August 8, 2024 - 4:00pm
The vague adjective “Asian” is still deployed by some sections of the media to describe the ethnicity of sexual “grooming gangs”, which in towns such as Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford have involved men of predominantly Pakistani Muslim heritage. Now, a week after the horrific stabbing of three young girls in Southport was the catalyst for nationwide riots, the term is being used to describe gangs of mostly Muslim counter-protesters.
The BBC and Channel 4 are among those guilty of opting for the fudge “Asian”, rather than more accurately describing those involved as “Muslim”. Unfortunately, this ambiguous racial descriptor puts many non-Muslim Asians at risk during these increasingly febrile times.
It firstly must be stated in unequivocal terms that these Muslim thugs on patrols to fight with the usually white far-Right thugs do not represent all Muslims or speak for the religion as a whole. But to use the term “Asian” is remarkably imprecise. In an article earlier this week, the BBC reported on clashes breaking out in Bolton between rival groups. It predictably referred to one side as largely “Asian men”, while the other side were “waving England flags”. Strangely, the article describes these “Asian men” shouting “Allahu Akbar”, but it does not require a PhD in theology from Oxford to know that Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Atheist and Agnostic “Asians” don’t use the phrase “Allahu Akbar”. In the same way that the BBC wouldn’t describe those responsible for the Holocaust as “European”, it should not be something similar with these riots. It has almost zero explanatory power.
Meanwhile, Chief Correspondent at Channel 4 News Alex Thomson published a video on X showing a gang of “Asian” men beating the pulp out of a lone “white” man on the street in Middlesbrough. The disturbing post was later deleted. Indeed, Thomson had been on the receiving end of criticism for using “Asian”. Similarly, when Darshna Soni, Communities Editor at Channel 4 News, reported events following trouble at a Birmingham pub on 5 August, she referred to “a group of young Asians” and “older guys in the community” quelling the unrest. But who exactly are the “young Asians” and the “community” Soni speaks of?
Part of the problem is no doubt informed by political correctness, which is motivated by a fear of causing offence. But by attributing thuggery to a whole continent, no one really gets blamed, because it encompasses 4.5 billion people and an area of over 44 million square kilometres.
Not all of the counter-protesters are religious zealots — many of them, like on the anti-immigration side, will be bored young men with nothing better to do and no community bonds to stop them treating their part of the world like a dump. But “Asian” is not the most accurate description. It merely heightens the fear among communities who are themselves extremely fearful of what’s happening in our country right now.
The UK needs to hold the media accountable for failing to accurately describe counter-protesters. Failing to do so could endanger many Asians and may just make the far-Right even more dangerous. That is a fear no one would like to see realised.
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SubscribeIn the bright side, no one believes what is said in the regime media, nor do they expect the truth.
Most people do believe the “MSM” and everything written in the MSM isn’t untrue.
It’s unfortunate that progressives, many centrists and most “anti woke” people demonstrate zero discernment about the actual facts of any matter.
… especially when said facts are labeled ‘misinformation’
Though most people say they don’t trust journalists, the MSM still manage to establish the underlying frameworks for most people’s weltanshauung
‘But by attributing thuggery to a whole continent, no one really gets blamed, because it encompasses 4.5 billion people and an area of over 44 million square kilometres.’
The term ‘Asian’ is used precisely because it is so broad.
That’s kind of the point….. They don’t want to get too specific.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has threatened people who repost video footage.
The Government has released new video footage of the attack in Middlesbrough.
It was taken from a different camera angle, and puts events into context. This can be reposted at will.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX80zwkdEjo
Are you aware this URL links to a The Simpson’s clip?
I am sure he does. 😉
True. Good article. I studied on a Hard Left UK campus and continuously objected to the rubric ” South Asia” which lumped very dissimilar political systems in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka, along with obvious religious divides and Constitutions.
My protests fell on deaf ears as the Establishment campus Marxists had already decided that the only ” victims” were of an Islamic kind.
indeed-one of my closest friends is a Hindu and is fond of pointing out that when he goes out for a curry with a few of Hindu/Sikh friends the sign in the window states “none of our meat is Halal”!!.So much for Asian homogeneity !
Halal is only an Islamic concept. There is no homogeneity in various regions of separate South Asian nations, let alone the nation’s themselves!
“The BBC and Channel 4 are among those guilty of opting for the fudge “Asian”” The challenge is not to discriminate ‘against’ but ‘between’. That can help to address real problems without ‘racism’. But even that distinction is a bridge too far it seems. Too real probably.
While it seems acceptable in the MSM to refer to right wing thugs without actually knowing what party the said thugs actually voted for, assuming that they bothered to vote at all, it seems taboo to refer to Muslim thugs even if they are chanting words associated with Islamic beliefs.
Better to tar all Asians than be too specific and risk Muslim pushback. Indeed the word thugs or other ugly epithets is not normally applied to marauding youths of ethnic origin in the way it is so uninhibitedly to “white” youth.
This is especially inappropriate, given that the term “thugs” originated from groups of criminally violent men in the Indian subcontinent.
Quite disgraceful cultural appropriation by Starmer and co I say !
Thugees were religiously violent, not criminals
They were criminal too, even if as a community, which is unsurprising in a culture of castes.
