Tag Archives: Alan Sked

Accept No Imitations: Fake Movements

Introduction

In the past, by which I mean as far back as you want to go, but particularly the 1920s, 1930s etc, the primary method of opposing a political movement or tendency was to do so directly. Political battles on the streets, electoral contests involving propaganda and shows of strength etc; books might be written, too. One thinks perhaps of Trotsky’s book Terrorism and Communism, largely a polemic against the social-democrat Karl Kautsky. That was then. Today, while elements of the former methods still exist, new ones have come to the fore. One of these, applied particularly to (deployed against) the nationalist wing of politics, is the fake party, fake movement, fake tendency (call it what you will).

Fake Movements: example

It may be that the modern “fake movement” tactic had its genesis in the repressions of the Russian Empire in the period before the First World War. The Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, established agents as “dissident” voices, attracting to those agents genuine dissidents. Thus society had “safety valves” and could blow off steam safely, with no danger of serious damage to the overall society or the government’s hold on the people.

There were many examples. The famous Father Gapon became one such, though it seems that, like his even more famous predecessor, Judas Iscariot, he started off as an “honest dissident” or believer in social justice. Likewise, the assassin of Stolypin was another “double agent” or double player, being both a revolutionary and an agent of the Okhrana.

Fake Movements Today: UKIP and how it was used to beat down the BNP; the Alt-Right fakery now joins with UKIP to prevent the rise of any new and real social-national party…

It is of the essence of a “fake” movement that it starts off or seems to start off as a genuine manifestation of socio-political frustration. UKIP was like that. It started life as the Anti-Federalist League, the brainchild of a lecturer at the London School of Economics, Alan Sked, whose first attempt at electioneering led to a 0.2% vote (117 votes) at Bath in 1992. UKIP itself was created in 1993. At that stage, UKIP’s membership could be fitted into one or two taxis.

By 1997, UKIP was able to field 194 candidates, yet still only achieved 0.3% of the national vote, perhaps equivalent to 1% in each seat actually contested, the same result as had been achieved in the 1994 European elections. In those 1997 contests, the Referendum Party funded by Franco-Jewish financier James Goldsmith was its main rival (beating UKIP in 163 out of 165 seats). The BNP was another rival, on the more radical, social-national side. However, the votes of all three combined would have amounted to only a few percent in any given seat.

It is at this point that an early joiner, Nigel Farage, emerges as leader. Alan Sked left UKIP, fulminating about “racism” and Farage’s meetings with BNP members etc. Farage had been the only UKIP candidate to have saved his deposit in 1997 (getting 5% at Bath, Sked’s old test-bed). Goldsmith died; most of the Referendum Party joined UKIP. “Major donors” emerged too.

In the 1999 European elections, UKIP received 6.5% of the vote; not very impressive, but enough (under the proportional voting system in use) to win 3 seats in the EU Parliament. From that time on, UKIP slowly gathered strength. In the 2001 general election, it still only had 1.5% of the national vote, but 6 of its candidates retained their deposits.

On a personal note, I missed much of UKIP’s rise. I was living out of the UK for much of 1990-1993 (mostly in the USA), again in 1996-97 (in Kazakhstan) and after I left Kazakhstan again spent much time overseas (many places, from North Cyprus to the Caribbean, the USA, the Med, the Canaries and Egypt, among others). In any case, I was not much interested in UK politics at the time. I had lunch with a girl in a pub at Romsey in Hampshire in the Spring of 2000. She told me that most of her time was spent “working on behalf of something called UKIP. Have you heard of it?” Answer no. When it was explained to me, I have to admit that I thought, secretly, that something like that had no chance. I suppose that I was both right and wrong at once.

Now, at the time when UKIP was gaining strength, after 1999, the BNP under its new leader, Nick Griffin, was also gaining strength and –in Westminster elections– doing better overall than UKIP at first. In 2001, it got over 10% of the vote in 3 constituencies (16% in one).  It is important to note here that the BNP was a genuine party, proven as such by the hatred it engendered in the “enemy” camp(s): Jewish Zionists, “antifascists” (many of whom are also Jews, though some are naive non-Jews), and the System (a wide term but certainly including existing MPs, the BBC, the journalistic swamp etc).

The anti-BNP forces were trying constantly to repeat their success in destroying the National Front in the 1970s. It lived on after the 70s, but as a shell. Internal factionalism was aided and abetted by skilled enemies. Akin to cracking marble in Carrara.

Whatever may be said of Nick Griffin (and I am neutral on the subject, though certainly more sympathetic than hostile), it cannot be denied that he gave the BNP its only chance of becoming a semi-mainstream party in the manner of the Front National in France. A strategic thinker, he managed to bring the BNP to the brink of success by 2009.

