The Signs and the Planets Are Lining Up Like Before - Demonisation of Vulnerable Groups
I have seen a marked upswing on social media in the last few months of narratives that demonise vulnerable groups.
Specifically, I'm focusing here on the narrative that people claiming asylum are criminal - specifically sex offenders posing a threat to women and children.
This is directly from the classic racist playbook - paint your targets as inherently evil by virtue of who and what they are and let fear and outrage do the rest.
How do we stand against this? How do we oppose it? And how do we practice self-care when speaking up can expose us to the most appalling vitriol and abuse?
Specifically, I'm focusing here on the narrative that people claiming asylum are criminal - specifically sex offenders posing a threat to women and children.
This is directly from the classic racist playbook - paint your targets as inherently evil by virtue of who and what they are and let fear and outrage do the rest.
How do we stand against this? How do we oppose it? And how do we practice self-care when speaking up can expose us to the most appalling vitriol and abuse?
Comments
I haven't seen a lot of people changing their minds on these things, but then, I tend to hang out in circles that are pretty fiercely against that sort of thing in the first place.
Far as online people go, I don't think I can tell who's real anymore and who isn't, so it's hard to say what the "authentic" vibe is. There have always been a few selfish people in my life and they sure haven't changed.
We need to publicly talk about what Italian and German fascists did in the past. The people herded away into camps, put onto boats and put out to sea to unknown destinations. The hunger, demonisation, back-biting, corruption.
No doubt the far-right will complain. But let them, if they take the words of truth about fascists of the past as being offensive to them, then they are admitting there is a connection to the present.
In addition: shame and blanking. Every time someone says something horrible, I walk away. Every time someone demands respect for their racist position, I refuse to give it. If I was in an elected position (which I'm not) I wouldn't give them the time of day.
For example demonising by salience and disproportionate coverage - to target a group when one of them commits an offence likely to cause disgust - splash it on the front page, pick the most sinister looking photo of them possible, give it prominence in the news bulletins. Splash and keep splashing over and over...
It's easy to make any harmless small group look like a disproportionate threat to the 'women and children' which gets knee jerk reactionaries baying by this method.
Basically you reverse victim and aggressor - it makes preyed-upon minority groups look dangerous and powerful majority groups think of themselves as victims who are acting in justified 'self-defence' when they attack.
It's in full swing at the moment.
And then there's 'balance journalism' and false impartiality which frame issues as 'he says/ she says' as if nothing accurate can be found or said, or which promote an artificially narrow Overton window of opinion within which issues are discussed - so only very rarely do you get to hear a true opposing point of view which undermines the false consensus.
And I'm afraid we're royally screwed.
There's no newspaper or broadcaster that doesn’t use these tactics. Just the other night there was classic demonising by salience on the Radio 4 news. If they featured every time a white bloke sexually harassed a woman the news would be hours long every day and there would be no time for anything else...
None of the complaints systems set up for media handles attacks on groups - I forget the get out clause for IPSO the press regulator and Ofcom is no better. Social media is poorly regulated and mostly in the hands of sinister people for whom such demonising attacks aren't a bug but a feature driving engagement and in the case of Musk et al shared fascist views.
If you try to regulate any of this stuff you get howls of 'freedom of speech' and 'censorship' which of course, all the press carry prominently because driving moral panics for 'engagement' or politicsl advantage is part of their business model.
So I don't know what can very done efficaciously. I don't subscribe to newspapers but pay for the rare independent journalism which rejects these models - but it doesn't solve the mass problem.
Groups like 'Stop funding hate' have organised advertisers boycotts of the worst offenders with some small successes.
Complaints can be made to the broadcasters et al but again the way guidelines are written mean you won't have much luck - they don't recognise the mechanisms that drive moral panics.
The best thing you can do is have nothing to do with any group that weaponises or drives moral panic - leave or reject political parties that embrace it - while raising awareness of how it works.
But I fear it's too late.
Last Sunday I nearly fell off my seat when a BBC radio politics programme actually platformed someone who told the truth about how the current 'crisis' was manufactured and blown out of proportion but they were outnumbered three to one and the others just chuntered on as if those points that blew up their narrative hadn't been made and the presenter never pressed them on these points - and to hear this view was so rare I think it's in actual fact drowned out by an enormous amount, so despite being accurate and well- grounded it can't get traction.
Learning the facts allows you to counter the dominant view when you meet it, but ultimately it can very very hard to change people's minds.
Which is a long winded way of saying again that we're screwed because we didn't change our media landscape years ago and now we're hurtling towards fascism and the last guardrails are down. I often have to turn off the news for self- care because it sometimes feels like listening to The Sun in radio form because I don't want to hear fucking fascists and liars being treated as appropriate commentators and pundits whose views must be respectfully heard for 'balance' - that's how their views get mainstreamed and spread.
I heard someone talking about migrants, and "acceptable" discourse seems to be first to talk about them being young men, then saying that the hotels and camps are bad and finally that these young men are a threat to "our women and children".
None of this would appear to be proven fact, but bloviating about it on the BBC as if it was fact seems normal.
Daily Mail journalists are people? What evidence have you for believing this?
Are there any notable religious institutions doing this in the UK? Not doubting that there are, I'm just out of the loop.
There's HTB's connection to Paul Marshall (GBNews, Telegraph, Spectator), and NFI as was' connection to Philippa Stroud (co-founder with Jordan Peterson of the 'Alliance for Responsible Citizenship' and formerly on staff at Christ Church London, the flagship church founded by Stroud and her husband).
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n04/peter-geoghegan/making-media-great-again
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/65415/the-marshall-plan-paul-marshall-gb-news
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/feb/20/us-culture-war-show-arc-london-strikes-chord-european-populists
Yes.
In fairness it's worth pointing out that the strouds church left NF a good number of years ago (I never managed to find out why).