THE press and social media are awash with attempts to analyse far-right figurehead Tommy Robinson’s mass mobilisations over the last few months and the riots in the wake of the murder of three children in Southport. There’s a lot we don’t know about the perpetrators of the violence, but there’s also a lot we do know about the far-right and fascist ideologues who supported them. 

What we should know from the history of the last century is that the rise of fascism is not easy to make sense of because its explanations for people’s problems, conflicts and fears relate to their real, everyday lives in shifting contexts. Nevertheless, some groups have an interest in treating fascism as though it is detached from “normal” life — a foreign import, like dragon’s teeth planted by outsiders, whose violent consequences we are left to reap.

In the current outbreak of violence, mainstream spokespeople for the state, like former MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, blame money, misinformation and the Russians. Supposedly dissident commentators, like David Miller and Lowkey, blame money, manipulation and the Israelis.