u/Harleygator_

Over the last few days – since the relative success of Reform UK and Restore Britain in the local elections – this and other British-focused subreddits have erupted into what can best be described as an orgy of anti-working-class vitriol by the usual suspects. The general sentiment is that by voting for anti-immigration parties, the working-class are proving they are too stupid to know what is good for them, and the only reason they believe immigrants are causing problems is because their bigotry makes them ignorant. One comment read, “you can’t reason them out of something they weren’t reasoned into.” “It’s not complicated,” said another, “they’re genuinely just racist.” “They’re falling for an obvious con.” “Trying to reason with them is a waste of oxygen.” And so on.

Undergirding this disdain appears to be a simple premise – the working-class are liars. When we report the impact of mass immigration on our local areas, especially in deprived parts of the north and midlands of England, or when we describe how migrants behave in general and towards us, we are committing a hoax. Little to none of what we say on this issue is worth being taken seriously because we are not truly telling you what we experience – rather, we are merely regurgitating far-right lies we have been tricked into believing, or spreading them ourselves for nefarious, racist ends. We are too stupid to tell the difference between propaganda and the evidence of our own eyes and ears. Too bigoted. Too dishonest.

If you think this is a harsh characterisation of the attitude to the working-class… you’re wrong. I have seen it in this sub-reddit and others. I have experienced it first-hand. I have been called a liar for saying things I know to be true, having seen them with my own eyes and heard them from the mouths of my own family and friends.

For some personal context, I have mixed heritage (my grandmother is African) and my father married an African woman with young children from a previous marriage, so my stepsiblings from age 1 upwards were a different colour to me, though we share ethnic origin. My wife is mixed Pakistani. I also have a Distinction-graded postgraduate degree. I say this because I will now share with you my own experience, growing up and living in a very deprived area of northern England with a large population of predominantly Pakistani Muslims, and I want everyone to know who the usual suspects will be dismissing as stupid and racist here.

Between the ages of 10-16, I was targeted repeatedly by Muslim students with violence and menace. I was spat on. Sucker punched several times without provocation. Chased home by mobs of more than 20 youths. Placed in a headlock from behind and repeatedly kneed and punched. Suffered an attempted mugging by four Muslim teens. And this sort of thing happened regularly to others too, from my social groups – the perpetrators almost always Muslim, the victims always not. Just a coincidence, I suppose.

The school had broader issues, of course. Mass brawls would break out regularly in the playground – Muslims on one side, non-Muslims on the other (the racial divide another coincidence, naturally). Eventually, this spilled into the streets, with group fights outside the gates. Cars with young Muslim men would park outside and join in the fray on the side of their fellows.

And, of course, some of the white girls occasionally got into those cars with those Muslim men and were driven off. That’s just another little coincidence, I suppose. They were probably just taxis. We all know that wasn’t happening, was it…

But let’s talk about that for a moment, shall we? A relation of mine worked part-time for a few months in a curry house operated by a Pakistani Muslim man, as a server. She was too young to drive, so the staff drove her home each evening. On one of those evenings, one of them – another Muslim man in his mid-50s – pulled over somewhere nice and quiet. I don’t need to describe happened next. When she reported it to the police, do you know what the restaurant owner did? He harassed her. He flooded her with abusive calls and texts, death and r**e threats. He would drive his car past her house at all hours of the day and night, honking his horn to let her know he was there, or park on the corner and drive away when she noticed.

I met another victim when I was early 20s, a working-class Mancunian, this one abused in her teenage years by a gr00ming gang. She was probably lying, though, right? Well, (self-harm) >!the fact she had cut the trauma into the flesh of her own arms, creating a lattice-work of red scars from the backs of her hands to the tops of her shoulders!< had me convinced, but then, what do I know? I’m just stupid, ignorant, bigoted working-class oink gammon scum.

Fast forward the next decade or two. I live in a large English city whose face has changed rapidly over that time. The place is overcrowded, unclean, unsafe, and undergoing a process of alienation. The buses and trams are packed with foreign people who push and jostle to get on, talk loudly or play music on full volume onboard, and don’t thank the driver when they leave. Litter is now ubiquitous, as are groups of foreign men who loiter around coffee shops, making weird pst-pst noises at women, smoking, and speaking alien languages, apparently unemployed yet somehow able to doss around freely while I’m forced to work. Of course, it could be worse – they could be loitering in groups around nightclubs instead, totally sober and preying on drunk women in the dark… oh, wait, they do that too.

