Yes, the Term "Far-Right" is Frequently Abused.

Yes, many of the current rioters are Far-Right.

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. Perfectly ethical cultural conservatives have been falsely labelled “far-right extremists” for expressing legitimate concerns about issues like the broken immigration system, radical Islamism, the unwillingness of some diasporic communities to integrate, London gang crime involving disproportionate numbers of black youths, the racism of ‘woke’ anti-racist activism and the potential problems of preserving cultural integrity in a multicultural society.

2. People can be accurately described as ‘far-right extremists’ when they are doing things like setting fire to police stations, cars, shops, and community facilities, surrounding mosques and throwing bricks at them, converging on migrant hostels with people inside, smashing windows and seeking to force entry, attempting to break into restaurants and bars causing people to barricade themselves inside, attacking police officers with bricks, bottles and flares & seriously injuring dozens, causing injury to other people in the vicinity including an unprovoked attack on an Asian passerby simply walking along the street, impeding firefighters from putting out fires & throwing missiles at a fire engine causing significant damage while yelling things like “You’re not English anymore” and “paedo Muslims off our streets.”

At least 30 demonstrations are occurring across the United Kingdom this weekend following the murder of three little girls at a dance class, Bebe King (6), Elsie Dot Stancombe (7) and Alice Dasilva Aguiar (9), and the serious injury of many others as well as their dance instructors. The murders were committed by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana. The murder or sexual abuse of children is the thing most likely to provokes a strong visceral reaction in our species. Such crimes can cause the most moderate and peaceable among us to wish we had a death penalty and preferably a painful one, even if fleetingly. Feeling such a instinctive reaction does not make one an extremist. I felt it myself in a case where the police were unable to prosecute the historic rape of a member of my family. I felt the judge had made the correct judgement when he gave a friend of mine of previously good character a suspended sentence for committing grievous bodily harm in the immediate aftermath of a man fracturing his nine-year-old son’s skull in a random attack on the street.

The riots and demonstrations we are currently seeing are not such cases, however, as clearly demonstrated by the nature of them as political protests against illegal immigration and Muslims. While misinformation was spread online immediately following the attack claiming Axel to be both an illegal immigrant and a Muslim, it was quickly ascertained that he is neither. He is a citizen of the UK, born in Wales to a devoutly Christian family originally from Rwanda. Yet, the riots, the threats, the violence and the intimidation of Muslims and asylum seekers continue. It should not need to be stated that, even if Axel had been an illegal Muslim migrant, this would be no justification for acts of violent intimidation against Muslims or migrants. It is deeply concerning that anybody would think it could be .

We simply do not know the motivations for Axel Rudakubana’s actions at this time. Reports from the family’s neighbours and friends indicate that they were a perfectly normal, suburban family with a semi-detached house and a hatchback. Mr. Rudakubana is described as a hardworking taxi-driver who also taught karate while Mrs. Rudakubana was a stay-at-home mother. They were known to be heavily involved in their church and Christian singing was often heard when passing their home. Otherwise, they were described as a quiet family. Axel’s older brother was said to be the more outgoing while Axel was quiet and introverted although he had performed in musicals and sung with drama groups. One of the family friends suggested that this was a way for him to try to branch out and make friends in the community which was something he struggled with due to his intensely introverted nature but that this had not been very successful. The court learned that he had been diagnosed with autism and that he had been unwilling to leave the house or communicate verbally, even with his family, for some time. He did not speak when spoken to in court and his behaviour was decidedly odd. He is reported to have covered his face with his sweatshirt and rocked from side to side throughout.

It is unhelpful to speculate without further information, but so far, his behaviour bears more similarity to the ‘neurologically/psychiatrically impaired loner exhibiting signs of feeling alienated and self-isolating” killer than the terrorist or activist killer. Unless he was psychotic and did not know that he was killing children or was unable to understand that doing so was wrong, which has not been put forward as a defence, this would not lessen his culpability or make his actions any less abhorrent. It remains possible that Axel’s actions were ideologically-motivated. Perhaps he is a psychopathic anti-white racist or a virulent misogynist? Maybe he is one of the tiny and unhinged contingent of Christians who believes Taylor Swift (upon whose music the dance class was based) is involved in promoting Satanism and witchcraft? Maybe he is even a Welsh nationalist with a deep and abiding hatred of the English that he took to murderous levels? None of these seem very likely, however, and even if he were any of those things, it would be deeply irrational and illiberal to hold black people, men, Christians or the Welsh responsible for his horrific actions.

