vetuste - //Good evening, Andy.
Do you agree with Mikey's assessment of the "fascist" threat? //
Good afternoon vetuste
Apologies for the delay in my response – I did post my answer last night, and then closed down, so I have only just discovered that it was not uploaded correctly onto the thread.
So – to address your question – I think that I part company from Mikey in terms of the scale and overall impact of the fascist threat as it stands.
My position on organisations such as the EDL, the BNP, the Klan, and so on, is that they provide a home for inadequate people who lack a sense of security, and badly feel a need to belong to something.
If the organisation has a quasi-military structure, with ranks, and if possible, a uniform, then so much the better.
A fundamental requirement is the feeling of bonding, and this is furnished by the belief that the organisation fights against something undesirable, which is universally accepted by the organisation as a serious threat, but seen by the rest of society as little or no real threat at all.
So, the notion of being a small band of like-minded individuals, trying to save society from the threat it refuses to acknowledge, gives ready-made excuses for meetings, marches, communications, and plenty of self-righteous anger and shouting in public.
Unfortunately these organisations are tailor-made for the outsiders who revel in the mayhem and violence, and care little for the ethos of the organisation, be it right or wrong in its approach.
My perception is that all these ‘fascist’ organisations achieve fare more media coverage than their either merit or deserve. It is utterly disproportionate to their value, or effect on society as a whole, since they are largely highly vocal, but very small units of people who, in a different strata of society, would be presenting coups of the local golf club committee, or running the local car club with an iron fist and an over-inflated sense of value and importance.
My wish is that the media gave extreme groups of either political persuasion the coverage and attention the really actually deserve, which is none at all, and then they could stop bothering the rest of us with their pointless marches and their nasty skirmishes, and leave the police service to be getting on with something of greater benefit to the society that funds it.