Hi All,
As I've noted previously some on the alternative right/left spectrum see the Ukraine war as an extension of the 'cultural wars', ergo the left hate Putin's faux social conservatism as much as the righ love it.
However that isn't the only meme going around, because some just can't get over the general public support for Ukraine to the extent of even wanting to host refugees in our homes and recently in my frequent trips to provinical middle england (tory land writ large) I've been overwhelmed with things like Ukrainian flags everywhere, more so than the Union flag.
What makes these people's heads explode- rather than appreciate that Britian is a more compassionate and non racist place than these doom mongers and race bait, victimhood evangelists loke to make out- is
1) How this contrasts with recent and not so recent wars, such as Bosnia and Syria.
2) Brexit and the UK's collective racist/xenophobic mindset
To some commentators this can only mean one thing and that is -of course -we're all RACISTS regardless of how much compassion we show toward Ukrainians or how much support we give to the Ukraine military. The reason for this argument stems from the mindset of who the victims of the Syrian or Bosnian conflicts were. To the race sensitive left this could only be either Muslims or dark skinned Arabs. So the terrible logic concludes that the ordinary 'Joe Public' who support Ukraine & even want to welcome refugees (gasp! white Christian Europeans), but did not welcome the 29 year old Arab Muslim child refugee with dark olive skin from Syria, must by the left's definition be racists or Islamophobic.
To this I would suggest
1) In regards to Bosnia and Syria. They were complex civil wars. In Bosnia's case there were ethnic and religious tensions (Croatian Catholics, Slavic Orthodox Serbs, Bosniak 'secular' Muslims) and at the time whilst there was a media presence we have nothing like the 24-7 internet and other non -MSM outlets that we have today.
In respect of Syria, again it was a highly fractionalised civil war involving Arabs, Christians, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Kurdish Muslims, as well as Jews (in the form of Israel) and the Non-Arab Iranians (in the form of Persia) and a whole host of ideologies and religious groups, with one in particular - ISIS - which not only imterposed its evil on the lands it had conquered but also to externalise that via terrorism in Europe. But in reality there was no group or fraction which could really bring the British public at least to support. Assad was and is a war criminal cum brutal dictator, but his opposition was not of the liberal democratic mould, but contained jihadists who were only so slighly less derranged than ISIS. Thus there was difficulty in the ordinary people's mindset of trying to sift the 'goodies' from the 'baddies', yes very simplistic but that's how many people see the world in a good vs evil way.
Furthermore with respect to the Syrian refugees there were slight differences.
The first is how and who were pushing these refugees out of Syria in the first place and they were mainly criminal people traffikers, who'd charge refugees to get out &throw them into the med sea on over crowded rafts .
Second it was difficult to tell the genuine refugee from the economic migrant as many of them were grown men and whether or not the refugee was escaping Syria or poverty in sub-saharan Africa.
Thirdly people could see that it was not just women and children fleeing, but also men and grown men at that, not 'boys' as they tried to make out, who didn't stop at their first destination, but made a sojourn which took them to Germany and France .
Contrast this with Ukraine- it is a straight up fight between two nation states- and in Ukraine's case it is either whole families and or women and children only who have been leaving the country, with the men being willing volunteers to serve in the defence forces & many civilians deciding to stay put to support their country. That many more had a chance to flee, but did not and followed the lead of their President, decided to stand and fight for their country. I would add that the conduct of the Ukraine President has also helped in that we have a man whose defiance, but also urbane reserve and self -restraint has struck a chord with most British people.
In respect to Brexit, that Britain is a nation of automatic rascists and nationallists for wanting out of the EU project , is one of these mythologies of the left. Brexit was in part about immigrantion, but -strangely the left never grasped this, even though the traditional left has an emphasis on the material and economic redistribution of the material -about the economic impact of unlimited economic migration of (white) people from poor parts of Europe to Britain. The concern was nothing to do with religion or racism(Eastern Europe being 'white' and Catholic or Christian Orthodox), it was to do with good old economics and material well -being, because cheap labour means lower standards of living for those already in established, but poorly paid jobs. Between that and the austerity toward social services (such as the NHS) people were ready to quit Europe as that was the only mechanism that they could trigger to halt the decline in wage productivity .
So no, supporting Ukraine and Ukranian refugees, but being wary of refugees from other -or any- conflicts you can pluck out of the air, is not racist. If and when the left stops seeing everything of the world through victimhood and race, then it may well
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