When a President Excuses Violence, the World Pays the Price

 On September 8, 2025, the President of the United States stood at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., and dismissed domestic violence as “things that take place in the home… a little fight with the wife.” He described such incidents as “lesser crimes,” a statistical irritation that prevented him from declaring Washington, D.C., free of crime under his deployment of the National Guard. It was a casual line, but one that cannot be shrugged off. When the most powerful office in the world calls domestic abuse a minor matter, it is not simply careless rhetoric; it is a signal that reverberates across borders and into homes, a signal that tells abusers they are vindicated and survivors that their pain is not worth public recognition.

It matters not only in America, but everywhere. The U.S. presidency carries global influence. Trump’s words will travel through news cycles, social media feeds, and political imitation. We have seen this before. During his first presidency, far-right parties across Europe borrowed his language on migration and nationalism, reshaping political discourse. Today, in his second presidency, the same pattern is already emerging. His dismissal of domestic violence as a “lesser crime” risks becoming not only American rhetoric, but global framing. If violence in the home can be redefined as trivial in Washington, it can just as easily be downplayed in Westminster, Abuja, Delhi, or Johannesburg.

In Britain, this danger is particularly close. The Reform Party has been gaining ground, fuelled by disillusionment with both Labour and the Conservatives. Its leader, Nigel Farage, has long aligned himself with Trump, echoing his populist style and adopting the same “common sense” framing against political elites. The risk is not that Farage has repeated Trump’s exact words, but that his politics are patterned on mimicry. If Trump reframes domestic abuse as a private spat rather than a public crime, it is not far-fetched to imagine similar framings appearing in British debate. And once violence in the home is reclassified as “private life” or “not serious enough,” the consequences are predictable: crime statistics undercounted, services defunded, survivors pushed back into silence. Britain’s support network for survivors is already fragile; Women’s Aid has long warned of shelters closing after years of budget cuts. A political climate that trivializes abuse will only accelerate that erosion.

This minimization is catastrophic when viewed against the scale of violence worldwide. The United Nations estimates that nearly one in three women globally 736 million have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, most often from an intimate partner. In Britain, the Office for National Statistics recorded 1.6 million female victims of domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024. These are not minor quarrels, not “little fights.” They are systemic harms, measured in broken bones, stolen childhoods, fractured communities, and lives cut short. To call them anything less is to erase their severity and, worse, to encourage their continuation.

That Trump made these remarks inside a Bible museum is equally telling. By cloaking his words in a religious setting, he implied spiritual sanction. Yet scripture offers no justification for abuse. Even within traditions that place men as “heads” of households, the mandate is to love and protect, not to harm. In Colossians 3:19, the charge is explicit: “Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them.” But around the world, religion is already invoked to silence survivors, urging them to stay in abusive marriages for the sake of family or faith. When the American president trivializes abuse under the roof of a Bible museum, he risks reinforcing those silences globally.

His words also land in a cultural climate already saturated with hyper-masculine messaging. Across platforms like YouTube and TikTok, influencers such as Andrew Tate are celebrated by millions of boys and men for teaching that masculinity is domination, women are subordinate, and control is the essence of strength. This rhetoric is not fringe it is algorithmically amplified into mainstream culture. When a president shrugs at abuse, he validates this economy of toxic masculinity, shifting it from internet videos into the presidential podium. What was once influencer talk becomes political truth. The effect is not abstract: it teaches boys that harm is normal and girls that pain is expected.

The consequences of such rhetoric are visible when we turn to global case studies. In Nigeria, the 2018 Demographic and Health Survey found that more than 30% of women aged 15–49 had experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and nearly 20% had experienced it in the previous year. In some communities, wife-beating is still seen as socially acceptable under certain circumstances. Silence is the norm, reporting is low, and shelters are scarce. When international leaders call domestic violence “a little fight,” they reinforce these harmful norms, strengthening the idea that violence in the home is not a matter for public concern.

In India, the 2019–21 National Family Health Survey found that 29% of married women aged 18–49 reported experiencing spousal violence. Yet many women do not report it, due to stigma, fear of reprisal, or the perception that police and courts will not take their complaints seriously. Too often, women are told by authorities to reconcile, to endure for the sake of family unity. When the American president frames violence as “lesser,” it adds weight to this normalization, making it easier for local systems to dismiss abuse as private rather than criminal.

South Africa illustrates the crisis in even sharper relief. With some of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world, activists have described it as a “second pandemic.” Police recorded more than 40,000 rapes in 2020, though experts say the true figure is much higher. Domestic abuse is pervasive, and women’s groups have long fought for it to be recognized as a national emergency. In such a context, a U.S. president’s dismissal of violence undermines advocacy efforts, emboldens abusers, and signals to governments that this is not a priority worth urgent action.

The risk is not just cultural but political. Calling domestic violence a “lesser crime” is a precursor to policy erosion. Once reclassified, incidents can be under-recorded, making crime rates appear lower than they are. Services for survivors can be defunded, as budgets are reallocated to what is framed as “serious crime.” Survivors themselves can be delegitimized, facing longer waits for justice, greater disbelief in courtrooms, and weaker police intervention. In countries where systems of protection are already under strain, this erosion is devastating.

For these reasons, women everywhere from Lagos to London, Delhi to Johannesburg must see Trump’s remark for what it is: not a passing line but a global threat. Violence in the home is not private; it is political. It corrodes democracies, weakens economies, and destroys lives. If leaders trivialize it, they imperil half the human population.

What should leadership sound like instead? It should affirm that domestic abuse is a crime that demands public recognition and response. It should insist that women’s safety is a public good, foundational to democratic life. It should commit to fully funded services, accurate data collection, and respectful systems of justice. And it should model a vision of masculinity rooted not in domination but in care, responsibility, and accountability. Anything less is betrayal.

