Nigel Farage is seriously uncool

We need to talk about Nigel Farage being seriously uncool. No, this isn’t the most pressing issue in British politics, but it is important. The man is a political fixture, we’ve ended up in a bizarre world where he’s on TV constantly and somehow supposedly respectable outlets publish fawning articles about how great he is. Yet he’s less cool than my gran. This situation is unacceptable. 

Now, you might think this is just my left-wing bias speaking. Of course I think Farage is uncool, he’s a right-wing nationalist, a flag-waving Brexit-obsessed conservative outrage generator that is impossible to shut up. However, his uncoolness is deeper than politics. This is about the fact that, at a fundamental level, Nigel Farage is the human embodiment of a wet Monday afternoon at a service station Wetherspoons.

Entitled rudeness

First, let’s talk about his aesthetic. He wears suits and ties, but not in a suave, Bond villain kinda way. Not even in a nostalgic, well-tailored, Peaky Blinders kind of way. No, Nigel Farage wears a suit like a man who also wears that same suit to eat a fry-up in the morning. You just know he drinks tea by slurping it and aggressively clears his throat before speaking. 

Then there’s his general demeanour. Farage has the energy of a man who gets impatient at a bar when the staff are dealing with another customer. The kind of bloke who taps his watch while muttering about how things used to be better. The sort of person you’re embarrassed to stand next to because you know his entitled rudeness will mean you all get served last.

Being impatient with bar staff

Despite all this, certain media circles remain infatuated with him. The Knowledge, The Spectator, and other bastions of tweed-clad “sensibles” breathlessly report on him as though he’s some kind of rakish anti-hero. We’re constantly told he’s an outsider kicking against the establishment, this despite the fact that he went to Dulwich College - an expensive private school - has more access to the media than most sitting MPs and has spent years playing footsie with powerful press barons. He couldn’t be more inside the establishment club if he crawled up their collective bum-holes.

He tries so hard to project the boring, snobby, conventional, tasteless type of wealth that is endearing to people who have (or aspire to have) a “country pile” but who haven’t encountered popular culture since the late 70s.

Man of the people, my arse

He swannes around in tweed like a rejected character from a PG Wodehouse novel, whilst giving off the air that he was pleased that he got a waitress fired for getting his wine order wrong. He has the grumpy, entitled, “call the manager” vibe, and by “manager” he means his mates in the right-wing press; such as when he started a political forumpf when it was revealed that he wasn’t actually wealthy enough to have an account at the elite bank where his oligarch pals park their ill gotten gains. Man of the people, my arse.

Then there’s his attitude towards young people. If something is popular with anyone under 40, you can bet your life savings that Farage hates it. He’s against immigration, against climate action, against progressive social change. Essentially, if young people support something, he wants it gone.

This is a man who looks like he calls the police on teenagers for playing music too loudly, and yet we’re supposed to believe he’s a maverick. What makes him a maverick is that he flies in the face of the soft liberal consensus that we should at least pretend to be nice to people. If wanting to be openly cruel to people less fortunate, less British and less white then himself makes Farage a man of the people, then “the people” should be offended by association.

What Boomers think is cool

Brexit was, among other things, a generational wedge issue, and Farage led the charge in telling young people that their future was less important than pensioners’ getting their empire nostalgia fix. Boomers may think Farage is cool, but that’s because their sense of cool as well as their sense of social responsibility died at whatever point after 1979 that they started voting Tory.

Farage’s politics appeal to the kind of people who think pop culture peaked in the 70s, worry incessantly about house prices, and have a visceral hatred of wind farms. The sort of people who get irrationally angry at the mere concept of an electric car (that isn’t a Tessler). These are people who live in a state of perpetual grievance, furiously opposed to progress in any form, and their bitterness needs an outlet, Farage is more than happy to provide one. In a word: Boomers.

His cultural taste must be diabolical. If Keir Starmer, perhaps the second least cool man in Britain, likes Coldplay, then what does Farage listen to? You just know it’s some dreary, middle-of-the-road, blues-rock nonsense, the kind of music that plays over the PA in a garden centre. Either that or he listens to the Zulu soundtrack on repeat while wanking over a picture of himself.

Smelling faintly of cigars and damp upholstery

Somehow, none of this stops certain publications from fawning over him. Take, for instance, the from The Guardian, where they actually tried to paint Farage as in touch with the common man on foreign policy. Never mind that when Jeremy Corbyn said similar things, he was branded a traitorous Vladmir Putin sympathiser. When Farage does it, it’s merely a robust debate.

Let’s not forget the absolutely deranged attempt to paint him as some sort of roguish sex symbol. The Spectator ran a piece on his supposed “rip-roaring romantic success,” [### link] breathlessly detailing his various affairs as though he were a protagonist in a 1950s spy novel, rather than a bloke who looks like he smells faintly of cigars and damp upholstery.

Our more tolerant reality

The right-wing - and a good proportion of the centrist - media still fawns over Farage like he is the Sex Pistols freaking out the establishment with swearing and nihilism. Worshipping Farage shows how uncool and out of touch the mainstream media is. I have tattered underwear that is more appealing than he is, yet he’s still found in newspapers and on panel shows. This shows how we’ve lost our collective minds.

How have we gotten to the point where people who like The Last Dinner Party or Fontains DC are in an out-of-touch bubble, but people spitting blood about small boats are in touch with reality? Mainlining right-wing bullshit all day on Facebook, instead of going to a gig or the theatre is apparently how to stay in touch with the national zeitgeist. At least, according to the people who generate the Facebook bullshit everyone is mainlining. Well, loving Farage and the rubbish he’s selling doesn’t put you in touch with reality. It puts you in a bubble being left behind by our more tolerant reality.

