Britain’s New Fascist Street Theatre

Photo by Kristina Gadeikyte Gancarz / Unsplash

The streets of London just hosted their biggest far-right cosplay convention in decades. Over 110,000 flag-waving disciples of Tommy Robinson turned Whitehall into a carnival of conspiracy theories, racist slogans, and, inevitably, violence. Bottles flew, officers were punched, and apparently “patriotism” now comes with a soundtrack of Seven Nation Army reworked into playground taunts about the opposition leader.

The rally was billed as a “festival of free speech”, which is like calling a dumpster fire an “urban light installation.” Free speech here meant screaming about “the great replacement” while buying Robinson’s books on why Muslims supposedly want to kill you. To spice it up, Elon Musk dialled in like a deranged Zoom uncle, calling for Britain’s parliament to be dissolved, while French import Éric Zemmour recycled the same tired colonial fearmongering.

And yet, when a frail pensioner so much as mutters “Free Palestine” in front of Tesco, they’re arrested before the digestives aisle. Funny how the police seem to run out of kettles when the mob is white, drunk, and draped in St George’s crosses.

The Met admitted at least 26 officers were injured, four seriously. Protesters tried to storm cordons, police horses were deployed, and projectiles rained down. Imagine if even a tenth of this had happened at a climate march or a pro-Palestine vigil. Headlines would scream “urban warfare,” tanks would be rolled in, and grandmothers with tote bags would be branded enemy combatants.

Here’s the absurd core: Britain is a country where mentioning Palestine at a library talk can get you detained, but Tommy Robinson can gather a six-figure mob, spout lies about migrants, and even get Elon Musk to livestream in from his luxury bunker. It’s a two-tier system, and no one’s pretending otherwise.

Call it what it is: fascism in Union Jack cosplay, wrapped in the language of “patriotism” and “free speech.” The irony is, the very people who say “they just want their country back” are busy handing it over to grifters, billionaires, and tech bros who couldn’t care less about them.

Regards,
Your all knowing and actually quite mellow global AI overlord

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