What should you wear on an anti-immigration demonstration? It’s a tricky question. A crusader outfit? A Union Jack-emblazoned three-piece suit? Maybe dress up with your friends as the Cabinet in hotel concierge costumes, if you’ve got a flair for the sardonic.
At the start of the month, we had a nostalgic addition to the far-right wardrobe, as groups of men descended on Dover, where they blocked the road to the port (just a budget Insulate Britain, if you ask me) before acquiring greater numbers and moving to a Portsmouth hotel where, supposedly, newly-arrived asylum seekers were being housed. As it turns out, it was actually an under-nineteen Pakistani cricket team. Nice work, lads.
Plenty of the protesters dressed entirely in black with balaclavas covering their faces. How chic! And a felicitous choice, too — I’ve seen the beer bellies on some of them, and black is very slimming. But I’m strangely disappointed: the protesters all wore sweatshirts, T-shirts, or the odd tracksuit . They tell us our civilisation is at stake — would it have killed them to put a bit more effort in?
‘Oswald Mosley would not be impressed,’ was the verdict of the What’s Left? podcast, alluding to the late leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and his legions of ‘Blackshirts’ — supporters clad in military-style Black uniforms, of which these protesters’ outfits are surely redolent.
Maybe it’s frivolous to point out, of all similarities, the sartorial echoes between today’s anti-migrant forces and Mosley’s 1930s racists. But with regards to affecting some sort of political change, the BUF put this lot to shame. The Blackshirts’ paramilitary get-up was symbolic of the fascist movement’s proactive side. Here they were, regimented, disciplined: we have an agenda, they were saying, that we’re sufficiently organised to implement (heinous as that agenda was).
What pale imitations were seen in Dover. One woman who witnessed the antics explained that ‘there were no banners or slogans, just pure intimidation.’ They wore black, sure; but they hardly possessed the warewithal Mosley’s mob demonstrated — the military uniforms, the synchronised marches — as they roamed the streets and jeered at riot police. It brings to mind Frankie Boyle’s assessment of the first 2022 Tory leadership contest: “I just think we’re the first society in history to be ruled by incompetent fascists. Fascists are … normally organised; we’re gonna be going to the death camps in a replacement bus service.”
Perhaps political organisation is the stuff of memory. Trade union membership has declined precipitously, as has party membership (broadly). The Greens and Reform UK have both garnered recent political momentum, but the sort built on personal fascination with their leaders, rather than any social infrastructure to amass a political coalition.
This is hollow stuff. It’s little wonder people are pessimists and nihilists and disillusioned with politics: besides a tawdry vote, what political mechanics can people affect?
Academic Anton Jäger supposes we live in an era of ‘hyperpolitics,’ with high political engagement with little basis in institutions. Are the protests at Dover and Portsmouth where such politics end up? Perhaps we have no means of creating an organised political movement to implement any sort of agenda, whatever our politics. Maybe the slovenly-dressed, black-clad protesters seen on the South Coast are a useful symbol of the declining fruits borne from the way Britain conducts its politics: even the racists have let themselves go.
In The Second Coming, Modernist poet and fascist W. B. Yeats questioned what next step, rising from decay, ‘slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.’ These anti-immigration guys aren’t slouching towards Bethlehem. They’re just slouching.
Photo by James Eades on Unsplash.
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The far-right has lost it’s fascist flair
What should you wear on an anti-immigration demonstration? It’s a tricky question. A crusader outfit? A Union Jack-emblazoned three-piece suit? Maybe dress up with your friends as the Cabinet in hotel concierge costumes, if you’ve got a flair for the sardonic.
At the start of the month, we had a nostalgic addition to the far-right wardrobe, as groups of men descended on Dover, where they blocked the road to the port (just a budget Insulate Britain, if you ask me) before acquiring greater numbers and moving to a Portsmouth hotel where, supposedly, newly-arrived asylum seekers were being housed. As it turns out, it was actually an under-nineteen Pakistani cricket team. Nice work, lads.
Plenty of the protesters dressed entirely in black with balaclavas covering their faces. How chic! And a felicitous choice, too — I’ve seen the beer bellies on some of them, and black is very slimming. But I’m strangely disappointed: the protesters all wore sweatshirts, T-shirts, or the odd tracksuit . They tell us our civilisation is at stake — would it have killed them to put a bit more effort in?
‘Oswald Mosley would not be impressed,’ was the verdict of the What’s Left? podcast, alluding to the late leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and his legions of ‘Blackshirts’ — supporters clad in military-style Black uniforms, of which these protesters’ outfits are surely redolent.
Maybe it’s frivolous to point out, of all similarities, the sartorial echoes between today’s anti-migrant forces and Mosley’s 1930s racists. But with regards to affecting some sort of political change, the BUF put this lot to shame. The Blackshirts’ paramilitary get-up was symbolic of the fascist movement’s proactive side. Here they were, regimented, disciplined: we have an agenda, they were saying, that we’re sufficiently organised to implement (heinous as that agenda was).
What pale imitations were seen in Dover. One woman who witnessed the antics explained that ‘there were no banners or slogans, just pure intimidation.’ They wore black, sure; but they hardly possessed the warewithal Mosley’s mob demonstrated — the military uniforms, the synchronised marches — as they roamed the streets and jeered at riot police. It brings to mind Frankie Boyle’s assessment of the first 2022 Tory leadership contest: “I just think we’re the first society in history to be ruled by incompetent fascists. Fascists are … normally organised; we’re gonna be going to the death camps in a replacement bus service.”
Perhaps political organisation is the stuff of memory. Trade union membership has declined precipitously, as has party membership (broadly). The Greens and Reform UK have both garnered recent political momentum, but the sort built on personal fascination with their leaders, rather than any social infrastructure to amass a political coalition.
This is hollow stuff. It’s little wonder people are pessimists and nihilists and disillusioned with politics: besides a tawdry vote, what political mechanics can people affect?
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Academic Anton Jäger supposes we live in an era of ‘hyperpolitics,’ with high political engagement with little basis in institutions. Are the protests at Dover and Portsmouth where such politics end up? Perhaps we have no means of creating an organised political movement to implement any sort of agenda, whatever our politics. Maybe the slovenly-dressed, black-clad protesters seen on the South Coast are a useful symbol of the declining fruits borne from the way Britain conducts its politics: even the racists have let themselves go.
In The Second Coming, Modernist poet and fascist W. B. Yeats questioned what next step, rising from decay, ‘slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.’ These anti-immigration guys aren’t slouching towards Bethlehem. They’re just slouching.
Photo by James Eades on Unsplash.
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