A figurehead for the people who enjoy yelling at cyclists

There’s a desperate nostalgia at play here. A longing for the days when men could down a pint, say something vaguely racist, and still be considered charming rather than insufferable. The media’s treatment of Farage is the political equivalent of people who think #MeToo has gone too far because they miss the days when being a lecherous old man was seen as an endearing quirk rather than a social liability.

So no, Nigel Farage is not cool. He is, at best, a pub bore who lucked into political relevance by stoking the worst instincts of the electorate. Yet, against all logic and reason, sections of the British press continue to treat him like he’s some kind of folk hero.

It’s time we put an end to this nonsense. Farage is not a rockstar, he's a figurehead for the people who enjoy yelling at cyclists and complaining about vegans. By picking on what young people like, he may think he’s kicking against the liberal establishment, but he’s just a stool of the conservative hegemony and really quite pathetic.

Another nail in the coffin of democracy as Musk and Farage cosy up

Elon Musk is throwing the geo-political equivalent of a toddler tantrum at the British government and the beneficiaries of this seem to be the far-right. This would be funny, if it wasn’t another depressing nail in the coffin of democracy. There doesn't seem to be anything we can do to stop Musk running Britain’s fragile democracy over with one of his cybertrucks, which will probably catch fire afterwards. 

The world’s richest man is apparently feeling a bit miffed over something the Labour government did - perhaps they didn’t return his DM on Twitter, sorry X - and has turned his attention to UK politics. The idea of a Labour government has sent him into a frenzy. He probably thinks Keir Starmer is woke because he believes poor people should get free healthcare.

The uneasy marriage of Musk and Farage

It seems Musk’s latest hobby is to play superhero for the self-proclaimed champions of “Western values” who want to save Britain from the craft beer drinking, vegan food eating, Guardian reading, woke dweebs. He’s doing this by boosting the people who want to put migrants in concentration camps and bring back hanging. Y’know, the posh lot who claim to be men of the people because they hate trans-people and obsess over the birth rates of different ethnic groups. If I was “the people” I would be insulted by this association.

For those who have been living under a rock (how nice that must be), Musk has been using his control of the discourse, via owning Twitter, and his vast sums of money to big up Reform and Nigel Farage, so that Farage can do to the UK what Donald Trump has done to the states and trigger all the libs in the process.

This plan lasted for all of five minutes, as Musk and Farage fell out after Musk found an even more dangerous far-right figure, one Tommy Robinson, to hand a giant platform to so that he can demonise ethnic minorities. Farage, sensing Robinson’s toxicity to the crucial “racists who don’t think they’re racist” voter demographic, who he hopes to flip from being Tory (or Starmer’s Labour) backers to being Reform backers, engaged in mild criticism of Musk. Farage should have known better, as Musk’s famously fragile ego shattered. The uneasy marriage of Musk and Farage seems to be over before it started.

The fig leaf of concern

All this hot air was in the service of getting more attention for the far-right and internet billionaire edge lords - it’s so hard to tell the difference between them - and increase the strangle hold both have on ailing Western democracy. However, because they can’t say this out loud, they needed an issue to get angry about and this is where the whole thing stops being funny and starts feeling hopeless.

What was the fig leaf of concern they hid their rage hard on behind? Ah, yes, the ever-delicate topic of “grooming gangs” or “rape gangs”.

Now, before we dive into the murky waters of politicised outrage, let’s clear up a few things: there was indeed an inquiry into the infamous gangs that operated in places like Rotherham and Oldham. An inquiry that the previous government chose to ignore the recommendations of faster than a child dismissing peas at dinner time. This government should surely pick up the baton, but that would require something akin to political responsibility, a rare breed these days.

The perfect stick to beat Labour with

Musk and his new pals don’t care about the victims. Not in the slightest. This isn’t a heartfelt crusade for justice; it’s a stick to whack the Labour government with, which is why rape gangs are back in the discourse five minutes after Labour took office. It’s the perfect weapon, as it plays into everyone’s preconception that woke or political correctness is responsible for brown men raping white girls, and after that’s said everyone hits the roof and debate stops. It’s also the perfect tool for claiming all those people who make you feel bad for pointing out the privileges of being white are the real monsters. So, we don’t have to listen to them at all.

The sensible lefties are unable to stop the legions of cynical boomers across the country blaming the presence of plays exploring race in fringe theatres and the use of the phrase “settler-colonial” on BlueSky for all the pain these girls were caused.

Pointing out that this is a conspiracy theory aimed at making beetroot faced Abbot Ale drinkers even more angry at something they already hate anyway to get attention for the far-right just leads to you being called an elitist who doesn’t understand the plight of the people of Oldham, who are currently besieged in Wetherspoons by a Jihadi mob and if you think otherwise then go back to Walthamstow you posh, woke, idiot. This accusation is of course levelled by someone who went to Dulwich Colleg.

The useful idiots of fascists

Well, it’s not true and most people angry about political correctness and rape gangs care nothing for the victims of white rape gangs; that is if they care for any victims. Will you pay more tax for better services to help abuse victims? Will you vote for a party that promises this? I thought not. This is why Starmer couldn’t promise to make anything better, as swing voters would vote Tory to keep their taxes down. These same swing voters are now busy being the useful idiots of fascists. Emphasis on the idiots.

