by Robert Kazandjian Follow @RKazandjian
Jo Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen, partner of Brendan Cox and mother of two young children, was murdered in the street by a fascist terrorist. We have sleepwalked into a nightmare. Jo Cox’s murder was the inevitable, tragic consequence of a steady flow of fascistic bile that has permeated the mainstream political discourse. Our Prime Minister described human beings fleeing death and destruction as a ‘swarm’. A columnist for a national newspaper with a daily average readership of 5.5 million people called for the use of gunships to halt the arrival of ‘human cockroaches’. Posters for the official Brexit campaign depict human suffering as a dangerous threat, and demand WE take back control of OUR borders.
We are drowning in hatred.
These examples of fascistic propaganda embolden the thuggish advocates of groups like Britain First, to whom witnesses say Tommy Mair, Jo Cox’s murderer, referenced while he shot and attacked her with a knife. The far-right group offers members countryside paramilitary training camps, amidst pledges of ‘direct action’. Their twisted ideals are given a veneer of legitimacy when echoed by those in positions of influence and power. The fork-tongued suit bemoaning the ‘erosion of British sovereignty’, and the alcohol-laden football supporters hurling coins at refugee children, are two sides of the same coin.
Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, told BBC news last month that ‘if people feel we have lost control of our borders completely, and by the way we have lost control of our borders completely as members of the European Union, and voting doesn’t change anything, then violence is the next step’. This is not the prophesising of an astute, deep-thinking politician. This is the irresponsible ranting of a hateful bigot. Farage, like many others basking in the eye of this storm, has blood on his hands.
So what now? How do we respond to the fact that an elected politician, building her reputation on a genuine commitment to challenging the poisonous rhetoric that threatens to overwhelm us, has been cut down and killed in her own constituency by the living embodiment of that poison?
Warning upon warning has been ignored. People of colour consistently struggle to have the presence of fascism acknowledged and challenged. And let’s be clear fascistic discourse begets fascistic violence. A man armed with a hammer and machete shouted ‘white power’ as he attempted to behead a Sikh man in a supermarket, in Mold, North Wales. Where was the condemnation and outrage? Mushin Ahmed, 81 years old, was on his way to the mosque when he was attacked, kicked and stamped to death by racists in Rotherham. Where was the condemnation and outrage?
Now it is brutally clear to everyone that we are at the tipping point. Now is not the time to sit on the fence. Collectively, we have long been in the process of choosing where we truly stand, and for far too many, indecisiveness has led to silence, and silence in the face of such hatred is complicity. The great Martin Luther King Jr. said ‘In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends’.
We must hold the media and politicians to full account. It is sheer delusion to believe that the words of columnists and parliamentarians, circulated on a mass scale, do not play a role in inciting the kind of hatred that has stolen a mother from her children. It is sheer delusion to believe that the persistent utilisation of mental health stigmas as a means of explaining away of fascistic acts of terror, does not contribute to the staggering complacency regarding far-right extremism.
We must challenge fascism locally, because while those in positions of power spin their webs of deceit from above, it is the readiness of thugs at the grassroots level to carry out violent acts of terror that pose an immediate threat to us. Together, in true solidarity with one and other, we define the standards of our communities and we must resist the degradation of them.
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Robert Kazandjian is an educator and writer. He works with vulnerable children in North London. His writing seeks to challenge inequality, in all its guises. He has previously written for Ceasefire Magazine on racism in Israel, gender politics and hip hop music, and the necessity of Armenian Genocide recognition. He blogs poetry at makemymark.tumblr.com. He cites Douglas Dunn, Pablo Neruda, James Baldwin and Nas as major influences. He tweets from @RKazandjian
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This is a right-wing Fascist. Even worse are the two kinds of immigrant Muslim Fascists. The first kind is the activist, the ones who form cells, teach themselves how to make bombs and other ways to kill us because we are not Muslims. They are enticed by the prospects of having 72 virgins who are beautiful and “improved” , no peeing etc. These ones are Europe’s worst enemies and they are all around us. The second kind is not much of a believer but has been imbued with the Muslim immigrant culture to such an extent that he thinks every British girl over the age of nine is a “prostitute” and should be abused in all sorts of possible ways. Whereas the first kind attracts thousands, the second kind attracts tens of thousands.
We also have the left-wing fascist equivalent of the alt- right now called the alt-left. Vicious, wearing masks to hide their faces, probably funded by the likes of Soros, they only show themselves up when they can hide among a large cloud of do-gooder protesters.
Since I cannot see the EU or even Britain stopping Muslim immigration, since the economic stalemate will continue (forget GDP increases, it is who gets it which will count) because it suits Germany, since the American mainstream media is largely disbelieved, we are likely to get more of the same, Fascists of all kinds, anti-globalism, and further increase in populism
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Great article.
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It’s not actually Fascism though is? Not by any actual political definition, or indeed comparison to 1930s Italy or Spain. Using Fascism as a label here doesn’t actually help, it about on the same level as the Socialist Worker’s Student Organisation spitting bile at a university protest march. Violent Racism certainly, but why the need to shoehorn an incorrect label onto this purely for emotive effect which serves no purpose and simply detracts from tackling the problem.
Also, your argument sounds like a plea for censorship, which is completely the wrong way to approach this, The effective way to tackle these ideas is to have them out in the open and let the sunlight detoxify, Nick Griffins appearance on Question Time is widely understood as the turning point in the rise of the BNP. Calling for the banning of certain views hides attitudes under a rock where they are re-enforced by whispers – I’d much rather have them talked about where they can be countered rather than have them grow unchecked in the dark. Unfettered Free Speech is our safeguard against attitudes like this, not the problem.
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Superb stuff.
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