The following is a legitimate interaction between a member of the community who will remain unnamed and a member of the Dorset Eye team. Please read it in full (a longish read) before commenting. Context and depth of analysis are everything, despite what some in the community would prefer us to believe.
In response to the linked article, an opinion was expressed.
The Opinion
‘How completely correct this post is and also how completely incorrect it is for the same reason.
This post could be used by the right in exactly the same way about the left. Both sides feeling exactly the same about the other side. There you have it. Divide and conquer and a hatred of those on the other political divide. There you have it too. A political divide. Everything is black or white, good and bad, left and right. Wake up. Sheep on both sides. There of course should never be both sides.
I want to understand why everyone is so polarised. I want to understand the arguments of the ‘left’. I want to understand the arguments of the right.
None of my following questions are gaslighting or rhetorical. They are genuine questions that I need to know the answer to. I am open to be persuaded on things I don’t agree with.
Why do the ‘left’ side accuse everyone who has concernsabout immigration as being racist and fascist and far right? Most of these people are just very concerned people and not associated with politics at all. They maybe misinformed but they are not the enemy in my view.
Do you not think that the rape gang situation is real? If not please tell me why. I don’t want to believe this myself. The Rupert Lowe enquiry was thorough it would appear. If not then please explain to me why not. Please explain why the government has not done its own enquiry. I’m not arguing. I genuinely want to understand different views.
It does appear that the vast majority of migrants are men. Not asylum seeking men. They don’t appear to be political migrants. I want to understand why you feel something different.
There is never ever a reason for violence. No reason ever. The recent protests in Dover and Portsmouth were not violent at all. Completely peaceful in fact. I know that there is a small minority of right wing thugs but why do these imbeciles lead to the hatred of everyone else who is concerned. This is how it appears to me. Please explain. Please educate and change my mind.
I won’t to know how all flags are acceptable except the British and English flags. I honestly just don’t understand the thinking. Please explain to me why. Please.
Why are face coverings ok for some people but not others? I’m not talking sides. I’m putting myself in the spotlight to learn what other people think.
Why should some religions be able to pray en mass in the streets but other religions can not. Not even one person preaching. This seems mad to me. It’s not about vilifying one side or the other. Why can’t every individual be free to do what they like?
I personally think that integration and multi cultural attempts have failed. I think the idea is correct but it has sadly failed. That’s not taking one side or another. That’s a view looking down at things objectively. I want this to be fixed but can’t see an answer. It doesn’t matter who is right and who is wrong but the country is now showing more hatred towards each other than I would argue since medieval times. What are your views and thoughts to the opposite?
As far as I can see if the ‘right’ did not use face coverings then they would probably face arrest, or lose their jobs or be called fascist. The majority of these people are scared of the consequences but are concerned and are not fascists. Please explain to me why you feel something different.
It seems to me that hatred trumps love. Both sides of the debate. Please prove me wrong. I want to understand.
If you think I am just the enemy and that is that then tell me why?
The majority of people in this world are good people. They have principles based on love and respect. This is the same across every race, religion, ethnicity, sexual preference and everything else combined or Inbetween. If this is true then why the arguments and hatred?
Many people in the uk want to keep hold of the British way of life and values. You can argue the rights and wrongs of that forever. But why think that these people are wrong and fascist for that view? It goes both ways. I say the same to people on the other side of the giant canyon of views.
It’s all about indoctrination and propaganda at the end of the day. Both sides. This brings me back to the very beginning of the post. Yes I agree it’s about the education of the masses. But that ironically means the education of both sides.
It is also ironic that I keep using the term ‘sides’. Job done for
those in real power.
Sharia law. Many would argue that it already exists to some degree in this country. That could be right wing propaganda for all anyone knows. Evidence would suggest that it is not. What I want to learn is do you think it is a true fact? Either way, do you support its introduction in this country or not and why? I want to understand the logic, the principles, the beliefs.
Do you really think that housing thousands of migrants in a small village without transport shops and schools is a good idea. I try and understand every view about the state of this country but can’t see the logic behind this decision. Please put me right. I want to understand the thinking.
I am not saying that this country should not be accepting all immigrants. I’m not saying that at all. But what is the reasoning in allowing undocumented people from being let into our communities without any vetting. If everyone passes the vetting then let these poor people stay and do the morally right thing. If you don’t agree with having any borders at all and so be it for the consequences then I respect that view without agreeing with it. But please explain to me the thinking behind this view.