For Musk, Farage and Robinson this is a classic case of political opportunism, dressed up as concern for women and girls. Ironically, Musk, who allows misogyny to flourish on Twitter like a weed in a neglected garden, seems to think he’s the knight in shining armour here. Remember that what Musk want from women is to pop out good white babies while being the perfect victims so that all of society’s problems can be scape-goated on migrants.

There’s a special place in hell for those who feign concern for women only to wield it like a weapon against their favourite targets, especially when their favourite targets are people of colour. Musk, Farage, and Robinson have jumped on the bandwagon of outrage, claiming that the police were too scared to investigate Pakistani men for fear of being seen as racist. This, of course, is a narrative that caters to the perpetually aggrieved; those who can’t seem to differentiate between common decency and “wokeness.”

A weak bully

Their argument goes something like this: “If I can’t yell abuse at someone in a burka, then white children will be raped.” It’s a charming bit of logic that suggests that the only way to protect children is to unleash a torrent of vitriol in the name of protecting Western values from horrible brown people. When sexual violence comes up, it’s as if everyone suddenly forgets the actual victims. Instead, it’s all about blaming political correctness, feminism, and anything else that fits their pet hate.

Musk seems to think he can get what he wants – which appears to be the downfall of the woke Starmer - by aligning with the very arsonists who only like democracy when it serves their agenda. From Trump to Farage, it’s a veritable bully club, with democracy and vulnerable minorities as the victims.

Musk is eager to join them, so that he can be the weak bully who laughs at you when the tough bully pushes you over and makes you eat mud. The Richard Hammond of the group. Musk’s ego is so thin that he must be on the side of far-right rage fiends, as he can’t stand being their target. He probably thinks the far-right is the authentic voice of the people, a thought you can only have by spending too much time online hating on progressives who want billionaires to pay their taxes. This notion is also as stupid as the idea of rebranding Twitter as X.

Another painful tragedy in this long list of misery

So here we are, on the precipice of the end of democracy as the billionaires big up the far-right because they hate the left and fear the right-wing juggernaut they can’t stop or control. It’s sad, really, that the fate of democracy could end because Musk can’t handle a bit of online criticism.

The really depressing part is that the left can’t explain to the man in the street that the Musks of the world really are awful, and they should be nice to people who are different from them, without being accused of being elitist. Maybe I am elitist, he writes in his iPhone on the tube home from a London fringe theatre.

The sad thing is we’re staring into a future world shaped not by the voices that care for the victims, but by those who simply want to beat the angry drum to get more power for themselves. Another painful tragedy in this long list of misery is that it’s working.

What is the New Right’s narrative, and why does it appeal to some on the left?

The “New Right” is having a moment. That cannot be denied. Neoconservatives - with their Christian moralising about The Simpsons or Desperate Housewives, love of globalisation and outsourcing, and desire to throw around American military might - are out of fashion on the right. Now the right is all about defending Western culture, economic and political nationalism, and fighting culture wars at home, not military wars overseas.

The “New Right” is not a political party or movement or philosophy. It’s not a group of people who think one thing or even share the same values beyond the broad description of being conservative. A few things can be said for certain about them: they are on the right, they are opposed to the left, they are most numerous in America (but have counterparts in the UK and the rest of the Western world) and, most importantly, they’re strongly against the establishment of liberals and big business. In other words, their main enemy is the Third Way of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

This new movement is best described in this article by James Pogue in Vanity Fair. To find out more about this movement read that article. It’s full of detailed reporting from years of studying the American right. What I want to talk about is the narrative that bands the diverse bits of New Right into this uneasy alliance. Their shared worldview. Most of my analysis draws heavily on Pogue’s article and I wouldn’t be able to write this if it wasn’t for his excellent reporting. 

The Cathedral

The narrative that (broadly) unites the New Right is called “the Cathedral”, which is a term to describe the liberal (both small and big “L”) institutions in democratic society. The Cathedral was coined by blogger Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) who is a known “intellect” popular with the New Right. The Cathedral narrative is difficult to define exactly, but it loosely describes a series of political, cultural and civil society institutions that create the cultural and political power nexus at the heart of America. The Cathedral extends from universities to the White House, via newspapers and business board rooms. It has power and protects its hold on power. The New Right are against The Cathedral. 

The New Right’s war against The Cathedral is mainly a culture war. The political theories behind the idea of The Cathedral are complex (although, at times, they’re conspiratorial and outright terrifying) however, on the surface the New Right are engaging in the standard anti-liberal, anti-woke, culture war that has gripped the right globally. At first appearance, it’s all very normal. They are opposed to left-wing institutions, like universities, and support right-wing institutions, like the police. However, there is something else going on here.

The New Right take the culture war to extreme ends. J. D Vance - author of Hillbilly Elegy, the Republican Party nominee in the 2022 Senate election in Ohio and member of the New Right - said to Pogue in the Vanity Fair piece linked above: “I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.” Banning everyone considered “woke” from government and cultural institutions is extreme, even by the standard of grumpy online conservatives, but what makes this different enough from the rest of the right to earn the moniker “New Right”?

Young, energetic and cool 

What makes the New Right different is that they have a cool edge that people like Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage can only dream of. They might be fighting the same culture war, but the above mentioned perpetually peeved press provocateurs aren’t the vanguard of a new culture, they're the reactionary end of an old, dying one.

