Katie Hopkins recent comments about refugees have definitely increased racial hatred – not against the refugees but against us. This post is not about the ongoing plight of refugees in the Mediterranean. Not because I think it unimportant, but because it has been covered elsewhere¹.

The editors of the ‘Daily Jihad’ or whatever ISIS/Al Qaeda call their propaganda would have been delighted with Katie’s comments. It would be proof that what they have been saying is true. The contempt with which the lives of some of the poorest, most destitute people in the world is plain to see in one of the West’s biggest selling newspapers. Not only that – the destitution and desperation of these people was to a large extent created by the West’s military intervention in Libya. People such as Katie Hopkins are al-Qaeda’s ‘Useful Idiot’².

It is not only al-Qaeda and ISIS who use events to ferment hatred and fear to build up their own position – it is also done by countless rulers throughout the years, including our own³.

From Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, the incidents have been used to attack the Muslim faith. I am no great fan of the Muslim faith or any other organized religion, however, what should be attacked is the act and not who is doing it. To do otherwise leads to complete hypocrisy. The Christian faith was not attacked because journalists were killed in Iraq by Christian forces – and not only that those who exposed the events ‘should face the death penalty’ or be made to ‘disappear’⁴. Many articles or books cannot be printed – or if they are, they are pulped⁵ – because what they say is inconvenient to the social elite and vested interests that run this country.

I am sure that if the people of this country threatened this social elite and vested interests, then she would be calling on gunships to be used on us.

¹ Refugees don’t need our tears. They need us to stop making them refugees, Anders Lustgarten, The Guardian, 17 April 2015 (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/17/refugees-eu-policy-migrants-how-many-deaths?CMP=fb_gu)

² Is Bush al-Qaeda’s ‘Useful Idiot’?, By Robert Parry, August 26, 2005 (https://consortiumnews.com/2005/082505.html)

³ The Shock Doctrine, Naoni Klein, (http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine)

⁴ WikiLeaks: guilty parties ‘should face death penalty’, The Telegraph, 01 Dec 2010 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8172916/WikiLeaks-guilty-parties-should-face-death-penalty.html)

⁵ Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Noam Chomsky, March 15, 1989 (http://www.chomsky.info/talks/19890315.htm)