COMMENTARY: US and UK leaders’ xenophobia and race-hate has spiralled
By Dickson Igwe, Contributor
Austere trickledown economics has created a dangerous world. The western world especially the US and UK are in a similar place the world sat in 1935.
In the US and UK xenophobia and race-hate has spiralled. Trump’s Pitchfork Revolution is akin with Adolf Hitler’s stormtrooper paramilitaries whose mission was to make the ‘white race’ pure once more.
And underlining Brexit, there is the same xenophobia and racism that plunged the world into war in 1939. The great paradox is that the evil today is with the victors of 1945.
Apparently, history has not taught anything. Appalling hate crimes are being committed daily on the streets of the west. And anyone who denies there is racial tension practically everywhere is simply, deluded.
The UK Prime Minister’s ‘racial slurs’
Now, and very recently, Boris Johnson, a leading Brexiter, called gays, ‘tank top bumboys’. The UK Prime Minister referred to blacks as ‘piccaninnies with watermelon smiles’.
Moslem women wearing burkas were letterboxes. A second leading Brexiter stated that migrants brought into the UK, ‘bacteria’.
The preceding are well-known statements and published in the UK media, including the deliberate action of ignoring blacks at a recent conference when the UK Prime Minister refused to shake the hands of black men passing them over to shake the hands of whites with whom he was much more familiar and comfortable.
The US President’s ‘racist comments’
Before that, President Donald Trump launched his successful bid for office when he descended the escalator of Trump Tower and termed Mexicans, ‘rapists, drug dealers, and gang bangers’. ‘Blacks’, the US President asserted inhabited ‘rundown, crime-ridden, and diseased neighbourhoods.’
The preceding statements began a new rise in ‘white supremacist activity’. Trump is an expert in the politics of the ‘dog whistle’. The point here is that Trump, Brexit, Farage, xenophobia, and racism, in the west, are the key drivers of a ‘new and toxic, divisive politics’, that may well define news cycles for years to come.
Racism, Islamophobia, and anti-semitism are rampant in UK politics post the Brexit Referendum of 2016. In the USA – especially in the Deep South — the days of Jim Crow have returned with a vengeance. Where all this will lead? Look no farther back than 1939-45.
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Igwe, please stop making every of your contributions about race. Your contributions only divide people.
Perhaps you can think of ways to bring people together instead of writing these horrible contributions.
normally I would agree but he is on point this time, but without the foundation or story behind the problems.
The problems arose due to the Middle East tensions and all the refugees flooding Europe instead of staying behind and fighting for their homeland.
This was USA that started this ball rolling and now Trump is reaping the benefits with the country devised and Europe allover the place.
PC has ran its course and now people are pushing back, but its too late and now everything is seen as racist, xenophobic and hate crimes, people in their countries are becoming minorities in their villages and towns…….think BVI
There is no such thing as the Middle East there is only Afrika. People in the region look transparent due to specific breeding regiment. When you have Trump in office and this other wood slave vampire looking Boris in power then the article is on point. Everybody need BLACK DNA to survive it is why the good prince of England married and procreated with a woman with immediate BLACK DNA to ensure his son’s survival health and strength. Help eliminate the high odds of getting those weird white people genetic disorder. For heaven sake If Blacks were sooo inferior you think the Queen would allow her son to marry a woman whom mother is BLACK?
@Igwe please
Your thought process gave the US Trump. The man’s own mouth said he groped women, can kill people in public, support hate groups or at least soft on them, lock up children, want to build a Berlin wall, and is the most unethical US President ever.
Remaining silent is just as bad….Remember Hitler….he started the same way. I was in Germany when that wall came down, I will never forget the joy the people from both sides had.
Please give me something nice to say about Trump?
Hitler had nothing to do with the wall …
Hitler did not build the wall, no. However it is not unreasonable to say that Hitler’s policies, actions, and the war started by those very policies and actions, all created the conditions for the wall to be built after the Allies victory and the ensuing tensions with USSR. I think the point being made was that people who were divided by ideology, and the associated divide and rule scaremongering, were overjoyed when the wall that was a very clear symbol of that period came down. In short, division of populations across any dogmatic lines is never helpful to the stability of society or humanity.
You are simply a pompous ignorant racist in a suit . Sad
… why are we subjected to this man’s racist student union politics week after week.
because you cannot discern the difference between foolishness, stupidity, , fact or fiction even if either came and scack you upside the head and tried to teach you otherwise..
