Culture — Revolution Socialist Youth

Hungry Britain: austerity drives millions to foodbanks

September 17, 2012 By Sally Turner 3 Comments

At least 13 million people in the UK live below the poverty line and every day people in the UK go hungry for reasons ranging from unemployment to having to pay off debts to doorstop lenders. In 2011-12 food banks fed 128,687 people nationwide which was 100% more than the previous year.

The busiest food bank in Britain is in Coventry, it is run by the Trussell Trust and it can provide people three days of good quality food such as rice, sugar, tinned meat/fish and cereals. However you can’t just turn up their and get some grub, the only people who can receive food are those that have been referred by social services, youth offending teams or the citizen’s advice bureau.

Once they’ve been referred they can only go once or twice before they are put onto programmes to address the root cause of their poverty.

43% of people who attend the food bank do so because they are on benefits but they have been cut, delayed or the money they are getting simply isn’t enough to feed them. In the first 3 months of 2012, 167,000 people had their job seekers allowance stopped for no apparent reason. When this is what they’re surviving off and it is taken away from them they have little other choice but to go to food banks and take out a crisis loan.

The other 57% are people who have jobs but still cannot afford to feed themselves. A lot of the time it is because they have borrowed money in order to pay for bills and they have to pay it back out of money they would buy food with. Most people borrow off door stop lenders who befriend them and then guilt trip them into paying the money back with a massive interest rate. It can be very difficult and embarrassing to admit you can’t afford to feed yourself and you need help, but these people have no other choice.

There are no 250 food banks with 3 more opening each week. While our welfare system is suppose to support those who can’t support themselves it is in fact making life more difficult. With benefits not paying a living wage and with the government cutting thousands of peoples everyday for no reason except to make figures go down it is no wonder that people are beginning to starve.

We say

• Jobs for all and a living wage to be paid
• Benefits to be paid at a living wage for those who are unable to work

Filed Under: Culture, Cuts, In the Media, News, Society Tagged With: austerity, food banks, hunger, poverty, starving

Whose Olympics?

June 5, 2012 By Dan Edwards Leave a Comment

On the 27th July, the much-hyped London 2012 Olympics will finally be upon us. As well as providing a means for every financial parasite, corporate tax-dodger and government cutter to distract our attention and make us feel warm and patriotic for around a month, the Olympics mean big buck for big business, at our expense.

The choice of sponsors for the Paralympics have already raised more than a few eyebrows. Atos, the French IT firm better known to many as the modern-day Scrooges who profit from kicking the disabled off benefits through dodgy tests, are using the games as a means to distract from their horrific and life-destroying actions towards the physically and mentally handicapped.Likewise Dow Chemicals, the company responsible for the 1984 gas-leak disaster in Bhopal, India, which killed 20,000 people and has caused many more to be born with birth defects, will also be a sponsor. This is the same company which produced the infamous Agent Orange in the Vietnam War, which has caused over 4.8 million birth defects. Organiser Meredith Alexander resigned over the company’s connection with the Paralympics, while complaints have flooded in from Indian Olympians, the Vietnamese Government, and a number of campaign groups.

Both these firms are responsible for creating untold hardship for hundreds of thousands of disabled people and their families, and yet are using the Paralympics as a way of covering their arses and trying to restore credibility to their names.

But that’s not even the half of it. A number of international corporations are set to profit off the Olympics, despite the fact that the public will have to pay over £11 billion for the event (a huge amount compared to the initial £2.4 billion that the government said it would cost when they first put in the bid).

The huge appeal of the Olympics for these companies has been the right to claim a monopoly over aspects of the games. VISA will be the only usable credit card at any of the events, while Coca Cola will be the only company allowed to sell branded drinks, and McDonalds (!) the only company allowed to sell branded food. Rival companies will have their adverts and signs covered or removed in the areas around the Olympic Stadium, ensuring that those who won the scramble for the stadium are guaranteed to make a killing.

Other companies such as Nike, Adidas and Puma are all trying to increase their profits by being the official advertisers for various teams and notable athletes. This is in spite of the fact that they have been repeatedly found breaking labour laws by paying employees in South East Asia poverty pay.

The iron strength of these monopolies was recently demonstrated when an 81-year old grandma was told that she shouldn’t sell a doll with a knitted jumper with ‘London 2012′ on the front as part of a charity fund-raiser, lest she incur the wrath of the Olympian lawyers.