The New Right has a punk edge to it. I have been kicked in the head at punk shows more times than I can count, and I’ll say that these suit-wearing nationalists are not punk, but they have, consciously or unconsciously, appropriated the aura of punk. They’re not standing up for the poor and marginalised as bands from The Clash to Dream Nails have done. They’re also not the shout of pain from a downtrodden underclass like the Sex Pistols were. However, they do have the youthful rebelliousness of punk

What they also have is the claim they are fighting a dominant, puritanical culture and that they are smashing up the neatly ordered world of the establishment by not giving a fuck. This cool edge means the scene has on its fringes trendy figures like podcaster, actress, filmmaker, model and Instagram personality Dasha Nekrasova, mentioned in Pogue’s piece, who most people know for playing Comfrey in Succession.

The New Right and the disaffected left

The presence of people like Nekrasova indicates that the New Right is a countercultural scene with youth and energy behind it. It also highlights how many disaffected members of the left are flirting with this scene. Nekrasova and her co-host, Anna Khachiyan, talk on their podcast Red Scare about how they supported Bernie Sanders and Nekrasova has been described as Sailor Socialism, after a clip of her being questioned by an InfoWars reporter dressed as a an anime character went viral. Yes, I know. Internet.

Recently, Nekrasova has been photographed with Alex Jones and has shared memes on Instagram with statements along the lines of “the far-left and the far-right should unite to destroy capitalism”. It’s all very horse-shoe politics.

As these are New York scenesters we’re talking about, all of this is laced in about ten levels of irony, making it impossible to know how much of this is genuine and how much is for the lols. Has the cool thing for it-girl New Yorkers to do switched from socialism to nationalism? Maybe. I’m not cool enough to know.

Cool world 

Nekrasova is not the only instance of someone who used to be on the left being in the New Right. Notably Lydia Laurenson, Yarvin’s fiancé, who describes herself in Pogue’s article as having “a background in social justice”, is part of the scene. Pogue writes that Laurenson “was ‘horrified’ by ‘how the mainstream media covered the [2020 BLM] riots.… It was just such a violation of all of my values.’”

Tellingly Pogue adds: “She’d had a strange realization after she and Yarvin started dating, discovering that some of her friends had been reading him for years. ‘I found out that all these people had been reading NRx stuff just like me. They just never told anyone about it,’ she said. ‘It has been very striking to me,’ she said, ‘how cool this world is becoming.’”

There seems to be a mix of disaffected left-wing people in amongst the right-wing culture warriors. There is likely to be a mix of reasons for this. Some are people who may think the left has become too extreme. Some are people who supported Bernie and his plans for radical change, and now that this has failed, they’re looking for another radical programme that might succeed in bringing down corporate America. Some people just want to see stuff burn. Some have always been drawn to fringe ideas that are common to the left and the right. 

Families and meaningful work 

The fact that the New Right has picked up some support from disaffected members on the left isn’t surprising. The New Right is opposed to Reaganomics and the Third Way, neither of which is loved by the left. Pogue wrote: “They share a the [sic] basic worldview: that individualist liberal ideology, increasingly bureaucratic governments, and big tech are all combining into a world that is at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.” This is something most people on the left can largely agree with.

At one point Pogue asks Blake Masters - a venture capitalist, a Republican nominee for the Senate in Arizona, close associate Peter Thiel and one of the most public figures in the New Right - what victory would look like to him, and he said: “It’s just families and meaningful work.” He added: “So that you can raise your kids and worship and pursue your hobbies and figure out what the meaning of it all is.” 

Pogue writes that “pretty much anyone could agree with this” and certainly lots of people on the left do. You would struggle to find someone who doesn’t believe in families and meaningful work on the left. What the left and the New Right have in common is that they believe that our current economic system - created through years of Reaganomics, globalisation, Third Way politics and neo-liberal economics - actively prevents this. 

Culture war grand standing on Fox News

The narrative of the New Right includes elements of left-wing politics, which is why it appeals to disaffected people on the left. The cool edginess of the scene, and the fact that it might have a tangible impact, also attracts people who are dissatisfied with the current system.

It’s interesting to note that when figures from the New Right are in private talking one-on-one to Pogue, they say things that could, at least, be sympathetic to left-wing arguments. When they are on TV, they resort to banging the culture war drum and liberal/leftie bashing.

There is more to the narrative and political project of the New Right than just culture war grand standing on Fox News. Even when they are doing culture war bits, they aren’t doing standard right-wing culture war talking points. Yes, they are socially conservative and opposed to social justice, but the New Right is big enough to include people from the so-called manosphere who give tips on how men can pick up women for casual sex. The New Right isn’t down with Christian moralising, they claim to be more accepting than the totalitarian and puritan liberals/left.

Like British nationalists

It’s hard to get to the bottom of exactly what the political philosophy behind the New Right narrative is, or what these people believe. Partly because it’s a large scene with lots of different people in it. What links them together is a narrative about society, where it’s gone wrong and what needs to be done to fix it.

As this is an anti-free market right-wing narrative, British readers will assume this movement is like the BNP and other British nationalist parties, who are also known for their right-wing social policies and opposition to globalisation. (Mainly the immigration side, but they have a side order of class war and protect the NHS from privatisation to go with it.) 

Late Republican period

There is something to this comparison. The New Right’s flirtation with conspiracy theories and their love of authoritarianism is certainly something they have in common with British nationalists. Vance talks in Pogue’s article about America being in a “late republican period”; referring to when Julius Caesar seized power from the Roman Republic. For a candidate for public office in November’s election, Vance is terrifyingly relaxed about the idea of a military strongman sweeping away democracy. 

Mentioning Caesar an Ancient Rome makes the whole thing sound classy. If Vance talked about Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome or Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch it would make him sound more frightening, but it’s probably closer to what the New Right has in mind when people throw around phrases like late republican period.