Nevertheless, there are demonstrably very many people determined to focus on identity and politics and to blame immigrants, Muslims, black people or the Left. As, editor of The Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie posted

This is speaking into a politicised “grand theme” rather than engaging with the facts of any situation - an approach to addressing current events with which we are all now very familiar. It is associated with both postmodern (on the left) and post-truth (on the right) ways of determining what is true and what is morally right. This is the realm in which empirical reality gives way to “lived experience” (perceptions), ideological narratives and collectivist identitarian thinking.

Those working on a Critical Social Justice (woke) framework rooted in postmodern notions of truth might tell us that black Americans are being lynched by police every day and read any situation in which a black man is shot by police as evidence of this even when it is demonstrably proven that the individual in question was a violent criminal aiming a gun at law-enforcement officers. The facts of the individual case do not matter, we are told, because it is all part of a larger narrative that is a true representation of society and is felt, lived and perceived by black people and it is that perception of the truth that matters and must be addressed on a societal level. (Black people disagreeing are dismissed as inauthentic Black voices)

Similarly, Mr Mackenzie would like us to understand that the Prime Minister responding to the wave of violent and intimidatory protests with practical plans for better policing and addressing the false narratives driven by right-wing ideologues online is deliberately missing the point. He doesn’t “get it” that ordinary people are afraid and associate the murder of children with illegal immigration. He wishes him to go with the lived experience (perceptions), ideological narratives and collectivist identitarian thinking of his own ideological group and “stop the boats.” It does not matter that, in this case, the lived experience, perceptions, ideological narrative and identitarian collectivism that led people to associate the murder of innocent children with illegal migrants are wrong. “Stopping the boats” would not have prevented Axel from murdering children as he did not travel to Southport from Cardiff by boat and his parents are legal migrants who arrived legally and are respected members of society. The facts of the individual case do not matter because it is all part of a larger narrative that is a true representation of society and is felt, lived and perceived by “ordinary” people and it is that perception of the truth that matters and must be addressed on a societal level.

This video by a woman from my own part of the country uses the same thinking. She accuses the Labour government of “not listening to the people” and blames them for people having “gone up there and rioted and got angry.” She goes on to say that raising any concerns about immigration doesn’t work anymore - “They don’t want to integrate with us” - and that ‘they’ are out on the streets “raping our daughters.” If Starmer had listened to the people, she suggests, rather than “pandering to the other side and thinking everyone’s Islamophobic which is bullshit,” maybe the riot wouldn’t have happened. It does not seem to register that the PM was unable to give details of the murderer until the court allowed this because he was a minor. Nor does his critic address the fact that Labour is fast-tracking reviews of asylum cases and has taken measures to apprehend illegal immigrants and has returned migrants found in the channel to France for the first time.

Of most significance is when she says,

Anyone who voices a concern about what’s happening out there is just a far-right racist.

and

We’re just concerned and standing up for what is right and that does not make us racist or far-right.

Of course, here, she is absolutely right. It does not make anybody racist or far-right to voice concerns or stand up for what they think is right. Many on the identitarian left have claimed that any expression of concern about cultural cohesion and illiberal attitudes towards women, Jews and same-sex attracted people commonly found in those from much more socially conservative cultures, particularly Muslim ones, are racist and far-right. Ethical conservatives whose concerns are absolutely genuine, evidence-based and not motivated by racism or prejudice against Muslim people whose practice of their faith varies widely are understandably angry and frustrated by this. It is neither racist nor far-right to want to conserve one’s own culture. It is the essence of traditional conservatism but, in this case, it is also central to liberalism. Much of the culture so many of us wish to conserve is liberal. It is the intellectual and political history and the governing system and social norms that have emerged from the philosophical tradition of liberalism that developed in England that liberals overwhelmingly want to conserve.

