Throw the Fascists in the Sea
Protester FLO GRAHAM outlines the dangers of ‘groupthink’ perpetuating the very problems the protest is about
Having attended the counter-right protest in Hastings recently, I felt a swollen sense of conflict in relation to the rhetoric: chants and general ideologies that were being expressed by those standing with banners by my side. The anger and hate towards groups of ‘fascists’ felt unjust because ultimately it is only exaggerating a division between the two sides. Money is the great divider. Standing with familiar faces I see on the streets, I felt at odds about my place at this event.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I will stand in solidarity with anyone seeking humanity, kindness and safety. However I do not feel comfortable targeting a group of individuals who have likely been the product of the great wealth divide. People are not born with hearts full of hate, they did not grow up with an instinctive hate for the ‘other’, they likely grew up without love and as part of a system that allowed them to slip through the fingers of safety. Impoverished parents who had little time for their children, who may have escaped their own difficulties with substance abuse, in over-saturated classrooms where teachers were forced to remove ‘obstructive’ children as opposed to seeking out the reasons for their behaviour, who were likely only seeking attention and love because they lacked it at home. These individuals are searching for their community, for their people, and found that in radicalised groups who also want to blame someone for their lack of opportunity and perhaps subconsciously their lack of understanding.
There is a reason why politics, economics, sociology, anthropology and psychology are not properly taught in schools. There is a reason we learn history based on the achievements of the British as opposed to the atrocities we enacted. To know all these things would fuel a divide between the working classes and the ruling classes as opposed to a divide between races, sexes, genders and religions. With community, with care, with safety and love we would not fall at hurdles such as these, but to watch my fellow educated peer protesters shout about throwing people in the sea I couldn’t help but feel the dangers of mob mentality and although it was an excellent show of solidarity, it was also a dangerous exhibition of how we came to be standing where we were. Groupthink can act as quick as wildfire.
There is a quote from Orwell’s 1984: “the proles stayed human.” The ‘proles’, proletariat, the underclass, working class, and now middle class. If there is hope, it lies with us, because to be human is to have love, to understand, to look at life from the perspective of others. If we can understand why a refugee has ended up seeking kindness on our shores, then we must also try to understand why swathes of the British populace feel belittled, ostracised and forgotten about and therefore feel the need to take out that anger on the ‘other’. The victim becomes the bully.
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