America's Ugly Present: Britain's Future?

There is a frightening video currently racing around Twitter; a compilation of all of the recordings so far of enraged white people coughing, spitting, and punching their protest against Covid-19 safety measures, mostly at masked and cornered services workers. Socialist activist Ryan Knight (@ProudSocialist) shared it with a short, sharp caption: This is America and it is ugly.

It is America, but it is also Britain. The difference is that our violent, white reactionaries so far feel empowered to vent their rage only at black people. In the space of a week, rail worker Belly Mujinga and taxi driver Trevor Belle were both spat at by members of the public. They developed symptoms, they were hospitalised, and they died, leaving children and loved ones with a grief soured by rage.

What is happening in America feels like a glimpse into the future; when a crisis hits a country that has been ruled by a far-right authoritarian kleptocrat for 4 years, rather than our 4 months, and when the rage and violence of the mob has expanded from its first targets - immigrants and people of colour - to anyone considered an enemy of the regime. It is a station further along the track that we are riding, a track built of human sleepers: middle, class white people who allow creeping fascism into the lives of others, thinking that it will not come to them. "First they came..." is so frequently quoted that its power has diminished but its truth remains.

Of course, these sleepers should have been paying attention to the authoritarianism, dystopian bureaucracy and state violence inflicted on poor people, people of colour, and immigrants for their own sake, not just as sign of what was to come for them. Yet the fact remains that if white Brits think, through a British exceptionalism present as much in the centre as the far right, that what is happening in America "couldn't happen here", or that the terror visited on people of colour and immigrants will not come to us in time, we are deluded.

Boris Johnson is the first British Prime Minister to have the explicit backing of the far right.

Even as Conservative (and Labour) governments enacted parts of their agenda for the sake of appeasement, no previous leader went far enough as to actually win their support. The far right hated David Cameron, Theresa May and even Margaret Thatcher but they worship Boris Johnson. Venture into their corners of the internet, and the propaganda for the "dear leader" is enough to rival that of any historical authoritarian state that we now scoff at. Below is just one example, laughable and disturbing in equal measure.

There are huge swathes of people who dwell exclusively in this part of the internet, who consider even the Daily Mail to be part of the corrupted, left-biased mainstream media. So while centrist commentators chortle over the fact that the Mail's latest smear of their favoured Labour leader turned out to expose only Keir Starmer's rather endearing donkey sanctuary, they are missing the real story. There is a signifiant and energised group of people who, through smears around his tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions, effectively believe that Keir Starmer part of a pedophile ring: just look at the replies to any of his tweets, no matter how conciliatory or uncontroversial. A doctored video outlining the conspiracy theory from a far right social media account was shared by several Conservative MPs, including a government minister, and yet those with platforms still refuse to see the danger.

One of the many alarming features of the 2019 election, in addition to the dark-money funding and blatant lies of the Conservative campaign, was the number of Labour canvassers, including pensioners, who were physically assaulted. Largely ignored by a mainstream media who love to paint the left as thuggish, this was a stark illustration of how the racial hatred stoked against "terrorists" (read: all Muslims) had spread to the "terrorist sympathiser" Jeremy Corbyn, and in turn to all his perceived supporters. If centrist commentators believe that the fever they helped to whip up against Jeremy Corbyn and his party can be put back in the box now that their preferred man is in charge, they are in for horrible shock. First they came for the socialists, indeed.

As a Welsh socialist, I have also observed with alarm how the chauvinistic British nationalism stoked by Brexit and the last election has expanded its crosshairs to include the devolved parliaments of Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland and to the Welsh language and people more generally. When the Welsh government announced an extension of lockdown in Wales, including monitoring of the border and fines for English people found to be in Wales on non-essential journeys, a pent up well of English resentment and entitlement spilled out across social media.

Crises bring seismic changes but, as Daniel Evans writes, these are not necessarily for the better. In fact, they can be for the far, far worse. If we cannot wake up to the danger and fight for socialism, truth and liberty now, our Trumpian future awaits.

There is hope.

Boris Johnson has not managed, in 4 months, to degrade our institutions and political culture to the degree that Trump has achieved in the USA in 4 years. Lockdown protests were limp and late in coming. Johnson cannot yet get away with prescribing bleach as a cure. He does not yet feel bold enough to praise a legendary anti-semite - who propagated conspiracies that diseases were spread by Jews - for his "good bloodline". In the face of a grassroots campaign, his government were forced to U-turn on a policy to charge immigrant NHS workers for access to the service they sustain (though other immigrant key workers remain heroes unworthy of medical treatment, apparently).

If we are to avoid the fate of the USA, we must look to our comrades there, those who saw their own dystopia coming and keep fighting in circumstances even more dire than our own. When Trump was elected in 2016, journalist and expert on authoritarian states Sarah Kendzior wrote a guide to being your own light in the dark times ahead. It is high time that we in the UK heeded her advice:

"My fellow Americans, I have a favor to ask you. Today is November 18, 2016. I want you to write about who you are, what you have experienced, and what you have endured.

Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.

Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget. Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.

Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them." In this crisis alone, we have normalised so much that none of us would have believed possible just months ago:

• that manslaughter is less of a crime if the victims are old

• that teachers and doctors and nurses and cleaners should expect to die in the execution of their jobs

• that disabled and elderly people, who might not benefit from ventilation, therefore deserve no treatment whatsoever; that they can be sent blanket Do Not Resuscitate forms on the basis of their disabilities which relinquish their right to use the emergency services; that they can be left in care homes or their own homes to asphyxiate slowly with no oxygen, no IV, no palliative care; that we will celebrate their torture after the fact because "the NHS was not overwhelmed."

This is eugenics, brutality and state murder.

Don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking otherwise. Don't let anyone call you hysterical for fearing the people committing these crimes. Don't let anyone accuse you of peddling conspiracy theories when you point out the obvious, as many did when we drew a link between Dominic Cummings hiring a eugenicist and the government he advises choosing to follow a "strategy" of culling the herd. Don't let anyone use credentialism and elitism to say that your voice doesn't matter. Don't let anyone tell you to save your resistance for a "more convenient season". Don't let anyone tell you the disproportionate deaths of people of colour, the poor and disabled people are some kind of coincidence. Don't let anyone tone-police or emotionally blackmail you into bestowing the benefit of the doubt on people who have demonstrated at every opportunity that they don't deserve it and that they will exploit it.

Talk to other people that see the truth and reinforce each other's voices. We are going to need each other more than ever: not just to share in mutual aid, not just to stand in union in our workplaces, but to look into our eyes and tell us that we are not "crazy" - we are paying attention.