Within UKIP itself, there were social-national elements as well as what I would call conservative nationalists and others who were really Conservative Party types who, being anti-mass immigration, anti-EU etc, had defected. Two of the last sort later became UKIP’s 2 MPs, both initially elected as Conservatives: Mark Reckless, Douglas Carswell. Their kind of pseudo-“libertarian” “Conservatism” was exactly the wrong position for UKIP to take and positioned UKIP somewhere near but beyond the Conservative Party, when, to really break through, it needed to go social-national.

When the BNP imploded after the disastrous post-Question Time 2010 General Election, UKIP was able to get the votes of most of those who had previously voted BNP, if only fuelled by frustration or desperation, or “better half a loaf than none”.

UKIP beat all other UK parties at the 2014 European elections, getting 27 MEPs. OFCOM then awarded UKIP “major party” status, enabling it to get huge amounts of airtime (and people still talk about Britain’s “free” mainstream media…).

UKIP however, was unable to beat its way through the British fair-seeming (but in fact as good as rigged) “First Past the Post” electoral system at the General Election of 2015. 12.6% of national vote (nearly 4 million votes), but only 1 seat (Carswell’s, at Clacton, Essex). Meanwhile, the BNP vote had collapsed even from its 2010 level (1.9%, 563,743 votes) to effectively zero (1,667 votes).

I myself had already tweeted and blogged from 2014 that UKIP had peaked. I paid virtually no attention to the BNP, which by that time was already yesterday’s news. The 2017 election brought UKIP 1.9%, whereas the BNP bumped along with statistical zero (despite having tripled its individual votes to 4,642).

Douglas Carswell, the “libertarian” Conservative faux-nationalist resigned before UKIP’s 2017 failure to take up lucrative “work” in the City of London. His work with UKIP was done, let us put it that way. As for Farage, he reinvented himself as a touring talking head, while keeping his hand in as a “nationalist” by referring to his concerns about the “US Jewish lobby” (strangely, he failed to mention the Jew lobby in the UK or France…).

Today, in 2018, with neither main System party commanding firm support, we see the System, the Zionists in particular, “concerned” about the “resurgence” of the “far right” (i.e. worried that the British people might awaken and turn to a real alternative).

So what happens? The System “operation” revs up a little: the “Alt-Right” talking heads –who rarely if ever criticize the Jewish Zionist lobby– are now flocking to join UKIP! Milo Yan-whatever-he-is-opolous, “Prison Planet” Watson, “Sargon of Akkad”, “Count Dankula” etc…all the faux-“nationalist” fakes and fuckups are going to UKIP, have in fact gone to UKIP, have all suddenly joined as members of UKIP.

Conclusion

Naturally, all this could be co-incidence, but it is very odd that the events that I have chronicled seem to have happened at just the “right” time:

  • UKIP rising at the same time as the BNP which was, at that time, a rapidly-growing potential threat to the System;
  • Nick Griffin ambushed on BBC TV Question Time;
  • BNP marginalized in msm while UKIP was promoted as a “threat” to LibLabCon;
  • UKIP given endless msm airtime so long as it was “non-racist” (it now has quite a few non-whites as prominent members and is pro-Israel etc…);
  • Conservative Party MPs defecting to UKIP and so (in the absence of any elected UKIP MPs) bound to take leading roles in UKIP and steer it into capitalist, “libertarian” backwaters;
  • as the people look ready to follow any new credible social-national party (were one to emerge a little further down the line), suddenly dead-and-nailed-to-its-perch UKIP gets a boost from those fake “Alt-Right” figures…;
  • Former msm “radical” talking heads such as Paul Mason turn up shouting about the UKIP/Alt-Right convergence as if the SA were marching down Whitehall.

It is just all too convenient.

Still, God moves in mysterious ways. Maybe the System, in its cleverness, will score an “own goal”. After all, that’s what the Okhrana did in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg…

Notes

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-alt-right-members-paul-joseph-watson-mark-meechan-carl-benjamin-a8418116.html

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2018/jun/28/neil-hamilton-ukip-supergroup-supremacist-a-team-infowars-breitbart

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/06/ukip-s-turn-alt-right-warning-sign-we-need-fight-back

https://archive.org/details/storymylifebyfa00gapogoog

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party

C64bh5XW0AIWYgyhttp://altrightnotright.com/

Tipping Points in Politics and Life

We have all heard of the theatrical cliche of the actor who achieves “overnight success”, having in fact worked hard against all the odds for years. The same is often true of writers, painters and other artists. Not forgetting scientists. It was Edison who, on the failure of his (supposedly) 2,000th lightbulb experiment, is said to have said: “I have not failed. I have just discovered the 2,000th way not to invent the incandescent lightbulb.” At a later time, he of course succeeded. Many things follow the pattern: a long period of non-movement, then sudden success (or sudden failure of something, often after long stagnation).

