Are anti-fascism strategies failing?

I don't know what to do but I worry that no one else does either

It is hard to get beyond the word Scum.

These violent thugs are committing attempted murder on camera. So convinced are they in their righteousness and their moral superiority they are trying to kill people in a hotel because they are so convinced that they have the right not just to be angry about the presence of these people they have never met but the right to try to get rid of them by any means up to and including murder.

Let’s not forget that many of these thugs are using the pretext of a violent murder for their violence. As we have moved from the shock of the killings of three little girls in Southport to the riots that have followed, those killings have been almost as lost from the narrative as the facts of the case as they are known. Facts like the accused man was born in Cardiff and is not an immigrant.

There are further riots being talked about around the country - including in my part of the world. There is a counter-protest planned that I intend to attend. God knows if it will do any good. I don’t know. I don’t feel like I know anything right now.

I talk often of how I find some people’s certainty unsettling. But I am certain that something must be done to stand up to violent, racist scumbags. I will show my face to do so. But I am ambivalent as to what to do beyond showing up.

What worries me is that we have been fighting this fight for years. I was born in the 1970s and the National Front were in their heyday. I was a teenager when Derek Beackon was elected the first BNP councillor in the borough next door to mine. Have we moved on? Have we moved backwards? I just don’t know.

I go on GB News a lot and I am asked to talk about immigration a lot. I try to offer a different perspective from many of the other voices on that channel. I try to be empathetic when I am talking about those with concerns about immigration as a whole while still making points that are about tolerant liberal values. I tell myself that if I don’t do this, who will? I think I am good at it. But am I helping? The vitriol I get online afterwards - every single time - tells me I am not saying what the racists want to hear. But am I doing any good? Or am I just paying my bills?

These are questions I have to ask about my own path. For the moment, I do think it remains important that that channel hears voices like mine (and those bills are not going anywhere). But I know others are disappointed in me for doing it. Are they right? I don’t know. I hope not.

How have we got here? Why have we never consolidated our wins into a defeat of racism? How have our tactics and strategies failed so badly that they have led to this moment? Are the fascists cleverer than us (not the front-line thugs. The ones in suits whipping it up from a safe, comfortable, deniable distance)? More agile?

Have we got too comfortable with tactics we know how to perform and less able to question their efficacy? Do we have a Theory of Change that tells us how we want the world to work rather than telling how to actually change it?

I don’t know.

I don’t know much.

I know I am angry and scared. I know my community is angry and scared. I know I want to do something. For something to be done. I know I long for certainty and security. For answers.

But I also don’t know what the right questions are to even begin to find the right answers. I worry that no one else does either.

This is not a post of high level political analysis - which in my own small way I try to usually offer. Maybe there will be time for that later.

But for the moment, I am going to be honest. I just don’t know a damn thing.

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