Reform UK is fuelling the return of racist language and behaviour | Letters

Some members of the public feel they have been given ‘permission’ to shed any pretence of tolerance, says Diann Hanson. And Dr Guru Singh writes of the despair felt by most people of minority ethnic originIn her article (The Nigel Farage-ing of Britain is causing a terrible ripple effect – and families like mine are feeling it, 3 September), Natalie Morris discusses how she had hoped we had moved beyond the racism and intolerance experienced by her parents’ generation. I was born in the 1950s and often heard appalling racist, homophobic and misogynistic language from my father and his family. I too believed that we had thankfully progressed as a society, at least to a point where such language and the entitled attitude to its accompanying cruelty where no longer considered socially acceptable. Although hateful social undercurrents have never been completely eradicated, the worst were viewed as abhorrent anomalies that provoked utter outrage from government, media and, generally, the public.I worked as a teacher in schools in a deprived area of the north, now targeted by Reform UK, where children would openly challenge even a hint of such hate from their peers. They recognised it as dehumanising. It is therefore horrifying that Farage et al have not faced such challenge from the media or government, which have failed to address the societal consequences of a return to overt normalisation of racist language and attitudes. What is concerning is just how quickly some members of the wider public feel they have been given “permission” to shed any pretence of tolerance. Unchecked, Farage has raised the possibility of the unthinkable in a certain sector of the public psyche and has been enabled in building normalising frameworks around disgusting ideologies. Continue reading...

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