THE weaponisation of flags is a symptom of the Americanisation of the far-right and shows US culture wars have become “more embedded” in the UK, an expert has said.
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, editorial manager and analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said that Christian nationalist “elements” have also become more prominent.
The think tank analyses how the far-right operates online, and Venkataramakrishnan has said that there has been a “really big increase” in anti-migrant hate in the past few years.
There have been several protests outside hotels housing asylum seekers in England and in Scotland. And, on Saturday, more than 100,000 people took to the streets of London to take part in Tommy Robinson’s “Unite the Kingdom” protest.
Elon Musk, the Tesla billionaire, spoke at the event via videolink and called for a “revolutionary” change of Government, telling the crowd that “violence is coming” and that “you either fight back or you die”.
In recent weeks, St George’s Cross flags have been put up across England as part of a push by an ally of Robinson to push an anti-immigrant sentiment.
“We’ve seen how the flags have become weaponised, which is, again, much more American in some ways, than British,” Venkataramakrishnan said.
“I mean, generally, we've seen a shift towards sort of more evidence of Christian nationalist elements, which are kind of more American by nature than the UK far right, where it hasn't been.
“You'd have talk of crusades, but less of the kind of American style. “You do have American actors who come and speak. Generally, I think the US culture wars have become more embedded in the UK across the board, and that obviously plays out here.”
As well as Musk, Steve Bannon, a far-right strategist who worked for Donald Trump during his first term in the White House, was also billed as speaking at the London protest.
The analyst argues that there has been a “transnational shift”, where rhetoric pushed by the far-right has widened out.
“I realize the rhetoric is like to 'Make Britain Great Again', or 'Make England Great Again', but I think it's usually seen through the lens of ‘Make the West Great Again’,” he explained.
“I think that's what you've really seen is that it's shifted in some ways from being Muslims threatening the UK, to migrants threatening the West.
“There's been a broadening of the parameters into the kind of broadly speaking Christendom and Heathendom in a very bold sense of the world.
“As in, there are good white people who must be defended from the bad non white people. I think that's been the real shift of the last few years into that much broader rhetoric.”
We previously told how an expert said that Scotland is at an “inflection point” with anti-migrant sentiment, and that one incident could be a trigger.
A recent incident in Dundee, where Police had to issue a warning about misinformation after a child was charged after an incident involving a “bladed weapon”, was seen as a “rallying cry” by some elements of the far-right, Venkataramakrishnan said.
“I think the big spike, looking at data here in the UK, is a lot of anti migrant actors, both in the UK and globally, took the case in Dundee and really ran with it,” he said. “There was a cryptocurrency named after it which people were selling. called Braveheart.
“I think generally we've seen a much bigger focus on threats to women and girls from migrants over the past year than we did even last year.”
Venkataramakrishnan added that the nature of the far-right has evolved with social media, and unlike in previous decades, large, loosely organised groups such as the English Defence League (EDL) are now not the prominent instigators.
He said that now there are more “amorphous networks” where people will share information, such as on messaging app Telegram.
“They may have disagreements about specific ideological issues, but will kind of mobilize around events, which makes it harder to identify exactly when things are going to happen because, or indeed top down structures don't exist as strongly as they did in the past, in some ways, or they're not as important as they were in the past,” he added.
We told of outrage after the Saltire was co-opted as part of the “Raise the Colours” campaign, with flags popping up attached to lampposts in Glasgow.
And, an anti-racism campaign group is calling on Scots to oppose far-right-backed protests in Scotland this weekend.
