The march of the fascist mushrooms

It has been too long coming. While conscientious and decent liberals have tried to explain why, to their horror, millions of people in Europe and the USA have embraced populist causes in recent years, none has really got near the nub of the issue, dug down to the very core. For example, I have long been of the opinion that the Brexit vote, along with the 2016 election of Donald Trump and the continued popularity of right-wing governments in Poland and Hungary, are almost entirely the consequences of the malign influence of fungi. I have attempted to advance this argument in political debates but am never taken seriously. Now at last I have some support.

Next week at Loughborough University Dr Lenka Vrablikova will be delivering a guest lecture entitled: ‘Othering Mushrooms: Migratism and its Racist Entanglements in the Brexit Campaign.’ It is Dr Vrablikova’s contention that ‘research on how forests, mushrooms and their foragers have figured in the formation of white hetero-patriarchy is vital (my italics) for contesting the re-emergence of the right-wing populism that, in Europe, is exemplified by events such as Brexit’.

Vital, actually, to my mind, is a gross understatement. Dr Vrablikova lectures at Leeds University, and focuses on ‘the study of visual ethnomycology’. She is also the co-founder of the Feminist Readings Network, which, I am told, ‘provides a trans-lingual and trans-national space to explore reading with feminist, queer, and anti-racist thought, art and pedagogy’. I could hardly have hoped to have a more learned supporter for my theories and, with this in mind, have written to Dr Vrablikova at her Leeds University address enquiring which particular species of mushroom is most seriously implicated in the foisting of fascism upon so many people, and what we should do if we come across one of them.