On LDV we rarely reproduce press releases from HQ word for word, but this one needs to be given wide coverage. Although the poster has disappeared from the Leave.EU website it is still circulating across social media.
Tim Farron accused the Leave.EU campaign of racism today after the group endorsed by Nigel Farage released a poster saying: “Act now before we see an Orlando-style atrocity here before too long.”
The poster was taken down online but Leave.EU failed to apologise. Tim said:
The latest poster from the leave side shows that campaign’s true colours. It is scaremongering at its worst. Their decision to take the poster down but not apologise is cowardly, they know they’ve crossed the line and should apologise.
The media should not play into the hands of their base campaigning tactics by reproducing the poster. As we enter the last phase of the campaign, let us have a debate based on facts and figures and not give oxygen to those who want to fan the flames of fear.
This is supposed to be a debate about ideas. Whoever made this shameful poster should be sacked.
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33 Comments
I agree that the poster is in poor taste and that politicans need to be careful with their language so that an entire community doesn’t become blamed for the acts of the few.
However the lib dems need to face up to the fact that there is a problem. It appears that terrorists have used the mass migration to sneak into Europe. It’s true that once the refugees are given European passports the UK is open to them. And it is true that many in the Islamic world are anti gay to an extent that the religions in the west aren’t. There are still Islamic countries in the world where being gay carries the death penalty.
These issues need addressed carefully, but they do need to be addressed. The lib dems and the rest of the regressive left do not seem to want to address this.
Calling for whoever made the poster to be sacked is trying to silence debate, not addressing the issue. If leave win the referendum it will be because remain have not addressed people’s legitimate fears and concerns.
@Rightsaidfredfan – “It appears that terrorists have used the mass migration to sneak into Europe”
Do you have evidence to support that statement? The Paris atrocities were carried out by French and Belgian nationals, radicalised whilst in Europe.
Rightsaidfredfan – the atrocity in Orlando was carried out by a US born US citizen.
You’re right that Islamic countries have some of the most appalling anti-gay laws. If your argument is that more should be done to combat homophobia, here in the UK and overseas, I am with you, and we can have a debate about how that can most effectively be achieved.
However you then make a link with refugees. Are you suggesting no-one from one of these countries should ever be granted asylum in a western country? Or would you have some kind of vetting procedure for tolerance and absence of bigotry? Or are you making a different point that I’ve missed? I’d be interested to hear.
When large numbers of people are displaced by war that does create challenges – for neighbouring states most of all, but also for countries further afield such as ourselves.
But in any case, whatever we do with refugees, that would have had no impact on the Orlando killings which, just to repeat, were carried out by a US born US citizen who according to reports had never even been to his ancestral home of Afghanistan.
@ Rightsaidfredfan
Not quite in the words of Bruce Bairnsfather, ‘Haven’t you got a better hole to dig somewhere ?’
The bigotry of the leave campaign is truly astounding, no liberal should be voting with them
There are no Muslim countries EU.
Democracy is right when it states that people can vote how they like. However their vote should be based upon facts and not fiction.
Shocking, well said Tim…
ppb
“The bigotry of the leave campaign is truly astounding, no liberal should be voting with them”
I had a look on the Leave.EU campaign site to see who was supporting them and I was surprised that there were 34 Lib Dem councilors on their list. In fairness nearly everyone who supports Brexit – including Farage – has condemned the poster.
While Syrians have been victims of recent terrorist attacks in Europe , the perpetrators, whether you go back to London 2005, Charlie Hebdo, the multiple attacks in Paris n November 2016, or Brussels this year have been French, Belgian and British born with one Jamaican born convert. To date all the terrorists have been home-grown, including now in Orlando. This is not a migration problem or a refugee problem or an EU problem. It is a problem of radicalisation of young Muslims and the failure of successive national governments, here, in France and in Belgium, and elsewhere to effectively address the alienation and isolation of some communities.
