Yesterday I attended the ‘Day for Freedom‘ rally in London. As someone who both disagrees completely with many of those involved and who tracks Far Right movements, I wanted to see what kind of arguments and rhetoric they would use in front of what was promised to be a large audience – many tuning in on-line.
Coalition of the Shilling
The ‘Day for Freedom’, ostensibly, was the result of Tommy Robinson’s banning from Twitter for Islamophobia. It gained traction with support from Breitbart London, UKIP, the For Britain political party and a host of right-aligned YouTubers and e-celebrities such as Sargon of Akkad and Count Dankula. It also received heavy promotion from the UK branch of Russia Today.
I can’t begin to describe to you the money and resources involved here. A large stage with display screen was set up directly outside 10 Downing Street, draped in banners prominently displaying the #DayForFreedom hashtag. There was a large area for media, and a backstage area manned by volunteer security wearing branded ‘Tommy Robinson Online’ hi-vis vests. A security cordon was set up around 2000 metres down Whitehall to prevent Antifascists and rally attendees clashing. Police were everywhere.
This was about as far from grassroots as you can get. This was a well-funded, well-organized and streamlined operation from top to bottom. Whoever funded this spent an inordinate amount of money.
I was also taken aback by the cult of personality surrounding Tommy Robinson. When he arrived, it was to a rockstar welcome, with wild cheers, selfies and autographs with his volunteer security detail. There were prolonged chants of ‘Tooooommy’ from the crowd, and there was the sense that the crowd saw him as a genuine folk hero.
Match of the Day
When I arrived around 1.30pm, there was already a crowd gathering around the stage – from all appearances a die-hard core of mostly white, middled aged men, with a trickle of young men wearing ‘Make America Great Again’ caps and Kekistani flags.
As the kick-off time approached, the crowd was filled out by a considerable number of families, some with kids. As they waited, there was a bit of a party atmosphere – people were drinking (somehow even getting plastic glasses filled with beer from somewhere).
Whatever you might read in the papers in the days following the rally – don’t let it be said that this was solely a white, male crowd. This was something that people definitely felt comfortable bringing their wives and kids to.
Just before the rally began, a large crowd of the Football Lads Alliance arrived, having marched from Speaker’s Corner. There were also massive, prolonged cheers at their arrival, and they quickly filled the area.
It was at this point that I observed the only violence of the day. Ali Dawah was apparently supposed to speak, and was making his way towards the stage to check in, when he was confronted by a group of angry white men. Quite a few seemed to have been drinking. After a tense stand off, with shouts of ‘Paedo’ and ‘Cunt’ at Ali, punches were thrown and a brawl began. The police were quick to get involved, and they established a human barrier before anybody could get hurt.
Fear and Loathing in Whitehall
I won’t go into all the speeches – I don’t particularly feel like listening to them again, but I will comment on a few.
Richard Inman of Veterans Against Terrorism – a man once reported as describing the entire religion of Islam as ‘antichrist’ – was first out the gate, with a fiery broadside against the religion, employing the story of a pensioner in Northern Ireland prosecuted for describing the religion as Satanic. He definitely delivered the fire and brimstone.
Gerard Batten of UKIP seemed to be on his best behaviour, talking about the apparent absurdity of hate speech laws, but he did not resist from taking a swipe at political correctness and ‘cultural Marxism’, supposedly working hard in hand in Islam.
Anne-Marie Waters of the For Britain Party (who had a very visible presence at the rally) shocked me with her claims of a New World Order, bringing out the old anti-semitic canard that big business and the Far Left are in cahoots to usher in a new authoritarian age. Personally, she seemed unhinged. Terrifyingly, she got a huge response.
‘Sargon of Akkad’, aka Carl Benjamin, almost seemed to go full Goebbels with his predictions that ‘THEY’ won’t rest until you are completely subsumed and contained within some sort of authoritarian hell – he wasn’t heavy on the details.
