Ethnic minorities in the far right

The Jewish businessman Ettore Ovazza (above, right) backed Mussolini even after Mussolini, under German pressure, introduced anti-Jewish laws in 1938

If ever Sara Pochin, Reform MP for Runcorn, is remembered at all it will be for her bigoted comment that the sight of "too many" black and Asian people on TV “drives me mad.” Yet strangely she hasn’t said the same about black and brown faces amongst the leadership of Reform.

A number of prominent Faragists come from first or second generation immigrant backgrounds. Suella Braverman, Zia Yusuf, and Nadhim Zahawi are from Asian backgrounds. Laila Cunningham, Reform candidate for London Mayor, has Egyptian parentage. Reform Kent County Council leader Linden Kemkaran describes her Trinidadian father as a member of the Windrush generation. Why have these people assumed leading positions in obviously anti immigrant and pretty much racist political outfit?

Drawing up the ladder is the most common charge. A desire to become part of the ruling establishment another. Class definitely plays an important part. You’ve made your fortune at Goldman Sachs so obviously you are far superior to the Filipino nurse who works in the NHS or the care worker who comes from Nigeria. You belong, they don’t.

Farage had the cheek recently to complain that his ethnic minority candidates in the local elections were on the receiving end of racist abuse via X - “utterly appalling in every way”. Perhaps a lot of that abuse came from supporters of loathsome Rupert Lowe’s Restore outfit, which seeks to outflank Farage in the racist stakes, but I would imagine it was from many Reform voters as well. His newfound concern for politicians subject to racist abuse has never extended to Diane Abbot, Sadiq Khan, or even Rishi Sunak.

The obvious elephant in the room for those from ethnic backgrounds who involve themselves with the far right comes from the base of such parties. Look at any Reform gathering and it’s a sea of white faces. They might not at the moment tell it to your face, but they don’t like you for the obvious reason you are a different skin colour.

Last April Reform launched a "Stop the Boris Wave" pamphlet held aloft by both Yusuf and Farage picturing "migrants" in a similar manner as those in the notorious Goebbels-style Brexit "breaking point" poster. One wonders about Yusuf’s mental alacrity at his failure to recognise that the people depicted on its front cover looked a lot more like him than old frog-face Farage!

Of course the real reason far right parties welcome ethnic minority individuals into their leadership is down to "proximity denial". How can we possibly be racist or anti-Muslim if we have Asians like Yusuf or Muslims like Laila Cunningham among our leading figures?

The quasi-Nazi AfD in Germany are up to the same trick with leading member Alice Weidel in a relationship with a Sri Lankan woman and her adopted children. Ethnic minorities and the LGBT community in Germany will be safe under an AfD government just like they were during the Nazi regime some in the AfD leadership make no secret being fond of.

History carries a definite warning for members of ethnic minorities foolishly opting to ride the ethno-nationalist tiger. It would be pretty flabbergasting to learn that Jews in Nazi Germany leant support to Hitler. The vast majority of German Jewish population were pretty certain their future in the Third Reich was going in a dreadful direction.

However, the Association of German National Jews, led by Max Naumann, believed that Nazi anti semitism was political posturing to "stir up the masses". It didn’t apply to them, anti-Communist, anti-Zionist and anti-liberal-cosmopolitan. Their attempts to accommodate to Nazism didn’t stop their journey to the concentration camps though.

Nazi Germany is an extreme example of the dangers of ethnic minorities getting entangled with European racist political parties. A more pertinent example is Italy under Mussolini. Many in the Italian Jewish community were fervent supporters of the fascist movement and state for much of its existence. Italian fascism was not blatantly anti semitic in its first decade or so. Jewish Italians joined the Fascist party in proportions three times higher than the rest of the Italian population.

Mussolini declared in 1934 that “there has never been antisemitism in Italy” (a blatantly historical false statement - think ghettos!). In 1938 his regime enacted racial laws which stripped Italian Jews of their citizenship. From then on as his regime became increasingly subservient to Hitler no one in the Jewish community was safe. Ettore Ovazza, a Jewish financier who bankrolled Mussolini and regarded him as "a personal friend", was murdered along with most of his family by the SS in 1943.

Nearly 8,000 Italian Jews perished in the Holocaust, out of a population of 45,000. A classic work of twentieth century literature, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, by Giorgio Bassani, portrays the impending menace faced by Italy’s Jewish communities before the walls caved in.

It’s less likely leading far right figures from ethnic backgrounds today would meet such extreme fates as that which befell Ovazza, but they should be worried about the kind of politics they are promoting, assuming they are capable of thinking about the consequences of what they are doing. How many of those actually voting for them really believe they are "British"? It's pretty certain many Reform and Restore voters don’t think black and brown people are, even those who’ve been living in the country for several generations.

The emergence of Restore, which makes no pretence at not being a racist party and indeed positively welcomes neo-Nazi and fascist types to its ranks, poses an acute dilemma for Farage on top of all the scandals surrounding how he and his party are financed. With the odious Lowe syphoning off some of his extreme racist base, will Farage attempt to recapture that ground by upping the ante with ever more virulent anti immigrant and anti foreigner rhetoric and risk jeopardising his project of Reform becoming a "centre-right" party?

Farage has tacked to the further right recently with claims that middle class white men are somehow subject to "anti-white discrimination", in an effort to win back some of the support he’s lost to Lowe’s outfit. Yet going down that route must make the likes of Yusuf and Cunningham very uncomfortable particularly when in the distorted minds of Lowe followers Farage is being portrayed as a "Muslim puppet".

Yusuf resigned as Reform chairman after Pochin made a "ban the burka" call in parliament despite it not even being Reform policy. He was quickly brought back into the leadership and now enjoys the title of "shadow home secretary", even though he isn’t. His return to the fold probably signified that he wasn’t all that bothered about Muslim women or indeed women in general.

Yusuf has admitted that he has never been proposed as a Reform parliamentary candidate, yet failed to explain why. Some say it’s down to his obnoxious personality. Others suspect it’s because he won’t get many Reform supporters canvassing for him for some inexplicable reason.

Pandering further to white racism can also cause problems for Laila Cunningham as wannabe London Mayor. Her attempt to win over an ethnic minority audience recently didn’t go down well recently when she declared “some of my best friends are Pakistani.”

Yusuf, Braverman, et al can always go and live in Dubai - a popular bolthole for leading Faragists - should things ever get too hot for them. That option is not open to working-class people of colour who must be extremely worried about the potential racist violence these individuals have helped stoke up. Ethnic minority leaders in far right parties are there to provide a facade for racism and as such need to be called out.