Since the recession first started, private investors have been increasingly reluctant to pay for the infrastructure (Olympic apartments, road improvements, etc) necessary to host the games, meaning that the government has filled the gap using taxpayers’ money. If you are expecting to see the public purse grow from this investment, you’d do well to look at the Olympics village which became totally state-funded in 2009, before being sold off at a £275 million loss to the Qatari ruling family’s property firm.

The Olympics is being used as another way to siphon public money into private pockets. Just as the cuts have stripped back the welfare state and allowed companies new markets and areas to profit from, the Games have sunk our cash into creating a bubble filled with tourists, sports fans and athletes whom the private sector can profit from through aggressive advertising and monopoly rights.

While the government says that we will benefit from tourism and spending during the games, reports on the impact of previous games on countries’ economies have shown there are no winners except for a few private firms who milk them for all they’re worth. At the end of the day it’s us who foot the bill so that multinationals with a track record of violating human rights, profiting from mass poverty, and fundamentally not giving a fuck about anyone except their shareholders, can make a quick buck in turbulent times. Whoever ends up winning the Olympics, we’re still coming out as the losers.

Filed Under: Culture Tagged With: capitalism, corporation, culture, london2012, olypimcs, profiteers, sport

Keep football fascist free!

June 4, 2012 By MikaelRydellandStuartB Leave a Comment

One of the biggest events in the sporting calendar looks set to be overshadowed by evidence of racist and fascist hooliganism and attacks. Anticipation is building for Euro 2012, an international football competition organised by UEFA every year. It will see teams from all over the world descend upon Poland and Ukraine to play. Rather than the usual triumphant flag-waving and punditry on who will turn up trumps when it comes to game itself, the report at the forefront of the news focuses on the disturbingly common on and off-terrace racism of sections of fans in both Poland and Ukraine.

Both countries have a history of neo-Nazi groupings and violence, especially surrounding football. A recent BBC Panorama report documented incidences of Nazi salutes by legions of fans in Ukrainian stadiums and anti-Semitic chants. There is also the all-too-common ‘monkey noises’ made towards black players, something which is still seen on British pitches today. Tellingly, the families of England players Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain have stated they will not be attending the competition in fear of racist attack. This evidence has led England international legend Sol Campbell to call on black and Asian fans to avoid the tournament due to the threat of, not just racist abuse, but violent attack. He stated “don’t even risk it, because you could end up coming back in a coffin”. But this is not scaremongering, but an opinion based on fact. On April 14, at the Metalist stadium in Kharkiv, Ukraine, an organised mass of more than 2,000 fans from both sides of the stands gave a Nazi salute. At a match two weeks later, amid scuffles between rival fans, a group of Metalist supporters proceeded to attack several of their own fans; fans who happened to be Asian. The Asian students had to withstand punches and kicks as they escaped almost unaided by stewards, and completely ignored by cops.

A Ukrainian police chief interviewed by the BBC laughably claimed the fans were “pointing in the direction of opponents as it were, the fans, so it looked like they were pointing with the right hand to the fans, kind of attracting attention to themselves.”

The BBC documentary also showed abundant evidence of a real fascist presence on the streets of many of the Euro 2012 host cities, with white power symbols, swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans adorning the walls around football grounds and in local communities. It also unearthed the involvement of organised fascists such as Patriot of Ukraine, who use football hooligan ‘firms’ and supporters’ clubs as a recruiting ground for their organisations. This is similar to way the English Defence League (EDL) has been organising around football in Britain.

What is clear here is that the threat of fascist violence will be very real during Euro 2012, as police and official bodies do little or nothing to stamp out this cancer at the heart of football. UEFA pays lip service to its policy of ‘zero tolerance’ for racism while allowing anti-Semitic and racist chanting to go ahead in its stadiums. Players such as England’s John Terry, who is due to face a criminal trial for the racial abuse of another player, also go with next to no punishment for their actions by the bodies that exist to regulate footballing standards. The defence of our communities and a great sporting event such as Euro 2012 from fascists is clearly not something that can be left to the state or official authorities. We need to defend our matches from these racist thugs and ensure they do not tarnish ‘the beautiful game’ with their divisive politics and bonehead violence. Football, a sport with so much power to bring people of different backgrounds together should be fascist free. The task is for antifascists and football fans to stand together and organise against this threat before it’s too late.

