Last weekend, more than 100,000 protesters marched on the streets of London for a “Unite the Kingdom” anti-immigration rally organized by far-right thug and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson. Yet part of the event quickly devolved into chaos as protesters clashed with some 1,600 police officers who were deployed to the scene, resulting in the arrests of at least 24 individuals.
Mehdi and Owen unpack the growing anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric, as Owen warns, “It’s fascism all over again. It’s the same tune they sung in the 1930s and 1940s. They just swapped, this time, Jews for Muslims. And they’re also talking about the left in exactly the same way.”
But the rally wasn’t just about immigration, because Robinson also used it to honor US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk joined via video link. Despite most Brits being unfamiliar with Kirk before his assassination, Mehdi asks one major question: Are British politics, especially British conservative politics, becoming Americanized? MAGA-fied?
Owen notes, “One of the quite sinister things I heard being yelled at that rally was ‘God is king,’ which is this term which is being used by the US far right… it’s got nothing to do with British culture. That phrase has just been imported, and it’s associated with the likes of Charlie Kirk.”
The two also break down the glaring double standard between the policing of far-right and pro-Palestine protesters in the UK, after 890 people were arrested the week prior at a Palestine Action protest. Mehdi asks, “24 people arrested at a violent rally. 890 people arrested at a nonviolent rally. How do we explain that disconnect?”
Paid subscribers to Zeteo can watch the full episode of “Two Outspoken” above to also hear the two discuss Keir Starmer and his cabinet reshuffle, Jeremy Corbyn’s new party, the future of the Labour Party, and Owen’s recent trip to the occupied West Bank, where he says he witnessed “apartheid” and the way in which Israel s trying to “get rid of the Palestinians between the river and the sea.”
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