This is an intellectualised Trumpism. It takes blustering about elections being stolen and turns it into a narrative that encompasses ideas about how the state works, how culture is controlled and how political consensus is made (and broken). This may be an intellectual movement, but it can’t be overstated how anti-democratic this scene is. One particular exchange with Vance from Pogue’s article is worth quoting at length:

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—“he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

”This is a description, essentially, of a coup.”

An elected Emperor

Most alarmingly, the New Right is opposed to liberal democracy or the checks on absolute power that have been slowly built up from the English Civil war onwards. America elects a president not an Emperor, which is what you would have if the checks of the liberal democratic system were removed.

The New Right appears to argue that winning an election gives you absolute power. Maybe they think electing someone to absolute power is a truer form of democracy than a system that has a legislature and courts to check the use of the leader’s power. If someone wins power in an election then they should wield it, they seem to say. The main, but not the only, problem with this is that people from Caesar’s days onwards have known that if someone is given absolute power, after winning an election or otherwise, before long you don’t have elections anymore. 

Warnings from women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour

Another thing worth pointing out about the New Right and their narrative is how many women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour are really scared by this predominantly male, white and heterosexual scene. Women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour are the ones who have had to fight for rights and protection under the current liberal (both small and big “L”) democratic system that the New Right rallies against. 

There are a lot of problems with liberal democracy; between the abolition of Roe vs Wade and police violence against people of colour, it's hard to argue that American liberal democracy provides equality and protection under the law. However, once this system is torn down by the New Right, the people who will be most vulnerable will be women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour who will have lost the (at least theoretical) protection offered by liberal democracy.

Pogue asked Yarvin why so many people were afraid of his movement and Yarvin’s argument is not convincing. He said that opposition to the New Right “is fundamentally in service of something that is far worse than anything, in your wildest nightmares”. In their words: you shouldn’t be worried about what we want to do with absolute power because the current system is worse. This is misdirection and deliberately avoiding the question. 

The price of getting attention 

One of the most telling parts of Pogue’s article is when he follows Masters on the campaign trail. Masters attends a gathering of non-city dwelling retirees, i.e. the principal Republican party members and voters, who aren’t particularly moved by his ideas on how we regulate tech companies and create more meaningful work. When the Q&A comes around, the Boomers only want to ask about how the Democrats stole the 2020 election from Trump, which Masters doesn’t deny. He then indulges their delusional fantasies further (if he doesn’t believe them himself). 

Whatever the New Right’s views on how the hegemony of Liberal culture, globalisation and big tech are sucking the meaning out of work and life, what’s cutting through is when they spread dangerous conspiracy theories about a stolen election and vaccines. Spreading these narratives is the price of getting attention in conservative America and the New Right are more than happy to pay it. The simple narrative of the Big Lie (Trump’s stolen election) drowns out any more nuanced or complex discussion.

In this way, the New Right is helping Trump and other much more thuggish authoritarians. If the New Right gets their American Empire (or whatever comes after the late republican period) I wonder how much the knuckle dragging authoritarians and Trump supporters will tolerate right-wing intellectuals. I am reminded of Winston Smith’s colleague at the Ministry of Truth, in 1984, who loves Big Brother too much and will likely get purged faster than someone who makes a minor slip up. Authoritarians want glum acceptance, not zealots.

Philosophically well-read useful idiots

The New Right has a well developed and complex narrative, which is also really scary when you look closely at their disdain for liberal democracy. They might be against globalisation, Reaganomics and the runaway power of big tech, and picking up support from disaffected lefties, but this makes them a better-read BNP and not a movement that will improve the world. 

What is most significant is that their narrative is spreading in American conservative circles and may well replace the Reagan era neo-liberal narrative as the dominant one on the right. Those of us on the left should be wary of this and be aware of how dangerous these people are in their quest for absolute power.

Despite their well developed and complex narrative, their professional appearance, air of cool and philosophical insight, they are often useful idiots for Trump and his simple right-wing conspiracy theories about stolen elections. They indulge this and other culture war bullshit to get attention. Ultimately it may destroy them, but they may destroy liberal democracy first.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

Ecofascism, Malthusian economists and why we need less fearful stories about the environment

Fear is a powerful motivating force. The fear of Covid-19 made us change our entire society very rapidly from one that seemed perfectly designed to spread the virus to one that is perfectly designed to contain it. 

It makes sense that fear would be a strong enough motivator to do the kind of society wide changes that are necessary to stop a climate disaster. The data tells a simple story: that if we don’t change our behaviour soon there will be huge impacts and massive suffering caused by climate change. Amping up the fear of this makes sense as a strategy to encourage the changes that are needed to prevent a climate catastrophe.

This seems self-evident, but decades of raising awareness in the hope that fear of a climate disaster would lead to a more environmentally friendly society have not worked. The story being told by the environmental movement has been consistent, but temperatures and CO2 levels keep rising.

Avoiding an oncoming train

A report from Futerra entitled Sell the Sizzle outlines the problems with a story that uses fear as a motivator for environmental action. The fear of danger is only a good motivator if the way to avoid danger is clear. The fear of an oncoming train works well as a motivator to avoid being hit by a train as the solution is simple: get off the train track.

A more recent example is Covid-19. Fear of coronavirus (and what it can do to society if it spreads unchecked) created social change because it's clear what you need to do to stop the spread of the virus: stay home. It’s that simple.

Sell the Sizzle says that when the solution to the frightening thing is not clear, the fear response produces a sense of resignation rather than action. Narratives about how we’re all doomed unless we change our lifestyles don’t work if it's not clear what we need to do.

