“Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die," Elon Musk told the large crowds at Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” rally.
More than 100,000 people descended on Britain’s capital on Saturday for one of the country’s largest far-right rallies in decades.
The “Unite the Kingdom” rally was organized by Tommy Robinson, a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, and attended by billionaire Elon Musk via video link. Amid a sea of flag-waving and soccer-style chanting from large crowds that exceeded expectations, violent clashes with police led to dozens of arrests.
It came amid a surge of nationalism in the U.K., with a far-right party topping the polls, and the murder of American conservative activist Charlie Kirk — an assassination Robinson used to mobilize support in the run-up to the event.
As an American, my message to my friends in Europe is, to paraphrase Musk: “Whether you choose Trumpian right wing thuggery and nationalism, it is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.”
We are so fucked. There is no escaping this global rush of extremism.
I am originally from the states, but was lucky enough to move to Australia 11 years ago.
I thought I escaped the growing right wing crazy, and watched from afar as Trump was elected the first time, and my country descended into fascism.
Then here in Australia there was a white supremacist rally. Then another.
Then in my city there was a “March for Australia” organised by known white supremacists, but claiming not to be racist.
“They just don’t want all this immigration”.
Their website also said they wanted remigration.
Remigration is an originally European far-right proposal for ethnic cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white immigrants and their descendants, sometimes including those born in Europe, to their place of racial ancestry.
Sounds pretty racist to me.
This march was planned for the final day of the state multicultural festival. Its planned start and end point was the park where the festival was being held.
My family and I decided we would go. I haven’t been to a protest since I was a teenager, but I felt it was our duty to show that not everyone agrees with this.
The day before the march our best friend said their friends were afraid to go out to lunch with them that day, because their parents were verbally assaulted in a grocery store on Friday for being immigrants.
They later said people came to their parents house and were beating on the door and yelling about them being immigrants.
My husband stood there in his suit, I stood in my pretty dress with flowers, our daughters held signs that said things like “so bad even the introverts are here”.
The March was not peaceful and was definitely racist. We started off to the side, sitting with flags my daughters and I made with hundreds of countries on them, and eventually we were swarmed as the crowd veered to come right past us.
They screamed obscenities at us, pushed into me, pushed my husband, tried to rip the sign from his hands. They ripped down the flags we made. Blew an air horn in our faces.
Many claimed they were not racist but my husband got called a f-ing Jew multiple times??? Maybe it was the beard and the hat, I don’t know.
Seemed pretty racist to me.
Eventually police came and stood in front of us while we packed our things and left. We would do it again, in a heartbeat.
Before the rowdy crowd came looking for trouble we had immigrants come up and thank us, hug us, and we want them to know that not everyone agrees with this march.
Not wanting immigration is not what this march was about. This march was about fear and racism.
I urge all of you, show up, make signs, show that not everyone agrees.
There is no escaping this global rush of extremism.
You can’t escape it, you have to defeat it.
I stood up for what was right, as did my husband and daughters, I’m really proud of them.
We are only one family, but we would do it again.
At some point climate change is going to cause more migrants than any ‘developed’ nation can support. Net migtration into the UK is currently coming in at around 700k a year. This is London a decade for a country that is pretty close to as population dense as the area around New York - I think they call it the tri-state area. Imagine nearly a New York a decade into the tri-state area. That is what the UK is currently doing and has been doing for decades now.
With the best will in the world it simply isn’t sustainable. The UK is not food secure and is not energy secure now. Are we supposed to rely on a belligerently corporatist EU for food, and then Russia, for energy? (edit - I haven’t looked at our current energy situation, I am not interested in media stories about UK energy. I have looked into it enough to know a lot of it is bollocks.) It actually isn’t possible now for the UK to have the immigration we have.
The door is going to be closed and at least many millions of the poorest globally, who haven’t caused climate change, are going to lose their lives unnecessarily. I don’t like it at all, but this IS going to happen. So when do we close the door? The poorest in the UK are already having food taken out of their mouths, and that working poor is growing due to many decades of neo-liberal capitalist policy. Same dynamic as the US expressing itself in a slightly different way.
I spent the second decade of this century is a small city of about 250k people that experienced about 30k immigration in the last two decades. It is a poor city anyway, with cheap available housing due to previous government decisions forcing many of the people born there to leave. They dumped a load of people into communities that cannot support them. It is not racist to say that this isn’t doable. When ‘liberal’ media people say it is racist to complain the people I grew up with (who I don’t particularly like, but will defend from outsiders) will just say 'well fuck you, if I’m racist I[‘ll vote for the racist party’.
I don’t like any of this. I am just describing the reality. You either face up to reality or you will see fascism as a result.
The issue isn’t that they don’t want immigrants, or want immigration reform.
The issue is that they literally want remigration (ethnic cleansing of all non whites) and were threatening and ugly.
They chose to hold a protest on a day when families were out enjoying different cultures.
They were violent towards me and my children and husband, and spouted bullshit American rhetoric while doing it.
Claiming that they like immigrants, they just don’t want illegal immigrants.
Australia is an island! We lock up the immigrants who come by boat on an island! We don’t have illegal immigrants!
We lock up the immigrants who come by boat on an island! We don’t have illegal immigrants!
In a shop window in northern California, I recently saw a sign saying “nobody is illegal on stolen land.”
