Far left racism is rising, Priti Patel is needed more than ever
A person who I have probably mentioned the most politically in the last couple of years is Priti Patel. Everything about her, (in terms of what society has taught us) is wrong. Being a strong Indian woman in itself draws criticism but even more so when you don’t prescribe to the notion of being on the left or at least in the centre as generally that’s what is expected from non-white people. I have often said that the concept that my skin colour or my surname means I should think or act a certain way is as racist as any racial slur. To my own community, this concept is a very similar form to mental slavery.
Just because you’re a woman, an Indian woman, that does not mean you must have a certain set of beliefs and behave a certain manner. A lot was discussed about Priti Patel’s points based immigration policy in mainstream media and it was largely centred about the importance of the points you get for speaking English. What did the headlines say after this? And what did some of my own Indian community say? “Would her grandparents have been allowed in the country? Has she abandoned her roots? She is no longer Indian.” Well firstly when there is a labour shortage and you need workers, you relax immigration laws. You make it easier for people to come to the country which is largely what the UK did in the 40s-80s (when Priti’s parents came to the UK). However, as a country becomes more prosperous and you no longer have such a labour shortage you begin to restrict immigration as 7 billion people can’t fit into this island. So we must create laws and policies. So let’s debate this, let’s debate the policy and use logic, facts and figures. But no, instead, we saw personal abuse. I remember saying on the BBC that a London-born home secretary does not have to create an extremely liberal immigration system just because of her own family migration story.
We saw Howard Beckett, the assistant general secretary of Unite the Union, posting a tweet that Priti Patel should have been deported instead of the two asylum seekers who were detained last month. Even after deleting the tweet, a self acclaimed socialist Howard Beckett talked about Muslim refugees being deported on the morning of Eid-ul-Fitr despite the two people being Sikh.
Beckett was subsequently suspended from the Labour Party, but his words are a huge feature of the new modern left. There has been a normalisation of white people being allowed to be racially abusive towards people who don’t hold left-wing beliefs. The response from the media? Guardian’s Jason Okundaye simply described Beckett’s tweets as “Misguided,” with a lot of other media outlets barely even covering the story. Then there was the Guardian article mocking Priti Patel in the form of an overweight cow. This derogatory caricature of a ‘sacred cow’, mocked Priti Patel’s Indian/Hindu heritage but once again went unnoticed and is seen as acceptable to people as she doesn’t hold the “correct” views.
The left and trade-union movement work on racism has been undermined massively with Labour’s anti-semitism scandal but not as many people are commentating on the rising anti-Indian sentiment.
British Indians offer an issue for the identitarian far leftists as they have been successful economically and have socially integrated themselves into the UK . They show that strong family set-ups and belief in self-reliance are the most factors in being successful in Britain. Indian children are the least likely to be raised by a lone-parent, they score the highest (proportionally) in terms of most social & economic success measurements. They outperform white people in job markets and in education therefore remove the ridiculous narrative of “white privilege.” As well as this, British Indians tend to be patriotic and have sense of pride in being British. Indians were also the most pro-Brexit non-white ethnic group in the UK. This causes issues for the far left who continue to group ethnic minorities the same and don’t attempt to understand those who don’t fall into their belief system.
Priti Patel embodies what a lot of the far left can’t accept, a strong non-white woman who in their eyes is the “wrong kind of Indian.”
Watch here Priti discuss the far left, racism, identity politics and much more — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w7C5KJmh_8