Filed Under: Anti-Fascism, Culture, In the Media, News, Society Tagged With: anti-fascism, europe, fascism, football, Poland, Ukraine

Owen Jones talks about the working class

May 16, 2012 By Sally Turner 2 Comments

This evening I went to hear Owen Jones talk about his book, Chavs, the demonization of the working class and participate in the discussion that followed.

The talk was amusing as Owen started by saying we probably wondered who the twelve year old that had just appeared on the stage was. However joking aside what he had to say was interesting but also informative and the discussion which followed brought up some good points.

He started off by saying he wanted his book to spark a debate about class, which he feels is greatly ignored by the politicians and media. ‘There is a false view that the respectable working class just doesn’t exist and is simply reliant on the state,’ he backed this up with a survey which showed that out of a group of people with similar low incomes only 23% believed themselves to be working class while 71% believed themselves to be middle class. When asked to use connotations to describe the working class, both groups were negative using words such as poor and dirty.

We are pushed to aspire to this idealistic middle class and to turn our noses up at the working class. We can see attacks on the working class everywhere, one stark example is that on Karen Matthews and how following her kidnapping her daughter it was portrayed that the whole working class were like this, the community that helped look for Shannon unaware of what was happening and the working class nationwide. Jones compared this to if, when Harold Shipman had murdered all his patients it was that middle class professionals were generally murderers and couldn’t be trusted, of course this wasn’t the case and there would have been outcry had this been said.

The talk continued about how working class people have been made to feel they are to blame for unemployment and be ashamed of the situation they are in. This is following the Thatcherism period when many mines were shut down and massive holes of unemployment were left in communities. ‘On yer bike’ as Norman Tebbit put it, meaning if you wanted to find a job, go look for one.

Owen wound up saying that in a time of such austerity we need to be giving the working class a voice and representation. With 2/3s of our politicians from professional background and the majority never having had a job outside of politics and with the media so difficult to get into, we are ruled by the elite. We need to organise from below and force change.

The discussion afterwards was interesting with talks about private education, that ideally there would be the abolishment of class and talks about why the student movement died down.

Owen Jones will be in Leeds Waterstones on Thursday 31^st May and I would highly recommend people to go and hear him speak, join in the discussion and give his book a read.

Filed Under: Culture, Events, News

Olympics security uses civilians as human shields

May 7, 2012 By REVOLUTION LONDON 1 Comment

Makes you feel real safe right?

Air defence missle systems, fighter jets, armoured cars and an aircraft carrier sailing up the Thames… you could be forgiven for thinking East London had turned into a film set when the government launched a propaganda exercise designed to flaunt Britain’s militarisation of London ahead of the Olympics.

With just over two months to go, tens of thousands of police, soldiers and private security are completing preparations for London Lock-Down 2012.

The escalation of the military presence in and around London is greater than anything seen since WW2. It’s hard to imagine what kind of threat Britain faces that means we need our biggest warship docked in the Thames.

Plans to place High Velocity Missiles on the Lexington Building in Tower Hamlets and the Fred Wigg Tower in Waltham Forest, both in east London have provoked furious opposition from residents, who resent being used as human shields.

Rapier missiles would be positioned on Blackheath Common and in Oxleas Wood, both in south east London, and at William Girling Reservoir Chain in Enfield and Barn Hill at Netherhouse Farm in Epping Forest, both in north London, as though World War 3 had been declared.

The policy of siting huge numbers of soldiers in civilian areas exposes the hypocrisy of a government which excuses the murder of Palestinians in Gaza on the grounds that resistance fighters are ‘hiding’ amongst civilians. Yet when it comes to London, it becomes perfectly OK to set up their killing machines on our rooftops.

Some of the buildings are residential flats and the occupants have had no consultation of the deploying of the missiles which would see people’s homes overrun by armed police and soldiers for several weeks… with enough explosives packed on their roof to demolish several city blocks.

The Ministry of Defence claims the missile systems will pose no threat to residents, and that anyway they should be grateful because the systems will deter terrorists.

Are we at war?

The supposed threat of terrorism has been a goldmine for the international arms trade – in which British companies are some of the biggest players.

The militarisation of London during the Olympics has given the merchants of death a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fleece the taxpayer.

