If You Want to Stop the Spread of Fascism, Vote Labour Tomorrow

Mike’s put up a series of articles this week arguing that anybody really worried about the spread of Fascism in Europe should vote Labour at the European elections tomorrow. He’s based these on comments and an article posted by one of the great readers of his blog, and by a Groaniad journo. And his and their logic is impeccable.

The election tomorrow is not a re-run of the Brexit referendum. The responsibility for deciding whether Britain leaves the EU and how lies very firmly with parliament. Nothing the Lib Dems for the Remain side nor the Brexit Party does in the EU parliament will alter that. But European democracy, culture and human rights are under threat from a renascent Far Right. The Brexit party is part of that threat, and the Lib Dems are part of the underlying cause: the misery and increasing poverty caused by neoliberalism for the benefit of the European elites, and particularly the financial sector.

Let’s start with the Brexit Party. Whatever the Fuhrage says to the contrary, his is an authoritarian, racist, far right party. It only looks moderate because Batten’s recruitment of Sargon, Dankula, Paul Joseph Watson and Tommy Robinson has pushed the party further right, bordering on the real Fascism of the BNP. But the party was already stuffed full of racists, islamophobes and militant anti-feminists under Farage. And the Brexit party still contains them and draws on them for support. The song by Captain Ska that Mike’s put up this morning attacking Farage as a racist is spot on. He did put up anti-immigrant posters that used the image of a long line of immigrants almost identical to a Nazi one against the dangers of Jewish immigration. His party is a corporation, like that of Change UK, and there are very strong suspicions that it is funded by dark money from foreign powers. Which is illegal. Quite apart from the fact that he lied about it not being funded by Arron Banks when it clearly was. The Fuhrage’s personal style of leadership is extremely authoritarian. In Chester last week he had a member of the audience at a rally thrown out because the man had the temerity to ask a searching question. Rather than cry ‘Duce! Duce!’ along with the rest of the adoring masses. Now he has blocked Channel 4 from his rallies, for the same reason. This is extremely ominous, as it shows that, like his friend Trump, he would dearly love to get rid of the freedom of the press and speech completely. He would also like to privatise the health service and roll back the welfare state even further than the Conservatives.

He’s a threat to Britain, and to genuine European liberal values.

As is Vince Cable and the Lib Dems. People are voting for them apparently because of their clear Remain message, and they’re supposed to have overtaken Labour in the polls for this election. But let’s remember that the Lib Dems went into the coalition with the Tories, where they were quite happy to support the further privatisation of the health service, the bedroom tax, the increasing destruction of the welfare state, including IDS’ and McVey’s lethal sanctions of the unemployed and the disabled in the DWP. Thanks in part to the Lib Dems, a quarter of a million people now have to rely on food banks for their next meal, the majority of whom I think are now working people. And something like a quarter of all children are growing up in ‘food insecure’ homes. Or something like it. And students in particular have a very good reason not to vote for Cable or his gang of bandits. The massive hike in tuition fees was urged by Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader. Cameron would have given in and lowered or dropped them had the Lib Dems insisted. Our young people, the doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists, engineers, and professionals of tomorrow, are being sadly with tens of thousands of pounds in debt because Clegg and the Lib Dems thought they should. They are also a threat to democracy, because they decided to throw out John Stuart Mill and his resolute support of democracy to bring in secret courts. All in the interests of national security, of course.

But hey, the austerity they and the other centrists demand will bring prosperity eventually. 

The answer to this is no, it won’t. It hasn’t so far, and won’t ever. A few weeks ago I put up a video from the Canary which explained that everywhere austerity has been implemented it has produced nothing but poverty. And far from being massively popular, those parties promoting it have met with the absolute reverse.

And the Fascists know this, and are exploiting it.

Hope Not Hate on Monday, 20th May 2019, put up piece about a mass rally in Milan of the various European far right parties, organised by Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Lega Party. It was a kind of ‘Unite the Right’ of European Fascists, attended by

Marine Le Pen of France’s Rassemblement National and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom. Alternative for Germany (AfD), Belgium’s Vlaams Belang (VB), Estonia’s EKRE and the Danish People’s Party (DPP) had all sent their main MEP candidates and central party figures, Jörg Meuthen (AfD), Gerolf Annemans (VB), Jaak Madison (EKRE) and Anders Vistisen (DPP). Representatives from Slovakias Sme Rodina, Austrian Freedom Party, Finland’s True Finns, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) from Czech Republic and Volya from Bulgaria also addressed the rally.