Some minds are simple incapable of even discerning simplicity itself.
The truth hurts. Honest readers can conclude that xenophobia, racism and discrimination is on the rise. Racism has been part and parcel of life in both the UK and US. However, to get along, the racists shed the hoods and resorted to suits but their racial attitude didn’t change. The inauguration of Donald John Trump embolden the racists in America, ie, controversial Charlottesville both sides remark, caging children on the border, Muslim ban, shit hole countries remark, send them back about the Squad…….etc. In the UK, one can take a peek at Enoch Powell, former MP, Rivers of Blood speech in April 1968. Further, Brexit was born out xenophobia, racism…..etc.
The UK liked the benefits of being part of the EU but a slim majority despised the freedom of movement, even from poorer west European countries. Instead of both feet being in the EU, it only had a few toes, ie, retaining the £ and not going to the Euro. Thus, it cut off its nose to spite its face. More evidence of racism includes the ‘Windrush generation’, ie, the failure to grant full status to Caribbean nationals who emigrated to the UK to build its economy. The UK is delusional to still think that the sun never sets over the Commonwealth or Britannia still rules the waves. Prez Trump wants to make America great again by a full return to its racist roots, attitude and behaviour.
F*t man, nothing but racist dribble puts from your … face. Look inward as you are the racist among us. Your goal? To incite those that are small minded like yourself. How dare you call world leaders racist as you are obviously king of that hill.
Why are you having issues with the truth? He is not inciting anything; this is what’s happening right now and if you want to bury your head sand, go right ahead. Don’t expect the rest of us to line up next to you.
Igwe likes to pontificate as if he is truly a student of history, or economics, or whatever. When he compares the UK and the US to Hitler’s Germany, it apparently escapes him that the UK has had three different Prime Ministers, in the last few years, precisely because it’s a democracy, not a dictatorship. He neglects to point out that the majority of US citizens disapprove of Trump and that there is currently an impeachment process playing out. Igwe’s command of facts is no more accurate than the wild inventions of some of Trump’s most avid supporters….and some of Hitler’s, as well! Policies and prejudices come and go, in all societies. In democratic ones, unlike Hitler’s Germany, they are subject to comment, scrutiny, and ultimately a vote.
We see that here in the BVI, which is no less racist than the UK or the US (maybe even more overtly), and hopefully the Territory will one day move past its own prejudices. One hopes it will drag Igwe along to a more enlightened and educated future, as well. Enough of his hatred and warped point of view. It’s folks like him, using their pulpits, who foster and fuel xenophobia.
Germany was also a democracy with Hitler being elected by a majority of his people. Trump won an election fairly and if you want to compare, the US had its own concentration camps in WWII and still maintains some today. In fact some are exclusively for children who are raped and neglected in custody. The wars in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam rival much of what Germany did in its war. In fact in Britain and the US these attitudes do not come and go. Racist, genocidal war is what they’ve always done.
Hitler certainly was elected, but well before the war he could no longer be “un-elected”. There were no more free elections nor an impeachment process, so the parallels grow dim. You have a poor understanding of the genesis, history and magnitude of the wars in Indo-China, sad as they were.
You are as ignorant as the fat man
Igwe please continue to shed the light
When in darkness there’s ignorance
My life is not about feeling and emotions
Every one of us needs to examine the facts that shapes our lives and our society
We all have the worldly and personal right to our personal opinion, while showing the rest of the world how small or large minded we are ; how much we or less we know; how well or how little we can accept truth or how much we wish that every one saw facts the same way we do.
That everyone had the same ability, as Igwe and Quiet Rebel do, who know, accept publish so the rest of the world can be educated.
Do hope they continue to do so.
Do hope the dissenters, he she looks in the mirror and accepts that he/she is a bigot and a racist and that reverse racism may work for them, but can be see by many and will not on most. Those days are behind us now. Neither Igwe nor anyone else will be deterred b thereby. Destiny is destiny!
Anyone who disagrees with these articles could so, but should so respectfully. Afterall, they are truthful and does not disrespect anyone. They simply state the facts.
We know that bigotry and racism exist. We also know that the bigot and racist, particularly the white one, does not like to and is quite uncomfortable being called either or even being confronted with that history. It is a very psychologically painfully history to him/them
Which is why some of them unconsciously and very conveniently and quickly would refer to Igwe and any other Black person whose narratives and historical facts do not fit into their narrow perspectives as racist.
Hence, they must grow, be less quick to type the words “racist” and be more prone to look in the mirror.
