#24

I saw a thing going round on Twitter “Man how awful would it be if we thought we were helping a 17 year old flee war and we were in fact helping a 19 year old flee war!”

3 Likes
#25

Yeah exactly, did we have this attitude in for 40’s to refugees when we were ‘great’? Probably not.

The other thing I saw was a response to all the ‘where are the little kids’ (the cute photogenic ones that look at little scruffy that people expect) that was 'they’re dead or trafficked, those little kids don’t tend to survive these things :cry:

#26

i saw someone arguing this point quite sensibly the other day on some telly debate thing, and then that terrible woman from UKIP started going on about the the ‘men’ ending up in school with young children - so like a primary school? liek what the fuck?

#27

Also people don’t think the best hope for their 7 year old is to send them away without their family. If you’ve got a 15 or 17 year old son who you think might be forced to fight as a soldier, you’re more likely to send them off to a far away relative. Or if you’re a teenager whose family have died, the same.

In the 90s there were a group of Kosovan boys who were sent away by their families in the same circumstances, and put up in my hometown as a temporary measure. People treated them like total dirt and started using the word Kosovan as an insult like it meant scum. It was really depressing, even though I already knew there were a load of knuckle-dragging EDL/UKIP types there (hey, they even voted in a UKIP MP).

#28

They did in the 30s, the Daily Mail campaigned against receiving refugees from the Nazis (as well as supporting Oswald Moseley). I’ll try to dig it out.

#29

Oh yeah, I think I’ve seen some stuff from the mail about Jewish refugees from then. But was the general public so anti refugee like now? Maybe they were.

#30

Daily Mail has always been a huge selling paper.

1 Like
#31

I think the attitude to refugees/‘foreigners’ in general has always been there.

I don’t think brexit has really altered the way many people think, it’s just given them the confidence to speak out thinking their regressive world views and fear of change/foreigners are held by the majority.

4 Likes
#32

The scale and nuances of the crisis are lost on people, but they also don’t want to know or understand them. Banging on about how they can’t possibly be actual refugees if they don’t seek asylum in the first country they set foot in, as if those few countries could handle the millions of displaced people in one go without leaving them open to abuse and exploitation (already happening in some of the Turkish camps I believe). Dismissing anyone who isn’t from Syria itself because obviously the horrific human rights abuses in Eritrea or the continual looming spectre of the Taliban in some parts of Afghanistan are totally fine, and obviously people who turd off about moving house because of a new runway would definitely stick around if they found themselves caught in those situations. Being furious that refugees can’t work in many countries until their asylum requests are granted, and equally furious when they are allowed to work and do start working. Etc etc.

The hypocrisy, inhumanity and territorialism makes me sick.

3 Likes
#33

3,649 people dead or missing after trying to reach Europe by sea so far this year.
Our country doesn’t give a flying fuck.

#34

You’re completely right, but I’m at a complete loss when trying to think of what we can do : (

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#35

Disown any family member who thinks like some of the examples above for a start. They think it doesn’t matter? Fine, fuck 'em, maybe they’ll care when their own kids/grandkids won’t acknowledge their existence.

#36

^this.

I’m getting pretty fed up of white, middle-class liberals whining about how they want their tolerant country back after the Brexit vote.

The country was this seeped with racism and intolerance before the vote, and people less fortunate than them were those forced to live with the consequences, it’s just that those who were privileged enough to never have experienced it are now forced to acknowledge it.

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#37

however racist you thing most of britain is, they’ve got nothing on the institutionalised french mindset, completely unsurprised by french authorities’ lack of giving the slightest toss.

#38

this wasn’t a reply to marckee directly btw

#39

Last week my Daily Mail reading Dad actually said that racism doesn’t exist in the UK and hasn’t existed here since the 70s. When I obviously pointed out to him that clearly racism is real and that he, as a white middle-class man, is simply privileged enough not to deal with it directly, he went on a 10 minute rant full of nonsense about how I’ve been brainwashed by the corrupt and biased BBC.

#40

The whole ‘brainwashing’ by the BBC is a favourite of a certain generation isn’t it. My Dad (who’s does watch it) once said ‘I’ll flick over to sky if I’ve had enough of BBC brainwashing’ I pointed out that he’ll be getting a whole lot more brainwashing from Murdoch’s Sky and he changed the subject.

#41

Especially stupid these days when the BBC bends over backwards to be ‘balanced’ on issues even when one side of an issue is clearly full of shit.

#42

Another favourite excuse is to talk about how all media is biased, not just the Daily Mail - as if that makes everything even and lets Murdoch off the hook for the abhorrent and transparently hateful stuff they write/broadcast. Basically the media equivalent of all lives matter dickheads

1 Like
#43

Yes! I get that from my mum when I point out how hateful things like the mail are. ‘Well all papers chose the bits they want to print’, yes but not all papers chose to print hateful lies.