A short thread on “legitimate concerns”. The phrase is used repeatedly by UK government ministers. The Home Secretary is at it again this week. But only ever - as far as I can tell - in one context: people’s response to the arrival of asylum seekers. Please read whole 🧵before responding - thanks As far as I can discover (please correct me if I’m wrong), no government minister in either this or the previous administration has used the phrase when discussing people’s protests about the genocide in Gaza. Or about climate breakdown. Or about any other protest that challenges established power. In these cases, they clearly believe our concerns are illegitimate. So illegitimate that they often associate us with – or even proscribe us as – terrorists. Care about Palestinians? Terrorist. Want to burn and kill asylum seekers? We might not like your methods, but you have legitimate concerns. It doesn’t stop there. Compare the way ministers treat local people’s views about providing accommodation for asylum seekers with their treatment of other planning objections. In these cases we don’t have legitimate concerns. We’re “nimbys”, “blockers” and “zealots”. So the favourite obsession of the far right, being weaponised by US billionaires to push us towards their technofascist dystopia, is repeatedly legitimised by a Labour government. Other concerns, including the longstanding concerns of the left, are vilified and delegitimised. You might ask yourself “whose side are they on?”. You might not like the answer, but it becomes hard to deny. So why? Why, when we know that appeasing the far right empowers and builds it, do they keep doing it, alienating their base and helping to deliver the country to Reform or Restore? The thread on one page: skywriter.blue Thanks for bearing with me. Ends/
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