Also note that there are heavy penalties for homosexual acts in some Christian countries, notably in Africa and the Caribbean. And in some predominantly Hindu and Buddhist countries. Whilst homosexuality is legal in some Muslim countries including Bahrain and Jordan. So LGBT tolerance is not exclusively a Muslim problem. The vast bulk of homophobic hate crime is not committed by Muslims.
There are legitimate debates to be had on the increasing isolation of Muslim communities here and elsewhere in Europe. And on using foreign policy and development funds to encourage tolerance. But these do not form part of the EU in or out debate as the issues are for national governments to address; it is their jurisdiction.
Bear in mind that we in the UK benefit from the external EU border manned by hundreds of thousands of border guards / police and hundreds of Italian and French and Greek patrol boats, Then we have our own border with 8,000 more officers. It is untrue that an EU passport means that entry into the UK is a guaranteed right. We can refuse entry on public security grounds. Note today the French jailing and then banning English hooligans from France.
Does that address all the points?
“It appears that terrorists have used the mass migration to sneak into Europe”
Nick Baird asks of Rightsaidfredfan:
“Do you have evidence to support that statement? The Paris atrocities were carried out by French and Belgian nationals, radicalised whilst in Europe.”
This report from Reuters does seem to back up Rightsaidfredfan.?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-shooting-bomber-greece-idUSKCN0T50U420151116
Does that address all the points?
Not really. Surely, basic common sense would suggest that from the point of view of an ISIS strategist, this perfect opportunity to get 2 or 3 of your disguised ISIS people into Europe, secreted in every third or fourth boat of 100 real refugees, is far too good an opportunity to pass up? The real shock would be that it is not happening on a fairly large scale,.. surely?
While Leave pulls ahead Tim goes on about process to shore up the core vote of his subset of liberals. That’s because he doesn’t really understand the issues and just resorts to big picture stuff. Any news about the Lib Dem view on Trade, Immigration, SMEs and EU red tape? Oh yes `we’re the party of IN`.
Nobody amongst our membership on this site has called more for a realistic and a sensible non knee jerk stance on immigration, than me and all who share my concern that it can sound complacent to not reflect the concerns of decent people.But in the wake of such an atrocity there is nothing whatsoever that is moderate about raising it at all for it is, here ,actually more or less irrelevant ! Why , because the killer was not an immigrant and his own immigrant father actually has said he would have given up his son to the police if he had known what he was like !
To make political capital out of this whether here or in any country is an outrage .Trump is a disgrace , the leaflet in this posting no better!
Now is the time for level heads and compassionate hearts. Heads that think and act after that and only then.Hearts that care and show it in word and deed.
Now is not the time to judge and to moan and to react in any way but in full sympathy with those who have suffered and are our friends and our brothers and sisters.
Jane
In terms of overall Lib DEms views of the topics you outline:
Trade – It is about working together to strike better deals, and ensuring free trade across Europe. There is no reason for Lib Dems to outline a picture of trade under Brexit – that is for your (Leave) side to do. We haven’t heard any convincing, or even united view of this in a Brexit future!
Immigration – A personal view – I am not sure how helpful “net immigration” figures are? You might like to consider the Cameron approach on this. When British citizens flock back under a Brexit future, for instance, what will be the Leave camp’s approach as the figures go up to 500,000 and beyond as worried British dwellers in other EU countries flock to the UK? The economy as currently run (by neoliberals of In Tories, Out Tories, Kippers, nuLabour, and yes, Orange Bookers) demands immigration. If this cannot be supplied from Europe, it will come from elsewhere. Non-EU immigration already more than half of all, will go up to compensate for EU immigration. It is a chimera to suddenly think there will be a great change. We already have one of the more repressive border and immigration regimes – how do you think “more control” is going to operate? Leave has told as many lies on this as their more well-known and exposed ones on the economy!
What do you mean – EU red tape? If you mean environmental regulation, eg the hoped for ban on glyphosate weedkiller, we often need this. It would be done in-house under Brexit in any case. If you believe in slashing these kinds of rules, and become a UKIP style climate change denier, Lib Dems and most people want none of it. Unscientific and hugely damaging.
