1/ When @SuellaBraverman took office she would be briefed on the fact that one in six terror convicts in the UK is far-right. The core ideology driving them is fear that "invasion" by migrants is a form of "white genocide". Here's Renaud Camus - Great Replacement - 2012...
2/ So "invasion" is not just an over-emotive word, that might trigger the far right. It is a word validating their world-view... that the invasion is being organised by liberals, human rights lawyers, and feminists - and in Suella's case by implication, the Labour Party
3/ For Camus there are three phases: the "collaborators" prepare the way (human rights law); the "invasion" takes place; then the invaders "colonise and replace"... Braverman's thought architecture is close on the first two points...
4/ Here's the most succinct form of Camus' thesis. Tell me how Braverman's Commons answer in any way distanced the government from this worldview?
5/ See also the link to "globalism" and ...and you can see why it is so dangerous to use this terminology. Thousands of actual fascists will feel they have an explicit ally - in the very politician whose job it is to prevent far right terror and street disorder...
6/ In #HowToStopFascism I describe the central problem: the ideological takeover of authoritarian conservatism and right-wing populism by the language and thought structures of Camus' fascism...
7/ If Great Replacement is Item #1 in the fascist thought architecture, and Collaborationism of the liberal humanists #2, what is Item #3? You guessed it: Cultural Marxism... the idea that the downfall of the West has been designed by an alien/hostile/treacherous force...
8/ Item #4 of modern fascist ideology is to commit acts of symbolic violence that reinforce the narrative. Like firebombing a migrant centre. Spot the absence of outright condemnation in Braverman's first public response...She could have said "I condemn this attack".
9/ The fifth and final item in the modern fascist belief system is the idea that modernity will end in a global ethnic civil war, from which transnational ethnically pure empires will emerge. Thankfully there is no trace of that in right-wing British conservatism...
10/10 But Braverman's use of the world "invasion" in this context is despicable. I hope ministers will take a crash course in how to defeat Great Replacement politics, and understand its pervasive influence among the online right, including those convicted of terror offences.
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