https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/left-must-understand-and-challenge-rights-demagogy

WELL over 100,000 people gathered in London last weekend under the banner of “Tommy Robinson” — actually Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — a notorious and violent fascist and grifter, with several criminal convictions.

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The racist core of Robinson’s support is a small minority in most communities, and its attempt to stir up violence generally falls flat.

Saturday’s rally was actually called not to protest about the arrival of asylum-seekers on our shores, the issue which Reform’s Nigel Farage had been majoring on all summer. Its main theme was, ostensibly, “free speech.”

And underlying it was certainly an expression of popular powerlessness and national decline, sentiments which powered the Brexit vote in 2016 but which have only been exacerbated since, since the assertion of sovereignty does not in itself guarantee that it will be wielded to any good effect.

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In reality, the left has always focused on winning arguments rather than banning contrary views, but it needs to double down on that approach today as part of the general defence of democracy.

The particular argument it urgently needs to prevail in today is the responsibility for the national malaise affecting so many areas of ordinary people’s lives. It is not down to the impoverished refugees arriving by boat.

It is down to the ruling class and the global super-rich, seen fawning on the leader of the far right internationally, Donald Trump, in Windsor Castle this week.

It is they who have spent 15 years slashing living standards to protect profits, who squeeze public services dry to promote private interests, and who slash support for the neediest the better to fund their imperialist aggression abroad.

What Farage and Robinson are doing is, in large part, a manoeuvre of deflection. Farage is himself a very wealthy Thatcherite, while Robinson is the well-funded plaything of the multibillionaire manchild Elon Musk. Their populist demagogy is just a mask.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/left-must-understand-and-challenge-rights-demagogy