Editor’s comment: I read this originally on X/Twitter and approached the author, who agreed to us publishing it here. I then had quite an internal debate about whether or not to trust my impulse to share it with a wider audience and have come to the conclusion that the time for skirting around this subject is long past. Dangerously long past. The right-wing media, social media sites and certain politicians/tech bros are spreading disinformation and striving to normalise fascism and we are letting them get away with it, partly because we are too coy, too frightened to call it out for what it is. Let’s hope that is over. Oh, and the BBC can stop calling the rioters ‘protesters’. They are racist thugs, mobilised and manipulated by fascists. Am I comfortable with descriptions of these people as ‘boneheads’ and ‘dregs’? No. But are the majority of us understandably disgusted by their behaviour? Absolutely. We need to find a way to educate people being used by fascists in this way and to begin to close the vast and ugly gulf between citizens that is being widened and deepened by those with a dark and destructive agenda.
Someone is attempting a fascist coup in Britain using a mix of tactics borrowed from the Nazis and more modern, Russian-style propaganda. We’ve already had the divisive referendum in 2016, and a Reform MP is agitating for another one in parliament. The Nazis loved referenda.
Hitler hated a lot of people, but his focus was on one religio-ethnic group, the boogeyman. Jews in Germany, Muslims in UK for our fascists to focus on. Tropes like grooming gangs and halal, instead of money conspiracies.
So, our far right has its ‘enemy within’, like Hitler did. The far right’s party of choice, Reform UK, has recently entered parliament legally, albeit in small numbers, just like when the Nazis first entered the Reichstag in the 20s
Patriotic Alternative and the Tommy Robinson-style boneheads, and their offshoot, are the equivalent of Hitler’s Sturm-Abteilung (SA) brownshirts, using political violence and intimidation whenever their paymasters tell them to, wherever they’re told to go. Rent-a-mob, made up of the dregs of the UK.
Reform, and the Boneheads get blanket media coverage. If the real establishment, the money men and aristos whom Reform represent, not the people we elect, wanted the fascism to stop, it would. The real establishment quite possibly prefers a hard right coup to Labour being in power.
Hitler hated globalists, socialists, eastern Europeans, racial diversity and multi-culturalism and the LGBT+ community: all were his scapegoats. Those, along with Muslims, are the far right’s targets today, here, too.
Both the Nazis and the modern Russians love a false flag or even bogus incident to get people on side. Russian lies about Ukrainian atrocities in the Donbas since 2014 have altered perception of that war in Russia. One photo, retweeted by a network of bots and useful fools can be deadly. Literally.
Ditto the lie spread on July 30 on Facebook and Twitter re ethnicity/faith of the Southport Sicko. No sooner had the lie appeared, than Reform’s own version of Hitler’s SA stormtroopers , summoned via the internet, headed to Southport.
Trust in mainstream politicians and the media has never been lower. This, too, is largely thanks to the fascists’ manipulation of angry people via the internet. People angry about cost of living can be manipulated into transferring their anger; after all, it’s easier to burn a mosque or blame a foreigner than it is to remonstrate with JP Morgan etc.
So, the question is, what will be these fascists’ next move, if indeed there is a coup afoot?. Bear in mind it’s an establishment coup, not a grass roots thing, although the grass roots will doubtless be conned into participating.
What will be our Reichstag fire? What political means do the fascists have? Unlike the Nazis, the UK fascists currently face an overwhelmingly centre-left majority in parliament, but we’re only ever but one financial crash away from chaos, or the Tories returning again.
People lose their compassion when skint or scared, and some would drift to the extremes, like voting Reform. Once we identify and halt that foreign interference in our political discourse, we’ll be in a better place. We’ll know who’s behind this at home and can destroy and debate them openly. It’s all gotten worse since 2022 and the Liz Truss budget. It’s possible she didn’t lose us a fortune; she may have lost us the whole lot!
Which would explain, well… almost everything. Our enemy doesn’t travel by dinghy; as the working class [or the decent majority], our true enemy arrives on a private jet from a tax haven. And they’ll happily see us kill one another, rather than share their wealth.
An example of the appalling messaging from Reform MP, Richard Tice: https://x.com/JMPSimor/status/1819857211452981486
