At the risk of sounding rather Star Wars universe, I’ve got a bad feeling about this…
I’m thinking in particular of the possibility of counterprotests to the attempts of the far right in Scotland to kick off their own riot, inspired by the English rioters. In theory it ought to be an easy choice to make – fascists are bad and we don’t want the message to get out that their ideas have been normalised or that people are turning a blind eye to the rise of the far right in Scotland.
It’s just that ‘in theory’ doesn’t work well when you apply it to the far right and fascism. Fascism is surprisingly immune to the normal responses that liberal democracy has up its sleeve. It is surprisingly hard to beat fascism on its own terms.
You have to remember at all times that the far right isn’t interested in what you think and it isn’t interested in what anyone else like you thinks. Perhaps a way to think of this kind of far-right organising is that it is like the inverse of a triangulation strategy. In reality, if it encountered a ‘you’ which was giving credence to their opinions, they would view it as an error on their part.
The point of this kind of entho-populist far-right is that you are the kind of liberal elite that they believe they are overthrowing with their ‘salt of the earth’ common sense, immoderate violence and fecal projectiles. Your opprobrium is, precisely, their goal.
Because their ultimate goal, as with all naughty children who are acting up and getting out of control, is to be noticed. That this has some legitimate and illegitimate roots makes it more complicated. The root of this behaviour I don’t see has having any political legitimacy is that most of these guys almost certainly behave like this all the time.
Which is to say an awful lot of them are basically just weak and pathetic and compensate for it by acting out and perpetrating violence. If they weren’t burning mosques they’d be provoking a fight in the pub or trying to dominate or humiliate their wife – basically anything that gives them the sense of power over someone else.
But it gets complicated because an awful lot of people with whom they are seeking to communicate (in their own, limited way) really do have reason to feel that they are invisible. The far right knows that disillusioned young men in communities, not only left behind by the contemporary economy but frankly condescended to by our political and economic elite, feel unheard and undervalued.
The chances of violence breaking out are very high indeed, and the consequences deeply unhelpful for the cause people are seeking to represent
Being despised by you is no skin off the nose of the far right. In parallel, there is a fighting chance that you frankly don’t care much what young unemployed men living in run-down housing estates think about you. Rather too many progressives think poor white men don’t quite count when we’re talking about social injustice.
You spitting bile into the faces of far-right protesters who are simply more like that target audience than you are is probably a good way to sever your (indirect) social relationship with those young men and drive them further towards the arms of the far right.
Any kind of counterprotest which the far right can present as smug, self-satisfied middle class people showing condescension to the white working classes is ideal for the far right. It is bluntly a large part of how it has managed to get such a grip on British politics so far (though I note that with one non-voice our entire media is ignoring the direct role the right-wing press played in creating these riots).
And that still manages to miss the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that you think the inevitable outcome is ‘Scotland sends strong message that fascists aren’t welcome here’, yet the more likely outcome is ‘violence on streets as far right and counter protestors clash’.
That’s the other thing about the far right – they always want to break something and hurt someone. You would be ideal for their purposes, standing there with all your non-violence and determined not to rise to the… oh, your child has just been hit in the face with a rock…
It takes one provocation too many and people do stupid things. Worse, some people may be there to do stupid things in the first place (don’t believe that all violence-orientated inadequates are on the right…). The chances of violence breaking out are very high indeed, and the consequences deeply unhelpful for the cause people are seeking to represent.
See, here’s the thing; Scotland already has a powerful and well-organised anti-fascist organisation. It has significant funding and is well trained. It isn’t perfect, but it is exactly designed to stop far-right protestors from causing violence and hurting people. It is called Police Scotland and that is the anti-fascist force I want to meet the protesters.
We are quick to forget that this stuff isn’t legal. If what we were currently seeing was a bunch of disillusioned English racists holding legitimate protests to express their displeasure at whatever it is exactly that they’re displeased with (other than ‘the world’) then what would be happening just now is that small groups of sad-looking men would be wandering through towns chanting some version of ‘secretly all we want is your love and respect but we hate ourselves so I’m blaming this guy over here’.
Save your efforts for building a society in which people actually feel equity so that these pathetic, self-obsessed grievances do not get to feed from the genuinely legitimate grievances of working class communities
They are only in the news because of the violence. A few hundred protesters doesn’t prick the interest of whomever is editing page 27 in Britain. It is violence and hatred that takes them out of the much more threatening Le Pen/Wilders/Melloni territory. They can’t build without it, and yet it remains illegal and is winning them few friends.
To be clear, there are moments when direct confrontation of evil is necessary. But on the whole I’d argue that those moments only come round where evil has any chance of winning. Here and now it doesn’t stand any chance of winning. Widespread unrest with fights in the street currently constitutes victory for the far right. Don’t give them it.
This does not mean that we shouldn’t also seek to send out messages that the vast majority of people in Scotland are disgusted by this kind of racist violence. But that doesn’t need to mean the risk of confrontation. Organise in a different community, or at a different time, or in a different way.
Perhaps it could be a major weekend of solidarity visits – I don’t know, a mosques doors-open day for local communities co-organised by different local organisations, or perhaps a ‘March of the Mens’ Sheds’, involving people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds to the ‘protesters’. Perhaps fundraise for a major initiative to support young men in disadvantaged communities. Perhaps the liberal establishment could even give up showing contempt to them for a while – like a sort of Lent for moral superiority.
There are safe and creative ways in which we can take on the far right which doesn’t run the risk of giving them what they want. The ideal outcome is for this to turn out to be a sad little collection of oddballs howling at the moon. If English protesters come to create organised trouble, the second best outcome is that the police deals with them calmly and methodically.
The worst outcome is one which drags us all down into the gutter with them. I can see no real reason to take the chance at this stage. Let them be.
Save your efforts for building a society in which people actually feel equity so that these pathetic, self-obsessed grievances do not get to feed from the genuinely legitimate grievances of working class communities which have been so neglected in our society.