The original estimated cost for hosting the Olympics has ballooned from £2.4billion to £12 billion largely as a result of the cost of stationing an army capable of repelling a full-scale invasion.

Londoners in particular are being rinsed to fund the Olympics which is becoming a playground for multi-national corporations. Londoners have had a £20 levy slapped onto their council tax, while the word ‘Olympics’ has been exclusively reserved for those who can fork out the exorbitant licensing fee.

The Olympics will see 14, 000 British soldiers patrolling the streets of London – more than are currently fighting in Afghanistan.

In reality, the latest military exercise is designed to create a level of fear of terrorism way out of proportion to the actual threat. Sailing an aircraft up the Thames and posting soldiers on our doorsteps is nothing more than a crude attempt at intimidation.

With a ban on all assembly and protest in the area for the period of the Olympics, we can see the government is determined to use the Olympics as a cover for ramping up the power of its security apparatus.

Having invested this kind of money into it, they are very unlikely to simply ditch the whole scheme at the end of the Olympics.

Despite all the money we’re spending on ‘keeping London safe’ the United States are still brining a private army of 500 FBI agents – and the US refuses to let any of it’s citizens be subject to foreign laws.

The security is not about keeping Londoners safe, it’s a giant advert for Britain’s shiny (and very expensive) weapons which Cameron is desperate to sell to any regime that wants such toys to menace it’s people with.

The Con-Dems cuts have thrown Britain back into a new recession. With millions of Londoners living in unfit housing, suffering from high rents and mass unemployment amongst youth, do we really need to be wasting billions on a travelling circus which will come and go leaving no positive benefit for those who paid for it.

Filed Under: Culture, News, Police Tagged With: army, culture, london 2012, olympics, police, soldiers, sport, terrorism

Conscious music gives voice to the voiceless

April 19, 2012 By Sam ET and Matt Chew Leave a Comment

Matt and Sam from Manchester look at the rise of politically conscious music fuelled by mass resistance to cuts, war and capitalism.

Dealing with issues such as war, poverty, alienation, racism, oppression and the other savage symptoms of profit-over-people capitalism, a range of different artists and bands are expressing their contempt for the system we live under.

It’s not every day that such a frank and explicit protest song makes it onto the BBC Radio 1 playlist, especially one that so obviously raises the issue of class consciousness, but Plan B’s Ill Manors song and music video has proved to be a serious contribution to debates concerning social inequality, class divisions and the August Riots.

The song raises, with no apology, the issues of being young and poor in the UK. Plan B attacks the intolerance of working class kids in the media and wider society.

Ill Manors is a breath of fresh air to anyone who feels alienated by capitalism’s constant attacks on the working class; it deals with the cause of the riots, the closing down of community centres, attacks by Boris Johnson and the Tories, the Olympics and increasing police aggravation.

The song rightfully puts the blame of the riots not on those out rioting, but those who created the conditions that caused them to feel they had nothing to lose.

Plan B’s support of working class people is symptomatic of the ever-spreading discontent, especially amongst young people, and this is reflected in a resurgence in the number of musicians focusing on the inequalities of society.

Ranging from hardcore acts such as Pay No Respect (whose latest video, the anger-filled “This World Is Ours” has reached an average of 2000 hits a day) to hip-hop collective Broken Dialect (who blew up on the revolutionary scene during the student movement.)
Perhaps the biggest success story of recent times for revolutionary music has been UK electronic/post-hardcore band Enter Shikari’s latest album “A Flash Flood of Colour” which attacks the excesses of Capitalism and the effects it has on both humanity and the planet. They sum up the fundamental flaws of Capitalism with these lyrics….

“Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t think the primary purpose of your life, of my life and the entirety of the human race’s is just to blindingly consume to support a failing economy and a faulty system. Forever and ever until we run out of every resource and fall to the result to blowing each other up to ensure our own survival. I don’t think we’re supposed to sit by either while we continue to use a long outdated system that produces war, poverty, collusion, corruption, ruins our environment and threatens every aspect of our health and does nothing but divide and segregate us. I don’t think how much military equipment we are selling to other countries, how many hydrocarbons we’re burning, how much money is being printed and exchanged, is a good measure of how healthy our society is but I do think I can speak for everyone when I say, we’re sick of this shit.”

Musicians don’t need to quote classical philosophers to be political. When artists like Jamie T or N.W.A deal with issues like growing up in a working class area or police brutality, they are fusing class-consciousness and music.

The resurgence of class-conscious music is an international phenomenon, the long list of artists promoting revolutionary ideas and leading the fightback against bland corporately-endorsed music today include : Akala, First Blood, Flobots, Suheir Hammad, Immortal Technique, Stray From The Path, El Haqed, Born From Pain, Lowkey, Final Prayer, The King Blues, Shadia Mansour, Logic and Simon Cowell’s worst nightmare…Rage Against The Machine.

Encompassing a huge variety of genres, these artists draw on a tradition of music that speaks out against injustice and oppression. British artists such as Billy Bragg and The Clash have spoken out against inequality for decades. Artists such as Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie fought racism and McCarthyism in the United States in the 1950’s and 1960’s and many popular musicians including The Beatles spoke out against the American invasion of Vietnam.

The artists named in this article are just some of the best from a tradition of political music that spans all countries, cultures and genres. They show that it’s possible to break out of the Top 40 ghetto and bring a message to the people. Their general lack of mainstream support by the big music corporations also shows how capitalist society has the power to control which ideas get a say and which don’t. Do your bit, spread their tunes, join the resistance!

Filed Under: Culture, News Tagged With: culture, music

Lowkey lays down the mic

April 19, 2012 By SAM ET Leave a Comment

REVOLUTION wishes to express its sadness at the decision by Lowkey, the UK-based rapper and political activist to take a hiatus from music. Lowkey has fought against the imperialist wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as being a champion to the Palestinian people and their struggle for freedom, he has exposed police brutality in the UK and the extreme inequalities of capitalism both in the UK and overseas. By fusing strong ethics and political convictions with his unmistakable musical style Lowkey brought domestic and international political issues into the minds of many, both young and old. REVOLUTION thanks Lowkey for his unmatchable contribution to politics and music over the last few years and hopes that the future will see him once again turn his mic against the imperialist butchers and those who protect them.

Filed Under: Culture, International, News, Palestine, War Tagged With: culture, hip-hop, Imperialism, international, lowkey, music, palestine, rap, war

Make Bradford British: one step forward, two steps back

April 18, 2012 By Dan Edwards Leave a Comment

With its provocative (and xenophobic) title and Big-Brother-meets-Wife-Swap format, Make Bradford British was destined to be trash TV. But there were some interesting twists and turns along the way. Dan Edwards reviews C4’s latest effort at Diversity Telly.

The basic premise is pretty simple- get eight born-and-bred British people from a variety of backgrounds who all fail the British citizenship test (used to deny immigrants and refugees the right to live here) to live together as a group for a few days, and then partner them up to live each others’ lifestyles for a further couple of days. What could possibly go wrong?

Well let’s start with the biggest problems first. It portrays Bradford as highly segregated, with communities virtually at war with one another due to differences in lifestyle. I’m not denying that are racial tensions in Bradford, but it fails to point out that this is far from universal- when the thugs of the EDL tried to start a riot in Bradford, few locals joined them, and the anti-fascist turnout was incredibly racially and culturally diverse. The show also failed to look at how increasing poverty in Bradford, caused by Thatcher’s gutting of northern industries, has been manipulated by the far-right to stoke racial tension.

The programme also assumes that the way to overcome racism is simply by getting people to befriend people of different backgrounds. While greater social mixing is definitely a good thing and can help individuals overcome unfounded fears and prejudices of different ethnic groups, it overlooks the fact that racism is a problem with societies rather than individual people. When a racist says ‘I’m not racist, one of my best friends is black,’ they’re not necessarily lying to you- it’s just that they view the overall threat of the black community as different and separate to the relationship they have with one or two black people. Mixed-race landlady Audrey was an excellent example of this- though she had Asian family members she was also incredibly prejudiced and came out with a lot of phrases that wouldn’t be out of place in the worst right-wing rags.

There were some genuinely interesting aspects of this program. When the whole house had to live together, Rashid’s frequent trips to the Mosque to pray were repeatedly criticised by the rest of the house, and he was portrayed as not willing to help the collective out because he didn’t get to the shops in time to buy the ingredients to make dinner, and instead ended up getting everyone a take-away. While this intolerance was not commented upon by ‘diversity experts’ Laurie Trott and Taiba Yasseen, who acted as hosts, other instances were. Why should this guy be singled out for going to pray? Knowing that prayer would prevent him from buying the chicken, why wasn’t someone else asked to go? Why is this intolerance overlooked and legitimised?