Domestic violence is not “a little fight.” It is crime. It is violence. It is a global epidemic that undermines the safety and dignity of women in every society. For the U.S. president to minimize it is to embolden abusers, silence survivors, and unravel decades of fragile progress. The world should care because these words are not confined to Washington; they echo across borders, shaping the way men treat women, the way states classify crime, and the way societies decide whose pain matters. Women have fought too long and too hard to accept regression. If leaders trivialize violence, the rest of us must answer with refusal: refusal to let harm be downgraded, refusal to let pain be erased, and refusal to accept “lesser crime” as our destiny.

And refusal must go hand in hand with action.

Supporting the organisations already on the frontlines is one way to resist the minimization of harm.

In the UK, Women’s Aid and Refuge provide life-saving shelters and services.

In South Africa, Sonke Gender Justice campaigns to end gender-based violence. Globally, UN Women continues to fight for recognition and resources to tackle violence against women everywhere.

These groups, and others like them, are holding the line where political rhetoric threatens to push us backwards. By supporting them, amplifying their work, and refusing to let leaders dismiss abuse as “a little fight,” we insist on a different future: one where women’s safety is not an afterthought, but a foundation.

Sources

• Trump downplays domestic violence in speech about religious freedom – 19th News

• Trump apparently thinks domestic violence is not a crime – The Guardian

• Trump downplays domestic disturbances as he touts D.C. crime reduction – Washington Post

• ONS: Domestic abuse prevalence and trends, England and Wales: year ending March 2024

• UN Women: Facts and figures on violence against women

• Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey 2018

• National Family Health Survey, India 2019–21

What does truth mean in 2025

Hatred is the lowest place we can take ourselves toward others. Whatever mask it wears belief, politics, race, fear it is always the same descent. Hatred diminishes before it destroys. It corrodes the one who carries it before it wounds the one it targets. And yet hatred today is not something hidden, whispered, or shameful. It has become ordinary currency in our politics, our media, and our everyday speech.

Across the UK, Europe, America, and beyond, hatred is spoken aloud, without embarrassment. It is justified, dressed up as freedom, or framed as “saying it like it is.” In some places, it is cheered on openly. In others, it circulates in coded speech, in jokes, in offhand remarks that are meant to cut but also to normalize. The more it circulates, the less it shocks. The less it shocks, the more it grows.

Lies as Fuel

In the UK, one of the most striking recent lies came when Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, declared before a U.S. congressional committee that Britain had become “like North Korea” in its approach to free speech. It was not a statement made in fear or confusion, but a deliberate exaggeration designed for outrage. And yet, the irony was sharp: he was free to say it in the first place. Would he have dared to say such a thing in North Korea? Of course not. There, such words would mean disappearance. Here, they meant headlines, retweets, and another round of outrage theatre.

And what happened next? Nothing. No lawsuit, no sanction, no accountability. The lie simply entered circulation, another drop of poison in an already contaminated well. And there are some who believe him.

Lies like this are not innocent errors. They are calculated tools. They exaggerate oppression in order to diminish the very real suffering of others. They position relatively minor inconveniences mask mandates, inclusive language, equality policies as though they were the chains of dictatorship. By doing so, they trivialize the lives of those who actually live under authoritarian regimes, those who are genuinely imprisoned for speaking, those who are silenced with violence.

And yet, such lies flourish because they tap into something deeper: the desire for grievance. Lies become fuel for hatred. They give permission to despise others, to blame, to reject. If we are “like North Korea,” then those who resist me are tyrants. If I am a victim of censorship, then my hatred is self-defense. Lies clear the ground for hatred to be seeded and grown.

This is not unique to the UK. In the United States, lies about stolen elections and shadow conspiracies have driven people to violence. In Europe, lies about migrants “flooding” borders, “taking over” cities, or “destroying culture” dominate headlines and shape entire political campaigns. The lies differ in content but not in function: they are scaffolding for hatred.

There is something chilling in how ordinary hatred has become. Once, hatred wore a hood or hid in shadows. Now it wears suits, appears on television, and is retweeted by millions. It is presented as patriotism. It is framed as common sense. It is excused as humour.

Hatred today is not always about shouting slurs. It is about the slow normalization of contempt. It is about the subtle suggestion that some people do not belong, that they are dangerous, that they are “too many.” It is about everyday language that frames neighbours as threats, colleagues as enemies, strangers as invaders.

This ordinariness is its power. When hatred becomes banal, it no longer alarms us. We scroll past it, we shake our heads, we sigh, we carry on. And so it spreads, not through spectacular moments of violence alone, but through repetition, through tolerance of the intolerable, through small lies left unchallenged.

What Is Truth in 2025?

We are told we live in a “post-truth” era. But perhaps that is too neat. It is not that truth has disappeared, but that truth itself has become contested terrain. To claim something as “true” today is not only to make a statement about facts; it is to enter a battlefield of politics, identity, and power.

Whose truths are recognized? Whose truths are discredited? Consider Palestinians who tell their stories of occupation, dispossession, and loss, only to be dismissed as fabricators or agitators. Consider Black Britons who speak of racism, only to be told that racism is an American import. Consider women who testify to harassment, only to have their words framed as overreaction.

Truth has always been about power. Facts do not float freely in the air. They are mediated by institutions, by governments, by the press, by platforms that decide what to amplify and what to bury. In 2025, this feels sharper than ever: truth is not just what is said, but who is permitted to say it, and who is believed when they do.

The danger is not only that lies circulate but that truths are disqualified. Some truths are rendered “biased,” “emotional,” “exaggerated,” while lies are given the status of “opinion.” This inversion destabilizes public trust. If every truth is called a lie, and every lie is defended as perspective, then what grounds remain for shared life?

