How Dare Sadiq Khan call us the Racists

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By Jason Michael

That’s just what we need; Another London Labour mouthpiece coming up to Scotland and telling the half of the population that has been fighting to protect migrants and refugees after Brexit that we are all a shower of racists. Eff-off Sadiq Khan.

We have heard it all before. Ever since some petty unionist propagandist came up with the idea of switching the word ‘national’ in the Scottish National Party for ‘nationalist,’ those against Scotland’s independence have worked tirelessly to convince the wider public that Scottish nationalism is all about bigotry, divisiveness, and racism. With another independence referendum about to be called in Scotland, the Labour Party has launched its Better Together – mark 2.0 – campaign by having Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, pontificate in the Daily Record that nationalism is racism. No doubt the idea here is that, as a Muslim man of colour, Khan is just the man to make this rubbish stick.

022 — The Mayor of London’s ignorance of realities in Scotland beggars belief.

In an earlier article for The Butterfly Rebellion I made something of an attempt to define nationalism and in so doing show the differences between nationalism in Scotland – as a desire among Scots for national self-determination – and British nationalism – as the product of post-imperialism and cultural and racial supremacy. Something tells me that doing this, so far as it is directed towards an honest dialogue with the unionist establishment, is a waste of time. Khan and people like him are smart enough to know all of this, but what they are doing they are doing consciously deceitfully. All that their pro-Britishness in Scotland has ever been has been one set of manipulative lies after another. The best thing that we can do is speak truth to power.

“Scottish nationalism” is less of a truly nationalist ideology than it is a catch-all term for the collective activism of people in Scotland who – for whatever reason – have decided that they would rather live in an independent Scotland. Of course there will be nasty little blood and soil nationalists in this mix as there are in any given population, but it has only ever been a fringe minority. In the main the vast majority of those seeking Scottish independence have rallied behind multiculturalism, anti-racism, and social justice for everyone who lives in Scotland. Independentistas have been among the most vocal people in Europe to welcome refugees and demand an end to Westminster’s fascistic anti-immigrant agenda.

017 — What Yessers themselves actually have to say about race and racism.

We certainly have not been treated fairly in this regard by the media, and the reason for this is that the only media in Scotland is a British unionist monopoly that continues to collude with the Westminster establishment to silence us and perpetuate the false narrative of the Scottish independence movement’s racism. The dirty little secret of the BBC – as everyone in Scotland knows, but few outside do – is that the only racism evident in the last referendum was on the unionist side, and this was not in the minority. Keeping Scotland British was and is all about Britishness and such disgusting slogans as “British Jobs for British People.” Sadiq Khan would do well to learn of the public display of neo-Nazism with which Scottish unionists celebrated their September 2014 victory in Glasgow.