Reading about Swinney's anti-hard right forum in Glasgow that the Tories are bodyswerving, and it reminds me of this passage from Patrick Leigh Fermor's book about his travels through Europe in the 1930's and how folk could see the impending collapse but were too afraid to tackle it.

Trumpism gives oxygen to the UK hard right that we see infesting our politics through the latest form of the BNP in suits, Reform. The 'Nazis A Warning from History' trope is hugely pertinent, and whatever you think of his belief in Independence, I'm relieved that Swinney is bringing Civic Scotland together to expose the proto-fascists who plague social media in order to win popularity by appealing to our basest morals, by othering the weakest in society.

by ewenmax

6 comments

  2. First response and it’s already off-topic! If you like Patrick Leigh Fermor, you’ll probably like this recording of Dominic West reading [this piece of his about the Mani olive harvest](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n15/patrick-leigh-fermor/swish!-swish!-swish)

    If you like being gloomy about where things are going, [Cory Doctorow recently reminded me of Piketty’s argument about capital](https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/18/pikettys-productivity/#reaganomics-revenge): as the wealthy accumulate money, they accumulate economic power which they use to accumulate more capital, and everyone else gets poorer until society collapses or goes through a shock that destroys a lot of of capital, a shock like world war two, and things are for a while more equal.

  3. As much as I dislike Reform, I’m not seeing them as far-right fascists.

  4. It’s things like PR or multi vote systems that allow left or right wing parties in, democracy is the enabler of this! If anything we need to move to a FPTP type model in Scotland

  5. This is only going to garner support for Reform, every party has an underlying agenda , we all know the SNPs 🙄 but by demonising Reform who seem to be putting forward a lot of common sence policies to ordinary people of various colours and creeds , by what really looks like a lot of scared / worried party’s it’s going to drive more people to support them , they don’t even need to say anything just let Swinney and the rest rattle on and the public again can watch self interest take away from the day job .

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