I have not been indoctrinated or brainwashed by right wing propaganda. I question everything and believe nothing and I am my own person.
Right v left is a very effective tool in controlling the masses. Don’t be sheep. Look at the bigger picture. Left and right being played as fools.
This is not left v right. This is good v evil. The two things couldn’t be further apart.
I am sure that most people who have bothered to read all of this will still see me as a right wing protagonist. All I would say is this. If I saw a group of armed right wing activists about to attack a single immigrant or Muslim I would stand in front of them. I would die for them, so is my belief that violence is wrong.
God will judge me ultimately.
How many people reading this would do the same thing if it were immigrants attacking a far right activist? I don’t think many of you will be cheering on the attack. But I think most would turn a blind eye because of so called ‘justice’.
Love peace and respect to everyone x’
The Response
I have read this properly and I think there is much more in it that deserves a serious response than simply dismissing it as right-wing, racist or extremist.
There are things in it I agree with, things I disagree with, and things where I think the truth is considerably more complicated than either side would like it to be.
Most importantly, I believe the questions are worth answering.
Being concerned about immigration does not make somebody racist. Wanting controlled borders does not make somebody fascist. Wanting Britain to retain a sense of national identity does not make somebody a far-right extremist. Equally, believing in immigration, supporting refugees or wanting a multicultural society does not make somebody anti-British.
The problem starts when we stop arguing about ideas and start deciding that the people holding those ideas are the enemy.
That is where politics has become so poisonous.
What I have done is deal with each issue in order to ensure a logical and coherent response.
Grooming gangs
The question about grooming gangs is absolutely legitimate, and I think anyone who says otherwise is making a serious mistake.
The grooming-gang scandal is real. Children were abused on a horrific scale. There were serious institutional failures. In some of the most notorious cases, particularly in Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford, there was a significant involvement of men of Pakistani heritage.
That shouldn’t be minimised because the subject is uncomfortable.
Baroness Louise Casey’s national audit in 2025 was extremely critical of the way authorities had dealt with group-based child sexual exploitation. One of the things it highlighted was the shocking inadequacy of national data on the ethnicity of perpetrators. In other words, we haven’t even collected the information properly.
That is a failure in itself.
There is also an important distinction to make. It is perfectly legitimate to say that some grooming-gang cases involved a disproportionate number of Pakistani or Asian men. It is not legitimate to turn that into a claim that Muslims or Pakistani men generally are responsible for sexual exploitation.
Those are completely different statements.
And, importantly, the government has now established a statutory independent inquiry into grooming gangs, chaired by Baroness Anne Longfield. So the suggestion that there has been no government inquiry is now out of date.
The proper response to something this serious is neither denial nor collective blame.
It is investigation, evidence and accountability.
The young men arriving in small boats
There is also a legitimate observation here.
A large proportion of people arriving in the UK through irregular routes are adult men. Government figures show that roughly 71% of people detected arriving through illegal entry routes since 2018 have been adult males.
So people aren’t imagining what they are seeing.
But there is an important difference between asking why this is happening and assuming that we already know the answer.
A young man arriving on a small boat might be an economic migrant. He might be a genuine refugee. He might have a weak asylum claim. He might have an extremely strong one. He might have left a war zone. He might have travelled ahead of his family.
You cannot establish any of those things simply by looking at someone arriving on a boat.
That is what the asylum process is supposed to determine.
And there is another point worth making. Some of the largest groups arriving through these routes are from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Sudan, Iran and Somalia. These are countries where there are very real issues of persecution, war, repression and instability.
That doesn’t mean every individual claim is genuine.
It does mean we should be careful about assuming that everyone arriving is simply an economic migrant who has decided they would like a better life in Britain.
Are people arriving completely unvetted?
This is another area where the language matters.
People arriving are not simply handed a key and told to get on with their lives.
There is a screening process. Identity information is taken, fingerprints are recorded and security checks are carried out.
Does that system work perfectly?
Clearly not.
Are there people whose identities cannot immediately be established?
Yes.
Are there people whose asylum claims are ultimately rejected?
Yes.
Are some people who have no right to remain nevertheless extremely difficult to remove?
Yes.
Those are legitimate criticisms of the system.
But saying that Britain is simply allowing thousands of completely unknown and unvetted people into the country isn’t quite an accurate description of what happens.
The stronger criticism is that the system is too slow, too expensive and too often incapable of reaching decisions and carrying out removals quickly enough.
That is something I think people on all sides should be able to agree needs fixing.
