Only with independence can Scotland escape the rise of the right

Last weekend, there were elections in the Germans states of Thuringia and Saxony. In both these states the far right Alternative für Deutschland party, which favours the ‘repatriation’ of immigrants and even of some naturalised German citizens – the ones who are muslim or not white of course – performed alarmingly well, coming top of the poll in Thuringia and second in Saxony. For the first time since the 1930s an actual fascist party is winning elections in Germany. Political canaries in the coalmine don’t get much more alarming than that.

The AfD won 32.8% of the vote in Thuringia and 30.6%, in Saxony according to preliminary results. However although the AfD came top of the poll in Thuringia, it is unlikely to be able to form a government as all the other parties refuse to cooperate with it and it does not have sufficient representation to be able to govern as a minority administration. Thuringia and Saxony are both part of the former East Germany where the AfD has most of its support, leading to concerns that over 30 years after reunification the former West and East Germany are growing further apart politically.

However this is not just a tale of politics in a country far away, the electoral gains of the AfD are part and parcel of the rise of far right exclusionary authoritarian politics across the globe, not least in the USA where Trump’s Republicans have all but ceased to be a democratic party, practising voter suppression on an industrial scale in Republican run states, and introducing frightening tactics to deny the results of ballots whose outcomes are not in their favour. Trump has never accepted the result of any election he has lost, from the New Hampshire Republican primary in 2016 to the 2020 presidential election and continues to deny that he lost the popular vote in 2016, an election which he won due to electoral college votes. Trump and his allies are already signalling that he will not accept the result of this year’s presidential election should he lose to Kamala Harris.

Across the world the far right is worrying well funded, by billionaires like Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, who makes no secret of his contempt for democracy. His erstwhile colleague Elon Musk, the worst thing to come out of South Africa since Apartheid, has turned Twitter from the Internet’s town hall into an abandoned shopping mall full of fascist ghosts, where Musk amplifies and promotes far right racist conspiracy theories.

The UK is far from immune to the rise of the far right, as the recent racist riots in England, sparked off by misinformation on social media so distressingly demonstrated. The gurning figure of right wing anti-immigration English nationalist populist Nigel Farage now has a foothold in the Commons for his right wing anti immigration and anti-European party. All that platforming he was given by the British media and above all by the BBC has finally paid off.

What has just happened in Germany and the USA could so easily happen here, indeed the signs are that it’s on the cards here too. Germany has a Social Democratic government, the ideological bed fellows of Keir Starmer, it is in no small measure due to public dissatisfaction with the Social Democratic government of Olaf Scholtz that the far right is performing so well in the polls. As anger and disappointment in the UK grows at the failure of Labour and Keir Starmer to deliver the change that they repeatedly promised and the malign effects of Starmer’s austerity cuts start to bite, the English nationalist populist right will be poised to take electoral advantage.

The Tories are currently in disarray following their recent election defeat, but that will not last forever. The current favourite to take the leadership of the Tories is Kemi Badenoch, who promises to take the Tories even further to the right than they currently are.

Meanwhile Farage and his allies continue their malignant manoeuvres, determined to take advantage of the inevitable unpopularity that lies in store for Keir Starmer.

Back during the Scottish independence referendum campaign, ten long years ago, Scots were warned in lurid terms that the Westminster parliament was all that stood between us and political extremism. Ten years later and we see that it is Westminster and the British media which put Scotland at risk of far right extremism. The results of the British Social Attitudes Survey published this week demonstrate that views and beliefs associated with exclusionary right wing ethnic nationalism are more prevalent amongst opponents of independence than amongst independence supporters.

The research found only 50% of those who support Scottish independence said that being born in Scotland is important to being “truly Scottish”, compared with 59% of those who oppose independence.

42% of those who support independence say that having Scottish ancestry is important to being Scottish, a much lower figure than the 51% of opponents of independence who take that view.

Opponents of independence are also far more likely to have a negative view of immigrants than supporters of independence and in this respect opponents of independence pattern more strongly with Brexit supporters who likewise tend to have negative views of immigrants. A total 57% of opponents of EU membership agree that immigrants increase crime rates, compared with just 17% of those who would vote to remain. 32% of opponents of Scottish independence also believe the right wing misinformation linking immigrants and crime, whereas only 19% of supporters of independence adhere to this view.

Indeed this report strengthens the argument of what I have been saying for some time that the Scottish independence debate must not be framed as a debate between ‘nationalists’ and ‘unionists’ who are magically immune to nationalism but rather as a debate between inclusionary civic Scottish nationalism and an increasingly exclusionary and ethnic British nationalism. Only independence can save Scotland from the rise of right wing Anglo-British nationalism, a nationalism which is constantly platformed and propagated by the British media and above all by the BBC, but which is never ever identified by them as a form of nationalism, and a particularly reactionary and regressive one at that.

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