The murder of Joe Cox, a pro migrant MP has shocked the country and left commentators struggling to explain it. Clearly something has changed in the far right since the days of BNP electoralism, a shift that has oriented them back to street based violence. But this still doesnt answer the question, why target Joe Cox?
Joe Cox was an MP of the Labour party but wasn’t in anyway ideologically committed to socialism or communism, she never described herself as an antifascist or at least not prominently and she was not visibly BME. In a country that has begun to see fascist violence as something that is just directed at those visibly different to being white British and performed by people who perform these acts on the way home from the pub. This is very different.
The attacker in this instance is not a drunken loner but an ideologically committed fascist who has chosen this target for specific political reasons.
Cultural Marxism was once assigned to the fringes of the far right, it is the delusional belief that communists and jews plot to bring down the white race through social movements like gay rights, anti racism and anti fascism. They believe that MPs like Joe Cox are part of an international Jewish conspiracy to flood the UK with Muslim migrants and therefore a traitor. Again this was a fringe theory until recently and more and more hard right publications and blogs have been picking this theory up, legitimising it. Breitbart Media even has a dedicated tag on its articles relating to ‘Cultural Marxism’.
Its this theory that is beginning to join traditional conservatives with the far right in their view of the world’s problems and it’s this theory that ultimately drove a man to assassinate a Labour MP. With this shift in far right ideology comes a shift in targets, people who originally felt ‘safe’ from far right attack should be under no illusion that if you are political enemy of fascism you are a viable target. Our response to this should be to counter this threat by any means necessary.
The question people will inevitable ask is who’s to blame for this? The mainstream media will offer it’s usual plethora of reasons: mental illness, the polarization of the EU referendum debate etc. But the problem is far more uncomfortable than we would like to believe. The far-right has been building, changing and growing in the past years, shifting their strategy back to the days of Lone Wolf attacks, straight of out of David Lane’s Turner Diaries. This is not only a UK or even European phenomena, but global. Dylan Roof, the Charleston shooter in North Carolina, was part of the same movement, read the same blogs and sported the same badges as Mair. Fascists are becoming bolder and bolder, and it is because of the space afforded to them by societal complacency which has allowed them to become more brazen.
London Anti-Fascist and the Anti-Fascist Network refuse to allow that space to exist. This is we we urge all anti-fascists, leftists and revolutionaries, to take the far-right seriously. They are only basement dwelling pre-teens spewing racial slurs on forums, they’re on the streets and they are arming themselves. Every platform they take, every single word they are able to speak, only further allows them to build strength. And so, we must respond in kind.
These far right assassins, like Thomas Mair or Zack Davies, were members of far right groups. That lived in our communities, that shopped in our shops, all the while plotting their attacks. Our response as antifascists must be to not allow them the anonymity in their communities. Strip off the veneer of ordinary and show the world who they really are. For too long, the far right have been able to march through diverse areas, invade mosques and attack left wing activists only to retreat back home, into neighborhoods that will never know their actions or their motives. This must end, the bastards must be exposed.
London Antifascists 