HOME | DD
timsplosion β TiN - It's Not About That...
#england #eu #europe #europeanunion #nationalism #political #racism #uk #webcomic #xenophobia #islamophobia #brexit #thisisnormal
Published: 2016-07-02 02:02:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 1362; Favourites: 16; Downloads: 1
Redirect to original
Description
Apparently I've become a political cartoonist recently (more so than usual), so click here if you want more of that and other stuff.Since the referendum, there's been an explosion of racially motivated incidents against anyone who looks, sounds, or has a name that vaguely sounds, like they might be foreign. A Facebook album documenting those incidents which are being reported on social media but may not have been significant enough to end up reported to the police went viral. When I shared it, it had 60 incidents - by the end of the day it had 114. There's now a group on Facebook dedicated to collating the incidents so that people can't just go "well it's not an actual trend", or "it's just a dozen bad eggs" - if you fancy adding things that you've seen shared or said, or been on the receiving end of racial abuse in the UK yourself since the referendum,Β it's worth checking out and sharing stuff there . Incidents like that should also be reported to the police as much as possible so that we can get adequate statistics on these kinds of things, and make sure those in authority take appropriate action to make racists sit the fuck down.
Related content
Comments: 29
It's pretty damn sad things like that happen. 
π: 0 β©: 1
Yeh, it's gotten pretty bad in the UK since the referendum. Polish guy beaten to death, a Polish child pulled into an abandoned building and beaten on his way home from school, so many verbal assaults (offline and online) with racial motivations it's depressing to look up the numbers, all since June 23rd. Makes Britain look like a proper backwards-ass hole to the rest of the world.
π: 0 β©: 1
And to think that all it takes is a few morons to make the rest of the country look like fools.
π: 0 β©: 1
'S how it works for America.
π: 0 β©: 1
Not exactly a positive point for them, is it? :/
π: 0 β©: 0
I want to say that it's not about bigotry. But I think the most accurate thing to say is that it shouldn't be about bigotry.
Even as someone who was for leaving, I feel the leave campaign was based largely on racist lies. They purposely framed it in a frankly racist way by emphasizing immigration, which in addition to being dangerous was not very practical. It appeals mostly to older racists, and alienates younger and more diverse demographics.
Immigration is not going to stop, not for this. To say otherwise was and is a lie.
Brexit should be and should have always been about the systemic corruption within the EU. Not only would this have been a far more accurate portrayal of what could be gained by leaving, but it would likely have been far more effective in getting support for leaving. If you need evidence for that, just look at how the new tide of young liberals today. Those of us in that tide talk about the 1%, the influence of corrupt money, the undermining of democracy, etc. The EU is such a blatant example of all those things.
How could it be that the leave campaign seemed to ignore this? People like Nigel Farage talk about the EU as antidemocratic, yet instead of focusing on that, the campaign appealed to an ugly, dishonest promise of xenophobia. Do they not see how, had they addressed the very real problem of corruption, they still could have won? They could have won cleanly, maybe even by a landslide, without this asinine redirect and senseless violence.
As always, take my two American cents on a British issue with a grain of salt.
π: 0 β©: 1
Honestly, I've gotta say that that sounds pretty bang on. The legitimate arguments (as flawed as they are) got lost in the fog of anti-immigration sentiment.
π: 0 β©: 0
I've not been following it on corporate media. I've been seeing people reporting it on social media, and talking to my own friends who've only started encountering it post-referendum, one of whom has literally said they're scared to speak to people now because they still have an Eastern European accent. Even if a portion of it is people noticing/reporting it more, there's still something extra that wasn't happening before the vote.
π: 0 β©: 1
Ok, but if people who usually experience racist incidents every so often are turning around and going "ok there's a lot more of it around all of a sudden", isn't that worth taking seriously?
π: 0 β©: 1
Ok, but even if it is simply that people had started responding more to incident that previously went unreported, that's almost even worse, as it reveals the baseline level had been way higher than we'd previously thought from previous data. That, if found to be true, would still be an alarming discovery and requires just as strong action against bigotry and it's bile.
π: 0 β©: 0
Are you saying anyone who voted 'Leave' is a racist?
π: 0 β©: 1
No, but racists now think that 52% of the population agree with them, and it's making them more confident about being open about it.
π: 0 β©: 2
OK, but there has to be a reason why 48% of Britain voted Stay. Is it to not be seen as a racist in an age where being PC is deemed more of a priority than free speech or are they afraid that they can't openly travel to places like Spain and Italy?
π: 0 β©: 1
Well, no, they probably voted remain because they realised that the leave campaign was lying out of their asses throughout the whole thing. "350 million for the NHS"- Lie. "We can be in the EEA and not have freedom of movement" - Lie. "The EU is to blame for post-industrial decline" - Lie. So the 48% is probably made up of people who saw through all that, as well as those with friends and family from Europe, and those who felt that the opportunities freedom of movement within Europe gave them were worth keeping.
Trying not to be seen as racist probably doesn't factor into it. Most people with racist beliefs rationalise those beliefs so that they can tell themselves they're not racist, "it's just that [ethnic/national/religious group] is [stereotype]."
And I realise that there were other reasons to vote against Europe - I nearly turned against it after seeing how the EU treated Greece during the worst of their financial crisis, and seeing how it's responded to the refugee crisis. But the Leave campaign was largely about removing ourselves from involvement in those things, and inside that isolationist contingent is a virulent strain of nationalism that's been brewing under the surface of British culture for decades. And it's those fringe nationalists who've found themselves validated by the result.
