Unfriending right wing friends

[nondrinker1985]

One of my school mum friends of around 10 years has started sharing loads of Restore Britain/Rupert Lowe posts.

I’m actually really shocked as she’s an Irish immigrant herself.

I’ve unfriended her which is a shame as day to day she’s ok. Also another mum who has been liking and commenting on the Restore Britain posts, they’ll probably tell me they’re not racist but I can’t be arsed calling them out.

What does that have to do with her comment?

They don't all get hotels, the nearest asylum seeker accommodation to me is a disused army camp.

And it is not illegal to enter the UK to seek asylum, so referring to asylum seekers as "illegals" is incorrect (and pejorative).

But we don't have uncontrolled immigration, so there's no need for anyone to be concerned about it.

I often see this view, in the US and the UK, that the "left" are polarising and divisive and othering and superior. The reform/brexit type people I know constantly share content about the left being sheep, brainwashed etc etc.

How is the labelling of the left not divisive and polarising? It seems to be a major argument of the right but completely pot and kettle.

An eye wateringly dishonest take from you there.

You said The journey that most of them make is fraught with danger

These people are entering Europe and travelling a long way across to us, adding time and expense to their journey. I am questioning how travelling across Europe is so ‘fraught with danger’?

Surely if it was that dangerous, they would be better to claim asylum in the first European country they reach instead of making this ‘fraught with danger’ journey to us. Why are they choosing to make a dangerous journey and prolong the time these ‘wives and children’ are alone in a dangerous country? It’s not adding up.

I'm not making a direct comparison, no. I am merely pointing out that most of us would find certain behaviours incompatible with continuing a friendship. We simply draw the line in slightly different places.

I would like to believe that most people would find it untenable to continue a friendship with someone who turned out to be a paedophile. However, recent news reports have made it known that some people clearly did find it acceptable for such friendships to continue. In the same way, many people would choose to distance themselves from friends express racist, mysognist or homophobic views etc, but there will be some who are quite happy to tolerate such views.

As for me, while I don't think Reform supporters are on the same level as people who have actually committed horrific crimes against children, I do believe that they are morally reprehensible - unless of course they are just too stupid to understand what they're actually voting for, in which case, I would just pity them.

You are of course free to disagree, but it is for me to decide whether I want to continue a friendship with someone who has values that I find repugnant. And I'm not interested.

So disappointing seeing people you know fall for the farage bigotry

You think adding an additional 10 million people to thr UK since 2000 is nothing to be concerned about?

But you voted for Labour who have effectively stopped women and children arriving via asylum.

I think a lot of people are no longer worried about being called racist.

That's because the term has so widened, is so all encompassing, that it could be applied and cover almost everyone in this land.

At one point, most decent people would be appalled to have a racist label applied to them but now many examples of fitting the racist bill are laughable or simply nonsensical.

Would I be ashamed for saying that first cousin marriage is wrong? No and yet this stance has been called racist.

Would I be ashamed of saying that everyone should have to make an effort to learn English? No and yet this stance has been called racist.

Would I be ashamed of saying that anyone who comes here without proper documentation should be sent to Rwanda or jailed? No and yet this stance has been called racist.

Would I be ashamed of saying that FGM is wrong? No and yet this stance has been called racist.

Would I be ashamed of saying that white people have contributed more to medical science than any other race? No and yet this stance has been deemed racist.

Would I be ashamed of saying that protecting Islam above other religions (the much vaunted Islamophobia law) is a back door blasphemy law? No and yet this stance has been deemed racist.

Over applying the term "racist" to things that are not racist-trying to make it "racist" to say anything negative about non-Caucasians- has done a lot of harm.

People openly laugh at the term and that has done a great deal of harm in cases where there is true racist intent because it has become a laughable term.

That is a hard truth for many who don't live in areas where this happens but truth it is, no matter how uncomfortable or unpalatable it may be,

But I know what I know, and I also know that a lot of the people voicing opinions about asylum seekers probably haven't spoken to many, if any. There are so many stereotypes and assumptions, and that's all some people see. You get a very different perspective when you actually interact with these people as human beings.

I agree, @MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack . I've never worked with asylum seekers, but prior to 2020 I worked on a project that sometimes involved working with refugee clients.

Some of their experiences were so harrowing that I felt traumatised from hearing them, like the young Somali woman who had seen her uncle hacked to death when she was 5 or 6 years old, or the Kurdish woman who had been imprisoned and tortured for a fortnight because she was a journalist who wrote articles critical of her government's persecution of the Kurdish minority (her boss was given a prison sentence in excess of 100 years for publishing pro-Kurdish articles). Another was a gay rights activist in Zimbabwe who had been imprisoned and badly beaten.

