The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80152   Message #1468106
Posted By: Piers
22-Apr-05 - 12:52 PM
Thread Name: BS: UK Elections
Subject: RE: BS: UK Elections
I very much doubt racism can be wiped out be any amount of persuasion or campaigning solely against it. Society isn't fair in any way (the richest 1 percent own nearly four times as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent added together) and many people are looking for someone to blame, mistakenly they see people from overseas as draining limited resources and increasing competition for jobs. These flames are fanned, or even started, by the ruling/owning classes, who are seeking to ride to power on the back of it (e.g. BNP) as well diverting attention from their dominance over resources being the cause of poverty. For example, it is well documented that the upper echelons of the Ku Klux Klan comprised of plantation owners who feared the combination of black and white workers after the American civil war - divide and rule.

It isn't necessarily division on strictly racial grounds (as if the human race could ever be strictly divided into races) it is usually on grounds of nationality the rich divide workers and so patriotism and nationalism are used to persuade the poor to help the rich expand or defend their resources.

To get rid of the BNP and other racists, we will have to get rid of capitalism. Which is why I will be showing my positive preference for a world of common ownership of all resources, democratic control of the community by everyone, production purely to meet people's needs and free and equal access to all goods and services by writing 'socialism' across my ballot paper, as there is no socialist candidate in my parish.