Farage and Extinction Rebellion: two politics of protest, only one has a future
Younge begins with quoting a poem about the friendly face of fascism by M Rosen which he attaches to the sight of N Farage on the stump. He has no doubt about the aptness of the term:
The point here is not to insult – though those it describes will, of course, be insulted. [Closes the circle nicely --to argue back is to confirm] It is to offer the closest, most accurate [sic --from a casual glance, maybe of a TV broadcast!] description of the social base, rhetorical impulses and political orientation of those attending and addressing the Brexit party event...older, rural, exurban and provincial (they were white, too, though since this was Clacton, that is hardly an indicator). The collection of pinstripes, tattoos, Barbour jackets and tracksuits marks a crude illustration of the class alliances at play [the two groups the petit bourgeois despise most] . Rich and poor, brought together by a chronic grievance....You can smell the nostalgia on them...Whatever else they are, they are not racist. This point is declarative, not discursive – a statement made in response to a question that has not been asked and a point that has not been made.[although sly inferences and assumptions have been legion] They insist on their own decency and persecution....there has never been much more to the driving force behind Brexit than this.
Luckily, they are a declining force:
they are galvanised by betrayal – betrayed interchangeably by all parties, the political class, the establishment and the parliament. This is an itch that can be scratched until it bleeds but will never go away. The country they mourn never existed; their place in the world, as Britons, white people, working people, posh people, [all the enemies] is not what it was and is not coming back.
Equally luckily, there is hope:
As Farage was winding up on the seafront, environmental protesters in central London were winding down. After almost two weeks of protests against inaction over climate change, Extinction Rebellion (XR) has announced that it will end its blockades.
Both are radical, but only one has clearly shining virtue which can be signalled with the usual shifters:
To some extent they start in the same place. They view the political system as broken and accuse the political class of having let us down. They believe the status quo is unacceptable, drastic action is necessary, and the push to make things better will have to come from the outside. The similarities pretty much stop there. One is a group without a single leader that holds creative, joyous, disruptive protests that attract a span of ages, not least the young, with a view to building a new future. Its most prominent standard bearer, [self-elected?] Greta Thunberg, is a 16-year-old Swedish girl with Asperger’s. The other is centred around a garrulous 55-year-old Englishman, who in the course of several resignations has left his teeth marks on the spotlight, leading embittered, mostly older people with promises of a return to former glory....XR, like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street and the anti-war movement before it, has shown that there are significant constituencies for global campaigns that have humanism and international solidarity as their core [and they did so well, after all] .
For the bad guys:
The logic of Brexit is, in its essence, against any worldview. It seeks a retreat from the rest of the planet into an isolating pastiche of independence so that Brexiters might grab what they can for themselves. “If you want to see what Brexit will do for Clacton, just look out there,” Farage told the crowd, extending an arm towards the waves. “It’s called the North Sea – and half of it should be ours. Not to be shared with the Dutch or the Danes or anybody else. It’s ours.[Didn't he say only half of it was?] It’s our birthright.” The sea, as any XR protester will tell you, belongs to all of us. Farage would welcome the fish that make it through. But God forbid a human being in search of food, work or refuge might brave those waves.
Of course, Younge's analysis is based on his reading of a poem on fascism, some observations on a (TV programme of?) a hustings in Clacton and his own unerring moral compass that steers between those above and those below. If he had actually read some work on fascism he might have come across Critical Theory and its analysis identifying a major role for unfocused affect in arousing the sense of oppression and resentment, especially among groups like the middle class experiencing insecurity and risk for the first time. One example of that sort of movement might be precisely XR and the other outpourings of emotional identity politics.
And one consequence has dawned on him, only to be rapidly left behind:
But the victories of Donald Trump and Brexit and the rise of the far right in general show that while these movements may be powerful, they are insufficient, in part because they have failed to convert mobilisations into electoral success
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