The Consequences of Tolerating the Far Right

As I have argued in previous posts, the rise in the far right is not a result of changes in people’s attitudes. In many ways over the last fifty years people have become more tolerant of minorities and less racist. What has changed is what is tolerated by the political elite. There has always been a minority of people who, other things being equal, would support a party of the far right that promoted extreme socially conservative and authoritarian views and which encouraged social division. A much smaller minority of that minority are prepared to use violence. Those who went from house to house in Bellfast, pulling those who were not white on to the streets and burning their houses, did not have ‘legitimate concerns’. They were not fed up with lack of action on immigration, as a Times editorial absurdly suggested, because immigration has come right down. Belfast is not ‘flooded’ with asylum seekers, who comprise less than 1% of the population. Instead the rioters are the equivalent of…