The rise of Facism

The rise of Facism and immigration as its fuel

OK. In order to go for­ward, some­times we have to take a step back.

Let’s go back 10 years. Feb­ru­ary 2016. Imag­ine I’m talk­ing to you then, with a list of pre­dic­tions about the next decade.

First: Farage wins the Brex­it debate. The UK leaves the EU and inflicts great harm on itself.

Sec­ond: The polls are wrong. Hillary Clin­ton does­n’t win the White House. The loon Trump does.

You think that’s mad? I’ve more.

• Trump los­es to Biden in 2020, then coor­di­nates an insur­rec­tion to steal the elec­tion. Peo­ple die storm­ing Capi­tol Hill.
• Putin invades Ukraine.
• Israel con­ducts a geno­cide in Gaza. Biden arms it.
• Trump, unpros­e­cut­ed, returns to the White House, dis­man­tles US insti­tu­tions, and pro­pos­es turn­ing Gaza into an Amer­i­can-con­trolled Riv­iera.
• We get an Amer­i­can Pope.
• And by the time we reach Feb­ru­ary 2026 polls show Nigel Farage is favourite to be the next UK Prime Min­is­ter.

None of us would have believed it, would we? But here we are.

Why does this mat­ter? Because there are oth­er things that could happen—less seis­mic, less extra­or­di­nary than what we’ve already lived through—that would tip the world into full-blown fas­cism.

Imag­ine Farage and Reform take office in Britain. Imag­ine AfD do the same in Ger­many. Imag­ine Nation­al Ral­ly final­ly pull it off in France too. We already have Putin’s impe­ri­al­ist oli­garchy, Orbán as his will­ing poo­dle, and Trump’s Amer­i­ca con­tin­u­ing under Vance or some oth­er zealot.

What is this, if not a fas­cist hege­mo­ny?

You might tell me those events are unlike­ly. I would counter with, ‘I cer­tain­ly hope so but they are clos­er to real­i­ty than any­thing we could have imag­ined 10 years ago’. And in every coun­try I’ve men­tioned, the fuel dri­ving nation­al­ist and ulti­mate­ly fas­cist hatred is the same: immi­gra­tion.

Let’s be clear about some­thing. This did­n’t hap­pen by acci­dent. When Farage is on a pod­cast with a bil­lion-dol­lar audi­ence, when you see AfD talk­ing points repli­cat­ed in Dublin pubs, when you see the same “great replace­ment” garbage sur­fac­ing in Droghe­da as in Dresden—that’s not acci­den­tal. That’s an inter­na­tion­al play­book with inter­na­tion­al fund­ing and organ­is­ing.

The usu­al sus­pects are involved. Musk’s and Zuckerberg’s algo­rithms boost­ing far-right accounts. Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion farms weapon­is­ing Euro­pean resent­ment. Amer­i­can dark mon­ey find­ing its way into “grass­roots” Euro­pean cam­paigns like we first seen here on Repeal and Mar­riage Equal­i­ty but has now ‘migrat­ed’ to immi­gra­tion.

But here’s the thing: that play­book only works if there’s tim­ber to ignite. And we on the left spent too much of our time soak­ing that tim­ber in petrol.

I need to say this care­ful­ly, because I’ve spent my life in the labour move­ment fight­ing for equal­i­ty and I don’t want to be mis­read. But here it is: while we were argu­ing about ‘cul­ture issues’, they were tak­ing our argu­ments about pover­ty and turn­ing them into argu­ments about bor­ders. While we were con­struct­ing ever more sophis­ti­cat­ed frame­works of iden­ti­ty, work­ing-class com­mu­ni­ties were watch­ing as their pub­lic ser­vices creaked, their hous­ing needs were mon­e­tised for bil­lion­aires, their chil­dren forced to emigrate—and were being told that the cor­rect response to all this was to ‘check their priv­i­lege’.

We can­not tell peo­ple that their mate­r­i­al real­i­ty does­n’t mat­ter and expect them to stay in the room.

The far-right offered them an answer. It was a lie—immigration did­n’t cause the hous­ing cri­sis, did­n’t close the fac­to­ries, did­n’t gut the health ser­vice. But it was an answer. And the left, in too many places, had stopped offer­ing any answer at all. Just a vocab­u­lary test. We went from win­ning on water to los­ing our peo­ple. And cut­ting each oth­ers throats in the process.

This is the con­ver­gence. Inter­na­tion­al far-right net­work­ing meets domes­tic left-wing fail­ure. The algo­rithms kick in and ampli­fy the lies while the absence of a cred­i­ble alter­na­tive makes the lies believ­able to the gullible. The hate filled lies are rammed into their brains by their phones as sure­ly as if Musk inject­ed them with a syringe.

In Ire­land, we’re not as far down this road as oth­ers. But we’re def­i­nite­ly on it. ‘Neu­tral­i­ty’ won’t pass muster in this debate. Why? If the only peo­ple talk­ing (or at least being heard) about work­ing-class suf­fer­ing are the far-right, work­ing-class peo­ple will even­tu­al­ly lis­ten to the far-right. Not because they’re racist—though some sure are—but because they’re des­per­ate, and des­per­ate peo­ple reach for who­ev­er acknowl­edges their pain.

None of this means there should­n’t be a debate about migra­tion. Of course there should. A rules-based sys­tem of sus­tain­able migra­tion is necessary—economically, social­ly and humane­ly. It’s as nat­ur­al for peo­ple to want to come to Ire­land as it has been for gen­er­a­tions of our own to leave. That’s not the argu­ment.

The argu­ment is about what hap­pens when the debate is poi­soned. When migra­tion is used not to build a func­tion­ing soci­ety but as the fas­cist fuel to tear it apart. When the far-right does­n’t want solutions—it wants scape­goats. And when the main­stream left, hav­ing seemed to aban­don class for cul­ture, has no answer except to change the sub­ject.

The last decade of com­pla­cen­cy and mismanagement—by gov­ern­ments, by insti­tu­tions, and yes by parts of the left itself—has raised the stakes to cri­sis lev­els. We are no longer  debat­ing pol­i­cy in nor­mal times. We are a few elec­toral twists away from a full blown fas­cist hege­mo­ny, and the ques­tion is whether our free­doms, our par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cies, our basic capac­i­ty to treat each oth­er as human beings, sur­vives. Because it won’t sur­vive fas­cism. Such is the nature of, and rea­son for the very exis­tence of, fas­cism.

So here’s a ques­tion we need to start fac­ing up to — if the far-right takes pow­er across much of Europe who will stand up? And how? We now see how author­i­tar­i­an­ism in both the Unit­ed States and Rus­sia is lick­ing its greedy lips.

That’s for next time. For now, under­stand this: the immi­gra­tion debate was nev­er just about immi­gra­tion. It was always about whether we can stop fuelling the hate that will cost us all our free­dom. Can we?