With the odd exception – notably, Russia – the amount of homophobia in a society is strongly proportional to the occurrence of religious belief. In the US, 94% of atheists, and 94% of agnostics, believe that “homosexuality should be accepted by society”. Only 45% of Muslims believe the same thing. Some faiths are much lower than that – 36% for evengelical Christians and Mormons, 16% for Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some other faiths are much more tolerant, particularly Buddhists and Jews. But there is no getting away from the fact that homophobia is strongly linked to faith – whereas immigration is a complete irrelevance.
If you want to tackle any kind of problem, you need to understand the causes, and faith certainly plays a large part here. (I mean generally; I’m not going to join the speculation on what caused Orlando specifically.)
Rightsaidfredfan says “If leave win the referendum it will be because remain have not addressed people’s legitimate fears and concerns” is only partly true. People have been fed scare stories and exaggerations about immigration and that all our problems are due to the EU ever since UKIP was formed. We on the other side have not communicated the true situation until very recently and now people are not ready either to listen to us or to believe us. Their fears and concerns are genuine, but that is because they have been misled in so far as UKIP, the Daily Mail etc. have taken a few small true stories and exaggerated them out of all proportion. Likewise at the moment ALL our media, in an attempt at being seen to be fair, are presenting information from Migration Watch as though that organisation is an independent fairminded one when it is not.
Last week I wrote a letter to our local paper (owned by the Daily Mail) pointing this out; they have yet to publish it.
@ JDunn,
I would have thought that the answer was not to prevent people fleeing from war, but to have proper screening centres in place.
The individual in Orlando was not a migrant. The cause of his hatred and self -hatred is yet to be determined. Isis are of course , very keen to claim responsibility, but it may well be that they were simply an inspiration rather than the planners of this atrocity.
More of a problem to me, in this particular case, is the fact that when these atrocities are committed, the perpetrators are known to the authorities. If anything needs addressing, it is that It is that societies like America refuse to confront the reason why mass shootings are an all too regular occurrence, the fact the unstable individuals can buy weapons legally.
It does not surprise me, given the ugliness of much of the leave campaign, that a human tragedy is used as another weapon to frighten people. Shame on you.
Jayne
I’m well aware that the Orlando killer was not a migrant. The issue was brought up by Rightsaidfred, in that potential ISIS killers are entering Europe, embedded a few at a time, within that desperate refugee stream. I think it has been proved that they *are* entering Europe, and finding it very easy to do so, and is being ignored at our peril, and irresponsibly hand waved away as nonsense by many liberals too afraid to face the reality of this severe threat?
Rightsaidfredfan
And it is true that many in the Islamic world are anti gay to an extent that the religions in the west aren’t. There are still Islamic countries in the world where being gay carries the death penalty.
Yes, and that is why the west must stand together and defend this shared culture of ours where we are opposed to that sort of thing. Rather than take the Brexit line which suggests we have no more in common with other European countries than we do with the countries you mention.
The reason why the leave campaign is succeeding is it plays to peoples fears. The reason the far right is succeeding in Europe is it plays to peoples fears. The reason Donald Trump is succeeding is he plays to peoples fears.
People fear losing what little they have and the less they have the more they fear. The questions Liberals through out the Western world should ask is how have people become so fearful and I’m afraid the answer to that is because politicians have failed to address them. You can harp on about the greenest this, the most equal opportunity that, but if your reality is a minimum wage insecure job, rotten housing and no prospect of a brighter future then they mean nothing and the Demagogue who tells you it isn’t your fault, it’s some one else s (insert scapegoat) is much more appalling and relevant to you, because at least they are addressing your fears.
Well done to those opposing the pandering to fear ,
well done those standing with allies within religions and without, who share the values of common decency,
well done anyone who knows what we know who know we are right , that the right way is the way of understanding and understatement in moments such as these!
The only national UK party that opposed gay marriage and the only one that wants to roll back LGBT anti-discrimination legislation is UKIP, backed up by socially regressive Tory right wingers. Oddly the same group that form the core of the Leave campaigns.
