***Stop Press*** ***4000 Immigrants Per Week*** ***Someone Call The Right-Wing nut-jobs***

According to an article in The Express there are 4,000 people a week applying to leave the UK.

Can you imagine the furore if this were people coming in to this country? My God they’d be standing on the White Cliffs of Dover, pitchforks in hand, foaming at the mouths and talking about Agincourt and Trafalgar.

Ironically The Express claims that one of the main reasons people are leaving is the immigration to the UK!!! Surely only the English right could attempt to justify such a position?! I can see the cartoon-like character now “I don’t like immigration, all these bloody foreigners coming over ‘ere, so I’m going to sod off to a foreign country.” These are of course the same people who insist on speaking louder to foreigners who don’t understand English and attempt to turn what little enclave in which they have landed into a British theme park. For further information on the British abroad see Big John.

Of course The Express does not cite actual references as to where it has obtained its information on what is actually going through the minds of those who are departing these shores nor has it named any names or conducted proper interviews. After all it would not be especially conducive to a right-wing rant if these people were former foreign nationals, or were leaving to avoid staggeringly high property prices, or leaving because they favoured a more cosmopolitan and less bigotted lifestyle. Just as it is not capricious to look too carefully at the state of the infrastructure and the reasons for it of the countries whence immigrants often come before criticising them for leaving. Of course the British emigrées will expect a warm welcome in whatever country they chose to go to and they will not give a moments consideration as to whether or not they have a right to be there.

The trouble is that this media brownwash is so pervasive, the hegemony is now so strongly anchored in the hard-line right that voices of the slightly right of centre are used to provide “balance” because they are different from the norm. The right these days see the genuine left as a spent force and that there only minor threat comes from the liberals. It is a grand Washington Consensus, so pervasive that it is so often unquestioned and therefore unfettered. The media is so positively under the control of the select few as to draw Orwellian compatisons or even those with Alfred Hugenberg and the Goebbels annexation in Nazi Germany. In the US for example establishment figure Michael Moore is held up to be the great swashbuckling radical and yet Moore is merely an state-annexed version of the wet centre ground. A figure brought out by the establishment as a bogey man to be booed and hissed like a Punch & Judy performance. The real left is therefore denied a franchise completely.

We can battle on the fringes and know we are right and convinced of the virtue of our own arguments, but in order to effect any change the hegemony must be constantly and consistently challenged from all different points of view. The seeds of doubt must be sown in the minds of those who have not bought into the bullshit but do not know where else to look for information. This is not about a conversion, it is about an awakening. You cannot force a person to think things are wrong, you can only draw their attention to it and allow them to have the information at their disposal to make up their own mind. I do not leave comments on right-wing blogs in an attempt to be big and clever, or in a mis-guided attempt to win back those who have turned to the fervent right, I do so to capture the interest of the casual observer in order that they know that there is another opinion out there. They can do with this information what they will it is not for me to indoctrinate. Things are not all shades of the same grey. I’m red and proud to be so, I do not ask you to be so, just hear the arguments and make up your own mind when you have the facts.

Ask yourself this – do the Right actively seek reasoned debate? When asked to account for their opinions do they argue rationally and strongly or do they turn to personal insults? Pick at the seams of any ideal and see whether it unravels. Question everything, it’s the only way you’ll ever learn, those who don’t wish to be questioned are generally the ones who have the most to hide.

Song Of The Day ~ Maximo Park – Girls Who Play Guitars