Speaker after speaker over the first half of the rally railed against Islam, Antifa and ‘globalists’, quite openly fanning the flames of fear. Free speech, at least to my ears, seemed an afterthought. Quite frankly, there was not a rhetorical device employed that wasn’t in use at political meetings across Germany in 1932. I use that line without hyperbole.
When the ‘heavy-hitters’ came out – Gavin McInnes of Rebel Media, Milo – their speeches were more standup routine than polemic. The crowd had been whipped up over the first few speakers, and were now being comforted with a good old dose of shock humour.
To be honest, I was far more concerned at the speeches of those who spoke early at the rally than the headliners. Their words were far more extreme – perhaps by design – while the more famous speakers relied on a pantomime act.
Watch the corners
I scanned the rally throughout the day, looking for the symbols of some of the more extreme right-wing groups. I was disappointed to see quite a few Generation Identity flags waving in the crowd, along with those of other Far Right Identitarian movements.
I also overheard a few conversations between members of these groups and members of the public, asking about what they stood for. With their flashy branding and professional online presence, they’ll obviously win a few converts out of the day.
Some of the real damage from the ‘Day for Freedom’, I feel, will be the recruits that extremist organizations are able to draw from the crowd.
Still think you can control them?
The Day for Freedom was a smashing success. It had a scarily impressive turn out for a Far Right event, was covered to within an inch of its life on social media and YouTube, and demonstrated a cohesion seemingly impossible on the Left.
Extremist beliefs and ideas were broadcast to the world from outside the home of British democracy. Despite a few clashes, a lot of the images and vision of the day show a peaceful, varied crowd.
This was a Center Parcs, Littlew00ds-catalogue crowd, for the most part. It was a mostly white, middle class audience taking in the sort of slurs and xenophobic conspiracy theories that we thought were contained to isolated parts of the internet. I found myself quite rattled by this.
From where I stood, this didn’t seem to be the endgame of something, or even the high point – it feels like the beginning of a larger movement. The momentum, whether we like it or not, is with these well-funded Far Right groups.
Simply, we ignore the success of the ‘Day for Freedom’ at our peril.
So what do we do to combat this?
‘Antifa’ violence was a big part of the speeches given during the rally. The name was booed whenever it was mentioned.
It is a ‘boogeyman’ to middle-class white folks who have never attended a Far Right rally in their lives.
Violence isn’t the answer. Deplatforming isn’t a solution. We need a broader, more nuanced approach.
I’m not going to tell you to go ‘talk to Nazis’, but you need to know that people are being radicalized by powerful interests that would never have been previously.
I hope what happened today can be seen as a footnote, rather than a warning that wasn’t heeded. I hope that conversations can start happening about the fascism that is being promoted as the ‘defence of freedom’.
I’ll be doing a lot of hoping from this point on.
History doesn’t really inspire me though.
“Far right” my ass…
Troll yes you are
What would you call the likes of Anne Marie Waters and Generation Identity then?
I thought your ass would have been left and right.
I like how you make the claim that women were only there because their partners brought them along.
Sexism 101.
Also, this is not far right. It would appear you have no comprehension of what far right is.
I’m guessing this is one of the very few times you’ve left your house and mixed with actual people. How terrible that must be for you. Most people value family. Most people value their country. Most people value their people. You may not. But you are nobody.
You’re constant attack on freedom of expression and speech will lead to a large swing to the right. It is inevitable now. So I guess I should thank you and your kind.
You’ve helped us.
For all the hysteria about “loony liberals” and “SJW’s”, the far left is fragmented and not very effective at organising. There are a thousand different little groups, all pushing in a thousand different directions.
As we saw with this ironically named event (given how much they try to silence those who disagree with them), the various far right groups are capable of uniting in a way liberals never will. This marks out the true difference and shows which is indisputably the greater threat.
“(given how much they try to silence those who disagree with them)”
Like when?
Are you sure you haven’t confused left from right?
I presume you never spent much time on the old Britain First farcebook page. Any dissenting comments voiced there were very quickly deleted, and very often resulted in blocking for the commenters too. I was banned twice for daring to question them (very politely, I should add).
