I think some of our american friends are reading too much into this.
It's not the first time fash have done this and it won't be the last. I don't read it as much different to 10 years or 20 years ago. If anything the UK fash are more disorganised now than they were 20 years ago. They're very very bad at mobilising and it requires major catalysts to get them to do anything.
The real threat comes from Farage. These thugs are essentially no different to football hooligans and there's been a reduction in this kind of activity over the decades. I don't consider them to be a huge problem right now.
Agreed, in the broader scheme.
The Tory government and crypto-fash establishment threw these groups implicit backing and pretty much orders to go and smash up the Palestine protests. They spectacularly failed that audition when they showed up pissed and coked up to the cenotaph, nowhere near the protests really, and just fought each other and the cops.
Yaxley has always been a grifter (and likely informant) without the real appetite for building anything beyond himself. Farage or a 'mainstream' organiser with state links would be far more worrying, a new Mosley.
Yeah they're not a threat and we have capability to mobilise MUCH MORE in the event of anything really kicking off.
If they ever do become a threat you can bet an antifascist call out from all of our orgs would completely overwhelm them in numbers too. You want to see what happens when a few thousand fash clash with a hundred thousand? It won't go well for the fash or for the police if that ever comes to pass.
Density of the country favours us when they're so small and lazy. This is partially caused by the demographics of the fascist base. They're all old fucks and being so old they're also lazy as shit. It takes a really large catalyst to get them to get off their sofas.
We can mobilise more people for a dog shooting which is a controversial topic to begin with.
The demographics of the far right in this country are entirely reliant on electoral pathways to power, they can't win in the streets, they can't even create pressure in the streets. It's ineffective and impotent.
EDIT: Not only can we mobilise more but our side is much more violent when it chooses to be. They made a mess of these streets but the rock throwing is all show compared to when the left gets the barricades and molotovs out and actively tries to force police lines to move. Get any of the Bristol anarchist crowd down to an event and watch what happens.
On a national level totally agree. Still pretty fucking awful for places like Hartlepool where an already very small minority without much organised community defense is gonna have their lives made even more shit by these wankers, and in communities like that there are a fair amount of bigoted, nihilistic teens not just the usual 'old firm' lot. Which of course is why it's still important to organise and link up even small, local anti-fash groups.
Yes. I agree. I'm not advocating they be ignored at a local level, just that they're really not threatening in the slightest in the national context.
Their growth strategy is dogshit too. They don't have much appeal outside of incredibly poor and racist which is completely different to american fascists who have strong middle-income and petit-boug growth, not many poor people owning those 80k trucks or huge expensive gun collections. The class demographics that our fash appeal to are much lower than the american fash.
Like shit, you can physically see how poor these people are in the videos. A lot of them probably do not work and are lumpen.
Agreed, and for what it's worth I didn't think you were advocating ignoring or downplaying it at a local level. Just awful seeing it, and particularly in one place close by where I lived for a while many years ago and worked with orgs to pretty much stamp out the BNP back in the day. I always appreciate your posts comrade.
yeah yeah... the stark contrast between how the police respond to violent fascists and peaceful climate activists... even when they getting a brick chucked at em.
Reminder that activists just got 5 years in prison for being on a Zoom call where there was a discussion of peaceful, disruptive protest.
Fascist demonstrations in UK, war in Europe, escalations in west asia....
Yep the timeline is looking good
The reaction to this has fully convinced me that mass murder and terrorist attacks need to be censored to prevent the spread of social contagion.
The media s a whole is an issue, but they should treat these more like they treat su*cide. Recently there were news articles across all major outlets about how some nazi was using twitter ffs.
they wont publish tweets from Kenyan communists when theyre being murdered in the street, but a nazi sneezes and its front page news
