British teens don’t think much of this Tory government, says Tomasz Lesniara in Al Jazeera. I don’t either. Students have been failed miserably during the pandemic, and life is practically unaffordable for them. But what alarms me is an “eat the rich” ideology that is slowly making terms such as “right wing” and “far right” interchangeable. I came across one British TikToker saying: “We literally have a far-right government.” Frankly, calling this government “far right” is offensive to anyone who has lived under one.
I am 25, and I was born and raised in Poland. I left for good in 2016, amid “ever-growing” anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant sentiments. Last autumn, in the middle of the pandemic, nearly 100,000 people gathered in Warsaw to protest against abortion being outlawed. “That is what far right really looks like.” Hungary’s PM, Viktor Orban, has called immigrants “poison” and introduced a law that stigmatises homosexuality. Only 10% percent of UK police officers carry guns, as opposed to 88% in Poland officers, a good example of the difference in attitudes towards policing citizens in each country. I disapprove of Tory policy, but a country where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2014, women have a right to abortion and where anti-discrimination laws have been in place for years is not far right, and has come a long way. Even post-Brexit, Britain remains a diverse, liberal and generally welcoming place. “Often your everyday reality is someone else’s dream.”
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