Global Mirrors

The erosion of truth and the normalization of hatred are not confined to one place. They mirror each other across borders.

In Israel and Palestine, truth itself has become weaponized. Each side accuses the other of fabricating, of manipulating, of erasing. But the asymmetry is clear: one side’s truth is broadcast by powerful allies, while the other side’s truth is often silenced, deplatformed, or censored. Here we see how truth is not just about accuracy but about who controls the megaphone.

In the United States, truth fractures along partisan lines. A fact on one news channel is dismissed as propaganda on another. “Truth” has become less about evidence than about loyalty to a camp. In this landscape, lies about migrants, about gender, about elections, thrive. They are not believed because they are credible; they are believed because they are useful.

Across Europe, far-right parties gain momentum by promising to restore “truth” against “wokeness.” Their truth is framed as common sense: that there are too many migrants, that nations are under siege, that tradition is under threat. These narratives feed on fear, nostalgia, and resentment. They rebrand exclusion as realism, and hatred as honesty.

And in the UK, culture wars dominate headlines. Migrants, trans people, environmental activists, “lefties,” “centrists” anyone who challenges the status quo becomes a target. Lies circulate about boats, about pronouns, about cancel culture. Each lie becomes a spark, igniting hatred that is framed not as cruelty but as “truth-telling.”

Philosophical Reflection: The Weight of Hatred

Hatred is not only a political force; it is a moral and existential one. To hate is to diminish oneself. It narrows vision, it hardens the heart, it reduces the complexity of the other into a caricature. It feeds on lies because lies make hatred easier. Lies simplify the world into good and evil, us and them, victim and oppressor.

But hatred also has a seduction. It gives a sense of clarity in a confusing world. It offers belonging to those who feel lost. It provides an illusion of strength to those who feel powerless. In this sense, hatred thrives not only because of lies told from above but because of the fears and insecurities that lie beneath.

The question is: what becomes of truth in such a world? Truth is harder work than hatred. Truth requires nuance, patience, listening. Truth resists simplicity. It insists that people are more than their labels, that suffering cannot be explained away, that justice requires complexity.

In 2025, to hold onto truth is to resist the seduction of hatred. It is to refuse the ease of lies. It is to insist that solidarity matters more than grievance, that compassion is stronger than contempt.

Hatred is the lowest place we can take ourselves toward others. Whatever excuse we clothe it in politics, religion, race, or fear it drags us down before it harms anyone else. In this moment, across continents, hatred feels ascendant. Lies multiply, truths are silenced, and the very meaning of reality is contested.

And yet, truth is not gone. It persists in the voices of those who refuse silence. It persists in the solidarity of those who choose compassion over contempt. It persists in every act that resists the seduction of hatred and insists on the dignity of others.

The question of 2025 is not whether truth exists, but whether we are willing to defend it whether we are willing to name lies as lies, to resist hatred in its banal forms, to hold on to the fragile but vital possibility of shared life.

Because hatred will always offer us a low place. The challenge is whether we can choose not to descend.

Bad by Design: Universities, Disability, and the Myth of Equality The Irony of an Equality Job

A department at the University of Oxford recently advertised for a Senior HR and Equality Officer. On paper, this was a role about fairness, inclusion, and creating a workplace where everyone could thrive. In practice, the recruitment process revealed just how little those words mean when access is treated as an afterthought.

On the application form, candidates were asked the standard questions: Do you consider yourself disabled? Do you require adjustments? I disclosed that I am a wheelchair user. HR saw it. The line manager saw it. Yet the interview was scheduled in an inaccessible venue  only moved after I raised the issue.

This is not a small oversight. It is a failure at two levels: HR, the department tasked with equality, and the line manager responsible for shortlisting. They had the information and ignored it. They looked at the form but did not see the person.

And here is the question I cannot shake: if they failed to notice disability disclosure, what were they looking for?

Borrowed Access Isn’t Access

This was not my first time at Oxford. I have been to four interviews there. Each time, access was close to zero. Sometimes an office was “borrowed” for the day, as though accessibility could be loaned and returned when the disabled candidate left. But if access has to be borrowed for an interview, what happens if you get the job? Where will you work? How will you belong?

Accessibility cannot be occasional. It cannot depend on borrowed rooms, temporary fixes, or hurried rearrangements. For disabled candidates, these arrangements send a clear message: you are not part of the design. You are an afterthought.

Toilets That Fail

The same problem plays out with toilets across universities and colleges. Many are built with the sign of disability on the door but not the reality of access inside. At Abingdon & Witney College, I often had to force myself to stand up twisting painfully  just to reach the toilet seat.

A so-called “disabled toilet” may have a wide door, a pull cord, and a handle on the wall, but if the room is too small to turn a standard wheelchair, then it is not accessible. If you cannot get from your chair to the seat safely, it is not accessible.

And when you point this out? Too often, you’re treated as a complainer, a whinger. The institution gets to tick the box “we have a disabled toilet”  while disabled people bear the cost of the design failure.

When you are already working, already tired, being told to “just use your walking stick” or “make do” is not a solution. It is an erasure of the exhaustion and pain that extra effort brings. It is not equality. It is survival dressed up as inclusion.

When Equality Is Selective

I worked in HR. I know how inclusion gets discussed in departments. Race and gender dominate  because there are charters and marks like Athena Swan or the Race Equality Charter that bring recognition and, in some cases, funding. Gender equality has weight because it is measurable and rewarded. Race is increasingly visible because institutions want to be seen to do the right thing.

But disability? Rarely on the agenda. It is spoken about the least, often ignored, and almost never prioritised.

The worst thing about being disabled is that you have no choice. If the lift doesn’t work, if the toilet is too small, if the interview room is upstairs, then you are excluded. Race and gender equality are urgent and vital struggles but they cannot be pursued while disability is sidelined, treated as optional, or too expensive to address. That is not equality. That is selective equality.

