those whose lies become a sort of way of life, are nothing to worry about. But when they hold incredibly important offices with the responsibilities of those of Grayling, we must all be concerned. I would go so far as to suggest he has one of the most profound records of fabrication in any government of the post war era.
As shadow minister for work and pensions, Grayling pushed the lie that £2.5bn was lost to benefit fraud in 2006 by stating:

…billions of pounds are still being lost to fraud.”

– Actually, less than a billion was lost to fraud in 2006. The National Audit Office who actually released these figures said that £690m was lost to fraud. Chris Grayling has never admitted his mistake here. It is also extremely odd that he seems to take offence at the morality of misspent taxpayers money, given that his Parliamentary expenses receipts show that he bought a flat in Central London, less than 17 miles from his constituency home, using tax payers money, and then renovated said flat, with tax payers money, claiming almost £2000 alone for refurbishing the bathroom. One wonders what taxpayers are getting out of the fact that he can have a more luxurious shit every morning? Or what taxpayers are getting out of his lovely new £1,341 kitchen And one wonders how this is any different to a single mother getting a few £ extra out of the system every week. In fact, it is worse, because Grayling is on a salary of £64,000 and has a house that was worth £600,000 in 2000, and two buy to let properties in London. Grayling spread the cost of the renovations on his flat over two years (one year would have gone over the maximum allowed by Parliament) claiming:

…..decorator has been very ill and didn’t invoice me until now.

Grayling, is a hypocritical, lying turd.
After saying that he supported the right for B&B owners to not allow gay couples to stay in their B&B, he backtracked, stating:

I am sorry if what I said gave the wrong impression, I certainly didn’t intend to offend anyone… I voted for gay rights.

– Humble apology. Though a complete fabrication. If we look at his voting record on gay rights we find that….
Civil Partnerships – Grayling voted against.
Fertility Treatment for Gay Couples – Grayling voted against.
The Repeal of Section 28 – Grayling did not show up to vote.
The Right for Gay Couples to Adopt – Grayling voted against.
– He couldn’t have lied more if he tried. There are more examples of Chris Grayling’s lies, blogged several times. The most prolific, and where I started my research is here.

We know where their hatred lies. Burley disliked the left wing attitude that the Olympic opening ceremony took on. That includes the trade unionism. Is it any surprise a Tory Party member – whose current cabinet is made up almost exclusively of millionaires – dislikes a movement that protects those who do not have a voice in Parliament? We are all playing the Corporate game. They want you to work longer, for less pay, whilst the guys at the top do less, for more. Here is a government that have led the country into the biggest double dip recession in decades. They have blamed the unions, Labour, the snow, the royal wedding. All whilst giving the wealthiest a huge tax cut. It is easy. There aren’t many public services – Sure Start, libraries, youth centres – that would ever likely benefit Conservatives, so swap them for a wealthy tax cut, and they’re all happy. It seems we have become a country that judges its success on how well we treat the wealthiest. The balance is tipped in the wrong direction and it has all but destroyed the economy.
In two short years the UK has gone from signs of growth and recovery (1.2% in the first quarter of 2010 – Labour’s last few months – staggering given the recession that we’d just come out of), to a shocking -0.7% drop in growth. There is no one left to blame. The economics of ‘businesses and rich people create jobs’ is a myth. Demand creates jobs, and by stripping the economy of demand as part of their unfortunately named “Budget for Growth” in 2010, the Tories have been given the harsh reality of making sure they only look after the people who fund them. Because let’s not forget that as part of Grayling’s flagship ‘back to work’ programme, the company Deloitte Ingeous was awarded 7 out of 40 contracts to get people back to work…… this comes after the same Deloitte Ingeous donated £28,000 to Grayling in 2009. The same back to work programme that found a certain Mr Stephen Hill fit for work.