Perhaps we are talking about two slightly different things. I was describing the situation in the UK and across ‘developed’ nations (i.e. the rise of fascism) that is leading to the same public sentiment you experienced. We had a neo-nazi march in the UK over the weekend too. You are describing what happened to you. I am explaining why,.
Maybe you were the downvoter. You can’t downvote away reality. It is foolish to try.
I’ll see you there then. This has been going on for long enough. They’re so full of crap, they don’t even realise that this land was never ceded from the traditional owners who have walked this part of the earth for over 60k years.
The irony of these people being anti immigrant.
Sigh. Indeed.
This is a very disheartening story. Do Australians realize anyone not brown isn’t indigenous to Australia?
The white racists in America sure don’t. And they don’t care.
True it’s sad that it’s getting bad everywhere. Nazis are a plauge
Sigh. I don’t know. We brought that up often that day.
they were even doing it this past weekend here in Toronto, Canada. People marching and holding up posters of Kirk. was insane.
Funny thing was seeing a bunch of POC among them and I’m thinking “you moronic motherfuckers, if the cops weren’t here they’d turn on you without a moments hesitation.”
That or say “you’re alright for a black man”, which is just as fucked.
Which translates to “even though I hate most people who look like you, I am surprised to find that you have a redeeming quality”
I’m mixed race and I usually get asked which side I more like. Or a mind boggled “What ARE you?” - if I answer “Canadian” it makes them have to squirm around and say “no, not in that way”
Exactly, please don’t think I was l excusing or defending this attitude.
Must be infuriating. Doesn’t get ask of white people.
Yet Palestine protesters are arrested… What a sick joke.
It’s because our police forces are full of sadistic far right facists
Nazis made a martyr out of Horst Wessel. Republicans are trying to make a martyr out of Charlie Kirk.
A gathering of bell ends, as the Brits would say.
Stop the world, I want to get off this ride.
It’s a living satire
Absolute fucking morons.
Every single one of those people is going to end up in poverty as a direct result of who they want to elect.
Just one more immigrant removed and life will get better, we promise /s
We may be underestimating how many are willing to be a peasant in a Christofascist ethnostate relative to having the quality of life they have now.
What you have to understand about these people is that they already feel they are down on their luck and are to weak to do anything about it.
The best they can hope for to feel better about themselves is that other people are even worse off, which is why they are so full of hate and want immigrants to be punished.
Even then, it’ll be the fault of the people coming over with fuck all to try and rebuild their lives.
The UK should issue an international arrest warrant for Elon Musk.
So should the EU
Whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you.
From the even further right as it turned out.
Wait, I chose no violence, but it will still come my way?
Now they’re just saying the quiet part out loud.
Again.
Jesus Christ, same planet but different worlds. How does someone so hateful have so many fans?
I think racism and tribalism is easy. It’s the first thought of an uneducated person, it’s base, it’s instinct, and it feels good to follow through on any conviction. But most people had no good reason to he racist, you worked with a few migrants, the black guy at college was great, and Jackie Chan movies are great. Then the internet / bot farms / Russia came along, and fed the uneducated a constant steady stream of racist content. Couple that with the people who found politics too boring getting Donald Trump. And he’s seen the racist bot farm content too! He just gets us! Bam, a recipe for disaster.
Basically everyone living in capitalism without regulation has been slowly and systemically crushed over time and the capitalists (and other parties interested in destabilization) have done a good job at convincing them that it’s not in fact the capitalists but rather immigrants, minorities, women, etc etc That are at fault
People want validations and to believe what they are doing is the right thing. When one side calls them evil, far-right, and racists, naturally they will flock to the other side who are telling them they are heroes who are protecting the country from immigrants.
You can watch street interviews of the protesters and you’ll see what I mean.
Britain must stand united
Where almost half the flags are not Union Jack but the English flag. 🤣🤣🤣
Such a bunch of morons.I’m astounded that in a gathering of fascists two people holding English and Irish flags can stand in the same vicinity of each other and not start throwing punches.
As i quoted before. Racists were never burdened with an over abundance of book learning
Here are some inventions by some really racist people:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:German_inventions_of_the_Nazi_period
It’s a mistake to underestimate the intelligence of fascists just because they subscribe to fundamentally dumb ideas. There are a lot of smart and sinister people serving those ideals.
Project 2025 isn’t the work of unintelligent people, the success of the extreme right isn’t a ”happy” coincidence resulting from ineptitude, and so forth.
They say knowingly dumb things because only idiots will take them seriously. It weeds out the skeptics while pissing off the intelligent, who often get dismissive, which lets them continue growing their party.
It’s like the Nigerian Prince scams, where bad spelling and grammar weeds out the people who wouldn’t fall for it anyway, but with the added bonus of pissing off opponents in the process.
I’d bet a few of those actually do want to exclude people from the other UK nations. Not as many as are flying the flags, I grant you, but nonetheless. Colonialist mindset still runs deep in some of the English.
here in the states younger patrons coming in the shop have said they related to him and are in mourning
fucking nuts just yesterday a younger couple came in and was the first thing mentioned and was like what about his views on keeping women in their place or his other extreme owner class ideals and woman with him stayed very quiet and busied herself with petting the shop cat
nothing but praise for the guy came from them or any other of most of the younger patrons and even the older crowd seems to be for him but the media is toxic and controlled as is all narratives even with education
United States was never the United States for all of us here but feels like getting worse but want to keep being hopeful just challenging
It’s crazy that people are claiming 3 million, I refuse to believe people are actually believing it.
Counting not a strong suit for this crowd
