“The old is dying, the new refuses to be born, now is the time of monsters”. These words, which paraphrase the writings of the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci, are freshly resonant for our times. We too are facing the rise and rule of monsters. A chilling wave of authoritarianism and reaction – perhaps most succinctly summed up as ‘Trumpism’ – is reshaping our world.
That today’s politics has echoes of the period in which Gramsci was writing is in many ways unsurprising. Politics is concentrated economics. Whenever the capitalist system faces a deep crisis, its most ugly features are brought to the surface. The harsher the economic conditions facing ordinary people, the stronger the system’s need for scapegoats to misdirect popular anger. The sharper a society’s contradictions, the greater the ruling elite’s requirement for authoritarianism to keep control and to put down resistance. The more inter-imperialist conflict intensifies, the further nationalism and chauvinism must be cultivated and nurtured while militarism is cranked up.
So the elevation of the world’s most backwards and toxic individuals to the highest offices on the planet is no accident. They are the living embodiment of capitalism in crisis and decay. It is no wonder, therefore, that the supposedly liberal representatives of this same decaying capitalist system have repeatedly shown themselves to be utterly impotent in the face of the rising far right.
Liberal Establishment Feeds Far Right’s Growth
Indeed, in country after country, ‘liberal’ and ‘centrist’ politicians have responded to the growth in support for reactionary forces by ditching almost all of their professed liberalism. Instead they echo the right’s divisive policies and rhetoric. Far from limiting the right’s growth, this approach is almost universally effective in accelerating it. It legitimises all manner of racist and reactionary ideas. Meanwhile, because under the watch of the centrists living standards continue to decline and public services fail, the underlying conditions which have led to the growth of the far right are exacerbated.
Keir Starmer is a case in point. In a lot of ways he is a much more consistent and reliable representative of the interests of British imperialism than a maverick figure like Farage. When he won his ‘great’ electoral victory in 2024 it was seen as a beacon of hope by many US Democrats and other ‘liberal’ establishment politicians.
True to form, Starmer has deployed the orthodox pro-capitalist playbook for dealing with a rising far-right opposition. He has echoed racist scapegoating, ratcheted up authoritarian attacks on protesters, bolstered military spending and dutifully cosied up to Trump. Yet despite all this, he has not only allowed the far right to grow, he has been chewed up and spat out as one of the most unpopular prime ministers in history. All in just two years. If anything, Starmer is proof that – whatever the particular ideological preferences of individual capitalists – ruling through figures like him is increasingly difficult for the capitalist class as a whole.
It is, in part, the deep built-in instability of ‘centrist’ governments – played out internationally over and over again – that has seen the ruling class turn more and more towards the Trumps and mini-Trumps of this world. This is in spite of the fact that this can throw up big problems for them, as the US president’s adventure in Iran has proven. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Reform has been leading the polls for months. Meanwhile, there is the growth of even more extreme forces like Restore, as well as of Tommy Robinson’s street-based thuggery.
Is Burnham the Answer?
Part of Andy Burnham’s pitch to be Britain’s new Prime Minister has been that he is the man who can beat back the right. Indeed, the former Manchester mayor’s massive majority in Makerfield was undoubtedly boosted by the overwhelming revulsion felt by the majority of working-class people at the racist riots and pogroms that happened in Southampton and Belfast in the lead up to the by-election. Reform is rightly seen as encouraging this extreme violence, which the vast majority of working-class people of all races clearly reject.
Burnham will, no doubt, provide Labour with a certain bounce, and early indications are that the party will overtake Reform in the polls for at least a period. But that does not mean that simply getting behind Burnham is an effective strategy for fighting the far right.
Even before making it into parliament, the new Labour leader made it clear that he would support the Starmer government’s draconian and racist new immigration reforms. This is a clear indication that far from breaking with the previous Labour administration’s approach of mimicking Reform’s migrant-bashing, he will double down on it. Meanwhile, considering his commitment to the strict self-imposed limitations of the ‘fiscal rules’, it’s clear that any action taken to alleviate the cost-of-living crisis will prove inadequate. All this means Burnham will struggle to turn the tide on the far right’s growth. In fact, as time goes on, there is potential for him to compound it.
So what strategy should anti-racists and those committed to fighting the right adopt in this period? One idea that is gathering a certain momentum is that of developing a ‘rainbow coalition’ to beat Reform. This idea relies on the fact that Reform is currently unable to break through the 30% barrier in polling. This means that a coordinated campaign of tactical voting – perhaps with Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens standing aside for one another in certain areas – could in theory be deployed to deny Reform a majority in parliament.
Rainbow Coalition?
This idea is an attractive one for millions. Indeed, it was basically echoed in material produced by the campaign group Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) during the Makerfield by-election. SUTR delivered thousands of leaflets calling on people to use their vote to ‘Stop Reform UK’ – without explicitly specifying support for any particular party. This will surely have been understood as a call to vote Labour by most.