Stephen Hill had been referred to a Fit For Work assessment by the private healthcare company Atos, after signing up for Disability Living Allowance whilst waiting for tests on his heart. Despite the fact that doctors had diagnosed him with heart failure, he was still found “fit for work”. He appealed, and won. But the Department sent him another letter demanding a second assessment, this time whilst he was waiting for heart surgery. The assessor commented:

“Significant disability due to cardiovascular problems seems unlikely.”

Stephen Hill died a couple of weeks later. Atos have just won £587mn worth of new contracts to carry out assessments.
Welcome to Corporate England, and the joys of private healthcare companies.

A country works best with a healthy national health service to ensure healthy members of an economic community. It works best with a safety net to catch those who fall, or who cannot help themselves. JK Rowling famously defended the welfare state with this rather beautiful summation of how it works:

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

It works best when those who benefitted the most from a healthy public sector – roads, health, education – do not burn the ladder up which they climbed for future generations, as the Tory Party is doing now. It works best when we fight to protect the most vulnerable, not to force them to work in order for unemployment figures to look better on tomorrow’s newspaper. It works best when we focus on how our Nation treats our poorest, and not how many yachts our richest can now afford.

Back to Burley. He is not alone in his contempt. Along with Grayling’s apparent dislike of homosexuality (and the disabled, claiming 75% of those on disability, were “skiving”), and the entire policy of forcing those with quite blatant disabilities back into work just to improve employment figures, whilst using the new found revenue flow to fund tax cuts for wealthy donors, other Tory’s have been quick to show, and then hide their true colours these past few years.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, a noble post, stood up in Parliament, and referred to gay Labour MP Chris Bryant as a “Pantomime dame”, followed by a sickening smurk and a barrage of laughter from his pompous back benchers.

“There is a real danger that the abolition of section 28 will lead to the promotion of a homosexual lifestyle as morally equivalent to marriage.“

– Theresa May, the Equalities Minister. Seriously.

“if there’s anybody who should fuck off it’s the Muslims who do this sort of thing.”

– Tory MP Philip Davies, after an act of vandalism which was later proven to have not involved any Muslims at all.

“Feminists are now amongst the most obnoxious bigots.’

– Tory MP Dominic Raab.
This is the same Dominic Raab who complained about tax payers money should not be spent on Government staff who are working on union projects. And yet, doesn’t seem to have a problem with millions of £ in taxpayers money being given to previously mentioned companies like Atos. Raab appears to rabidly dislike Unions marching, but has no problem with a company like Care UK majorly benefiting from changes to the NHS at a time when they donated £21,000 to the private office of the health secretary. Raab seems to have no problem with his party choosing Philip Green to head the “efficiency of government spending review” despite himself keeping his multi-millions in offshore accounts, being accused of excessive pay by awarding himself a dividend of £1.2bn, whilst his company avoided £125mn in tax payable to the UK, whilst also being accused of treating workers poorly by using sweatshops. By the way, the money spent on union planning that Raab is so angry about, came to £6mn. That’s about 20 times less than Philip Green’s company alone avoided in taxes. We see where Raab’s priorities lie. Alongside the rest of the Tory Party; with Corporate England.

So you see, it is wrong of us to insist on silencing Tory prejudice. It is inherent to them. They are the party of big business and bigotry. The nasty party. They haven’t changed, nor will they. Shouting abuse at Aidan Burley will not make him change his views that multiculturalism is anti-British, or that the NHS, the suffragettes, and the union movement are all disastrous. He, and his wealthy colleagues are simply playing a Corporate game with the lives of ordinary people. We should leave them to spurt their occasional venom at anyone who isn’t like them. It does the right wing no favours, and can only turn voter after voter off ever voting for these putrid little scumbags ever again.

And maybe, just maybe…. the ‘left wing’ aspects of the Olympic opening ceremony were used, because they are the things the British are most proud of.

This could be 1983

The Conservatives haven’t changed. It is true that they are the epitome of what it means to be wealthy, privileged, and have an in-built mechanism of contempt for anybody who isn’t wealthy and privileged. I find their politics to be vicious and nasty, and their economics to be self serving and hypocritical. They are typical of the type who wish to use a system to climb to the heights they have, and then burn the ladder up which they or their family before them, climbed.

