FASCISM is back on these islands, and it increasingly apes its past. British politics has become a Petri dish in which the far right flourishes.
When SNP deputy leader Keith Brown warns that fascist-style demonstrations have been “emboldened” by Reform UK and their far-right offshoot Restore, he needs to be listened to.
The footage from outside the Scottish Parliament is menacing. In black and white, it looks like a still from the 1930s, when Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts aspired to replicate the examples of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Not since then has the far right posed such a threat.
That this poisonous creed has traction in Scotland is chastening. Civic nationalism has offered a progressive outlet for the popular discontent which bubbles away across the West. Instead of blaming migrants and Muslims, citizens’ anger with a broken status quo has been redirected at Westminster.
But Reform’s strengthening grip over Unionism threatens Scotland with the same danger which menaces much of the world.
Across the West, the old centre right has perished. After the Second World War, there was supposed to be a political cordon sanitaire which blocked the far right from power.
Anything beyond a certain point on the right was deemed to be illegitimate and an existential threat to minorities and democracy.
But that cordon sanitaire has been shredded. Far-right parties have been repeatedly welcomed into power. In many places, they have replaced the centre right – or simply taken it over, as has been the case with the US Republicans under Donald Trump.
Reform and Restore have proven to be the battering rams which brought down the UK’s cordon sanitaire. There is no longer any agreement on what is deemed to be too right wing.
Restore – founded by disgruntled former Reform MP Rupert Lowe – openly demand the mass deporting of “millions and millions”. They even demand the imprisonment of officials and politicians “who knowingly placed dangerous third-world savages in our communities”, as they put it.
There are overt neo-Nazis within the ranks of Restore. This is not some misapplication of the term, as some on the right accuse. We are talking here about open admirers of Adolf Hitler, who demand the expulsion of all minorities from Britain, including Jews.
One of them demands the deporting of “approximately 21 million people”. It would be tempting to dismiss him as a fringe fanatic, but he has 144,000 followers and obvious traction within Restore.
Restore enjoy the active support of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. His social media platform, the artist formerly known as Twitter, has become overrun by Nazis and white supremacists. Indeed, Musk himself has shared openly white supremacist content. In one case, he agreed with a post accusing Jewish people of promoting “hatred against whites”.
This has produced a dynamic within British politics in which Reform shift right to avoid haemorrhaging support to Restore, hence the growing chatter about “anti-white discrimination”, the sort of rhetoric which once prevailed on the far-right fringes. That, in turn, encourages the Tories to shift further right, too. This is the far-right ratchet of British politics.
This context legitimises the street fascists – that is, the far-right extremists who do not intend to wait until tyranny has been established in the corridors of power.
Last week, Amnesty International reported that Islamophobic attacks in the UK were “reaching emergency levels”. Homes, cars and mosques, they noted, “have been targets of suspected firebombing and arson attacks over the last few weeks”.
These extremists, in other words, now believe they have been conferred with legitimacy and respectability by mainstream politics. Unfortunately, they have something of a point.
Where, then, is the hope? In part, the social and economic causes of discontent need to be addressed. Our prime minister-to-be Andy Burnham has promised an unprecedented devolution of power. But that will not change lives unless the Scottish and Welsh nations, as well as English regions, are given proper funds.
That must mean a radical council house building programme, a well-resourced welfare state, a war on poverty and insecurity, an industrial policy married to net-zero ambitions, and bringing down the cost of living through public ownership of utilities and services.
But it also means more mainstream politicians with the guts to face down racism. The Labour establishment have instead indulged the poison: raiding the rhetoric of Enoch Powell to demonise immigration. Remember Keir Starmer’s “island of strangers”, or the declaration that immigration had done “incalculable” damage to Britain?
In Westminster, both mainstream parties have refused to praise immigration for enriching Britain culturally and economically. There have been no rousing speeches facing down far-right extremists dividing our communities, or offering a vision of a diverse society which thrives on difference.
Instead, the conversation has been abandoned to the increasingly extreme right. Combining growing social and economic grievances with unchallenged rhetoric demonising migrants and minorities has led us to catastrophe.
That’s why fascists are openly emulating the style of their despised predecessors. Right now, they feel the wind is in their sail.
They believe they have more traction than at any point since the defeat of Hitlerism. It’s welcome that the SNP are prepared to call this out for what it is. But one of the many tests facing Burnham is whether he is prepared to do the same.
