Yet the political objective was achieved. Having spent the last two years stirring the pot, the far right have had their first summer riot. Another step toward how things used to be, when the National Front routinely took to the streets in the 1960s and 70s. But the second phase of this right riot has proven more successful then any of them could have dreamed. Paper after paper, news outlet after news outlet, have surged across and trampled on the cordon sanitaire and hurled the bricks and wheelie bins of far right talking points into mainstream public discourse. For example, Sky News asked if the police are indeed "anti-white", forcing the gibberish about two-tier policing onto television screens. They were joined in this by The Mail, a "debate" on Good Morning Britain, and The Sun "just asking questions". On top of this Chris Mason, the BBC's chief politics gossip-monger ran cover for Farage as he was criticised by the other party leaders in the Commons one Wednesday. Aha! said Mason, they were being political about Henry Nowack's death too! You've got to ask it's only a matter of time before the great replacement theory gets an airing, all in the interests of debate.What happened in Southampton gave right wing papers and their little helpers in broadcast journalism an excuse to treat far right rubbish, which they themselves know not to be true, as if it was based in fact and was a valid viewpoint. This is where their riot has proven particularly successful.
Characteristically, mainstream politics have been useless in its collective response. Keir Starmer and Ed Davey tried to look statesmanlike, while telling Farage off for not respecting the stated wishes of Nowack's father not to use his son's murder for the politics of division. Instead, if they had anything about them, they should be making clear that his speech instigated Tuesday night's unrest, as Farage knew it would, and make plain that Reform is but the electoralist expression of violent street thuggery. But even when the King responded better than Labour did ti the 2024 riots, anyone hoping for better will be waiting for a long time. Something underlined earlier on Thursday as Starmer was moaned about Elon Musk dialling up the race hate in this country. If only the Prime Minister with his huge majority were in a position to do something about malign foreign actors working to destabilise British politics. At the moment where the violent consequence of Farage's tub-thumping could see politics move decisively against him, there is an absence where the far right challenges to Britain's limited democracy could be met.
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Agree with your analysis. Two questions are troubling me about this tragedy:
ReplyDeleteFirst, should the way it emerged as a national news item be looked at? As reported by mainstream media, it’s a story that’s almost guaranteed to provoke the kind of reaction that duly occurred. Why was Farage’s self-described “address to the nation” even given airtime by mainstream media? Why didn’t Starmer make an “address to the nation” - he has more authority to make such a statement.
Second: why on earth did the police think it necessary to handcuff a young man who clearly was in no position to pose a threat to them or anyone else? The perpetrator presumably showed no sign of having been violently assaulted. To me, what this event does demonstrate is the incredible incompetence of the police.
What was going through the minds of the plods during the incident will surely come out... But of course the far-right weren't going to wait for that, nor respect the wishes of the murdered boy's parents, who they couldn't care less about. The biggest incompetence (or malice) on show is surely from whoever it was that played right into their hands by scheduling the verdict to drop at the beginning of riot season.
DeleteStarmer didn't make an "address to the nation" because (1) he's useless; (2) his party are in a state of civil war as the faction which put him in power - exemplified by McSweeney - try to cling onto control by forcing the PLP to pander to Reform-leaning voters, instead of going after a viable leftist coalition; and (3) he has no authority anyway to the sewer dwellers which constitute the far right audience. The sewer dwellers make a lot of noise and count the owners of at least half the newsstand among their number, and the latter fact gives you half the explaination for why the story was presented the way that it was. That is to say, much of the "mainstream media" are on board with a de facto program to install Farage as PM in 2029, enabling an orgy of state-sponsored ethnic and social cleansing, whilst collecting sizeable bungs from US healthcare denial vampires and probably Israel too.
As for the other half, make no mistake - the money which backed the present (and thankfully now flailing) christofascist regime in the USA is operating here too, with a very similar agenda; and it has willing allies in the form of a lot of fat rentiers who resent the possibility of their gravy train coming to an end, a good few of whom - especially in the "old money" and "crypto mogul" corners - are also dyed-in-the-wool racist bigots. For these characters, who largely think that democracy should be replaced by pure undiluted rule of money, the long overdue appearance of politicians like Corbyn, Sanders, Mamdani, and Polanski has put ants in their underwear. They would much prefer a nice stable authoritarian regime which will use unlimited force to protect the interests of the owner class, and the far-right takeover program appears to offer them this, so they're backing it. If the public can be focused on hating immigrants and Muslims then it won't have any time for hating them, will it? Very old story.
I didn't usuually defend the police but having become an avid viewer of Police Interceptors. 24 hours in police custody and CSI I see the complex situations they face and why they handcuff people - after all 40,000 have been assaulted this year so far - filling the gap in dealing with mental health issues and the deceptions they face from people. We will see what the investigation finds.
ReplyDeleteSeems, too, from the pictures of the riotes that the avowed fascists were able to play on the behavioural roles and models available to those in attendance at the demos to give meaning and direction to the violence. They were able to appeal to the mobs destructive impulses, fueld by alcohol and drugs, and arrogant defiance of authority combined with seeing it as their right as free born Englishmen to flaunt over the weak, racially inferior and cowardly.
I am not sure what the mob would have seen as success - a lynching or burning down a house or two or just the exhiliration of pure violence and rebellion against authority and order. Fortuately we will never know.