Zarah Sultana made a surprise appearance on the main stage at Forwards, delivering a passionate speech to the crowd before introducing Nia Archives.
The MP for Coventry South resigned from the Labour Party in July in order to co-found a new grassroots party with fellow independent MPs including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
On the main stage, Sultana said: “A lot of people are fed up. I am too. Fed up with being told that this is just how things are. Fed up with being asked to settle for less. Fed up with the idea that the best we can do is manage decline, implement austerity, blame migrants, Muslims and trans people, enable genocide in Gaza, and have fascism growling at the door.
“But here’s the truth: politics is not only what happens in parliament or on the news. Politics is us. It’s here. It’s all of you.
“It’s people deciding they won’t accept the world as it is. It’s people daring to imagine the world as it should be.
“Every great change we’ve ever seen, from rights at work, to votes for women, to the NHS didn’t come from the top down.
“It came because ordinary people stood up and said: we aren’t going to take this anymore.
“And when people come together with that conviction, something powerful happens: hope.
“Not the shallow kind that tells us to just wait and see, but the deep kind that comes when we believe we can build something new, and we start doing it.”
Robert Jenrick pictured with Eddy Butler, former member of Nazi terror group Combat 18
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has attended a demonstration organised by a neo-Nazi party and posted a picture of himself with the founder of a terror organisation.
On Sunday evening, Jenrick attended a rally organised by members of the Homeland Party in Epping. The event was addressed by Callum Barker, a member neo-Nazi group Homeland who have a history of endorsing racism and terrorism.
Jenrick later posted pictures of himself with demonstrators, which included Eddy Butler, one of the founders of neo-Nazi terror gang Combat 18. The numerals in Combat 18 refer to the first and eighth letters of the alphabet, referencing the name of Adolf Hitler.
After the demonstration, Butler posted a picture of himself standing directly behind Jenrick with the text, “At the Bell Hotel riding shotgun for Robert Jenrick.”
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Legitimising fascist violence
Jenrick’s attendance at the demonstration legitimises a growing fascist movement that is targeting refugees across the South East and around the country.
Many participants in Sunday’s Epping demonstration had been at a protest earlier in the day in Canary Wharf, where men in balaclavas clashed with police outside asylum-seeker accommodation at the Britannia Hotel.
Military vehicles with the Washington, DC National Guard are parked near the Washington Monument on August 12, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images)
It’s here. What should Democrats be doing now?
It’s here. Stop all the useless debate. Whether it’s a consolidating dictatorship, as Rachel Maddow says, or an illiberal democracy, or an electoral autocracy…
If masked and plainclothes secret police arresting undocumented immigrants, students, and citizens alike, including members of Congress, aren’t a clear enough indication, then the military takeover of Washington DC, citing lies about the crime rate, is.
America has become a fascist state. How fascist is irrelevant; the question serves only as an excuse, a way to tag out and wait for things to blow over. It’s not that bad.
So it’s here. It’s here thanks to President Donald Trump. What did we expect? It’s here thanks to his enablers, most prominent among them, Republican members of Congress. It’s here thanks to Republican voters and nonvoters alike, whose apathy in the last election should not be forgiven.
If anything, with approval ratings rock bottom, Democrats would be showing that they aren’t as feeble as they currently are and have been.
It’s here thanks to the ignorant and indifferent, the dumb and deluded, the hateful, scornful, spiteful, shortsighted, racist, militaristic, misogynistic, misguided…
Democrats—failed candidates and sitting representatives—are at fault too. For never putting up an effective fight despite all the warnings they gave us, despite all the warnings we gave them, pleading for proper change; who, even out of power, continue to resist with little ambition or desperation, strongly-worded letters a testament to what they are or have become: slaves to donors, the corporate class, and their own irrelevancy. Hello, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)
This needs to change. It’s starting to, maybe. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered a bit more fight, but he feels so very performative, both eyes on the presidency. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker feels a bit more honest—maybe it’s the belly—but as a billionaire, he’s also part of the problem.
A few others seem genuinely genuine, and are channeling, for once, the frustration of those they represent—or hope to—which happens also to be their own, rather than chiding us or assuring us that all is well. Hello, Zohran Mamdani.
So there’s some hope, however slim. The midterms loom. Republicans are scared. Trump aside, whose handling of the Epstein scandal has isolated even the most MAGA, his policies are unpopular. They will only grow more unpopular as their effects kick in; they can’t all be delayed until after the midterms. The reality of them will only grow more stark as ordinary people begin to suffer and Republicans and Fox News struggle to skew the story, losing track of their own lies. But only if Democrats make a concerted effort to connect the dots.
Avoid Town Halls, Republicans have been advised. It’s easy to see why. The few representatives to hold them regardless have been heckled and booed, called out for what they are: liars. Shameful. They’ve been called worse.
They’re scared. Which is why the party is trying to gerrymander their way out of a potential midterm defeat, to secure the one-party system they crave, a facade of democracy that will allow them, like other autocracies, to persist.
It’s here where Democrats and even Independents—elected representatives and prospective ones, organizers, activists, celebrities, podcast hosts—should be filling the void. Be for once bold. Brave. Enough with echo chambers. Strike deep into the heart of Trump country. Spark debate and controversy; garner headlines by simply being there, everywhere there’s a microphone and a too-large, red hat, at least some of which are definitely made in China.