Britain first are extremists and it don’t matter if they be left or right wing politically (or really any extremists for that matter), extremists cannot allow free speech. Both sides need to have their ‘echo chambers’ so they don’t look extreme to the less radical members. The leaders and the ‘hard core’ followers you might as well not talk to, but get them in public and just give them enough rope to hang themselves with, sit back and watch them do it…….
The same goes for what they read, watch as well as who they can and cannot talk to.
In your twitter thread about the event you mentioned something here that you appear to have missed out….
Markus Meechan (aka Count Dankula)? You skipped his speech in your article? Have you changed your mind on his speech? Have you come under pressure not to say anything ‘positive’ about the event at all? You did get a little ‘left wing’ dogpiled on twitter there, following that. I am curious.
You made some good points on twitter, however looking at this you have rolled them back. ‘The Left’ have abandoned the free speech issue to ‘the right’ and now appears not to have the ability to deal with the matter in any shape or form apart from screaming ‘look at the racists’ anytime something like this happens. Sure, when Mr Spencer (more on him later) and his mob come out, that’s a far-right (if not fascist) group of people. The problem the left has is that you point Fascist and Nazi at everyone now. You, to people like me in the centre left (oh and I don’t much care what you think of me – I am Centre Left and always have been – no not a Blairite either), have turned into the ‘boy who cried wolf’. You appeared to be alluding to that on Twitter, but now you’re back to the same old lines again. Us centre ground folk (which are the majority regardless of what anyone on the left or the right thinks) are eventually going to say enough from both sides. Maybe this is the start. Realistically the reason you can’t say it was a ‘far right’ event is because it wasn’t. The diversity of the crowd (go read the Guardian article, well the first one, by the second one they got their usual act back together), the number of people, types of people from many places and faiths means the ‘it’s a far right event’ narrative is well and truly broken. This too you had on twitter, alas………
I know you won’t be interested, but the actual alt-right have come out against the demonstration. Richard Spencer says it wasn’t white enough (amongst other BS things that that has-been spouts off) and ‘Our Cowardly Scotsman’ (the ace hole known as Millennial Woes) said some ‘nice things’ that I am too polite to repeat here. They don’t like it because of the diverse crowd, they don’t like it due to some of the speakers, they don’t like it cause it wasn’t a total ‘sausage fest’, and lets face it, they don’t like it cause it’s freedom of speech. Which is something they can’t have. Just right now it appears that’s something the left can’t have either…..
On the same side as actual classical fascists (Spencer) and Neo-Nazi’s (M Woe’s) – I know guilt by association is something you tried to make stick in your article, and that’s your opinion, but it must be uncomfortable to be on the same side as those two individuals and their usual collection of moronic supporters.
I half expect this comment to go in the ‘spam’ bin, if it does at least I will know where you stand on speech, but it’s your blog so you do as you wish.
This is an absolute belter of a response and gets right to the heart of the issue here. I too followed Mike’s reaction to this event on twitter, and noted his apparent surprise at Dankula’s denouncement of authoritarianism – whether from the left or the right.
Mike has been one of Dankula’s most vocal critics over the past months, and has been quick to wave away any concerns about the erosion of free speech as simply part of the alt right neo nazi play book. One would have thought that this write up would be the appropriate venue to address the assumptions he has made, and perhaps acknowledge that there are many moderate, non-fascist individuals who have genuine, legitimate concerns about their fundamental freedoms being curtailed.
For Mike to now ignore the content of Dankula’s speech entirely, and instead focus on characterising the whole event as a nothing more than a far right recruitment effort is extremely disingenuous – in the same way as how hope not hate re edited the event’s promotional material to exclude certain speakers.
What Mike needs to understand is that when he attempts to manipulate his readers in an intellectually dishonest fashion like this (in plain sight no less) he is contributing to the polarisation we see in today’s sociopolitical discourse.
I’m sure Mike thinks he is fighting the good fight, but he is going to push people away if he carries on like this.
Centre left? Clearly!!!!!
