The Rise of Fascism
How can people respond to the riots and violence spooling across English cities and towns?
First of all I see virtually no chance of solutions coming from the political class that have cultivated and nurtured the very views and stories that have created this situation in the first place. While the Conservatives disgusting government has done the most to promote racism and Islamophobia, the Labour party has ridden on their coattails. They are all enablers of this dreadful situation. They are all culpable. They are all complicit. So we cannot look to the mainstream political parties to create meaningful solutions. They have pandered to the narratives about immigration being a terrible crisis for years because it was politically expedient.
A perfect example of how its not just the Tories and Reform/UKIP who have cultivated this. The whole political class is culpablehttps://t.co/Gpde1HvMJF
— BELLA CALEDONIA (@bellacaledonia) August 4, 2024
I think ‘solutions’ are going to be a long-time coming but in the short time community-building is the way forward. Beware the tendency to ask for brutal police responses. Yes fascists should be arrested and prosecuted – but the British state is already massively authoritarian and over-powered and these new powers will easily be used against progressive forces.
Third, solidarity to all communities under attack from the far right this weekend, and respect to those anti-fascists who have stood up against them. We must build movements to resist this quickly and openly across political boundaries and without prejudice, but these must also be built on principles of humanity and solidarity and not be co-opted by liberals.
Fourth, it is not ‘exceptionalism’ to point out that this is not ‘sweeping the UK’. People need to face the fact that this is an English phenomenon with roots in England’s particular political culture. This is just a fact. And yes we should add the obvious proviso that Scotland is not immune from racism. Scotland has its own very real problems with racism and has its own subcultures of racism, bigotry and sectarianism. But it is inconceivable to consider violence of this scale because the far-right does not have the strength here. This is a crisis of English society with deep roots and we know the very many people and party’s who are culpable. They should be named and shamed.
Far right potestors have now attacked the Holiday Inn in Tamworth
They have gained access and appear to be lighting fires inside, the police seem outnumbered and unprepared for this
These are planned and targeted attacks#UKRiots#FarageRiots pic.twitter.com/4Fk150BKfn
— Clifford K 🇪🇺 (@holte) August 4, 2024
Fifth, this is not going away. The climate crisis means that vast amounts of people are being displaced as their homes and countries become uninhabitable. The crisis needs long-term solutions and a long-term project of changing the whole story about immigration that rests on humanity and solidarity not hate and fear.
Sixth, the problem of ‘X’ and its oligarch libertarian billionaire owner is a significant one. Whether you abandon it to his minions or defend and try and restore it – or try and create a progressive alternative – a new public sphere is a difficult one. This is a legal and a technical but also a social and a political question. Simply ordering the social media into silos of different political views doesn’t solve any of this. You can isolate the Trumpists into Truth Social but it doesn’t make them go away.
Seventh, and connected, find and follow alternative media. The mainstream media isn’t up the task as we have seen by countless examples of ‘both sideism’ and excusing the fascists, including this bizarre/disgraceful report by the BBC calling the fascists as a ‘pro British’ march:
BBC reporter has just described rioters as “a pro-British march” pic.twitter.com/IR8695kGWF
— Ted Booth (@tedgbooth) August 4, 2024
Eighth and connected, it is 100% justified in calling into question what this means for us in Scotland. This is not ‘playing the national question’ – this is legitimately asking what sort of country Britain is and why we should want to be any part of it. This should be done while making common-cause with the forces organising against fascism and while recognising that ‘England’ isn’t a homogenous thing and there are huge swathes of progressive and radical forces within England.
Ninth, we should not be surprised that Starmer’s response has been so pathetic. He is a centrist technocrat and is completely out of his depth. Like most of the political class he is utterly unprepared and unskilled for the scale of the socio-ecological crisis we are experiencing.
Finally, this may sound pathetic but kindness is a form of solidarity, While we will need in the coming days and months mass resistance and defence of communities, we will also need active anti-racism active anti-fascism and this can take many forms, including the micro-politics of kindness and care.
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hmm, whoivir this sarah edwards is I can assure ye she’s nay ane ae mine
There is much much worse to come in the next decade, because the lag time on what now appears to be real and present fascist danger in England has already been a long time in the making, and has accelerated significantly over the last 10-15 years. There is no political leadership against it, because all the political capitulations and accommodations to the far right by the Tory and Labour parties are now solidly baked in. The success of Farage was to channel this into Brexit but his greater and long hoped for achievement looks imminent in this decade. Even Labour MP’s are blowing his far right dogwhistles in the HoC. England gets ever more fucked, and yet here we are, still joined to their shitshow at the fucking hip.
What we are seeing is the death of Western democracy and the rise and establishment of Neo-Marxism. The grad elite has forced the decline of Western Nation sovereignty and identity.
The UK’s mainstream parties are indistinguishable from each other.
The recent protest sees a lot of frustrated citizens (accompanied by troublemakers).
The State now is demonising anyone who protests and implementing further totalitarian measures. We are heading for further conflict.
What we are seeing is a minority of violent activists with no regard for democratic norms trying to force their minority view on the rest of us. Of course the Westminster parties have shown their own disregard for democratic norms. whether it’s the Tories ( Russian money, tax evoiding billionaires, corrupt lords or ermine being bought) or Labour ( Israeli cash, private health money and ermine for the boys) or the allowable political lying of the libdems, each in its own way has done its bit to undermine representative democracy. Of course the Scottish branches have contributed as much to that.
