UK General Election: Britain’s shame at the level of support for the racist party known as UKIP

The UK General Election results are now known. The excellent news is that the (now former) UKIP fuehrer, Mr From-a-far-away-age, was not elected to Parliament. Unfortunately they did however win a seat elsewhere, but thankfully only one.

Overall though it is a shameful result for Britain, as 12.6 percent of those voting, cast their votes for the extreme nationalist party known as UKIP. This amounts to approximately 3.8 million people supporting a racist party. This is an appalling result for decency and respect for fundamental human rights, which UKIP party representatives continually violate via their racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic comments. It is shocking that so many people support such a nasty party that advocates classification, separation and exclusion – a party where racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia are part of the daily outpourings from its members.

On May 7^th 1945, Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered to the allied forces. The surrender marked a great victory over the evil Nazi ideology founded on nationalism, racism and perverse notions of normality which resulted in the murder of anyone who did not fit with this dogma. Seventy years later, on May 7^th 2015, 3.8 million British people voted for a party similar to the Nazis. The difference between the two only lies in the fact that UKIP have not yet achieved power and have not therefore demonstrated their true nature. At the moment they are trying to hide behind a cloak of respectability. This however is the party where the neo-Nazi element in the UK can take refuge for they know that it is an organisation where they find a warm welcome. And if you doubt this, just note the words of one of its election candidates concerning his Conservative opponent of Asian origin: “I’ve got 400 years of ancestry where I live. He hasn’t got that.” “If this lad turns up to be our prime minister I will personally put a bullet in him.” “His family have only been here since the 70s. You are not British enough to be in our parliament.”

The above words are exactly the sort of thing that Nazis said in the 1930s. This particular unsavoury UKIP candidate clearly would be well qualified to join a British version of the Schutzstaffel, if ever one were created. Evidently there are people in UKIP who want to create such an organisation.

If you voted for UKIP you voted for a neo-Nazi party. Shame on you!

Evidently we have learned very little from the past and some are willing to place their votes behind a party that uses propaganda and half-truths to stir up nationalist and xenophobic feelings. This is exactly what the Nazis did in Germany.

Now is not the time for complacency. UKIP remain a fringe group, but a very dangerous one, and the threat is that they may move from being a collection of fringe lunatics, to being a mainstream party. The danger that UKIP poses needs to be recognised and understood. Now is the time for action not passivity. My message to the new Government, as well as to the President of the European Commission, is that we should be taking strong measures to counteract nationalistic and neo-Nazi sentiments.

Words alone though are not enough. Public relations campaigns and education will certainly help, but we need to start thinking beyond the binary mind-set that offers the choice of Europe or the nation state, on which extremists like UKIP thrive. Moving beyond this stupid binary perspective however means also looking at the outdated models upon which government at all levels is based. These models are still grounded in the Victorian era. It is time to move on and to create organisations and structures suitable for the 21^st century. Many however, especially those with a vested interest in maintaining the status-quo, will, I suspect, resist such calls for reform! People like to keep things as they were in the past, which always looks more attractive than an unknown and uncertain future, which may be one of the reasons why extremism, both secular and religious, is on the rise.  

As I have said before, Europe and the Western world is creating the social, economic and political conditions in which extremism will develop and thrive. You know already about the religious extremist because they are continually in the news, but as UKIP demonstrates, political extremism is also on the rise, as is secular extremism, which nicely links to next week’s blog.

Now is the time for peaceful resistance. Time now to turn away from all forms of extremism – and that means you, if you one of those caught-up in religious, political or secular extremism and have become blind to the fact that it is extremism.