Penny and her friend on returning to Britain are shocked by the way British corporate media are treating people fleeing for their lives from wars and destitution brought about by Britain's participation in the Empire's neoliberal and imperial policies. This is an old divide and conquer strategy which she describes very well. The British and European capitalist ruling classes are apparently succeeding in frightening their subjects with the consequence that most ordinary people see migrants as a threat instead of the neo-imperial and fascistic policies of their ruling classes whose policies have created the problem along with a number of others. Chalk up another victory for ruling classes in class-structured societies!
The behaviour of the British and wider European elite towards migrants is not simple inhumanity. It is strategic inhumanity. It is weaponised inhumanity designed to convince populations fracturing under hammer-blows of austerity and economic chaos that the enemy is out there, that there is an “us” that must be protected from “them”.
.... Human decency, however, has been factored out of the equation – on purpose. Britain and the rest of Europe have deliberately been whipped up into a state of panic over migration, and when people are panicking, they don’t really listen to reason.