Hope Not Hate reported that

Welcomed by chants of his name from the crowd, Salvini said he wanted to “free the continent from the illegal occupation orchestrated in Brussels”, and that Europe had been betrayed by the “Merkels, the Macrons, the Soroses and the Junckers who built a Europe based on finance and uncontrolled migration.” The audience chanted “Matteo, Matteo, Matteo” in response.

Okay, Merkel is the leader of Germany’s centre right Christian Democrats, and Soros is the Hungarian-American billionaire financier. But the policies they are pursuing are the old shopworn neoliberalism and austerity. As are Macron’s, who’s supposed to be reviving French prosperity. And if you don’t believe that these people are Fascists, consider how close Geert Wilders’ comments that “We must secure the future of our land and children”. This is close to the infamous ’14 Words’ of the American neo-Nazis, which run something like ‘We must secure a White homeland and the future of White children’, although I’ve forgotten the right wording.

Salvini gathers leaders of the European far right in Milan

Europe desperately needs the return of genuine, socialist politics. Not just to restore its industries and people from decades of poverty, calculated neglect, privatisation and welfare cuts by its elites, but to save Europe and its tradition of democracy and human rights from a renewed Fascism. A strong vote for the Labour party in the elections will help them form a powerful bloc with the other European socialist parties. And it has always been the parties of the Left – the Socialists and Communists – who have been the most resolute and determined opposed of Fascism.

Don’t let Farage and Cable lead us into a Continent-wide new Fascist Dark Age. 

Vote Labour!

No Pasaran!

 

UKIP Wiped Out at Elections, but Threat Remains

One of the few good things about the elections results was that the Kippers were thoroughly annihilated. I think they lost all their council seats. I’m not really surprised. After the Leave campaign won the referendum last year, they’re ‘rebels without a point’. They were a single-issue party, who won what they were campaigning for. All that’s left of them is a legacy of racism, misogyny and bigotry.

With UKIP more or less wiped, it looks like their supporters and members are going to head back to the Conservative party. And to be fair, not all Tories are happy. One member of the party in Cheltenham yesterday Tweeted that ‘all the swivel-eyed loons will be coming back, and this time they’ll be worse than ever’.

So the Tory party, already with an ugly racist fringe, will get even more so.

Worse, Farage himself endorse Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections. David Lawrence, a researcher with the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, has published an article about this on Hope Not Hate’s webpage. Apparently the Fuhrage has made that decision after originally rejecting the Front National because of its Nazi origins. He said in a Telegraph interview that the party’s origins lay in Vichy France, but had embraced Marine Le Pen – metaphorically – because she had rejected its anti-Semitism, and made it a Eurosceptic party far more like UKIP.

Lawrence’s article quotes Cas Mudde, a leading scholar of populism, who states that the Front National is the unofficial leader of the European radical right. And Lawrence also points out that, while Farage and UKIP officially kept away from the Fascist, behind the scenes they had extensive links with various far right organisations and Holocaust deniers. Paul ‘Eddie Hitler’ Nuttall, for example, had close personal ties with the Sweden Democrats, another racist party, who in 1996 passed a resolution stopping their members from wearing Nazi costumes to their meetings.

The article also notes that Leave.EU, run by UKIP’s donor Arron Banks, has also been openly campaigning for Le Pen for several months.

As for Farage, the former generalissimo of embittered Little Englanders is expected to join the Patriotic Alliance, a new far-right group set up by Banks, which is expected to be launched this autumn.

