Today I visited a graphic design tool I use every day.
There was a banner on the top of the page. It said:
We stand firmly with Ukraine and for peace everywhere. Learn what XXX is doing to support those directly impacted and how you can add your voice to the call for peace.
And I stopped and thought: 'Why just Ukraine?'
Last week I heard something horrific.
'Oh, those Ukrainian refugees look just like us.'
Looking Caucasian means you get preferential treatment as a refugee.
You're acceptable.
The rhetoric is no longer those filthy migrants in rubber boats, turn them back, send them home.
Those same migrants fleeing a war-torn country, a war the UK knowingly encouraged and inflamed in the first place.
Being white puts you ahead of the queue when it comes to receiving compassion and funding for your plight.
Being white means, you get an open door to this country.
Being white gives you the privilege that people who aren't white don't get.
It's not just being white that's so fucked up when it comes to queue jumping for compassion.
It goes a step further. Add rich to the label—the rich, white Ukrainians who turn up in their Porsches and SUVs at the airport.
Tickets to leave the country have risen ten-fold, predatory capitalism at its finest. Your life means so much more when you have cold, hard cash to slap down.
Fuck the poor. Let them die.
And if you do happen to make it over the border to safety, then god help you if you are not Caucasian.
Like the Roma gipsy kids who are only allowed one drink and one small sandwich while watching, Lilly-white Ukrainian children have free access to as much drink and food as they want.
What bit of cruel don't you understand.
Oh, and all without having to show any papers to the police and border guards.
But god forbid if you're Roma. Being Roma means you have to show your papers for everything. And it isn't just Roma. If you're black, Asian, or basically don't have lovely white skin, then you're sent to the back of the compassion queue.
That stinks.
And the BBC keeps telling us that Putin's claim to eradicate fascism from Ukraine is a lie.
I despise Putin in the same way I despise every single politician, ruler and monarch that lives and breathes.
But on this point, Putin isn't wrong. There are over thirty neo-nazi battalions in Ukraine. Yes, thirty! And they all come under the umbrella of the Home Guard.
So yes, Ukraine is filled with nasty little fascists. Lots of them.
It's also filled with a heck of a lot of diversity.
So don't swallow your master's rhetoric that there are no fascists in Ukraine.
Because the evidence is there, with the Azov battalion being just one of the more infamous ones.
I don't care which war you are talking about.
There are no winners. Ever. Only survivors.
Traumatised, fucked up survivors.
Outside the moral superiority of right and wrong will be the war trauma that will saturate this earth for decades to come.
As Will Self once said on Question Time:
'War is an abomination.'
And prioritising whiteness for compassion and funding shows just how sick the human species has got.
- For refugees of war everywhere