Over the past few years, we have seen a distinct shift to the right in Europe, and of course the US. In Europe, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Belgium, Slovakia, and a host of other countries are led by distinctly hardline right-wing governments. In France and Germany, mainstream parties have changed their policies to align more closely with the right. The trend is visible across the world.
The situation is especially grim for Pakistanis in the UK, where 1.6 million of them live in England, Wales and Scotland. Together, they make up just under three per cent of the UK population. The victory in recent council elections of the Reform Party-UK, an intensely right-wing group led by Nigel Farage, is disturbing for these Pakistanis and for other non-whites in the country. Councillors who have won elections have put out slogans such as “shoot all Pakis” or suggested that Nigerians be slaughtered and used to pave broken roads in some councils. Such comments would have been unacceptable just a short while ago. While the left-leaning Green Party has also won seats, mainly at the expense of Labour and the Conservatives, it is the Reform Party that may dominate the UK’s next general election.
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a body set up in 2010 to conduct investigative work and share it with publications and TV channels, has traced some disturbing right-wing memes, caricatures and social media posts to Pakistan. The Bureau, as it is known, has cooperated with BBC, Channel 4, News Night, The Financial Times and other prestigious publications. It has tracked some of these online posts down to a single person in Pakistan who is deeply religious himself and clearly not a true hater of Muslims, but who has said that the work he puts out on social media, where it is viewed by millions of people, earns him a large amount of money.
The issue does not stop here. Another social media influencer, called Emily Hart, who appears on Instagram and other platforms as a registered nurse, turns out to be not a real person at all, but simply one created using AI by an Indian originator who has created a hugely popular character who again puts out extremely racist ideas directed against immigrants and suggesting that people of colour are in some ways inferior to white people. The same created personality speaks in favour of the ICE and Donald Trump. It is unlikely that the person who created shares these views. Indeed, he is believed to be a staunch Hindu and supporter of the hardline Modi government.
Groups investigating the situation believe that many hundreds, or even thousands, of South Asians adept at using social media and AI may be involved in similar practices. The person tracked down in Pakistan had initially said he did not know the meaning of what he was putting out, but later conceded that he did indeed understand and know, but the Islamophobia he shared on social media was the only way he could put food on the family table and pay household bills. Undoubtedly, the same is true of other Pakistanis, Indians and others in developing countries or perhaps parts of Europe or the US and UK, where poverty is on the increase.
The whole question brings us to that of ethics and its links with money. Can we really blame these people for what they do, given their need to provide for their families? The issue is one that we need to think about deeply and everyone will have a different response. The real problem is, in some ways, that of how social media is being used to put out extremely offensive messages, and cheap labour from countries such as Pakistan is used for this purpose. Pakistan has seen a sharp decline in ethical practices since the 1950s, evident in its politics, bureaucracy, health system, education and many other spheres. Money, it seems, is the only objective important to people.
Those on the starvation line cannot really be blamed for this. It is the state that is responsible for providing them with sufficient income to support their families and offer them jobs, given the right to a livelihood enshrined in the constitution. But of course, there’s a failure to meet these goals. The result is what we see. The problem also exists within our own country, with offensive and non-ethical material of all kinds generated in large numbers by Pakistani computer users and those who create content either for money or simply because of ideological beliefs.
The issue now arising is the use of these people by large parties in the West and, very possibly, by the US. Certainly, the character Emily Hart, who has been given her voice and her beliefs by an Indian who does not truly believe in anything that Ms Hart says, is one such case. There are undoubtedly millions of others in this age of social media and the internet. The case of the Pakistani putting out offensive material against his own religion and Pakistanis in the UK creating further problems for them is disturbing in many ways. It shows both the desperation of people and the lack of ethics in the age we live in.
Both matters need to be tackled at various levels and some way found to offer people with these skills more useful employment so that they can move away from backing persons such as Farage and all that the Reform Party has to say, along with other right-wing groups spread out now across Europe and the Western world. There is plenty they can do within their own country and beyond, creating material that does not cause harm or advance the right-wing rotation we are seeing globally.
The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. She can be reached at: [email protected]
