On Channel 4 News on March 29, veteran news broadcaster, Jon Snow, candidly observed he had “never seen so many white people in one place,” in reference to the crowd of pro-Brexit protesters gathered in Westminster on the day the UK was meant to leave the EU.

What was surely an honest statement, stung some sensitive skin.

His remark drew 2,644 complaints sent to the British regulatory body, Ofcom, which prohibits the use of offensive language on television.

Sputnik columnist, Jon Gaunt, claims:

When [Snow] used the word “White” it was shorthand for describing Brexit supporters and the non-metropolitan working class which he and most of the Political Establishment see as knuckle-dragging morons, bigots and racists.

Gaunt continues:

It wasn’t just the word white though, you have to remember what he said in the build-up to his clear white racism which in my mind was even worse and if anything should be the reason he should potentially get the bullet.

He said, “As we speak there are crowds rallying outside Downing Street… We’ve just got these pictures in… police are now wearing riot gear. Police dogs are patrolling. The mood has changed.”

He was desperate for trouble, hopefully, a riot. He should have hummed the Clash song, White Riot to fulfill his warped MSM narrative that the “plebs”, as he saw them, in Westminster would kick off.

Ofcom does not regulate the content of websites, so whether Gaunt is questioned about his use of the expression “get the bullet” — a British idiom that might be interpreted literally on a Russian website — remains to be seen.

While bemoaning Theresa May’s decision to enter talks with opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Gaunt clarifies how he prefers Brexiteers to be labelled: they are “the people.”

If in a country with a population of 66 million, only 17.4 million count as “the people,” where does that leave the other 49 million?

In an era of growing populism, this illustrates the dangers that spring from the many competing claims about “the people.”

In the U.S., the UK and everywhere else, we, the people, are not united.

Many embrace but others reject our diversity.

Many seek ways to expand the boundaries of inclusion while others want to widen the fractures of division.

If complaints about offensive language are merited, rather than direct them at anyone who dares refer to “white people,” perhaps we should target those who shamelessly promote exclusion and division by deceitfully using the expression “the people” as code for “us and them.”

More to the point, however, rather than perpetuate a fruitless effort to police language, we should instead directly interrogate its use. Instead of allowing glib deceptive phrases to slide by unquestioned, of anyone who says “we the people,” we need to ask: who belongs to that collective and who doesn’t? And who gets to decide?

Far too often, “the people” are marshaled by a small cadre of self-appointed leaders who ultimately speak for no one but themselves.

Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg — men of the people? Give me a break!

Populism has less to do with the populous, than it has with a chosen location of nostalgia — the particular period or mythic construct that supposedly embodies “good times” now lost.

What such nostalgia ignores is the inescapable fact that at all times, people have only ever lived in one time: the present.

Here we are. How do we make the most of it?