Increasingly - according to Cultural Conservatives and right wing identity politics nuts - liberal democracy allows unlimited immigration, is pro LBGTQ + and Wokism has infiltrated all institutions and all of society. In the face of such an attack, which sounds like something that Joseph McCarthy might have said back in the 50s, democratic norms and values - human rights, due process, fair voting systems - are all fair game in an all or nothing culture war - to take whatever country you are in back to the good old days. According to the head of the far right Heritage Foundation in the USA, that is 1984, according to Nigel Farage, that is unspecified in the UK context, but might be something pre-war maybe, without the welfare state and when Empire was still all the fashion. As state and society have been taken over by Wokism from top to bottom - according to these types - and its dirty communist tendrils get everywhere, every tactic is on the table. Russian interference? If it helps - fair enough. Subverting democratic systems that are already far from perfect? Fair game. Hate speech and online abuse and doxxing and intimidation of witnesses and public figures? A means to an end. Riots and attempts to attack Mosques and vulnerable minorities? All part of the fun. Making out conservative state broadcasters are run by socialist latte drinking Wokerati? Perfect. Lying on steroids through social media with Musk and co. laughing like Bond villains in the background - all part of the war. Mainstreaming Farage, Robinson, Tate - saying they raise good points amongst the bad - only what the Left do, so we can do it too.
So here we are.
I used to work in Southport and I have a soft spot for the place. When I heard that there were fatal stabbings there I was very bothered by it. I know these things can happen anywhere but all a bit close to home. I wondered what had happened.
I then heard it was young people who had been stabbed. Very young people. Soon the news filtered through that two had died - a third confirmed the next day, and that many others were in critical care, including the two adults who were running a Taylor Swift dance class during the summer holidays. I have a four year old son. The week before I had taken him to a birthday party led by a woman who ran kids parties. A few weeks earlier I had dropped him at a play centre for young people in a French campsite. I immediately thought of what might have happened and what the people involved must be going through. The tragedy of the loss of young life. The injuries to others that might lead to more loss. The impact on the immediate family - I cannot find the words, the ongoing trauma, the impact on the community and of wider society. So sad.
I am on Facebook and sometimes use Instagram, TikTok and Twitter to advertise my podcasts. I started to hear and see things on there, and be sent things by people who I know. I speak to people in Southport regularly, and have good friends who post on Facebook. I can honestly say that the stuff I have seen over the last two weeks has been both galvanising in some regards and utterly terrifying in others. The community coming together? Great. Videos of right wing figures spreading lies, misinformation and disinformation. Not so great. You start to question your own sanity. Needless to say the people who run these platforms don't really care about democracy, community cohesion and truth and in some ways are actively working against it. As of the 5th of August 2024 I am no longer on TikTok or X. TikTok was showing me Tommy Robinson and Far Right stuff on the first video on the feed. I complained to X that someone had accused another of being a paedophile in a comment flow. X said it had 'investigated' it and found nothing. Alex Andreou, commentator and podcaster on Quiet Riot, said that he knows of someone who complained about extreme anti-semitic comments, and I mean extreme, and got the same answer. Being off them, I feel better for it. You have to protect your mind. I urge everyone to leave social media that you know is not good for you. You know the truth of it. Search your heart. I am still on Instagram and Facebook for now, as I speak to friends on there. But leave groups that are not good for you. Sack people off who are not good for you. Look after yourself. Stay informed in your own way. Get different opinions. But don't get inundated with toxicity aimed at winding you up. Twitter is foul.
The night after the murders there was riot and attack on a Mosque in Southport. Many have said out of towners were involved and may have orchestrated it. But lots of locals got involved. A lot of men. Maybe people missing something in their lives I don't know. Whether it was orchestrated to a degree by established groups or not, the fact is it happened. And it was all based on a lie spread on social media. It might well be a lot of excited young men just got involved without necessarily being fully into the ideology of the far right, but found it thrilling in some way. I don't know. Many might not be the biggest fans of the police and authority already.
By the weekend riots spread around the UK. In the aftermath a lot of the right wing newspapers that have whipped up anti-immigrant feeling distanced themselves from the rioting. Online, the far right and a lot of populists seemed to be proud of what had happened, and that they were only acting out what many people thought.
