After the far right surge in Scotland this summer it is time to build the strength for next time, writes Carl Lewis.

Another summer, another wave of fascist activity. That seems to be the new normal facing us in the mid 2020s. Anti-immigration sentiments and propaganda have skyrocketed over the course of the last couple of decades, and a fascist administration in the US has escalated and lifted the liberal veneer from the authoritarian violence that has always characterised that nation. It’s no wonder that Britain is following suit and staging its own race riots and far right protests. Last year, as several cities in England saw massive far right riots targeting hotels used as refugee accommodation as well as individual black and brown people in the streets with violence and arson, Scotland mercifully avoided similar large scale manifestations. But now this surge of the far right has reached Scotland as well.

This summer we have seen anti-migrant protests take place in cities and towns across Scotland. These protests are typically characterised by taking place outside hotels housing refugees and were initially attended by around just 50 folk in Edinburgh to up to around 1000 in Falkirk and most places ending somewhere in the low 100s. The messaging mainly follows two lines: that migrants are the cause of the economic deprivation that ordinary folk are facing, and that male migrants are dangerous predators that rape and kill white Scottish women and girls. These protests draw in a diverse group of right wingers, from people who ‘just have concerns’ to straight up neo-nazis. Several of the protest have featured clear and intentional sieg heiling and nazi slogans such as the infamous ’14 words’, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children,” none of which has seen any condemnation from the ‘non-nazis’ at the protests. In most places, the protests have been organised by newer formations on the far right such as the Great British National Strike which was behind the initial protests in Edinburgh, and the Falkirk based Save our Future & Our Kids Future. However more established organisations have also been taking part. UKIP organisied a sizeable protest in Glasgow and prominent members of the neo-nazi parties Homeland and Patriotic Alternative have been spotted attending several protests in different cities.

In Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee counter protests have generally been able to outnumber the fascist protesters while in other localities they have struggled to do so, with Falkirk having consistently seen the anti-migrant crowd draw larger numbers than the counter protesters, even with the counter protest often featuring people coming through from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Most places have seen attendee numbers decline significantly over time, but whether or not folk continue turning up physically every weekend, it’s clear that anti-migrant sentiment is on the rise within communities in Scotland. Social media platforms like Facebook have been especially influential in the spreading of anti-migrant propaganda, with certain charismatic individuals gaining significant following from posting about these topics while hundreds of others can be seen interacting through comments and likes.

It’s no doubt important to visually challenge the idea that anti-migrant racists represent the majority opinion by outnumbering them in the street, and even more so when they stage protests outside hotels housing refugees. But it is also insufficient in countering the fascist surge. Fascism is, of course, born out of a capitalist imperialist system which inherently relies on white supremacy and patriarchy as a system of global labour division. Therefore fascism cannot ultimately be defeated without the defeat of the system that gives birth to it. But that being said, we can hardly delay our response to anti-migrant violence until we have defeated capitalism. So the question remains, what is to be done in the meantime?

Firstly we need to treat antifascist work as a struggle to build counter power to the state, grounded in solidarity. The state cannot be relied upon to stop the fascist surge because the border regime enacted by the neoliberal state is the largest flame fuelling the fascist surge. Neoliberalism requires the exportation of labour to the ‘cheaper’ global south and migrant populations within the imperial core countries in order to break the power of organised labour in those countries. It uses hard border regimes in order to enact the precarity on migrant workers that make them ‘cheaper’, to drive down wages and to prevent collective organising. But in order to do that the state must construct migrants as inherently being less human, less deserving, alien to the ‘body’ of the nation. And in that contradiction, that our economy requires migration while also demonising it, the fascist creep takes root. It spreads amongst the white British population who experience neoliberal austerity and falling living standards and feel that they are not getting the life they deserve. Our task is to build a movement opposing this border regime and the labour division which exploits both migrants and those born here.

