I always thought that UKIP were a bunch of little Englanders who lived in a delusional state. That is still largely the case, but there has been a change in direction. Previous leaders backed away from linking to far right groups, but not anymore. Gerrard Batten has lent his support, for what it is worth, to Tommy Robinson, the convicted fraudster and football hooligan whose real name is Stephen Yaxley Lennon.
I think it fair to say that Yaxley Lennon is a neo-Nazi rabble-rousing thug, without a single word of that being controversial in any way. Batten, the almost unknown leader of the fast evaporating UKIP, has compared ‘Tommy Robinson’ with Nelson Mandela. And he didn’t mean it as a joke. He really is that thick.
Then there was the trashing of the Bookmarks bookshop in London by a bunch of thugs, only one of whom wore a mask. In this age of video surveillance this proved to be a mistake, as several have been identified. Three of them were found to be members of UKIP. They were suspended from the party, but not ejected.
What marks out fascist activists is there picking on uninvolved but easily identified groups of people as the ‘ones to blame’. It used to be the Jews, but now Moslems have been made the main target. The chosen group is then subjected to verbal or physical assaults and are made to live in fear for their lives. Of course, any group will do, and anything ‘foreign’ is an easy target for xenophobes.
After that initial effort the fascists then go after other targets, the ones who want peace and understanding, the ones who object to the verbal and physical violence. So the socialists, the intellectuals, the peaceniks and all those willing to put their head above the parapet become the targets for hate. That is when bookshops get trashed.
Of course UKIP is a Populist party, not a fascist one. Except, if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck. To be absolutely clear, UKIP is now a fascist party.
And that applies for every movement across Europe and North America which claims to be Populist. Of course things are different now. We communicate in closed Forums on social media, and live in our own bubbles where anything we don’t want to hear can be easily filtered out. We don’t need the press to be controlled, as no-one is reading the papers these days, or watching or listening to good quality news.
So is Populism just good old fashioned fascism with added social media?
Jon Wakeham's Blog 