They will always use the “deficit” (which isn’t that bad) to justify the unjustifiable, simply because no one except a tiny band of elite scumbags will ever accept their economic principles. Libertarianism is dangerous and unhealthy to a civilised society. It is built on the premise of judging a nation by how rich its most wealthy have become, how concentrated that wealth has become, rather than how society protects its most vulnerable.

Their language is arrogant, vicious, dirty, and out dated, to match their political stance. Here is a few examples of Tories being Tories.

Wandsworth Council today announced plans for the Autumn, to charge children £2.50 to use the local park. It is in response to the £55mn it needs to find in spending cuts. Instead of fighting the obvious manipulation of figures from the Treasury which suggest we’re on the verge of becoming Greece (which we aren’t), and instead of pointing out that the Treasury is in worse shape now than it was when Labour left office, and expected to get worse, with regard to inflation and unemployment……… the Council has just accepted the bullshit, and decided that along with the disabled and the unemployed, children should be the next to be hit. We now have more property millionaires than anywhere in Europe – creating an horrendous property apartheid especially in the South, we have a banking system that has managed to get away with causing chaos, and we have a mass of Corporate tax avoiders costing the system £25bn a year….. and yet Wandsworth Council think the way to go is to make children aware that from now on, any ounce of fun, is going to cost them money. The excuse? The same typical excuse Libertarians use all the time, the same tired, nasty excuse Tories have been using for decades:

“Why should Wandsworth taxpayers subsidise children from other boroughs?”

– Who thinks like that? It makes me squirm.
If that’s the case, why should the majority of left leaning voters (over 57% at the 2010 election) subsidise the jobs of a right wing government? I don’t want our family tax money to pay for our Tory MP to live so comfortably. I don’t want our tax money to go to paying a National debt whilst the very wealthy manage to pump their money into offshore accounts, and be allowed to claim expenses on running those offshore companies, against the UK tax they don’t pay. We are subsidising their ability to pay nothing. They couldn’t run a successful business in the UK, and offshore its profits, without functioning roads, a decent healthcare system, a property protection system like the police force, an education system to prepare their future workforce. And yet, their right to offshore, is supported by our Government who instead choose to attack children’s parks. Great.

The Tories main campaign poster in 2010 was this:
– So imagine our surprise when Mark Britnell, who made it into the Top Ten of the most influential people when it comes to healthcare in the country by the HSJ, former Director-General for Commissioning and System Management for the NHS and now “health policy expert” on David Cameron’s personal NHS advisory group said this to a group of Private Healthcare lobbies, organised by private equity firm Apax:

“In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer. The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.”

Minister for Health Andrew Lansley, who is worth an estimated £700,000, and spent the Labour years flipping his second home, claiming expenses for renovating a cottage designated his second home, before selling it for a tidy profit, before claiming for furniture for his flat in London now designated his second home, insists that he isn’t considering NHS privatisation. One wonders what his most charitable donor, John Nash, of Private Health company Care UK thinks about that. Nash donated £21,000 to Lansley’s private office, whilst they continue to make 96% of their profit from the NHS. Care UK stand to make a great deal more from increased involvement of the private sector in the NHS.

Cameron promised that front line jobs would not be cut from the NHS, before the election. Vowing to protect the NHS is a big vote winner in the UK. Cameron knew that. He then didn’t win the election, didn’t get a mandate, and so decided to rip the NHS to shreds. According to Unison, 500 jobs at St George’s Hospital in South London are to go, along with three wards and 100 beds. Similarly, Kingston Hospital in South West London announced that around 20% of its workforce will need to go, to meet the governments cost saving demands. The government repeatedly claims it is increasing spending on the NHS in real terms. Another lie. NHS spending is set to grow by less than under the Thatcher years, which is when the NHS was gutted almost to complete meltdown. Here’s how that “increase” looks on a graph:
Between 1997 and 2010, the number of doctors increased by 57% and nurses by 31%. Funding rose from around £1bn a year (less than Philip Green paid his family in dividends in 2009, which he financed by taking out a loan, which in turn reduced his Corporate tax rate as the interest on the loan could be offset against Corporate profits of his firm Arcadia) under the Tories, to £4.3bn under Labour, which increased the activity of the NHS by over 40%. It worked. We are healthier now than we were in the 1980s, we are living longer, and morale in the NHS was higher than the 1980s. Increases in spending this year, when adjusted for inflation, will be 0.024% from April 2011. Great. In fact, Sir David Nicholson, Chief executive of the NHS said this about the new spending plans for the NHS:

there has never been a time where we have had four years of flat real growth. It is unprecedented.

– There are many Tories that will argue consistently and poorly, that Osborne and the Tories are championing the NHS and funding it amazingly well beyond all recognition. Listening to them, is perilous.
Waiting lists are already sky rocketing. In Coventry, it was reported that there would be a 13 week waiting list for Hernia repair at Walsgrove University hospital. That has now increased to 26 weeks and should be considered “just a guideline” as lists are likely to increase again this year.
According to County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust:

Trust is undertaking a £60m cost cutting exercise to be delivered by 2014, including £20m in 2010/11. The trust is also cutting 300 beds. 300 nursing jobs will be lost through natural wastage Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust: equivalent cost savings of around 200 fewer jobs are required to meet financial targets. In cash terms, the trust is making cost efficiencies of £25m over 3 years. City Hospitals Sunderland: The Trust undertook a £22.5m cost cutting exercise for financial year just gone. NHS County Durham and Darlington : The NHS service providers in County Durham and Darlington are undertaking a £200m cost cutting exercise over the next 3 years. The trust is cutting 62 senior nurse posts and replacing them with 78 more junior posts. In addition, County Durham PCT has identified 110 management posts for redundancy.

The managerial posts are “in addition” to front line nursing.

Cameron told a female Labour MP in the House of Commons – the NATIONAL LEGISLATURE – to “calm down dear”. One wonders what Tory MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan thought of this childish, sexist outburst from our Prime Minister, given that she was seen visibly laughing in the House of Commons at that pathetic remark, yet accused ME of being sexist when I simply asked if she had asked a planted question a few weeks back.
This comes a few weeks after Cameron took a swipe at ethnic minorities in his attack on multiculturalism, in which he mentioned Islam and Muslims 36 times in twenty minutes, and Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist not a single time. It was an attack on Islam, to the point where even Nick Griffin called the speech “provocative” and members of the EDL said that Cameron “understands us”.
That came about a week after Osborne referred to an openly Labour MP in the Commons as the “pantomime dame”. It isn’t surprising, their stance on homosexuality, given that whilst 100% of Lib Dems, and 99% of Labour MPs voted to repeal the nasty little Section 28 law that banned anything positive being said about homosexuality in schools, only 24% of Tories voted to repeal it. And whilst 100% of Lib Dems, and 95% of Labour MPs voted in favour of allowing gay adoption……. only 6% of Tories voted for it. So that’s homophobia, sexism, and racism all within a year. What else is left? Ah yes, class.
David Shakespeare, leaders of the Tory Councillor for Buckinghamshire Council said that poor northerners who are losing their jobs due to the cuts, should go down to London and pick the fruit of the land owners down south, instead of seeking job seekers allowance. He also said:

‘The North may replace the Romanians in the cherry orchards, that may be a good thing’

– Not even a necessary thing? Not even a regretful thing? A GOOD thing? He doesn’t mind kicking people out of their work and their jobs, he thinks it’s a great thing, because they’ll come to the south and work on his land for next to no money! He’s happy that the North is about to be gutted, again, of all funding whilst the south thrives, again, like the 1980s. Luckily I am from the Midlands, so I’m not sure i’d have to pick this overweight Tory prick’s fields, but i’m not sure if I have to bow as he drives past in his luxurious horse and cart.

