Long, long time lurker, although I think I may have posted back in the mists of time.
I have watched the rise of racism and facist appreciation with increasing horror. I'm just encouraged that so many are calling it out, yet depressed there are many willing to stay silent. Or indeed openly support them. I still can't believe Trump was elected. Every time he opens his mouth I cringe. He's like a comedy President in a really bad armageddon-style film. If only. It's terrifying that he's real.
Years ago I lived on an estate in North Kensington that was totally white. Not one single black person. Now, this was Notting Hill/Ladbroke grove in the Eighties... a particularly multicultural area. (it was a policy of the RBKC to segregate their estates, years of keeping the poorest of the poor more downtrodden and powerless).
A huge number of people who lived on that estate were openly racist, very public supporters of the National Front and the British movement. Most of the kids my age and above were skinheads and chanted Zeig Heil, did the Nazi salute, had swastikas tattooed on their heads/arms/legs. It was sickening and really frightening. Because we came from Scotland we were also hated foreigners and we were constantly told to "fuck off back to your own country." They wanted England to be solely for people who could prove that they were pure English for several generations (yeah, good luck with that...) We moved, I stopped knowing people like that, I thought that the world had moved on. The estate became more ethnically representative of the wider area. The racists were like deluded old dinosaurs, stuck in a hate filled bubble of their own making. I'd still see the occasional far right march attempt in London and there'd be a handful of angry, ageing skins, outnumbered by police, getting jeered from the roadside. I really naively thought worshipping Nazi's was dying out.
What Brexit and Trump have done is make it acceptable to spout prejudice and be openly racist. My brother's friend made racist comments at a party we were at. We had a huge row but I was shocked at the vitriol and hate from someone I would have thought knew better. I watched a family waiting for a train to Gatwick scream racist abuse at some black people just sitting on a bench. I had to get out of a taxi because the driver started raging about "fucking pakis." My friend was abused in a supermarket for being black, a work colleague pushed about on a bus... numerous incidents. This is only since last June. I've been attacked on twitter countless time because I'm openly critical of Trump, Farage and the rest of that despicable lot. Now I realise it was me who lived in a bubble and that prejudice just burbles under the surface of too many people.
I once worked with a man who had been in a concentration camp. I was 19 and naively asked him about the numbers on his arm. I should have known but I was stupid and didn't put two and two together that the elderly polish co-worker may have been involved in WW2. He lost every single person he knew because of the Nazis, every member of his family, all their friends. He said he kept the tattoo because he wanted to remember the hate so he could live with love. He would have found Trump's America utterly abhorrent.