Climate stories and white nationalism

The narrative of doom and gloom used by the environmental movement is creating more problems than just failing to motivate the change to society we need. It’s also feeding into the rise of far-right politics and white nationalism.

In an article for Gizmodo, Brian Kahn outlines the ways in which white nationalists have been using climate rhetoric. He describes Patrick Crusius, a white nationalist who killed 23 people in a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, and a manifesto he posted on 8chan that contains “ideas central to the mainstream environmental movement.”

Crusius wrote: “[O]ur lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources.”

The rise of ecofascism

Kahn explains how rhetoric like that used by Crusius is part of a new trend in far-right politics towards “ecofascism,” a right wing ideology that links white nationalism with a twisted form of environmentalism. What ecofascism and the mainstream environmental movement have in common is they both tell a story of a society that is sick, dying and ultimately doomed. Both say: through our decadence we are destroying the world and we need to turn the clock back to a simpler, better time to avert a disaster.

The idea that stories about a looming environmental disaster should fuel the far-right makes sense when you think about how people react when they’re afraid. Fear of something bad happening can be a good motivator, to make someone stop smoking or go to the gym more, but fear also brings out the worst in us. It makes us act suddenly, or do things that if we were calmer we wouldn’t do.

Fear leads to other negative emotions such as anger and hatred. Anger at whoever caused us to be afraid. Hatred of the people who have awakened these fears. This is especially true when our fear relates to things like our homes, our children or our futures. Things we feel strongly about. Things that stories about environmental doom and gloom play off.

If everyone is afraid of environmental devastation in our future then they’re likely to want someone to blame, someone to be angry at or someone to hate. For a lot of people that is the corporations who have poisoned the planet or the politicians who have failed to constrain them. However, for some people their fear about the future is causing them to hate the people they already fear and hate: immigrants, poor people and people of colour. This is the fuel that sustains ecofascism.

“Overindulging in apocalyptic thinking”

In the Gizmodo article above, Kahn interviews Betsy Hartmann, a professor emeritus at Hampshire College, who studies the connections between white nationalism and environmentalism. Hartmann said: “There is a deeply problematic, apocalyptic discourse about climate and conflict refugees that is quite common in liberal policy circles and even documentaries.”

She also said: “The environmental movement in the U.S. has, I would say, overindulged in apocalyptic thinking for a long time. There’s that kind of apocalyptic bridge and then the nature-race-purity bridge. What’s so horrifying and shocking to me is that these [far-right] manifestos are openly Malthusian environmentalist arguments. I don’t think we saw that quite as much before in the armed white nationalist movement.”

18th century economists and 21st century problems

Mentioning Thomas Robert Malthus is interesting. Malthus was a cleric and economist who had “ideas” about the problems of a growing population. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus set out his thesis that people, mainly poor people, would breed and breed and there would not be enough food. 

Malthus predicted mass starvation in the near future and said that charity, or state aid, to help the poor would only make things worse as any attempt to alleviate the suffering of the poor would lead to more poor people and thus not enough food. The solution, according to Malthus, was to stop people breeding so much.

A lot of problematic environmental stories that are fueling ecofascism are descended from Malthus’s ideas. When we tell stories about how there aren’t enough resources on planet Earth to sustain the human race at the rate at which we consume, we risk drifting into telling Malthusian stories about how the problem is that there are too many people. This leads people to suggest 18th century economic solutions to 21st century problems, i.e. there should be less people. It’s easy to see how this fuels ecofascism.

A question of distribution

The problem with Malthus’s work is that it’s too mathematical. He only considered that there were too many people and not enough food. He didn’t look at the social or political reasons why there wasn’t enough food. He didn’t consider distribution or power structures that keep people hungry. 

Eleanor Penny said it best in a recent essay on Malthus when she said: “His problem is more fundamental: he framed human suffering as purely a scientific and mathematical question - recasting the effects of a brutal economic system as the dispassionate mechanics of nature. He rewrote a political problem of production and distribution as a biological problem of reproduction and consumption - distracting from its causes, exculpating its architects from any responsibility, and blinding us to possible solutions.”

Modern Malthusian environmental stories

The environmental stories we tell risk drifting into these overly simplistic Malthusian narratives that can fuel ecofascism. Stories that paint a picture of a world where poor people of colour have been driven from their homes by a climate disaster and have to move to richer, whiter nations are Malthusian.

These stories make us - those of us in wealthy countries - worry about how our nation will accommodate climate refugees. They make us worry that there won’t be enough to go around in the climate-addled future. They make us frightened of poor people, people of colour and migrants. They fuel ecofascism.

We tell these stories with good intentions, to motivate people to change the world for the better, but stories about climate refugees are only fueling the fear of migrants that spread white nationalism and fascism. If the story is that the problem with the environment is that there are too many people, then we all know what a fascist solution for the problem of too many people is.

Hartmann said when interviewed by Kahn: “Using this highly militarized and stereotyped Malthusian discourse about poor people of color is dangerous and counterproductive.” She added that: “I would say the internet and right-wing media certainly plays a role in spreading them. But we can’t ignore how Malthusian ideas about overpopulation and the environment are taught in high schools all over the United States.”

From Malthus to Michael Moor

The lesson to learn is that we need to tell stories about the environment that are more complicated. Stories that take into account social and political issues and not just the fact that we are consuming too much or that there are too many people.

There is a serious risk of the stories we tell about the environment - with the best of intentions of improving the world for everyone - spread a message that white nationalists and ecofascists can use to spread their ideas. Penny said: “Everywhere we read lazy affirmations that we are the problem; humanity and its fatal tendency to multiply is plundering the earth of its natural wealth.” Even Michael Moore is at it in his new documentary Planet of the Humans, which lays the blame for the worsening environment on there being too many people.