It highlights that the uk needs comprehensive reform of election spending, financial contributions, overseas money and PR (which is unlikely to happen because the system favours the high rollers and FPTP)
Stevie H(ate)
You are spouting your usual far right (yes that is the correct term) bollocks.
What we are observing are racists performing acts of violence including trying to burn asylum seekers (who are not illegal immigrants until they are assessed under international law).
I remember many of these types following the English football team before banning orders stopped their activities.
They have been egged on by right wing media, politicians who have been making the lives of many worse in last 15 years through economic policies while simultaneously pointing to minorities to give the gullible someone to blame. This week is the illogical conclusion to last 15 years.
I dunno, I rarely pay attention to the mainstream media, radio off when driving, nay telly or internet in the shack, I used to be a big reader of the papers, but what you begin to notice after a while is it’s just the same stories recycled over & over, an attempt by the powers that be to keep the plebs in their place by insisting history repeats itself, social control in other words, harmful & deeply negative
Case in point, here’s Highland News & Media’s attempt to blame it on the travellers in what suspiciously looks like a staged set up of not much carnage at all & a claim that £5000 of damage has been done by these terrible ‘gypsy/travellers’. Could this be an attempt to justify further funding for Highlands & Islands Enterprise one wonders. Interestingly, Highland News & Media’s owners are based in Southampton, Southern England. So, at least in Moray (or is it Moray, Nairn & Strathspey) whenever a politician, councilperson or anyone else with a managerial or administrative role tries to tell you how to do your job you can be fairly sure it is simply bullying behaviour, (a wee point scoring exercise). If that’s the extent of their achievement thus far & the petty existence they desire for themselves let them get on with it I say. https://www.northern-scot.co.uk/news/5000-of-damage-caused-by-travellers-at-business-park-357363/
& before I toddle off tae dae ma bizniz their is another point worth making here, towns in moray are expanding at a rapid rate due to housing developments being thrown up wherever the developers feel like putting one, the mainstream media up here in the grampians, highlands & islands, could best be seen as a propaganda sheet which exists primarily to justify such get rich quick schemes at the expense of those employed who they saddle with a mortgage they are unlikely ever to be able to fully repay & the so-called social housing element which is usually based in an area of the very same development except those particular houses will be more liable to flooding, damp, dry rot, and/or subsidence
I agree wi you Mark, I hud a wee swatch at the so-cried riots last night & honestly, it’s jist the same ald anglaise or should I say british media exaggeration. Ye could see the joins where the tv edit skipt during starmer’s speech & the the riots themselves jist looked like the staged or vintage footage we’ve seen a hunnir times afore, it is a sad day when the one eyed god turns everyone into actors & actresses who don’t even seem to realise they are caricaturising themselves. Over indulgence in virtual reality by the middle/so called professional/managerial class is costing lives of hard working men & women (all those who kept the country going during the covid years basically) so not only are they incompetent they’re a menace, & a bunch of easily led fearties, sad but true.
Well, as I said last month:
“The British imperial political system is designed to be autocratic, and while the changes in style forced on it over the last century applied some faint gloss of democracy, the royal prerogatives will run the show in any prolonged, or permanent state of emergency as we are likely to be entering. Conventions allowed by our quasi-Constitution will melt like summer snow, and the iron fist will emerge from the ragged velvet glove.”
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2024/07/21/britains-niemoller-moment/
If we do see the Army on the streets, there’s a chance they will be more sympathetic to the rioters.
But as well as condemnation and kindness, to effectively counter the false narratives of racism and fascism, you have to understand how people are drawn to these, and see their sometimes genuine grievances and sometimes reasonable sense of injustice, and why they cannot seem to articulate those, and how sometimes they are exploited by the officer class of fascists (who themselves may have understandable issues). It may be that these rioters map demographically onto current convicted violent offenders, in which case we have a head start. This is not to excuse anybody: seeing how many people from similar backgrounds or with similar childhood experiences resist or reject fascism is at least as valuable a lesson.
English fascism may be a special case; I’ve lately been reading up on German fascism and Confederate racism, and its noticeable that the officer class of German fascism seems much more articulate these days, whereas in the USA white supremacy appears closely linked to militant Christian nationalism. We need to see how these groups network and are funded globally, and what their larger targets are (it’s not just about burning down local Citizen’s Advice Bureaux and hotels housing asylum seekers).
At root, it may be the inevitable failure of the British to adopt their own version of Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung as a cultural imperative (and yes, this includes Scots). There’s a lot going on in the CARICOM region that is blithely ignored in corporate British media that has everything to do with things that fascists don’t want to reckon with: the atrocity-laden history of the British Empire, climate change, USAmerican hegemony etc.
Remember this?
Sadly politicians of all parties are bought and sold for American gold.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0UmfBwA_U
@John Wood, and a crapload of artists were funded by the CIA too. Susan Williams (White Malice) darkly notes that the CIA, supposedly champions of the free market, sometimes had to buy up their own stooges’ books with state funds to further their agendas/careers. I wondered who bought poetry. But now, I guess thanks in part to Israeli spyware, the secret agencies of the USAmerican and British Empires will simply be able to threaten and blackmail most politicians and artists alike, and maybe keep them on their payroll too. Carrot and stick. Well, the US Dollar can’t keep its value forever. I mean, far from being the richest country in the world, the USA must be technically bankrupt. Maybe they’ll be helicoptering the last spook and grunt off Airstrip One sooner than we’d imagine.
Here is Freedom News (anarchist perspective) coverage of events Bristol:
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2024/08/06/fighting-the-racists-in-bristol-only-we-can-protect-our-communities/
Expect some valorisation, but the statements of fact are typically such that could be checked.