See: http://hopenothate.org.uk/2017/05/04/im-supporting-marine-le-pen-farage-backs-radical-right-candidate-french-president/

Vox Political: Anti-EU Chief Wants NHS Privatised

I think stories like this have been uncovered before. Mike yesterday put up a piece from the Independent reporting that Arron Banks, one of the leading donors to the Brexit campaign, would like to see the NHS privatised entirely. Mike points out that this contradicts the Brexit campaign’s claims that the money saved from Britain’s EU contributions would be spent on the NHS and other matters like that. They wouldn’t. The government would simply make another tax cut, giving more money to Britain’s bloated rich.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/05/21/theyll-say-anything-they-think-will-get-what-they-want-anti-eu-campaign-chief-wants-nhs-privatised/

Really, I believe there has already been more than one story about this. Nigel Farage, or as one of the commenters here calls him, Niggle Frogface, himself has very ambivalent attitudes towards the health service. Sometimes he seems to be endorsing it, while at others he’s recommending its privatisation and replacement by an insurance-led system, and mixing with those, who are blatantly in favour of its privatisation. This for me is enough not to want to have anything to do with Brexit or its grubby, parasitical leaders.

UKIP Donor: Replace ‘Luddite’ NHS with American System

Arron Banks

More evidence that the Kippers really do hate and despise the NHS. The anti-Fascist website, Hope Not Hate, has a report about the comments Arron Banks made to the Financial Times. Banks has given £1 million to UKIP. He described the NHS as ‘luddite’, and stated it should be replaced by an American system based on insurance before it bankrupts us. Those, who are unable to pay for their treatment should be given vouchers instead.

The full story’s entitled, UKIP Want To Crush “Communist” NHS.., and it’s at http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/ukip/ukip-want-to-crush-communist-nhs-4225

The Fake Anti-Corporatism of Fuehrer Farage

There are several pieces of interest in this fortnight’s edition of Private Eye. One of these, on page 5, is the item Landing on Mayfair, which demolishes the claim by UKIP’s generalissimo earlier this month (November 2014) that he and his party stand for ‘radical change’ from ‘corporatist politics’. The Eye states that it must therefore have been a totally different Nigel Farage, who in May last year – 2013 – went to an exclusive party in Mayfair at the offices of the hedge fund Odey Asset Management, hosted by Crispin Odey and attended by a number of City financiers.

The article then gives the details of the amount of sums big business, and particularly the financial sector, has given to UKIP. Harwood Capital Management’s boss Christopher Mills donated £50,000. Odey gave £22,000, and Arron Banks, the insurance tycoon, has promised a cool £1 million. Furthermore, UKIP’s treasurer is Stuart Wheeler, a former Tory, and the inventor of ‘spread betting’. He has also given £197,300 to the party.

UKIP and the Nazis’ Rhetoric against Big Business

I’ve blogged in the past about the similarity between UKIP and the Nazis in their election campaigning. Both are parties of the Right, who disguise their real policies in order to appeal to as broad an electoral base as possible. Hitler was in no way a Socialist, but he stressed anti-capitalist policies, rhetoric and imagery in order to win over working class voters, who would otherwise vote for the Socialist parties. It’s the reason why members of the Tory extreme Right now, like Daniel Hannan, try to present the Nazis as Socialists, and refer to the ‘Left-wing’ BNP.

Farage’s attack on corporatism is another parallel between UKIP and the Nazis’ electoral strategy. Historians of the Nazis have pointed out that Hitler also posed as the protector of the German working class from exploitation by big business when campaigning in working class, Socialist strongholds. In one speech, Hitler proclaimed that when the Nazis seized power, they would throw the coffers and money chests of the rich out into the street. He then went on to reassure the crowd that only Jewish businesses would be affected, and proper German enterprises would be left untouched and in peace. It was a policy that became horrific reality with Kristallnacht and the persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust.

In fact, Hitler actively sought funding from German business. This was originally from small and medium-sized industries, which feared attack and disruption from the unions and organised labour. Hitler then expanded his campaign to gain the complicity of big business during the Third Reich. An official from the financial sector became the head of the Nazi business cartel. Just before the Nazi seizure of power, the Machtergreifung, Hitler spoke to a meeting of German business leaders in order to gain their support. He declared that only under a personal dictatorship would German industry prosper and benefit from protection from Socialism and the trade unions.

Now Farage is not an anti-Semite, and has ostensibly tried to distance his party from the Fascist Right. Nevertheless, his party is populist, ultra-nationalist and extremely Right-wing, and like the Nazis covers up its true polices against the working class with a façade of anti-capitalist rhetoric, while doing precisely the opposite.