Johnson and Trump have strong Ties
What is a fascist? Is Boris Johnson a fascist? Is Britain becoming fascist?
This is what we know about fascists:
- They worship the Motherland – or Fatherland – and constantly repeat patriotic slogans – Global Britain, Build Back Better, Make America Great Again.
- National flags grow larger and appear on every pole and beside every desk, on clothes and badges and along the sides of buses.
- The people are encouraged to rally around an easily identified enemy: Europeans, foreigners, migrants, religious minorities, socialists. Hitler chose Jews; Trump Muslims and Mexicans.
The Daily Hate.
- Human rights are ignored. Torture, imprisonment without trial and long prison sentences are introduced to protect the nation from foreign enemies. Independently-minded judges are driven out and called ‘Enemies of the People.’
- The hard right extravagantly supports the military: the UK is spending £6 billion on two new aircraft carriers: HMS Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales. Boris Johnson said it would reflect ‘the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation.’
- Fascist regimes are generally male dominated. Women are seen as home and baby-makers. Homophobia is rampant. Boris Johnson called gay men ‘tank-topped bum boys,’ black people piccaninnies with ‘water-melon’ smiles and Muslim women letterboxes.
- Fascist leaders control or are supported by a compliant media that applauds reactionary policies – banning street demonstrations – and reports social concerns as the work of traitors and communists. National life is trivialised with blanket coverage of celebrity culture, sports and royal tittle-tattle.
- Fascists are fond of God. They draw on religious rhetoric to justify policies that are damaging to working people. They believe the poor, meek, mild and hungry are to blame for their own situation and should ‘Get on their bike!’ They hate social security, social medicine and believe there is no such thing as society.
- The corporation bosses, bank moguls and aristocracy in a fascist nation form one force that promotes political leaders from their own class. They create a system beneficial to themselves, appoint each other to government positions, provide government contracts to friends – £37 billion for a Covid test and trace system that never worked – and protect each other from accountability.
- Politicians with fascist tendencies promise the world and are prone to mendacity. They are supported by a right-wing press that smears opponents and manipulates the system by changing boundaries and making it hard for the weakest members of society to vote.
- Fascist leaders are attracted to dressing up and uniforms, brown shirts, black shirts, jackboots. A uniform can be a dark suit with a red tie of a scruffy suit with a crooked tie. They like parades, columns of tanks in avenues lined with flags and stirring music. Hitler was partial to Wagner. Donald Trump appropriated Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma’ for his mass rallies. Boris Johnson’s favourite band is The Clash, according to Damian Jones in the NME, November 2019.
- The only real threat to a fascist regime is working people. Their potential power is diminished by austerity measures, suppressing wages and sanctioning trade unions.
Is Boris Johnson a fascist?
The Italian writer Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) grew up under Mussolini’s fascist regime. He wrote: ‘The fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change.’ Eternal Fascism, as he describes it, ‘cannot be organised into a system; many features contradict each other and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.’
The last time fascism got a strong foothold in the United Kingdom was in 1932 when Oswald Mosley created the British Union of Fascists. Mosley was a charismatic aristocrat who went to the best schools and created about himself a personality cult. He believed in corporate power, nationalism and authoritarian government: the definition of fascism.
Is Boris Johnson a fascist?
You tell me. There is a comment box below for your answer.
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Thatcher was for sure.Cameron had those tendencies and this whole 11 year period of Tory rule has brought us into this situation today. Brexit following austerity was the decision which tipped us over the edge and the easy racism and xenophobia displayed by so may leaves the situation in little doubt. Johnson is obviously a Fascist with his attempts to hijack our democracy and change any law which stands in his way.If you doubt this then look at Lord Frost’s farcical exchanges over N.Ireland, which is reall just a shabby breach of a treaty signed only a few months before. The overall lack of feeling displayed by the government is very typical of the contempt Fascists show towards the general population. I think this regime ticks most of the boxes a few times. We need rescuing!
Yes.
This shouldn’t be a question, it should be a simple statement of fact. I’ve been telling anyone and everyone who’ll listen, for at least a year, that Johnson is a narcissistic fascist!
