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Scapegoating An Ancient Tool of the Powerful

It has now become fashionable, once more, to scapegoat migrants and refugees for the major ills that are, in the final analysis, an outcome of the activities of global corporate capital and the foreign policies of major powers aimed at defending these activities—ills that include shameless corruption at the highest levels of society, armed conflict, mass violations of civil and human rights of the citizenry, the relentless widening of income and wealth within and between nations, and the ensuing wretched pauperization of the masses. The most recent examples, complete with murderous violence, as of this writing, come from Myanmar and South Africa. However, many of the Western nations who never cease to tirelessly claim to be champions of democracy and all that is good on this earth are guilty too; even if (at the moment) the scapegoating is only at the level of rhetoric on the part of politicians and some in the corporate media who in spewing their hypocritical venom hide behind the skirt of “freedom of speech.”

A particularly odious example of hate speech masquerading as freedom of speech was just penned recently (reproduced at the end of this document) for The SUN tabloid in the United Kingdom by a person who clearly appears to be intellectually challenged by the name of Katie Hopkins. Leaving aside the matter of plain human decency, the editors of her newspaper in publishing her column chose to completely ignore the lessons of history; one of which is that hate speech—especially by politicians and/or the media against the powerless and the marginalized—has no place in a democratic society. Remember Nazi Germany; Rwanda; etc.? They also appear to have chosen to forget who the millions of economic and/or political refugees who poured out of Europe and migrated to Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Brazil, etc. over the centuries after Columbus, coming all the way into the post-World War II period, were. To take their

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line, they were all “cockroaches.” (A genocidal label their paper has employed, via Hopkins’ column, to designate today’s refugees heading for Europe.)

NOTE: If after going through this entire document you are inclined to want to do something positive by simply using your keyboard—and at no monetary cost to you—sign the petition that Change.org has organized and which is available here:

https://www.change.org/p/the-sun-newspaper-remove-katie-hopkins-as-a-columnist

Katie Hopkins has just written a piece so hateful that it might give Hitler pause – why was it published?Simon Usborne Saturday 18 April 2015

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/katie-hopkins-when-is-enough-enough-10186490.html

As Hopkins becomes more offensive to stay relevant and in work, it’s not ok for us to sit on our hands

Two things have been clear for years: a) Katie Hopkins has cleverly built a popular, personal brand on provocative views that tend to to demonise people she doesn’t like, and get a rise out of people who don’t like her; b) the best way to respond is not to respond at all.

That’s fine - Hopkins has children to feed and dress - and we can unfollow her, and avoid what she writes and says. Free country, free speech. Just look the other way.

But when a national newspaper, which gives this brand an audience of two million people, happily prints language that might give Hitler pause, is that still OK? Or is it worth responding this time, even if she’ll love every minute?

A bit strong to compare Hopkins to Hitler? Read her column on page 11 of yesterday’s Sun.

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“Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”. That was The Sun's headline, written apparently without concern.

She then refers to migrants in Calais who try to board trucks heading to Britain as “a plague of feral humans”.

Katie Hopkins

She proposes an Australian approach to migrants on boats. “They threaten them with violence until they bugger off, throwing cans of Castlemaine in an Aussie version of sharia stoning”.

She says we don’t need Save the Children “encouraging” migrants to make the journey. “What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country”.

She adds: “Some of our towns are festering sores,

plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money”.

Then she writes this, and The Sun prints it. “Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. They might look a bit “Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984”, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb. They are survivors”.

In the environment that led to creation of the Third Reich in Germany, Polish people were seen as "an East European species of cockroach", while Jews were rats. When Hutu extremists used radio propaganda to incite violence against the Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide, they called on people to “weed out the cockroaches.”

Putting to one side the facts - that Hopkins’ cockroaches include families trying to flee war zones - it is not a challenge to free speech to question the publication of language that reads so much like dehumanising, fascist propaganda. You don’t have to be humourless, or unsympathetic to the truck drivers Hopkins set out to protect, to feel like something is wrong here. And it is not about political correctness. It’s about decency.

Even before we consider her words in relation to the legal definition of racial hatred, The Sun has a responsibility to decide where to draw the line. What if any discussions took place before editors sent page 11 to be printed? (I asked Stig Abell, the Managing Editor, and Dylan Sharpe, the paper’s head of PR, for their thoughts on Twitter last night, but no reply so far.)

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I suspect that if any other journalist had filed that column to The Sun, editors would have rightly gasped and spiked it immediately. But this is Brand Hopkins. This is what she does, and she peppers her prejudice with gags. People like her - there is demand for her views, and it’s good for business. And what about free speech?!

But as Hopkins becomes more offensive to stay relevant and in work, so that she can make a good living for her family, it’s not OK to sit on our hands, even if challenging her and The Sun fuels the brand and delights the writer. There’s no way she’ll stop - she loves this, as I found when I met her a couple of years ago - but if the editors and producers who giver her a platform (LBC have just given her her own radio show) think that column was acceptable, they must explain why, and justify her future employment.

Read more: Hopkins has a panic button in her family homeHopkins 'in talks' to host her own chat show

UN Human Rights Chief urges U.K. to tackle tabloid hate speech, after migrants called “cockroaches” Source: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15885&LangID=E

GENEVA (24 April 2015) – After decades of sustained and unrestrained anti-foreigner abuse, misinformation and distortion, and in the wake of a recent article in the Sun newspaper calling migrants “cockroaches,” the UN Human Rights Chief on Friday urged the U.K. authorities, media and regulatory bodies to take steps to curb incitement to hatred by British tabloid newspapers, in line with the country’s obligations under national and international law.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein also called on all European countries to take a firmer line on racism and xenophobia which he said “under the guise of freedom of expression, are being allowed to feed a vicious cycle of vilification, intolerance and politicization of migrants, as well as of marginalized European minorities such as the Roma.”

