Attacks on the UK’s first Indian ethnicity Prime Minister shines a worrying spotlight on British racism against Indian-ethnicity people as a prejudicial media threatens to stoke the hate that led to the racial violence of the 1970s.
Attacks on the Prime Minister:
* Historically unprecedented assault on PM Rishi Sunak’s family home by environmental group Greenpeace (August 2023)
* A second attack on the Sunaks’ home by members of the group Youth Demand (June 2024). The attack had racist hallmarks
* Police fail to stop both the above incidents
* Racially abusive language targeted at the PM by a canvasser for political party Reform UK (June 2024)
* Relentlessly hostile coverage of the PM by the British media & members of the public, often with racist overtones.
The Prime Minister is being made a target of prejudice by the media, despite having called an election that he could very well lose. The situation is creating an extremely nasty atmosphere in the country. Yet, the country appears to be deaf and blind to the fascistic codes playing out before its eyes. Are we preparing the ground for a repeat of the murderous racism fought by Indian-ethnicity people in the 1970s?
Why is this article worth publishing?
This post was written two weeks’ ago, in response to an interview with Rishi Sunak by British TV show Good Morning Britain and the spiteful and mindless headlines that show made from the interview. Unsure of whether I had over-reacted in my response, I did not post my piece. But on 25 June 2024, an attack was made on the PM’s house that bore hallmarks of racial prejudice. I consequently found out it wasn’t the first such attack. It’s time to speak up.
Our Prime Minister at this point in time (pre-4th July 2024) is the former chancellor Rishi Sunak who is British born and bred and of Indian ethnicity. His ethnicity is a very important point that should not be overlooked if we are to safeguard our country against the kind of dangerous prejudice that, as Nazi Germany found out, is most efficiently driven by words and tone of speech used by the mass media, which results in hate followed by physical violence.
First ever attacks on a British PM’s home
One trespasser wore a T-shirt bearing an obscene statement, and an act of defecation took place, polluting a lake on the property. The references to faeces, which is common in racist abuse towards people of colour in Britain, makes it overwhelmingly clear that the group’s main driver was ethnic prejudice and not political concern except as a cover for their act of hate.
This is the second attack on the PM’s personal home.
In August last year (2023), members of Greenpeace climbed onto the roof of the PM’s house and draped a black cloth across the whole length of the house in an oil-related protest.
The failure of the police to stop the group was as shocking as the attack itself.
Today, yet again, the police failed to stop the criminals. They failed twofold: they failed to stop trespassers from entering the Sunaks’ property and they failed to stop the trespassers from damaging/polluting this property.
More worrying still, the statement given by North Yorkshire police is questionable. It stated that the trespassers were arrested “within a minute” of their entering the grounds of the property. However, is it possible for a group of trespassers to not only break into the grounds, but reach the lake and defecate in it within the space of a minute?
The only incident that comes close to these attacks on Mr Sunak’s home is the attempted attack on Boris Johnson’s home in North London in July 2016. However, it is notable that this attack was successfully thwarted by police officers who stood guard in front of the property.
The attacks against Rishi Sunak’s home appear to be unprecedented. So, why is the media not covering this fact, so important to the state of law and order in the country and the safety of minorities? Instead, the press machine is allowed to continue vomiting out strongly worded prejudicial falsehoods, such as criticising the PM for comments he was pressurised into making about his childhood (Rishi Sunak’s interview with Good Morning Britain below).
The attacks on Mr Sunak’s house carry the hallmarks of systemic racism: inaction of the police force and a sense of entitlement in the vandals. Why should Greenpeace believe it would gain support from attacking the home belonging to a family of Indian ethnicity? It can only be because this minority group does not (for historical and political reasons) have the support of the powers-that-be, including the handful of billionaires who own Britain’s mass media. This ethnic group is thus a soft target. Hence, Greenpeace wagers, its brand will not be damaged in making an attack on this target. Were Sunak black or Muslim or white, these attacks would not have occurred, or would have been loudly slammed and shamed.
Hostile Prejudiced Media
Media coverage of the PM is overwhelmingly negatively biased. It is often sneering and taunting, or it is indifferent. Racist overtones in reports and social media posts include jokes about the PM’s body as small, misshapen, or weak. Photographs used in news reports will often be prejudicial, such as the photograph used in newspaper reports about the last house attack. The shot made Mr Sunak look as if he was crying. It is a shot designed to make him look weak and undermine public sympathy towards him. It thereby drowns out and downplays the abhorrence and worryingly prejudicial nature of the attack on his home.
