Jim Allister, lead Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) cake-botherer and peddler of “legitimate concerns” nonsense, has made a fool of himself by doubling down on his decision to post racist AI slop.
On 16 June, the MP for North Antrim put a TUV-branded cartoon on his Facebook page. The witless AI-generated garbage depicts a bus marked “Dublin to Northern Ireland” and features an overwhelmingly dark-skinned group of passengers. Several appear to be Muslim and are shown waving signs boasting of free stuff they are supposedly about to receive as they cross the border.
Pittance passed off as fortune
As the Law Centre NI point out, an asylum seeker can expect to receive a whopping £49.18 per week. For those put up in hotels, they’re really living the high life on a bank-breaking £9.95 every seven days…
Appearing on Good Morning Ulster, Allister listed the basics of life which new arrivals receive, as if describing someone winning millions on the lottery. It begs the question of what exactly he thinks the alternative would be? For example, leaving people destitute instead?
Allister deployed the classic false dichotomy on the issue. He suggests we’re aiding migrants at the expense of “homeless people…on the streets of Belfast.” In addition, nevermind that Allister has little to say about the homeless except when deploying them as a convenient cudgel with which to beat asylum seekers.
Disregard too the obvious solution — let’s help both. We could do that by properly taxing wealth. The funds could then be used to pay for more social housing. However, any time that prospect arises at Westminster, racist Uncle Jim votes it down.
The wave of ethnic cleansing unleashed by loyalists last week was partly centred around the notion that housing is unfairly allocated to migrants. Doubling down on the notion of undeserving newcomers is thus criminally irresponsible. It is essentially a means of inciting violence, given the current context.
Allister whips up migrant panic
Of course, Allister couldn’t resist, given the movement of a Sudanese knife attacker from Dublin to Belfast enables him to do two of his favourite things. Those being — endorse racist talking points, and fixate on the lack of border infrastructure between the 26 Counties south of the border, and the 6 of the north.
Years ago, former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar outlined the dangers of building up security checks along it (denounced by who else but Jim Allister at the time).
Republicans don’t want anything that enforces the notion of a divided island. You put up a camera, someone smashes it. Then you need a guard to protect the camera. Then someone attacks the guard, and you need more guards. They get attacked, and suddenly you have a barracks on the border. This sort of escalation loop has massive dangers for stability in the Six Counties.
Similarly, no one but extreme racists wants ICE-style forces holding up trains and buses as they harass anyone with higher levels of melanin. All that song and dance, at enormous expense and risk, would be for the absolutely colossal, gargantuan, insurmountable torrent of…2,379 people currently claiming asylum support in the north of Ireland. In a region of nearly two million. The figure claiming assistance has been going down, not up, in recent years.
What ‘legitimate concerns’?
We’re living in an era of unprecedented mainstreaming of racist sentiment in Europe perhaps not seen since the 1930s. Sitting MPs like Allister peddle racist AI rubbish. Meanwhile, others like Rupert Lowe rave about “third world savages” and foam at the mouth about deporting millions. Moreover, MEPs at the European Parliament chant in a vile Nuremberg-esque chorus of “Send them back”, as they vote for harsher treatment of migrants.
This is aided by those in the centre condoning this confected bile by going on about ‘legitimate concerns’. Would it have been reasonable for a German in the 1930s to have had ‘legitimate concerns’ about Jewish people? After all, they too were apparently exploiting and undermining the nation at every turn.
We know it wouldn’t have been remotely reasonable, as the fictions about Jewish people were an utter crock of shit wholly invented by fascist bastards. Exactly the same is true today, as we see Britain descend into authoritarianism under wholly false myths about imperilled white people.
When answering back to the Jim Allisters’ of this world — the family member repeating GB News talking points, the racist bore in the pub — the approach has to be uncompromising. Don’t give them one millimetre, because the rubbish they spout doesn’t merit it. Nothing they say on these matters has any legitimacy, and the stakes of what we now face mean no ground can be ceded for the sake of being polite. These people have been historically wrong, they’re factually wrong, and they’re morally wrong.
Our problems are caused by billionaires. Not migrants, not Muslims. Racists can compensate for their lack of artistry with AI slop, and for lack of brains with brutish violence. However, if enough good people get out on the streets to challenge them in-person, and refuse to relent on the facts, the bastards won’t win.
Featured image via the Canary
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