Engaging with the Media in a Pre and Post Brexit World: Racism, Xenophobia and Regulation: A United Kingdom Perspective

Abstract

This paper engages with the perception that the UK media was instrumental in promoting racism and xenophobia in the period before the UK EU referendum. Furthermore, that this promotion led to actual hate crimes within the UK: How and why this occurred are central research issues. However, a further question is why no prosecution took place of either individuals within the media, or media companies themselves, promoting such rhetoric. Primary data analysis consisted of surveying newspaper content, online or otherwise, and particularly the tabloid press, but also EU reports, legislation, including Article 10 and 10.2 European Convention on Human Rights (Freedom of Expression), and European Court of Human Rights cases. Academic literature on Racism and Xenophobia, and their encouragement was utilised. The conclusions revealed weaknesses in the perception, identification and prosecution of 'hate speech' and racist and xenophobic material. Moreover, that prosecution has also proven problematic because of competing notions of 'Freedom of Expression' for individuals and organisations. However, regarding the media, the internal procedures, lack of adherence to ethical standards and lack of compulsory external regulation, further enabled such content. The effect cannot be conclusively determined, although spikes in recorded hate crimes coincided with virulent media content.

Othering Mushrooms: Migratism and its racist entanglements in the Brexit campaign

“…However, more disturbingly, my analysis of the tropes of othering mobilised in 'The Eastern European mushroom mobs' also shows that it is reminiscent of othering techniques deployed in Der Giftpilz -a publication which aimed not only to incite fear and hate but also activate engagement in the persecution and extermination of Jewish populations. This supports and develops work by scholars (such as Mcguire, 2019) who have called attention to the similarities between the rhetoric used in the Brexit campaign and that of Nazi propaganda. As argued above, a response which would enable to contest the material, discursive and fantasised structures that produce and naturalise othering would need to include the understanding that gendering racialisation has been a central principle of European colonial modernity that continues to configure our present.…”

“…British media, and especially the tabloid press, were instrumental in the fabrication and dissemination of this message (Mcguire, 2019). Coincidentally with the Brexit campaign, another topic appeared in many national newspapers -a call for the strict regulation of mushroom picking in British woodland (see McKie, 2016).…”

“…For instance, in 2018 communal elections in the Czech town Most, a party called Open Townhall based their campaign on a racist slogan 'disinfection is not enough to exterminate these vermin', which referenced Nazi antisemitic propaganda, and where vermin referred to Roma people (see romea.cz, 2018). Similarly, dehumanising language that compares immigrants to 'swarms' and 'cockroaches' has been used during the Brexit campaign (seeMcguire, 2019).…”