More Than Oxford

Oxford is bad. Westminster is bad. Oxford Brookes is not better either. At Westminster, I once went to a conference where the lifts weren’t working. I was escorted through service corridors by a group of facilities men  frightening and humiliating. At Oxford Brookes, my own supervisor once told me I couldn’t pursue an academic career because of my disability.

These are not isolated experiences. They are the norm. Universities across the UK remain unready for disabled people. They build environments around the able-bodied norm, then scramble to improvise when disabled people appear. It is not that the structures are “too old” or “too historic.” They build new ones too and still fail to design them for access. That is not heritage. That is choice.

Exclusion by Design

Here is the truth: universities were never meant for disabled people. Their buildings, policies, and cultures were created for able-bodied men of privilege. And while institutions have learned to speak the language of equality about race, gender, sexuality disability remains the category they least want to deal with.

That silence matters. Because for wheelchair users, what is “optional” to the institution is life-defining for us. A working lift is not a convenience. A genuinely accessible toilet is not a luxury. An accessible interview room is not a favour. They are the basics of participation. Without them, we are excluded before the conversation even begins.

The Lesson for the Future

Oxford is bad. Westminster is bad. Higher education is bad when it comes to accessibility. This is not about one building, one office, or one conference. It is about a system that was never designed with disabled people in mind and has still not been rebuilt to include us.

For future generations, the lesson is clear: inclusion is meaningless if it depends on who demands it. Disability cannot be left as the last, the least, the optional part of equality agendas. It must be built in  to the bricks, the rooms, the jobs, the everyday.

Until that happens, we do not have equality. We have selective equality and selective equality is no equality at all.

Yours truly,
The Chronicled Truth

Flags, Fear, and Fragile Identities: Britain’s Politics of Exclusion

 

Walk through Britain today and the flags are hard to miss. They hang from council offices and roundabouts, they stretch across bridges, and they remain taped to garden fences months after the jubilee bunting should have come down. People wear them on their shoulders in supermarkets, pub gardens, even on school runs. This isn’t the occasional burst of national celebration we associate with football tournaments or royal weddings. It is an everyday saturation a choreography of patriotism woven into the mundane.

Confident nations rarely need to wallpaper themselves with symbols. The very proliferation of Union Jacks is a confession: if we keep repeating who we are, perhaps we’ll finally believe it. The shift has even been institutionalised. In 2021, the government changed official guidance to encourage the Union Flag to be flown on all UK government buildings every day of the year, not just on designated days (BBC, 24 March 2021). ¹ Flags became permanent backdrops to ministerial press conferences, no longer celebratory but compulsory, visual proof of belonging.

At the same time, hostility towards asylum seekers has hardened into national obsession. Small boats crossing the Channel dominate headlines and news cycles. In 2024, 37,556 people were detected arriving by small boat, up from 29,437 in 2023 but lower than the 45,774 peak in 2022 (Home Office, 2025).² Relative to population size, these numbers are modest: Germany, France, and Italy all process far more asylum claims. But the imagery of dinghies at Dover has been elevated into existential crisis.

The politics follows the imagery. From the Conservative government’s failed Rwanda deportation scheme, which cost hundreds of millions but never actually relocated a single asylum seeker, to Labour’s decision in 2024 to cancel it and redirect focus toward expanded border operations, asylum has been used less as policy than as performance. The boats matter less for who is in them than for what they symbolise. They are made to stand for everything the nation fears: invasion, loss, disorder, weakness.

Flags and boats move together. One reassures us who we are; the other reminds us who we are not. But if identity needs this much staging, it reveals its own fragility.

This fragility is not new. British identity has long been negotiated through contradiction. For centuries, empire allowed Britishness to be expansive, exported with confidence across the globe. After empire, identity was rebuilt around the welfare state, postwar resilience, and institutions like the NHS. From the 1970s onward, Britishness was mediated through Europe: at once part of the project and always apart from it.

Brexit was supposed to answer the question of who we are. Instead, it has deepened the uncertainty. Sovereignty is invoked like a prayer, flags drape over the ruins of austerity, and asylum seekers are offered up as scapegoats.

Even earlier, the Windrush generation was invited to rebuild Britain after the war, only to face hostility, racism, and eventually betrayal through the Windrush scandal where Black Britons were wrongly detained or deported under “hostile environment” immigration policies (Home Office, 2018). The same nation that claimed pride in multiculturalism also punished those who embodied it. This double movement invitation and exclusion  is a core feature of British identity politics. Today’s asylum debates are another turn of that wheel.

The media amplifies the insecurity. Tabloids scream about “invasions” while NHS waiting lists lengthen and local councils declare bankruptcy. Protests against asylum accommodation flare in towns where the anger should be directed at underfunding, not at refugees. The asylum seeker becomes a lightning rod for structural failures. The politics of exclusion is useful: it directs anger away from those in power and toward those with none.

Meanwhile, the flags flutter over food banks. They decorate roundabouts in towns hollowed out by austerity. They cover bridges even as they span communities divided by inequality. Symbols stand in for substance, but symbols cannot fill fridges or pay rents.

The unusual thing about this moment is not that Britain has asylum seekers it always has, from Huguenots to Ugandan Asians to Syrians. Nor is it that Britain argues about borders every nation does. What is unusual is the sheer saturation of symbols and scapegoats: flags everywhere, boats on every bulletin, identity rehearsed daily in a register of fragility.

It is worth asking: what does it mean when a country defines itself primarily by what it excludes? A confident identity metabolises difference; a brittle identity panics at it. A confident country does not need to cover every roundabout in bunting. A confident politics does not need to vilify the desperate to feel whole.

