THE SMART SHIP AND THE ICEBERG

There have been worse years in modern history, much worse, 1914, 1939, 1940for example, but they have been few. Closer to 2016 are 1933 or 1938, for this has been, like both of these years, a year that will have consequences which will be felt for decades to come. Once more the piggy face of nationalism and fascism are triumphant. From Poland to the US and UK the slogan peddled has been that rallying call of the dictator and demagogue down the centuries, “we will make you great again.”

The fact that a serious threat of the break-up of the UK was narrowly averted turned out merely to be a portent, a bell ringing in the wind, warning of a hurricane coming. For the storms of 2016 have been a long time in the making. The root causes are many and often intricately interwoven. From the left’s pandering to militant Islam, the shock and revulsion at the Jimmy Saville revelations and of grooming by Asian gangs of, predominantly white, young teenage girls, to the ravages of cuts to basic services and fears about the future of the NHS. All disturbing to a white working class already feeling under siege. If you came from a run-down council estate and were concerned about your kids, that outsiders were leapfrogging locals in the housing queue, taking your concerns to the local Labour or Lib Dem councillor was usually a complete waste of time. They were as likely to lecture you on the terrible sin of racism as to listen to your concerns. Others however were listening, and in this atmosphere, the real racists and xenophobes flourished. For the left, in the brave new world of identity politics, the white working class had become an embarrassment, tainted by racism and lacking in understanding of the importance of language. The triumph of a heavily policed political correctness has been a triumph of middle class white guilt. It has also been the triumph of language over action – disability, what a horrid word, let’s say other abled, there job done.

If there was a moment at which I glimpsed this future being incubated it was the horrific murder of Lee Rigby and the failure of the political establishment, particularly the left, to grasp the impact, of this crime on working class communities. That leading politicians seemed more concerned with the threat of backlash, more concerned to assure, as Cameron did so asininely, that this act “was nothing to do with Islam.”
Lee Rigby's Killer
All the time the forces of xenophobia, nationalism and racism grew in strength. The smart ship of liberalism heading inexorably toward a terrible demarche.

‘And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.’[1]

In the US the onslaughts on liberal values has come primarily from the right, Fox News has been spewing out contempt for politics, due process and human rights, for years, joined by a hallelujah chorus of ‘shock jock’ broadcasters and pundits. Whilst waiting in the wings there were always the Truthers, Birthers, and a pick and mix of white supremacist survivalists, in or out of their KKK garb.
As for the liberal, and not so liberal left they been far too busy fighting free speech, creating ‘safe spaces’ and railing against ‘fascist’ reactionaries like Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and University professors to notice the real McCoy like a cobra, shaken out of its slumbers, uncurling beside them. Somehow picketing speeches by the like of Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Mark Steyn in defence of some imagined ‘safe space’ is going to prove adequate preparation for dealing with the real fascism of Donald Trump.




We are now at the dawn of a new era in which the likes of Trump and Farage have been given the keys to the wine cellar marked power. Who now will be standing up for liberal values? The oligarchs who own our tabloid press? The enfeebled BBC or the soon to be strangled PBS? Well certainly not the Corbynite left, or the Susan Sarandon style nihilists, who are already finding hope in the crushing of the ‘social fascists’[2] i.e. Tony Blair and the Clintons. This madness has been a long time coming and when the plague has finally run its course who knows what will be left standing.





[1] Thomas Hardy, The Convergence of the Twain (Lines on the loss of the Titanic).
[2] The far left in Weimar Germany, of which the communists were then a part, refused to make a distinction between socialists and liberals and the growing Nazi party. A policy that did not end well. 

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