Somewhere to jump to

As the Sell the Sizzle report found, promoting fear without a plan a clear plan for what we’re changing into to avoid disaster doesn’t work. We can’t jump out of the way of the train without somewhere to jump to. If we are going to use fear of an environmental disaster in the stories we tell to motivate change then we need to identify where we’re jumping to. If it’s not clear, people will blame the wrong people or people in general for the looming environmental disaster, or reach for the usual scapegoats.

We need somewhere to jump to. We need to talk up the positive aspects of the new society that we are going to build that will be fairer, greener, healthier and happier.

Jumping towards a solarpunk future

Recent examples of stories about positive vision of a future can be found in solarpunk: an art, literary and design movement that is centered showing what a greener, fair future might be like. Its rebellion against the dystopian futures of cyberpunk, a genre very much concerned with frightening narratives about environmental devastation. Solarpunk gives us something to aspire to whilst showing us what a better future would be like.

There are many problems with fearful environmental narratives. They don’t motivate us to change society for the better, they promote at best nihilism about the future and at worst ecofascism. We need better environmental stories.

The solution to too much pessimism is some optimism. We don’t need stories with a naive optimism that things will just get better. We need stories that say that if we all pull together, a better world for everyone can be achieved.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

The growing support for fascism should scare us all

Bookmarks on Bloomsbury Street in London is a left wing institution. For those not familiar with London's Premier socialist bookshops, I highly recommend a visit. The shop stocks a wide selection of books on left politics from histories of the Russian Revolution to books on women's liberation and trans rights. It sells magazines, journals, pamphlets and second-hand books, in a small space that has reading chairs and soft jazz music on the stereo. It is an oasis of calm reflection next to Tottenham Court Road station.

It was also the subject of an attack by mask-wearing fascists, who tore up books and intimated staff. This was a clear attempt to intimidate and silence the left. It’s strongly linked to the growing confidence and support for the far right in Britain. From Free Tommy Robinson to Boris Johnson insulting women who wear the Niqab, hatred is rising and fascists are benefiting from it. This is something that should worry us all.

Fascist is not a word I use lightly, but it does apply here. The word is overused and members of the far right don't have to be fascists to be scary. Fascism is like pornography, a terrible system to base a government on. Also like pornography, it's very difficult to define but we all know it when we see it.

Understanding exactly what fascism is can be difficult. There are many competing definitions. Benito Mussolini said he was fascism’s only theorist and when asked to define fascism he always gave different answers. Writing a clinical definition of fascism is very difficult, but it’s plain to see that people who attacked a bookshop, that sells books they disagree with, are fascists. Bullying and intimidating people who have different political views to silence their free speech is fascism.

I can tell at least some of you are rolling their eyes at this point and thinking something along the lines of “what about all those left wing students on campuses that I keep reading about? They want to bully and intimidate people. They’re against free speech”. Well, a campaign to disinvite Germaine Greer from a lecture is not the same as people invading a shop and threatening staff. One is tinged with the very real possibility of actual violence. The other is using non-violent political actions to stop the spreading of transphobia.

What the left is having right now is a discussion about what the limits of speech should be. Everyone believes in some limits to freedom of speech, unless you think child pornography or printing your own pound sterling is completely okay. Should I be allowed to give a speech to my local conservative club on how Margaret Thatcher ruined Britain? Is denying me the chance to scream at local Tories infringing on my freedom of speech? Well, it is, but I still shouldn’t be allowed to yell obscenities at Tory members in their own club if they don’t want me to. There are limits to freedom of speech.

It’s important that we have the discussion about what the limit is. It’s happening in a messy disorganized way, which frightens some people, but important political discussions are rarely neat. I can’t talk politics with someone in the pub without it getting heated, so it’s going to get messy when all of society tries to talk about something difficult. This tough debate on the limits of free speech is clearly different to menacing people quietly buying books.

Fascism is a political movement that aims to replace the current political system with a different, parallel one. One that is authoritarian and violent. Fascism is moving political debate off the TV and Twitter and into a street brawl where the strong assert their political dominance through physical strength. Fascism isn’t a set of beliefs, but a way of doing politics that is different and more violent. This might not be what the people who attacked Bookmarks wanted, but it’s what they’re participating in.

As much as I enjoy an academic discussion of politics and trying to wrestle with the definitions of what is and isn't fascism, this discussion is removed from many people’s experience of it. Fascism isn’t a thing that only lives in political science textbooks. It’s in the streets kicking people in the stomach.

For the people being kicked in the stomach, the fact fascism is hard to define from a political science point of view is a pointless observation. Fascism is a real force in Britain and it targets the people who have the least power. Immigrants, non-White people, queer people. Muslims and Muslim women especially. These people have much less power than white, straight, male, atheists like myself. Fascism is terrorizing their communities. This attack on Bookmarks may have drawn our attention to it, but it’s been going on for a while and it's getting worse.

The forces of fascism in the UK are getting stronger, fuelled by hatred of immigrants and fear of Muslims. Fascism needs an enemy to fight in the streets, one with less power, and by exploiting hatred of minorities fascism spreads. Fascists are using the freedom of open platforms like Facebook and Twitter to connect and organise. Fascism has always had an undercurrent in the UK, but now it is a serious threat.