What about putting asylum accommodation in small communities?
This is another perfectly reasonable question.
If you put a very large number of people into a small community that has limited transport, few shops, limited healthcare and little infrastructure, there will inevitably be consequences.
That doesn’t mean the people being accommodated there are to blame.
It also doesn’t mean the local community is racist for being concerned about the impact.
Both things can be true at the same time.
The government has a responsibility to accommodate people who are legally entitled to support.
It also has a responsibility to consider the effect on the communities in which that accommodation is placed.
That is not an extreme position.
It is simply sensible public policy.
The protests
I think there is another important distinction here.
People who attend protests peacefully should not automatically be treated as responsible for the actions of people who become violent.
That principle should apply regardless of political persuasion.
But it is also important not to rewrite what happened.
The recent demonstrations in Dover and Portsmouth included peaceful protesters, but there were also incidents involving disruption, breaches of police cordons, violence and damage. So describing the demonstrations as completely peaceful isn’t accurate.
The right answer isn’t to condemn everyone who attended.
Nor is it to pretend nothing happened.
Find the people responsible for violence and deal with them individually.
That seems like a fairly straightforward principle.
The British and English flags
I also understand the frustration about national flags.
There is nothing inherently racist about the Union Flag or the St. George’s Cross.
They are British and English symbols. They can represent national pride, history, culture, family, football or simply a sense of belonging.
Personally, I prefer to see people active in the community helping and supporting all those who need help and support instead of flying a piece of cloth often made in China to portray some imagined patriotism. However, I realise that not everyone thinks like me.
But of course, those symbols have sometimes been used by extremist groups. But that doesn’t mean everyone who displays them shares those beliefs.
The same principle should apply to every other symbol.
A Palestinian flag doesn’t make someone antisemitic.
A Pride flag doesn’t make someone anti-Christian.
An Islamic symbol doesn’t make someone an extremist.
And an English flag doesn’t make someone a fascist.
Context matters.
Face coverings
The question about face coverings is also worth answering, because I can understand why it appears inconsistent.
The law doesn’t simply say that one political group can wear a face covering and another cannot.
There is a distinction between wearing something for religious or medical reasons and deliberately concealing your identity during a protest.
The law can quite reasonably take that distinction into account.
Someone wearing a religious face covering is rarely attempting to hide their identity to commit a crime.
Someone wearing a balaclava at a violent demonstration may be.
That doesn’t mean the law should give one religion special treatment.
It means that circumstances matter.
Public prayer
There is also no general rule in Britain that says Muslims are allowed to pray in the street while Christians aren’t.
People of different religions are entitled to practise their faith, subject to the same ordinary laws concerning public order, obstruction, noise, harassment and the use of public spaces.
A Muslim can pray in public.
A Christian can pray in public.
A Jew can pray in public.
An atheist can protest in public.
None of them gets a free pass to break the law.
The question should therefore be whether the particular behaviour is lawful, not which religion happens to be involved.
Has multiculturalism failed?
I think this is one of the most interesting questions that you ask in the whole piece.
I wouldn’t say that multiculturalism has simply failed.
There are millions of examples of different communities living together successfully in Britain. People work together, go to school together, marry each other, play sport together, serve in the armed forces, work in the NHS, run businesses and identify as British while retaining other cultural identities.
That is not failure.
But neither should we pretend that everything has worked.
There are genuine problems with segregation, language, educational inequality, religious extremism, community tensions and the creation of social environments where different groups don’t interact nearly as much as they should. There are, of course, complex reasons for this and as a sociologist, it would take too long a time for this response to explain.
So perhaps the better question isn’t whether multiculturalism has “failed”.
Perhaps it is whether Britain has put enough emphasis on integration.
I think the answer to that is much less comfortable because those who are overtly racist make it almost impossible for people to integrate.
Sharia law
There is another distinction that gets lost in this debate.
If by Sharia law we mean that British Muslims sometimes choose to live their personal lives according to Islamic principles, then yes, that obviously happens.
People are allowed to follow religious principles.
Christians do it.
Jews do it.
Muslims do it.
That isn’t the same thing as Britain having a parallel legal system.
British law remains the law of the land.
There are Sharia councils that provide religious guidance, particularly around marriage and divorce, but they do not have the authority of British courts.
There are nevertheless legitimate questions about whether vulnerable people, particularly women, can sometimes feel pressured into religious processes or decisions that don’t provide the same protections available under British law.
Those questions should be investigated properly.