Another moment from the same episode provided a bit more hope for anti-racists, as a discussion over the use of racist words seemed to genuinely change the housemates’ opinions. While a couple of the white members of the house and Audrey felt perfectly comfortable saying ‘paki’ when they first came in, the pain caused by racist words – permanent reminders of a colonial past and oppressive present – soon became pretty obvious and they stopped using them. The only person who didn’t feel this way was (surprise, surprise) an ex-cop. This prick aside, it was a nice moment.

Perhaps the most worrying moment in the two-part series came when Muslim woman Sabbiyah tried a day’s work in a city centre pub. While there two customers racially abused her, with a burly thick-as-shit piece of EDL-fodder insisting she should wear a mini-skirt while in ‘his’ country, while touching her legs and cornering her. This was painful viewing and has even prompted complaints from Bradford city councillors, who question why the programme-makers didn’t intervene to stop this racist and sexual harassment.

Overall I think we should be grateful that Make Bradford British showed that cultural differences don’t inevitably lead to conflict (a great moment was watching white sheet-metal worker Jacob overcome his assumption that Muslims are all terrorists and extremists), and that the idea of an all-encompassing ‘British culture’ is unrealistic and unhelpful.

But, by failing to look at the material deprivation of Bradford, or the relationships between other ethnic/cultural communities in the city, the programme ultimately helped to reinforce the prevalent idea that Britain is being torn apart by the divide between the white working-class and Asian Muslims. One step forwards, two step back.

Filed Under: Anti-Racism, Culture, Liberation, News Tagged With: Bradford, C4, culture, racism, reviews, television, tv

Iron Lady review: tragedy through rose-tinted glasses

April 17, 2012 By leon mason Leave a Comment

The Iron Lady is a film which shows the life of Margaret Thatcher, told through flashbacks from an old and mentally ill Thatcher.

The film places its focus on the personal, rather than the political: Thatcher seeing the ghost of her husband Dennis, being a “woman in a man’s world” and the Falklands conflict. This attempt to personalize such a divisive figure was always going to be tricky.

We hear about mass privatisations and yet we don’t learn about the awful effects these had on people. We are treated to an interesting yet wrong analogy about cuts being like “medicine for a sick man”; of course when you simplify economics to abstract metaphors the audience is almost forced to agree with Thatcher’s decisions unless they have extensive knowledge of the issues (like milions of working-class people who remember losing their jobs under Thatcher do).

Many more things which were highly relevant to Thatcher’s awful reign are cut out or given very little attention in the film. Millions of unemployed, pit closures, anti-union laws, Ireland and many other issues are glossed over, despite the huge impact these policies continue to have to this day.

This leads to the film giving a totally one-sided view of Thatcher. When we see people protesting against Thatcher, the audience is invited to feel sympathy for a Prime Minister who caused misery and grief for millions of working families and can’t understand why these people hate her so much. After all, the cuts to state-owned industries were “just like medicine for a dying man” , the pit closures were necessary because Thatcher said they were “uneconomically sustainable” and poll taxes were meant to bring about some strange community spirit; only fools would be against these perfectly sound and ethical decisions that Margaret Thatcher made, right? Wrong.

Nonetheless Meryl Streep plays the role excellently and manages to humanize a thoroughly inhuman character albeit with the directors’ glossing over and ignoring many of her most infamous decisions while exaggerating the popularity of others.

Filed Under: Culture, News Tagged With: culture, Film, review, Thatcher

The Racist Games

March 28, 2012 By Richard Bateman 3 Comments

The Hunger Games film, based on the novel of the same name, was released last week to record box office figures. It made $155m in its opening weekend, making it the film with the third highest grossing debut in the US. However, with big viewing figures come some seriously small minds and Twitter has reverberated with some shockingly racist reactions.

Now any smart person knows that if you go to see the film version of a book you have read and enjoyed then it probably won’t live up to the same standards. The Godfather, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, No Country For Old Men – the exceptions to this rule can be counted on one hand.

