https://arab.news/8duex
Is it desperate posturing or simply gaslighting for electioneering purposes and to grab the headlines? Or is there a more sinister agenda that reflects remedies, imported from America, for an overinflated problem that could win its propagators easy votes? This week’s policy announcement by Reform UK to tackle immigration through changing the country’s settlement system and carrying out mass deportations could only fall into those categories. Such actions are likely to be costly and difficult to implement, while sowing greater division and discord and damaging social cohesion.
No one can doubt that there has been a rise in xenophobia across Britain in the decade since the Brexit vote, but this is now intensifying, as is the case across Europe. This rhetoric pits the so-called natives against the newcomers. Unlike in the multiracial, multicultural Britain of the 1990s, the ultra-right populists are no longer confined to the fringes and are now capable of winning seats in Parliament, in addition to having hundreds of local councilors around the country.
In the UK, like in various European nations, racist and discriminatory discourse is being normalized and even amplified by a less-than-innocent social media algorithm. And this coincides with a wave of US support for voices seen once as marginal under the guise of protecting freedom of speech. High-profile American politicians are also offering highly questionable help to prevent an apparent erasure of European values, or simply to protect a purer Western European society across the board.