What was that I wonder? That we need to have limits on immigration? That we need to sort out the systems of immigration? Like 100 percent the rest of the population? You can peacefully protest all you want. Totally into that. But rioting and attacking minorities and smashing up your own communities? I think you might be in single figures there. There are a few levels to this. Those who want to attack Muslims and immigrants no matter what, who use the murder of three girls by a 17 year old Catholic son of immigrants - to attack Muslims. How does that work? Even if he was a Muslim, do you run a sort of Kristallnacht like the Nazis did after a Jew killed a Nazi official in Paris in 1938? So all Jews/non-whites/Muslims/Gypsies (pick your own group) are to blame? Hannah Arendt, a famous Jewish Reporter at the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 wrote and observed that despite knowing Eichmann was a committed Nazi she could see he was a normal mundane and banal man who was caught up in something. In the book Ordinary Men, about death squads who shot Jews during the Second World War, Christopher Browning notes how they were often offered a way out, these ordinary men, from doing it, and that some stepped down with no consequences, but that the majority stuck with it. Why? A complicated question. Years of anti-Jewish propaganda? Masculinity and not being the one to step down in front of other men? The idea that if we didn't do this to them, they would do it to us? How mundane and utterly human is the fear of the Other, the way it can get out of hand, just become normalised. It is in all of us.
It all starts with a lie. A belief. All Jews are responsible. They are different. They dress different. They sacrifice kids. All Muslims are Jihadists. They dress different. All blacks must be Muslims. There is the lie. The reductionism. The nonsense. It is a feeling. An emotion.
The Southport killer has been apprehended. Investigations will take place. Conclusions will be drawn. It will not be perfect. But while that is happening people are not just using peaceful protest against immigrants or whoever is top of their list. They are rioting. Smashing up libraries. Smashing up already poor areas in many cases.
So there are the hard right nuts. Proper into it. There are the people who might get excited by violence and looting and might not be that into the ideology of the Far Right. There are those who might be into peaceful protest who are concerned about immigration. If you are the latter - okay, do that, it is a free country to a degree, but at least get some of your facts right. Check where you are getting your information from. Like anyone.
Then there are the closet racists. Or the semi closet racists. The rioters have a point, they say. Immigration is a concern. Okay, but what has that got to do with the Southport killings? It is a natural reaction, I have heard some say. When you hear that you know that deep down there is some kind of agreement with what is happening. I might not riot, I might not be far right, but I like racist jokes maybe, and winding people up, and to a degree agree with the rioters in making a statement against immigration or Islam or whatever. Just think about that for a moment. A part of you is agreeing with them. That is why Braverman, and Yaxley Lennon, and Tate, and the flag wavers for the populist right, won't come out and condemn these riots, or if so, do it in a guarded way. Because deep down they are okay with anti-Muslim sentiment and anti-immigrant sentiment, even when blown out of all proportion. Deep down, they agree with it. And many others do. Imagine attacking Synagogues because of the action of Israel in Gaza? Appalling. But Muslims are fair game?
Why? It is nice isn't it? It feels good. Arendt saw it at the Eichmann Trial. How mundane and easy it is to go along with extremist ideas or partially extreme ideas, as it gives one a really straightforward narrative - the other group is wrong, or bad, in some way. It gets clicks, it gets watches, it massages the ego, it gives the feeling of strength and domination, it gets you and others angry. And not only is it directed against the minority group, it is directed against the Other - the French, Brussels, non-whites, other strange cultures, other strange and extremist ideas among the other group, the way they dress etc. How easy and simple. How straightforward. And when times are tough how easy to use.
This is not to say that one might have concerns about extremism. But to use fear of extremism in the Other to blame all groups who are different or everyone in that group who is different is just pure racism. You are racists. Plain and simple. And the ones who are so concerned about extremism in the Other are the ones who are extremists themselves. And if you are a liberal, or on the Left, and you defend the Other - then you are just as bad. You are Woke. You are the enemy within. Losing democracy and human rights etc is all fair game. Cut off your nose to spite your face. Because anger and fear matter more than hope and progress in the eyes of the Far Right.
J.K. Rowling spreads hate speech about trans people. Makes out they don't exist. Defending true women, she claims. Ever hear her speaking about domestic violence or the pay gap? Me neither. How easy just to use hate speech. She will say all trans people must be extreme trans radicals. How easy.
Alex Andreou also said the other day, in quoting another, that the world often takes two step forwards and one back, and that maybe, since 2016 we have taken a step back, and are now ready to move forward again. I hope so. In the meantime, think about what you watch and who you spend time with, stay informed, keep calm and carry on. Let happiness and love into your life. Not hatred. One thing is for sure, since I started teaching in 1999 the Overton Window, the spectrum of what is acceptable from the left to the right has moved to the right. And the Culture War is the key battleground. The Right have nothing else to say. A lot of people are picking up on toxic ideas that used to be beyond the Overton Window. Even on the Left, putting aside whether Rowling might be considered on the Left for a moment, I hear extremist ideas, defending Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and claiming that sexuality should not be taught in schools. I recently left a Whatsapp Group of so called Leftists after someone piped up on these issues, who sounded like Marjorie Taylor Greene. Have you heard George Galloway recently? Terrifying.
And poverty and inequality, and problematic public services and all the other issues of the day rumble on. Extremists on the Right have nothing to say about that. Other than to blame people who look different to them.
And in the midst of all this, three young girls are killed, and a Culture War forgets them.
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