Rishi Sunak hails from a middle class, hardworking home. He became wealthy prior to becoming a politician, through his skills and abilities in the financial sector as well as through his marriage to a person from a wealthy family – which also made its fortune on personal sacrifices, passion, high skills and honest labour. This admirable background and achievements would be roundly praised by the media were they the possession of, for example, a celebrity. But the media has weaponised Mr Sunak’s wealth and achievements against him.
In its reporting of the Greenpeace attack, the Daily Mail took the opportunity to cite the high value of the PM’s house, thus inserting a bias into the story to emotionally manipulate readers against rather than for Rishi Sunak. The tactic turns the barrel of the gun away from the Greenpeace criminals and onto their victim: Mr Sunak.
The Sunday Mirror (below) baldly juxtaposed a hate headline targeted at the PM and his wife for their personal financial situation with an overtly positive, wealth-related headline for the pop billionaire Taylor Swift. Why shame the Sunaks for their wealth and laud Taylor Swift for hers? There is no justifiable reason. The reason that stands out is racial prejudice. The newspaper clearly desires to infect the minds of its readers with divisive racial prejudice: hate and jealousy towards people of Indian ethnicity and affection and admiration for white people.
The newspapers and news TV shows regularly trot out baseless but biased and inflammatory statements aimed to undermine public perception of the PM and his tenure.
For example, Rishi Sunak is often accused of the following: “The Conservatives have reined over the greatest cost of living crisis the country has ever seen….”. This statement makes Mr Sunak personally responsible for failures of his Party over the last 14 years.
The vaguely worded accusation fails to hold the British people accountable for voting for the Conservatives 14 years in a row.
It fails to specify the cause of the crisis for which Mr Sunak is being held responsible.
It fails to recognise the PM’s achievements: he pulled the country through the largest recession the nation has experienced in a century caused by COVID-19, and he pulled the country through the worst hit on gas prices of any Western European country, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It fails to recognise that Mr Sunak’s decisions have kept individuals afloat through the COVID furlough scheme; increased retirement pensions; and household energy subsidies.
Irrespective of one’s political opinion of Mr Sunak, the tactics of Britain’s media are unethical. Their intention and aim is to demonise Mr Sunak and falsify people’s perceptions of him. This is a prejudicial and dangerous state of affairs.
We only need look back at the demonisation of the Jewish people by Hitler’s media machine. Taking control of the media to achieve his genocidal aim was a critical step in Hitler’s grand plan. As Britain allows its media landscape to fall into the hands of three or four billionaires with clearly unsavoury views on white power, the takeover and control of Germany’s media by the Nazis is a risk we should recognise and take action to avert.
The Interrogation Of Rishi Sunak By ITV’s Good Morning Britain
If you can view Rishi Sunak without influence of the media bias, we see a man whose heart is in the right place. He’s honest and probably the most intelligent and exciting PM to listen to that Britain’s ever had in office.
Privately, Rishi Sunak is a self-made man from an economically non-privileged, hard-working immigrant family. His father, a GP (general practitioner doctor), his mother a pharmacist, his parents had no inherited wealth. They arrived in Britain with “very little”. Usually, Britain celebrates backgrounds and achievements such as these. However, Rishi Sunak is not being celebrated. He is being treated differently than would be expected, strongly suggesting a negative bias due to his Indian ethnicity.
Observing the bias
Mr Sunak’s brilliance, if it is ever appreciated, it is in muted tones, such as in this article where the PM’s debating skills in an election debate on television opposite Labour leader Keir Starmer caused the journalist to say he had underestimated Mr Sunak for the past 20 months.
It is a question how a journalist could only now have noticed Sunak’s brilliance? Prime Minister’s Question Time is aired weekly from parliament and is witness to Mr Sunak’s excellent debating skills and innovative thinking every time.
The interview interrogation that led an attack
Rishi Sunak was interviewed in June for ITV’s Good Morning Britain by a man called Paul Brand. In this interview, Brand’s tone and facial expression was cold, hostile and patronising to Rishi Sunak’s polite and well-meaning, even trusting demeanour.
The PM had left a late running D-Day commemoration in Normandy early in order to meet his leadership engagements, including speaking to Brand. The show chose to latch on to the PM’s early departure from the D-Day event to demonise him as unpatriotic and untrustworthy.
In a later interview, Mr Sunak’s decision was defended by foreign minister David Cameron in an interview with the anchors of Good Morning Britain. Notably, their tone sharply contrasted with the cold and disrespectful tone used by Paul Brand in his interview with Rishi Sunak.
The show, which Mr Sunak had helped meet their deadlines and make their headlines, also made hate clickbait from a response the PM made to a question about his childhood.