To give a bit of flavour to this depiction, there is a historic town hall in the centre of the city, a beautiful building surrounded by archways and statues. Over the last two years, each morning as I go to work, a work crew is there hosing down with soap and water the pathways, corners, and red telephone boxes around it. Why? Because migrants are using them as a public toilet. I know this because I’ve seen them myself, defecating in broad daylight. The place often stinks of human excrement.

But there are benefits to this, of course. If you need a haircut and shave from a Turkish barber, a sweet treat from an American-candy store, or a new case for your mobile phone from an Accessories shop, they absolutely have you covered. You can’t turn a single street without passing one of these businesses. Oddly, I’ve never seen a single customer in 90% of them, though. But they must be popular and profitable, and definitely not fronts for money laundering and human trafficking or anything like that.

What I describe is not a lie, a fabrication, a hoax. It is not something I made up, nor something I just believed because I read about it online. This is what I’ve seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, and felt in violence upon my own skin. It is the same experience you can hear from the mouths of the working class as far afield as Hull and Newcastle, Manchester and Liverpool, Stoke and Leicester, and "darn sowf" as well.

The usual response to the things I have described is that, well, eNgLiSh PeOpLe dO iT tOo. This is correct, of course. Some English people are rude. Some are dirty. Some commit crimes. Especially us oikish working-classes. But there is a big difference between domestic and migrant crime. Every society has its bushel of bad apples. Bad English people are our problem, and we deal with them through social programmes and criminal prosecutions. But bad foreign people are not our problem, and inflicting the problems they bring on us is a policy decision. It does not have to be that way. Every r**e, stabbing, and theft by a foreign person who otherwise had no legitimate business being in the country is a preventable atrocity. A choice made at our expense.

Do I think Reform are the answer? Of course not. I think Nigel Farage is a grifter. But what I have written here is the reason for his popularity and success in recent elections – because the experience of the working-class with the foreign people who have been foisted upon our towns and cities is REAL and has been IGNORED for far too long, and we are sick of it. We are tired of being told we’re evil and thick for wanting solutions to real problems. We’re fed up of being demonised for not putting up and shutting up.

So, we’re going to vote for Nigel Farage, and if he doesn’t fix it, we’re going to vote for Rupert Lowe, and if he doesn’t fix it, we’re going to go down the line until we elect someone you’re really not going to like. It’s time to start listening.

So, I would like honest answers from the usual suspects, who have spent the last few days (actually years) degrading the working-class – why aren’t you listening to us? Why won’t you acknowledge what we are going through? Why do you deny our lived experience? What do we have to do to convince you that our suffering is real and that we don’t deserve the society you’re inflicting upon us? Or – answer honestly – do you just not care? Are you just happy as long as you have enough serfs to clean your toilets and serve you at Pret?

I'm not really into online PvP/PvE titles like CoD, Arc Raiders, Helldivers 2, etc, because I don't have time to commit to them regularly. I tend to prefer single-player narrative experiences where I can go at my own pace. So I don't really have any online friends to hang out with.

However, there are a few titles I'm interested in playing which are reportedly much better in co-op, but I sadly have few friends who can commit to them. I'm looking for a guy/some guys who'd want to play through these games together from time to time, maybe once a week or so, ideally people who enjoy similar single-player experiences like I do.

The sorts of games I've been looking at are Grounded, Abiotic Factor, Remnant: From the Ashes 1 & 2, and Borderlands. Would also be open to some EAFC26 if anyone is interested in some co-op seasons, though I have a love/hate relationship with it (I love to hate it).

Some personal info. I'm a dad. Married. Like rock music. Don't watch a lot of TV or movies. Read a lot of books. Currently juggling Crimson Desert and Hades 2 as my single-player games.

Have you contacted your local branch to help out? If not, why not?

Why are working-class concerns on immigration being treated with such disdain?

34M (PS5) looking for guys to form group for Co-op campaigns