When they come to ethnically cleanse me/Will you speak out? Will you defend me?

[nanila]

I should be sleeping. Instead, I'm watching the results of the European elections come in, with a mounting sense of horror.

The massive gains by far-right parties in mainland Europe.

UKIP winning its first-ever seat in Scotland.

UKIP topping the polls in England.

And I'm wondering, did I become British just to watch the UK I admired and wanted so much to be part of, crumble in front of my eyes? I don't want this to be so. I very much don't want this to be so.

I voted. What else can I do to stop this seemingly inevitable march towards xenophobia, racism and isolationism?

Welcome to a state, where the politics of hate
Shout loud in the crowd, watch them beat us all down
There's a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence


Pop Will Eat Itself - Ich Bin Ein Auslander

Listen to the victim, abused by the system
The basis is racist, you know that we must face this
It can't happen here, oh yeah?
Take a look around at the cities and the towns

See them hunting, creeping, sneaking
Breeding fear and loathing with the lies they're speaking
The knife, the gun, broken bottle, petrol bomb
There is no future when the past soon comes

And when they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out? Will you defend me?
Or laugh through a glass eye as they rape our lives
Trampled under foot by the rights on the rise

Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander

Welcome to a state, where the politics of hate
Shout loud in the crowd, watch them beat us all down
There's a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence

If they come to ethnically cleanse me
Will you speak out? Will you defend me?
Freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Trampled under foot by the rise of the right

Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander
Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Ich Bin Ein Auslander

By the way, I want it on the record that if next year's general election results demonstrate that I'm overreacting here, I will be overjoyed. Because I care far more about compassion and kindness winning the day than I do about being personally in the right.

Comments

[major_clanger]

The simplistic answer is to say that we are not facing a V for Vendetta scenario. UKIP has polled high because its supporters buck the trend for low turnout in EU elections, and most credible pollsters are confident that in a UK general election its share of the actual vote would be more like 17%. Even then, it's a 17% that does UKIP precious little good; the party has siphoned support from both Labour and Conservatives, but not to the extent that it (so far as I am aware) has any prospect of winning even a single seat in the next Parliament.

But it's not as simple as that, and there is a lot to worry about. There will be more pressure in the Conservative party to adopt UKIP policies; even more disturbing is the prospect of Labour following suit. The media's - especially, and unforgivably, the BBC's - grotesque love-fest with Farage will if anything get worse. Anti-immigration and anti-immigrant views will increasingly become part of acceptable mainstream discourse, which is a bitter irony seeing as how the mainstream consensus has become astonishingly more liberal in areas such as gay marriage.

There is hope. As this blog post points out, UKIP has no internal coherence, even - if you push far enough - on issues such as Europe. Its dismal failure to impose party discipline or even properly vet candidates has led to a string of gaffes by its candidates that are very revealing about the true nature of UKIP. I would not be at all surprised if UKIP's new crop of local councillors provide endless further examples of just what sort of people a UKIP vote supports.

But then the risk is that a UKIP that is manifestly full of idiots but gets significant support will tempt both major parties to adopt UKIP-lite policies, expressly with the aim of saying "Unhappy about immigration but think UKIP are a bunch of crackpots? Well, now you can happily vote for us!" And that is a prospect I find very depressing.

[nanila]

I found it telling that there were no less than seven different anti-EU nutjobs parties on offer in the West Midlands. I think if those whose votes were spread across those parties had been united behind one, the results would have been truly devastating.

I wish that the mainstream parties, instead of asking themselves, "How can we win back the fraction of voters who switched to UKIP?" would ask, "How can we engage the 64% of voters who are so disenchanted with us that they don't even vote?"

[major_clanger]

The local results suggest that the other anti-EU parties (everything below the Greens on that list) got about 90,000 votes between them, as compared with UKIP's 428,000.

Also, looking at those numbers UKIP were up 10.2% - but the BNP, the English Democrats and No2EU between them dropped 9 points. Add in the slightly less than 4% of votes for the new nutjob parties, and the actual increase in anti-EU share is 5% overall. Still worrying, but a lot of UKIP's supposed rise has been fuelled by the BNP's collapse.

Engagement at EU elections is always a problem. We've now got ourselves stuck in a vicious circle where the only voters who feel strongly about them are the ones who support the anti-EU parties.