PGR at QMUL 2025-29 researching Political Identity, "Caribbean-ness" and the World Crisis 1935-1960 Poetry in Motion, Like a Pathe Newsreel" -@tomblack.uk 🏳️🌈//🇬🇧🇨🇦🇮🇪🇹🇹 Will sometimes write things of consequence here: https://jconcagh.weebly.com
2,486 followers 877 following 4,999 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
Honestly, I think a lot of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic got psyoped into viewing salt of the earth bigots as more authentic and worthy than them and thinking therefore they must ritually cleanse their sin of education by rolling in the gutter.
Hard agree! sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/07/comp...
I also think that a lot of left-of-center politicians are utterly overwhelmed by immigration in particular, and really have no idea what to do about it, and have therefore internalized a level of self-flagellation where they believe they deserve the right's criticisms on immigration.
Labor Day cartoon by Fred Wright, 1962.
I'm sorry but on some level my brain is in denial. Yvette Cooper really actually said to our refugee communities that they are not entitled to a right to a family life today
It's remarkable how ~2017-2019 was an all-hands existential struggle to eradicate the unacceptable scourge of bigotry and racism from British politics forever, and now it's this, all day, every day, and not a single one of our commentariat has noticed nor has anything to say about it.
"Blueskyism" helped make The Onion one of the largest newspapers in the world in less than a year. If we had spent all of our time on Twitter, we'd be poorer, dumber and terminally ill with internet poisoning. He's just angry he's wasting away over there in a nazi agnostic lane that doesn't exist.
What if they not letting Trump speak because he had a Reverse Fetterman Stroke and hes woke now
I think he might just be racist.
Well, at least I'll have a Doctorate when I join an international Brigade
Toronto is the best city in the world because it's as multicultural as New York but manages not to be a dick about it
I'm fine, thank you for offering. I am too much of a horrendous optimist to be there yet
Oh I'm fine, just more of an understanding point
like i said, i feel like Pope Leo was the Curia's way of basically picking Lib JPII, primarily because they knew immigration and America would be flashpoints
Multicultural Britain can be both a government slogan unbacked by action and a basic reality practiced in day to day life by millions of people. The existence of the latter does not depend on the truthfulness of the former.
Quite, but I wasn't going to question the validity of a trans woman's anger at Britain and it's governments at present
Every race should have a nation, but woke
I have this feeling that we have groups of people who have internalized fascist worldviews even if they reject the violence and bigotry - and so they say really regressive shit with shiny sounding progressive language
Okay those are two valid reasons to be mad at me, I'll take that
Is...this how Stefan Zweig felt?
Anyway I understand why people might turn their back on it but I am a child in all ways imaginable of late 20th/early 21st century multiculturalism so telling me it was all a lie and never existed/never should exist is insane to me.
Well, except Toronto. Love Toronto.
It's why any progressive saying "You shouldn't like it/feel like you belong to *that*" is a little off-putting because it's not like it's a knee-jerk instinct. I've thought about this, and I've been to places others would define as "home" for me on my behalf, and they bounce off me.
it's terrifying reading the BNP 2010 manifesto and watching how many Reform UK planks it matches
A lot of my views on Britishness are downstream of "it's not really my fault that this is the only place I don't feel like a stranger, is it?" Because that statement, in itself, is 99% of nationality identity
I mean we're not going to agree on this so I don't know why *either* of us are bothering, actually.
I'm not sure what I think except that I quite like the idea of Britain being a multicultural society, and if that means fighting past the commodification, tokenisation, exploitation and extraction, I'd quite like to do it. Doesn't mean anyone else has to.
I mean, I don't what to tell you. I did enough soul searching about this myself, between my own lived experience and the fact my career is largely focused on the historical relationship between Britain, Britishness and the Black Diaspora.
What a low, despicable person Starmer has shown himself to be, and for nothing.
(though I'm not daft or craven enough to say any of that makes up for a transphobic regime or the current turning of the screw, except to say that they are both things attempt to destroy a kind of nation that made *me* possible)
Something you might think does not make up for other things but it does speak to a certain kind of multiculturalism, doesn't it?
When it comes down to "multiculturalism by action", the existence of me, the child of a London Irishman and a Canadian-born Trinidadian...speaks to something, yes?