 

What We Can Do

We cannot strip every flag from every roundabout, nor can we undo decades of media hostility overnight. But we can refuse the swap of symbols for substance. When the next row about boats fills the headlines, ask: who benefits when our anger is directed at asylum seekers instead of austerity?

We can reclaim identity in ways that are expansive, not defensive. To belong here should not mean to exclude. It can mean resilience, creativity, solidarity. It can mean seeing asylum seekers as neighbours, not invaders.

We can demand competence rather than theatre: schools funded, clinics staffed, councils resourced. A politics that works does not need costumes.

And we can remind ourselves that flags cannot fix what is broken. They can decorate; they can commemorate but they cannot substitute for justice, dignity, or care.

Britain today is caught in a contradiction: the louder the flags wave, the more fragile the identity beneath. A nation sure of itself does not need to rehearse its belonging every day. A nation at ease with itself does not need scapegoats. The real challenge is not the asylum seeker in the boat; it is the country on the shore, unsure of who it is without an enemy to measure itself against.

Because in the end, an identity built on fear is no identity at all. And no number of flags will ever cover that truth.

 

 

 

 

 

References

1. BBC News. “Union flag to be flown on all UK government buildings every day.” 24 March 2021.
2. UK Home Office. “Irregular migration to the UK, year ending December 2024.” Published February 2025.
3. The Guardian. “Labour scraps Rwanda deportation scheme after election victory.” July 2024.
4. UK Home Office. Windrush Lessons Learned Review. 2018.

 

What’s Happening to the UK? How the Far-Right Found Its Voice in a Broken Nation

 

Hotels across the UK are becoming the stage for an ugly drama. Outside, crowds gather with flags and placards, chanting slogans like “Make Epping Safe Again” and “No More Silence – We Fight.” Inside, asylum seekers families, children, people fleeing wars and persecution wait in fear.

This is not a random uprising of “concerned citizens.” This is the far-right, emboldened and organised, feeding off Britain’s political failures. And unless the country wakes up, this will not just be about hotels. It will reshape what it means to be British.

To understand why far-right protests are spreading, we must look at the past decade. Successive Conservative governments promised to “take back control.” Brexit was sold as a cure to everything more housing, more money for the NHS, safer streets, restored sovereignty. None of it came true.

Instead, austerity hollowed out communities. Libraries closed. Youth centres disappeared. Local councils went bankrupt. The NHS collapsed under waiting lists. Wages stagnated while billionaires got richer.

People were promised transformation. What they got was decline.

And into this betrayal stepped the far-right. They pointed to migrants and asylum seekers as the reason everything feels broken. Conveniently, these shifts blame away from the politicians who created the mess.

Let’s not pretend this is just fringe extremists. Senior politicians have poured fuel on the fire. Former Home Secretary Suella Braverman spoke of an “invasion” on Britain’s southern coast. She called the arrival of asylum seekers a “hurricane.”

This language is not accidental. It’s designed to dehumanise, to reduce vulnerable people into a faceless threat. When politicians talk like this, they give the far-right permission to act. They make protests outside hotels feel justified, even righteous.

And Braverman is not alone. For years, both Labour and Conservative governments have played the same game: treating migration as a problem to be “tough” on, rather than a reality to be managed with fairness and compassion. This cowardice has allowed far-right narratives to thrive.

The protests are not just happening in the streets they are planned online. Facebook groups, often filled with recycled lies, are the beating heart of the movement. One exaggerated incident is enough to trigger outrage across dozens of towns.

The pattern is predictable:

• A rumour spreads usually unverified.
• Far-right pages amplify it with memes and dramatic captions.
• Local groups pick it up, framing asylum seekers as a danger.
• Outrage builds until it spills into the real world.

This is not “organic community anger.” It is manufactured, fuelled by algorithms that reward hate because hate generates clicks.

What makes this truly depressing is how misplaced the anger is. Protesters shout at hotel windows, but the real causes of their despair are elsewhere.

• It wasn’t asylum seekers who slashed local services. It was George Osborne’s austerity budgets.
• It wasn’t asylum seekers who caused housing shortages. It was decades of government failure to build affordable homes.
• It isn’t asylum seekers making it impossible to get a GP appointment. It’s chronic NHS underfunding and staff shortages.
• It isn’t asylum seekers who broke Britain’s economy. It’s the chaos of Brexit and years of political mismanagement.

The far-right wants people to believe Britain is “unsafe” because of migrants. The truth is Britain feels unsafe because people have been abandoned by their government.

The UK has a proud history of offering refuge from Jewish families fleeing the Holocaust to Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin, to Syrians fleeing war. It has always claimed to be a place of fairness and justice.

But today, that identity is under attack. If the loudest voices become those shouting at hotels, Britain risks becoming a nation defined by hostility, not compassion.

The question is not just about asylum seekers. It is about who the British want to be. Do they want to be the people who slam the door on the desperate? Or do they want to be the people who stand against hate and demand real answers to the crises tearing communities apart?

The far-right does not need to “win” power to succeed. It only needs to make its ideas seem normal. Already, the rhetoric of “swarms,” “invasions,” and “safety” has entered mainstream conversation. Already, politicians on both sides adopt tougher stances, terrified of losing votes.

This is how democracy corrodes not in sudden coups, but in small shifts where exclusion becomes acceptable and cruelty becomes common sense.

A Call to Action

It’s not enough to shake our heads at these protests. The UK needs a different response:

• Expose the lies. Misinformation about asylum seekers must be challenged loudly and consistently.
• Hold politicians accountable. When leaders use dehumanising language, they must be called out for fuelling hate.
• Redirect the anger. Britain’s problems are real, but they are political problems, not migrant problems.
• Reclaim the narrative. Compassion, fairness, and solidarity are not weaknesses. They are the foundation of a strong society.

What’s happening outside asylum hotels is not just about immigration. It’s about Britain’s soul. It reveals a nation in crisis, where betrayal and despair have left people vulnerable to manipulation.