Osborne announced this week that he was going to make it easier for companies to cut pay, cut pensions, dismiss people, and be allowed to get away with being discriminatory. In essence, he plans to make job security as unsafe as possible. It will be golden news to people like my boss. It is an attack on the workforce again. Presumably he will moan about Unions trying to hold the country to ransom whilst he attacks the rights of as many workers as possible, expecting us all to just bend over and take it. I hope the Unions unite and fight, I hope for a period of industrial action on a scale never seen before, and I hope a general strike is called as soon as possible If it is going to be a case of a very wealthy minority making life as miserable and difficult as possible for the many, then I hope the many fight back. Osborne claims employment rules are holding back job creation. He of course, is wrong. Job creation is held back significantly by a vast majority of big bosses plundering money into dodgy stocks or increasing their salaries beyond recognition. Why not cap private sector managerial wealth to a percentage of the lowest paid? Therefore when the lowest paid gets an increase, so does the highest paid. The extra-profit to be used to employ new people. Why attack the right of the workforce to a decent level of job security and working conditions? Why is that the only solution? Do you know what else creates job losses? It is happening on a smaller scale across the country, cuts are having affects on jobs and livelihoods. Cuts….

Derby’s Historic Industrial museum has had to close, 9 job losses.

Bishop Aukland College – 179 jobs losses.

South Tyneside College – 200 jobs to go.

Tyne Metropolitan College – 66 jobs to go.

Stockton Riverside College – 23 jobs to go.

City of sunderland College – 69 jobs to go.

Newcastle College – 171 jobs to go.

East durham college – 76 jobs to go.

New Cross library, Crofton Park library, Sydenham library, Grove Park library, Blackheath library all to close.

Oxford Brookes University – 400 support staff received “at risk” letters.

Diss weekly Youth Centre praised by police for helping troubled children, to close, and staff to lose their jobs.

Taunton Primary School – no more music teacher, no more music lessons.

A Big Society initiative – new volunteers to help out at museums in Hampshire – to replace 25 staff who have lost their jobs. Unpaid staff to replace paid staff. Great.

Five libraries in Lewisham to close.

Cuts to NHS disabled transport in Dumfries – jobs losses expected.

50% of pupil support assistants assigned to children with special needs, to be cut in Aberdeen.

21,000 job losses at Lloyds……..

….. former Lloyds boss Eric Daniels takes home a bonus of £1.45mn…..

….. new Lloyds boss António Horta-Osório takes a signing on fee of £6mn and a salary of £1.6mn.

In short, the poor need jobs to live. The rich need the poor to be as close to slaves as possible, reliant entirely on them to be able to eat, to be called lazy and scroungers and attacked as greedy if they unionise or refuse to work for a piss poor boss in piss poor conditions for piss poor pay. It is not a plan to increase job creation, it is a plan to enable the very wealthy, to get even more wealthy – to buy an extra yacht to fill the void in their soul – by asking more and more of their staff for as little as possible, and it’s always been the case. The project is designed to make people believe their tax money is wrongly being used, not just by people who claim to have a physical disability whilst they play tennis and golf 24 hours a day, but also by children playing on swings in the town next to yours, as opposed to the fact that your tax money is actually used to make sure that the wealthiest get massively insane tax cuts with Corporation tax expected to drop from 28% in 2010….. to 15% in 2020. That is what your tax money is funding. Make sure the man in the expensive house in Notting Hill thanks you for his lovely new Mercedes….. but don’t let your kids play on the park next to his house, you scrounging scumbag.

The progress the country has made since the hell of the 1980s, is about to be burnt to the ground. Do not be fooled into thinking this “has to be done”, it is Conservative party ideology, they have waited over a decade to have this chance.

They are attempting to replace compassion, with greed, and it’s working.

Racism in America: Today

When the United States was beginning to form, there was a hierarchy of oppression that kept everyone subservient to someone above them. The King of England demanded goods from the Jamestown white elite who exploited and controlled the white frontiersman who, in order to appease the elite with money and land, slaughtered Indigenous people and brutalized African slaves. Many whites joined Indigenous and African rebellions. The white elite worked to stop this because they knew such an alliance would become too powerful and would succeed at overthrowing the control that the elite and the King had. So in order to separate the whites from everyone else, they started giving more privileges (land and better treatment) to the white servants. This worked. The working class whites effectively abandoned the movements for change and to this day these groups have problems working together.
– Howard Zinn, 1980.

