Only Connect

As someone perennially allergic to conspiracy theories I once found it hard to accept quite everything said about a Far-Right campaign to sew discord by promoting violent racist outbursts such as those over the Henry Nowak murder and the Belfast stabbing in recent days. The Russia-Farage-Tommy Robinson-MAGA-Bannon-thugs-money-Musk etc. etc. nexus story looks prima facie like a concoction aimed at scaring us into resistance. An international campaign to destabilise, to create the conditions for a Far-Right takeover in as many places as possible, long in the making, already successful in the US, coming to a head in the UK – really?

Yes, really. There is a mega-plot afoot for a Nazi-style future and it is not hiding either its intentions or methods. Put images of Kristallnacht alongside burning buses and houses in Belfast, and shiver.

I refer you to the investigative article in Byline Times 11 June 2026 about Tommy Robinson posting White Supremacist material (from Moscow, where he had discussions with Musk’s father) from the ‘Brotherhood of Academicists’:

Revealed: The Russian Neo-Nazi Network Pushing ‘White Lives Matter’ Division in Britain – Promoted by Tommy Robinson

The ‘Russian oligarch’ mentioned in that article is Konstantin Malofeyev, proscribed by the US for sanctions-busting, extremely dodgy banking activities, association with the Tsargrad Society ‘Double-Headed Eagle’ outfit (the ‘All-Russian Public Organization Society for the Promotion of Russian Historical Development’) – all of a piece with the vigorous campaign of destabilisation, distraction and discontent aimed (in the case of the UK) at undermining government and society, and getting the Faragists into power.

Anyone tempted by Farage and his political business company called ‘Reform’ needs to ask what a government formed by promoters of riot, arson, racist ‘White Supremacism’ and pro-Putinism would be like. Because we know what it would be like. History drips with the blood, screams with the pain, writhes with the torment, of having the likes of Farage and Robinson in charge. They are working assiduously at taking us back there.

It would serve their cause if we responded in like manner. They want street battles. The fist, the boot, the Molotov cocktail, is their way. No doubt it seems a feeble plan to try defeating them with the techniques of civilisation, viz. information and discussion. But the truth is that if we value these techniques of civilisation we have to cleave to them – but make them work. Instead of fisticuffs on the street, there has to be informing, persuading, challenging to debate, in pubs, workplaces, bus queues. Substacks like this, media like Byline Times, don’t reach the people who need to be alerted to what they are being hijacked into supporting. The facts, and the consequences, have to be presented, antidotes to the lies administered, individual by individual. A model that suggests itself is the Salvation Army – not that I literally mean brass bands and military organisation; I mean getting out among our fellows and buttonholing them, where they live.

Our main-party politicians have failed us extremely badly in recent years – you might say, more badly than usual – for example, allowing Brexit to happen (very satisfying for Putin, that one), and pursuing policies that have widened inequality and left many floundering. Too many of the grievances that the populist demagogues use to recruit support have substance to them. A massive boost to the economy would come from rejoining the EU or at least the Single Market, and the funds could be applied to repairing the disintegrating social fabric that is ripe material for the Far Right. (That would not be the only benefit, by far, but it would be a superlative one).

But while the main-party politicians spend all their time in-fighting and picking their political noses, focused on the short-term narcissism of keeping their seats rather than saving the country, the Sally Army endeavour to which each of us can contribute has to swing into action. And one major strand in that has to be to defeat the lies about immigration. Immigrants and asylum-seekers are easy vulnerable targets for the Far Right to blame. That immigrants add to GDP as well as to the richness of the social texture, that it is vile to see some of our fellow-citizens beating-up on asylum-seekers who have fled oppression and terror in other countries only to be met with Tommy Robinson’s beer-swilling thugs and Farage’s rat-like inflammations where they had hoped for sanctuary and peace – it’s utterly sickening to think of this – has to be explained, advocated, made clear, brought home to the better part of our fellows’ natures.

Above all, it has to be iterated endlessly that our civil liberties and the rule of law are the next target for the Far Right. Today they attack immigrants: tomorrow, they attack us.

Resisting them vigorously has to be done now; it is getting late.