Left-wing organisations are mobilising their members to march against the far-right group ‘Democratic Football Lads Alliance’ (DFLA) in London today in a demonstration of what the left can achieve in unity.
Following John McDonnell’s call for a new anti-nazi league, trade unions, Momentum, community leaders and other progressive organisations at the counter-demonstration in Westminster.
Momentum recently issued a video opposing the far-right. It went viral and has been viewed nearly three million times on social media.
The DFLA have previously organised violent marches in Sunderland, Birmingham and London, with support of UKIP leader Gerard Batten and former EDL leader Tommy Robinson.
In recent months there have been far-right attacks on mosques, senior trade unionists and a socialist bookshop in London.
A Momentum Spokesperson said:
In the US and Europe, the far-right is on the march. From Steve Bannon and Donald Trump in the US to the rise of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Marine Le Pen in France, the far right is at its strongest across the western world since the 1930s.
In the UK the Johnson-Mogg faction of the Tory party legitimise the far-right racism pedalled by Tommy Robinson and his supporters whilst groups such as the Democratic Football Lads Alliance (DFLA) are hijacking our football clubs to spread vile Islamophobia.
Last year saw a record number of anti-Muslim street attacks and the number of far-right terrorists in our prisons has tripled. Violent, far-right groups like the DFLA are a danger to our country. We cannot sit idly by whilst they mobilise…
The Labour movement must stand in firm opposition. We must oppose Tory racism in parliament, tackle fascist propaganda on social media and stand firm against far-right hooligans on the streets.
Working class socialists have a history of beating the far-right. At Cable Street against Mosley’s blackshirts, in Lewisham against the National Front and more recently in Dagenham where thousands of anti-fascist volunteers saw off Nick Griffin’s parliamentary run and made sure the BNP lost all 12 of their council seats.
We have a plan to rebuild Britain for the many, and that includes opposing the few who want to destroy it.
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I can imagine Breitbart reporting on this with their usual spin: ‘left wing thugs attack right wing protestors’. One actual Breitbart headline I remember reading was something like: ‘Left wing thugs attack Nazis’.
The ruling class will always prefer fascism over socialism.
This explains why the establishment and the likes of the BBC are offering platforms to the far right. They are paving the way.
Interesting label ‘progressive’, in Scotland that includes ‘Nationalism’, but here it’s whatever Lansman says it is.
Steve: I have no idea why, when I want to comment on your site, using google and from outlook, that I keep getting a 400 message stating a bad request, yet when I cut and paste into Firefox I can successfully post.
I have similar problems.
On the subject of the rise of the far right.
One only has to look at the shot of the DFLA marchers in your article to see that they are poor and at the end of their tether. Added to this they probably haven’t had much of an education. They are lashing out at whatever visibly signifies a change in their lives , as usual the newer, non white immigrants get most of the the blame for our failed economic and social system and harsh government .
We need to engage these people.
That is much easier said than done Monika.It is also true that the only thing they respect is power.
Spot on Monika. They can change and I know this from experience. I know of several former criminally violent political thugs who have turned around completely. We really have to get this lot out and into jail. Educate subtlely. Regards.
Yeah look at the state of them. What a bunch of Fred Perry stereotypes!
I wonder if there’s really any point in trying to engage with them though.
I remain far more concerned about the fascistic, or call it increasingly totalitarian if you prefer, government/corporate/banking alliance that controls much of our lives including our digital communication. Plutocrats running hegemonic social platforms are now working closely with governments and neocon think tanks.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/facebook-partners-hawkish-atlantic-council-nato-lobby-group-protect-democracy/242289/#.W8HFGEpnlm8.twitter
Yes oppose the far right on the streets but where is the outcry about F. Book deleting 800 pages and accounts yesterday? Many of these left and right accounts were dissident, anti-imperialist and monitoring and documenting government repression and corporate crimes.
The Democratic Football Lads Alliance! Really! Speaking as a member of the HAWA (Hairy Arsed Working Class), I would suggest that the only way to deal with these beer bellied, bald headed, middle aged losers, is to ignore them.
Most of these “far right activists” are only there for the crack.
No deeply-held political commitment, just the enjoyment of mob power they discovered as football hooligans.
On their own they’re shrinking violets incapable of articulating a McDonald’s order, much less a cogent political theory.
We have the numbers to stop them on the streets and we will soon have an inclusive, caring, socialist society able to give them the education they missed first time.
Yes the Far Right Barbarians are the
“emergency committee of capital” and as political imbeciles try to set diverse working people against each other because they are insular, may have never made the effort to mix cos ‘they don’t like Black and Asian people etc’ but mixing can be a powerful human experience and the rich and powerful literally laugh all the way with the bankers!
Far Right US Billionaires are to pump billions into Far Right Barbarian parties in Europe and Barbarian individuals including here so we need to get organised.
But of course some have tried to tie us down with bureaucratic procedures but perhaps they play a dangerous game with a few political imbeciles even chanting “Labour off our streets!”
But perhaps we need to be on the streets and to even to protect these few political simpletons from themselves.
Diverse working people unite!
I think marching against the far right is a very bad strategy. let the right march and give themselves bad press. But when we march we look like them. The electorate equate us with them – two sides of the same coin. We are the ‘centre’ ground now.
pimatters, I disagree – I think something like “Where were the Left?” would be the MSM’s and eventually the electorate’s response to our letting neo-Nazis goose-step unopposed.
The right wing MSM will attack us with the same vitriol whether it’s for marching or for failing to march.
Strategy takes second place to the burden of principle anyway (or we’d be Tories) – opposing the far right wherever they raise their ugly heads is a duty.
An aside. Please could someone explain to me, an oldster, what/who “non binary people” are? Apparently they as a group were part of the anti fascist march. I’m afraid this sexual identity thing is doing my head in.
Perhaps “non-binary people” is a political position ‘identity’ then? I’m still no wiser if it is.
Maria
I don’t know and care even less! It’s just a made-up term for a made-up “condition”, otherwise known as attention-seeking narcissism.
Identity politics is what Noam Chomsky alluded to (perhaps unknowingly since the term hadn’t been coined yet) when he decried the increasing tendency of authority to kid the public they’re living in a democracy by reducing the spectrum of acceptable debate to a tiny sliver, but then allowing a lot of debate within that sliver, thus letting the really important stuff like the wealth gap go unaddressed.
It’s still a load of shite, though!
Thanks for replying.
In the end if you haven’t got a safe, warm and secure roof over your head, enough to eat and drink (not talking alcohol here) and health and social support when needed, throughout your life, then you are going to suffer and even be left to die under the current extreme neoliberal profit driven system.
A system that siphons extreme wealth from society to the few and leaves people to die on the streets and in extreme poverty and hardship and profits from murdering and impoverishing others around the world and destroying ecosystems is a failed system. Humans created such uncivilized and cruel systems and humans can change them if the will and humanity is there. TINA is a con and is taking us back to a Victorian like or far worse era where we are commodities or waste to the 1% and those serving the system.