One searches in vain on the Guardian website for the name Nissar Hussain. This is odd because the newspaper seems to have spent the past few months engaged in a campaign against hate. Virtually every day there is a column or leader grimly claiming that the vote for Brexit has unleashed a spate of hate. Its archives brim with news stories trying to infer a causal link between Brexit and a reported rise in hate crime – even to the point of absurdity. Last month, the paper carried a story claiming that there had been a 147 per cent rise in homophobic attacks since Brexit. Given that homosexuality didn’t feature at all as an issue in the referendum campaign, you wonder why the headline-writer decided to link it with Brexit rather than saying reported attacks had increased in recent months – isn’t that exactly the kind of nod and wink which the Guardian deplores in tabloid headlines?
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Nissar Hussain, though, doesn’t get a look in because he doesn’t quite fit the narrative of a society, peacefully living as part of the EU, which is then ripped apart when a referendum unleashes the inner emotions of white, closet fascists.
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