How the far-right stirred up violence – and how to defeat them

On the social media platform formerly know as Twitter, I glimpse a post from a right-wing influencer bent on making full use of the current disorder in British cities. The man is standing on a pretty mediaeval square in one of Poland’s historic cities, commending the peaceful urban scene all around him, and declaring that the model of society practised in some east European countries – monocultural, monoracial, suspicious of incomers from different cultures, and openly hostile to Muslims and their faith – obviously represents a far better model for our future than the noise, mess and chaos of the recent riot scenes in England and Northern Ireland. For years, now, the global far-right have been pursuing the idea that multiracial and multicultural societies are doomed, and must be shown to be so by any means available, from rank disinformation to actual incitement to violence. And now, in a single smooth movement, the international far-right that helped to foment the scenes we see on our television screens is using them to advocate for their deeply reactionary vision of how modern societies should work. All of which comes as a salutary reminder that the far-right push, the consequences of which we have seen on some British streets, over the last week, is a complex international phenomenon that needs to be resisted on many levels, involving the hand and the heart, but also the head.

Building true community spirit

First of all, with our hands, we need to build and cherish the kinds of communities that we have already glimpsed in some places following these recent events; communities that know one another, value one another, and work together on priorities that everyone can share: as we learned during the pandemic, this is the daily business of all kinds of familiar organisations at the grassroots of UK society from liberal churches and mosques, to trade unions, interfaith groups, community groups, and charities.

Yousaf demands 'evil' EDL terrorist proscription following Southport riot Then there is the heart; for each of us has to be wise in handling the emotions aroused by these events. In the first place, if we seriously want to oppose the far-right, we have to commit ourselves to a politics of love; to always seeing and hoping for the best in people, and of taking it for granted – as the facts suggest we reasonably can – that at least 95 per cent of those we meet, even in a city of strangers, are just ordinary people with the same dreams and hopes as the rest of us. We also need to recognise, as the global far-right clearly does, that the functional opposite of love is not so much hate as fear. Fear of change, of the future, of poverty or humiliation, of being taken for a fool, is the fuel on which reactionary politics feeds. Allowing ourselves to made fearful of our fellow citizens is therefore a first step towards complicity with the far-right politics we seek to oppose; and we need to be both hopeful and courageous in resisting that temptation, and facing down the evil that would drive us apart.

Danger of fear

This, though, is where the final aspect of the struggle becomes important; because in order to resist fear, we need to inform ourselves, and to muster our arguments. However small the groups involved in the violence we have seen in recent days, and however unrepresentative they may be, they nonetheless occupy a space in our public debate that ramps up fear, and makes people utter thoughts like “stay indoors, be safe” or “I wonder if I’ll be able to bring my kids up here”. And the only reasonable counter to these fearful thoughts is a barrage of hard facts, and of arguments against fascism that have been tried and tested by history. The recent rise of far-right thinking in the UK has been fuelled by lie after lie about immigration, its economic impact, its actual scale, and the criminality of migrants; and every citizen now needs to know the facts, and to know that those politicians and opinion-formers who offer a different narrative are lying for political advantage.

Far-right fantasy world

More to the point, we need to know – and to be able to argue – that the man standing in the square in Poland advocating a “return” to a monocultural white Britain, with no racial or cultural diversity, is evoking a fantasy world which never existed. Just as there has never been a society without gay or trans people, there has never been a prosperous modern nation that did not win that prosperity through intense exchange with, and often conquest and exploitation of, neighbouring countries or those overseas. The black and Asian people who live in the UK today are therefore as much a part of our imperial history as any white citizen; and every piece of 19th-century stone in our handsome cities is to some extent marked with the blood of slaves, and with the huge wealth generated by colonial economies built on their labour. There is, in other words, no past to return to, of the kind the far-right advocates; and as we have already seen in Russia and parts of the United States, those who seek to return to it often end up, on their journey of reaction, doing horrible violence to minorities, and to the basic human rights and bodily autonomy of women. Rejecting all this, if we can achieve it, will now be the best work of our generation, along with seeking – perhaps through the same grassroots strength – to tackle the climate crisis the far-right refuse to acknowledge, and which now threatens us all. So with hands, hearts and brains, let’s get to it; for even at the end of the world, there is no better way to invest your time, your energy, and your love.