My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (9.9.25) challenging the media censorship of the words “fascism” and identification of active fascists in the UK. In the course of a broadcast BBC interview with me, editors clumsily cut my sentences to ensure the word fascist” wasn’t included. That is a sophisticated editorial decision, and probably institutionally dictated. This was published before the violent protest by the fascist Tommy Robinson supporters on Saturday 13th September 2025, an historic turning point with upwards of 250,000 supporters racist Islamaphobe surrounded and kettled 15,000 anti-racists, boot-boys looking to assault us all. We were kettled for over three hours, the Police having allowed the mobs to encircle us in Whitehall, the seat of UK Governance. The Nazi-saluting Elon Musk addressed the huge gathering, having donated towards the costs of coaches from across the countries and thousands of nationalist flags, to state that the current British government must be dissolved, and the gathering should prepare to fight to defend themselves. My article had not anticipated the grotesque scale of the rise of organised racism in Britain, but the point is made in print, in time. We need to call out fascism, everywhere, all the time.
The unedited version below:
There are fascists in Britain. Organised fascists. And they are organising. But we don’t talk about them.
Across Europe there have been fascists ever since Mussolini first adopted the political concept of a mass movement for authoritarian rule. Political descendants of Hitler’s National Socialist “Nazis” in Germany and Franco’s authoritarian Falange militarist party in Spain still hold positions of power and privilege today, their street supporters numbering millions locally identified and opposed.
In the United States various fascist organisations parade with their guns demanding male white supremacy, allied with or spawned from the Ku Klux Klan and their vigilante lynch mobs.
In Britain, with the historical echo of us fighting and beating the fascists in the Second World War, tolerance of fascist speech and fascist organisation has been understandably very low by comparison. Low until now. British fascists are on the streets once again, funded by those in Europe and the USA.
Post-war Britain saw working class mobilisations destroying the fascist organisation of Moseley’s Blackshirts – his street thugs finally routed in the Battle of Cable Street. In the 1970’s we organised a mass movement against the fascist National Front through the Anti-Nazi League, in the ‘80’s and 90’s we beat-back the BNP through Unite Against Fascism. This century we mobilised against the English Defence League organised amongst the violence-obsessed ultra-nationalists on the football terraces.
But now we have a new breed who have studied and analysed their previous defeats and built a militarised cadre of organisers across Britain. Some fascist groups are proscribed, but new forces imported from the USA are permeating local housing estates and community organisations.
The largest fascist group, the Homeland Party has emerged from the neo-nazi “Patriotic Alternative” as a front-runner here, preaching white-supremacism and “white nationalism”. The “National Rebirth Party” and the previously defunct UKIP group led by the fascist Nic Tenconi are also competing for leadership. With links to American groups they’re helping fund the “Fly the Flag” ultra-nationalist protests across the UK, in competition with the “Britain First” fascist group, their leaders identified at the “Flag” demonstrations in Plymouth last week. They brandish Nazi salutes of Seig Heil and lead the chants of “let them drown”, whipping-up racist division.
Fascists are peddlers of myths and superstitions, lies and conspiracies. Fascists feed on fear and guilt and powerlessness. Fascists use individual force and violence to remove all opposition, weaponising individual traits to victimise entire minorities, creating division inside the working class. They currently lead the “anti-woke” brigades, opposing multiculturalism, gay and trans-rights, action on the climate emergency, and women’s rights. Fascists are misogynists and antisemites to the core.
Today, as in the past, the fascist organisations are funded by the super-rich and billionaires internationally, tolerated if not fed by mainstream politicians. Why? Because democracy can get in the way of unregulated profiteering and exploitation. Fascists may propagandise against “The Establishment” but theirs’ is no anti-capitalist revolution – on the contrary it is a promotion of dog-eat-dog exploitation and a reaction against any call for equality and human rights.
Today, Capitalism is in crisis and the billionaires are taking control. We are heading for war and climate collapse.
The definition of Fascism is the melding together of the big business corporations and the State. Trump is militarising American cities, placing corporate executives in charge of the military, and encouraging racist scapegoating of migrants. Elon Musk is funding the UK far-Right. Italy’s Meloni is drowning refugees. The fascist Le Pen is set to be France’s next President, fascist street gangs are killing migrants in Spain, and the fascist AfD now controls half of the German republic.
The Centre will not hold. Democracy is in peril.
The international working class is beleaguered and demanding change. The fascists are seizing the opportunity. Trade unions oppose racism and fascism for obvious reasons. The aim of fascism is the atomisation of the working class and liquidation of the Left as a progressive social force. The Capitalist ruling class have let the fascists off the leash for their own self-defence. It’s our job to defend workers rights and defeat fascism once again.
Trade unions will be mobilising for the national counter-protest against the fascist “Tommy Robinson” demonstration in London next Saturday. Standuptoracism.org.uk
Emotional Climate 