But the idea that Britain is secretly becoming governed by Sharia law is simply not supported by the evidence.
Open borders
Someone who believes Britain should have open borders is entitled to hold that view.
I can understand the argument. But again, it is a complex discussion that requires much more consideration.
The argument is essentially that people should have the freedom to move, work and build lives wherever they choose, subject to the normal laws of the country.
Then, though, there are, of course, consequences.
How do you provide housing?
How do you fund healthcare?
How do you plan infrastructure?
How do you manage welfare?
How do you decide who is entitled to citizenship?
How do you maintain democratic control over immigration?
Those are difficult questions.
And the opposite position has difficult questions too.
How much immigration is sustainable?
How do you distinguish genuine refugees from people with no legal right to remain?
How quickly should unsuccessful asylum claims be processed?
How do you integrate large numbers of people?
How do you maintain public confidence in the system?
There are no easy answers.
The biggest problem with the whole argument
For me, the most interesting contradiction in the original post is this:
It warns people against dividing the world into left and right.
But it then repeatedly talks about “the left” and “the right” as though each were a single group.
They aren’t.
There are millions of people on the left who disagree with each other.
There are millions of people on the right who disagree with each other.
There are people who are economically left-wing but socially conservative.
People who are economically right-wing but socially liberal.
People who support high immigration but want much stronger borders.
People who want low immigration but strongly support refugees.
People who are deeply patriotic and politically left-wing.
People who are politically conservative but don’t care about nationalism at all.
The political spectrum is much more complicated than two camps shouting at each other.
And that brings me back to the central point.
Good versus evil?
I understand the intention behind saying that this isn’t left versus right, but good versus evil.
But I actually think that phrase is dangerous.
Because once we start describing our political opponents as “evil”, we’ve recreated exactly the problem we’re trying to solve.
The left can make the mistake of believing that everyone who disagrees with them is hateful.
The right can make the mistake of believing that everyone who disagrees with them hates Britain.
Both are wrong.
Most people are much less extreme than social media makes them appear.
Most people aren’t fascists.
Most people aren’t communists.
Most Muslims aren’t extremists.
Most immigrants aren’t criminals.
Most people are simply trying to get on with their lives.
And I think that is the part we are in danger of forgetting.
So what do I actually believe?
I believe that the vast majority of people have not studied politics, sociology, economics, philosophy intellectually and their opinions are often illogical, irrational, and without evidence or fact-based. They are opinions that are merely hot air and should not be treated as a framework for policy or for people to have to live their lives. As the original article articulates, ignorance has been exploited and people need to know how and why it is being done.
I think the answer is to become much more demanding about evidence and intellectual inquiry.
If someone says something I agree with, I shouldn’t believe it simply because it supports my existing view.
If someone I disagree with produces evidence that proves me wrong, I should be prepared to change my mind.
That applies to immigration.
It applies to grooming gangs.
It applies to crime.
It applies to religion.
It applies to integration.
It applies to the economy.
It applies to everything.
There is nothing wrong with saying:
“I don’t know.”
There is nothing wrong with saying:
“I was wrong.”
There is nothing wrong with saying:
“I hadn’t considered that.”
Those three sentences would probably improve political debate more than almost anything else.
The person who is concerned about immigration isn’t necessarily the enemy.
The person who supports immigration isn’t necessarily the enemy.
The Muslim isn’t the enemy.
The Christian isn’t the enemy.
The socialist isn’t the enemy.
The refugee isn’t the enemy.
The English nationalist isn’t necessarily the enemy either.
People who commit violence against others are the problem.
People who deliberately dehumanise entire groups are the problem.
People who knowingly spread lies are the problem.
And politicians and commentators who deliberately inflame hatred because it benefits them are certainly part of the problem.
But ordinary people who are frightened, confused, angry, concerned or simply trying to understand what is happening around them shouldn’t be treated as the enemy.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is stop asking:
“Which side are you on?”
and start asking:
“What do you believe, why do you believe it, and what evidence would make you change your mind?”
Because the moment we genuinely start doing that, we stop being useful soldiers for somebody else’s political battle.
And perhaps that is the real way out of the canyon.
Not pretending that everyone agrees.
Not pretending that there aren’t serious problems.
Not pretending that one side is always right.
Just refusing to hate somebody because they reached a different conclusion from you.
That seems like a fairly good place to start.
I hope the above helps and that those who have given their time to read it all will at least take time to consider it. Some will but alas many will not. Perhaps that is the real fundamental problem.