But there is still a choice. The UK can confront its real problems inequality, austerity, broken politics or it can continue to scapegoat the powerless. It can rebuild around compassion and justice or slide further into fear and division.

The far-right wants Britain to forget its history of refuge and pride itself on hostility. The question is whether Britain will let them.

 

 

 

 

Decolonisation Beyond Politics: The African Refusal

 Decolonisation is often spoken of as a historical moment, an event contained within the mid-twentieth century when African nations declared independence from European empires. Flags were raised, constitutions signed, and the old colonial powers forced to retreat from the continent they had carved into possessions. Yet what followed independence was not always freedom. The colonial state left behind more than soldiers and governors; it left its languages, its economies, its symbols, and its ways of thinking. It left structures of dependence so deep that to be “independent” often meant still looking outward for approval, for validation, for permission.

But today, across the African continent, we are witnessing something different something more profound. We are witnessing refusal.

Refusal is not merely opposition. It is not simply protest. Refusal is the act of saying no to the conditions that attempt to define us. It is the insistence on stepping outside the frameworks that diminish us, the courage to reject what has long been normalised. And refusal is taking shape not only in the streets, not only in the parliaments, but also in the languages we speak, the clothes we wear, the ways we understand ourselves.

In Burkina Faso, under the leadership of Ibrahim Traoré, refusal has become government policy. It has become a national ethos. And it offers a glimpse of what Africa’s future might look like if it chooses not merely to be free in theory, but free in practice.

The Burkinabè Example: Decolonisation in Action

When Captain Ibrahim Traoré assumed power in 2022, many outside observers dismissed him as just another young officer seizing the opportunity of instability. But what he has represented since then is more than a military takeover. His government has redefined the meaning of sovereignty, moving decolonisation out of the abstract realm of politics into the tangible spaces of culture, language, and daily life.

In December 2023, Burkina Faso’s transitional authorities declared that French would no longer be the country’s official language. Instead, French was reduced to the status of a “working language,” while the national languages Mòoré, Dioula, Fulfulde, Gourmantché, Bissa, and others were elevated to official recognition. This was not only a linguistic reform; it was a profound act of refusal. It refused the idea that law and governance must always speak in the tongue of the coloniser. It refused the silent assumption that modernity and progress are tied to Europe’s words. By translating the constitution and the anti-corruption law into indigenous languages, Traoré’s government declared that democracy belongs to the people who live it, not just to those who can read French.

In the courts, refusal has taken another form. Judges no longer don black satin robes imported from Europe. Instead, they now wear Faso Dan Fani, the handwoven cotton cloth that is a source of Burkinabè pride. This change may appear symbolic, but symbols matter. They shape the imagination. To see justice robed in Faso Dan Fani is to see justice rooted in local soil, not borrowed from a foreign culture. It is to remember that even law can be clothed in dignity that is ours.

Burkina Faso has also banned the import of second-hand clothes from Europe, a market that for decades has flooded African streets with discarded fashion. By saying no to this trade, the government is refusing the logic that Africa must wear the West’s leftovers. It is insisting on supporting local production, on weaving its future with its own threads.

Each of these decisions is political, yes, but they are also cultural. They are not just about statecraft; they are about identity. And identity is where the battle for decolonisation is truly fought.

Refusal, for me, has meant something similar, though lived on a personal scale. It has meant refusing to shrink myself into the images others made of me. Refusing to let racism decide the limits of my worth. Refusing to let disability be treated as silence or absence. Refusal has meant insisting on being heard in my own voice, even when others would rather, I repeat back theirs. When I see Burkina Faso translate its constitution into local languages, I recognise the same struggle: the fight to ensure that dignity speaks in its own tongue.

Traoré’s project is not without precedent. He walks in the footsteps of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso in the 1980s, whose vision remains one of the most inspiring in Africa’s modern history.

Sankara understood that true independence required more than a flag. He renamed the country from Upper Volta, a colonial label, to Burkina Faso, the “land of upright people.” He urged Burkinabè citizens to wear local fabrics instead of imported suits, to eat food grown on Burkinabè soil rather than relying on foreign aid. He refused the domination of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, declaring that debt was another form of slavery.

In this, Sankara was an early prophet of refusal. His assassination in 1987 interrupted his project, but the spirit of refusal he ignited never disappeared. Today, Ibrahim Traoré is reclaiming that inheritance, reviving Sankara’s radical commitment to dignity. To wear Faso Dan Fani in a courtroom, to reject second-hand imports, to elevate national languages these are echoes of Sankara’s conviction that freedom must be lived, not just declared.

Refusal, for me, has meant looking at inherited narratives and deciding not to carry them further. It has meant saying no to the ways history tries to script my life. Sankara’s refusal was continental, but mine, too, has been revolutionary in its own small way. In the face of those who reduce me, refusal has been survival. In that sense, I know exactly why refusal matters for nations it matters for people first.

Burkina Faso may be a focal point, but it is not alone. Across Africa, a wave of refusal is building.

In Mali and Niger, governments have expelled French troops, rejecting the idea that security can only come from external saviours. These states, alongside Burkina Faso, are now pursuing a confederation, exploring new forms of regional sovereignty that place African solidarity above Western alliances.

In Tanzania, the long-standing use of Swahili as the national language continues to serve as a powerful example of how indigenous languages can unify and empower a nation. In South Africa, debates over reclaiming African languages in education challenge the dominance of English and Afrikaans. Across the continent, young Africans are refusing to be defined by colonial tongues alone, insisting on the richness of their mother languages.

Culturally, too, there is refusal. In music, Afrobeats and Amapiano dominate global charts, no longer imitating Western pop but shaping global soundscapes. In fashion, designers are reviving traditional textiles and fusing them with modern styles, refusing to be mere consumers of Paris or Milan. In literature, African writers are rejecting the expectation to write “for the West,” centring their stories in African contexts without translation for a colonial gaze.

