As a brown person (born here to parents who came here in the 70s to work for the NHS for 50 years until retirement) living in one of these cities that's been the site of terrifying violence today, I'm really scared. More for my elderly family who attend Friday prayers at a major mosque which I'm scared will be targetted, but also just generally for the future.
I spoke to a (white), really good friend tonight to ask if we should call off our plans in city tomorrow. She said "oh no, it will all have blown over. I was there today and we were just peacefully protesting about what's happened to our country, how the good people who speak out get silenced and jailed and now we've been unfairly portrayed in the media". I've seen the live footage of exactly what was going and at the time and location she was at (with her CHILD I might add) hundreds of people were doing the Nazi salute and policemen and women and animals were violently attacked, stabbed and glassed.
Honestly. I'm heartbroken. If that's a friend what hope do we have?
But the reality is a LOT of people are being brainwashed on social media now. Radicalistion is happening quite clearly and right wing terror is growing, mark my words. The internet has a lot to answer for.
Violence against women growing thanks to how easily available porn is and the Incel movement growing online.
Paedophilia thanks to how easy it is to obtain and share images of child abuse.
Conspiracy theorists that have lost all touch with reality thanks to fake news.
Anti social behaviour thanks to young people sharing bullying, theft, vandalism and so on on TikTok and glamourising it.
Xenophobia and Racism thanks to all the Britain First type posts people share and people like Farage, Robinson and Trump milking every second of it.
Isis used the internet to share images of the horrific terror they inflicted upon their hostages and victims and to scare the lot of us into changing how we lived for many years. That directly fed into the right wing agenda, as did those images that Farage used of Muslims (on a pilgrimage coincidentally) lining up to pour into the UK. Then in 2020 we all got locked up in our houses and had what for company? Facebook. Insta. TikTok. YouTube. All of which use AI to pretty much read our minds and suggest more and more content to us which only divides us more...as we end up in our own little echo chambers, with our own little supporters who share all the same views as us.
It's been reported that Southport suspect apparently spent years as a total recluse barely leaving the house. I'd bet a large sum of money that he spent a lot of that time with unrestricted internet access.
And pretty much every kid over the age of 2 these days is given a screen. So it continues.
You see posts on here all the time, "I miss the 90s. It seemed like a more innocent happy time."
Yes. Because we didn't have these devices with us 24/7 that, at best gave us FOMO or anxiety and at worst radicalised us, were used to brainwash us...or abuse us. More people only had about 5 channels of TV and weren't subjected to 24/7 terrifying news. "Fake News" was rare. You could go out for the day and focus on your own little world without knowing what was going on everywhere throughout the world. You could actually speak to people who for the most part weren't glued to a phone. You got your "community" from the living, breathing humans around you. Not virtual communities. People you could look in the eye, and learn to trust, over time because they earned that trust.
That Ali Al-Akhati coming over on a dinghy bollocks that started all this unrest has been proven to have come from a Russian twitter account. "Grey warfare". And as a result we have riots and violence on our streets without any need for an attack from Russia itself.
I realise the irony of me using social media to make this point, but still...people need to realise the weapon we're all holding in our hands and have the intelligence to realise how much it's harming and dividing us.