π: 0 β©: 1
So what you are saying is that the reason why you were against the Leave campaign is because you feel like the people running it are racists.
π: 0 β©: 1
Their vision of a post-Brexit Britain was not one I could get behind and support. I'm within my rights to oppose a move if it's being made for the wrong reasons and with a goal that I oppose. Some of them held racist views, others were just isolationists - both of those are what I consider to be the wrong direction.
π: 0 β©: 1
But there are racists for and against the move. Just because one side has some racists doesn't mean the other side doesn't. Taking racists and isolationists out of the picture do you think Brexit is an understandable move?
π: 0 β©: 1
I mean every organisation I know of with racist history and ties was pro-Brexit and I don't know of any similar organisation that was pro-EU, but ok.
I think there are reasons for the UK to distance itself from the EU, but I felt that "in the EU, outside of the Eurozone" got the balance about right. Like I hated the way the EU treated Greece, but creating the conditions that may well domino the EU into implosion isn't going to solve that at all. The biggest issue people had was immigration, but everything they say immigration causes isn't actually caused by immigration, so those arguments don't convince me at all. I think if we sent sensible parties with reformist attitudes to the EU parliament, like Labour or the Greens, we could help shape the EU into a more fair and equal partnership - although I recognise the uphill nature of that ambition, given most UK MEP's belong to a party that doesn't believe in the EU. Like, I get where people are coming from when they point to the loss of reliable jobs, the degradation of infrastructure, the fixation on London, and the level of inequality, but the EU is not directly responsible for any of that and it's programs have, in some parts of the UK, helped mitigate them. So while I understand the non-isolationist and non-racist motivations for Brexit, I know that no one in a position of reasonable power is likely to take us down that path and that we are far more likely to drift right-wards, emboldening and lending credence to those organisations and groups I mentioned back at the start of this.
π: 0 β©: 0
the way you said it
"so that people can't just go... 'it's just a dozen bad eggs'"
clearly sounds like you think 52% of Britain is racist.
π: 0 β©: 1
Ok, but I don't. The thing is that there's a strong strain of English nationalism that would have the UK either isolate itself or war to become a colonial superpower again, that views England as somehow inherently superior - it's come and gone in many different forms, but the referendum result has produced a resurgence of the National Front's demonstrations, and the emboldening of groups like Britain First and the English Defence League. There's a significant crossover between the followers of those groups and the core foundations of UKIP, which was the party that pushed for this referendum and was prominent in the leave campaign. UKIP got it's start by hoovering up the support that used to go to the British National Party - a party whose leader is on record as denying the scale of the holocaust.
So seeing these kinds of groups celebrating and thriving makes me worried, because this is not the odd individual here and there, this is a potentially dangerous fringe movement finding a core part of it's platform becoming mainstream and using that as an opportunity to claw further into the spotlight.
Yes, there is legitimate cause to be concerned about the current state of the EU. I lost most of my enthusiasm for it when I saw how poorly they treated Greece, and inequality in the sizes of economy and the wages within member states is definitely going to present a weak spot that could lead to a collapse in the future, but I appreciated that it was possible to reform the EU in a way that could mitigate or fix that - especially if we started sending sensible parties to the EU parliament, not populist parties who don't believe in the very parliament they were sent to sit in.
π: 0 β©: 0
I remember Watching you back when you were all about Chrysalis outwitting Shining Armor.
You're definitely a political cartoonist now.
But I'm still hoping you can find a way to present Nigel Farage as Discord or something.
π: 0 β©: 2
I still want to do pony comics, but I just don't have the ideas for it anymore. Nothing's clicking right, y'know? Anything I do come up with feels forced so I don't post it up.
And to be fair, I'veΒ always had something of a political streak in my postings (examples: Who I Trust the Most ,Β CopyRights ,Β TiN - The Biggest Team ,Β TiN - Green Tsunami ,Β TiN - Spelled Out ,Β TiN - Protest Problems ), so I guess it shouldn't be too much of a surprise (hence why I haven't seen a mass exodus of people recently, which I was worried might happen X) ).
π: 0 β©: 1
Such is the eternal plight of the arteest!
π: 0 β©: 0
I'm honestly wondering about that now and about if there might be a potential for the statistics to be rising mostly because people are starting to take greater action on it as a result of the results of Brexit; that being that a lot of people did see the vote as being racially charged (Which it probably was in party), so they're now more aware and more willing to act on these incidents that may have gone undocumented.
Still, it makes sense that this vote would probably bolster some bloody wankers to start piddling on the 'immigrants' and 'foreigners'.
And VICE apparently has that same hypothesis:
"Britain's ugliness was laid bare in the run-up to and in the aftermath of referendum β but that doesn't mean it wasn't there before. That a "leave" victory was so quickly equated with bigotry could also mean the public are more attentive to the racism around them, and victims, perhaps fearing this could be the new normal, more willing to report such incidents."
π: 0 β©: 0
My now ex-BF was one of those people saying that it wasn't about xenophobia or racism as well, despite it being exactly that.Β
π: 0 β©: 1
Like, there are legit reasons to worry about the EU, but the Leave vote is definitely being exploited by xenophobic groups and people to justify their position.
π: 0 β©: 1
Mhmmm, that's what I've understood from it. ^^
π: 0 β©: 0