Having said that, there is a tendency on the left to think that economic struggle is all that is needed to defeat fascism, that we can simply turn white working class folks’ attention elsewhere, in other words distract them from their own racism. But whatever the state of state propaganda in this country, blaming economic deprivation on migrants is not some sort of natural 1+1 = 2 equation. It’s the kind of conclusion white people draw because they are primed with racist bias from growing up in a white supremacist country. If we do not come to the understanding that fighting economic oppression does not in and of itself turn folk away from racism – that a specifically antiracist struggle is needed – we will continue losing ground to those selling fascist solutions to economically oppressed white folk. Let us not forget that part of the nature of fascist movements has exactly been to sell supremacy to some working class people through belonging to a national community of ‘producers’, contrasted against an outside parasitic force. Our task is not just a rational one, to convince people that it is factually wrong to think fascist capitalism will make their lives better, but a moral one, to root out notions of racial supremacy which cause folk to be open to fascist propaganda.

Individualising this struggle, however, and attempting to win over racists one by one is not a good use of anyone’s time. Instead it is the entire communities of people who are not taking part in anti-migrant protests, that we need to prime against future radicalisations before they become convinced of fascist ideas. We need to win the battle of ideas within community groups, sports clubs, local campaigns, tenants and trade unions, and imbue them with an antiracist ethos and practice, so that when fascist ideas come knocking at their door they have no desire to open it. Winning communities over to antifascism will in turn make individual fascists already within them feel unwelcoming to the, which can have a deradicalising effect on those fascists in and of itself.

But while working on building popular power, we cannot neglect the more immediate safety concerns that also come with a fascist surge. It is a fool’s errand to attempt to outsource antifascism to the police and prisons. Police do not prevent violence. They are at best able to punish people after the fact. And even when it comes to policing protests, we saw examples last year in England of the police pulling back as fascists were on the attack because their own safety is more important that anyone else’s. This is why dismissing the black bloc tradition of militant antifascism, as certain sections of the left often do, is a mistake. It is a mistake which sows discord between different groups who are ultimately aligned in the struggle for a solidaric world, and reduces the effectiveness that comes with a diversity of tactics. It also ignores the very real physical threat to racialised folk in Scotland, especially refugees and migrants. There is no essential reason why the riots we saw in England last year would not migrate to Scotland as well. We should embrace and encourage those with the will and ability to engage in physical confrontation, to put their bodies on the line and counter racist violence with self-defensive violence whenever needed. There have been multiple examples of Stand Up To Racism organising counter protests and then calling an end to the protest while fascists are still in the streets, specifically citing concerns for the safety of the counter-protesters when doing this. While taking care of our own safety is important, this blatantly ignores the safety of the people inside those hotels who we are supposed to be there to support. Black bloc protesters have never shied away from putting themselves at risk for the sake of more vulnerable people. That is a tradition and praxis we should celebrate and support.

The other reality we should be preparing for is relevant in every context where fascists gain traction and numbers: they come for the anarchists and communists too. This is well understood in the historical example of nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy but remains true in more contemporary contexts too. Sweden has long had a serious nazi problem which in the 2000s resulted in targeted attacks on antifascist leftist organisers and attacks on leftist organising meetings. One Swedish comrade of mine described how they would permanently keep baseball bats by the door of their meeting room because the risk of nazis coming to attack them was that immediate. Closer to home there have been recent reports of fascist groups in Ireland sharing the locations of various leftist squats within their networks, with fairly obvious intentions. We should not remain naive that we aren’t facing a future where we will need to be able to defend our organising work.

It’s probably likely that protests will die down as the months get colder and fewer and fewer folk feel like spending hours freezing outside on the weekend, but this will hardly spell the end of the fascist wave we are living through. I would urge all of us to spend the potentially quieter winter months building and organising so we are in a position of strength come next summer and hopefully all future summers to come. Now is the time to organise assemblies in our cities and communities, to discuss with those around us how to do this work, to develop coalitions of likeminded local groups and individuals who can all take on this fight together and not expect nation wide organisations to save us. If you are of a mind to practice black bloc protesting, now is the time to create an affinity group, to train skills together and learn to trust each other. Umberto Eco said that “Freedom and liberation are an unending task”, but it is nonetheless a task made lighter the more of us carry it.

Carl Lewis is an Edinburgh based anarchist political organiser and antifascist.