Britain’s Islamo-left is on the march

‘Love, unity, hope.’ That was the cringe, Hallmark-card message of yesterday’s ‘march against the far right’ in London, organised by the Together Alliance – a coalition of trade unions, hysterical left-wingers and dense celebrities who have memed themselves into believing that the right-populist Reform UK is a ‘far-right party’.

I’d barely been on Whitehall for 30 seconds before I saw that most lovely, unifying and hopeful of sights: a sea of flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the terror state that has been veiling women, hanging homosexuals and murdering dissidents and Jews ever since 1979.

You might think that any self-respecting anti-fascist wouldn’t want to be seen dead with these ayatollah fanboys, apologists for an anti-Semitic dictator with messianic designs on the world. (Now who does that remind me of? It’s on the tip of my tongue!) But you would be wrong. The flags and placards of the late Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, offed by Israeli airpower last month, bobbed through the crowd without incident.

This is not guilt by association. Not least because the Together Alliance has formally associated itself with groups who have – to put it gingerly – ‘links’ with many of the most blood-stained Islamist movements on Earth.

On its website, its list of supportive groups includes the Muslim Association of Britain. This inoffensive-sounding org, a veteran of anti-Iraq War and ‘pro-Palestine’ activism, was founded by one Muhammad Sawalha, a former Hamas military chief in the West Bank, who now lives in London for some reason. You remember Hamas, that Jew-killing, woman-raping jihadi army. That Hamas.

Then there’s the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which the think-tank Policy Exchange describes as ‘an entity tied to the Iranian government’. Its greatest hits include awarding Charlie Hebdo ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ just two months after the mag’s staff were massacred by Islamists, hailing Khamenei as a ‘great martyr’ at the recent Al-Quds Day demonstration, and trying to organise a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Depressingly, I could go on. And none of this is the least bit surprising. Since October 7, we’ve seen alleged leftists in dayglo dungarees happily marching alongside Islamic radicals waving placards featuring caricatures that wouldn’t look out of place in Der Stürmer, or chanting Arabic war slogans about the slaughter of Jews in the 7th century. That’s a fun day out for them now.

Britain’s Islamo-left has been on the march for decades, too. Back in 1994, Chris Harman of the Socialist Workers Party penned ‘The Prophet and the Proletariat’, a pamphlet arguing that Islamism spoke to a ‘feeling of revolt [that] could be tapped for progressive purposes’. This hellish marriage of convenience has now been consummated. Hence, Jeremy Corbyn calling Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends’. Hence, Lindsey German of the Stop The War Coalition, which was also out in force yesterday, declaring loftily that ‘democracy in the Middle East is Hamas, is Hezbollah’. German said that back in 2006 – the last time Hamas-run Gaza held an election.

But this is no longer confined to the dregs of the old left. What yesterday’s demo – with its festival-style branding, dance stage and tote-bag-swinging attendees to match – reveals is that the deranged brand of ‘anti-fascism’ that has curdled in recent decades has gone mainstream among the time-rich middle classes. An anti-fascism that thinks the British people peacefully, democratically agitating for national sovereignty, less migration and more clout is a terrifying echo of the 1930s, all while ignoring religious extremists blowing up kids at pop concerts and stabbing Jews at synagogues.

The ‘left’ has simultaneously become dumber and more extreme. Green Party leader Zack Polanski, the de facto headliner yesterday, embodies this lobotomisation. A man who got involved in politics about five minutes ago and gives off the distinct impression he has never read a book that wasn’t written by Owen Jones. A man who thinks and speaks in faux-inspirational Insta talking points – replete with talk of ‘hope’ and ‘love’ – while pushing leaflets through letterboxes appealing to voters on the basis of ginned-up ethno-religious grievance. A man who confuses virtue-signalling for politics, blokes in wigs for women, and hardline conservative Muslims for allies in the fight for rainbow-coloured ‘social justice’.

This is not your grandfather’s anti-fascism. There were appeals from the podium yesterday to the Battle of Cable Street and the fight against the National Front. This is an insult to historical memory, almost a form of stolen valour. At Cable Street, Jews, leftists and East Londoners faced down Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. In the 1970s, genuine anti-fascists organised to stop genuine far-right thugs stabbing Asian people or burning black families out of their homes. Yesterday, tens of thousands of Daunt Books botherers gathered in Westminster to collectively screech about a migration-sceptical political party they happen to dislike leading in the opinion polls. It’s not the same thing.

Alongside Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson was the other bête noire of the day. The Together Alliance was hastily formed after the anti-Islam, nationalist activist’s Unite The Kingdom demonstration last September, which brought north of 100,000 people out on to the streets. The speeches from Together Alliance organisers implied they feel they are losing ground. They constantly stressed theirs was a gathering of ‘working people’, despite the overwhelmingly more bourgeois vibe, and insisted their march had attracted half a million (the Metropolitan Police reckon it was closer to 50,000).

But rather than ask why ordinary people are so fed up with uncontrolled migration, multiculturalism and Islamic extremism that they are taking to the streets – even getting behind questionable characters they might have previously swerved – the speakers yesterday appeared convinced the little folk are just sadly mistaken. Billy Bragg and others charitably conceded they have a right to be angry. They are just angry about the wrong things! Silly geese. That gnawing sense of unease at how the country is changing, in ways no one ever voted for? That’s just misdirected anger at ‘the billionaires’ and the sorry state of public services. As one placard put it, rather less diplomatically, ‘Stop blaming immigrants… for your shit life’. Scratch an ‘anti-fascist’, find a classist.

But it’s not just Robinson, is it? The left and even the centrist dads have spent the past decade calling Brexit fascist, the Tories fascist, Farage a fascist. What they mean is democracy. The public’s stubborn refusal to lie back and accept their own disenfranchisement. That is what really keeps the great and good up at night. Meanwhile, these supposed warriors against black-clad barbarism appear remarkably chilled out about the threat posed by the Islamists – who account for 94 per cent of all terror deaths since 1999, and three-quarters of MI5’s terrorism caseload. Hell, they will even happily march alongside them on a sunny Saturday. With ‘anti-fascists’ like these, who needs fascists?

Tom Slater is editor of spiked. Follow him on X: @Tom_Slater_.