46% of American Republicans in the State of Mississippi believe that interracial marriage should be illegal. I will elaborate on and explain this later.

After my blog on the racism of Abraham Lincoln, I wondered whether race is still a divisive issue today as it has always been, in America. In the UK, race is still an issue, though it is far more subtle and much less noticeable, but it exists nonetheless. There isn’t this notion of white supremacy, nor do we have the history of the “founders” being slave owners or massive racial segregation up until very recently. We don’t have a KKK equivalent and we didn’t fight a civil war to protect the rights of States to own slaves. Race is certainly a problem in the UK though. We tend to become far more Nationalist during times of economic hardship and the need to blame immigrants or anyone who doesn’t happen to fit the narrow band of what it means to be “British” becomes an almost accepted narrative. Political parties push immigration reform to the top of their agendas, giving credit to such racial tension. Race is used as a divisive mechanism to subvert attention away from a failing class system.

Here in the UK, with talk of economic austerity, it was only a matter of time before the issue of race was introduced into the equation. We know that poorer areas like inner city Liverpool, Manchester, and Hackney are going to face the toughest council cuts. Low socio-economic areas are predominantly mixed race or black and Asian. So it was only a matter of time before David Cameron would bring race into the mix. He then suddenly made a speech against multiculturalism, in which he mentions the words “islam” and “muslim” 36 times, and “Christianity” once. Race is yet again being used as a divisive wedge.

Back to the USA, and the 19th Century, before the Civil War. It has long been argued by the rather hermetic Southern America that the Civil war was a war between the States (the South) and the big bad Federal Government (the North). Yes. The States rights to own and perpetuate slavery. The charge against a big bad Federal Government invading the lives of its citizens does not hold up when you look at the evidence, and is actually rather rudimentary.

The American lawyer and journalist William Walker, in 1854, after a failed attempt to set up a Republic of Sonora in Mexico, with the intention of it becoming a State of the Union; invaded Nicaragua for control of a vital trade route between New York and San Francisco. He succeeded in his efforts, and took control of Nicaragua, renaming it “Walkeragua” (seriously, i’m not making this up). In 1856, President Franklin Pierce, officially recognised Walker’s regime in Walkeragua as legitimate. His regime began to Americanise Walkeragua, by instating slavery, using American currency, and making English the official language. He advertised his new Country to American Southern businessmen by advertising the fact that his new quasi-State was pro-slavery and would remain so. By the time Walker revoked Nicaragua’s 1824 Emancipation Act, the rest of Latin America took note, and invaded. He fled and was bought back to the U.S where he was welcomed as a hero of the South. As “States rights” go, invading another sovereign nation and revoking its anti-slavery laws, is about as big and as bad as a Federal Government can get. He died before the Civil War kicked off, but the South referred to him throughout the Civil War as “General Walker“. The South did not just fight to preserve the institution of slavery, they wanted to expand it, on a grand scale, to the point where Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky proposed that the 36°30′ parallel north be a line that separates the northern free states, and the southern slave states, all the way down to the tip of South America. American racism has always been rife.

In 2011, membership of white supremacist organisations has increased tremendously. According the the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white supremacist organisations in the US, the number of members is up by 48% since 2000. Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement (the Nazi Movement) in America, who the FBI classify as terrorists, said:

“The immigration issue is the biggest problem we’re facing because it’s changing the face of our country. We see stuff in England and Spain like this. … They are turning those countries into a Third World ghetto.”

Well, I live in England, and he’s right!!! Here is the River Thames in Central London a few years back:

Here is the River Thames in Central London today:

Sad times.

