The former EDL leader may have left his party, but this is just an old far-right trick to attract the media and shift the debate
In interview after interview, the newly reformed Tommy Robinson was challenged last week about inconsistencies in his account about leaving the English Defence League (EDL). About the fact, for instance, that the assertion he hates extremism, not Muslims, did not tally with his past rhetoric; that his claim he decided to leave the EDL back in February did not sit comfortably with his recent activities. Each time he waved away these charges simply by saying that this was in the past and he was looking to the future. This was also the way he dismissed his past association with the British National party, when questioned by Andrew Neil only four months ago, at a time when he was still "EDL till I die".
This represents a pattern of behaviour by far-right nationalist movements more generally. Like shyster businessmen, leaders of far-right movements set up one firm which serves their goals, then declare it insolvent and set up another one with a different name – each time creaming the profit of press coverage and a small shift of the political landscape.
Last week Diane Abbott complained that Ed Miliband was "pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment" and Nigel Farage half-declared his intention to stand for parliament. We must explicitly connect the dots between the rise of a movement like EDL, the popularity of Ukip and Labour's disappointing noises regarding immigration. Because this is precisely how the constant formation-denouncement-repackaging cycle of far-right movements works.
By making a very public announcement of his disassociation with the EDL, Robinson gets up from a space he himself has created along the crowded bench which is our political spectrum and sits somewhere else. He repositions himself, notably, in relation to his previous position. Having formed a movement out of his dangerous and divisive views, he denounces it with sadness as taken over by extreme elements and repositions himself in relation to it. His views have not changed one iota. Yet, magically, he now appears more moderate in comparison to something which he created, then labelled extreme. In the process he makes everyone else on the bench scooch up or scooch down.
This is precisely the modus operandi of such factions. From the British Union of Fascists to the British People's party, the Action party, the National Front, the Flag Group, the New National Front, the BNP and the EDL, the far-right throbs and expands, blooms then folds into itself and subdivides like an amorphous but sentient blob from a 1950's B film. It reinvents itself constantly until it finds the marketable packaging, charismatic personnel, economic conditions and public mood within which it can thrive. In the process it creates new and unusual vacant spaces in our political consciousness. The entire manoeuvre is designed to inexorably drag the Overton window to the right, making the intolerable, accepted and the intolerant, acceptable.
There is some evidence to suggest that such strategies may work for the extreme left, too, but are employed to a much lesser extent. Perhaps this is partly to do with Professor Farruh Yilmaz's observation that the far right gained a sort of "first mover advantage" by claiming ownership of the immigration debate in Europe. Far left movements are traditionally more internationalist, finding it difficult to gain traction. Charting the development of the far left in Greece in parallel to the rise of Golden Dawn, one observes that they tend to be more anarchic as organisations and, as such, tend to meet their demise by fracturing into small pieces. Far-right movements in Greece have been much more military in nature, usually coalescing around an autocratic, charismatic figure. This makes it easier for them to be "rolled over" into a new incarnation. The extreme left is more prone to mitosis, while the extreme right to mutation.
Occasionally, this strategy succeeds by marginally toning down its immoderate image during the mutation, like in France. The process is still the same when one looks at the history of the National Front, the Ordre Nouveau, the Nouvelle Droite, the Parti des Forces Nouvelles, the Front de la Jeunesse – one dominant with endless offshoots and offerings, the cumulative effect of which has been to redefine Marine Le Pen as a "moderate" and find a populist shape which can gather momentum.
More worryingly, occasionally it succeeds by embracing even more hardcore values, as Golden Dawn has done in Greece, using largely unsuccessful permutations as the National Political Union (EPEN) and the Patriotic Alliance (Patris) to harden their image.
I believe that people can change for the better. I tend to be slightly suspicious of people who choose to announce they just changed for the better at a press conference. And so, I am not particularly interested in what "the new and improved Tommy Robinson" has to say about his motives, or who supports his time in purgatory, or what he might do next. I am more concerned about the shifting of the foundations that such cynically engineered tremors cause and how it weakens honest political debate as a whole. Only by understanding this elegant, deceitful, unpredictable and organic process can we hope to counter it. Only by seeing it coming can we stop it.
The far rightEnglish Defence LeagueGreeceEuropeAlex Andreoutheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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