Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Prove it, you lying racist bastards.

You'll have to bear with me today as I try to emerge unhurt from the tsunami of bullshit, manipulation and misinformation otherwise known as the Express and Mail's coverage of immigration issues. A government report has come out with some stats. The Mail and Express, as is their wont, do a Chris Tarrant and say "But we don't want to give you that! Read what we want you to hear about immigration!" then, in the case of the Mail, pretend it's an 'open and honest debate' by bolting on a bit (and it's a waffer-thin bit) of balance. More of that later, I promise you.

As we saw earlier, the Express is as subtle as a fucking brick, deliberately using hysterical language to lie about immigration and portray it as an 'invasion'. I often wonder what the Jewish community thinks about Richard Desmond - on the one hand you could say he's a philanthropist, always giving time and money to charities, especially Jewish ones; on the other, how comfortably does that sit with the sons and daughters of immigrants and refugees when they see today's immigrants and asylum-seekers demonised, lied about and smeared as 'invaders' in his newspapers? Isn't that just the sort of inflammatory language and despicable lies that those families faced when they came to this country? Desmond has said previously that his editors are chefs, the publications are cakes and he can sometimes add a cherry on top - implying with a refreshing honesty, unlike other pathetic proprietors who claim they never touch anything in their papers, that he does have a say in what happens in the Express, Star and OK. Does he support this stance, then? And if he does, what does that make him?

But that's the Express. Not subtle, not clever, not very good. I don't even mind that it's not subtle. I'm not subtle. I swear and rant a lot, so I can hardly call them out for doing the same kind of thing. But the Express are more than just brutal: they're nasty, clumsy and inarticulate, a magnet for racists, using language deliberately to stir up feelings of uneasiness between communities. The Express is a vile, dirty place where numbskulls and scum can have their base and baseless prejudices confirmed.

You're expecting me now to say what I've said many times before - that the Mail is a lot more subtle, more cunning and more coded with its use of language. Well yes, it usually is, but here's just a snippet of their immigration coverage today:

'White flight' as more than 400,000 Britons head for a new life abroad

What the fuck? I mean seriously, if you're going to use a term like white flight - and I couldn't give a toss whether you put it in quotes or not, that won't save you - you had damn well be able to prove it, my friends. Otherwise you are a racist, pure and simple. Oh yes, the Mail and others like it love to claim that you can't say anything about immigration without unfairly being branded a racist by the idiotic left - indeed, there's an attempt to state this also in the Mail today, of which more later - but if you say 'white' you are talking about a race. It's as simple as that. And if you talk about 'white' when you can't prove you're talking about 'white' and you're only saying 'white' because of assumptions you're making, then that is racist.

So can the Mail prove this 'white flight' theory? Can they prove that white people are moving abroad, with a side order of the implication that it's because of immigration into the country that these whites are doing it?

Look at what they say:

Record numbers of Britons are leaving the UK to settle abroad, latest statistics reveal.

In the 12 months to June this year a total of 406,000 British residents left to live overseas, of whom an unprecedented 202,000 were UK citizens, up from 196,000 a year ago.

It is the highest level of so-called 'white flight' from the UK since records began.

Oh, I didn't realise that there were records for 'white flight' dating back to the Domesday Book, but great. I mean, what the fuck? Are "British residents" white now? Can we say that? Are we sure about that? Are "UK citizens" all white now? Is that right?

For a kickoff, you have the misleading ramping-up of figures by quoting numbers of "British residents" first. Many of these will, of course, be migrants, citizens of other countries and migrant workers, sometimes going back temporarily, sometimes going back forever. Because the second figure, of UK citizens, is half that of the first. But once again I ask: how does the Mail know they are white? Where is the proof they are white? Are they white? Might they not be second, third, fourth generation immigrant families moving abroad?

This is NOT white flight. This is the moving around of people. This is what migration is, and guess what, Brits do it as well as people from other countries, that's what this whole bloody story is about, for fuck's sake - yet Britons emigrating is always portrayed as being OK, whereas other nationalities coming here? Hmm. You'll remember how the Mail got all teary-eyed over a British family who wanted to go to Canada. Do they report stories of immigrants trying to get into the UK but not racking up enough points, or being stopped by the Border Agency, and so on, and so on? No, of course they fucking don't.

The use of 'white flight' is an absolute disgrace. It has connotations - easily deniable, of course, in a Littlejohnian stylee - that these good white people are leaving the UK because of other people coming in. Well if they are leaving because of that, they're stupid racists, and I'm glad they're gone. And don't fucking come back. I imagine the reason the Mail is so worried is because that's several fewer readers for the kind of anti-immigration poison they've been spouting for years. If there really is 'white flight', and there is no evidence whatsoever that there is in the slightest, then the people responsible for it are those people who have told lies about immigrants - the Mail themselves.

Can the Mail prove it? No, they can't. But I don't think they care. There is no way of telling the ethnicity of those people leaving this country. We don't even know if they've emigrated forever, or if they might be coming back. But that doesn't matter: the racist dog-whistles are there. The use of 'white flight' is there for a reason. And it's obvious what that reason is.

The Mail may not be as crass as the Express, but they're both saying the same thing. And it's a pretty disgusting thing, too.

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