The immigrants are coming. The bottom-feeding, barbaric scum are a plague upon the civilised world, subduing and obscuring the shining beacon of development and progress. They are robbing and pillaging these unfortunate developed nations, leaving their coffers bare and halting their unbridled march towards Utopia.
This idle but effective rhetoric, one of the founding pillars of the resurgence of the far right, came into being even before passports were issued under the auspices of Henry V in 1414. Unspoken at the time, nevertheless certainly felt, the seeds for the Westward orientation of the principal worldview were planted.
The hypocritical Caucasian male discoverer set sail, marking the dawn of the third world being judged by impossible, duplicitous, restrictive standards of freedom, morality, and justice.
The travels, concealed under the veil of the romance of adventure, may have manifested themselves as expansionism, but the objective was to benefit tourism. The key difference, however, was that the white man that rode the waves was not an immigrant.
Gun in holster, passport in pocket, cutlass in one hand and purse of coins in another, the adventurers were colonialists, not colonists. Unsurprisingly, their ulterior motives have informed the suspicions and prejudices of their descendants, some of whom continue to populate the corridors of power.
Thieves are convinced everyone else is a thief, but, being kinder to themselves, overlook their own indiscretions. This self-perpetuating immunity grants moral superiority.
Repeated often enough – and the civilised world has centuries of reruns under its belt – it becomes unequivocal moral authority. Spoken from its pulpit is the equally self-evident and indisputable message to the poorer nations that on Western shores lie better lives.
These derelict countries are condescendingly instructed to make themselves in the image of those shores, their citizen beggars are patronisingly pitied and tantalised with the prospect of refuge there.
The hordes that surrender to temptation are a level, perhaps two, above their ancestors, the slaves. Migration on terms proffered by these tramps does not sit well with the coloniser, demonstrated by the anti-immigration rhetoric.
In his continued lust for imperialism, he does not wonder whether it is worth acting in the best interest of the third world rather than persisting with his interests on its soil.
It is precisely this contagious idiocy that sees emissaries of the USA and the UK ridicule the politics of developing countries, encouraging coups as solutions and adding the veneer of democracy to them when successful.
They seek to rule, not serve, and in aspiring to replicate them, fledgling systems become dysfunctional as despots battle for supremacy.
If these nations were allowed strong foundations and tools to truly build, if good fortune smiled on them and accelerated their development, their citizens would look within. The ships carrying the thousands – portrayed as billions by the right-wing zealots ringing the citadel bells – who hope to fulfil the American and British dreams would instead believe in Digital Bangladesh.
This is not possible when their realities are dictated by self-serving autocrats incapable of empathy and altruism. Whenever a third world political crisis reaches boiling point, the West can always be relied on to tip it over the edge and make all the wrong choices in the aftermath, believing that to be the best course of action in aid of imperialism.
This is one of two true rules, the other being disillusioned displaced populations becoming single-minded to reach those elusive shores.
Sooner or later, the irreversible migratory pattern set by this deranged quest for survival, peace, and happiness sees them arrive. The aberrant influxes provide vulnerable politicians with the perfect scapegoat, one that can both be blamed for all ills and distract from actual issues. The resulting rhetoric gifts the rising tide of bigotry a healthy façade of nationalism.
The solution is simpler than the convoluted politicking that gives rise to the problem – and it is just as much a problem for the third world countries as it is for the US and Britain.
It stems from respect becoming the overriding principle of the latter when dealing with the former. Assistance needs to be honest and in good faith, not the support of authoritarianism and military action that is disingenuously passed off as caring. It may be too much to ask from nations that neither take responsibility nor show remorse for centuries of sin.
Immigration and imperialism are the bastard children of the myth of the West. As Cain and Abel differed in their constitution, so too do these. The values that are used to judge the world, and that are prescribed as panacea, decree consensual intercourse a heinous crime and celebrate rape. Rejoice.