davidgillon | Entries tagged with racism

I was watching some youtube gaming stuff earlier.

First off the ad YT serverd up at the start of the video appears to be some sort of deep-fake video of Elon Musk shilling for some trading app no one's heard of - it may well have started with a genuine video of Space Karen, but the pacing of the words seems deep in uncanny valley (though the lip-syncing matches), it doesn't sound like Musk's phrasing, and I don't see Musk being happy with an app he appears to claim 'closes 96.3% of trades' (as if that was somehow impressive). Second YT ad this week that's struck me that way, though I forget what the other was.

Then there's the persistent text 'ad' that appears at the head of the list of other vids you might like (i.e top right on the standard YT layout). It's phrased as a "Poll on inclusion in Britain", and asks if inclusion should be prioritised over religious belief, illustrated with a picture of two women hugging. It's tagged as from 'The Epoch Times', I googled The Epoch Times the other day, figuring it would be some far right political group, or Suella Braverman (same thing, really), but it turns out to be Falun Gong. I estimate I'm getting this ad or a variation roughly every three or four vids, all challenging equality, and that's been true for at least the last two months, if not three or four. That's a substantial advertising spend, for a subject apparently unrelated to the group's aims*, and apparently aimed at a youth audience. If they're going after equality in Britain this way, god knows what they'll be like in the US where they're a Trump backer to the point it got them banned from Facebook.

* Though the Wiki article notes the German arm of Epoch Times is aligned with AfD on anti-immigration policies and that the founder of Falun Gong is a racist, so maybe it's a more general representation of their beliefs.

Current Mood: Disturbed
Current Location: Opposite end of the spectrum

... with a friend of mine.

I posted a link on FB to the Indy's long and depressing article on the scale of post Brexit racism.

His immediate response, 'I voted Leave and I'm not racist and I'm sure the majority of leave voters weren't racist.' Followed by a po-faced line about how free movement of labour isn't working.

I never mentioned Leavers, or free movement, and neither did the article.

And what makes his post doubly hypocritical is half his friends work in the EU.

I reminded him that the kind of people who launch racist attacks are precisely the same the same kind who attack people like me, or him, for being disabled in public.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Freely moving
Crossposts: http://dwgism.livejournal.com/14077.html

... at the assassination of Jo Cox, MP.

The eyewitness reports say the attacker was yelling 'Britain First'. Britain First are an ultra-right fascist party, with a special penchant for Islamophobia. But I had my own run-in with them during the Rochester By-election when I found their vice-chair, Jayda Fransen (their candidate at Rochester), and a dozen of her thugs cornering a lone, and very slight, black woman against the wall of the War Memorial.

Jayda Fransen is in the media bleating that the killing of Jo Cox is not what they stand for. I saw with my own eyes precisely what they stand for, what she stands for, and Britain First have blood on their hands whether or not the attacker was a member.

Current Mood: Furious
Current Location: Standing for our green and pleasant land, and against fascism
Current Music: Beethoven's Ode to Joy

By the time I was three tweets into #WhitewashedOUT I wanted to beat my head against a wall.

The initial focus was Hollywood's whitewashing of several recent prominent Asian roles, Scarlett Johanssen as Major Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange, as a symptom of a wider problem within the movie industry, but it turned into an outpouring of experience of racism. @BethPhelan, who just organised #DVpit, tweeted about her experiences as a child, and that really struck home because of the parallels with disability related bullying I experienced as a kid. Different otherness, identical hate.

The number of people tweeting about trying not to appear Asian as a kid was heartbreaking.

And the number of writers/screenwriters tweeting about being told to white out asian characters was truly disturbing.

There were the usual handful of idiots railing against it. and proving its point, but two things about them disturbed me. (I looked at a bunch of profiles, you usually find about half are blank, pointing at professional bigots running pure attack accounts, but half weren't). First, the number identifying as Trump supporters, second, the number who seemed to have some link to fandom. That 'social justice warrior' tag beloved of the Puppies was very prominent.

