A golden age for fascism

The re-emergence of fascism in Britain is highly inconvenient for our political parties, it is a distraction from the election campaigns they are all so overly keen to begin. They deal with the BNP by ignoring it, by banning MEPs from parliament to make sure no one has to pass Nick Griffin in a corridor. They pretend the BNP is a strange anomaly, too small to be dangerous with ‘only’ a million voters, and they claim to be baffled as to how such support could emerge. The events of this week left two large clues.

The first is the fascist march being called in Wiltshire. No one describes Islam4UK’s proposed anti-war protest in Wootton Bassett as a fascist march — but as Melanie Phillips argued here recently, it is. It’s the reverse side of the fascist coin. The BNP should no longer be regarded so much as a racist party: it never succeeded much in winning anti-black votes.