So Far... So Good

Mathieu Kassovitz put it best in his 1995 film La Haine when he said 'It's a story about a society in free-fall...' Nothing much has changed since his groundbreaking masterpiece about race and police tension in the gritty Paris suburbs. Except, now the tension lies between extremists and the rest of society that dominate our landscape. Propaganda, rallies and protests are splattered with extremist ideology,  both from the European far-right groups as well as Islamic extremists groups. Ironically, whilst the two sides oppose each other's ideology completely, their tactics are more or less parallel. They utilise the current tool of victim-hood as a rationale for their beliefs, whilst infiltrating vulnerable people in society, both economically and socially, to garner support. Anti-Islamic activist Tommy Robinson and ex-Islamic extremist, Maajid Nawaz both have extremely similar stories about how they ended up harvesting these extreme beliefs. Tommy was beaten up by muslim Asian boys at school when he was young and faced discrimination for being white, whilst Maajid was a victim of "Paki-bashing" by violent, young thugs when he was a youth, as well as suffering other racism and discrimination. They were both isolated, young men who reacted with narrow-minded hatred towards the narrow-minded hatred they received. As we all know, hatred breeds hatred.

The leaders of these movements are powerful, strong men (mostly). No doubt they believe themselves to be the heroes of their people, salivating over the opportunity to convince others of the same thing. The more support they appear to have (which is usually less than they think, as those who want change the most amplify their voices the loudest), the more they realise there's two ways it can go. You either land on your face, or on your feet. However, since both create a mess, they may as well enjoy the ride.