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The Brexit traitor trope: how hard-right fantasies put us all at risk
Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts were a menace. So were the Nazi sympathies of many British aristocrats in the 1930s. Today’s ascendant far right poses its own unique dangers, using familiar tropes that have been fuelled and legitimised by the political and media elite – and there is all too little appreciation of where Britain could be heading.
Brexit, for the Tory right, was a national revolution: not simply a recalibration of Britain’s relationship with the EU but a blunt instrument to roll back progressive social norms. Those deemed to be critics or opponents were now enemies of the people, saboteurs, traitors, all splashed on newspaper front pages. A rising Labour left is portrayed as treacherous, in league with terrorists and foreign powers. For the hard right, in Britain and beyond, the left is an agent of the nation’s destruction because of its support for migrants and refugees, and opposition to anti-Muslim bigotry. Islamophobia is a respectable bigotry, fanned by national newspapers such as The Sun and The Times which are forced to publish corrections after publishing articles which twist the truth and whip up hatred, but by then the damage is already done.
A classic far-right trope has always been to portray opponents as betrayers of the nation. This week, it reached a zenith with the threatening Daily Express headline: “Ignore the will of the people at your peril”.
Brexit, for the Tory right, was a national revolution: not simply a recalibration of Britain’s relationship with the EU but a blunt instrument to roll back progressive social norms. Those deemed to be critics or opponents were now enemies of the people, saboteurs, traitors, all splashed on newspaper front pages. A rising Labour left is portrayed as treacherous, in league with terrorists and foreign powers. For the hard right, in Britain and beyond, the left is an agent of the nation’s destruction because of its support for migrants and refugees, and opposition to anti-Muslim bigotry. Islamophobia is a respectable bigotry, fanned by national newspapers such as The Sun and The Times which are forced to publish corrections after publishing articles which twist the truth and whip up hatred, but by then the damage is already done.
A classic far-right trope has always been to portray opponents as betrayers of the nation. This week, it reached a zenith with the threatening Daily Express headline: “Ignore the will of the people at your peril”.
[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/13/brexit-traitor-trope-hard-right-fantasies-risk|
Still trying to work out how the looniest of the far right managed to wrestle so much power in what is a centrist country???
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