The largest white supremacist group in America; Stormfront have a website with a forum, which includes systematic attacks on white jewish people. They appear to use “Jew” as a term of race. White, black, Jew. On a discussion about the economic crises, a member called “Crowstorm” whose nationality he has set as “Jewnited States of America” says this:

The problem is, Jews look White so when people see a Jew do evil, they don’t say “look at the evil Jew”… no, they say “look at that evil White man.

– It is an odd statement to make for a variety of reasons. First, a Jewish person is not the colour “Jewish“. It isn’t white, black, jew. If he’s a white man and Jewish, then he’s a white Jew. Jewish is not a race. But not just that, but race itself is not biological. It doesn’t exist. It is a fantasy. An abstraction. Like Nationality and Religion. All man made abstractions, meaningless nothingness used to create tension between low socio-economic groups to ensure disunity. If poor white people are blaming poor black people for all the trouble in New Orleans after Katrina hit, then their attention is on each other, and not on the very rich folk in Washington (both white and black) who washed their hands of the plight of anyone who isn’t a very wealthy lobbyist decades ago. And lastly, no one says “look at the evil white man”, because for the vast majority of people, race isn’t an issue; if you’re evil, I don’t care what colour you are.

Another quite extraordinary post on Stormfront was from a school teacher who taught apparently in black schools. Here are some of the quotes from it:

I was away about two minutes but when I got back, the black girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.

Many black people, especially women, are enormously fat.

Blacks, on average, are the most directly critical people I have ever met: “Dat shirt stupid. Yo’ kid a bastard. Yo’ lips big.” Unlike whites, who tread gingerly around the subject of race, they can be brutally to the point.

When a black wants to ask, “Where is the bathroom?” he may actually say “Whar da badroom be?”

Many black girls are perfectly happy to be welfare queens.

There is something else that is striking about blacks. They seem to have no sense of romance, of falling in love.

Pregnancy was common among the blacks, though many black girls were so fat I could not tell the difference.

My white students came back with generally “conservative” ideas. “We need to cut off people who don’t work,” was the most common suggestion. Nearly every black gave a variation on the theme of “We need more government services.” One black girl was exhorting the class on the need for more social services and I kept trying to explain that people, real live people, are taxed for the money to pay for those services. “Yeah, it come from whites,” she finally said. “They stingy anyway.”

It is impossible to get them to care about such abstractions as property rights or democratic citizenship.

– The “teacher” goes on to say he doesn’t understand why his black students think he his a racist. Surely it isn’t racist to think that black students are inherently lazy, fat, illiterate, racist, anti-democratic, communist sluts who just don’t understand why being indoctrinated in Conservative ideology is a wonderful learning experience and are incapable of love?

The days of burning crosses and wearing silly costumes are over. White supremacists tend now to fight their cause with mainstream language like “We just want to protect our children and live in a safe environment“, the language is manipulative because they are simply masking the fact that they blame anyone with slightly darken skin for why their neighborhood isn’t safe.

A study by the American economic review between July 2001 and May 2002 entitled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination.” , found that job applicants with a white sounding name are 50% more likely to be asked back than an applicant with a white sounding name. The researches sent out 5000 applications in sales, marketing, clerical and customer service positions. The names they used were a mix of white sounding names, and black sounding names. The report showed that white applicants with stronger resumes than other white applicants received 30% more callbacks, whereas black applicants with stronger resumes than other black applicants received just 9% more callbacks. It proved that regardless of credentials, black applicants were 50% less likely to get a callback than a white applicant.

Institutional racism is particularly subtle, and so less noticeable. If you are black, you are three times more likely to be pulled over in your car and searched for drugs than if you’re white, despite the fact that if you’re white, on the few occasions when you are pulled over you are four times more likely to have drugs on you. If you are white and you drive past the police without them pulling you over, you are experiencing the privilege of being white. The war on drugs then, is not a war on drugs, if it were, those statistics would be a hell of a lot different. The war on drugs would go where the drugs actually are, not where the people with dark skin are. It is a racist institution.

