“The Home Secretary was criticised today for granting a visa to a controversial Jamaican reggae singer [Bounty Killer], allowing him to perform in London this weekend. Jacqui Smith was accused by gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell of “rewarding a maladjusted thug” after the Home Office gave a work permit to dancehall artist Bounty Killer (Rodney Pryce). Tatchell has accused the singer of glorifying the killing of gay people and promoting gang culture. Bounty Killer will play at the Stratford Rex on Saturday.” [TIL, earlier]
‘Death to Gays’ Rapper Given UK Visa
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ChicagoJimmy
This fucker protests too much. I’m sure what he’s really interested in is a gang bang.
fredo777
Ain’t that a b*tch?
Bill Perdue
I don’t think he’s protesting too much, I think he’s the real thing, a stone cold bigot and an accessory to murder. It’s pretty well known in England and the EU that the vast majority of anti-GLBT and anti-muslim hate crimes are committed by home grown Euro skinheads. Like their big bothers in the US, their violence is empowered by superstition and ignorance, i.e., religion expressed in the pop culture of bigots like Bounty Killer.
In the case of Jamaica religious homophobia was imported from England along with the slave trade and plantations. Racism tied to slavery and bolstered by religion is an English invention. In Europe sadism and canings in upper class schools are called the “English vice” but that’s piddling compared to the real vices of the English upper classes which include rampant racism, islamophobia and homophobic religion.
That’s what makes the betrayal of Labour on this question so ironic and so enraging.
Jamaican musicians who engage in hate speech and advocate violence cause violence where ever they go. Suppressing their music, denying them passports, and jailing them as accessories to murder is not a question of free speech. When Brian Williamson, one of the few openly gay advocates for equality was murdered by homobigoted thugs in Jamaica.
Amnesty International reported that Buju Banton was involved.
ousslander
Photograph and post his concert goers and label them supporters of homophobia and such.
Bill, I’m glad to England is at fault for racism and slavery. Here I thought it was the evil US. We are all victims of the European other wise every culture got along so peacefully and never practiced slavery or sacrifice.
Also goo to know that those poor Muslims who are persecuted daily never harm anyone and just want to live in peace, never subjugating any other peoples.
kevin57
I utilize the “insert other marginalized groups” technique when looking at these sort of decisions. If the “artist” were talking this way about Muslims, about blacks, about fill-in-the-blank in the same fashion, would the same decision have been made. In this case, the British government fails the test.
Charles J. Mueller
The very fact that this worthless piece of shit got a UK visa, says reams about the Immigration Officials who granted it, doesn’t it?
Bill Perdue
@ousslander:I’m glad if your glad but no one, and especially not me, said that “England is at fault for racism and slavery.”
150 years before the first American Revolution the English were creating an enormously profitable three way trade consisting of trade goods from England going to Africa to exchange for slaves. Then the slaves were sold in English North American and the Caribbean to English plantation owners. In the final leg of their trade agreement raw materials were taken to England.
When that source of profits dried up English plantation owners in India cultivated opium and fought a war with the Chinese central government forcing them to allow massive importation of English opium. The trade was conducted through thier forts at Hong Kong.
So when I said that “Racism tied to slavery and bolstered by religion is an English invention” I was telling the truth. The combination of slave labor, involuntary labor (Jim Crow) and low paying labor (Jim Crow) and racism haunts and distorts US culture to this day, just as it distorts the cultures of all fomrer European colonies.
It won’t be solved in the US short of a third American Revolution.
PS – islamophobes are scum.
ZeeLee
Why? Why would they give this…. thing…. a visa in the first place?
Really does say alot about them….
Chris
But if it was a gay artist talking about killing Jamaicans…