Blimey, I've got a horrible accent

I know, I shouldn’t have.  But I did and I do. I occasionally trawl through the online comment forums of the papers- including those of the red-tops.  Call me masochistic.

I pay particular attention to the rantings and ravings about immigration and the rights of EU citizens.  We are called parasites, scumbags, leftist bastards, freeloaders and that is from the comments that have not been deleted. EU citizens are ‘taking your jobs, your houses and your GPs’. We are being told to go: ‘eff all these immis home,’ and that when we do come to the UK, we ‘are pregnant or do any low wage job for couple of weeks and then get pregnant and claim destitution to get social housing for some random child.’.  We are: ‘EU dregs that come here purely to scrounge’ or ‘uneducated and here to pack shelves get free money’ and folk are happy to get rid of us: ‘We won: no more foreigners with horrible accents’. 

More often than not, these rants are ill informed, full of mistakes and based on a body of highly biased and deliberately misleading reporting.  It makes me so, so sad.  When I keep to my own circle of friends and acquaintances all is fine and dandy.  Stepping out of the bubble, I don’t feel very welcome anymore; I have been made into ‘The Other’.

What is it that makes a person, who is probably quite reasonable and amicable when you meet him or her face to face, spouting racist and xenophobic language online?  What has happened to the much celebrated sense of fair play and civility of the British public, the values that ‘everybody’ is so keen to defend? It is certainly not apparent in many of the comments.

A person’s perception of the world is partly formed by contrasts.  We instantly assess people by how much they are like us or unlike us.  By comparing ourselves to individuals or groups we form our sense of self, our individual as well as our group identity. We are of a particular religion; we support a football team or a political party, we are dog lovers and we can be all of these or none.  It is perfectly possible to have more than one identity.  I am Dutch, but within the Netherlands, my identity is closely linked to Amsterdam.  I live in the UK, but I identify more with Scotland than with the whole of the UK.  I am firmly against Brexit and so identify myself with the ‘Remoaners’.  And since Brexit, another identity has been foisted upon me: One of the Three Million.   I say foisted, because it is not an identity I desired. The online forums turn me into a stranger, probably with a forked tongue and little horns or other lurid appendices.  The commenters identify themselves with a subset of those who voted for Brexit: those who voted on the issue of immigration; and now they’ve won they’re baying for blood.

In the wake of the recent terror attacks, Theresa May called for an end to ‘separated, segregated communities’. There is no justification for identifying oneself with a violent Islamic cult, being prepared to sacrifice your own life in order to kill as many others as possible.  But whilst Theresa May refers to Muslim communities, it is not difficult to see that separated communities of all religions and none exist because of the failure of consecutive governments to create a more just and fairer society.  The NHS is in dire straits; there is no social housing being built. There are 3.7 million children living in poverty in the UK and 1.7 million of those are living in severe poverty; 63% of children living in poverty are in a family where someone works; the wages are simply too low to support a family.  So people need to find a scapegoat. 

Helped by Farage and Co that is easy enough: Britain is full and the migrants are to blame.  Rather than holding the government to account for years of underfunding, migrants from the EU and beyond should be thrown out as soon as possible or at least be cut off from any benefits that British taxpayers take for granted.  Britain for the Brits, an uncomfortable echo of Trump’s ‘America First!’: no more foreigners with horrible accents. Many keyboard warriors have bought into this utopia – with predictable consequences. The lone voice of reason is drowned out by the barrage of suspicions and hatred.  Cyber soldiers: left, right or downright nutty: the anonymity combined with the immediateness of reply and counter reply makes them an unsavoury aspect of contemporary society.

Trawling through the more extreme comments doesn’t make me happy or hopeful.  Is this how they think of me?  That we are nothing but ill-educated scroungers?  One of the authors in ‘The Good Immigrant’ writes: ‘What’s it like to live in a country that doesn’t trust you and doesn’t want you unless you win an Olympic Gold medal or a national baking competition?’  My days of Olympic Gold are over and my cakes always have soggy bottoms: nae chance for me.  That’s me out, then.