The problem with Rishi Sunak
…is not that he is Indian. The problem is that he is a neoliberal class-warrior against the poor.
A friend sent me a video of Trevor Noah in a segment on the racism experienced by Rishi Sunak. I could only find the original video on Facebook, of all places. YouTube is chock-full of reaction video to the original video. Trevor Noah plays a call-in show from England that features a racist caller saying that Sunak can’t represent England because he’s not white. That’s just basic maths, right?[1]
I wrote the following about my initial reaction to the video.
“I mean it’s cute, and he’s right, on the level that he approaches it, but Trevor Noah is the king of taking inoffensive positions and grabbing low-hanging fruit.
“I wish he had the courage to examine what’s really wrong with Sunak rather than lazily defending him from the most racist morons in the country, who are allowed to voice their opinions on the air precisely because it makes everyone else angry and makes those angry people feel superior and, most importantly, keeps them watching through the adverts.
“Give it six weeks and let’s see whether a born-rich Goldman Sachs alum who made all of his money in 2008 when he benefitted mightily from a financial collapse that ruined millions of lives and who viscerally hates the poor is going to do anything useful.
“Maybe his cash giveaways to the rich will be more subtle than Truss’s were, and won’t immediately destabilize the bond market so drastically that the BOE has to restart quantitative easing AT THE SAME TIME that they’re raising interest rates, which is like slamming your foot on both the gas and the brake and expecting to get anywhere.
“It’s absolute amateur hour over there in Great Britain and I expect Sunak to fit right in. But, sure, let’s reemphasize that his skin color is the last thing people should be focused on, either as a negative OR a positive.”
When I searched for the original video for this article, I learned that Great Britain had quite a problem with American liberals (and I guess Noah is one now?) projecting literally everything through an American lens. E.g. they assume that Great Britain is just as racist as America, when it’s actually a good deal more integrated and chill. It’s not perfect—it’s not like there are no racists—but it’s not America.
God help me, but I’m going to cite an article from The Sun, ’SIMPLY WRONG’ Downing Street blasts leftie comedian Trevor Noah’s weird claims that Rishi Sunak experienced racist backlash as new PM by Natasha Clark (The Sun)
“The ex-Chancellor hit back: “Simply wrong. A narrative catered to his audience, at a cost of being completely detached from reality.
““Britain is the most successful multiracial democracy on earth and proud of this historic achievement.”
“Internet users accused him of “projecting” his American views about race onto Britain.
“Historian, author and podcaster Tom Holland also responded to Noah’s claims, writing: “As ever, the inability of American liberals to understand the world beyond the US in anything but American terms is a thing of wonder.
““The likelihood of the right-wing party in the US choosing a Hindu as its leader is, I would agree, effectively zero.””
Well, shit, when you’re right, you’re right. The American so-called liberal-left is so far up its own ass that it doesn’t even bother to check in with reality before it starts spouting opinions. It honestly feels like how people discourse on Twitter now dictates how they do everything. This is an awful, awful trend.