What is essential, before any consideration of the Nazi violence against racialized people that has been unleashed in England and Northern Ireland since July 30, is to clearly define what is happening. We are facing a violent political operation that is developing on several levels.from the streets to the networks, passing through the editorial offices of newspapers, radios, televisions and home studios of streamers and podcasters. That is why the definition of what is happening has an extraordinary political value, which is inseparable from its value of truth. A week later, we have to define the ongoing Nazi pogroms as a rehearsal for civil war against the racialized and foreign population in Great Britain. This means that we are neither facing a spontaneous revolt, nor a phenomenon of moral panic in the face of an execrable act such as the attack, on July 30, by a 17-year-old minor against a yoga and music event in Southport, in the North West of England, which resulted in 3 minors dead and 8 minors and two adults injured of varying severity. No. We are facing an operation prearranged in advance by a political and social coalition between members of the conservative establishment and the nationalist far right, media —from the BBC and private television channels like Channel 3 to the worst tabloids like the Daily Mirror— and what can be described as an operational network of Nazi and white supremacist individuals and nodes. The events in Southport have been just an excuse to implement a preconceived plan of violence and terror against racialised people, their property and any institution or company directly or indirectly linked to racialised and foreign people. The attacks throughout England and Northern Ireland have been coordinated through Telegram groups and incited on social media using the typical resources of an organised pogrom: fake news, manipulated videos, harangues of violence and extermination.
The supremacist social and political bloc has seen the opportunity to carry out a civil war test against a quarter of the population of the British Isles.
So, no spontaneity, no legitimate protest, no “indignant and confused populations”. The supremacist social and political bloc has seen the opportunity to put into practice a trial of civil war against a quarter of the population of the British Isles, without distinction or any other restraint than the weak and friendly police presence and, above all, the anti-fascist citizens who have been able to respond with direct confrontation with the Nazi groups and gangs, preventing in many cases their attempts at aggression and murder.
It is now necessary to put this unprecedented assault on the lives and safety of millions of racialised and foreign people in the UK into context, both in the present and in history. The progressive British and foreign media are putting the spotlight on the best-known far-right squadrists and the most notorious Nazi and supremacist organisations. And they are not wrong: the participation of supremacists such as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson), a squadrist and repeat offender with clear links to British and Israeli intelligence and security agencies, founder of the defunct English Defence League and Pegida UK, has been proven; alt-right influencers such as the Anglo-American and racialised Andrew Tate or the supremacist Andrew Grimes have spread lies about the identity of the perpetrator of the Southport murders; Nazi organisations such as Patriotic Alternative or the British Movement have coordinated and organised pogroms across England; Mainstream far-right extremists such as the tireless Nigel Farage, the undisputed protagonist and provider of the most right-wing and racist content in the Brexit campaign and today a member of parliament in Westminster for the racist and neoliberal Reform UK party, have been decisive in legitimising the pogroms, through the well-known tactics of “doubt and worry” and the constant reference of the facts to the “Islamic threat” that is looming over the country, very much in the style of Eduardo Zaplana who declared that “perhaps” 11M had been the work of ETA and the PSOE.
But pointing the finger at the squadrists and their parliamentary friends is not enough and limiting oneself to that constitutes culpable irresponsibility. In the long term, we have to refer to more than six decades of supremacist and colonial racism within the political and cultural bloc of the Conservative Party, which began with the exploitation and organization of Nazi pogroms against British Afro-Caribbeans. Let us recall the racist pogroms in Notting Hill, London, in which the fascist leader of the 1930s, Oswald Mosley, reappeared, now with his Union Movement, as well as the unequivocal White Defence League and its very current slogan, “Keep UK White”. But also the reaction of the leader of the right-wing Conservative Party in 1968, Enoch Powell, against the anti-racist legislation promoted by the Labour Party with the Labour Relations Act, and his famous speech in which he announced “rivers of blood” if the “black invasion” was not stopped. Powell’s verbal excesses ended his political career, but not his influence in the Conservative Party. The entire generation of young conservative leaders took up Powell’s legacy. Let us recall the participation of the young David Cameron in the campaigns in defence of apartheid in South Africa and against the boycott of the supremacist regime, a human rights campaign supported by the UN itself. British colonial racism is a constitutive element of its historical capitalism and its national identity, but since the second half of the 20th century it has occupied the centre of British politics, even though the Conservative Party formally adopted the multicultural approach as a model of governance and coexistence.