“This is not only sapping compassion for the thousands of people fleeing conflict, human rights violations and economic deprivation who are drowning in the Mediterranean. The nasty underbelly of racism that is characterizing the migration debate in an increasing number of EU countries, has skewed the EU response to the crisis, which as we see in the results of the EU Council deliberations yesterday focuses on deterrence and on preventing movement at all costs, risks making the crisis even worse, and could sadly result in further massive loss of life.”

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An article by a Sun columnist on 17 April began with the words “Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don't care.” Elsewhere in the article she described migrants as “a plague of feral humans,” compared them to “a novovirus” and said some British towns were “festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers shelling out benefits like Monopoly money.”

The Sun columnist also advocated using gunboats to stop migrants, threatening them with violence, and said “drilling a few holes in the bottom of anything suspiciously resembling a boat would be a good idea too.”

In language very similar to that employed by Rwanda’s Kangura newspaper and Radio Mille Collines during the run up to the 1994 genocide, the columnist said “make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches.” Leading figures in both Rwandan media organizations were later convicted by an international tribunal of public incitement to commit genocide.

On Monday, a British NGO, the Society of Black Lawyers, reported the Sun to the U.K.’s Metropolitan Police and requested the matter be investigated under the 1986 Public Order Act to see whether the article amounts to incitement to racial hatred.

Zeid urged the UK authorities to take the complaint seriously, and to closely examine the broader issue of incitement to hatred by the tabloid press and other sectors of society. “This vicious verbal assault on migrants and asylum seekers in the UK tabloid press has continued unchallenged under the law for far too long. I am an unswerving advocate of freedom of expression, which is guaranteed under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), but it is not absolute. Article 20 of the same Covenant says ‘Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.’”

The High Commissioner noted that Article 20 of the ICCPR, as well as elements relating to hate speech in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination* (both of which have been ratified by the U.K., as well as by all other EU countries), were rooted in the desire to outlaw the type of anti-Semitic and other racially based hate speech used by the Nazi media during the 1930s. “The Nazi media described people their masters wanted to eliminate as rats and cockroaches. This type of language is clearly inflammatory and unacceptable, especially in a national newspaper. The Sun’s editors took an editorial decision to publish this article, and – if it is found in breach of the law – should be held responsible along with the author.”

Zeid noted that the Sun article was simply one of the more extreme examples of thousands of anti-foreigner articles that have appeared in UK tabloids over the past two decades. “To give just one glimpse of the scale of the problem, back in 2003 the Daily Express ran 22 negative front pages stories about asylum seekers and refugees in a single 31-day period. Asylum seekers and migrants have, day after day, for years on end, been linked to rape, murder, diseases such as HIV and TB, theft, and almost every conceivable crime and misdemeanour imaginable in front-page articles and two-page spreads, in cartoons, editorials, even on the sports pages of almost all the UK’s national tabloid newspapers,” he said. “Many of these stories have been grossly distorted and some have been outright fabrications. Elsewhere in Europe, as well as in other countries, there has been a similar process of demonization taking place, but usually led by extremist political parties or demagogues rather than extremist media.”

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The High Commissioner noted that “while migration and refugee issues are completely valid topics for public debate, it is imperative that migration policy decisions that affect people’s lives and fundamental human rights should be made on the basis of fact -- not fiction, exaggeration or blatant xenophobia. History has shown us time and again the dangers of demonizing foreigners and minorities, and it is extraordinary and deeply shameful to see these types of tactics being used in a variety of countries, simply because racism and xenophobia are so easy to arouse in order to win votes or sell newspapers.”

ENDS

* Article 4 of the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) says that States Parties "shall declare an offence punishable by law all dissemination of ideas based on racial superiority or hatred, incitement to racial discrimination, as well as acts of violence or incitement to such acts against any race or group of persons of another colour or ethnic origin...". The international body overseeing the implementation of ICERD has made it clear that the provisions of article 4 apply to non-citizens.

Article 19(3) of the ICCPR makes it clear that the exercise of the right to freedom of expression carries with it special duties and responsibilities, and it may therefore be subject to certain restrictions.

In addition, the 2012 Rabat Plan of Action, the outcome of extensive international discussions on the prohibition of advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence provides further useful guidance on these issues.

For more information and media requests, please contact Rupert Colville (+41 22 917 9767 / rcolville@ohchr.org), Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org).

UN Human Rights, follow us on social media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unitednationshumanrightsTwitter: http://twitter.com/UNrightswireGoogle+ gplus.to/unitednationshumanrights YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/UNOHCHR

The racist column from The SUN, a British tabloid with a primarily working class readership, published on April 17, 2015, is reproduced below. (The Sun is owned by a giant transnational multimedia corporate conglomerate founded by the Australian Rupert Murdoch whose genius was to discover decades ago that there is gold in them thar hills of intolerance, intellectual mediocrity, cultural banality, and anti-working class propaganda.)

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Original source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/suncolumnists/katiehopkins/6414865/Katie-Hopkins-I-would-use-gunships-to-stop-migrants.html

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