Oh sorry, my mistake. But also I do *understand* why you'd feel this way: None of my family are *ethnically* English, or British. No one genetically related to me lived on this island before 1950.
but that's insane
US and UK left of centre types each see the other as basically the one country which it’s ok to sneer at unproblematically, which invariably means having to do lots of minority population erasure to maintain the caricature of the other one as a deserving victim of scorn
This is an evil, bad, and dangerous time. Which is why it is the correct time to say "Britain is a multicultural nation that should not shy away from that, and should be proud of that!"
And if you're argument is that the my lived experience, my friends lived experience, the lived experience of my family and of others is irrelevant compared to the position of Reform and our Government, what does it say about America, where an outright majority voted for equal tyranny and evil?
It's not hard: if Britain is *not* a multicultural country, I do not exist. My father and mother would not have married and had three children in a city where that was considered socially acceptable a normal, and I would not have gone to school with people whose parents were from all over the globe.
God forbid people come out swinging for the idea of mulitcultural Britain because they think it's a good thing that did exist and should exist
I'll take "views on Britishness that treat me the same as Reform would" for 500, please
It goes without any goddamn fucking saying that a right to asylum that does not include the right to bring your family here is not a real right to asylum.
Happy #LabourDay
Labour's whole 'well everything sucks but the politics are what they are, look we're at least getting the employment rights bill through' act is the behaviour of a junior coalition partner
[combining discourse] the British Government have a view of Britishness that's essentially the same as the "Chicken Tikka isn't British" Americans
well on the one hand it's bad for democracy and social cohesion that Keir Starmer is trying to appeal to the racists by pretending to be one of them, but on the other hand it's not actually working and the racists still don't want to vote for him
This is why the 'dont say anything and move on' approach to immigration wont work. I get the logic, but the media is obsessed and youre not going to get any cut through with anything else
Kinda like with the whole "transplants are the devil" stuff you see on SubwayTakes a lot of people are constructing in their heads a framework of acceptability to express xenophobia
You can't just say 'the problem is using the flag divisively', you have to set out and demonstrate what using it in a non-divisive way means.
To take the lowest hanging of fruit: If I wanted to keep the damn hands of the far right off my flag, which I do, I would have invited the winning England team to Downing Street on a day the prime minister could actually make and be in the photographs and clips for!
Government has absorbed, correctly, that there is a conscious project to roll back a half century of making Englishness and Britishness identities based on more than ethnicity, but has no plan beyond going 'I too like flags' to defend it.
Impressive to have the stench of both moral foulness and insincerity coming off you, and what the fuck is the BBC doing?
Everyone has this blank look when you go "maybe we should have some form of forward looking patriotism and ambition about this country", as if said thing hasn't been proved as a viable programme in other parts of the Anglosphere
for 10 years any time you disagree with him, no matter how sincerely or deeply felt the disagreement is on your part, his fans scream at you, accuse you of being a Tory and a wrecker, and generally do not in any way respond with any sort of constructive debate
The George Constanza school of rhetoric
What's the most amount of red flags you can fit in a paragraph?
is it only asylum seekers our Labour Prime Minister would object to living next to or would the sentiment apply to black and brown people in general? if merely the former, would he like to explain how he knows people he sees, say, in the street, actually are asylum seekers and not citizens?
what?
For 300 years, English and British identities blended and merged together in such a way that, to all intents and purposes, when a lot of English people try to visualise their flag they might instinctively think of a Union flag. That's why the fash could take SGC: it was being used for nothing else.
I like how we've just all refused to accept the King's coronation quiche. Sorry, Your Majesty, your mum had a better one
Brits correctly rallying to the defense of British culinary innovation chicken tikka masala is heartwarming, as always.
Fun discourse related fact - curries have been a part of British cuisine for longer than the USA has been a country.
This is why the ‘British food is bland’ trope is racist too. It ignores all the amazing fusion food in the UK because apparently that’s not ‘British’.
I found out from a German friend at the weekend that Currywurst, that German classic, was invented because the only thing British soldiers had to trade of any worth (unlike the GIs) was curry powder in their rations. Curry spice came into Germany because it was such an Imperial staple.
More importantly, when you imagine Carribean food you're imagining Jamaican food and-
Anyway while we're on this, it is forever amusing to me that when people talk about "authentic caribbean food" in London they are usually talking about one of three restaurants, all of which have menus that are...not quite there arguably!