There they will find the true, real, authentic, real, dangerous and emminent enemy of the Black man, bigotry and racism.
Lupita Nyong’o believes race is a “social construct” because, growing up in Kenya, she never thought of herself as “Black”.
The 36-year-old Pisces was born in Mexico but raised in Kenya, which gave her a different perspective on race and racism in Black America.
She tells BBC Newsnight that she still experienced “colorism” prejudice due to having darker skin.
But it was only after she arrived in the U.S. that she saw how people were divided by race.
“Race is a very social construct, one that I didn’t have to ascribe to on a daily basis growing up,” she says. “As much as I was experiencing colorism in Kenya, I wasn’t aware that I belonged to a race called Black.”Nigerians divided as Lupita Nyong’o plays Igbo person in tv version of Chimamanda’s ‘Americanah’
Black Panther star Lupita Nyongo’s first book encourages girls to love dark skin
She said she only realized she was Black when she moved to America, “because suddenly the term Black was being ascribed to me and it meant certain things that I was not accustomed to.”
Lupita says she was once told she was “too dark” to appear on TV, and that she was not as pretty as her sister, who had lighter skin.
“I definitely grew up feeling uncomfortable with my skin color because I felt like the world around me awarded lighter skin,” the Black Panther star explains.
As a result, she believes Americans favor lighter skin even among those who are Black.
“We still ascribe to these notions of Eurocentric standards of beauty, that then effect how we see ourselves among ourselves,” she adds.
Be mentally confronted here that ther is no racial, social or difference in UK, EU, Aus or any other country in Europe realitve to the existence of the Black man existence on this here earth.
He has been and will remain a taget for hate and destruction for a very long time yet to me. But he will rise and rule again
For a small island made up of blavks the BVI is one of the most xenophobic place on earth. And the worst thing is that the blacks ‘born here’ are mostly xenophobic towarss its own kind from other Caribbean Islands and welcome with open arms white foreigners. Shameful. Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery
Emancipate your mind from the desire to keep the Black mind in slavery, and the fear of his emancipation=n therefrom.
We are not slaves, unread and uneducated any more inherited spoiled brat.
With generation, more and more truths will be forth coming for yoou to face and confront, and the will not be a damn thing you will be able to do to bot confront it, learn from, grow or be gone.
Destiny is the God and ruler, not you.
BVIslanders see themselves as the new overseers of the plantation. They have sold the plantation ownership rights to American/European Expats unfortunately. Sad times we live in.
This crap written by someone who lives on one of the most racist islands in the Caribbean? Open your eyes fool.
Blacks have it better than they have in decades under Trump. Obama drove the race card around like a pimp wagon.
More folks leaving BVI for US these days. Wonder why?
You clearly are in need of a historical and an mental psychological update relative to the Black mind. Please take a read and learn something. I dare you.
The first ever intellectual property theft ever experienced , took place in AFRICA.
Slavery build America, if not for slavery American will be a skunk colony.
The skills, labour and the sweat of our ancestors build America,
Not only was that the case ,they stole all our craft work alongside with them.
AFRICa was reap of her best and left barren as a result of slavery.
The people that were supposed to build their mother land ended building a foreign colony.
Just when we thought we could get our mind of that menace, they came again with a different format.
This time it was colonisation,.
Colonisation to manipulate and brainwashed us into believing in lies. falsehoods, false history and history not our won.
The Arab had already brainwashed some sections of the continent into Islam.
It was now the time of the Europeans to brainwash the of the continent, the Caribbean and the rest of the world into Christianity.
This is the mad situation we find ourselves in today. The Arab and the Europeans might not be physically colonising us, but they have successfully chained us mentally.
And you so are aware of this that you think that you can blog ignorant dribble about us and think that we are to dumb, blind and ignorant to respond. Wake up cracker.
Slavery and colonisation dealth with AFRICAns so badly that we don’t even know who we are as a people anymore.
No other continent and people have gone through the humiliation that Africa and her children has gone through. And here you are trying to continue continue that humiliation in some small minded form.
We are still mentally chained even up till today
This is why Neo colonialism is still festering in all over the world, the Caribbean, the BVI and AFRICA even up till tomorrow..
It will take a century of enlightened generational change to drain the swamp, not only of such, but racist and bigotted minds from the face of the earth.
Can try to fool those who you think are not reading and being fed and believing Foxx filth.
Last time we checked, there is a major exodus of Blacks out of America/Amhellica relocating to Ghana among other countries.
