Prominent women including cultural figures, politicians and campaigners have signed a letter criticising rightwing attempts to link sexual violence in Britain to asylum seekers.
Signatories include the musicians Paloma Faith, Charlotte Church and Anoushka Shankar as well as Labour, Green and independent MPs including Kim Johnson, Ellie Chowns, Diane Abbott and Zarah Sultana.
"We reject the far right’s racist lies about ‘protecting’ women and girls. They are not defenders of women – they exploit violence against women to fuel hate and division,” the letter says.
The open letter, titled Women Against the Far Right, follows a surge in protests outside accommodation housing asylum seekers and far-right attempts to exploit a number of cases of alleged sexual crimes involving asylum seekers.
No, that’s asinine. My point is that the anti-immigant rhetoric has nothing to do with protecting immigrants from being raped and everything to do with falsely portraying immigrant men as inherently likely to commit rape.
I didn’t say or even imply anything to the contrary. You can pack away your weird strawman now.
Immigrant women being victims ≠ immigrant men being the perpetrators. To imply that immigration leads to rape is like implying that black people existing leads to killer cops.
I didn’t. In fact, I never suggested otherwise, see above.
Again, that’s not what’s happening here.
The “leftist elites" are objecting to demagogues exploiting the very real problem of sexual violence against women (of which none of them nor I have denied that immigrant women are disproportionately the victims) as a way to further demonize and persecute immigrants.
Prejudice, conflating victims and perpetrators, or both. Take your pick.
Nobody’s arguing for doing that.
That’s the POINT: the far right are putting it in a false context for their own disinformation campaigns and you’re doing something similar for different reasons.
Meanwhile, the “leftist elites” are simply saying that demonizing and scapegoating immigrants doesn’t help any victims and is MUCH more likely to cause MORE immigrants to be assaulted by native born people who are taught to dehumanize them.
Saying that the fascists are blaming the wrong people is not denying that there are problems.
Nobody’s denying anything. At least none of the people you’re accusing of it are.
I don’t think you being reactionary to a far-right whose not present here, or the letter writers trying to preach to the far-right from a “corrective left” perspective of professionals in the top end of town works.
It’s hot air. The far-right aren’t going to read the edicts past down from on high and see the error of their ways. It’s a totally pipe dream leftism that assumes “being a scold” does anything but push people right.
I mean take yourself - you couldn’t even handle my original comment pointing that out. Look at all the time we’ve wasted here just because you had an “I’ve detected prejudice” error.
This is just all the stuff the left gets wrong, that feeds into the far-right populism. We need an alternative ti being scolds.
Good thing that none of that is happening, then.
Back to the self-description, I see.
Public figures tend to react to media pressure and other public figures taking a public stand tends to create such pressure. This is politics 101 stuff.
So what do you suggest, then? Never speaking up about harmful lies and the suffering they cause? Because that’s DEFINITELY not going to convince anyone.
Again with the ridiculous strawmen. You were wrong and I pointed it out. The only one unable to “handle” anything seems to be yourself.
Again, not the case. It doesn’t say anything good about your point that you need to keep insisting on two or three strawmen to make it.
Yeah, right. Telling them that they’re harming people forces them to double down because that’s how interpersonal communication works 🙄
You’re invoking this comic in spite of pretending to be a leftist yourself:
Oh please, you’re the one claiming it’s prejudice to call out wealthy leftists for being so far removed from the situation that they don’t even know rapes are happening in these communities.
Your defense of ivory towers of wealth, lifestyle disconnection and intellectual privilege is far more fascist aligned than anything I’ve said.
Hence your whole “anyone who disagrees with me must be MAGA” stance here…
…and again, it’s an discourse where studies show that negative reinforcement is far less effective than positive reinforcement. Your line of thinking on these issues actually contributes to the polarisation and prolonging of them (so is pro-rape). As was your original denying there was any issue (saying it was just prejudice).
You just keep pushing bad answers… And I keep having to explain to you what the actual studies say (be they how negative discourse creates polarisation, or the very fact that rapes are happening).
You need to learn political nuance. Get off tiktok or whatever’s got you so ideological boxed in.
But yeah, I’m done with you, and your reactionary polarisations. I hate you and we’re on the “same side” - I can’t imagine you’re doing anything out there worthwhile. I just hope people like you can educate yourselves so I don’t have to. Good luck.
I don’t know where to even BEGIN adequately refuting that whole wall of nonsense, so I won’t waste any more time on you to do so. Have the day you deserve.