The current comments say it all. When we, the ant-Brexit group, try to stand outside No 10, we are policed, told not to block the pavement and *encouraged* to stand on the opposite side of the road. I have warned and warned, from my own family’s experience in Nazi Germany, of the way fascists gain control. From the enabling of hate-speech via the corrupt Brexit Referendum, the propaganda of the Daily Mail against ‘migrants’ (they never distinguish between illegal ones, economic ones, refugees and those of us here legitimately under treaty obligations with the EU) this country is set on the same path as Germany in the 1930s. I see from the piece that the ‘old enemy’ us Jews are also in the mix. I presume some of the participants come from the Labour left? At least I and my family can now escape. Woe to all those who can’t!
Hurry up and leave then.
I was there, I am not far right or alt right. Final nail for me was the Telford scandal, young children raped and murdered with the perpetrators left free to do their evil for many years as the authorities were too scared of being branded racists.
A late happy birthday to you, Adolf
It seems to me you also have no idea of what the far right is, but feel comfortable in supporting the agenda.
Unfortunately, good people can be racist xenophobes participating in extremist rallys. They just are not very bright.
If they are bright and racist xenophobes participating in extremist rallys, they are not good people.
And if they are good people and bright, they won’t be racist xenophobes participating in extremist rallys.
Which one are you?
The ballot box, protect democracy, unlike the Government with their I.D. and boundary changes for their own gain. Get more people to vote, win the elections the BNP and UKIP have been defeated via the ballot box. If any from the left attended other than to observe they should be removed from any left, left of centre organisation including Trade Unions, there is no room for people holding the views expressed by the Far Right or what ever they call themselves. As to anti facist, either your a Facist or an anti Facist all teh lads on D Day were anti Facist as were the RAF in the Battle of Britain.
Money, loads of money….the question here is “who has forked out all the cash for this event to go on?”
I wonder where the donors come from…
If you’re left-wing and reading this with a look of concern on your face, the thing you need to learn is how to engage with people who hold ‘extreme’ views.
Attack ideas with ideas. As soon as one of the parties in a debate uses violence, they forfeit their right to claim victory, and people will see this and know. It’s as simple as that. Avoid violence, conduct yourself in a clear way. If the debate isn’t going anywhere or you can’t debate back, find a way to step out of it respectively. Then find like-minded people like yourself, tell them all that was said, and try and find the logical way to debate against ‘that point’ next time.
The extremist is concerned that the things familiar to him are being threatened. Allow him to voice these concerns. Your role then is to ask who is to blame, why, and whether everyone who fits this ‘group’/ these ‘groups’ can be blamed.
The biggest issue right now, frankly, and I can see it’s been mentioned, are the Rotherham and Telford scandals. White and Sikh girls were deliberately targeted by grooming gangs, the members of whom were exclusively Pakistani Muslims. And the government, knowing what those girls were going through, tried to cover it all up. That was horrendous. And we don’t know what that means in terms of the bigger picture. But the extreme right will now politicise those scandals because they are rightly concerned about their own children’s safety.
I digress. In all things, just act with decency. Tell the truth, and look for it. And find people who think like you so that you can learn from each others’ experiences.
Some very very thoughtful, articulate & well written responses to this blog. It’s heartening to realise there are many, like myself, who are voicing their concerns over the demonic ‘Far Right’ label that is being foisted on anyone who does not agree with divisive identity politics, political correctness, threat to freedom of speech & the colluding, propagandising MSM.
This blog is called ‘A Day For Fear’…as others have pointed out, it all boils down to conveniently keeping everyone in the ‘extremist box’ because that justifies the fear & keeps it ‘real’ – so, as long as everyone stays in their place, and is a good boy/girl, they won’t get labelled with some buzzword that helps to quickly define who they are, in the eyes of their intellectual/ moral superiors.
Its becoming too much to be honest…I am so tired of the cognitive dissonance – brainwashing has been so successful, that I have only just come out of the group think myself. Friends look at me as though I’ve lost my mind, and sadly, one or two just decided to take their friendship away.
Anyway, once the veil has been lifted there’s no going back…