Just as in France, Great Britain is faced with an explosive cocktail: a noisy, increasingly influential far-right ; immigration increasingly contested by the right-wing press; and insecurity where the slightest incident can take on unprecedented proportions

— Three little girls were murdered on July 29, 2024, near Liverpool, by a 17-year-old boy born in Cardiff (Wales) to Rwandan parents with no apparent link to Islam. This is a heinous and horrible act. But the assassin was falsely presented as a Muslim migrant and asylum seeker. Just like in Dublin at the end of 2023, during memorable riots, it was a false rumor that circulated on social networks and sowed chaos.

The far-right is on the move and is violently attacking mosques and places where asylum seekers are accommodated. As usual, Muslims are being attacked by anti-Muslim racists. Online disinformation leads to the trivialisation of anti-migrant discourse. People like libertarian Elon Musk hit where it hurts and claim that “civil war is inevitable in Britain”. Conspiracy theories add to it: the ‘great replacement’, or ‘mass migration’, which would threaten English identity.

However, a country where 20% of its population lives below the poverty line is a country condemned to be handed over to demagogues of the worst kind. If we add the extinction of the old working-class culture, numbing consumerism, financial deregulation, uninhibited surveillance of individuals, particularly activists, and indoctrination via screens, we have all the necessary ingredients for the rise of an authoritarian society.

Just as in France, Great Britain is faced with an explosive cocktail: a noisy, increasingly influential far-right (with Nigel Farange, MP, promoter of Brexit); immigration increasingly contested by the right-wing press; and insecurity where the slightest incident can take on unprecedented proportions.

This should alert us. In France, we already had a glimpse of far-right mobilisations in Callac, Crépol… Even in Corsica, the separatists are forced to step up to the plate in the face of the rise of the RN. Two nationalisms thus compete. And to explain this growth of the extreme right by “a French community vote”, as if the Corsicans did not vote RN… it is a very weak and risky analysis.

Following the last legislative elections, the RN will receive 18.4 million euros in public subsidies per year. Likewise, the parties receive 37,200 euros per deputy and senator. This means that even us, the abstainers, will pay for the far-right through our taxes… This war chest will allow the RN to campaign on a large scale. This party can thank Mr. Macron with its dissolution.

This financial windfall will fuel the RN program which will continue to divide the French. But we should not believe that only the “declassed” vote RN. The inhabitants of peri-urban areas who have accessed individual property are not, on the whole, precarious workers. Often these employees work as couples. The “racialized” population found itself in the suburbs and social housing was devalued. Ultimately, the relationships of domination that anarchists have denounced for ages cross French society at different levels. The issues of jobs, housing space, educational establishments, public services… bring workers into competition, the poorest of whom find themselves stigmatised or even excluded.

It is around these subjects, among others, that activists must get to work. While workers oppose and compete with each other, employers, local elected officials who refuse social housing, and politicians rub their hands and benefit from it.

The far-right is imposing itself in successive stages. This rise in power is fuelled by identity extremism. From the light version via the RN to a hard version via the Zemmourists or the Marion Maréchal clan linked to the Catholic fundamentalists. Rather than tackling people’s economic problems, ecological issues, their business is the identity crusade. Anti-Semitic acts and anti-Muslim acts stem from the same logic. Far-right politicians are riding on the fear of others, collective anxiety… and are becoming, via social networks, experts in manipulating language in order to exploit odious facts and thus stir up tensions.

It is the Macronist politicians, from the right and the far-right, even some on the left, who have put the theme of identity at the centre of the debate. By crying wolf, things get out of control and it is difficult to put out the fire. Fortunately, in Britain, many anti-fascist demonstrations have taken place in recent days. It is time to do the same in France. What libertarians have been saying for a long time, without being heard much, is that a far-right regime can come to power through the ballot box.

~ Ty Wi

from Le Libertaire