Monday, 18 July 2016

Stuck in the Groove.

The Daily Mail and its sister paper The Sun are considered in Britain by those with the odd brain cell to be the worst of the tabloids. Mostly we find them hilarious, as for example when The Daily Mail carried the headline:

GIANT MUSLIM SPIDERS BRING EBOLA VIRUS TO THE UK!

(I never read the piece because there’s always the risk that you might be spotted, and that would be a bit embarrassing, wouldn’t it? I suppose it was probably an attempt to encourage the base level right wingers to demand that spiders of foreign extraction be banned from wearing the kebab. They would have meant niqab, of course, but The Daily Mail isn’t terribly good with words. Words are for mealy mouthed liberals, not right on Daily Mail readers. But to continue…)

Mostly we laugh at them, but sometimes they can be dangerous. They love deceit, they love spreading hate, and they love to support deceitful hate spreaders in positions of power. Brexit was right up their right wing back alley, and their constant bleat was the primal fear:

Migrants.

No woman would be safe. Crime rates would become uncontrollable. We would all be reduced to penury because they would drain the national coffers. They would pollute the sceptered isle with dirt and alien bacteria, and soon our very skin would lose its pink-tinged purity. And suppose Britain were to sink beneath the waves under their weight, instead of ruling them as we’re supposed to do. Whatever hell they are trying to escape, we don’t want them here!

Migrants, migrants, migrants… Where would we be without migrants to demonise?

Today the Daily Mail headline was about the failed coup in Turkey. It wasn’t about the causes. It wasn’t about the political instability. It wasn’t about Erdogan’s leadership. It wasn’t even about the cost in human lives. It said:

TURKEY:
FEAR OF MIGRANT SURGE.

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