One of the favourite narratives of the BBC is that Brexit is somehow caused by racism and xenophobia, and is in turn a cause of racism and xenophobia. This narrative was given a lot of fuel by statistics that emerged showing that hate crime had increased following the referendum. They even quoted Superintendent Paul Giannasi, who explained that Brexit “isn’t really over for most people”.
But who exactly is Paul Giannasi? Well, he’s the ‘National Hate Crime Coordinator‘ and ‘Cross-Government Hate Crime Programme Lead‘. He’s responsible for the hate crime statistics, and he runs True Vision, the online portal for reporting hate crime. He’s the top dog on hate crime in the UK and he has even received an OBE for his work. I wonder…which way did he vote in the referendum…
24th June 2016 – someone started a Facebook group, ‘We Love Europe’.
Not only is Paul a member of the group, but he also added members of his family. He shared a post from that group which stated, ‘We are the huge number of people in UK who voted to remain’ and also discussed the ‘dehumanisation of foreigners’. He posted to his profile a petition for a second referendum, along with a comment stating that Brexit was ‘the tyranny of democracy’ which was ’caused by political arrogance, thirst for power, idiotic fears, prejudice, bigotry and incredible stupidity’. These posts were made within days of the referendum, which means he had in mind the theory that Brexit was related to racism and hate crime long before the alleged increase in hate crime in the weeks and months afterwards.
It seems Brexit really isn’t over for Paul Giannasi. His impartiality is in serious doubt here, which places doubt on the validity and accuracy of the hate crime statistics. The BBC’s narrative relies a great deal on those figures. Just this week they posted that ‘there was a spike in race hate crimes in England and Wales.’ Well was there? Because it wouldn’t be the first time police statistics were unreliable or even manipulated.
He really should be careful, because you can get into a lot of trouble for posting the wrong thing on social media these days…