None of this would be possible without subscribers
However, In the short term, the ongoing pogroms are the result of two decades of institutional racism, xenophobia and anti-Islamism dating back to the imperialist war adventures of Tony Blair’s government in Afghanistan and Iraq. and the criminalisation of Islamic, Arab and Asia Minor people and communities in the UK. Conservative governments since Cameron have only deepened and intensified this comprehensive policy of racism, suspicion and segregation.
Non-white British people and communities have been singled out as actively responsible for the destruction of the country’s welfare system.
There are two key factors that explain this qualitative leap in Nazi and supremacist violence in the United Kingdom. On the one hand, the Brexit campaign, which had racist content from the very beginning and which has served as a justification for the state’s economic violence against the living conditions of the subaltern classes in the United Kingdom, whether racialized or not. The balance of these ten years is devastating. Today The UK is virtually a failed state by most conventional human development indices: infant mortality, poverty, hunger, social and health services, nutrition, suicides, care for the disabled, housing, transportation, wages, etc. A programmed war of the oligarchic and rentier classes has produced this result. On the other hand, and without a solution of continuity, this class war has been accompanied by a systematic racialization of the subaltern classes and a narrative in which Non-white British people and communities have been singled out as actively responsible for the destruction of the country’s welfare system and for parasitic and hostile behaviour towards coexistence and the common good. But there are two processes that, for four years now, have provided the ongoing Nazi pogroms with excellent windows of opportunity. The first is the criminal management of the Covid-19 pandemic by Boris Johnson’s government, which not only let hundreds of thousands of people die without strengthening health systems or worrying about epidemiological prevention measures, but also fuelled racist conspiracies from Downing Street about the origin of the virus. The second is undoubtedly the war regime consolidated in much of the world since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and which has turned the balance of 60 years of racist policies into a comprehensive regime. Likewise, the Western genocide in Gaza has given full freedom of action, on the networks and in the streets, to the British Nazi networks, with the invaluable collaboration and sympathy of the supremacist businessman Elon Musk, owner of the X platform, authentic primary responsibility for the success and legitimization of the Nazi attacksHis framing of events as the prologue to an “inevitable civil war” over white supremacy is not an outburst, it is a program.
Only the irresponsibility of central Europe, complicit and hypocritical in the policies that sow and nourish fascism, can think that police campaigns, moral condemnations and “community plans” are enough to deactivate the Nazi offensive.
However, the resistance of racialised classes has been activated. We have to remember the riots of August 2011 in London and other cities, which erupted in the wake of the shooting of Mark Duggan, a young father of four, by the London Metropolitan Police. 13 years later, not only has nothing changed, but everything has gotten worse for racialised people and communities in the UK. This time, Muslim communities, the anti-fascist movement, trade unions such as the Communication Workers Union and others, as well as the Labour left and other groups, have been activated in time to confront Nazi violence, on the streets, in the media and in the courts. Solo It is to be hoped that the response will serve to change the fear and initiate the process of convergence of groups, classes and subaltern communities to confront and fight the war against fascism and the British war regime..
At the same time, these Nazi pogroms are not a British peculiarity, but the increasingly frequent norm throughout the Western world. What distinguishes them is the qualitative leap they express, in the organisation, extent and intensity of violence. Only the irresponsibility of the extreme centre of Europe, complicit and hypocritical in the policies that sow and nourish fascism, can think that police campaigns, moral condemnations and “community plans” are enough to defuse the Nazi offensive. In the Western extreme right, groups, parties, media, individuals and their financiers are taking note of what is happening and are preparing the occasions to make the pogrom against racialised people and communities a central repertoire in the new phase. They have the environment of the war regime and the complicity of a good part of the media and political ecosystem of the Western business and political right, as well as police and judicial forces and corporations. It is suicidal and irresponsible to look the other way or to minimise what has happened. The open problem is how to resume the offensive and organize the success of the all-out war against fascism and supremacism, on the networks, the streets, the media, parliaments and the courts.
