Fascism is on my agenda

Posted on June 29 2024

Richard Murphy

I am not going to offer an apology for the fact that my videos over the next few days are going to be about fascism, in the main.

Nor, in that context, do I apologise for the first one, which is out today, being longer than is normal. I like to make videos that are less than five minutes in length, in the main. This one is almost double that. The issue is, however, one of such importance that I did not try to curtail my flow.

I am raising this issue now for what I think are obvious reasons.

Both the USA and France face the risk of having fascist governments before this year is out.

We will not, but unless the Labour Party takes serious action the rise of fascism in this country will continue and what will happen in 2029 is unknown. That is most especially true given that Reform are likely to have a parliamentary presence after 4 July, whilst whatever rump of the Conservative party might remain will, almost certainly, move even further in a far-right direction. Unsurprisingly, I am worried as a result.

That being said, fascism is not beaten by talking about it. Fascism might be created by political rhetoric around the myth of the strong man, the enemy who is the “other”, and an appeal to supposedly traditional values that conflict with what the “strong man” wishes to claim are our current abnormal values. It is, however, defeated by something quite different, which is by removing the causes for alienation within society that so many, not unreasonably, feel at present.

Forty years of neoliberalism have left large numbers of people, and large parts of the UK, alienated from the political mainstream. That was not by accident; that was by design. Neoliberalism was meant to redistribute wealth in a way that would always leave large numbers of people feeling left behind. The existence of inequality that is fuelling the demand for fascism is not an accident: it is a design feature of neoliberal politics.

Labour can address this issue. It could use the power that the government has to deliver growth in the economy. It could tackle the failures in public services. It could redistribute income and wealth. It could as a result tackle inequality. It could promote well-being.

Or, alternatively, it can maintain the status quo, and leave millions in despair, wondering what the whole political process can do for them without resort to a far-right agenda.

One of the reasons why I will be spending so much time over the next five years (all being well) talking about what Labour and other parties should be delivering for the benefit of the people of this country is precisely because I do not want to see us falling into the political mayhem that the far-right agenda will deliver.

I will do that because I care about people, and that is the last thing that the fascist does.

I will also do that because I care about democracy, and our right to choose, and there is no doubt that the far-right wishes to take that choice away. Just look at Trump.

Finally, I will do this because I believe that without change there is a significant threat to our way of life here on earth, and ultimately maybe to life itself in the form that we as humans know it unless we are to change our priorities. Fascists deny climate change, because the only thing that ultimately matters to them in their deeply-warped thinking is the accumulation of wealth for a few, invariably at cost to those within the countries that they seek to govern, but also beyond it. For that reason, we quite literally cannot afford fascism.

So,  fascism is going to be quite explicitly on my agenda during the years to come. But much more importantly, so too will be the ways to defeat it.