Defending Our Values

Well, you’re certainly right about Marx—he was a very dangerous sort indeed—more about him later. But he’s a bit of a dead duck now, Don. And it’s true fascists are misguided patriots of a sort—but not the kind we’d welcome. Our biggest barrier to developing a new, inclusive patriotism is the fascists. They need to be stopped because they’re yobs and bullies. They’re not only abusing the flag; they’re whipping up an atmosphere of intolerance and islamophobia, they’re offending people, they’re aggressive towards foreigners, immigrants, and refugees, they’re against free speech. In short, they hate our values as much as the terrorists and other antisocial elements do.

There have been fascists throughout history—Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin. They began in Ancient Rome. That’s one reason why, in a sense history doesn’t mean anything. Nothing really changes. The tiny microhistories—the real stories of real people’s lives—are more meaningful than the grand narratives of the past.

And we must always be on our guard to stop fascism happening again. There are new kinds of fascism springing up everywhere, new Hitlers everywhere. Whether it’s some tinpot dictator in Africa or some yob on a street corner or some Islington intellectual demanding more rights for criminals and outsiders— islamofascism, ecofascism, liberofascism—it’s all the same menace to community relations.

The youth who spits at old ladies displays the same antisocial lack of respect for those of a different background as Hitler did towards the Jews—it’s a matter of degree. The biggest threat we face is perhaps not the growing number of intolerant dictators in the world but the little Hitlers in our own society—the Hitlers of the shopping precinct, of the home and the playground. Like the football hooligans whose movements are being traced and controlled as we speak.

Unfortunately, many misguided working-class people feel the politicians are too distant from them and the fascist lies tempt them. Perhaps our leaders have been too elitist in the past, but we have been informed they’re planning lots more focus groups and all sorts of innovative campaigns to make their policies more appealing and understandable. And OfCare is developing strategies to tackle the problem and defend the values of Community, Identity, and Stability. So promoting values of democracy and co-operation and respect for difference at every level of society is a great measure for preventing the escalation of this cancer that is eating us from within. And it’s something that we can all work on together. We need your participation, you of the decent majority. Society is like a bundle of twigs—one on its own is fragile, but bound together we become strong.