Earlier this month, I helped organise a protest to defend the refugees holed up on the Thistle Metropolis Barbican resort in London. We mobilised 800 folks to assist the asylum seekers, who waved again at us from the resort to point out their gratitude. On the opposite aspect of the street, about 250 folks had gathered to demand the resort be closed. Audio system there known as refugees “illegal”, “invaders” and “parasites”.
Seeing and listening to our opponents, the anti-racists responded with a spontaneous chant of “Nazi scum, off our streets”, which our aspect was capable of maintain for greater than an hour. I perceive why folks needed to precise their contempt for the individuals who inform lies about refugees, however the chant didn’t strike me as efficient once I heard it, and the extra I’ve considered it since, the extra satisfied I’m that it was the improper technique.
There have been fascists current on the demonstration – one banner marketed a small hard-right group – however they weren’t the organisers; they hung again, mute, on the fringe of the protest. The group did chant in assist of Tommy Robinson. The latter, I think, might be the hyperlink that organisations like Stand As much as Racism lean on when labelling the present anti-refugee motion as fascist. (Most of the protests, their spokesperson has stated, “are organised by known fascists and Hitler admirers”.) However Robinson, in contrast to the fascists of the Nineteen Seventies, doesn’t leaven his speeches with reworked passages from Mein Kampf. He isn’t a “Hitler admirer”, neither is he perceived as such by the motion. He used to boast of getting a Churchill quote tattooed on his arm.
The technique of labelling our enemies fascist is determined by a context the place the mainstream is keen to isolate and disgrace Nazis. These are usually not the instances we live in. So a wiser, extra tailor-made message is critical.
Take Robert Jenrick, the shadow lord chancellor, who just lately attended an anti-refugee protest in Epping. Anti-fascists launched {a photograph} from the protest that includes Jenrick with Eddy Butler within the background – Butler is a former election candidate for the British Nationwide social gathering and was the guru behind its “rights for whites” marketing campaign within the Nineteen Nineties. What was most revealing in regards to the incident was what got here subsequent: a “source close” to Jenrick stated he didn’t know who Butler was; Jenrick saved the pictures of his time in Epping displaying on his X profile. He made it clear he wasn’t embarrassed, and the story dissipated to nothing.
If the motion was perceived as fascist – by Jenrick, or by the opposite Conservative and Reform politicians who’ve related themselves with it, or by the Labour ministers who’ve conceded the correct’s major calls for and agreed to shut the refugee motels – then it might not be as assured and unrepentant as it’s. And behind the politicians who’ve flattered the road motion are a a lot bigger group who share its insistence on describing migration in unfavorable phrases. Keir Starmer, the prime minister, tweeted than a dozen instances in August about migration – each considered one of his messages has offered it as problematic, “illegal” or the work of prison folks smugglers.
Within the weeks for the reason that Barbican protest, the anti-refugee motion has saved up its momentum. Calling them Nazis – even when there have been fascists current on the edges of their occasion – has completed little to undermine them. They don’t imagine they’re fascists; they don’t have organised fascists of their main circles. The time period appears to them exaggerated, laughable.
It’s possible you’ll say I’m anticipating an excessive amount of of 1 time period; even when the fascist label had labored, and obtained underneath our opponents’ skins, there is no such thing as a manner we might understand it was working. However within the Nineteen Seventies, it was frequent for former supporters of the Nationwide Entrance to interrupt with that marketing campaign and to quote its fascism as their cause for leaving. Right here is one defector quoted within the East Finish Advertiser in 1977, explaining that she deserted the far proper when she noticed footage of Entrance chief John Tyndall wearing a Nazi uniform. “I won’t stand for any of this Sieg Heil nonsense,” the previous NF member stated. (This was, in fact, a mere 30 years after the blitz; east London nonetheless bore the bodily scars left by German bombs.) If the identical techniques had been working 50 years later, anti-fascists could be assembly folks like that and ensuring their tales had been within the press.
Once we cope with the far proper now, we face a motion that’s pushing ahead a gaggle of feminine leaders – that feels totally different from 5 years in the past, not to mention 50 years since. In Islington, one of many speeches got here from a lady described as operating an area nursery (it was learn out on her behalf). The modern far proper is concentrated on pushing a single narrative about refugees, all primarily based on the identical logic – that the folks within the resort are single males, are foreigners, and on each scores are more likely to be sexual predators.
This argument wins supporters, and it shields them from accusations that they’re extremists. The one option to confront that is to fulfill it head on, by rejecting any concept that international males – or Muslims – are extra susceptible to sexual offences than their British counterparts. The logic of the argument is racist – it depends on the belief that simply because they’re migrants, or asylum seekers, or not white (and with no different supportive proof), they should be extra susceptible to sexual violence than the lads who already dwell right here.
And the best, one-line refutation of it’s to have a look at the lads who had been convicted of offences within the varied race riots that adopted occasions at Southport final yr. Of these males who attend the far-right protests, a staggering 40% have been reported to the police for home violence. There may be, in different phrases, in all probability no single group of individuals – not in Britain or anyplace else – who’re extra susceptible to violence in opposition to ladies than the folks now standing outdoors the motels denouncing refugees.
This, slightly than shouting Nazi, is the argument most definitely to undermine the anti-refugee protests. We must be utilizing it in our leaflets, once we discuss to folks, and on our protests.