However, most of the time the reasons behind the failure are because of complex difficulties in crossing between formats – fitting a thousand pages into an hour and a half, bringing the style of the writing to life on the screen, exposing the story without the author’s omniscient, omnipresent voice.

With The Hunger Games, the film-makers faced a different, but equally challenging, obstacle – large swathes of their prospective audience were fucking racist morons.

Because your brain can’t understand basic adjectives…

Just to clarify for those who don’t speak stupid – this enlightened human being is confused because one of the characters in the film is black. Fair enough that she’s confused though, because they weren’t black in the book.

Apart from the fact that they totally fucking were…

“…And most hauntingly, a twelve-year-old girl from District 11. She has dark brown skin and eyes, but other than that’s she’s very like Prim in size and demeanor…”

That’s the first time Rue is described in the book. Similarly, another character who has been the target for some Twitter vitriol (Twitriol?) has been Thresh. Again, certain people were annoyed that the producer paid such scant regard to the book…

“The boy tribute from District 11, Thresh, has the same dark skin as Rue, but the resemblance stops there. He’s one of the giants, probably six and half feet tall and built like an ox.”

…by casting someone who fits the original description exactly:

Now let’s not jump on these people too quickly! It’s easy to skip over important details in a book – for example if I come across a place name that I can’t pronounce then, in my head, the people live in *mumble mumble*-town for the rest of the story.

So these people were just expressing their surprise that they’d missed that description of the characters and had a different image of them in their imaginations.

Right?

Ohhhhh you motherfucker.

Yeah turns out that these people were not just upset that they can’t read properly. What they really meant was they hated black people, didn’t care when they died and were annoyed that they had stolen the roles of a lovely innocent white girl and a strong, brave Aryan man.

I have 15 different symbols in my name! Don’t you want to be my friend!?!

See the real problem is not that these people had missed the description of the characters in the book. It’s that they then added in their own description in their heads that equated being an innocent, loveable young girl or a strong, heroic man with being white. See the post above: “Why did the producer make all the good characters black?”

This implies that something was lost by them being black, that the good characters were spoiled by having black skin. One of the other Twitter-Twats above said that he felt less bad about the death of a young girl in the film because she was black!

Awkward moment when you out yourself as a terrible racist to the world…

And this is the reason all this is so important because it reveals something much darker and more serious than some idiots being racist on Twitter. It exposes the racist undercurrent inherent in capitalist society. White girls are seen as innocent little angels and black girls aren’t. This is why when little white girls go missing, it’s front page news. When little black girls go missing, it’s buried in the middle of the paper.

It’s a trick Capitalism has used throughout its history – from calling black people “subhuman” to justify slavery, to using the images of “hooded youths” selling drugs and carrying guns that lead to things like the recent death of the innocent Trayvon Martin.

And it’s carved it so deeply in the brains of some people that they not only ignore an author telling them a character they like is black, they then picture them as white and get annoyed when the film producer is faithful to the book and casts black actors. It makes them angry, it makes them care less about the characters and care less when they die. And these are characters they previously really liked! Is it any wonder why people can live with thousands and thousands of black children dying in Africa every day, of hunger and poverty? I wonder how different the situation would be if all those children were “little innocent blonde girls.”

Capitalism is the systemic cause for this kind of racism. It is a system where, if you don’t have a job, the first ones to get the blame are immigrants. If you have to pay high taxes, it’s because immigrants are sponging them all. If you are afraid to leave your house it’s because there are “ethnic” gangs waiting to mug you. If you have to give up your civil liberties it is to protect you from Muslim terrorists.

And why are these the first ones to get the blame? Because the bosses and the government know that it’s easy to use racism as a distraction from those who are the real cause of these problems – themselves.

So they stoke racism whenever they can get away with it, to keep people looking the other way.

These idiots on Twitter were not just born racist and they aren’t JUST idiots. There is a deeper systemic reason behind why they behave this way – a dark swirling stew of prejudice that is kept bubbling just below the surface that can be brought to boil whenever those who run society need it.

If any further proof was needed that we do not live in a post-racial society and that the struggle against racism continues, then this is it.

You can see a collection of some of the worst offenders at Hunger Games Tweets.

Edit: I fleshed out the conclusion of the article to explain a little more why the racism behind these tweets is systemic to Capitalism.

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Racism & Capitalism

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Filed Under: Culture, News Tagged With: cinema, Film, hunger games, racism, twitter

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