Many liberals in the centre and on the left as well as feminists, gay-rights activists and advocates against antisemitism on the left have also been accused of being racist and far-right for raising concerns about not only Islamist extremism but the much more common highly socially conservative and illiberal practice of Islam. There is a need to be able to discuss this and liberals, in particular, who reject identitarianism and oppose illiberal ideologies consistently must be able to engage with and criticise those ideas within Islam which threaten the rights, freedoms and safety of women, sexual minorities, Jews, apostates from Islam and critics of Islam. We are particularly effective when we support the liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims, Muslim feminists, reformers and gay rights activists already doing that.

Nevertheless, it is essential that we do not allow those who genuinely are racist and far-right extremists to hide behind the accurate observation that this term has been abused and misapplied to anybody who does not agree with the identitarian (woke) left. There are those who genuinely do hold ethnonationalist and white supremacist views. White identity politics is growing and it is every bit as stupid and unethical as any other kind. In a white majority country, it has the power to be particularly destructive and dangerous. It must be opposed. There are also those who really do harbour great hostility towards Muslims, no matter how they understand and practice their faith or even if they practice it at all. And there are those who are deeply intolerant of migrants and the children and grandchildren of migrants including those who consider themselves proudly British and contribute much to society.

It is deeply regrettable that terms like “racist” and “far-right” have been so abused by the identitarian left that they are often now understood to signify ‘not woke’ and ‘not far-left’. This must not be enabled to work in reverse. If you harbour hostility towards people of racial minority regardless of their individual character and behaviour, the name for this is not ‘non-woke’ or ‘anti-woke’ but ‘racist.’ If you are surrounding mosques and migrant hostels, trapping the inhabitants inside while you hurl missiles, smash windows, demolish walls and set fires, you are not simply demonstrating that you are not far-left. You are demonstrating that you are a far-right extremist. If you can recognise violent and destructive protests in which people get hurt and property gets damaged as far-left extremism, you can recognise far-right extremism. If you are an ethical, law-abiding citizen on the right who abhors thuggery and violence and wishes to conserve the best of British values, it is absolutely essential that you do recognise this and address it.

Liberal conservatives are our best hope for dealing with the rising problem of the illiberal right including the far-right extremists. You are the ones who recognise that we cannot conserve our liberal democracy or “Western Civilisation” without conserving the liberal principles that underlie it. You know that it is not patriotic or in keeping with the best of our intellectual, cultural or religious heritage to condone or tolerate the intimidation or denigration of any of our citizens for any reason other than their own individual behaviour. Racism has no place in our Christian or pre-Christian religious heritage. Religious persecution is anathema to our liberal philosophical foundations. Wanton destruction of property, loutish, abusive behaviour, and physical attacks on police and firefighters as they strive to keep order and protect life go against core conservative principles.

Liberal leftists and liberal conservatives are natural allies in the battle against the revolutionaries and reactionaries - two sides of the same coin - prepared to overrule democratic processes and their fellow citizens, and trample all over our philosophical traditions, structures and institutions and cultural heritage with threats, violence and authoritarianism. To be liberal left is always to be conservative in some sense because to be liberal is to progress by reforming what is good to make it better. To be conservative is always to be liberal in that same sense because to conserve our philosophical heritage is to conserve liberalism.

Liberal leftists like me are best placed continuing to address the illiberal identitarianism on the left which feeds into the illiberal identitarianism on the right and vice versa. We are the ones who can demonstrate how to do economic leftism and social progress in a liberal way. You are the ones who can demonstrate how to conserve culture and tradition in a way that upholds the principles underlying our liberal democracy. To voice reasonable concerns about immigration and how it impacts cultural integrity and seek to effect change that will conserve it is conservative. To break things, set fire to things and hurt and intimidate people who are guiltless of any crime or who are trying to keep order is not. We need you to stand up and make this very clear right now.