MoronWatch

News For Morons

Let me start with some background for people who have never visited Britain: we drink. A lot. And unlike our continental neighbours, who drink moderately most days of the week, we like to binge. This makes for busy times for the police and hospitals at weekends. In fact, if you’re an aspiring war reporter looking for experience, just head for any British town or city on a Friday night. But be careful out there.

Usually, this attracts little attention in the media. After all, it happens all the time, everywhere. But one particular brawl has excited the moronic end of the press, along with morons throughout the Twitterverse: a brawl that took place in the city of Leicester.

What Happened

A group of Somali women attacked a white woman; they claimed they were responding to racial abuse. The incident was captured on CCTV and the women were arrested, charged, found guilty and handed down a suspended sentence and curfew (for the worst offender) and community service for the rest.

Then The Media Got Wind Of It

Drunken brawls happen in every British city, every weekend. The unusual aspect of this was that it involved Somalis: almost all alcohol-related disorder usually involves white British people.

Being Somali, the women are also Muslim – although clearly are not practising Muslims. This helps expose the nonsensical far-right accusation that “Muslims refuse to integrate”. I personally know Muslims who drink and mix freely in British society; the EDL, BNP and other Muslim-baiting morons would have you believe that all British Muslim women wear burqas and “hate our way of life”. It seems that these young women actually like our “way of life” – perhaps a little bit too much.

The right-wing press, of course, sniffed a chance for Muslim-baiting. Rather than celebrate how well adapted these women had become to the British lifestyle, they ran headlines such as The Telegraph’s: Muslim women not used to drinking walk free after attack on woman. The only other papers to carry the story, with the same anti-Muslim spin, were the ultra-right-wing Daily Mail and Murdoch’s Sun. All three papers have great racist form. Oh, and StormFront, a Nazi site, also carried the story.

All three papers managed to mention the women’s religion in their headlines. Strangely, I’ve never seen a headline about Christian drinking violence, although this happens pretty much every day. The “walk free” part of the headline was used to imply that they were let off. This was misleading – as I’ve mentioned, they were found guilty and received similar penalties that anyone else would have done in the same circumstances.

And Then Twitter

The far-right BNP, EDL and their moronic online supporters wasted no time in spreading the story, twisting it more with each telling. What began yesterday as a regular Friday night incident for Leicester police, with a racial twist, is now evidence of a Jihad.

This is a perfect example of the race-hate machine in action: from the seed of any story comes another excuse to stoke up race hate among morons. The fact that around 99% of drunken, violent attacks in the UK are made by white people is irrelevant to them; they only need these isolated incidents to fire up their moronic followers into a frenzy of mouth-frothing hatred.

Racist Tram Moron

You’ve probably seen the video of racist-tram-woman ranting at “non-English” people on a tram in South London; it went viral yesterday, culminating in the woman’s arrest. The arrest was predictably followed by moronic screams about attacks on free speech or authoritarianism. But the woman’s behaviour was clearly within the definition of hate speech, and was clearly upsetting to those she chose as targets. It also came close to inciting a violent response. It was a textbook example of why hate laws exist.

People who have never experienced such an attack may have difficulty understanding how it feels to be on the receiving end. As I’ve mentioned before, I have experience of being a “visible minority”, to use the politically correct terminology. At my London school, I was among a white minority of around 10%. Through my adult life, largely because of choices I’ve made, I’m often in a minority of one among black people. And black crowds are no more enlightened in their treatment of minorities than white crowds are.

I experienced something very similar to yesterday’s incident, a few years ago on the Subway in Brooklyn. I was the only white person on my train carriage; this didn’t strike me as weird or frightening, as I’m used to being in that position. Nothing happened until I caught the eye of a man staring at me; my natural response was to nod in greeting, to which his reaction was to scream at me: Who the fuck you looking at, you White Bastard? My initial response was rage, then a mixture of fear and embarrassment. In London, I’d know how to respond, but in New York, I didn’t know where I stood. Unlike the other passengers in the South London tram incident, nobody on that train stood up for me. Every coward or racist on that carriage found something else to stare at. If there’s a shred of comfort from the London video, it is that people stood up to the racist bully; London 1, New York 0.