Book Town Halls and adjacent venues; stage protests and counterprotests; tour as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.) did, albeit under a less pretentious title… Fighting Oligarchy is like the polar opposite of Save Democracy, and we know how well that went… and explain, in the simplest terms, what we know is concerning people.
Name every single broken promise. Follow with the Epstein scandal. Repeat Trump’s own words: “terrific guy,” “A lot of fun to be with.” Show him partying with the pedophile. Over and over again. Show how he’s just another golf-loving nepo baby, a member of the Swamp as well the cabal of pedophiles—at least a sympathizer—he was entrusted to destroy; has he not floated a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell? Moved her to Club Fed? Hint how he’s complicit, harnessing the conspiracy theories his supporters have themselves created. Challenge them to find, if they can and want to, the most twisted justifications.
There’s just so much to go on outside the more nuanced ways in which the current administration is unraveling not just democracy—which we don’t even need to mention—but what truly makes America great: economic opportunity, stability… Betrayal cuts deep.
Let the wounds fester, and we might find that something resonates, ripples outwards, flowers, flourishes, that seed of doubt; even if the most dug in refuse to admit that they were wrong, scammed, grifted… then at least the more moderate or indifferent can come around, inspiring, if not a popular revolt, than enough votes or nonvotes to turn the tide when the time comes.
If anything, with approval ratings rock bottom, Democrats would be showing that they aren’t as feeble as they currently are and have been. That, even if they believe in progressive policies more conservative voters may not agree with, like trans rights, women’s rights, due process for undocumented immigrants, or stricter gun laws, they also believe in a familiar, free, and safe, bountiful America.
So it’s here: fascism. The best we can do now is ensure it’s short lived.
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Soldiers from the U.S. Army National Guard 42nd Infantry Division walk through streets in Washington, D.C. on June 13, 2025. (Photo: Bryan Dozier/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
“Trump’s move to mobilize the National Guard against Americans in D.C. is another telltale sign of his authoritarian ambitions,” said Democratic Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh.
U.S. President Donald Trump is planning to send up to 1,000 members of the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, D.C. this week in a move that critics are warning is another step toward authoritarian rule.
In a post on his Truth Social page on Monday morning, Trump framed the decision to deploy the National Guard as necessary to combat crime in the nation’s capital.
“Washington, D.C. will be LIBERATED today!” Trump claimed. “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN! The days of ruthlessly killing, or hurting, innocent people, are OVER!”
However, the president’s claim that the National Guard is needed to protect Washington, D.C. residents from purportedly unprecedented criminal violence does not hold water given that the city has seen a dramatic fall in crime recently. As noted by CBS News reporter Scott MacFarlane, violent crime in Washington, D.C. has fallen by 26% over the last year, highlighted by total homicides declining by 12% year-over-year.
In analyzing the news, some legal analysts were quick to label Trump’s latest move a power grab that was wholly unjustified by the facts on the ground.
Joyce Vance, the former United States attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, argued on her Substack page that Trump’s decision to plow ahead with deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C. shows he “is going full bore to push the power of the presidency, even if it means ignoring actual statistics on crime that contradict his stated justification for acting in the nation’s capital.”
Vance added that Trump’s actions in this instance also need to be understood as part of a broad sweep by the president to seize more power for the executive branch.
“In case you’re wondering, just six months into his second term, Trump holds a commanding lead in the number of executive orders issued,” she wrote. “These statistics from The American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara show the totals for each president in light blue, so, in the first six months of his second term, Trump has signed 186 orders, compared to a four-year total of 162 for Joe Biden.”
Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck explained on his own Substack page that Trump does have some significant powers when it comes to deploying the D.C. National Guard in the nation’s capital, although he said that the law clearly prevents him from “federalizing” the city as he has threatened to do in the past.
“The president does have two important authorities when it comes to ‘local’ law enforcement in the District of Columbia: He can use the (small) D.C. National Guard in circumstances in which he probably couldn’t use any other military personnel; and he can require the use of [the Metropolitan Police Department] ‘for federal purposes’ for up to 30 days,” he wrote. “That’s not nothing, but it also isn’t anything close to some kind of federal takeover of the nation’s capital.”
To actually do a federal takeover of Washington, D.C., Vladeck continued, the president would need to get an act passed through Congress that would almost certainly be filibustered in the U.S. Senate.
Legal experts weren’t the only ones alarmed by the planned Trump National Guard deployment.
Karen Attiah, a columnist for The Washington Post, warned her Bluesky followers against writing off the deployment as an effort by the president to distract from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
“Threats of the militarization of cities—including D.C., which has been fighting for self determination for generations—isn’t a ‘distraction,’” she said. “It’s a massive, giant, red trial balloon for what an American president can do [in] YOUR city… I need people to wake up.”
Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Illinois, similarly warned that Trump’s National Guard deployment could be a blueprint for the rest of America.
“Trump’s move to mobilize the National Guard against Americans in D.C. is another telltale sign of his authoritarian ambitions,” she wrote on Bluesky. “But at some point signs of authoritarianism stop being signs and become symptoms of an autocratic regime. We’re far past that point now.”
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