Unionism is Violence : Statist Ideology and Forceful Coercion – Random Public Journal
▻https://randompublicjournal.com/2017/09/22/unionism-is-violence-statist-ideology-and-forceful-coercion
death threats, threats of violence, and actually acts of violence are very much part of the Scottish unionist toolkit. Since sharing the first threat on 7 September a significant number of fellow independentistas have shared with me similar experiences of online threats and intimidation, and – in one case – actual physical violence. We know that this does not happen to unionists because it would be all over the unionist press. It isn’t.
This, I have been thinking, has something to do with the nature of unionism. I have in the past already written about the connection between Scottish unionists, British nationalists, the British far-right, and neo-Nazi and racist organisations across Europe and North America. It comes as no surprise to me that unionism – or British nationalism in Scotland – is racist to the core. Of course it is. It idealises a monarchy well known for its racism and anti-Semitism and a monarch who was pictured giving the Nazi salute in the 1930s with her family in the garden.
Racism and violence are inseparable because racism itself is violence. It stands to reason then that these people, emboldened by the sharp right turn in British politics and the overt xenophobia of Brexit, see violence and the threat of violence as political instruments. None of this comes as a surprise. We need look no further than Brexit, in fact, for the hardest evidence of this violence. Thomas Mair, the man who hacked Labour MP Jo Cox to death during the EU referendum campaign, is a white supremacist and British nationalist. He was merely following the rule book as he had been taught to understand it. In his mind he was protecting union jacks from blacks.