No One Is Coming To Stop The Fascists
On the morning of September 5th, as I write this, a gang of black-clad fascists attacked the Port of Dover, a major shipping port and focal point for the far-right imagination as the unguarded gates of Britannia. Details are scant, right now, and so it is sensible to take some time when it comes to reporting details about what is happening.
Our press, however, seems taking even more time than that. The legally-neutral BBC labelled it "disruption" by "protestors". The far-right Telegraph named them "protestors" and "activists", despite the fact they "did not appear to have placards or banners". ITV News labelled this an "anti-illegal migrant demo". The Times called them "anti-migrant protestors". Ditto with the Daily Mail, with some breathless reportage on how easily and awesomely they were able to briefly overwhelm police.
Labour MP Mike Tapp, who represents the constituency, said "I bet if you asked any one of those 'protesters' they wouldn't know small boat crossing are down by 40% and we are working hard to fix the mess." In other words, he agrees with the point being made, even if he thinks the numbers are slightly out of date, and the methods distasteful.
While this was going on, Nigel Farage tweeted "we will stop the boats forever."
I'm sure the media have a variety of effectively-concealed reasons for their mealy-mouthed equivocation, but this is a safe space: we can all be honest here. These are blackshirts. These are fascists attempting to exert extra-legal physical force to send a political message, confident that the state will leave them free to do so time and time again. The police removed the thousand-odd protestors without any great alacrity, and seemingly without any meaningful consequence. These are people itching for a fight: these are people who hide their identities because they know society considers them wrong.
The continued malfeasance of our media in failing to call this spade a spade draws a direct line between the race riots in Southport in 2024, the pogroms in Belfat and Glasgow, and this attempt to intimidate the people of Dover and the government machinery of London.
This latest incident, in which no one appears to have been hurt, and featured a whole bunch of tough "big men" holdings hands to block roads, might seem laughable compared to the extremely serious violence I stacked it against. As historian Bret Devereaux points out, "such efforts are farcical only until they succeed." On January 6th, 2021, a mob dressed as caveman adorned with red baseball caps broke into the US Capitol building, defecated on floors, and looted random property. It was a ridiculous insurrection: but an insurrection nevertheless.
There can be absolutely no question as to who this equivocation is designed, consciously or unconsciously, to benefit: the far-right. Whether as part of a conscious ploy, as Channel 4 recently exposed the Telegraph's reporting to be, or a consequence of an inability to meet the factual demands of our current moment, the UK press is laundering the violence and spectacle of the far-right using the language of healthy and respectable politics. A mob attempting to seize Dover is described exactly the same as an orderly and law-abiding crowd of climate protestors in London, except the mob is less gay, and possibly cooler.
This equivocation and moral laundering is everywhere around the violent and fearful impulse's political arm, the Far-right, and it's current British messiah, Nigel Farage MP. Undercover reporters recently videoed him being blatantly complicit in political financial fraud, a story which was played for a few hours in the morning, dropped out of most UK News websites by the evening, and the bile for which was largely aimed at the advisor who were sat just to the left of him in some of the most damning footage, instead of the obviously culpable man himself. Blatant admission of criminality shared space with announcements of racist and ridiculous financial and military policy at their party conference, frequently meeting with approval. At this conference, a woman was violently dragged away by a baying crowd for exercising her right to protest, while the Farage himself laughed and clapped along. The footage is horrifying, and utterly incompatible with anything a moral society could allow. I see nothing about this on any of the front pages, despite the fact it happened mere hours ago.
Fleet Street, consciously or otherwise, is trying to smuggle the Far-right into respectability, and therefore into power. At every inflection point, they have turned away from their responsibility to the truth or the future. They shape mainstream discourse, and they have over months shaped it to a place where it sounds insane to say "the world's most influential social media platform is owned by a trillionaire racist who constantly speaks about maintaining the racial purity of Europe and using women's bodies as property", despite this being an understated and factual description of the situation.
At any point, any major publication could denounce these thugs who keep saying they're fascists; name as violent these men who advocate for violence; react with incredulity to their incredulous policies. Their refusal to do so is a catastrophic moral failure. Refusing to report on these people as villains will not make them more respectable, it will only create more unrespectable people. This failure has dragged us into Brexit, and given us a political mainstream where anti-immigrant violence is accepted as sadly necessary by every political party, including, implicitly, Zack Fucking Polanski, a man who has no issue going against the grain when it comes to NATO. The refusal to call a spade a spade has produced a political arrangement and ruling government acting under the assumption that the fascists are reasonable-by-default, and should be appeased and approved of at all costs.
As I write this, Andy Burnham's government has just said, "The right to peaceful protest is fundamental to our democracy, but we condemn the behaviour in Dover and the travel disruption it has caused." Blackshirts attempted to hold a port hostage! It doesn't become less horrifying just because they were bad at it! Is anyone trying any more? Is an intimidating mob aspiring to violence able to be accommodated within civil society so long as they get off the road when the light goes green?
I am furious at these cowards. These cowards will not change until more people are furious at them. The Press will launder this violence and disintegration of our principles until it becomes impossible: either because no one will lower themselves to reading it, or more likely because the leopards will have eaten the papers entirely. For now, they will continue to lie to your faces about the world around you. You can only hope to make good and worthy decisions aligned to your principles if you see the world for what it is: if you believe the lies, you can only ever be correct through luck. We cannot drive these lies out through political power, and so we must start by driving them out of our own sovereign minds.
We are under no obligation to believe in our heads the words that short-sighted expediency speaks through politicians' mouths. The situation is this: self-destructive violence is spreading throughout the UK. It will destroy itself, and it will cause a great deal of harm as it marches to pointlessness. The free lives of millions in the UK alone are in the crossfire, as our state and society marches further away from the liberal principles we owe our modern comfort to, and closer to an absolutely empty nadir. Violent groups run amok with varying degrees of success at achieving their indulgent objectives: our current government is utterly disinterested in stopping them either at the source or in the streets, while the media promotes darlings who publicly approve and tacitly support this violence through their words and money. People will not believe this, because it sounds insane that we have allowed things to reach this point, but reality is utterly unconcerned with its own plausibility. These people need to be stopped and resoundingly defeated, excluded from the political acceptability they aspire to infiltrate and corrupt, or we will all suffer the consequences they are closer to achieving than ever before.