Bet you would never highlight that, but would rather sit on your couch and spout some tired, lies and drunkenness from a couch about Obama and current master of ceremonies of hell, but nothing of truth, substance and value or worth. Just more red, white and blue hate..
Thank you Mr. Igwe for calling it like it is. Some people hate the truth. Keep speaking the truth my brother. It is what it is. They are as racists as they come, those two leaders you mentioned
Really, the truth shall set u free. Some things just need to be said; no matter how uncomfortable. The sergeant must cut through healthy tissue to get at the Cancer beneath. Yes, some progress has been made and is being made; but no one can truly say that we have arrived at a comfortable place in race relations. I would like to think of humanity as a labour of love; for ever polishing it with the goal being perfection one day. Until then, know your own truth. Let everyone strive for him or herself for perfection; knowing that no one is perfect. but like the diamond in the rough, one day in time shall be a polished diamond
Quiet Rebel, a rebel without a cause and a lover a good balance debate and different and professional opinions, here. Per Wikipedia, Five whys (or 5 whys) is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The technique was developed by Sakichi Toyoda. On this electronic news site and others, though it is their choice, too many readers find it convenient to just hit the Dislike button on a comment because they simply can. IMO that action does not add value to nor advance or further the debate. Of course, it is their choice not to say anything. However, there is debater’s creed that states that a statement without substance is not worthy of a response. Let’s be courageous. Let the arrows fly but my kin tuff like old wife fish kin.
What nonsense Igwe spouts, why is he given air time. Yes Boris said that but years ago long before he was PM. Times have changed and he appears to have learnt from the past.Igwe seems the most racist of all
How is it that one can be labelled a “racist” for commenting on and
posting FACTS/TRUTHS?
Perhaps the assertion should be backed with compelling facts.
I read the article and I see absolutely no reason for all the outrage towards Igwe. He told no lies. Trump in 2019 still holds the same opinion that he did in the 90’s when he called for the death penalty for 5 innocent black men even though the evidence has since vindicated them of the crimes they were falsely accused and erroneously convicted of committing. Trump called guys that proudly spoke about ridding the world of all races except whites as ” very fine people and found it hard to condemn racism. He prefers a muslim ban although the number of terrorist acts committed by muslims is minute compared to those committed by home grown white nationalist.
I think the problem is that this “old boy” continues to call out other countries and races without any reflection on the problems here.
For every “xenophobe” voting for Brexit, there is a BVIslander complaining about Down Islanders taking jobs.
For every “racist” pointing at inner city violence predominantly amongst black youths, there is a BVIslander complaining about a foreigner bringing crime to the BVI.
Unless there is a little more inner reflection, you will just upset the people you are calling out.
Whilst Trump and Boris have some extremely questionable views and priorities (both seemingly communicated to feed their individual power-hungry narcissism), HUGE numbers of people in both the USA and UK are far from racist. It is not helpful to tar everyone with the same brush – I have traveled extensively to most parts of the world and racists are definitely in the minority when you look at human interaction on an individual level. The trouble comes when people start to lose hope of a better life, and the easiest way for political “leaders” to stay in power is to create an external enemy rather than doing any introspection on their own failings and finding actual ways to improve things.
Final point: slavery. It’s bad. However it did not start with the western powers bringing Africans to the Caribbean and beyond. It is not only the white man who has committed this heinous crime against humanity. It still goes on and it’s bad. It has always gone on and it has always been bad. It is not, and never has been, about race. It’s about a lack of morals and ethics, it’s about power and it’s about money and wider economics. The BVI has by far the worst relationship with it’s slavery history in the Caribbean. Whilst it is inexcusable, the other countries and territories around the Caribbean have found ways to move on from this and that has been to their emotional advantage, if not also their economic advantage. Closure needs to be found with this part of the BVIs history; not for the white mans sake but for that of the BVIslanders.
That man, Igwe is ridiculous. Everything is not about race, people like him are who prevents their people from thriving. Open your eyes and enlighten yourself, it is the right of the leader of every country to protect its’ citizens.
Everything is about race. Everything. If you don’t think it is, you are living in a world where you can’t see the forest for the trees.
That man is ridiculous. Everything is not about race, people like him are who prevents their people from thriving. Open your eyes and enlighten yourself, it is the right of the leader of every country to protect its’ citizens.
Everything is about race. Everything. If you don’t think it is, you are living in a world where you can’t see the forest for the trees.