Barmy Bigots

I think they're in the woodwork

Some anonymous coward had been distributing the racist leaflets below, putting them through letterboxes in the night. It reminds me of recent Tory tactics.

I think the creators are under the impression that this is an amazing work of psychological manipulation, when it’s really both risible, and thematically confused. Honestly, a little kid could do a better job of creating a coherent narrative. (Yes, I am speaking as an author and creative writing teacher here.)

So I’m going to make a rare exception and expose this crap to the light of day, since it provides a good example of interpreting media manipulation, and shows the stupidity for what it is.

Side 1

Mmm. First we have a false-colour Teletubby image of supposed England, a programme perhaps chosen as being appropriate to the mental age of bigots. It’s such a comforting photo! An ideal world! But then it gets confusing. Is it saying racists only live in the countryside, not in cities? Do the Photoshopped cows mean that racists are dairy farmers, or dairy farmers are racists? Who has removed all the native forests, was it the tolerant racists? Do they live in the barn, and was that their ideal home? Why is the land so sunny when the metaphoric dark clouds should be obscuring the light and casting shadows? Are the racists the sunshine and their targets fluffy agglomerations of evaporated water? Sorry, totally confused.

The second image is one of white people affected by Tory austerity and wealth inequalities, forced to burn flags to keep warm in winter. To me that suggests we need to break down inequality, and not have the megarich consuming so much more than their share of the Earth's resources. Or perhaps the racists are saying Nationalism is bad? Or the Union Jack is a symbol of evil that must be destroyed? I’m sure many in Wales, Scotland and Ireland would agree with them on that single point.

The final image is a stock picture of people with brown skin and beards, who seem to be justifiably annoyed at the violence of British colonial history, ongoing today in our support for US imperialism, attacking country after country. So are the racists praising these heroes who are speaking out against injustice? I don’t know, I need more back story, more character motivation, more ... well, sense.

Note the attempt to manipulate you by darkening and desaturating grainy images to make them look “threatening”, and oversaturating the ones meant to look “good”. It’s an obvious trick to imply contrast, and present things as binary divisions (which is almost always a falsehood). Likewise images are selected as extremes on the basis of trying to create an emotional response in the absence of argument (since there is really no sensible argument being made, because there couldn’t be). The most generous interpretation is that the Photoshopper thinks dark-skinned people hate dairy farming. And that the countryside is being destroyed forever (somehow … mumble mumble …). But really this is just a bodged together set of photos that only tell a story to someone who lives in Teletubby land.

Side 2

Obviously I deleted the link.

First, the image. We see well-used public transport. For some reason the racists think public transport is bad, but I think it is great! Though the bigot’s Photoshopping skills need work. As I looked closely I saw that they’d soon started pasting in heads randomly, so that the seats become a Dr Who Tardis, and the bus has almost infinite z-dimensions running to infinity. Try turning that monster around in the middle of Pwllheli! Whereas normal bus seats only fit two humans, the trans-dimensional nature of this bus fits 3-5 per seat. It’s amazing tech, I’d love that for public transport.

Or do they mean ... if you have darker skin, you shouldn’t sit on a bus? Only whites can? Mmm, the echoes of hero Rosa Parks segue back into Dr Who:

The wording around the edge of the image is wonderfully bizarre.

“The replacement of white britons”.

How is that occurring? Into what dimension are the white Britons being zapped, so that dark-skinned body doubles can appear?

Of course, it also begs the question of why they think white Britons have any more rights to the land than darker-skinned Britons. The leafletters don’t want to explain because there are no justifiable reasons. It’s exactly what racism is: an irrational prejudice against others based on an arbitrary and non-moral attribute. If you’re born somewhere, it is just as much your country as anyone else’s that was born there.

“Brainwashed voting fodder”

Ah, the irony. A statement by someone who wants to brainwash you with simplistic images and words into adopting their viewpoint.

“Traitors to the people of Britain”

They missed the telegram which pointed out that everyone born in Britain is a person of Britain. It doesn’t matter what your skin colour is, your hair colour, your sex, your age, your family background, your income level. Hey, even irritating baldies like me can be British!

I will drop the leaflet off at the police station next time I go past.

Clarification

It does give me an opportunity to make it clearer what I stand for, in case my posts have left any doubt!

Karl Drinkwater is proud to be detested by racists, bigots, megarich tax dodgers, fascists, sexists, apartheid defenders, homophobes, arseholes who are cruel to animals, Zionists, colonialists, regressives, those who adore inherited privilege, imperialists, and warmongers. He can’t be bought or bribed.

He is respected and loved by those who want peace, equality, justice, and cooperation.

That makes it so simple even someone designing racist leaflets can understand it.

Update 2024-06-07

One of my friends said: “Shocking stuff. I’ve been getting weird stuff like this on Facebook - not obviously racist, just about how wonderful England used to be, accompanied by bad AI. Then of course people start adding a lot of racist remarks in the comments.”

It’s a really good point, and many people won’t have spotted that tactic racists are using, which is why I wanted to draw attention to it. It’s all about trying to seed regressive views. They do it on all the topics: sexism, trans issues, homophobia, racism, immigration, religious hatred, the environment, and so on. The government pretends to care but really it’s happy to see people fighting amongst themselves, rather than paying attention to what the politicians are doing.

Divide and conquer is their mantra.

Unite and conquer is ours.

How you can help.

Promoted by Karl Drinkwater (Green Party) at The Gate, Keppoch Street, Cardiff CF24 3JW.