NINA Simone did not pull her punches. She lived in an era and a country where it was dangerous to be black.

“Southern trees bear a strange fruit,” she sang. “Blood on the leaves and blood at the root. Black bodies swingin’ in the southern breeze. Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees.”

Researchers at Ohio State University have estimated that some 3,500 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968.

White supremacy ruled and, in a way, white supremacy rules still in the United States.

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The Trump administration has chosen to go to war on the American people using race, sexuality and so-called communist leanings as their weapons.

The culture wars are not confined to the USA. And lynching - 21st century style - appears to be back in vogue in Britain.

The death on Friday of Professor Jason Arday is as sad and shocking as a lynching.

And the motivation of some of those who persecuted him was little different than that of the lynch mobs who policed blacks in the American deep south.

The young professor’s death has exposed the rotten heart of elitism, white supremacy and naked racism which sits at the........

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