If you raise money for charity, you're probably oppressing someone.
Just as we have lurched past the warmongering campaign of the poppy-peddlers and Movember's little Mussolinis, now Christmas looms with its interminable campaigns to help the needy. From then, each month now has a designated charity aim, with January's 'dryathalon' all the way to 'Stoptober'. Alongside these, people will be engaging in so-called fun runs and comedy nights across the country. What's wrong with that? It's all for a good cause, they say as they proffer their jangling buckets.
It seems like a bit of fun, but in reality they carry pernicious racial connotations and act as a Trojan horse for exclusion. Movember is an obvious example, with its moustaches that mock the cultural signifiers of Kurdish and Indian men (Not to mention the fact that Hitler was a famous moustache wearer?! Do you all get together and poo on each other too, guys?). Each charity event marginalises one group or another: dryathalon excludes Muslims, a marathon excludes people who aren't fit enough to run a marathon, the race for life excludes zombies. The list goes on, but the general message is always the same. They exclude all but the self-propagating bourgeoise elite under the veil of charity work.
They get together in Nuremberg-style gatherings, where the language is strictly martial "let's fight cancer" they cry, but they may as we'll be saying "let's fight ethnic minorities and the working classes". Some charities and public health initiatives even exclude the people they were supposedly supposed to help. Someone who has successfully completed Stoptober is then forever unable to be included in its festivities, and people are encouraged to give blood when ironically the very people that need the blood, cannot give theirs. This contributes to the "othering" of haemophiliacs, separating them out from the majority.
So, next time someone asks you to donate to a campaign to help the homeless at Christmas, spit in their face and remind them that there are Buddhist homeless people too, who don't appreciate your New Testament timetabling. If charity begins at home, make sure your home is heartless, or you'll only encourage the oppression.
Inspired by http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/why-movember-isnt-all-its-cracked-be and all the other click-bait anti-charity articles I've come across recently.