There’s no such thing as “reverse racism”; it’s a myth. Racism is racism, and it’s always moronic. The idea (that I’ve heard from liberals at times) that racism directed at white people is somehow more excusable due to the actions of other white people towards other black people at other times is ludicrous. Because some other white people were/are guilty of “oppressing” some other black people somewhere else doesn’t make my skin colour a valid target of hatred.

I’ve experienced racism many times – usually in subtle forms. Walking with a black woman in London, New York or Accra I have been met with confrontational stares from passing men. My only option as a man on the receiving end is to puff out my chest and stare back. To look down, to back down increases the risk of an attack escalating. This can become tiring; it drains you, makes you angry, makes you start to misjudge people’s attention and see racism where there isn’t any. Those black and Asian people on the London tram have all faced racial aggression before – probably not so overt, but nonetheless, it’s hardly a novel experience for any of them to know that a person dislikes them for their skin colour or accent. I fully understand the reaction of the young black man who rose to respond; but was glad that he was persuaded to sit down again.

People have the right to ride a tram or walk the streets without facing aggression. The moronic woman broke hate laws and it’s right that she was arrested. A failure to react condones the behaviour; at a time when racism and nationalism are on the rise, failing to deal with hate crimes will inevitably result in the crimes multiplying and becoming more serious.

The same applies to hate speech everywhere; for example, South Africa too is experiencing increased racial tension, not just against the white minority but against foreign blacks too. South African minorities need hate laws to be enforced every bit as much as (or perhaps even more than) minorities in the UK need protecting. So do minorities in Rwanda, where hate laws (for obvious reasons) are ruthlessly enforced. Racism is a universal problem, affecting minorities of every race, tribe, religion and colour. To protest that arresting the tram moron was an attack on free speech is simply moronic.

Hang Theresa May? Some mistake surely..

The annual Tory (Conservative) Party conference is of course the height of moron season in the UK, and this year’s is (so far) no exception).

Yesterday’s choice moment came from Theresa May, the Home Secretary (not to be confused with Teresa May the porn star – take care when Googling). Right-wing Tories are upset that, due to being in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the Tories in government haven’t yet herded ethnic minorities and the poor into extermination camps. It’s therefore the job of conference speakers to say insanely stupid/dishonest things that will cheer up the moronic wing of the party.

May delivered in style, attacking the Human Rights Act (the HRA is a pet hate for British morons, as you’d imagine) with the claim:

“…illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he had a pet cat…”

Readers of the British moron press (aka the tabloids) will be familiar with this kind of claim, which is a common enough feature of British political discourse; indeed, most Sun, Mail and Express readers will be able to regale you with tales of paedophiles freed to strike again, murdering immigrants who can’t be deported in case they’re tortured, and so on.

The right hates the HRA for a variety of reasons, including:

1. It classes immigrants as human,
2. It classes Muslims as human,
3. It was given to us by the EU, and perhaps most appallingly,
4. It’s used to defend human rights.

May’s claim about the immigrant’s cat therefore pleased the moronic Tory right by attacking the HRA, the EU and immigrants in one short sentence.

Anyone (at least any non-moron) watching the speech would have immediately been wary about believing the claim because a) it was said at Tory Party conference, b) Theresa May said it, c) she used the words “I am not making this up” and d) almost all such claims ever made have been thoroughly discredited. True to form, it turned out to be a lie: the man in question hadn’t been deported because he was in a long-term relationship with an EU citizen. The cat only came into the story because it was one of the pieces of evidence presented to demonstrate the veracity of the relationship.

To his credit, my favourite Tory cabinet minister Ken Clarke (from a shortlist of one) was the first to challenge the claim, and Channel 4 News quickly checked and discredited it.

Morons though will have already added this lie to their list of reasons as to why the HRA, the EU and immigrants are all evil, and it will no doubt circulate in moron circles forever.