In tabloid Britain, the ranked masses of the billionaire-owned corporate media have long poisoned our politics.

While their influence is in dramatic decline the Sun, Daily Mail and most noxiously the Daily Express take our basest motives, celebrate them and project them back to us.

Hate, fear and greed are the values they most strongly proclaim.

Homophobia, misogyny and the demonisation of the sick and the poor have at various times been their main focus.

Many of us fear others. Such fear can lead to racism.

In the Bible when Christ told of the good Samaritan the intention was to replace hatred of a minority with compassion but our tabloid media uses all its power and rhetorical tricks to make us hate others.

Migration is now the second most important election issue. Ukip has shifted from being a primarily anti-EU party to a focus on migration.

Most political parties have been pushed into an arms race to sound the most hostile to migrants.

Its difficult to challenge the anti-migration rhetoric, but in a world where hatreds based on ethnicity, religion and other real or imagined differences cause so much harm, I believe that it is vital to do so.

How do we do this? It’s easy to disagree with others and to call them out on hate, but while this might make us feel righteous and warm inside it can be pointless or perhaps even counterproductive.

How can we open up a conversation that makes an alternative to Farage-mania possible and effective?

It’s worth pointing out some obvious weaknesses in the anti-migration case.

First, many of us are descended from migrants. The leader of my political party Natalie Bennett is, as I have often noted, a migrant, born in Australia. She is not only an exponent of ecological policies but can shear sheep.

Two other leaders are descended from asylum-seekers. Ed Milband’s dad, the famous socialist Ralph Miliband who wrote Parliamentary Socialism, sought refuge from Belgium. The son of Polish Jews, Miliband came to Britain to escape the nazis.

Nigel Farage’s ancestors also sought asylum in Britain as French Huguenots under threat of persecution in the 17th century.

Britain has been shaped by wave after wave of migration. I believe the royal family are descended from French speaking Vikings and we have seen Celts, Romans, Saxons and others shape what it means to be British.

I think such diversity makes us a rich culture and it’s good that we have given asylum to others.

Another contradiction worth identifying is that, when polled, most British people oppose free movement of European Union citizens into Britain but believe British citizens should be free to live and work in other EU countries.

I am really not sure how this is supposed to work, but last time I looked at the figures 300,000 British-born individuals were living in Spain.

So if we stopped continental Europeans from living in Britain, as some Ukip members seem to suggest, would all the Britons living in Spain, France, Sweden, etc, have to leave and come back here?

Free movement is good for British citizens but it’s absurd to argue that others should not have the same freedom we do.

All of us are capable of believing in absurdities, so it is not enough to point them out in the arguments we find untenable.

I think it is important to use humour to engage with those people we disagree with.

Banksy has produced some good graphics reminding us that Paddington bear was a migrant from Peru who would now have been faced with razor wire fences in a Britain increasingly intolerant of non British-born mammals.

Better still is his mural of British pigeons harrassing an African parakeet with the slogan “Keep off our worms.”

Banksy’s work is a good illustration that fears about migration are based more on wider insecurities than on real problems.

I am not sure whether British pigeons are suffering from a shortage of worms but we British are suffering from unemployment, job insecurity, unaffordable housing and a host of other problems.

It is always easier to identify an enemy to blame than to look at more complex and nuanced causes. Identifying an enemy in the form of a mysterious and sinister other, is, sadly, often good politics.

Why think about globalisation, when you can blame migrants? Why look at how ownership structures and speculative bubbles threaten our economy, when you can blame the Moroccans, the Finns or whoever might be the foreign-born scapegoat of the moment?

There is a constant urge to racialise real problems and blame others.

Nigel Farage’s attack on HIV patients is an almost textbook example of how to do this.

The NHS is a British institution under threat — as we know NHS services are increasingly being run by private corporations. The British Medical Association has warned that we may soon be charged for visiting the doctor, and these threats have even lead to the creation of a new political organisation, the National Health Action Party.

From an ideological assault from the coalition government to the simple fact that an ageing population increases healthcare needs, there are a number of reasons why the NHS has problems.

So what does Farage do? He blames the problem on foreigners. The facts of the matter are secondary, so called health tourism is not a problem in Britain and British citizens using other EU countries’ healthcare facilities are ignored by Farage.

Anti-migration campaigners note that migrants can push down wages but the solution to this is surely to introduce stronger trade union laws, raise the minimum wage and protect collective pay and conditions. Equally Ukip and the tabloids will argue that population growth caused by migration is environmentally damaging but at the same time deny the existence of climate change as a problem. 

Equally the housing crisis is blamed on migrants but the fact that perhaps 600,000 empty homes exist in Britain is ignored. Houses are increasingly a speculative commodity, out of affordable reach, and the failure to build council housing in recent decades has created a crisis.

Name almost any problem and foreigners are targeted for blame. The EU can be criticised for a wide variety of failings, but the right criticises it, above all, because it contains foreigners.

A focus on migration is a distraction from social justice, which explains why right-wing politicians and tabloid newspapers are so obsessed with it.

The blame game is why racism is part of a wider network of hatreds based on insecurity, an “out” group who can be blamed and demonised is the increasing focus for politics globally.

From the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India — which grew out of Hindu fundamentalist groups — to the various forms of sectarianism in the Middle East, hatred reinforces hatred.

It’s difficult but vital that we challenge these corrosive hatreds and champion the benefits of diversity and mutual understanding.

When I visited my mother a couple of weeks ago, she pointed to a photo of my grandmother, taken in 1912 in Stoke Newington in London. She was surrounded by her siblings and her parents. Her mother died in childbirth and the family found it hard, but my grandmother always praised her Jewish neighbours who helped her father, a member of the Salvation Army, look after the children.

The British Brothers’ League at the time were active in this part of London, whipping up hatred against the Jewish community. It’s worth remembering that, long before the Jews were demonised, Nigel Farage’s Huguenot ancestors settled in east London.

All too often we are told that migrants are our enemy but let’s remember that all of us are migrants and that migration can create opportunities and friendships as well as problems.

• Derek Wall is international co-ordinator of the Green Party