In 1973, The World at War aired on ITV for the first time. This was a serious, record-breakingly expensive, 26-part documentary series, telling the story of the Second World War through interviews with soldiers, civilians, bureaucrats and concentration-camp survivors. I was too young to watch it then, but I remember the haunting music and my family’s reaction to it – especially my granddad, who had been injured in the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940.
I finally saw The World at War in its entirety during a rerun one Christmas period during the early 1980s, as did many others of my generation. It had a lasting impact on us. During this time, there seemed to be a collective education about the Second World War and its horrors, as well as about the horrors of fascism. Central to those horrors were the gas chambers, the concentration camps and the industrial-scale killing of Jews in the Holocaust.
As a consequence, since the end of the Second World War, far-right extremists and fascist movements have tended to be on the fringes. Throughout Europe, ordinary men and women – some who had lived through the war and others, like me, who were generationally affected – learned tactics to oppose the far right. This included protesting against them and exposing them in debate. The aim was to never let them march or speak unchallenged. Working-class youth, ethnic minorities and especially the Jewish community were instrumental in opposing fascism and the racist far right, who were still idolising Hitler and the Nazis.
The UK was, as a country, proudly anti-fascist. Our relatives had lived through the Second World War and had passed the story down to us, urging us to oppose fascism in all its forms. However, during the 1970s and 1980s, the far right started to mobilise again in the UK, especially groups such as the National Front and the British Movement. Sensing the political and social upheavals at the time due to recession, mass unemployment and immigration, the remnants of the British fascist movements meted out violence on particular communities. Ethnic minorities, homosexuals and those they saw as ‘race mixing’ were targeted.
They also targeted another group – white, working-class youth – to recruit and spread their ideas to. This is how I first encountered the National Front in 1982, when I was 13. Leaflets were being handed out at a youth club and those giving them out encouraged us to attend a meeting about politics. I came from a political household – my mum was a trade unionist – so I took the leaflet home and asked her if I could go. She immediately knew what it was and who was behind it, but for me, these ideas were foreign. The literature had words on it I had never heard of. The group positioned itself as ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘against cultural Marxism’. My mum then took me to a Young Socialists meeting, where I learned what these terms really meant. Far-right conspiracy theories insisted that cabals of bloodthirsty Jews were trying to take over the world through secretive groups. ‘Cultural Marxism’ was the ideology they would supposedly deploy.
The National Front and the British Movement were both remnants of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. During the 1970s and 1980s, they perpetuated Holocaust denial, referring to the Holocaust as ‘the six-million myth’ in their literature in an attempt to rehabilitate Hitler and the Nazi regime among the British population. The far right continued to operate into the 1990s and early 2000s, with the British National Party (BNP) under Nick Griffin. The BNP never gained popular support and, along with the National Front and British Movement, has since fallen into irrelevance.
Yet, over recent years, anti-Semitism and attacks on the Jewish community have increased because of the ongoing wars in the Middle East. This rise in anti-Semitism and racism towards Jews is coming not from the political right, but from the left and those it chooses to ally with. This includes people who believe themselves to be anti-fascists in their support for Palestine. There has been a sinister turn of events since 7 October 2023, when Hamas soldiers and supporters murdered and tortured civilians in Israel, before taking hostages into Gaza. What followed in the West was a rise in fascist language and ideology among the ‘pro-Palestine’ movements, including the conspiratorial view that a global Zionist movement is pulling the strings of international affairs.
On social media and on pro-Palestine marches, I have seen and heard absurd accusations that Israel has been responsible for all manner of atrocities. I have seen Nazi salutes thrown and heard Holocaust denial. This is clear, unhinged racism. And yet it is rarely called out.
I cannot imagine a situation in which the organised left would march side-by-side with the traditional far right. Yet the pro-Palestine left has been happily marching almost weekly for 18 months with people who are Holocaust deniers, racists and believe anti-Semitic conspiratorial ideology as if it were fact. Who seem to think Hamas is made up of freedom fighters resisting imperialism, rather than far-right, anti-Semitic terrorists. They are turning a blind eye to those who promote fascism and racism among them.
We must confront this dangerous alliance, lest we forget the lessons of the Second World War and allow a new form of fascism to take root in Europe once again.
Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic.
