Pink floyd the committee rar file10/27/2022 But after the experience of fascism, certain bulwarks were erected in our collective consciousness. The point is not that Europe is about to ‘turn fascist’, or that activists should see themselves as back in the 1930s (in ‘slow motion’ or otherwise). Indeed, in the most troubling of cases (Hungary with Jobbik Greece with Golden Dawn) there are successful parties combining the worst bits of both the EDL and BNP: that is to say, both ideologically national socialist and in possession of a private army. Almost everywhere, at least one such party has 10 per cent of the vote. It is a matter of happenstance whether the most successful electorally is closest to the BNP (as in France), the UKIP (as in Italy) or the EDL (as in Holland). Looking to the rest of Europe, it seems as if almost every country on the continent has two or three parties in the image of those just described. Yet recent UKIP candidates have included EDL supporters, people who blame the Second World War on Jews, men seeking to exclude women of child-bearing age from the workplace and admirers of Anders Breivik’s manifesto. Primarily populist rather than racist or Nazi, it has been backed by sections of the press who see the party, rather than the governing Conservatives, as the inheritor of Thatcherism. The UKIP is a very different sort of party from either the EDL or BNP. It claimed that Britain would be swamped by immigrants from Bulgaria and Romania, who will shortly be entitled to travel here without restriction (in common with other citizens of the EU). This spring, before Rigby’s death, the UKIP won 23 per cent of the vote in local elections. The third is the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In Newcastle on 25 May, and again in central London, the EDL turned out around 1500 people – more, both times, than the Left could muster in response. It marched in Woolwich on the night of Rigby’s killing. It is patriotic, jingoistic, culturally anti-German and, to that extent, ‘anti-Nazi’. Funded by millionaire Alan Ayling (previously a senior employee of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), the EDL combines anti-Islamist rhetoric and a football supporter base with nostalgia for wartime Britain. The second party is the English Defence League (EDL). Despite considerable assistance from the officers of London’s Metropolitan Police, who arrested fifty-eight anti-fascists, the BNP were unable to make their planned march to Downing Street. Banned from marching in Woolwich, 150 or so BNP supporters congregated outside parliament. But recently, seeing the popular mood harden, the BNP sought to protest in London. It plays down national socialist rhetoric in favour of electability. Normally the BNP acts as a purveyor of a ‘Euro-fascist’ politics. The first is the British National Party (BNP). Three parties in particular have been fighting to make best use of Rigby’s name. The killing of British soldier Lee Rigby outside his barracks in May by two young black British converts to Islam has been used by our opponents against the Left. Electoral success has made racism acceptable once more. After several years in which British far-Right organisations seemed to be in relative decline, that situation has reversed. This summer has been tough time for anti-fascists and groups like Unite Against Fascism (UAF).
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