Maybe it's time to become uncivilised
It's not okay for us to have a difference of opinion if the difference is life or death.
I wasn't going to write this. Not because I don't want to, but because I simply do not have the capacity to fit another thought in my body.
The amount of grief we have to carry day to day is untenable. And yet, we live in a society where those with the privilege to be unaffected are parroting the rhetoric that the things that are happening around us aren’t causing direct harm to real people. This, on top of everything else, is a strategic tactic to drive the empathetic insane.
When anyone, a force for power or not, tries to intellectualise why it's okay for certain people to get away with certain things, it's dehumanising for all of us.
I don't want to write a list of triggering things in this blog because I'm not an idiot. I know the people I've surrounded myself with. I know if you're reading this, you probably feel the same way I do. So, I'm simply going to write a list of things I believe are true. If any of them do not resonate with you, I would like to politely ask you to remove yourself from my sphere of influence. It's not okay for us to have a difference of opinion if the difference is life or death.
Free speech does not cover hate speech.
Whataboutery is a distraction tactic.
Every headline about Kneecap or Bob Vylan or anyone like them is a distraction tactic to stop you thinking about atrocities and keep you believing that the only way you'll succeed in life is by being polite and civilised.
I do not, and will not, have kind or even rational feelings towards racists, homophobes, transphobes, ableists or anyone else who thinks an arbitrary group of people is biologically “wrong” somehow. Why do I have to be the bigger person but they don't? Why are you inflicting a moral standard on me that you're not inflicting on them?
The people who make money from far-right ideologies are not your mates.
And, if you think those ideologies aren't rooted in hate and built on racist structures, it's really important that you do some actual research in a library, not on social media.
If you're poor, rich people do not care about you. They are banking on you being so sad and hard done by that you are looking for a scapegoat, a reason that the world has been so cruel to you. They pit you against another vulnerable group so you don't have to reflect on how you’ve been let down. This is a well-documented tactic; it's not a coincidence or a conspiracy theory. They do it because it works.
I am English. I was born in England and I am a British citizen. The St George's flag has always been a threat of violence to me.
But first and foremost, I'm Black Caribbean. My family and thousands of families like ours didn't randomly choose to descend on the UK. We were asked to be here. And if it wasn't for colonialism, we would never have come here in the first place. Our migration is a direct result of the British government’s choices over hundreds and hundreds of years.
The current state of the UK is causing direct harm to me and my family. We are in active danger.
Your existence here, like everyone's, is a happy accident. You do not have any more rights than anyone else to be anywhere.
People who attack doctors, burn down libraries and threaten unaccompanied minors are not interested in the “safety of women and children”
People who align themselves with Nazis are irredeemable. The fact that we are even debating this shows the level of danger we are in.
If a racist zealot attacks me in the street, it won't be a random act. It will have been designed and influenced into being. I don't like writing this because I don't like the idea of writing violence into existence but I need you to understand that it's not imaginary people this is happening to. Every single person who comes to harm because of the state of the UK is no different to your sister or your neighbour or your friend.
However, you shouldn’t have to relate to someone to recognise their humanity. If you can’t feel empathy for people who you perceive as different to you, it’s you who is the problem. Poor people don’t deserve to starve, people from other countries don’t deserve to drown. Your life isn’t worth more than theirs.
It's okay to admit after five, ten, twenty years that you've been coerced by powerful forces into believing things that aren't true. It's okay to change course. Nobody is going to think less of you for admitting you're wrong. What matters most is what you do next.
It's not possible to be apolitical. No stance is a stance.
If you've read this and you're living this and it's made you sad, I'm really sorry. We're each experiencing massive trauma on a daily basis in a way that we never have before.
If you've read this and it made you angry because you disagree with me;
Good.