The Far Right Is Moving to the Mainstream

[MsAmerica]

Excerpt from the New York Times assessment, if anyone is interested.

In Britain, the Far Right Is Moving to the Mainstream
By William Davies

As the far right becomes a fixture of British politics, prominent voices are willing to abstain from condemning the violence, excuse it or even appear to encourage it.
The anti-immigrant, nationalist Reform Party, led by Nigel Farage, has been steadily moving from the fringes to the mainstream. With eight lawmakers in Parliament, it consistently tops polls and is increasingly talked about as capable of winning the next general election. Mr. Farage described the reaction of “our leaders” to Mr. Nowak’s death as proof of “a two-tier culture in this country, where the rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities,” and urged Britons to respond with “pure, cold rage.”

A more explicitly far-right party, Restore Britain — formed by the lawmaker Rupert Lowe, a breakaway from Reform, and endorsed by Mr. Musk — responded to Mr. Nowak’s murder in a long post on X that said, “Enough is enough,” and that keeping alive the “savage” who killed him served nobody.

As Britain’s traditional two-party democracy disintegrates, and voters splinter in five or six directions (Reform may lead the polls, but gets only around 25 percent support), the boundaries that once distinguished the center-right from the far right have collapsed. As the writer Daniel Trilling writes in his book “If We Tolerate This,” flagrantly racist ideas and claims that would have been utterly beyond the pale just over a decade ago now circulate among conservative newspapers and politicians as they struggle to keep up with the rage bait of far-right influencers. Last year, for example, an up-and-coming Conservative lawmaker named Katie Lam told The Times of London that legal residents needed to “go home,” leaving Britain more “culturally coherent.”

There is a troubling sense in Britain that only the right seems to possess the momentum and theatricality that succeeds in this new quick-fire videographic era of politics. Be it in Westminster or on the street, the right — including the far right — takes the initiative and sets the agenda, leaving those in the liberal mainstream to denounce sporadic outbursts of violence without confronting the wider political and ideological climate that encourages and condones it.

www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/opinion/britain-far-right-reform-restore-uk.html

Well, I didn’t hear Corbyn, that non right wing champion, condemn Jewish tropes, anti. Jewish prejudice from his own party, and violence against them. 🤷‍♀️

I’d never vote Reform, or any far right party, but let’s not be hypocrites here. The left can be as bad as the right.

The meaning of the term “far right” seems to have changed significantly in the last couple of decades.

In what way?

Exactly. Unfortunately, leftists have cried wolf too many times over the last decade or so. The grooming gangs scandal was dismissed as a "far-right conspiracy" for many years. Female athletes get called fascists if they object to competing against men. Lesbians get called bigots for not wanting to sleep with men. There was a bizarre article in the Economist last year saying that white people having children is "part of an insidious plot to create a whiter America".

😂😆Ah an American article written by a British Labour supporter. William Davies - this article he also wrote, bout Labour having 'the expertise to fix the foundations' (2024) didn't age well did it?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n22/william-davies/a-crisis-in-credibility

Quite. Disagree with Labour lunacy? Far Right! Racist! Means nothing anymore.

Immigration is excellent.

Immigration fraud (asylum seekers) isn’t.

Abyone who thinks that’s far right ie unacceptably Nazi is welcome to their opinion.

But not the respect of the majority of Europeans of every colour.

How exactly is exercising the legal right to claim asylum "immigration fraud"?

I don't think we've moved towards the far right collectively, in one unipolar direction, but that which was once centrism is disappearing. The earnest debate, to both speak and listen, the intent to understand the other side, to try to find the middle ground, is vanishing. Instead, there's a line, left/right, and everyone stands on one side or the other, waving their placards, and nobody wants to listen to anyone who doesn't agree with them. Just in this thread itself, you can see it -- people making ideological statements which may or may not benefit them, or anybody else, but yet everybody feels it is necessary to state their position, to show their colours. I am not an exception. I have a position, too. But, I don't think it benefits anybody, including myself, to try to persuade or dissuade people to share my opinion here, or anywhere else on social media because I do not want to participate in feeding the beast.

It's looking ugly out there, and I worry about where we're collectively heading.

I think that often, the left/right dichotomy is obscurantism, and the only real winners are the people with already full pockets who exploit the dichotomy to further their own ends.

For the bird of democracy to fly, I think it needs both a right and a left wing, yet, the bird also needs a core, neither right nor left, but a stout middle. I believe the bird looks thin, right now, and wonder how it shall remain in flight.

Ultimately, whatever you call these parties (and Reform are not "far right"), their policies are popular. If that's what people want, isn't that democracy?

LSE of economics has published articles on how counterproductive it is to wrongly malign populist centre right policies as far right.

The word has cheapened to such an extent there was a trend of black, brown, women, men from all walks of life proudly stating they were far because they don’t want men in their bathrooms etc.

The Left should have learnt lessons from The Democrats in America that lost 20% of black male votes and large majority of legal Hispanics to the republicans. This is happening in the UK, many Black and Asians are gravitating towards right leaning parties. Instead of dealing with the issue the left call everyone racist or say BAME are not about to be against illegal immigration because our parent or parents were born overseas. Our parent(s) followed the rules of the UK upon entering and believing BAME cannot support such a position exposes their racial bias and stereotypes far more than those that lean conservative.

I can not wait to see the faces of those when the electorate finally get to put a cross at the ballot box.

Exactly

I agree. Walk in your own political shoes. People should stop trying to ram their politics down other people's necks by demonising anyone who disagrees with them, accusing them of immorality or stupidity or being a proto facist or whatever the trendy abuse term is at any given moment. Its hardly persuasive.

'So why was it a surprise that on 23 June 2016, following a referendum campaign in which immigration was a key issue, 52 per cent of voters opted to leave the European Union?

I am not suggesting that those who voted to leave the EU are ‘far right’ – those wanting to leave span the political spectrum. Rather I see the surprise elicited by the referendum vote as symptomatic of a political complacency in how we understand and engage with what we conveniently think of as a pathological fringe. The tendency to label uncomfortable and contentious views as ‘far-right’ and treat them with disdain led to a failure to recognise how extant anxieties have become infused with increasingly mainstream frustration with the contemporary practice of politics. In this sense, the referendum provided a one-off opportunity to ‘be heard’.'

And 10 years later - they are still not listening. They will reap what they sow.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/why-dismissing-uncomfortable-views-as-far-right-risks-political-complacency/