This also happened in the Netherlands.
I remember having started petitions about this as soon as it started happening in the UK. “Incidents include individuals being spat on and assaulted, with an unprovoked attack on a 26-year-old woman in Edinburgh, the beating of a university lecturer out jogging in Southampton and a physical assault on Singaporean student Jonathan Mok on Oxford Street in London.”
Donald Trump was not helping. Boris Johnson was not helping.
How can we make this better? How do we create a strong voice against this sort of thing? I have so many questions and so few answers.
Politicians who say something – frequently quite innocent – that others misunderstand are often forced to resigned. When top politicians – sometimes “jokingly” – deliberately whip up aggression, they tend to get away with it and are often even applauded for it. I guess this is also why some people love watching mud-wrestling? But discrimination and hate tend to beget discrimination and hate. I have also seen it in myself. There is only so much you can take without getting really angry.
Behind it are real or perceived power imbalances and when Presidents and PMs signal that hate towards a specific group of people is okay, it shifts that perceived power imbalance even more.
