Stop the Fascists not the boats.

Yesterday, Britain formally merged into fascism’s political lane when Rishi Sunak normalised “stop the boats" as his government's solution to our 21st-century refugee crisis. You should not be surprised Britain's political class want refugees to be treated as an invasive species that must be contained rather than cared for with compassion. Xenophobia as an ideology is a Right Wing Government's best friend during a cost of living crisis. It diverts the public from the greed of the entitled and shifts the blame from the 1% to the penniless refugee who just wants a safe place to live free of bombs, war or famine.

Britain is not unique to "stop the boats" when it comes to solutions for the refugee crisis. All G7 and EU countries want to do the same or are working up to the “out of sight out of mind method” to erase the refugee crisis.

The exception to our hostility or indifference towards those seeking asylum is refugees from Ukraine. They were given a backstage pass to asylum in the west. The reasons for this aren't nuanced- although not formally declared, we are at war with Russia, and Ukrainian refugees are white and generally Christian. Ukrainian refugees might have won NATO's geopolitical lottery and been granted sanctuary in the affluent nations of the west. But they shouldn’t be looked at as particularly lucky because, in the end, they’d rather be safe in their homeland rather than with us. Sadly, their return home will not happen for a long time, if ever.

I am sure, in time, despite the generosity of the Polish people to house nearly 2 million Ukrainian refugees, stories will emerge about how their extreme right-wing government in Warsaw denied refugee women- access to abortions and abused the LGBTQ community from Ukraine who sought sanctuary in their country.

But what our open arms approach to Ukrainian refugees, as opposed to refugees from the Mideast, Africa, Asia, or Latin America, tells me is; the public is receptive to giving sanctuary to the vulnerable if; they are provided with the right prompts by the news media and political influencers.

But there is the rub because the news media shoots videos of refugees in dinghies in dangerous waters with as much compassion as they report on benefit claimants or the homeless on shore.

Asylum seekers crossing the channel from Calais in unsafe water crafts are framed politically as scroungers straining Britain's goodwill and denying citizens social services.

The conservatives and the entitled are brilliant at propaganda. It’s why on social media you here them talking about how they want to help Britain’s vulnerable but can't because they are doling out the dosh to refugees in excessive costs for housing, health, education and other social services. To create fear and distrust in ordinary people for refugees, Suella Braverman’s alleged 100 million asylum claimants could arrive on Britain’s doorstep if draconian steps weren't taken.

The “Big Lie,” used by the Nazis to create hysteria against Jewish citizens, gay citizens, trade unionist citizens, developmentally challenged citizens, Jehovah Witness citizens, politically socialist citizens, and its Roma citizens is now an accepted rhetorical device of the Sunak government.

People can’t even take solace that this conservative reign of terror against the vulnerable and fiscal incompetence towards everyone else is soon to end because Labour’s official policy is to also be intolerant towards refugees. They too, want you to believe that the refugee crisis is aided and abetted by people smugglers rather than our foreign policy.

It’s not people smugglers causing today's refugee crisis no more than it caused yesterday's. People smugglers existed during the time of Hitler. The people smugglers of that time took money from Jewish refugees to spirit them out of Nazi Germany or their occupied territories. There will be people smugglers as long as we continue to allow our corporations to exploit developing nations. There will be people smugglers as long as we vote for governments that support tyrants. There will be people smugglers as long as we believe our nation's economic plan should include manufacturing weapons of war for sale to belligerents in war zones. There will be people smugglers as long as consumer society continues to enable the climate crisis.

Ring-fencing Europe, Canada, the USA, and Australia against refugees while housing refugees in concentration camps in countries where few news agencies will sanction journalists to go to document our inhumanity to the vulnerable will not solve this crisis. In fact by allowing ourselves to be desensitised to the refugee crisis or buy into fascism’s factory default setting that “they aren’t real refugees like the ones in World War Two,” we have signed the death warrant for democracy.

Allowing refugees to be detained in concentration camps just makes it easier for the entitled to put the next vulnerable group into a concentration camp.

Perhaps, Britain missed its opportunity to stop fascism when it elected Boris Johnson rather than Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. I don't know. But I still believe we have it in us to stop fascism and make refugees welcome because otherwise, our existence will be reduced to material consumption, watching reality tv shows and repeating the talking points of intolerance taught to us by our news media influencers, as if they were a catechism of hate.

As always, thank you for reading. Your subscriptions to Harry’s Last Stand keep the legacy of Harry Leslie Smith alive and me housed. So if you can join with a paid subscription which is just 3.50 a month. I promise the content is good, relevant and thoughtful. Take Care, John