Approaching Menace

Alun Smith

“The MAGAs won’t reach you in Holmfirth or Hove, the Blackshirts won’t march on Rhyl, the good folk of Tewkesbury, Tyleri and Tamworth won’t swallow their fascist pill.

“It’s over there, out of mind, out of care, in Saxony and gay Paris, it can’t happen here in Oxford or Cambridge and certainly not in Tonddu.

“Jackboots in Brecon are way off, I reckon and the Gestapo won’t find Nant-y-Glo. Rest easy in Bristol, the thug with a pistol knows not which way to go.”

UNTIL IT HAPPENS. And it’s happened. It’s happening right now in Portsmouth and it’s been happening more and more over the last few years.

Be under no illusion: Yaxley-Lennon, Ryan Bridge and others are no different from Rupert Lowe or Nigel Farage or Dan Thomas in the UK. They’re no different from Trump or Hegseth in the US, and none of them are any different to the people marching on Portsmouth today or the people who marched on the Capitol.

They’re merely different wings of the same fetid bird, the same rancid movement. The same goes for the AfD in Germany and the National Rally in France.

We must recognise the common thread here. All of these organisations – MAGA, Reform, Restore, AfD, NR, Raise the Colours – they’re ALL part of the same problem.

Some of them wear balaclavas and some of them wear suits but they’re all part of the same threat. In the 1930s and 40s in Germany the Nazis didn’t all wear the same uniform.

We can easily recognise the difference between the Gestapo, the SS and the regular soldiers so why are we so slow to recognise it now?

The other blatantly obvious commonality between then and now is how the Nazis came to power in the first place, all those years ago.

Germany was suffering profound economic and political turmoil, with mass unemployment, poverty and resentment over the settlement imposed after the First World War. There was massive inequality, massive need, and people felt that power was being concentrated at the top, that they were being left behind.

When people are dismissed and beasted like that, it creates a vacuum that populists are only ever too willing to step into.

Here in the UK, years and years of Thatcherism left millions of people, particularly in south Wales and the north of England, in need. Thatcherism never replaced the industry it destroyed so a wealth gap opened up and it’s grown exponentially ever since.

It was on this miserable but fertile ground that the idea of Brexit was allowed to germinate. Brexit is an enormous factor in why we are where we are.

Now, here’s the unpopular bit. It’s our own fault.

We were explicitly and repeatedly warned that some of the leading Brexiteers stood to benefit from it, both financially and politically, rather than acting purely in the interests of the electorate. Not the country, them.

They knew that if they asked a disaffected, disengaged electorate a binary question they’d get the answer they wanted, just like the Nazis did in Germany.

They won that vote by lying to people who weren’t paying attention and hadn’t done for years. They told them immigration was causing their grief, but didn’t tell them Brexit would make it worse.

They told them the EU was making them poor but didn’t tell them they’d be poorer outside of it. They created the perfect storm we’re in and then only gave themselves cagoules.

It worked, we’re out of Europe, far worse off politically and financially as a nation and the poor saps who voted to make themselves poorer are now marching on Portsmouth (and unwittingly stopping ferries) spouting the filth they’ve been told to spout and are absolutely none the wiser as to why their worlds are shrinking or why racism is their only release.

‘Dummy run’

The connection between the two protests isn’t conjecture. Daniel Thomas, one of those behind the demonstrations, reportedly told the Portsmouth crowd: “Dover was a dummy run.”

They’re being facilitated in this behaviour and they can’t stop. So, they have to BE stopped.

If the police can arrest an elderly female vicar for protesting against the genocide in Gaza, then they can arrest the people responsible for the “thuggish and intimidating behaviour” happening in Portsmouth, can’t they?

Well, can’t they?

I didn’t call it that, by the way. I think it’s far more sinister. No, that was Emma Reynolds, Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

I don’t know about anyone else but I’m fed up of waiting. It’s long past time for the government to “smash the gangs” here. Because that’s all they are.

They’re gangs of far-right, disenfranchised, dismissed and disaffected racists being enabled by unnamed figures who really don’t care about immigration or the people they’ve whipped into a frenzy.

How can it possibly be right that Palestine Action is proscribed but people who hound innocent folk out of their homes or frighten passengers on a ferry aren’t dealt with?

Accountable

Also, isn’t it past time that members of Reform were held properly accountable for their actions? If any are found to have broken the law, then arrest them, charge them and, if convicted, punish them accordingly.

What’s the hold-up?

I’m not saying for one moment that a world without these specific men will suddenly make everything better, it won’t. But it’s a start and a start that the government really ought to be making, followed by getting directly to the root of the issue, which is inequality, poverty and disaffection.

It is, after all, these things which give rise to hatred, these things and fear.

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