It's funny how everyone is furious about the need for this website to make enough money to tick over, as if the inability of large elements of the digital space to make enough money to survive isn't the key reason for the decline of Twitter/News sites/blogs/forums/youtube etc.
Do you actually *have* principles around multiculturalism and diversity or are you actually a chauvinist
Between this type of American and the types of Americans who are convinced Britain is under Sharia Law, I would like to make an appreciation post for the Americans who hate us in a normal way
As we enter another regularly scheduled round of food discourse I will remind you all that any argument that says that Tikka Masala etc. is not "British" food is dependent on a definition of Britishness that renders me "not British" which, come on, get a grip
The “British person” in this instance was me; I do find it deeply amusing that, as well as being extremely racist about British Indians and their role in British food culture, this America has managed to name the curry that was most famously created in Britain
again a reminder that the british vs american food debate is not only tediously boring, but also often racist.
here's a cold, final word on american-uk food discourse: i think it's very interesting how americans will absolutely claim food introduced to them by an immigrant or minority culture is american food but when anyone else does it it is 100% not theirs and how dare they
Yeah - the reason why it absolutely is a “intolerant lefty” problem is that the bedrock of people who attack people about “sportsball”, or criticise anyone for posting about culture, are you know…on the left, but there is a lot of “the call coming from inside the house” on that.
British food discourse is usually pointless arguing over stuff that doesn’t matter, but the blatant hypocrisy of “food brought by immigrants to America is American, food brought by immigrants to Britain is not British” will never not infuriate me
Just one day of Americans not doing blood and soil nationalism and claiming I am not really British is all I ask for. Will never happen.
all roads lead to rome, all bluesky threads lead to this
In summary
I think it’s so awesome this has broken containment
Hipster “no-transplant”-ism is structurally identical to right wing “no immigrants”
Time to tap the “supply shortages (real or perceived) make reactionaries of us all” sign
People say this site doesn’t have the juice but we got the president of the United States doing “I’m alive” posts
'How will you prevent another Emmett Till' is an incredibly important, pertinent question that literally no abolitionist has an answer to beyond 'It just won't happen'
we should probably talk about that more yeah bsky.app/profile/jame...
The ECHR is the only good fruit of the fake EU Churchill set up to try and take over control of Paneuropeanism from Kalergi, before Jean Monnet successfully *did* take over Paneuropeanism from Kalergi by inventing the real EU
Yeah. This is what is so funny about it, if you are arguing that “giving money to the guys who helped with 9/11” is not something Reform should be attacked over, you are arguing that they can’t be beaten.
Famously, attacking Corbyn over Salisbury made a bunch of swing voters pro-Russia. Labour people love to go “it’s different this time”, it never is, it’s always just Labour doing what it almost always does. (Losing.)
Also, again, the aim shouldn't be winning over the 10-15% who are Reform ultras, its getting the 10-15% who are drifting towards them.
The Earth is the common heritage of mankind and no corner of it should be denied to anyone merely on the basis of race, religion, nationality, ethnicity, or place of birth.
Our heroes are a bunch of retirees who we’re supposed to see as plucky underdogs despite their extreme wealth, status and connections. They spend the film meddling in a murder investigation and opposing a property development. “Stop the war on seniors” a protest sign declares in a pivotal scene.
Post a meme made by you
lol at them sitting at a kitchen table
A man and woman have been arrested after NHS nurse Apple Moorhouse was attacked in Halifax park. The couple asked if she “came here on a rubber boat” before performing Nazi salutes and assaulting her. Both remain in custody. #Halifax
Had a real "there are only four people in London" moment today
Pope Leo demands end to ‘pandemic of arms’ after Minnesota school shooting
"Is the Mossad hitman who pitched 'a land without a people for a people without a land' a Zionist," the greatest intellectual debate in human history, concludes he must not be because no country with a man named "Mister Sinister" in the government could be untrustworthy.
Remember the "Is Maginto a Zionist?" Discourse? Good times. By which I mean awful times, but damn there was some wild Discourse.
We are in the Final Hours now! This is your last chance to get your stories in before 23:59 PDT TONIGHT!
And if you're wondering whether someone getting killed is what it will take for the media and political class to come to their senses, I would just remind you that Jo Cox was murdered in a similar moment of demagoguery and hysteria 9 years ago, and if anything things have got far worse since then.