But today the word is being used expansively in ways that very inaccurately and unhelpfully conflate everything from neo-Nazis and white supremacists to people who voted leave in the 2016 referendum. When being interviewed about President Donald Trump’s recent visit to the U.K., Rupa Huq MP referenced the Leave vote in warning of us being on a slippery slope towards fascism.[...]
George Orwell in the early 1940’s said “the word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’”. How true. The discourse around Brexit has become so polarised, so toxic, that the word is being thrown around with abandon by senior politicians as a means of shutting down debate and extolling one’s own virtuosity.
This is dangerous. We know from the ensuing research that the most significant issue driving the 2016 referendum result was concern over immigration. Inevitably, this has come to frame much of why people voted to leave the EU. In the simplified world of social media Brexit = Racism. And yet, this has been a missed opportunity to have a proper discussion about immigration which has largely been ignored by political parties of all persuasions over the last three years. These are issues that we should feel a lot more comfortable talking about. If we do not retain them within mainstream discourse, then we surrender them to the extremes. [...]
To add insult to injury, to be a member of the forgotten tribe is also to be branded a “fascist” when the debate becomes uncomfortable. And there has been a definite shift on social media from the use of the phrase “I’m not racist but...” to “If that makes me racist, then I’m a racist”. Just look at the sense of threat in response to recently reported incidents of an army veteran and Brexit Party supporter having a milkshake thrown over him, a male being called “Nazi Scum” and again having a milkshake thrown over him at a Trump rally, and an elderly male Trump supporter being pushed over at a demonstration. What this tells people is that you’re either with us or against us. And if you’re against us then you’re fair game. We should all be concerned by the escalating levels of violence. Britain feels like a febrile environment at the moment, like a tinder-box of rage that will only take a nudge for us to see wide scale public disorder implications.
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