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A ‘pro-Brexit’ demonstration, organised by key forces in the emerging far-right Islamophobic street movements, brought 2,500 racists and fascists onto the streets of London on Saturday, 23 June.
Islamophobia, extreme hatred of migrants and hard opposition to Jeremy Corbyn and the Left ran right through the mobilisation.
The march from Victoria station to Parliament showed the huge threat posed by a resurgent far-right – but also the rivalries within their ranks.
‘Unity demonstration’
The protest was fronted by Richard Inman, a fundamentalist Christian
The far-right mobilisation was hailed by the speakers as a ‘unity demo’, bringing together Inman’s group, the DFLA and their erstwhile split, the Football Lads Alliance (FLA).
The DFLA and FLA parted ways in 2017 after their founder, John Meighan, faced widespread allegations of financialmalpractice and theft of cash from ‘charity’ drives. But there were also deeper arguments about the strategy for the far-right street movement.
At the core of the DFLA are football hooligan firms with known neo-Nazi links. Outfits like the Chelsea Headhuntershave historic links to Combat-18, the Hitler-worshipping terrorist gang, and hope to provide the muscle for the growing far-right. They favoured a much more openly racist approach and increasingly fanatical attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party and the wider Left.
At the end of a vicious months-long battle over which organisation would become the main racist street organisation in the U.K., the FLA were forced to liquidate themselves into the DFLA after their Manchester outing in May was outnumbered and humiliated by a Stand Up To Racism counter-protest.
‘Free Tommy Robinson’
Despite the bad blood, the DFLA and FLA are back together again for now – but their mobilisation today shows the continuing rivalries within the far right.
The top figures within the DFLA have been locked out of the leadership of the movement around Tommy Robinson, the imprisoned founder of the fascist English Defence League, which brought up to 15,000 racists and fascists into the streets of Central London two weeks ago.
Key Tommy Robinson allies, like former Breitbart editor Raheem Kassam, are trying to retain a superficial veneer of respectability by shipping in far-right politicians from Europe, while keeping the organised thugs and neo-Nazis within the DLFA at arms lengths.
This presents a problem for the DFLA, who know that Tommy Robinson has emerged as a hero of the far-right and a lightning rod for racists who want to come out into the streets.
The mobilisation today shows the DFLA are still a major threat with significant mobilising power, but also that the next official Tommy Robinson rally on Saturday 14th July in Whitehall is now the key date towards which the far-right is building.
A big counterdemonstration is the best way to beat back the rise of the fascists – and a huge demonstration on the day before, against Donald Trump’s visit to the U.K., would be a big blow against the far-right.
George Soros, the ‘Euro-Communist’ plot and fascist conspiracy theories
Despite claiming to be a mobilisation against the ‘betrayal of Brexit’ by the political establishment, the biggest cheers from the crowd went up for speakers like UKIP leader Gerard Batten, who called for an end to ‘mass migration’ and its ‘destruction of British culture’.
Batten is desperate to rebuild his shattered party, which has suffered defeat after defeat in national and local elections over the last 12 months. He called for people to join UKIP to huge applause.
UKIP flags dominated parts of the demonstration. The party had hired a mobile hoarding for the march which ragedagainst ‘mass migration’ and the EU ‘empire’.
And other far-right activists had rented a decommissioned Bomb Disposal van with a sound system that they used to blast racist slogans at passers-by.
Meanwhile, former UKIP MEP Janice Atkinson took to the stage to denounce the European Union as a communist plot.
In a disturbing echo of Hitler’s Nazis, she claimed that the Jewish financier George Soros was at the head of a ‘Euro-Communist’ conspiracy to flood the West with Muslim refugees.
Talk a shadowy elite headed by a Jewish banker will give succour to groups like Generation Identity, a white nationalist organisation who brought their distinctive yellow-and-Black flags onto the demo.
Generation Identity, who are themselves led by racist richkidslike disgraced city banker Tom Dupre, see big street mobilisations as a recruiting ground to their vile fascist ideology. GI alleges that ‘globalist big business’ and the Left are conspiring to wipe out white people through mass immigration and racial intermixing.
Also present were members of the Islamophobic For Britain party. Their leader, Anne Marie Waters, made her first public appearance after securing a humiliating 266 votes in last week’s Lewisham East by-election.
She was joined by Eddy Butler, a central figure in For Britain and a former Nazi British National P
All out against the fascists on July 14th
Saturday’s hatefest was large and shows the continuing danger as the far-right and the fascists regroup.
The DFLA announced a new London demonstration for mid-September and may call regional mobilisations.
But it’s clear the far-right is now gearing up for a big rally in support of Tommy Robinson on July 14th at Downing Street. They’ll hope to bring together the Football Lads thugs with the international far-right, in a bid to repeat their success earlier this month.
This will give space for neo-Nazis and white nationalists to recruit to their disgusting organisations.
The entire anti-racist movement must now concentrate on building a weekend of fightback in three weeks’ time, with a huge demonstration on July 13th against World’s Number One Racist Donald Trump, as well as a counter-protest against the far right the next day on 14 July that can push back against the growth of the racist-right.