When I was one of those Westminster Tory twats who thought a good night out involved hanging around in the subsidised bars in the Houses of Parliament, I once came across a Labour Party researcher who demanded: “You’re Asian, you should be one of us”.
He was talking about being a Labour supporter, basing his insistence about my voting preferences not on what I believed to be the best for the country I was born and raised in, but rather, my skin colour and ethnic background.
“No,” I replied. “I’m not Asian, I’m British… and I’m going to vote Conservative”. I hope you, dear reader, will forgive me my trespasses on the latter point.
I was reminded of this incident when I accidentally stumbled upon a Huffington Post article this morning. The piece – ‘Britain First’s Deputy Leader Jayda Fransen’s Family Tree Is A Bit Awkward‘ – seems to imply that because one of the leaders of Britain First – a UK nationalist group – was descended from immigrants, that she can’t possibly be in favour of strict border controls.
Whatever you think of Britain First and their pledge to “[c]ompletely halt any further immigration”, I hope you’ll see that the Huffington Post is being blatantly racist, ignorant, and insulting to people like me, the progeny of immigrants.
Attempting to claim that ethnicity (or is genetics?) determines what our political or philosophical persuasions should be – especially with regards our home nations – is the worst kind of racial profiling and stereotyping.
HuffPo’s Chris York writes “..it is rather awkward that the far-right group’s deputy leader is of foreign descent, according to an amateur family history researcher” before using some jpeg-artefact-laden Wordpress blog as a source for his story. Great journalism.
The blog states: “I’ve been studying family history now for long enough to suspect that [Jayda Fransen isn’t] completely British. Fransen is not a British name. So I decided to have a little dig around.
“Let’s start with [her] paternal grandparents; John Joseph Fransen, or rather Jan Jozef Wynand Fransen. Born in the Netherlands in 1927, Jan came to England with the Dutch Naval fleet.”
He then adds that some of Ms. Fransen’s family may even have been… dun dun dun… Jewish.
So what is Mr. York, his blog-mate, and the Huffington Post really saying? Here are a few alternative headlines for their story that I have concocted:
- ‘YOU CAN’T BE JEWISH AND BELIEVE IN CONTROLLED IMMIGRATION’;
- ‘WE HAVE EXPOSED A FOREIGNER (SORT OF) WHO HAS INTEGRATED INTO BRITAIN!!!’
- ’14 REASONS YOU CAN’T BE A PATRIOT OR A NATIONALIST AND NOT BE “COMPLETELY BRITISH”‘
- ‘WE FOUND SOMETHING ON A WORDPRESS BLOG THAT WILL SHOCK YOU TO THE CORE’
Unsurprisingly, the “Exposing Britain First” blog calls its PDF updates about Britain First the “EBFington Post” as a hat tip to their “mainstream” counterpart who uses them as single sources for heritage and ancestry race baiting.
P.S. Because I’m sure someone will try and portray this as a defence of Britain First – it’s not. Not because I refuse to defend them either. But because I have bigger fish to fry. I wonder when the HuffPo will pick up on stories that really matter, rather than telling the sons and daughters of migrants to get back in their political boxes?