Amongst both pro- and anti- immigration groups in the UK there seems to be a massive ignorance about the world at large. The Indian subcontinent is more ethnically, linguistically, socially, and historically diverse than the whole of Europe. Yet people here are oblivious to it, lumping it all together in the ‘Asian’ bin.
Not everyone “here”…but most people are only familiar with Pakistani Muslims as it is that “group” which is prominent in the MSM.
One of the big differences is that the Indians in the UK tend to be educated and integrate well and easily into society without ever getting close to religion being mentioned. The Pakistani immigrants are the exact opposite.and so get noticed more.
Same applies to Africans. The number of mutually unintelligible languages and tribes within just Nigeria makes Europe seem pretty ethnically similar. The diversity of Indians and Africans is something that colonial officials will have been alive to but this knowledge has been lost to the somewhat more parochial citizens of modern Britain.
Thank you for highlighting this. It is another example of how not calling things what they are leads to different harm, not less.
That is, if political correctness actually was reality – which it isn’t. Fortunately, everyone knows in this context, and from those sources, that Asian really means Muslim – so no harm done.
Even more specifically Pakistani Heritage Muslims
When I think back, it was sometime in the 70’s when the term ‘Asian’ came into usage in polite society – I don’t recall what words were used in the time prior to this though there must have existed some.
I’m on the other side of the world but it looks to me like the British establishment typified by Starmer & Co are scared sh..less about the “Asian Community”.
Help me out; are they “Islamaphobic” or just completely spineless?
Nice ironic use of ‘Islamaphobia’.
A bit of both (in the true sense of a phobia) but mainly spineless.
I’d say completely spineless. Remember that Labour seats were lost or very nearly lost to pro-Gaza groups led for the most part by people from specific parts of the ‘Asian Community’. Labour have to be careful not to upset or provoke the people from these specific parts in future which probably means lots of sucking up or looking the other way when things get complicated.
Why ‘Islamophobic’? Surely ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘spineless’ are, in this case, the same thing i.e. the are scared shitless of angering Muslims. Surely the alternative to this spineless option is ‘Islamophilic’.
Yes, they are scared ‘sh..less’. And, exactly because of that fear, they take out their spite on the easiest target…the white ‘far right’. Almost comical to listen to the threats and bombast of the DPP (and his distant predecessor, the non-prosecutor of Rotherham).
Apparently in Leicester a while back Asian men decided to fight other Asian men for no apparent reason.
The point generally made is that poor regions of Pakistan have been transplanted en masse into former mill-towns and general post-industrial areas of Northern England. Old family and village networks are more important to these self-contined communities than any British integration and many of the new arrivals get by without ever learning English.
Now these are poor regions of England with relatively few economic opportunities. Hence the criminal underbelly is pronounced, with heroin dealing and the trafficking of women and girls as a side-product of the night-time economy where younger immigrants can work in the taxi and take-away sectors.
Add unfortunate cultural attitudes towards women, and particularly ‘liberated’ Western females (often young girls), and we had the recipe for the South Asian grooming gangs of Lancashire and south Yorkshire.
Spot on. To which should be added that the experience of mass immigration in the m62 corridor is completely different to that in the South East. Another reason why the luvvies media is so detached from the reality of life in the North.
The ridiculous thing about it is that everyone knows exactly who they mean when they use the euphemism “Asian.”
Wholly agree, but apply the same reasoning about using “far-right” to mean “anyone not on the Left”. If there are 4.5 billion Asians, there are also 120 million conservatives in America, and dare I say 30 million conservatives in the UK, all of whom are labeled far-right if they disagree on a leftist point of doctrine, such as open borders. Stereotyping is just wrong, whoever does it.
As an elderly White Englishman I’ve had much business dealings with many sub continent human being’s. I’ve always respected their varied religions. It’s of No consequence to me. In fact I found it very interesting.
However, when one particular persuasion attempts to embrace extraordinary powers, Then I object.
‘Asian’ is no more accurate than ‘far right’, though they are inaccurate for opposite reasons. While the criminals referred to are indeed ‘Asian’, they generally come from relatively small sub-groups. ‘Far Right’, on the other hand, is a general slur directed at people whose attitudes are deemed unacceptable by the mediacrity.
Very good article.
Many gave up on the MSM as reliable news sources a long time ago. People have become used to drawing their own conclusions on attacks such as the one in Southport because they follow a pattern. I had personally concluded there was a >90% certainty the attacker was Muslim because who else does that kind of thing? I still expect to hear he was a recent convert at some stage. So I end up trawling through eye witness reports for the inevitable cries of Aluha Akhbar.
This lack of truth is one reason sites such as Unherd, Spiked and Gript (in Ireland) are becoming so popular. Remember when the Guardian and The Economist were good? A distant memory now, sadly. Even the Daily Mail was quick to jump on the “far right” bandwagon.
As an aside, given that Sikhism descended from Islam, why are they so bloody different? I have a lot of respect for Sikhs; any I ever had for Islam is long gone.
Sikhism isnot descended from Islam. It was part of a wave of Hindu reformist movements in mediaeval India, inspired by Islamic egalitarianism but called the ” Bhakti” movement.
It gradually developed its own identity with Guru Gobind Singh who was brutally killed by the Muslim Mughals. If anything Sikhism is a reaction to Islam.
There is a paranoia in the media to refer to Pakistanis and hence ‘Asian’ becomes the chosen description.