Brighton Says No to the Fascists as Thousands Rally to Send the Rats Back to the Sewers

 Largest Ever Anti-Fascist Rally in Brighton Said No to Farage, Tommy Robinson, the BBC, Starmer and their Media Friends

The Night that Brighton Sent the Fascists Back to their Sewers

Ever since the murder of 3 little girls in Southport, the air has been thick with calls for revenge. Aided by the media which emphasised the Rwandan origins of the alleged killer, coupled with disinformation on social media that the killer was a Muslim and Nigel Farage hinting that information was being withheld, mobs of fascist thugs were encouraged to attack mosques, beat up Black people and set fire to and try to burn alive refugees in asylum centres.

Off you fuck racists 👋👋👋
Can’t even believe they had the audacity to try it in Brighton
So proud of the people of Brighton 👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/0UVQmWWgiN

— 💙🤍Gareth🤍💙 (@Brighton_Peer) August 7, 2024

Tonight was the night that people came onto the streets in their thousands, all over Britain, to say no to the fascists and their GB News and BBC sponsors. Farage and the rest of the Westminster political slime can eat their heart out.

The Master Race

Sir Kid Starver had a phone round to Labour MPs instructing them not to attend the anti-fascist mobilisations and Stella Creasy in Walthamstow had people chanting ‘where are you’.

From Bristol to Brighton, London to Liverpool, anti-fascists have taken the streets and sent the far right packing with their tail between their legs.

No pasaran! pic.twitter.com/oTBeP91DcZ

— We Deserve Better (@_we_deserve_) August 7, 2024

When I went to see my probation officer yesterday I was told they were closing the offices the next day because information had been received, presumably from the police, that fascists and neo-Nazis were going to descend on Brighton in order that they could attack.

Comrades of mine were worried about whether we would be sufficient in numbers to be able to confront and see off the fascist hordes who were set to descend on Brighton. Careful plans were laid to go to the rallying point in large groups just in case.

At most 20x fascists and #FarageThugs turned up in Brighton for the riot they planned. They were surrounded by literally THOUSANDS of anti-fascists chanting "FUCK OFF HOME" and "YOU CAME TO THE WRONG TOWN" all the way back to the station. They were outnumbered 100 to 1. #RiotsUK pic.twitter.com/cs6yBRRk93

— Leyton Jay - the Silly Version (@desertconfetti) August 7, 2024

I even advised my two twenty something children not to go because I didn’t want them to get hurt but I needn’t have worried. Thousands turned up.  I would estimate that between 4,000 and 5,000 occupied half of Queens Road leading up to Brighton station. If the Police hadn’t been there doing their usual job of protecting fascists they would, literally, have been massacred.

I am the historian of Brighton fascism having written the only history of Brighton’s fine anti-fascist record. We have had large demonstrations against the fascists in the past.  In 1981 we mobilised about a thousand people. A similar number put Oswald Moseley’s henchman Geoffrey Hamm in hospital with a broken jaw in 1948. In 2012 up to 1,500 took to the streets to send the EDL back to the sewers but last night was  by far the largest anti-fascist mobilisation ever seen in Brighton.

Update of the protests in Brighton this evening.

Five or six far right protesters surrounded by police (halfway up the photo on the RHS), surrounded by an entire street of anti-fascist protestors.

Oh, & there even was a band!

Times like this I’m very proud to live in Brighton. pic.twitter.com/WOCRvBW2oK

— abigaildombey.bsky.social (@AbigailDombey) August 7, 2024

And not just in Brighton. There was a massive demonstration in Walhamstow in London and elsewhere. People have become sick to the back teeth of corrupt and rotten politicians like Yvette Cooper, Sunak and Farage demonising asylum seekers. It is these scumbags who create the atmosphere in which Tommy Robinson can exist. They accept that refugees are a problem and of course the fascists have much more simple solutions than a drawn out deportation process. They either force them out immediately or kill them.

After all that’s what our politicians are supporting in Gaza.  Israel’s genocidal ethnic cleansing.  So why not here?  And of course it wouldn’t be limited to refugees. Every non-White person would be a target as we have seen with the attacks on Black people. And like the Greater Manchester Police, the filth will protect the fascists and arrest their victims.

We should be clear. Refugees are welcome in Britain. The reason they are here is because we were and still are in many cases in their countries. That is what our ‘defence’ budget is about. Intervening in other countries to change their regimes if they don’t serve our interests. The £80 billions on ‘defence’ could be spent on the NHS, schools etc. Instead it goes on imperialist wars and supporting the fascist state of Ukraine.

If the media class think we’re going to forget their complicity over decades with one front-page, then I’ve got news for you:

HELL NO. pic.twitter.com/B4GnjUqgib

— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana) August 7, 2024

Economically migrants benefit a country because they tend to be young people who don’t use social services or claim benefits because they want to work. This idea that a migrant takes someone’s job is economic illiteracy.  As if unemployment is a function of the size of a population.

Likewise this argument about it lowering the cost of wages. What lowers the price of labour isn’t immigration but weak and useless trade unions. When British unions were militant they served their members interests.

So we should rebut the racist narrative of the main parties and also challenge the media monopoly of the racists – be it the BBC, Sky or GB News. They each sing from the same racist song sheet.

Of course even the bourgeois establishment became somewhat worried that the right-wing riots were getting out of hand with their smashing up of property. So we had the absurd and once-in-a-lifetime experience of the Daily Express and Mail paying tribute to the thousands of anti-racist/anti-fascist demonstrators last night. Even the BBC had a half-decent report.

As the old saying goes, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue!

Tony Greenstein