There’s plenty going on in the wacky world of fascism around the globe at the moment. Russia led by fascist Vladimir Putin, the USA USA USA under the control of fascist Donald Trump, the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) which is close to taking power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt and of course at home Reform UK Party Ltd’s annual conference, led by our own Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage. People everywhere, it seems pining for the good old days of Hitler, Mussolini and in Britain’s case Oswald Mosley. Has lily-livered soggy wet liberalism had its day?
I’m not sure about that. We should, for sure, be concerned about the rise of the populist right. In Britain, with Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives tacking to the right to compete with both Farage and Rupert Lowe’s even further to the right Restore UK, supported by a compliant media, which these days includes the discredited BBC, you’d think we were on a journey to a fascist dictatorship. Added to the thuggery in Portsmouth at the weekend when several hundred masked men attacked and injured police officers in what the media laughably describes as “protests”, things do not appear to be looking good. However, I still believe that most of us are better than that.
The unnamed person hiding behind the name “Yorkshire Lass”, whose social media post leads this blog, could literally be anyone. I struggle to take anyone seriously who doesn’t give their real name on social media anymore than I take seriously hundreds of men who conceal their identities while attacking police officers. She is also at worst a liar and at best someone who is making stuff up.
People are not cancelling their RNLI direct debits, as “she” suggests, because they know that the purpose of the charity is to save the lives of those in peril on the sea. The RNLI does not judge the people they save. They save people, end of. Even if the charity was completely defunded by the public, you can be sure the government would step in and carry out the work themselves. You can’t just let people die at sea, whether they are refugees or ordinary folk who get into difficulties.
Do you really think the sort of people who decry the work of the RNLI are the kind of people who donate to any charities at all, let alone the RNLI? If your life revolves around fear and hatred, you’d have little room left in your heart to help anyone else. If you lack sympathy, empathy and compassion, what’s left?
Just because the voices of hate are often louder than the voices of the so-called silent majority doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t exist. Most of us just get on with our lives, generally doing good things, being kind to people, helping our fellow men and women, believing in the inherent goodness of the human condition. We are all concerned, to an extent, about small boat crossings, as I am, not wishing to see desperate people, including women and children, making perilous journeys across the English Channel. The numbers of crossings are falling, but they will never fall enough for some people.
Ironically, some of the main complainants about migration and small boat crossings are the people who have been directly responsible for causing them. In leading the country out of the EU, Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and co ensured we lost our right to automatically return asylum seekers to the EU country they arrived from. Before 2018, there were barely any small boat crossings. There were 200,000 detections by 2026. Yes, Brexit, which many people supported in order to “take back control” and stop migration has dramatically increased small boat crossings. It was Farage what done it. Yet the hard of thinking still idolise this dreadful human being, believing him to be the saviour, the man who can stop small boat crossings despite actually being the man who started them. Funny old world, isn’t it?
It will take a lot of work to put this right. Rome wasn’t built in a day, Brexit won’t be fixed in a day. Sooner or later, for reasons not just of migration, we will either need to rejoin the EU or to have far closer links with it. This is not the time to pretend we can solve all our problems by standing alone. Only by having closer relations with our friends across the Channel can we address the problems of migration and, arguably more importantly, the rise of fascism.
We certainly can’t go on like this, with the extreme right on the rise, with post war generations seemingly having forgotten what our forefathers fought against and indeed for. Farage, Trump and Putin are not Hitler but their politics comes from the same place
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, said the philosopher George Santayana. As true today as it ever was.
