Divide and Rule
A Successful Time-Tested Tactic
I find it interesting that in recent years billionaires have taken an interest in buying up mainstream media and increasing their presence on social media. Why do they do that?
Just last year the US’s Investpedia pointed out: ‘Billionaires seem to have a thing for media ownership. Deep-pocketed, high-profile investors have spent fortunes acquiring mass communication platforms, including newspapers, magazines, and even social networking services, particularly over the past few years.’ AND
‘Joining that list of legendary names is a new club of investors with cash to burn and a belief that there’s still money to be made—or something else to be gained—from owning a media business.’
Of course the ‘something else’ which is gained is the ability to tell us largely what to think about and what to think.
A most-read award for newspapers goes to Metro which is free for anyone to pick up on a bus or at a train station. What power to grab people’s attention and feed them ideas!
Nowhere is this more evident than in the pouring out of stories about the small boats crossing the English Channel. My search on YouTube found a proliferation of stories of immigrants desperate to get to the UK where they’d been led to believe they’d have a good life, as well as comments about the rise in the small boats since Labour came to power.
I only found relatively short pieces about/references to the people smugglers/traffickers who, I believe, make big money from the trade.
Wars and political conniving are currently making front page news but hovering in the background and popping up regularly are stories of mass illegal immigration. Small boats crossing the English Channel and Mexicans flooding across into the US.
Feeling ever more angry that while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, blame for the lack of housing, pressure on the health service, etc, etc, which we in the UK are suffering is being dumped on illegal ‘immigrants’ who are often fleeing war and starvation, I decided to go off and think about it, read about it and then write about it. I asked myself: What is the real story behind immigration in the UK?
Are ever more immigrants ‘invading’ our country?
Who are these immigrants?
Do they work or, as we are led to believe, are they being housed, using our NHS and living off benefits?
First off I found that ‘divide and rule’ has a long been used as a way of taking and holding on to power. As long ago as 50bc Julius Caesar was pitting different Gaelic tribes against each other to extend his empire. The 20th Century saw Britain driving a wedge between Hindus and Muslims to pave the way to a divided India.
Fast forward to 2017 and we see Donald Trump – and his wealthy backers - using the same old tactic to direct attention away from the ever-growing massive wealth of the few alongside poverty in the US by highlighting the ‘invasion’ by Mexicans.
Yes, as we move through tumultuous times, the wealthy minority work hard to divide and rule.
Has our UK immigrant population increased in recent years?
Yes: The Migration Observatory reported that the UK’s foreign-born population increased rapidly between 2004 and 2021.
Who are the immigrants?
At the top of the list are those who come to join family and those who come to work.
Do immigrants live off benefits?
Huge numbers come on work visas. Between 2020-21 and 2023-24 the number of staff recruited internationally into adult social care rose from 10,000 to 94,000. Many of the immigrant workers had to pay money to come here - sometimes as much as £20,000 – for ‘visa processing costs’. In looking at care sector immigrant workers I had something of a shock because, to put it bluntly, care providing companies have been making huge profits from bringing in staff on work visas, exploiting the workers, paying less than basic pay and threatening them with deportation if they didn’t comply with harsh working conditions. At the same time bringing in workers from overseas often undermines the UK workers’ living standards as well as depriving their homeland of their caring skills. How many overseas doctors work in your local surgery?
How do they get into those small boats:
The number arriving in small boats in 2023 was around 29,000. As with those coming as care workers, I suspect that the driving force behind the immigration figures is that big money can be made from encouraging people to come here – with the small boats the incentive is the fortunes being made by people traffickers/people smugglers making vast sums of money promising immigrants a good life in the UK.
Just as I was thinking about immigration, I came across a book which I hope throws some light on how people smuggling works and is my next must-read: ‘How Migration Really Works’ by the Dutch sociologist and geographer. Sounds interesting ...
If you want to know more:
Billionaire media ownership: https://shorturl.at/Qidwh
Migration numbers in the UK: https://shorturl.at/xAKbE
Divide and Rule: https://shorturl.at/VFlVi
Immigrant workers exploited: https://shorturl.at/H9EZW
News bias: https://shorturl.at/vnbTs
Tackling People Smuggling/Trafficking: