The Consequences of Tolerating the Far Right

 

As I have argued in previous posts, the rise in the far right is not a result of changes in people’s attitudes. In many ways over the last fifty years people have become more tolerant of minorities and less racist. What has changed is what is tolerated by the political elite.

There has always been a minority of people who, other things being equal, would support a party of the far right that promoted extreme socially conservative and authoritarian views and which encouraged social division. A much smaller minority of that minority are prepared to use violence. Those who went from house to house in Bellfast, pulling those who were not white on to the streets and burning their houses, did not have ‘legitimate concerns’. They were not fed up with lack of action on immigration, as a Times editorial absurdly suggested, because immigration has come right down. Belfast is not ‘flooded’ with asylum seekers, who comprise less than 1% of the population. Instead the rioters are the equivalent of football hooligans who wanted to start fights with supporters of the other side, or who used to glory in sectarian violence. People who used to be members of the UVA, the BNP, or before that the National Front. For some in unionist areas, non-whites are the new Catholics.

What has changed is that the leader of the political party with the most support in the UK incites this violence by calling for “pure cold rage.” What has changed is that every party on the political right is calling for large scale deportations including British citizens. That the right wing press, that once would have not been associated with such politicians or with any suggestions of inciting violence, now appear to show no such inhibitions. That the BBC actively attempts to attract viewers from a far right political party. That the departing chair of the media regulator describes Reform’s TV channel as covering the agenda of the majority. That the most widely used social media website should deliberately amplify calls by Moscow supported Tommy Robinson to protest against this “invader attack”, and a US Vice President who talks about a mass invasion of migrants. None of these actors care that they are inciting race riots, and some positively welcome it.

All these changes have eroded the social norms we used to have against racism, dehumanising minorities or exploiting tragic crimes for political ends. The situation has become a lot worse in the last few years in part because the fascist government in the US is actively promoting the UK far right, and because the UK Labour party foolishly thought they could diminish the popularity of the far right by parroting its language and policies.

The politicians of the far right will carry on competing amongst themselves about who can be the most barbaric. The right wing press is not going to change. Its wealthy owners have fully bought into the idea that encouraging social division is the best way of protecting their wealth. The countries that have actively encouraged the far right in the UK are not going to stop what has so far been a very successful strategy for them.

The only way we can stop this rapid decline into division and violence is for the political centre to stand up for the moral principles most people follow, and ensure the institutions that it can influence do the same. Condemning the rioters is easy, but this alone will achieve very little. Condemning the consequences without addressing the causes is bad politics and bad government.

Claims by those in the right wing media and by right wing politicians that immigrants are much more like;y to commit crimes need to be debunked by all politicians who are not on the populist right. The evidence is there, so why not use it. It is so easy for the media to give the impression that violent crime is unusually associated with immigrants or asylum seekers by publicising the cases that are and ignoring the much greater number that are not. [1] Media that does this needs to be condemned for doing so. Media and politicians that use individual crimes to push their political agenda should be condemned for doing so. Such actions exploit the victims of those crimes.

Draw a clear line between concerns about levels of immigration on the one hand (while also noting that immigration levels have come right down) and the dehumanisation of the immigrants who do come here on the other. In many ways what we see today can be traced back to May’s ‘hostile environment’: the immoral idea that treating badly immigrants who are here and trying to make a new life will discourage others from coming. Making it much more difficult for migrants to become UK citizens is part of that dehumanisation.