Shabbir Lakha argues that everyone who supports Palestine should be on the demonstration against Tommy Robinson this Saturday

‘There’s a culture war and we need to fight.’

This was Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (Tommy Robinson)’s rallying cry ahead of his march in London on 1 June. An estimated 5-10,000 people joined the march to oppose ‘two-tiered policing’, claiming the police treat Muslims and Palestine protesters better than white British people.

This Saturday, 27 July, Robinson and his supporters are set to descend onto the streets of London again. It is crucial that those of us who have been marching to end the genocide in Gaza for the last nine months are on the streets at the counter protest.

Tommy the fascist

Tommy Robinson is a fascist. A one-time member of the Nazi British National Party and then founder of the English Defence League, he has been convicted several times for violent offences and sued by a Syrian schoolboy after his libel led to the latter receiving death threats.

Apart from fleecing his supporters to fund his lifestyle, Tommy’s shtick is primarily focused on attacking Muslims. Not exclusively of course, as shown by his recent tirades against the Roma community in Harehills and attacks on LGBT people and other minorities.

His political life as a figurehead of fascists and the far right has centred around opposing Muslim migration to the UK, so-called Muslim ‘grooming gangs’, Islamism, the ever-present danger of Sharia law and Halal meat etc.

His ‘new movement’ is a continuation. The 1 June march was directly mobilised in opposition to the Palestine movement. It was about waving Union Jacks instead of Palestine flags on British streets. It was about opposing Islamists that hate the West. It was about opposing the establishment that is apparently in thrall to some global Muslim conspiracy.

Driven by the state

The slogan of his demonstration, against ‘two-tier policing’, came straight out of the mouth of one Suella Braverman. In November, the then-Home Secretary accused the police of ‘double standards’ when they decided they had no legal basis to ban the Armistice Day Palestine demonstration as she had asked them to do.

Her words directly mobilised fascists on the streets of London who violently attacked the police and attempted to attack Palestine protesters. Two police officers were injured, over 100 far-right protesters were arrested, several with weapons. Meanwhile, the Palestine movement that the government was trying so hard to discredit as dangerous mobilised 800,000 for a march that even the police were forced to admit was peaceful.

The embarrassment cost Braverman her job, but it didn’t stop her in April calling on the Met Chief to resign over ‘two-tier policing’. Robinson decided to use the same words as his slogan after he was cleared of charges from his arrest attempting to join the Zionist ‘march against antisemitism’.

That Robinson and Braverman use the same words is no coincidence. The Islamophobia generated by the political class to justify its War on Terror in the Middle East, explained as a ‘clash of civilisations’ to demonise dissent among British Muslims and the anti-war left, and to scapegoat the refugees seeking safety in Britain from the countries ravaged by British bombs, has long been the starting point for fascist and far-right organising.

When David Cameron in 2014 described universities as ‘hotbeds of extremism’, it led directly to Tommy Robinson’s English Defence League attacking Islamic Society and Muslim events on university campuses. When Boris Johnson described Muslim women as ‘letterboxes’ and ‘bank robbers’, it resulted in a 375% increase in attacks on Muslims.

Michael Gove’s promotion of the now entirely discredited Trojan Horse affair helped the far right claim that Muslims were ‘Islamising’ school children. Repeated Tory ministers’ claims about so-called Muslim grooming gangs, including Suella Braverman saying last year that they are ‘almost all’ made up of British Pakistani men have been the driver of far-right organising in Rochdale and Telford where Tommy Robinson organised his last protest earlier this year.

From David Cameron calling refugees in Calais ‘swarms’ to Theresa May’s ‘go home’ vans to the last government’s flagship policies of stopping the boats and deporting refugees to Rwanda, the state has handed the far-right fully formed rhetoric around which to organise. They have led to Patriotic Alternative and Britain First-organised attacks on hotels housing refugees, and the English Defence League’s Knowsley riot last year.

As Des Freedman argues, Islamophobia and anti-migrant rhetoric have become the acceptable forms of racism in the mainstream. The fascists and the far-right launder their reputations primarily by focusing on attacking the same groups the government and the media are, while dropping the anti-Semitism with which they were previously mostly associated. In the looking-glass world we now live in, Tommy Robinson, like Marine Le Pen in France, accuses the left of being anti-Semitic.

Tommy the Zionist

Tommy Robinson positions himself as opposed to anti-Semitism by showing support for Israel. There are three factors in this equation. One is the drive to the far right in Israeli politics. Over the last two decades, Netanyahu has dragged Israeli politics further and further rightward, and his present coalition government includes self-described fascists.

Second, forming strong ties with the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and former Presidents Bolsonaro and Trump, Israel and its supporters have turned the definition of anti-Semitism on its head. According to Israel, its allies who peddle Jewish conspiracy theories and have denied or minimised the Holocaust aren’t anti-Semites, anti-Zionists are.

Third, and most significantly, Israel plays the role of the US’s watchdog state in the Middle East. That means it is central to Western imperialist architecture in the region. The West’s wars are its wars, and vice-versa. So when Bush and Blair were laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq with rhetoric about Islamic fundamentalism, Netanyahu was describing Palestinian resistance in the same terms and linked his violent attacks on Palestinians as part of the War on Terror.

For Tommy Robinson and fascist movements across the West, Israel is the defender of Western civilisation against the Muslim threat, and the left and the Muslims at home that stand with Palestine are the enemy. For at least a decade, Zionist protesters that turn up to counter Palestine demonstrations in Britain, usually tiny in number, are flanked by the ranks of fascist organisations.

Stop the fascists

In the week after 7 October, the entire political class was united in its support for Israel. There was wall-to-wall coverage of the Hamas attack across the mainstream media and Israeli flags were plastered on government buildings. I remember desperately trying, and failing, to find one person on public transport or on the streets wearing a kuffiyeh or a badge.

On 14 October, we had our first national demonstration against the bombing of Gaza which brought 150,000 people onto the streets of London. From then on, it is rare to not see kuffiyehs, flags, t-shirts and stickers on any journey around the capital. The demonstration was an immediate injection of confidence, both for people on the demo and those who saw that it happened.

It’s not hard to imagine then, that a demonstration of the far right led by a fascist core, if left unchallenged, will be a massive morale boost for all of those who turn up for Robinson’s demonstration on Saturday, and wider. A boost for the fascists won’t just mean the possibility of a bigger demonstration at another date, it will translate into more attacks and more violent attacks on Muslim women, Palestine protesters and refugees.

The only thing that can curb their enthusiasm is if they are met by widespread opposition on the streets. We cannot rely on the police who arrest Palestine protesters for stepping off the very strictly prescribed route, while doing nothing when Nazi-saluting fascists shout openly racist abuse: the real dynamic of two-tier policing, ironically.

At a time of growing disillusionment with a political class that attacks working people at home and supports genocide abroad, we need to fight for a real alternative and build a real avenue for struggle to stop the fascists growing. But it starts with weakening their resolve, and that means confronting them this Saturday.