"We have reached a stage when the very word 'Socialism' calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may win. "George Orwell "The Road to Wigan Pier" (1937)
Today we are seeing it again. On one side are socialists, liberals, feminists, the various LGBTIQqAa+ communities, some Christians and even many conservatives. On the other are the so called "Alt-right", a ragtag bunch of Neo Nazis, other White supremacists, anti-feminists, Islamophobes, TERFFs(*), right wing (especially evangelical) Christians with a considerable overlap with a mixed bunch of: Flat-Earthers, Anti-vaxxers, Climate change deniers, creationists, homophobes, transphobes and other nutters. At first sight it looks like the inverse of the situation described by Orwell but I feel it is not so clear cut. Firstly the news coverage of the alt-right tends to focus on on neo Nazis for video shock with hate pieces by the Christian right & TERFFs published by right leaning newspapers creating the impression that they are united by more than hate. I can only assume that someone is hoping to pull them together into a united front.