I've never had a refugee client who I felt didn't merit being awarded refugee status. I don't think any of my colleagues did either, and some of them actually changed their views of asylum seekers as a result.

To be fair @LakieLady , the refugee clients you work in have a vested interest in telling you terrible things: they want you to believe them and help them.

They are hardly going to tell you that they are simply economic migrants or are criminals on the run.

Many of the stories you hear will, I'm sure be true but plenty of others will be exaggerated and some will have no truth in them whatsoever.

I get second hand embarrassment for anyone sharing anything beyond happy family pictures to be honest.

I read recently that the government has set net zero policies for the procurement of 20000 tonnes of steel for the new lower Thames crossing (billions of pounds of steel) which mean the steel can't be made or supplied in the UK. The government has determined net zero steel is more important than British jobs. It thinks it's woke ideology is more important than british people. Thats the type of woke left wing intolerance we have where ideas and concepts are more important than British workers and British taxpayers.

You'll find plenty on the left who disagree with that decision, @Dorisbonson . It's not an issue that splits neatly along the left/right faultline.

"Old school" lefties put protecting workers' rights, including the right to work, above environmental issues. I'm quite divided on it myself, and think we could have had our cake and eaten it if only we'd invested in modernising our steel industry so that it used less damaging processes.

They didn't have a vested interest in telling me anything at all, they all already had refugee status and, in at least one case, UK nationality. The project didn't work with asylum seekers at all and the vast majority of clients were white British.

The Somalian woman didn't actually tell me her history, her mother did, and the Kurdish woman's existence was denied by the government of her country of origin when she tried to renew her passport, so she applied for (and got) UK nationality.

But we kind of do. When you have people coming in the back door then that is uncontrolled immigration. The government are not controlling it. People escape the system in place to process their applications by just disappearing. Unless you think the government are aware of the numbers coming here. Immigration.is.immigrstion, whether coming here illegally or coming here legally.

While I agree everyone is rightly entitled to human rights, do you think immigrants who wish to continue their religious practices of subjugating women, violent homophobia and cruelty to animals are equal to us? What about the ones who have been convicted as terrorists?

Are our animal cruelty laws, laws on women’s and gay rights and our society’s support thereof not superior to other places where that is not acceptable?

If you choose to vote in a fascist government, please remember when you are snivelling in a corner wondering how things went so wrong that this was YOUR vote, YOUR choice and YOUR responsibility.

I'd also add, that if you voted for Brexit, you voted away the UK's Dublin agreement right to return asylum seekers and access to the shared migrant information that EU countries have, and Brexit voters need to own it.

I occasionally mention this to some of my ILs who voted for Brexit and are now griping about "boat people", asylum seekers etc. Their response is always "But I didn't vote for that!". This makes me more convinced than ever that the Brexit vote should have been a 2-stage thing, a vote on the principle and a vote on whether the terms were acceptable.

I'd like to see a Venn diagram of Brexit voters and anti-migration people. I suspect there'd be a considerable overlap.

@LakieLadyeven Mahmood doesn’t spread the Brexit misinformation, why do you?

I think the limit might be when Labour think they have brought in enough voters. I need to check their latest manifesto but pp pointed out that their 2019 manifesto promised to give voting rights to ‘all residents’ so they may well have carried that forward.

If it is not in their current manifesto, I’m sure that won’t stop them as they are already doing several unpopular things that weren’t in their manifesto.

Please enlighten me as to what you believe is the difference between “right” and “far right”? I’m all ears. I say this because people are using the term “far right” for the most laughable reasons now.

Agreed. This is where it stops being a reasoned discussion about immigration and becomes out and out racism.

Equality does not mean impunity. It just means that you are punished/sanctioned on the basis of what you do, not what you are. Someone who rapes, coerces or batters a woman deserves a harsh punishment, to the full extent of the law - and whatever their motives. Same rights mean same accountability. No one should be above or below the law. Everyone should have the right to defend themselves and the same risk of being punished by the law.
A lot of resentment caused by the grooming gangs derives from the fact that people felt some groups benefitted from impunity. I am strongly arguing AGAINST that. But it also means no one should be treated as less than.

Its still bed and board, meals, medical and dental care that many British citizens are struggling to access

First of all, like PP says, the accommodations are no exactly comfy. But more importantly, the issue with access to healthcare is a systemic problem which isn't caused by the very small percentage of small boat arrivals. And in fact, the sooner they're processed, the sooner they face the same challenges we all do.
I also cannot see a rosy future for any of us with the Reform proposals for healthcare.