“irresponsibly hand waved away as nonsense by many liberals too afraid to face the reality of this severe threat”
I don’t think anyone is denying there is a risk or threat. But it is very difficult to see how any element of that risk in mitigated even slightly by leaving the EU. We share border protection as well as having our own, we share intelligence and policing to reduce the threats, we can deny entry to the UK to anyone with an EU passport on public security grounds. The European Arrest Warrant makes extradition, where needed, relatively quick and simple. If we leave there is no obligation to share anything with our police and Border Force. There is no reason to include us or listen to our opinions or take into account our interests for any further joint initiatives. What exactly do Leave supporters think would reduce risks in this area if we were to Brexit? I repeat, because this is vital and widely misunderstood, we can and do refuse entry into the UK to EU passport holders who are deemed to pose a risk to public security.
“I repeat, because this is vital and widely misunderstood, we can and do refuse entry into the UK to EU passport holders who are deemed to pose a risk to public security.”
But there is no method to screen people to determine their intent? And if you cannot screen them to determine their intent, how can you deem one way or another if they pose a risk? It was a laboured journey, but the thread seems to have gone from knee jerk,..’it’s bigoted nonsense’, to accepting that it’s very credible, that for every 100 genuine refugees that step out of a rubber dingy, it is a reasonable assumption that 1 or 2 might not be what they say.?
But when 100 people step out of a rubber dingy, or 100 EU passport holders go through UK passport control, and they have ‘no history’, how do you screen them for either malevolent or benevolent intent?
Perhaps we should spend our time dealing with the threats we actually face rather than trying to whip up fear of refugees.
“But there is no method to screen people to determine their intent?”
By that logic we just close the borders full stop. No-one can enter for any reason. That’s the only way to be 100% sure you are not letting in a terrorist or other criminal. But since the greater risk is home grown terrorists it doesn’t stop you being shot or blown up. You are completely wrong anyway. Border Force employ teams of intelligence analysts to scan passenger manifests before people arrive. Front line Officers are also highly trained and experienced in identifying suspect passengers. It cannot be 100% unless you close the borders completely but it works.
There were most certainly criminals among the refugees that came from Germany in the 1930’s, so I presume you would have left them all to die? It is wrong and bigoted to demonise the 99% because of the risk one might have malevolent intent. And it’s under national not EU jurisdiction anyway so nothing to do with the referendum.
“But there is no method to screen people to determine their intent?”
“By that logic we just close the borders full stop.”
No, we don’t close the borders,..We profile people, which is how the Border Force do it. And as much as it angers the snowflake liberal mind, it is a fact that some people have a higher security risk profile than others, and profiling is the only logical way to deal with it.
J Dunn, …Which is what I said we already do… and I know of no-one who objects to that. I have no idea what point you are trying to make. We can already choose to deny entry into the UK anyone, including those with EU passports, who we deem to be a risk to public security. Screening, profiling, intelligence analysis, whatever term you want to use is how the risk is assessed. You say there is no screening method, I say there is, you say no, there is. This is a bizarre argument. We agree profiling mitigates risk, we can and do profile now and exclude based on that risk, this is a matter for UK jurisdiction not the EU, so it has no place in the in/out debate other than by the unscrupulous seeking to plant a false seed that membership of the EU means we can’t protect our borders when patently we can and do.
Stevan Rose, can I just salute your patient efforts to bring rational discussion to bear. Too late, I fear, for Mr Dunn, but hopefully others can be dissuaded from falling for this nonsense about “getting back control” of what we already control as well as anyone reasonably can.
Good. We’re all in agreement then, that it is in our security interests to profile people on their personal attributes.
Perhaps our next poster should be .LETS REMAIN IN HOPE NOT FEAR.
Well when you start scaremongering then sometimes folk reply in kind! It could have been a proper, positive debate as Nicola Sturgeon and others had advocated but Project Fear based on half-truths, pessimistic guesses and outright lies seems to be the specialty of this government.
Regarding the screening of those wishing to enter the UK; why not follow the example of the USA?
They ask, “Do you advocate the overthrow of the United States government by force or subversion?”
I’m sure many a terrorist has been trapped by that approach…
T