Christopher Columbus is hailed as the founder of America. He has a day named after him. It is not taught in any history class at American schools the true horror that started the day that Columbus found an island in the Lucayan Archipelago in the Bahamas that he named San Salvador, though it was actually already named, by the population who lived there, as Guanahani. Within years, Spanish adventurers had captured thousands of the native Taino population, enslaved them, and took their women captive as wives/sex slaves. The Spanish had utterly devastated the Taino population by the turn of the 16th Century. Epidemic disease brought by the Europeans was bad enough, but the Spanish settlers placed too much strain on local crop farmers, and the survival of the Spanish was considered more important than the survival of the Taino’s and so the food naturally ended up in the hands of the Spanish. Columbus when he landed, wrote of the natives:

“We can send from here, in the name of the Holy Trinity, all the slaves and Brazil wood which could be sold.”

– We know what he had planned. Nicolas Ovando, the governor of the Indies from 1501 to 1509, decided he needed to ensure the Taino’s knew their place once and for all. He did this by inviting the much loved Taino queen Anacoana and local tribal chiefs to a dinner to celebrate his governorship. When they were all in the room, the Spaniards set it on fire, killing most of those inside. The ones who got out, were tortured for days on end and then killed. Queen Anacoana was tortured and hung. By 1510, the Taino’s were virtually extinct.

To be honest, there really isn’t much you can celebrate about Columbus. Apart from bringing with him the biggest genocide in history, he was a rather simple man. He believed Cuba was in Asia, that he hadn’t discovered a new land, that the entire continent of South America was an Island, and to pay his debt to the Spanish crown he raped his way across Central America taking as many as 1200 women and children slaves for Europe; children who had, without a second thought, been stripped away from their families. But don’t take my word for, take it from the man himself:

“We shall take you and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault .”

I cannot think of a worse man to idolise.

Back to the present day, as if Stormfront and institutional racism and selective history aren’t enough to convince a person that racism is deeply ingrained in the American psyche, certain lovely little advertisements have deep racist connotations, still.

Aunt Jemima, a trademark for breakfast food owned by Quaker Oats is still going today. Aunt Jemima represents the notion of a good little black ex-slave girl who just loves her servile role as servant to a white middle class consumer.

Equally as subtle, is Uncle Ben’s rice. It would be ridiculous for a company now, to have as its fictional spokesperson, a black man using the name “Uncle” which was a term used by the children of white slave owners to refer to their slaves. If a newly formed rice company were to say “Well, you know that we white people used to ship Africans in to farm our rice fields, as slaves? Well why don’t we make our spokesmen black?” they would be lambasted as a hugely racist company. But Uncle Ben is a tradition, and so it appears acceptable, though the stereotype behind it perpetuates the racist sentiments it subtly encourages. This kind of subtle cultural racism has not gone unnoticed. In an episode of the Sopranos (the greatest show on TV) Tony warns a black guy away from his daughter. Tony then has an anxiety attack when he sees a packet of Uncle Ben’s.

Public Policy Polling of Raleigh North Carolina, found that 46% of Republican voters in Mississippi think interracial marriage should be illegal. 14% said they weren’t sure. I cannot comprehend that number. It does indeed show that race is an issue, and especially with Republican voters. There is still the essence that the white race is superior and should be protected. This sentiment has found its outlet with the Tea Party movement of recent months. Whilst Glenn Beck spews his bullshit, insisting on top rated “news” channel that Obama has a deep seated hatred for the white race, his equally as vacant and mind numbingly moronic viewers stalk the streets with signs like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Now I wouldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that the Tea Party is an inherently racist organisation, it is mainly a vehicle to promote the incoherent ramblings of an uneducated economically far right puritanical Republican group wholly run by Corporate America to advance its interest at the behest of even the idiots who indirectly fight for the rights of Corporate America, now slowly morphed to include racism as part of their base.

It is sad to see notion of race being such an issue in 21st Century America. One would have hoped that the social wedge of racism, placed to draw attention away from class and a deeply unequal wealth system would have crumbled away, or intellectually and politically dismembered for the disease that it is. Race is not real. Class is.