We are not going to try to list all the ways in which the election of Donald Trump is a catastrophe. That is being comprehensively catalogued in many, many other places and we all know there is much to be feared.
Suffice to say that those who believed that the election of Barack Obama in 2009 was America coming of age, have been proved sorely wrong. In fact, it signalled the launch of a ruthless right-wing fightback determined to ensure that it would never happen again.
This result is testament to their extraordinary success and reveals just how deep racism and misogyny run in American society. The effects of this election will be felt both on an international scale, where climate change may now be dramatically accelerated, and at a domestic level with the extreme right, here in the UK and in many other countries, hugely emboldened.
Our fightback is going to have to measure up to theirs. There are simple lessons from the past to draw on. In this fightback all defenders of democracy must come together, uniting around the simple, fundamental things that bind us. There can be no place for division, nor sectarian disputation. That way lies further defeat. We simply cannot afford it.
For our part, we will continue the work Searchlight magazine has been doing for nearly 50 years, since it was launched in 1975 with the words ‘Defend Democracy – Expose the racists and extremists’ on its front cover. We will, with your support, continue to investigate, expose, analyse and disrupt the activities of the far right, and put our work at the disposal of the movement.
This weekend we remember the victims of the Greensboro massacre in 1979, when Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Party gunmen attacked an anti-Klan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina, leaving five anti-racist demonstrators shot dead.
The main character behind this attack was Harold ‘Chubby’ Covington, the Nazi Party leader. Some of his gunmen involved were arrested and tried, but acquitted by an all-white jury.
Later, having escaped the USA, Covington travelled to Ireland and ended up in London in the early 1990s. Always the man encouraging violence, but never having the guts or nerve to do more than hide behind a typewriter, Covington was ever the advocate for terrorism. The early 1990s was a time when some fascists were moving towards the electoral road. Others wanted violence. This was the Turner Diaries generation. Covington, for his part, thought he could get away with creating a neo nazi network without anyone finding out.
However, not one, not two, but three deep cover operatives within British fascism were working for Searchlight at the time. Covington made the mistake of mailing out his newsletter from London under the pseudonym Winston Smith. Within hours of these arriving at various fascist headquarters, copies were being forwarded to Searchlight. One of our insiders recognised the Covington style and modus operandi immediately. “You’ll never guess what I’ve got here,” he told Gerry Gable at a hastily arranged meeting the same evening the Covington material arrived.
Gerry was very interested indeed, as he’d heard whispers about a new neo-nazi defence force being set up, ostensibly to guard BNP and associated fascist events.
This was Combat 18.
Not long after it became clear that C18 leaders had much bigger plans. So called self-defence was to become outright murder and terrorism. And it would have been considerably worse had we not had our men and women in place.
Covington fled the country but within short order we were able to pin down the major players, many of whom were football hooligans, ex-British Movement neo-nazis and a panoply of violent thugs too extreme for either the BNP or NF. Sargent was not as clever as he thought.
He soon had World In Action television cameras following him, working with Searchlight to expose his wicked plans and violent intentions. His close confidants weren’t too bright either, handing copies of his first newsletter around at Brick Lane during the regular Sunday fascist paper sales, at BNP headquarters in Welling, and at BNP branch meetings in the weeks after Covington’s association with Sergeant became common knowledge.
Even then, the numbers of fascist activists numbered a few hundred, if that, and everyone talked to each other. Searchlight had ears to the ground and very well placed people in place. And, today in 2024, we still have people in place and we’re still keeping the closest possible watch on today’s Covingtons and Sargents…
The Tommy Robinson grift gets more outrageous all the time.
Now it’s “with Tommy sentenced to a lengthy prison term, his kids don’t have a dad at all”
They have almost exactly as much of a father as they had all the time he was gargling cerveza on the Costa Del Trotter. The Ayia Napa trip was probably all they have had out of their deadbeat dad in the last year.
They do come in handy for him from time to time, though. Remember how, when he cocked a snook at the authorities by attending a Luton match contrary to a court-ordered exclusion, he played the ’my duty as a father’ card, claiming that it was his daughter’s most fervent wish as her birthday present?
A girl who didn’t want a Barbie or a Hello Kitty backpack or a Party Package at TGI Fridays, but to go to see the Hatters. And not a home match, either, but one conveniently inside the M25.
You couldn’t make this stuff up. (Though ’Tommy’ obviously does).
The Guardian reports that there is a split in the leadership of Reform UK, over whether they should support Tommy Robinson (see link below).
In fact, this has been brewing.
At Robinson’s July ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, when they were asked who had voted Reform in the General Election, almost every hand went up.
But, in the run up to the October rally, Robinson went public slagging off Farage and cosying up to UKIP. Then, speaking at the rally, UKIP NEC member Stan Robinson (above, no relation) also attacked Farage.
Reform know they are in a fight to keep their existing support but can’t agree on how to do it.
A few takeaways from today’s ‘Uniting the Kingdom’ rally in London.
Without the presence of ‘Tommy Robinson’ himself, the whole thing founders. Numbers attending seem to be not much different from those who attended in July, and were largely, and predictably, middle aged and male.
They had to wait for hours, increasingly bored and restless, until the appointed march time – so restless that rival football firms from Millwall and Chelsea started to square up to each other. A tedious evangelical Christian rock band of limited musical ability did nothing to improve the mood.
By the end thousands just couldn’t be bothered staying to watch TR’s latest so-called ‘documentary’ and drifted away.
In the absence of TR, the most effective speaker was UKIP’s Nick Tenconi (pictured) who fired the crowd up and urged them to join UKIP. Searchlight has been reporting on and forecasting a link-up between UKIP and Robinson for some time, and it now seems to be happening. Today’s event organiser, Richard Inman, an old buddy of TR, was recently appointed to the UKIP National Executive Committee.
Screenshot
UKIP will be salivating at the prospect of profiting from TR’s fund-raising abilities (depending on how long he ends up in jail) but he will have other, very different, ideas about how the money should be spent.
Another speaker today was Stan Robinson, UKIP’s Wales spokesman, a candidate in the recent general election, and one half of the racist Voice of Wales online blog. The other half, Dan Morgan, is a convicted fraudster.
There is little love lost between the TR camp and organised fascist groups. Mark Collett from Patriotic Alternative turned up with a few followers and a ‘Free Sam Melia’ banner but was ejected from the gathering. Alek Yerbury, the leader of National Rebirth Party, openly accused TR today of being an ‘indirect government agent’. And Steve Laws, Homeland Party’s most ‘prominent’ recent recruit advised people not go as it was “a waste of time”.
One of the most imprssive aspects of the huge counter demonstration called by Stand Up To Racism, was the presence of thousands of trade unionists with their banners. The trade union movement really pulled out the stops for this, and it was a heartwarming sight.
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