The people outside the Bell Hotel in Essex were angry. And there's a lot to be angry about: there is so much lacking in this society; there are many injustices. Is it the fault of asylum seekers? Of course it isn't. And the crowd which assembled outside the hotel over the past week knows that.
Oh, but they're worried about the safety of their kids? Well who knows the truth of the matter? A Bell hotel-resident refugee tried to kiss a girl and got charged with "sexual assault"? He was put away easily enough; all it took was for the police to follow up on an accusation.
Was it also easy to whip up the anger of others? Perhaps. Or maybe help was at hand. As happened before - at Southport, Dublin, or Ballymena... The far-right facilitators of rotten capitalism - cheerleaders for hire (ex-EDL, BNP, Britain First, UKIP ... and "Reform" activists) are always on hand to get the "deflection of anger" going.
Because godhelp us that the real cause of all the woes we face as working class people should be attacked and burnt down! Yes, and by that we mean the City, Westminster, the Palace, etc., etc... No, it's far better to pick on an easy target - and the more visible, the better, so that all that anger-energy is used up utterly uselessly through the safe valve of scapegoating "the other"...
And conveniently, today's out-and-out favourite for scapegoat is the migrant-asylum-seeker... Obligingly, the media, that other prostituted cheerleader of the system, tracks their journeys over here in detail - especially the last lap which involves resorting to iconic black rubber dinghies to cross the perilous Channel...
Scapegoats "über alles"?
Of course, in the 1920s and 1930s, it was the Jewish people who were the chosen scapegoat; blamed by the Nazis for causing the Great Depression in Germany and everywhere else.
And this scapegoating was again resorted to during the deep economic crisis of the 1970s. That time round the scapegoats were black and Asian migrants. The racism of the time was whipped up by the obliging National Front cheerleaders of rotten capitalism, encouraged by Enoch Powell - forerunner of Nigel Farage - who made that notorious Rivers of Blood speech predicting "race riots" and blood on Britain's streets.
Then along came Thatcher, who stole the would-be fascists' thunder. More proof, by the way, of who they really were/are. Just an exaggerated version of "hers truly" - and always willing to do the dirty work for her and her followers' protection - be it a bit of violence, or spiced-up propaganda against any potential real threat - like a general strike - to the viability of "gloriously" rotten English (& Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish) capitalism.
It's ironic really, that what's happening to asylum seekers worldwide today - nobody wants them - is what happened to the Jewish people fleeing persecution before, during, and after, WW2 due to fascism. And doubly ironic - indeed, horribly so - that the Jewish government of Israel has been treating the population of Gaza for the past 22 months (and the West Bank's Palestinians) as "rats" to be exterminated; as "Juden"... Just like the Nazis treated their forebears.
We're all in the same rubber dinghy
How the far-right propaganda against immigration can be at all credible and even boost Reform's ratings, is a mystery. Why would anyone buy it? The crisis in housing, jobs, wages etc., is clearly caused by rack-renting landlords and profiteering, by mostly "good old" Brits on the Rich List, quite a few of whom sit in Parliament: Farage, Tice... Geoffrey Robinson, Margaret Hodge!
It's a bit like blaming Hamas for the unspeakable horror perpetrated in Gaza today, quite evidently - and proudly - by the one and only Israeli army. But Israeli spokespersons say exactly that! "It's all because of Hamas"!
Just as they boast about doing everyone else a favour by "keeping the peace in the Middle East"! Yes, after creating absolute mayhem, near nuclear war, and now, their latest "achievement": presiding over the massacre of thousands of civilians in Syria's Suwayda city.
In fact they've made such a mess, that today it's impossible to know which so-called extremist or "jihadist" is which. But top of the "Terror Pyramid" sits the Israeli government with Netanyahu wearing its crown. A true "king of the beasts".
Yes, the world has turned on its head. The provocateur blames the target of his provocation for responding, when that was exactly what he wanted in order to have an excuse to fight him. This is obviously true of the IDF, but also of Starmer and his EU partners who provoked and now fuel an endless Ukraine war.
Today, Epping protestors may think they're defending some kind of British "birthright". But the truth is, they've no such entitlement. These "rights" belong to the ruling class: they give them and take them away.
Indeed, we're all sitting in a rubber dinghy, along with the migrants, floating nowhere. That is, until we recognise and build up our own class power, side by side with those denied justice, including asylum seekers. Yes, whether the Epping rioters like it or not, we're all "in it" together! And our strength is in our numbers! Welcome to the real fight!