Milkshakes – Farage and the far-right

Tomorrow people will vote in European Elections something we shouldn’t have been a part of due to the UK supposedly leaving the European Union. 

In the previous few weeks of campaigning we have seen high profile incidents where MEP candidates have had milkshakes thrown at them. Some have seen as a childish pranks and others have classified it as ‘domestic terrorism’. What ever your views on this doesn’t take away the real issue people should be talking about. Why are they people being covered in fast food drinks?

Far-right commentators are quick to blame ‘militant far-left agitators’ and see it as a divisional argument where two sides of a political debate are waring for attention and support. This divisive tactic for me makes people believe that there are competing enemies ready to defend their beliefs and use varying methods of protest. I think there is a simpler point that’s being made.

People are utterly fed up of hearing hatred and vilification of various communities and minorities. Conspiracy theories are now so engrained in some that they have become part and parcel of everyday life. In a blog post last year I wrote about how the conspiracy theory is the new religion. We have accepted revisionist history lessons as if they were fact. Happy to embrace far-right tropes such as ‘Islam isn’t a race therefore it’s not racist to criticise it’ (or demonise an entire religion).

As I explained about confirmation bias we look for possible information to back up our own beliefs without actually thinking rationally about a situation or event. We are constantly on the search for material that panders to our own fears and prejudices. For example, say I am afraid of spiders I see a story about a man who was hospitalised due to a bite from a spider on holiday and we confirm in our minds the reasons that we hate spiders, and don’t read the rest of the story that explains the man was hospitalised due to the wound being infected, rather than the actual spider bite. The danger doesn’t come from the spider but the infection that is caused and could have happened in any other way in which skin is broken and allowed germs breed and spread.

I try to look at a situation rationally and objectively. See the reasons behind someone’s actions. I don’t follow any religions and dismiss conspiracies and theories not facts. The recent increase in measles is without a doubt down to parents listening to lies that vaccines cause autism. They don’t. There is no proof just one discredited medic with an opinion.

These theories that can spread quickly over social media and they become irrational when parents are willing to endanger their own children but not getting them vaccinated against deadly but treatable diseases. Rational thought is dismissed and science thrown away. If make this rational statement on social media I can guarantee within a few minutes I will have someone popping up on my timeline to argue the case that the ‘conspiracy’ is true and vaccines are bad for the world.

For me Farage is the arse-end of politics. He has used the theory of leaving the EU as a basis of political debate and whether you agree with him or not, it is clear the far-right xenophobes have latched on to believing that if the UK does eventually leave then the freedom of people to come in to the country will some how be immediately stopped – it won’t.

I know all those who voted to leave the EU aren’t racist but all the racists voted to leave.

R Kelly

I never liked him even from the 90s so much so I would deliberately not buy compilation albums if he was featured on them but R Kelly is part of a music scene that treats women as objects and not human beings. 

You only have to look at the music that the artists produce and the derogatory ways in which women are used in the videos.

Let’s take this group of guys who think that putting loads of women around them some how make them desirable and worthy of what they are singing about. But you have to ask yourselves the question why are there so many women in bikinis in this video and what is their purpose?

If you have managed to take your eyes off them for at least twenty seconds you would realise there is absolutely no reason why they should be in the video. Its basically talking about meeting people and sex but the women are used as objects. You would be mistaken to think it resembled a beauty contest from the 1970s. It’s a reflection of something that should be consigned to a bygone era.

R Kelly has been accused of using women and abusing them in coercive relationships. It an appalled indictment of a person who has spent decades in the public eye. A number of documentaries have been made about him and the women who have known Kelly have gone on record to say that they were controlled in every part of their lives. What they can wear and who them can talk to is a common pattern in controlling relationships.

It has been stated that an average of two women a week are killed in England and Wales by a partner or ex-partner yet it seems to continue without much attention. There should be public outrage that so many people lose their lives to horrendous abusive relationships.

Women aren’t placed on this planet to be subjugated to mens pathetic egos when they cannot cope with the fact that another man talks to their girlfriend or wife. They lose it when a relationship ends and aren’t mature enough to deal that there is no longer love in the affinity between the pair.

I have know men confront me because they don’t like the fact that I have been talking a laughing with their fiancé even though I am gay I was still seen as threat. If you are with someone who cannot cope with you going out with your friends then its time to look at the relationship to see if its really worth the stress the mans jealousy causes.

People like R Kelly get away with bad behaviour because some allowed it to happen. The mark of a true feminist is to believe that you are worth just as a man and not to be controlled by anyone.