George Takei has a good take on Marvel's defence of their Doctor Strange casting: They must think we're idiots

Sitting waiting for a blood test at my GP's surgery and the woman next to me starts ranting to the guy opposite that the receptionists are conspiring to let the non-white people waiting jump the queue 'I heard them talking in their language". It runs on a ticket system and I think what happened was the receptionist was helping a (non-white) wheelchair user and grabbed him a ticket while his wife was getting him into his wheelchair. I'd guess a good third-to a half of the people in the waiting area were non-white, they would all be able to hear her, and she was less than ten feet from the people she was railing against for being "foreigners". I bit my tongue the first couple of times, but eventually had to point out that there might be a very good reason behind it and there was no need to jump to race as the issue, which shut her up (after ranting at me that she had a good reason too).

This is what UKIP are doing to us and it has to stop.

Current Mood: angry
Current Location: On the barricades of liberty
Current Music: We shall overcome

It's bad enough we have UKIP on the streets of Rochester because of the by-election, but today we had the fascists of BritainFirst blaring patriotic songs and waving Union Flags and the St George's Crosses in front of the War Memorial.

The friend I was with was shopping in the grocer's across the street and I was quietly seething at everything they were doing - when they started playing Jerusalem I commented that it was like Springtime for Hitler In Germany come to life and that they'd have been better off with Wagner.

They were leaving as we came out of the shop and I realised that 8-10 of them had surrounded a young black woman who was sitting on the wall. Apparently they had demanded to know if she was English. She was holding her own, but she was one small woman surrounded by 8-10 racist thugs, all but one of them male. I just though 'Oh, Hell' and walked into the middle of it, gesturing with my crutch and saying 'There's none of you ever more than 5 seconds away from becoming a minority and being attacked in the street by people like you.' I certainly didn't calm the situation, but I diverted half of them on to me, and I had the chance to tell them that I despised them, that I particularly despised them parading in front of the memorial to people who died fighting against everything they stood for, and that if they really love everything England stands for then they should emigrate ;)

It went back and forth for about five minutes, with amongst other stuff the Britain First woman (ETA: who I've now identified as their candidate and deputy leaderr Jayda Fransen) trying to claim mosques were centres of terrorism, but a couple of them (they'd be the really dangerous ones) realised that being seen harassing a slight young woman and a disabled guy probably wasn't the image they wanted (though it's the only one they'll ever have) and they beat a retreat.

I imagine they'll claim they weren't harassing anyone, but that's belied by how upset their victim was afterwards (and kudos to her for standing up to them).

One of the people who came up afterwards (and if I have the right guy he's a local folksinger who writes some absolutely haunting stuff about social deprivation in Medway) commented that the UKIP supporters and the England First thugs had been being very pally with each other earlier - takes one to know one, I guess....

I'd been thinking about Pastor Niemoller's prayer while I was watching them, I guess I passed.

Current Mood: Incandescent with Rage
Current Location: A Green And Pleasant Land, with an unwanted infestation of fascists
Current Music: Springtime For Hitler in Germany

Not me, I'm afraid, but I was just sat at the window table of my favourite restaurant on Rochester High Street watching a black guy absolutely berating the UKIP supporters outside their campaign headquarters. I couldn't hear anything of what he was saying as he was a few doors down, but the body language was incredibly passionate. A couple of customers who'd popped out came back in to say he was brilliant, and that Farage had been there for at least part of it - result!

The owner was sat at the next table and commented he was hoping Farage would pop in so he could refuse to serve him :)

(Rochester isn't my constituency, I'm in the next one over, Chatham and Aylesford, so unfortunately I don't get the pleasure of casting a vote against their candidate, Mark Reckless, who while he was Tory MP for Rochester responded to a TV interview with me on disability hate crime by saying that people were entitled to feel angry at disabled benefit claimants - Reckless by name, Reckless by nature, he'll fit well in UKIP).

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: The frontline against racism
Current Music: We Shall Overcome