Category: Right-wing extremism/radicalism
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Article on polarisation in Jacobin
I am very excited to announce that Jacobin published a piece by Aurelien Mondon and myself on the centrist myth of polarisation and the false equivalence of radicalism on the right and left in the liberal mainstream. You can read the piece here. Aurelien and I are also pleased to see that it has been…
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Today’s right-wing talking points resurrect yesterday’s fascist tropes
Last weekend, The Independent published a piece by myself on how the contemporary hard right are reusing fascist tropes from the 1930s. Below is a longer version of that piece with links added. As public disorder has swept across the United States in protest against police brutality, many on the right have blamed ‘antifa’ for…
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There is no such thing as the ‘alt left’
Earlier in the week, a journalist at the ABC asked me some questions about whether there was such a thing as the ‘alt left’ and the possibility of left-wing violence in the twenty first century. I responded, but in the article published, there were no quotes from me. As the article has attracted significant criticism…
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Two new opinion pieces on the history of fascism and anti-fascism
A quick post to let people know that I have had two opinion pieces published this week on the history of fascism and anti-fascism in Britain and Australia. Firstly, the Times Higher Education website published a piece on the pre-history of ‘no platform’ and the protests against far right speakers on university campuses in the…
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No Platform documentary on BBC Radio 4 (featuring me!)
Last month I was interviewed about the history of the NUS policy of ‘no platform’ by BBC Radio 4 for a documentary on the subject, hosted by Professor Andrew Hussey from SOAS. It aired on Saturday night in the UK and is now available to listen to on the BBC iplayer. You can find the…
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The Communist Party of Australia reports on ‘the Battle of Cable Street’
The importance of the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ for the Communist Party of Great Britain has been discussed elsewhere on this blog, but I thought readers might be interested in how it was reported on in the Workers’ Weekly, the bi-weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia. On Friday October 9, 1936, the newspaper…
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My article in The Guardian on the history of the Australian far right
Just a quick note that I have reached the bourgeois elite now. The Guardian Australia website has published a short piece by myself on the history of the far right in Australia since the 1960s. The argument of the piece is that the far right has swung between electoralism and ‘direct action’ at different points…
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From Powell to Brexit: My interview with the Weekly Worker on ‘race’, anti-racism and the British left
This week, the CPGB’s Weekly Worker (see here for more info on its background) conducted an interview with me about my forthcoming book, British Communism and the Politics of Race, as well as on my research in general and the anti-racist movement in Britain since the 1960s. You can read the full interview here. It…
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Powellism and the advent of the British far right: The Communist Party response
48 years ago this week, Tory Minister Enoch Powell gave his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, in which he predicted dire consequences for Britain if further immigration from the Commonwealth continued. While criticised by many at the time, Powell’s speech opened up a political space to the right of the Conservative Party, mobilising around the…
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The UK Home Office and American Nazis: The Deportation of George Lincoln Rockwell
Earlier this week, a researcher at the BBC contacted me to ask about other cases of the Home Office refusing visas to ‘undesirable’ political figures, as Parliament was to debate the petition calling for Donald Trump to banned from entering the country. Amongst the cases that I could remember, one of the most interesting cases…
New Historical Express 