If there's one ironclad law of the Internet at the moment, it's that racists will get mad at literally anything. Yesterday, it was the Snow White remake, and today, it's a guy enjoying a really big piece of naan bread. Allow me to explain: it all started with a thoroughly average Tweet from thoroughly average Englishman Tony, expressing astonishment at the size of a piece of naan bread he was served at an Indian restaurant in Birmingham. Unfortunately, Tony was selected to be Twitter's main character of the day.
Perfectly innocent- but not for long. The innocuous Tweet blew up among the kind of people who say the kind of thing like "England is for the English", racking up views in the millions and boatloads of replies. Most of them seem to be decrying the kind of moral decay and erosion of the (white) West that comes with, again, eating naan bread. A large percentage of the replies are too obscene and/or racially charged to reproduce here, but they were all things along these lines:
It's as sad as it is genuinely concerning – legions of right-wingers like this poisoned by hateful online rhetoric to the point where a picture of bread is enough to send them into a frothing fury. Naturally, Twitter's new management is doing nothing to combat this kind of hate. As long as it's freedom of speech, it's fine, right? If nothing else, this episode has made me hungry for some naan.
