James O'Brien's Brilliant Explanation Of Rise Of Anti-Migrant Rhetoric
11 November 2016, 12:19 | Updated: 11 November 2016, 12:30
James O'Brien has a breakthrough moment as he tries to figure out why so many people are mad at migrants.
It starts with a simple analogy from James: imagine you've got a pie in front of you. The pie represents society's wealth.
"But 75% of the pie is stitched up and sewn up between the richest people on the planet, the big business, the career politicians, the Establishment.
"25% of the pie, the rest of us are sharing. So of course if loads of people arrive from somewhere else, and we've still only got 25% of the pie, people are going to really resent that. It doesn't make them racist, it just makes them squeezed.
"It makes them resentful of having their small and unfair slice of an enormous pie shaved even further."
James returned to the analogy later in the show, asking why people "look down so much more readily than up, when trying to find the reason for their own dissatisfaction.
"The answer is - and it's so crucial to immigration - 'You weren't on the ladder before, and now you are. That's got to be making my experience worse.
"There's a logic to it that's very very hard to refute. Until you remember: nobody has said you have to stay where you are."
"Oh man, the right wing media have got a lot to answer for...every time anybody has suggested you should be going after the pie, the politics of envy argument kicks in.
"And if it's someone who's got a few quid?
"Then you're a champagne socialist.
"And all of us, sharing out that small slice of pie, end up fighting with each other."