The interview was unpleasant to watch. Paul Brand began to pressure the PM on his upbringing. He demanded to know exactly what sacrifices Mr Sunak’s family had made in order to send him to a private (fee paying) school, and what Mr Sunak had had to live without as a child. There was no reasonableness in Paul Brand’s attitude. He exhibited passive aggressive hostility and his tone was accusatory as he demanded Sunak share his childhood sufferings.
To Mr Sunak’s credit, he took no offence to the pressuring. He struggled to find an answer. As a viewer, my thoughts were: this man obviously had a happy home life, has a positive mindset and doesn’t spend time victimising himself for the sufferings and sacrifices of an immigrant family with no inherited wealth or political connections.
Under pressure of interrogation, Mr Sunak finally came up with one thing he’d wanted but had lacked: Sky TV. He said it partly in jest. This was what made the headlines news nasty Good Morning Britain. The response was treated like a criminal admission and the show’s hosts slammed and shamed Mr Sunak for not being poor enough as a child to warrant his career as a politician.
What the show missed…or hid
What the programme did not learn – or inform the public – was that as a child Mr Sunak lived under the cloud of racist violence. He suffered hearing abuse thrown at his younger siblings. The programme did not hear Mr Sunak talk about how the sting of racism “hurts in the way that other things don’t”. The show did not highlight how Mr Sunak’s hard working parents sent their children to voice training lessons to remove their Indian accents in order to fit in. This is clearly a family keen to contribute to the success of the country.
Good Morning Britain, in failing to highlight and support such patriotic behaviour as that displayed by the Sunaks, is unpatriotic and undemocratic. It uses ignorance to create prejudice, hate, and division; and it manipulates and skews the truth, corrupts the media space and politics, and drives people away from political engagement.
Perhaps Paul Brand could have extracted further information about the sacrifices of the Sunak family by speaking to Yashvir and Usha themselves. He might have learned about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of ethnic hate and discrimination. They might have told him about how awful it feels to be spoken to in the cold, patronising tones that he was using when interviewing their son. They might also tell him what it feels like to have your innocent words mocked and twisted the way he twisted their son’s words – stealing his time and his contribution to Brand’s news programme to simply mock and undermine him in the public eye.
Mr Brand and his show need to understand that the Sunak family had far greater challenges than a white family of their standing. They not only had the economic challenges faced by everyone, but they also had the threatening atmosphere of ethnic hate and potential violence slithering within their daily lives. Their success and their son’s success occurred despite this extra, dreadful challenge.
What the media has failed to highlight is that Rishi Sunak’s childhood experiences make him well-placed to not only understand but empathise with human fear and suffering. He is more than qualified to lead the country, not only in brains and strategy, but in humanity.
While Mr Sunak’s Sky TV response has become hate clickbait, truthfully, the most newsworthy thing about the PM’s interview is the hostile way in which his answer about his childhood was extracted by a coldly interrogatory journalist, which to someone like me is resonant with prejudice.
Power Imbalance and Abuse
The show’s treatment of Mr Sunak’s response appears appallingly insensitive given Mr Sunak’s ethnicity.
Rishi Sunak’s ethnicity marks him out as a member of a minority group that has suffered the trauma of abusive prejudice at the hands of members of the majority ethnicity for decades. This has never been properly addressed in Britain due to the historical beef between Britain and India supported by powerful or disgruntled individuals and which seeps into the structures and life blood of the country. This historical element marks out Indian-origin people from other minorities in the country: black and East Asian people, and middle-eastern Muslims.
However, interviews such as the one conducted by Paul Brand, and the behaviour of the ITV show following his interview, are not merely insensitive. I would argue that they actively participate in maintaining the imbalance of power. The lack of respect shown towards the PM and the active demonisation of him through falsifying people’s perception of his background, is the vilest racial prejudice in action. It is essentially no different from the actions taken against the Jewish people by Hitler’s Third Reich media.
Journalism’s job is to question, analyse and balance facts, not conduct fascist-style interrogations. Nor is its role to hound down innocent people using its vast privileged platform. That is abuse of power. This matter is so sensitive and so important that it warrants an investigation of media practices and a severe review of the nation’s media independence.
When a powerful entity (the so-called Fourth Estate) starts to spread jealousy and hate, it should not be allowed a platform. It should be reformed or removed.
Only the public has the power to change this situation. We need to speak up if we perceive that a criminal level of hate is being summoned by the media against a person or people and if there is a race or ethnicity element involved. It is especially important to take action like speaking up when the hate tips over into aggressive physical action – such as we have seen with the unprecedented attacks on Rishi Sunak’s personal home.
Any kind of fascistic take over of the British media, and of British hearts and minds, must be stopped. Before it’s too late.
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