This is not coincidence. It is the emergence of a continental ethos: Africa is learning again how to say no.

Refusal, for me, has also meant saying no to second-hand identities. Just as Africa rejects discarded clothes, I have learned to reject the second-hand expectations imposed on me expectations of silence, compliance, invisibility. I have learned to say no to the stories handed down by those who would rather I disappear. Africa’s cultural refusal mirrors a personal one: we both insist on wearing what is truly ours.

A nation may raise its flag, but if its children are taught to despise their mother tongues, has it truly broken free? A country may have its own constitution, but if its people must wear the garments of Europe to feel dignified, is it truly sovereign? A continent may trade with the world, but if its people are dressed in the cast-offs of others, how can it claim self-respect?

Cultural decolonisation is about re-rooting identity in the soil of the people themselves. Refusal is creative: it clears the ground of dependency so that something new can be built. To refuse is not to close off possibilities, but to open them. When Burkina Faso refuses French linguistic dominance, it opens the possibility of justice understood in every village, of laws that speak to the farmer and the trader in their own words. When judges wear Faso Dan Fani, they not only refuse European robes they affirm that African cloth can carry the weight of justice.

Refusal becomes a path to affirmation.

And here again, the personal resonates with the political. Refusal, for me, has never been only about turning away it has always been about turning toward. Toward self-respect. Toward survival. Toward dignity. In my refusal to be diminished, I affirm the fullness of who I am. And so too does Africa, when it chooses refusal, affirm its potential to be whole.

Challenges of the Refusal

Yet refusal is not without risks. The global economy is tightly bound, and rejecting foreign imports can bring short-term hardship. Western powers do not easily tolerate disobedience; sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and economic retaliation often follow acts of refusal. There is also the danger that revolutionary language may be used to mask authoritarian practices, with leaders suppressing dissent in the name of sovereignty.

These challenges are real. But they do not erase the necessity of refusal. Rather, they highlight the courage it takes for nations like Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to walk this path. The refusal is costly, but dependence is costlier.

Across Africa, from the Sahel to the Cape, refusal is rising. It is not uniform, not without contradictions, not without setbacks. But it signals a turning of the tide.

Burkina Faso under Ibrahim Traoré is more than a national story; it is a symbol of continental possibility. It tells us that decolonisation is not finished. It is not a chapter closed in the twentieth century. It is alive, unfolding, demanding to be lived every day.

Refusal is not despair. Refusal is hope. It is the courage to imagine differently, to say no to what diminishes us so that we may say yes to what liberates us. It is a reminder that freedom is not given it is taken, insisted upon, embodied.

Refusal, for me, has always been about survival in a world that often tries to erase me. For Africa, refusal is about survival too. It is about dignity, sovereignty, and the right to dream its own dreams.

The question is not whether Burkina Faso alone can transform Africa. The question is whether Africa is ready to embrace refusal not as retreat, but as rebirth.

Because the age of refusal has begun. And with it, the chance for Africa to finally be free.

Postscript

We celebrate when Africa recognises itself in its languages, its cultures, its knowledge systems, and its people. But we do not celebrate nor accept authoritarian regimes that use identity as a mask for oppression. True decolonisation is not the replacement of one domination with another, but the affirmation of freedom, dignity, and self-determination for all African peoples.

Dangerous Words: Left, Liberal, and the Language of Fear

Scrolling through Facebook one morning, I saw a post from a British tabloid. Its headline screamed about the “loony left.” The villains of the day? Students protesting racism on campus, councils debating whether statues of slave traders should still loom over our public squares, and striking workers daring to demand fair pay in a cost-of-living crisis. The framing was not subtle. The left wasn’t just wrong. The left was dangerous.

Later, another clip appeared in my feed this time from Fox News across the Atlantic. The anchor warned viewers that “liberals” were threatening America’s very survival. Not socialists, not radicals, not even communists just liberals. In the U.S., the word “liberal” itself has been turned into an insult. Different countries, different words. But the same tactic: take those who dissent, rename them as an existential threat, and repeat it until the public sees not people with ideas, but enemies at the gates.

To understand why the labels sting, we need to pause and define them.

• Left: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the left refers to “those holding liberal, socialist, or radical views in politics.” Historically, “the left” has been associated with equality, redistribution, and collective justice. Yet in Britain, tabloid headlines often reduce it to an insult: the “loony left” councils of the 1980s who supposedly cared more about symbolic battles than “common sense.”
• Liberal: In political theory, liberalism is rooted in individual freedoms, democracy, and rights. But in the U.S. context, “liberal” became shorthand for anyone supporting progressive taxation, universal healthcare, racial justice, or gender equality. In right-wing media, “liberal” is often spat out as a synonym for weak, out-of-touch, or morally corrupt.
• Fascism: Merriam-Webster defines it as “a political philosophy that exalts nation and often race above the individual, and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader.” Scholars like Robert Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism, 2004) describe it as mobilising popular resentment through nationalism, scapegoating minorities, and glorifying violence. While politicians today rarely call themselves fascists, the rhetoric of fear and exclusion the idea that equality itself is a threat bears disturbing echoes.

Britain: The “Loony Left” and the Politics of Ridicule

The phrase “loony left” took root in the 1980s, weaponised by tabloids to discredit Labour councils who passed progressive policies. Fast-forward to the 2010s and 2020s, and the pattern is alive. When Bristol protestors pulled down the statue of Edward Colston a slave trader whose profits built parts of the city the right called it “mob rule.” When students backed Rhodes Must Fall at Oxford, headlines mocked them as hypersensitive, “woke warriors” unable to face history. When junior doctors, nurses, and teachers went on strike for fair pay, they were accused of “holding the nation hostage.”

