It’s tricky territory when you as a white person start saying what you think is or isn’t offensive but I largely agree that Papa Lazarou, whilst certainly mis-judged, and something I wouldn’t condone today isn’t perhaps the best target. Inevitably there will be some knee jerk reactions as we begin to reconcile with these issues.
With regards to the right wing media’s completely out of proportion defence of statues of racists I feel the same way about it as JK Rowling. Insomuch as if you’re getting so worked up about something that that largely doesn’t effect you (are DM reader’s lives really affected that much by a King Leopold statue being taken down in BELGIUM?) it’s because it’s symptomatic of a real deep rooted prejudice, and this is an easily marketable way of broadcasting it. Ultimately the anger’s stemming from people challenging a system that they’re actually quite happy with and believe in. All the screams of activists ‘going too far’ basically translates to, “haven’t we given you enough already”. They’re happy to humour minorities with the idea that they’re equals, but any real encroachment onto their power and they begin frenziedly doing whatever they can to undermine their opinions, and pushing out articles in the media that hope to recruit others to believe in their ‘common sense’ approach. Common sense essentially meaning in most of instances ‘my prevailing white middle-class world view which is not be challenged.’