Sometimes when I read reports of what’s happening in America or Hungry and Poland, I have visions of John Snow coming down from the Wall to warn the rest of us in sunny King’s Landing. Meanwhile, the various factions of the left are fighting over who gets to sit on the Iron Throne. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important who sits on the Iron Throne. The Iron Throne is very significant, that’s why people are fighting over it. However, John Snow has come down from the Wall to tell us that the old enemy has returned, the enemy we thought was long dead. Not only are they back, but they’re strong and getting stronger. The old enemy doesn’t care about our fights and our differences. The old enemy is coming to kill us all. Unless we can stop them. 

I’m very worried about how fascism is growing in the UK, fuelled by those in the media and on social media who spout hatred aimed at those with less social power. I am worried about how many people don’t see the danger that is on the march. Are we going to go back to the 70s when the National Front openly marched through the street and racist attacks were a frequent occurrence? Or, are we entering some new hell, unlike anything we've seen before?

The Bookmarks attack show how bold fascists have become. If we don’t stop them, this will become much worse. I am very frightened.

Crowd image created by James Cridland and used under creative commons.

The return of fascism

Although the aftermath of Britain’s Brexit vote still dominates the news, it’s not the only story unfolding in Europe right now. A shadow has been cast across the continent, a shadow that has stretched from the Turkish border to the arctic circle. This shadow is the return of fascism to Europe.

Nationalism, xenophobia and authoritarianism are rising at an alarming rate in Europe. In Greece there is the Golden Dawn, in Hungary we have Jobbik, France has a newly resurgent National Front, Finland has the True Finns and in Britain the remnants of the BNP and EDL are coalescing around Britain First. The rise of such parties is a serious problem that should terrify anyone who believes democracy and liberty.

The question is, what has caused this sudden rise of authoritarian parties? Is it because capitalism has become so unjust, and mainstream politicians so impotent, that voters are turning to extremes? This seems unlikely, as we have not seen a corresponding rise support for radical anti-capitalist parties. Is it that the memory of past fascist regimes has faded to the point where voters have forgotten the danger they present? Unlikely, as the memory of fascism in Europe runs deep.

Is this just an expression of human cruelty, people refusing to recognise the humanity of others and trying to make their lives more difficult? What is happening seems like more than sadism unleashed; it is organised and popular. The simple truth is that the defenders of democracy have no response to the return of fascism, because we do not understand its causes.

Fascism itself is difficult to identify, partly because overuse of the word has muddied its meaning. ‘Body fascist’ and ‘kitchen fascist’ are two such overuses cited by writer and broadcaster, Jonathan Meades, in his masterful documentary Ben Building on Benito Mussolini, as examples of how the word has lost all meaning. Fascism is not a perversion of the politics of the far right - or even the far left. Meades says: "if the extreme right is a race horse and the extreme left is a cart horse, what sort of horse is fascism? It is the sort of horse that is called a combine harvester, which is not a horse". This is the essence of what makes fascism different.

The problem is we think of fascism as a political system; it does not have an ideology. Every time Mussolini was asked what fascism was, he defined in a different way that was convenient to him at that point. Fascism is so new that it eradicates the past, but it also deeply rooted in the traditions of the past. Fascism desires total control through authority. Fascism does not accept criticism. Fascism does not object to murder or even mass death. Fascism turns its leaders into living gods. Fascism desires total war. Fascism glorifies death, especially death for country and leader. This is the anatomy of fascism, but it is not an ideology. Fascism is not the perversion of a democratic system. It is an entirely different system, like a monarchy or theocracy.

Are the collections of far right, nationalist and authoritarian parties I mentioned above fascist? They all have elements of fascism in them, but it is hard to tell if they are truly fascist because fascism is not one thing.

Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has become the Republican nominee for President by stirring up nationalism, racial strife and refusing to accept any criticism. The debate about whether he is fascist continues, as fascism is difficult to spot until you are in the midst of it. I would say that Trump has elements of fascism - certainly his authoritarianism, and refusal to accept criticism - but he is not a true fascist. Given more power and less oversight he could evolve into one.

If fascism is one thing then it is against democracy and individual liberty, and seeks to overturn these in its parallel system of government. What we are seeing across Europe in the rise of these new parties is a movement to suppress the liberty of certain people. These people are the Other. The migrants; the people who are different from the “indigenous population”. If liberty trumpets the rights of the individual, and fascism suppresses the rights of the individual, then the suppression of the individual rights of one group of people is as much fascism as the suppression of the rights of all people. It is in the racism of these new nationalist parties we can see origins of fascism.

Is modern fascism like old fascism? The essence of fascism is its totalitarian control of all of individuals. Vladimir Putin has created a cult of personality and effectively eliminated opposition in Russia. This is the direction many of these proto-fascist parties want to move in. They appear to be modern democratic movements, but their goal is to move their countries outside the democratic process so that they can brutalise the people they do not like. Fascism may have changed its face, embraced social media and contemporary crises in Europe, but at its root is still the desire to control others through aggression.

Pointing at people who are odious (like Trump) and calling them a fascist does not bring us any closer to understanding what fascism is or what these new authoritarian, aggressive and nationalist movements are. Those opposed to fascism and its constituent parts of hatred, violence, egomania, war and tyranny have no response to the return of fascism because of this lack of understanding. To defend democracy and liberty we must first understand what threatens it. Fascism should not be dismissed; it should be a warning sign that this is something we need to pay attention to.

Defenders of democracy and liberty need to think about what has brought us to this dangerous cross roads, where fascism has returned to Europe when we thought it had been banished to the history textbooks. Understanding fascism is the route to fighting it, and we need a means of fighting fascism.

Crowd image created by James Cridland and used under creative commons.