The Charlottesville protests - led by a bunch of Nazis who want America to be white again (somehow confused that America was originally inhabited by First Nations people, and that all white people in the US are descended from actual aboriginal peoples’ immigrant oppressors) - drew international headlines. Here were a bunch of Nazis, free to march in the US while holding weapons and intimidating those who came to counter protest them.
Gun-carrying at protests won't happen in the UK like it has in the US, and the Nazi protestors were mainly upset - or at least pretended to be upset - about the potential removal of a statue of one of the US Civil War’s Confederate leaders.
But what happened in Charlottesville isn’t isolated, and has the potential to happen in the UK. On some small scale, that is.
Not only has it been uncovered that the Nazi group behind the Charlottesville protest - one that is linked with James Fields, the man who allegedly drove his care into a crowd of anti-fascist protestors, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer - has a UK chapter, but this weekend the streets of Grantham, in Lincolnshire, hosted a National Front march.
Grantham, where Margaret Thatcher was born, saw 60 National Front supporters rally in the name of the far-right. According to The Times, one sign read: ’White Pride’, while another contained this snappy witticism: ‘We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.’
There were violent clashes between the protestors and antifascists who were part of a counterdemonstration.
Meanwhile, according to Vice, fledgling hate group Vanguard America has a British chapter. The group’s uniform is a white polo shirt and khakis, which is what Fields was wearing in Charlottesville (he is also pictured holding a Vanguard America logo shield). The group also limits membership to people who are 'at least 90 percent White/European’ and those who are not: ‘homosexuals, transsexuals, micegenators, or any other sexual degenerate. No hand, face or neck tattoos. Physically fit, or willing to become so. No lifestyle choices that do not reflect the values of the group.'
The supposedly clean-cut Nazi faction, which began in America less than a year ago, started up in the UK chapter in June of this year, and spreads anti-Semitic and Nazi propaganda online. It includes a quote from Adolf Hitler on its homepage, which is, interestingly, littered with Americanised spellings.
Could Charlottesville really not happen in the UK? Perhaps not on the same scale, but at a time when a third of British Jews have considered leaving the country due to antisemitism, it’s not impossible.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.