Yes – He ticks all the boxes
I don’t doubt it for a moment. I think his personality disorder prevents him from ever knowing, or caring about anything but himself, and he has no understanding of right and wrong.
Yes !!
Some great evidence C.
But I didn’t realise it was still a question.
Seems pretty much an open and shut case.
The guy is essentially the devil incarnate dressed in the 21st century equivalent of a brown shirt.
The country is under siege but the people are too busy savouring gourmet restaurants to care.
Your presentation has made it a rhetorical question?
A better question on this basis is why should any of us not think Boris Johnson a Fascist,
All very disturbing and only a few years ago unthinkable.
The people of Britain, and especially of England, need to think long and hard about where all this is leading,
The old Conservative Party is no more and it’s replacement members care nothing for the people of the United Kingdom.
Great article Clifford!
But while Boris Johnson does exhibit some fascistic traits, so do many current world leaders on the right, and even (gasp!) some on the left.
I’d stop short of describing BJ as a fascist, and I’m generally wary of overusing the word, even on the likes of Maggie T.
If we describe Johnson as a fascist, then how do we describe Viktor Orban in Hungary?
Also what if (God forbid) UKIP one day wins a U.K. Parliamentary majority?
How would we describe them?
Then what about the EDL or the BNP?
The latter certainly CAN reasonably be described as fascists, but I think we should be careful of devaluing the word by overusing it on a crew of common, incompetent, mendacious, grifting nincompoops, best described just as they are.
Defining fascism is difficult, but it’s a term that applies to something extraordinary. Wikipedia says (as a headline) “Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism[1] characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy,[2] which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.[3]” If that’s a reasonable definition, it doesn’t fit. Johnson and his government have some disturbing features ( contempt for existing rules and laws, tendency to change them when they fall foul of them, placement of loyalists in positions of authority, anxiety to suppress dissent etc) but those features can be found in British history in governments which we probably wouldn’t retrospectively describe as fascist. Like others, I think it is dangerous to use the term loosely because it distorts our understanding of the roots of the problems we face and what to do about them. The emotions stirred are one thing but understanding is another.
There is no doubt that Boris Johnson and his crew have fascist tendencies and would like to go as far as they can in asserting them. The Owen Paterson affair was a perfect example. Democracies, by their very nature, are fragile and we must not take them for granted. I wish Labour would sort out their internal problems and start becoming a more forceful and coordinated opposition.
All I can say is that I have observed over the last 15 years or so that there has been a powerful and effective campaign by the Tory party to a generate a “nationalistic” fervour in the UK.
This started when support for the royal family and armed forces was waning in the country.
Since then the Tories have harnessed the most basic emotions of the population by promoting the idea that being “British” means unquestioned loyalty to the royal family, the armed forces and British exceptionalism. This being evidenced by the governments recent request to have God Save The Queen played by the BBC everyday.
This campaign is responsible for and strengthened by animosity towards immigrants, experts and Europeans etc! A direct result of this was Brexit and more recently the Nationalities and Public Order bills.
Does this constitute Fascism… well if it talks like it, walks like it and acts like it, I guess it must be it!
“Fascism is coming; probably a slimy Anglicised form of Fascism, with cultured policemen in suits instead of Nazi gorillas and the lion and the unicorn instead of the swastika.”
George Orwell. ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’.
As for imprisoning people without trial, the UK used Internment in NI in the 70s. It’s not a Mussolini style Fascism, but it ticks the boxes
Boris Johnson (or at least those who put him where he is) know that fascism is the last defence of “free” market capitalism against increasing discontent. Hence rallying the authoritarian third to the cause with polenty of pantomime patriotism, and promises to exclude those who don’t fit the narrow defiition of who “we” are. Women, for all the fact that we are considered lesser beings, are quite happy to join in with the “I belong more than you do” game. And yes, fascists like to claim that they are doing it all for God, although I think many of the leaders either know or do not care that it’s nonsense. As to believing that the poor should get off their arses, it’s all their own fault etc, we are back with “free” market capitalism, and that’s what fascism is here to defend. The rich must on no account have to pay their taxes.