Mass rallies are impotent unless we can understand why populist right is growing

Of course, that such people – usually identifying as ‘progressive’ – throw the ‘fascist’ label around with complacent abandon doesn’t mean a far right doesn’t exist. It does, it worries, and it’s growing in popularity in the UK, particularly via grassroots, anti-immigration groups.

But, having witnessed the modus operandi of the organised left this past decade, I can’t view marches like the ‘Together Alliance’ gathering of approximately 50,000 people in London on Saturday without a hefty dollop of cynicism.

It was reportedly opposing Tommy Robinson, whose Unite The Kingdom march last year rallied 110,000 people, that Saturday’s march was set up to counter. But it wasn’t Robinson’s face emblazoned on placards at the weekend. It was Reform UK’s Nigel Farage’s.

Their politics are different in crucial elements, with Farage repeatedly saying he wants “nothing to do with Tommy Robinson,” accusing him of wanting to “stir up hatred.”

I’m not interested in defending Farage’s politics. There have been multiple accounts of Reform councillors and candidates making racist, homophobic, or antisemitic comments.

In Pictures: Edinburgh march and rally for independence from Royal Mile to Calton Hill

But, if there’s one crucial lesson I wish my old left-wing friends would learn, it’s to understand that opposing someone means being able to articulate what they actually think first.

To genuinely ‘fight the far right’ you have to understand what is fuelling their rise, with honesty, and a solid counter. You also have to be clear-headed. It’s contested whether Reform UK are ‘far right’, with the more accurate ‘populist radical right’ preferable.

For some, that will be hair-splitting. But being on the receiving end of false accusations about my own politics, to the point where some justify violence against women like me on that basis, it makes me rather cautious about labelling others.

Political violence

Nigel Farage has faced street violence, in a time where politicians of all parties face increasing threats to their safety. It’s unconscionable to joke about or support that, as I’ve seen many left-wing activists do online, on the basis they oppose his politics. Never has ‘play the ball not the man’ been more sorely needed as a principle in public discourse.

On Saturday’s march, Your Party’s Zarah Sultana railed that we face a choice between “socialism or barbarism” and said “when necessary, we fight them on the streets.”

Meanwhile, alongside lovely placards like “Friendship Not Fascism”, brandished by a cute kid with her family, there were banners celebrating the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran, and his murderous, barbaric regime.

“Tens of thousands of people from all walks of life are marching against hate,” Amnesty International claimed, despite this. “Together, we are calling for a different vision of society - one which places dignity, compassion and human rights at its heart.”

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That would be the same Amnesty International who took nearly a week to condemn the October 7th 2023 attacks against Israeli civilians by Hamas, and have routinely stayed silent on the wholescale abuse of – including violence against - gender-critical feminists.

I’ve said many times that the ‘gender wars’ are a litmus test for credibility. If you cannot condemn something as obviously wrong as women facing McCarthyite witch-hunts, violence, and death threats for defending their rights, your trustworthiness or moral authority on what constitutes ‘hatred’ is at best questionable, at worst non-existent.

We’re in seriously divisive, dangerous times, when we cannot universally agree on the basics. Opposing political violence against elected politicians – and completely powerless feminists – should be as easy to agree on as the importance of oxygen.

I’ve many life-long leftist, feminist friends, and can see the sincere pain at both the rise of right-wing populism, and their own continued ostracization from the anti-racist activism they used to be part of.

Last week, for example, academic Shereen Benjamin, former lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and opponent of far-right agitators for decades, attended an anti-racism rally outside the Scottish Parliament.

Instead of being welcomed, one of the speakers recognised her as a ‘gender-critical’ feminist. Pointing her out to the crowd, he reportedly told her to leave, then, using his megaphone, chanted: “Trans rights are human rights! Trans rights are worker’s rights!” finishing with the offensive “Trans rights are women’s rights!” while urging the mob to join in.

They did.

That left-wing, anti-racist activism has made feminists so unwelcome has been both morally repugnant and strategically idiotic. It’s a prime reason for the surge of support for the populist, radical right.

While I appreciate this is anecdotal, I’ve spoken to many who plan to vote Reform in May’s election. Among them are former SNP supporters, disillusioned Tories, and a few working-class women whose trust of the mainstream has been devastated due to the ‘gender wars’.

Racism, or fascistic leanings are absent from these people. I hear despair, for the most part.

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Despair over drugs deaths in Scotland, the cost of living crisis, and full-scale opposition to attacks on free speech, most evident against feminist or gender-critical women.

People can counter that thinking Reform UK is the answer is misguided. I fully agree. But these social divisions aren’t going to resolve with a bunch of rainbow placards and false claims of ‘unity’ against ‘hatred’ from those responsible for much of this.

Until the left gets a grip on what their culture warring campaigns against natural allies has done, how genuinely hateful their ‘cancel culture’ missions of over a decade have been, all their rallying is simply more carnival performance instead of the rational politics sorely needed.