Imperial nostalgia is shoring up the remnants of a decaying order

~ Kell w Farshéa ~

305 people received British Empire Medals in King’s Birthday Honours list, and people wonder why a section of the population still can’t handle that Britain is not a white country any more. The UK’s G7 status is based on the Corporation of the City of London & the defence industry. Yet politicians and the media refuse to acknowledge that the empire has been gone a long time and no amount of riots or Reform/Restore MPs are going to bring it back.

The racist pogroms in Belfast, Southampton and Glasgow were entirely the result of the decayed order of kings, private schools, a stunted democracy, imperial nonsense, untrammelled capital and a slavish adoration of ‘whiteness’ in all its dangerously destructive forms. The “secret immigrants”, which my racist Raise the Flag neighbour talks loudly about in his front garden, went home during Covid and didn’t return. He means East Europeans in general and Poles in particular. He hates the Polish sections of the supermarket even more than the Asian section, because his family can’t cook food with the Polish ingredients.

Going for a curry, a Chinese or a kebab after the pub is now ingrained in working class culture. After the Unite the Right march last September, marchers sporting St George’s Cross flags were seen eating Balti bowls at the Southbank Centre street-food market. The neo-nazis of the 1970s would have been appalled by this food fusion. But modern fascism is quite at home with spicy food. The Poles never got the memo. Open a late-night pierogi shop on street corners near the pubs and your racist white neighbours would have treated you as one of their own. Well, almost.

Meanwhile across the leftover heartlands of white Anglo-Saxon Protestantism in the de-industrialised dead zones of England, Scotland, Wales & the North of Ireland, there are swathes of white people terrified of ‘others’ – Muslim, African, Filipino or South Asian – being brought in to take away their jobs: the Great Replacement Theory. True Brits can supposedly trace their ancestry all the way back to the shires; thoroughly Protestant, embedded in loyalty to empire, capital and state.

Why are they scared and angry? Because no one is prepared to speak truth to decades of inglorious miseducation about the demise of England and the slow death of the UK in general. That Britain is a small island archipelago off the western coast of Europe and completely and utterly dependent on foreign born workers and international finance capital.

Yet on we go. Handing out British Empire Medals. The King rides in a golden coach to sit in a golden room wearing stolen jewels and mink and furs and reads a speech written by someone else full of false promises and lies and make-believe. And when houses are burned out, people murdered and mosques are torched – the author of that speech talks about decency and service. And when people, buildings and asylum hostels burn – he speaks of thuggery. But not of the truth. So let’s say it out loud, lets name it. The forbidden truth we all know but no one must say. The reason people are rioting and raging: The empire is dead. And it’s never coming back!

So what must we do, as anarchists? We go there. Be there. In the midst. Staring down the faces of the fascists like we have done since Arditi del Popolo held the world’s first anti-fascist protest, in June 1921, to oppose Mussolini – and 20,000 people turned up. We are there organising. From the fight against the poll tax to supporting trans rights, from smashing Elbit factories and the EHRC, it is anarchists and our co-conspirators who are embedded in resistance. And we are no Trotskyist fly-by-night front groups with thousands of placards and zero analysis. We are not in marches controlled by the police. When the next race riot comes – stirred up by Elon and Tommy, Rupert and Nigel and wafted by Andy or Keir or Kemi – we will be there again. In the thick of it.

Because in this fight there is no space for the lies of Westminster or Fleet Street, for smug arrogant liberals wringing their hands or suggesting that only stupid people voted for Brexit. There are two sides in this struggle, and on the other one are the fascists, the racists, the trillionaire shit-stirrers. And as the EHRC guidance and the Filton 24 judgements show us clearly – the state already has picked its side. Its us or them and we know in our hearts who must win.

Image: Ian ROB CC BY-SA 2.0