Facebook's done it again

Evening readers,


It's with heavy heart I come to you today, for I have committed the awful crime of letting other's activities on Facebook annoy me. How so? Groups. Namely the ignorant, borderline racist ones that everytime I go on the damn site, which I assure you is far too much, I see young people whom I like and respect, have joined.


Let me paint you a picture. Well actually it's more of a collage, an arrangement of newspaper clippings, but anyway, I digress.


"ENGLAND FOR THE ENGLISH"


Let's play word association. What does that group make you think of? For me, the capitalisation is basically just a bad start, and it gets worse from there.


Click into the group and my fears are confirmed. I won't post the comments, but you can probably guess what they are; the general BNP theme is running strong. A general outpouring of hate and fear at people who suffer from exactly the same concerns and problems as the group members themselves - no jobs, no money, no security.


So why, then, has an intelligent person living a good life joined this group? How can young people be duped into what are effectively lies? Obviously I don't know the answer, or I wouldn't be blogging about it, but I do know that something, somewhere has failed if otherwise well balanced people can fall into this kind of stuff.


It's not a question of just selling multiculturalism differently, that does nothing to address the problems that...oh God let's generalise, white working-class communities face. Clearly there are issues that, well I'm tempted to say politicians, but really it's the communities themselves, need to deal with. What I'm angry about is how groups of people, who are largely blameless, get scapegoated, whilst the media does absolutely nothing to demonstrate the facts, and those in power do fuck all to deal with the problem that, let's use the hated word, CLASS.


Identity politics have an important place - gay rights, women's lib and in an extreme segregation, divide the working class by creating a misplaced "them&us" feeling. A truly free society, or a falsely free one for that matter, cannot be achieved without complete quality for the LGBT community, women, ethnic minorities and everyone else. But that doesn't mean they're the key to doing it. Honestly, I can understand why most people turn away from the class struggle as they get older - it's exhausting and never seems to go anywhere. For every person who listens and is willing to help change the world, there's five who walk on by.


Blaming them would probably be wrong. Grow up in a society where the only escape route from the shit of living is reality TV, and it's understandable why so many just don't give a damn. That doesn't make it any less depressing, it just puts into perspective the size of the challenge.


You know, at the start, where I mentioned digressing...yeah. I think that may have happened. Sorry and all.


So anyway, come on Fred, sum it up into something coherent.


Lots of people, especially young people, join racist groups on facebook. Why? Disillusioned, tired, misled. Society as a whole has been told over and over again for the last thirty years, that class doesn't exist, we're all middle class now, and class warfare has "no place here" by the privileged few who had all the advantages in life and now have fucked off with their money, happily ignoring the rest of us. Ignore something for long enough and maybe it'll go away? I think not. The problems are the same and they filter down to every level of society.


I must go and do something in the real world now, but I do hope that was informative. I almost typed fun, but tbh, I've been a miserable bastard in these last two posts, which is ridiculous, because socially my life is excellent right now. You have my word that I'll start writing about something positive the next time we meet.


I do have one nice message to leave you with though. No matter how many people join the unpleasant facebook groups, it's swamped by how many have joined the Haiti support groups. Or the Anti-Twilight groups, for that matter. There's hope for the world yet ;)


In solidarity
Red-Fred