In all of this, the language does heavy lifting. Calling protestors “woke mobs” shifts the story from injustice to disorder. Talking about “loony” councils reframes democratic decisions as irrational excess. The goal is not just to disagree, but to delegitimise.

And this matters now. With the rise of the Reform Party UK, founded by Nigel Farage and Richard Tice, the rhetoric has intensified. Reform positions itself as the antidote to both “soft Tories” and the “loony left.” In their 2024 campaign, they rail against “woke elites” supposedly controlling institutions. The left isn’t just wrong; it’s portrayed as un-British, a betrayal of common sense and tradition.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the word “liberal” has undergone a transformation. Once linked with John F. Kennedy’s optimism or the civil rights movement, it is now the punching bag of conservative media. Fox News, talk radio hosts, and MAGA politicians frequently warn that “liberals want to destroy America.”

During the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, peaceful protestors were branded “liberal anarchists.” Advocates for universal healthcare are “radical liberals” pushing “socialism.” Teachers who introduce inclusive curricula are framed as “liberal groomers.” The rhetorical sleight of hand is clear: add “liberal” in front of anything, and suddenly it becomes a threat to freedom, faith, and family.

Here, we also see the shadow of Christian nationalism, particularly within the MAGA movement. Pastors and politicians alike preach that liberalism is anti-Christian. Calls for LGBTQ+ equality are framed as attacks on religious freedom. Medicare expansion is framed as creeping socialism. The aim? To cast liberal policies not just as wrong-headed, but as morally dangerous corrupting the nation’s soul.

What unites the British fear of the “left” and the American fear of “liberals” is the target: equality. Calls for racial justice, gender justice, economic fairness, healthcare, housing these are reframed as threats to order, freedom, or tradition. And when those calls gain traction, the backlash grows sharper.

We can see this in the global rise of far-right parties. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s self-declared “illiberal democracy.” The labels shift, but the strategy remains: define your opponents as not just misguided, but as enemies of the nation.

In Britain, the Reform Party polls in double digits, shaping debate even if it doesn’t win power. The Conservatives adopt its talking points to survive. In the U.S., Donald Trump openly praises authoritarian leaders while promising retribution against “liberal enemies.” And ordinary people scrolling Facebook, watching the evening news are fed a steady diet of fear.

The words stick. They shape who we see as dangerous, who we see as ridiculous, and who we see as human. They decide whether a striking nurse is a hero or a traitor. Whether a protestor pulling down a slave trader’s statue is reclaiming history or destroying it. Whether calling for universal healthcare is compassion or communism.

Language matters. Because once people accept that “the left” or “liberals” are not just wrong but dangerous, the path to authoritarianism opens wide.

What’s striking in both Britain and the United States is that while politicians and media obsess over “left” and “liberal,” the word fascism is whispered, if mentioned at all. Yet the signs are there: the rise of authoritarian rhetoric, the scapegoating of migrants, the normalization of conspiracy theories, and the demonisation of entire communities. In Britain, the Reform Party has tapped into these anxieties, styling itself as the “common sense” alternative to what they call woke or weak leadership. In the U.S., Donald Trump’s movement has openly courted groups aligned with Christian nationalism and embraced the “MAGA” vision of returning to a mythic past.

Fascism doesn’t usually arrive wearing jackboots at first. It comes disguised as “ordinary concerns,” as “patriotism,” as “protecting values.” It shows up when strikes are painted as selfish, when antiracism is reframed as divisive, when queer and trans people are cast as threats to children. In Britain, this rhetoric is fed daily through tabloids; in the U.S., through Fox News and a constellation of right-wing platforms.

The irony is that while these movements warn that “the left” or “liberals” are a danger to democracy, the erosion of democratic norms comes most clearly from their own side: voter suppression in the U.S., the push for anti-protest laws in the U.K., the constant reframing of inequality as personal failure rather than systemic design.

These aren’t just words thrown around for sport. The language sets the frame for what counts as legitimate politics. If “liberal” is enough to make you an enemy of the state in America, and “left” enough to make you a national threat in Britain, then the bar for dissent has been pushed dangerously low. Today it’s students taking down statues or striking nurses under attack. Tomorrow it could be anyone asking why billionaires pay less tax than their cleaners.

Naming fascism matters because it breaks the illusion that this is simply about opinion or party politics. It reminds us that when politicians and media declare certain groups “dangerous,” they aren’t just debating ideas they are drawing up the lines of who gets to belong, who gets to dissent, and who gets to exist safely in public.

And it matters because we’ve seen this before. Europe in the 1930s, America in the McCarthy era, Britain during Thatcher’s war on unions. The terms shift, the scapegoats change, but the script is familiar: demonise, divide, then consolidate power.

The debate over “left” versus “liberal” isn’t a distraction it’s a signal. It tells us that democracy is being rewritten through language. And if we don’t pay attention, if we don’t challenge the frames, then fascism doesn’t need to march in. It will have already been invited.

You don’t need to sit in Parliament or Congress to hear how language shifts the air we breathe. It’s there in a neighbour muttering about “lefty students” while quoting the Daily Mail. It’s in the WhatsApp groups where “liberal” is shorthand for weakness. It’s in the casual dismissal of Black Lives Matter or climate protestors as dangerous extremists, while actual far-right marches are excused as free speech.

This is where the stakes become real. When everyday conversations adopt the frames set by politicians and media, the ground tilts beneath us all. It tilts toward division, toward suspicion, toward a world where belonging is conditional.

That’s why language matters not as an academic debate, but as a lived question of survival, safety, and democracy. And that’s why we must name fascism where it lurks, challenge the distortion of “left” and “liberal,” and remind ourselves that words are not neutral. They are the architecture of power.