to get an easy ride = not be punished/have repercussions?

Question

How I escaped my certain fate by Stewart Lee

Acres of angry newsprint were generated, much of it about things that weren’t even in the show - [...], the 6,000 swear words that never were – and frightened white people who imagined immigrants were getting an easy ride whenever their faiths were mentioned joined the queue of incoherently angry people eager to see the show closed.

The author describes how his opera show was going to be closed by angry Christians who thought that the show was blasphemous. Does he mean that the immigrants made jokes about Christians and weren't punished for [were getting an easy ride]  them?

As I understand, when there were mentions of white people's faiths in the newspapers, these white people were triggered towards immigrants. Is this correct?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

While there is ambiguity in the pronoun, from general knowledge it seems likely that that "their faiths" is "the immigrant's faiths". So the "frightened white people" became angry when they imagined that Stuart Lee wasn't fairly attacking the faiths of immigrants.

So Lee made jokes about faiths. Frightened white people believed that his jokes about the faiths of immigrants were kinder than his jokes about faiths of the frightened white people. And so they joined with the angry white people who wanted the show closed.

(it is grammatically possible that "their" means "of the white people" but that makes less sense in context)