Implicit in the ‘vote against Reform’ slogan – and in the Rainbow Coalition idea itself – is an approach which can be described as ‘lesser evilism’. Lesser evilism encourages working-class people to vote for politicians who are attacking their living standards, who are complicit in war or genocide, and who are implementing draconian attacks on migrants in order to stop even more right-wing politicians whose attacks will be even more extreme. Indeed, considerations like this clearly do already motivate many working-class voters when deciding what to do at the ballot box. That is understandable and on an individual level it is not inherently wrong.
But when it becomes a strategy, we know that lesser evilist approaches to politics tend to rob working-class people of the opportunity to have their own interests represented. Lesser evilism is used by capitalist politicians as a way to prevent themselves from being challenged by the development of left, anti-austerity or socialist forces. In the long run, this actually helps fuel the growth of the far right, whose lies continue to go unanswered.
Equally, the growth of the far right is not a purely electoral phenomenon. Nor is the struggle against them one which will primarily be conducted at the ballot box. In Britain and Northern Ireland, the streets have this summer been ablaze with riots and pogroms viciously targeting migrants and people of colour. While the numbers involved in this kind of aggressive street-based far-right activity remain relatively low, the poisonous atmosphere being whipped up has penetrated the mainstream in deeply disturbing new ways.
Open racism – stripped of all pretense – has been effectively rehabilitated in public discourse. Explicit white nationalism enjoys free rein on platforms like X, owned by the world’s first trillionaire, who in turn funds and supports Tommy Robinson and his entourage. Revoltingly, the idea that white people are the victims of racism in this country (a complete inversion of both history and modern reality) is now being considered with apparent seriousness by all manner of politicians and journalists in forums as prestigious and respectable as the BBC.
These kinds of ideas – and particularly their organisational expression in different far-right forces – are a threat to the working class as a whole. Horrifically and immediately, they create a dangerous and hostile environment for migrant workers and all Black and Asian people living in Britain. But these ideas are also fundamentally designed to break the solidarity of the workers’ movement. When Farage appeals to the ‘white working class’ and (cynically) to the trade unions to support him, this is exactly what he is trying to do.
United Front
This needs to be understood as an attack on the entire workers’ movement and to be responded to in kind. Around a century ago, when faced with the rising threat of fascism, the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky developed an approach for fighting back against the far right known as the United Front. Fundamentally, this was a tactic that involved uniting the working class, including all sections of the socialist and trade union movements, to take powerful joint action – pushing back the far right using the methods of working-class struggle. The idea was for the workers’ movement to maintain its own unity and independence in this fight. So Trotsky cautioned against seeking to unite with pro-capitalist politicians or forces who he knew would offer no real defence against fascism. His warnings were borne out brutally as the capitalists of Italy, Spain, Germany and elsewhere lined up behind the fascists.
These ideas remain highly relevant in the context of the different, but nonetheless dangerous, far-right threat we are facing today. Rainbow coalitions and even routine counter-demonstrations are not going to cut it. Trade unions got behind the huge and successful ‘Together Alliance’ demonstration that took place earlier this year – half a million strong. But the slogans blandly emphasising ‘hope and love’ and the approach of seeking support even from pro-austerity politicians, were insufficient in the face of reactionary forces with great momentum.
Instead, we need the workers’ movement itself to step up to this challenge and assemble a coalition including all elements of the anti-racist, anti-war and other progressive social movements in this country. We do need to show our strength in mass national demonstrations against racism and the far right. But we also need to build forces at a local level which can root themselves in communities and physically defend people when they face attack. The example of the ‘rapid response’ groups which were developed in Minneapolis to resist the ICE invasion is a useful one here. So too is the movement’s deployment of general strike action, which was the decisive factor in forcing Trump to beat a retreat and withdraw his ‘personal army’ from the state.
We need to build a massive movement against the far right that will put pro-working-class politics front and centre. The best answer to racist lies is to tell the truth. Housing is scarce and unaffordable because of massive profits being siphoned off by giant construction companies, housing corporations and landlords. The conditions for epidemic-level gender violence have been promoted by reactionary capitalists – especially those on the far right. Misogyny is not about race, but capitalism’s need to control and commodify women’s bodies. Services are overstretched because of nearly two decades of austerity. Wages are too low because of years of pay cuts. None of these issues are addressed by hammering those our society already mistreats and marginalises.
So we need a mass anti-far-right movement that can demand rent controls and council house building, not racism. We need one that will stand for above inflation pay rises across the board – and a £20-an-hour minimum wage. We should fight for green re-industrialisation and a massive programme to repair and expand infrastructure, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs to tackle the climate crisis and deal with its effects. And we should fight to make solidarity the norm. There should be no place for racism, sexism, or any form of bigotry and prejudice in our movement.
That means, along with building a movement on the streets, we should continue to fight (despite the setback presented by the failure of Your Party) for the development of a mass socialist party, rooted in the working-class struggle. This is needed to cut across the far right’s growth and build a genuine political alternative. Because the answer to decaying and crisis ridden capitalism is not racism. The answer is for workers to take matters into their own hands – to fight for the transformation of society based on public ownership, workers’ control and democratic economic planning. We fight for a socialist world built on solidarity: the only way to lay the foundations for an ultimate end to all forms of racism, division and hate.
Photo: Steve Eason (flickr)
