The fascism is coming from inside the house

When I heard about an old friend of mine being arrested and held on remand for falling down a far right and drug-induced rabbit hole earlier this year (for trying to set fire to a 5G tower, attacking a police officer, and planning to set fire to an Indian restaurant), the first thought that came into my mind following the shock was: how lonely he had been.

I knew he lived in his parents’ basement, didn’t go out much and had struggled to establish himself as an artist, which was his dream. Over time he had lost himself to an online world that said white men like him were being held back; that they were being discriminated against by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) measures; that it was migrants’ and women’s fault that he was isolated, unsuccessful and unhappy. 

His isolation, intensified by Covid and lockdowns, meant he had no one in his life to challenge his ideas, no opportunity to find community. No sense of belonging.

Because of my past relationship to him, I have to look at him for what he is: a person (although a deeply disturbed one). At one point some years ago, he was a genuinely lovely, kind one, without an aggressive bone in his body. I’m not going to sit here and humanise fascist behaviour, but his story has helped me understand something about what is happening to men on a larger scale. 

Loneliness by design

Over this past weekend, we have had a very clear, very frightening sight of how this loneliness is being organised. History tells us that this loneliness and isolation is the engine of fascism. It is not accidental, nor spontaneous, but purposefully designed.

In parts of Dover and Portsmouth, hundreds of black-clad, masked men marched on the ports, demanding migrants arriving on small boats be “sent back”. Most of you will have seen the videos by now. Angry men, faces covered, hackles up, singing “Britain for the British”. 

The statement from Kent Police that this was somehow a “spontaneous” gathering and they knew nothing of it has already been debunked (not least by a Conservative MP). These men instead had gathered the night before in local villages, and were organised and ready to literally fight for their misdirected beliefs. 

And if you think that this somehow came out of nowhere, ideologically, just read the new Restore Britain statement on their “philosophy of national belonging” published just a few days before the Dover march and Portsmouth riots. It calls for “demographic evidence” to be used to cleanse the UK of at least 5 million black and brown people.

“A Restore Britain government will make demographic impact an explicit consideration as it relates to immigration policy. We will collect and publish objective demographic information and permit that evidence to be discussed openly. … Mass deportations, remigration, net negative immigration – call it whatever you want. That is Restore Britain’s position on immigration, and it will not change. The label is irrelevant. It is a policy that unapologetically defends our islands, our home, our demographic security, and our British citizens.”

Leader of Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe MP, defended the blackshirts as patriots. Haven’t we been here before?

It’s never been more clear that fascism is not just on the doorstep, but inside the house.

Organised Loneliness

This weekend is what organisation of this loneliness looks like. The great writer and theorist of fascism, Hannah Arendt, knew this well, drawing her lessons from how Nazi Germany organised its depressed, isolated population under a banner of “national belonging” that promised to undo the “punishment” meted out on Germany as a result of its loss in the First World War.

The School of Public Life, a critical education programme drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and Fred Dewey, have been articulating this threat about organised loneliness. They teach that it is far more dangerous than the arbitrary will of a single man, like my friend who lost his way. Its danger is that it, as they say, “threatens to ravage the world as we know it — a world which everywhere seems to have come to an end — before a new beginning rising from the end has had time to assert itself.”

This is something that we have learnt in the climate movement, and it is why some of us have pivoted to work on building democracy from the ground up, in real life, to create the spaces where people can come together and feel like they belong. To have a say and chip in their experience of the kind of country we want, and the kind of people we want to be. We don’t need a climate movement but an everything movement that rebuilds our country by dealing with poverty, racism, the climate crisis, and the epidemic of loneliness all at the same time.

Loneliness is, as Hannah Arendt taught us, the common ground for terror. As the School of Public Life puts it: 

“The essence for a totalitarian government is closely connected with the uprootedness and superfluousness which have been the curse of modern masses since the beginning of the industrial revolution.” 

Why is the BBC normalising fascism? 

Claiming these marches are to “protect women and girls” from illegal migration, these men insist they are good Christians, simply protecting British values, a very exclusive “our” way of life. 

What seemed unbelievable to me was how the media, as well as the police, responded. BBC News seemed quite happy to interview these men, broadcasting their vile and divisive views across national airwaves as though everything about it were perfectly normal.

Everything is not normal. 

It isn’t only the UK that is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness, and it isn’t even a new phenomenon. But it is most definitely here, driven by decades of neoliberal hollowing out of our ways of life, industries, high streets, pub culture, third spaces, and communities. All the ways that especially young and old men would gather. On top of that, we have social media and AI algorithms literally designed to provoke and amplify rage bait. This is turning the loneliness epidemic into something violent and unruly. What happens when men – or scared little boys – like this come together in droves to express that anger?

No, we are not safe

The women from Absurd Intelligence, and those of us of colour, can safely say we feel a hell of a lot less safe knowing these men are on our streets. In our pubs and supermarkets. Living next door to us. It’s been well documented that a very high percentage of men who gather in these marches have convictions for domestic violence against the women and girls they pretend to protect.

If it feels like the country is coming apart at the seams, that’s because it is. It has been for a long time and many in the black and brown community have predicted this outcome for years. 

If we don’t belong, we become extreme

The American academic Robert D Putnam’s research into the decline of social capital in the United States highlighted a yearning for belonging and place, which when thwarted led to fascism. He clearly states: “People divorced from community, occupation, and association are first and foremost among the supporters of extremism.”

The far-right know this, and what they offer in these marches is what these men desperately want (and we know this, because it is what all human beings want): collective belonging, camaraderie, purpose, and togetherness. And to those taking part, it feels joyful and fun. Joseph Gelfer has written about the fun and laughter he witnessed among the crowd on the Tommy Robinson Unite the Kingdom march. On Trevor Noah’s podcast ‘What Now?’ he spoke to Robert Putnam about his time on the Daily Show, attending Trump rallies in 2016 to interview people. When asked why they were there, their reasoning was less political, more for "the vibe".

Hannah Arendt also wrote about it, in Between Past and Future: 

“…From this perspective, we remain unaware of the actual content of political life—of the joy and the gratification that arise out of being in company with our peers, out of acting together and appearing in public, out of inserting ourselves into the world by word and deed, thus acquiring and sustaining our personal identity and beginning something entirely new.”

In a way, the content doesn’t matter to the participants. But the problem is, there are so few other offers, and almost no other political offer, to these men on the table for the kind of belonging and purpose they crave, this being part of something bigger, and new.

The answer – end loneliness

As blackshirts once again marched on British soil, the AfD in Germany won a regional election in Saxony in a shock landslide this weekend. Fascism is rising across Europe again.

We’ve talked about this before, but what’s happening to the far right in the UK is a direct import from fascism in the US. Similarly in Germany, where the AfD praised Elon Musk for helping them surge in the polls. 

The answer though is simple to define, if not to implement. We must knit back together our social fabric of belonging to each other, and build the spaces in which to do that. We must tackle loneliness and build a culture of belonging and acceptance for everyone across Britain.

Because these marches are weaponised and organised loneliness: organised by the fascists out of the lack of belonging in people's lives. So let’s remove the material out of which fascism fashions itself.