One can call this a tipping-point, or characterize it by some other metaphor. The aircraft which suddenly fails by reason of metal fatigue, the ship which finally turns over after ice has built up on its external structure in Arctic waters, the huge empire which “suddenly” staggers and falls. On the other hand, there is that actor with his “overnight” success, that composer whose works suddenly find favour, the small political group which “suddenly” rises to prominence and power.

The Bolsheviks were a small group of societal rejects mostly living in internal or external exile, or in prison. Many were not even Russian. Jews predominated in their higher councils (despite forming only 10% of the entire membership), but there were also Georgians and others. In fact, the Bolshevik Party only had 8,400 members in 1905 and, though that increased to 46,100 by 1907, by 1910 the numbers had slipped back to about 5,000. Few would then have imagined either that the mighty Russian Empire would collapse or that the tiny faction of Bolsheviks could seize control of what was left. We know the rest: a failing war and an impoverished population, an initial attempt by others at “moderate” revolution and then a coup d’etat by one small group in one corner of a vast empire.

The lesson: a small and marginalized group, disciplined ideologically and practically, can both seize power and institute an entirely new form of society, once that tipping point or crisis point has been reached.

In post-WW1 Bavaria, Adolf Hitler became the 7th member of the German Workers’ Party [DAP], which may also have had an unknown number (estimates vary from mere dozens to as many as 15,000) of loose supporters in the beerhalls of 1919 Munich.

By 1923, this tiny and marginalized group was able to attempt the Beer Hall Putsch [aka Hitler-Ludendorff-Putsch], but it is important to note that, despite the support of Ludendorff and a few other notables, the actual number of putschists involved was small: the main march headed by Hitler was only 2,000-strong (immediately after the putsch failed, 3,000 students from the university also marched in support and to lay wreaths). Indeed, even had the putsch succeeded, Hitler would only have taken power in one city of one region within the German state as a whole.

The membership of the NSDAP grew steadily, reaching 108,000 by 1928. Electorally, however, the NSDAP was doing worse in 1928 (receiving only 2.6% of the national vote) than it had done in 1924, no doubt a reflection of the growing prosperity in the intervening years (i.e. since the infamous hyperinflation finished in 1924). Despite that poor showing, once the Great Depression started to affect Germany after 1929, the NSDAP was able to gain the trust of ever-more voters: the vote in 1932 was 37% and then 33% (in the two elections of that year), growing to 44% in 1933. Adolf Hitler then took full power, having been appointed Chancellor in 1932.

A different example: UKIP grew from a few people in a pub in 1991 to a peak in the 2012-2015 period, but has not the ideological discipline or revolutionary intent to “seize power” even by electoral means. It missed its chance and will probably not get any further. Still, its growth, in the UK context, is interesting. Its founder, Alan Sked, was a former Liberal candidate who stood as “Anti-Federalist” candidate for the seat of Bath in 1992 (i.e. after UKIP had been formed), receiving 117 votes [0.2%].

UKIP had virtually no members until the late 1990s, though by 2015 the membership had grown to nearly 50,000 (now 30,000). As for its vote share, that grew to nearly 13% by 2015, but the UK’s unfair “First Past The Post” [FPTP] electoral system meant no gains.

FPTP voting itself illustrates the “tipping point” idea, as happened in Scotland: the SNP had fairly good support for decades, but few MPs until the tipping point was reached. Now it has 50% support, but almost 100% of Westminster seats. Why was the tipping point reached? Cultural identity rising, living standards falling, entrenched Labour failing. The point was reached–and the Labour vote collapsed.

UKIP has the same problem. So long as it has only 10% or even 15% of votes, it cannot get more than one or two MPs. Were it to get to 25% support, the situation would tip and UKIP would have perhaps 100 MPs. Except that that will probably not happen…

In fact, the Bath constituency mentioned above is instructive: Alan Sked got only 117 votes (0.2%) in 1992; in 2015 the UKIP candidate received nearly 3,000 votes (over 6%), but was still only 5th (Sked came in 6th in 1992)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s

The difference between UKIP’s situation and that of the Bolsheviks or NSDAP is that UKIP has no really firm ideological or organizational structure. Even if society came to a political tipping point, UKIP might well be unable to take advantage of that.

A new and properly-run social nationalist party could take most of the votes of UKIP as well as those which formerly went to the BNP and others. That however, could only ever be a foundation for electoral success. That success itself would depend on the rising star of the new party meeting the fading star of the old parties. It is a question of timing and of Fate. The tipping point for the whole society would be key.