Denounce your teachers!Early last year a new group started making waves in UK. An American far right import, Turning Point UK (not to be confused with the social care charity of similar name) set its sights on influencing British domestic politics. The alt-right offshoot spared no expense in promoting its cynical message to British youth, even creating the 21st century’s answer to Diana and Unity of the Mitford sisters, Alice and Beatrice whose grandfather headed up one of the nation’s largest banks. I critiqued a couple of their vacuous videos here and here.
The group has been endorsed by senior right wing politicians including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel as well as Nigel “Mr. Brexit” Farage himself which really ought to tell you all you need to know about their right wing aims. Farage even misrepresented socialism on video for the group. But in case you’re in any doubt let’s take a look at Turning Point UK’s latest escapade.
In an attempt to further indoctrinate British young people, the far right group has asked children to ‘denounce’ their teachers should they say anything that might be construed as non-supportive of neoNazi ideals. For example.
Yeah, the Trump picture is a bit naughty. Funny though and Trump’s policies really can be argued to be analogous with an aggressive cancer spreading internationally.
Next up is a perfectly reasonable analogy about the behaviour of cells described as “remainer propaganda” in this paranoid campaign.
A lecture on Marxist perspective (presumably in a social history or similar class) is described as evidence of indoctrination – it seems that only one side of the political spectrum is to be taught, even though a balanced approach is the only way for young people to make truly informed decisions.
Here, an appeal to critical thinking contrasted with the non-critical Daily Mail is objected to for no apparent reason. Nobody could seriously argue that it’s not a valid contrast. The Daily Mail is far from renowned for facilitating critical thought – but it is a right wing rag and so the fash from TPUK will brook no criticism of it.
Now where have we seen this sort of thing before? How about the actions of the AfD in Germany – the modern white-supremacist successors to the Nazi party?
“The far-right Alternative for Germany’s decision to set up web portals to denounce teachers who express political opinions in the classroom unleashed a storm of protest this week. Critics hear an echo of Nazi tactics or repression in Communist East Germany.”
In perfect style German teachers have reported themselves en masse to the party, explaining that it’s a matter of public duty to be recognised as someone who stands up to fascism as an example of good citizenship to the young people they seek to educate.
In this country the National Front tried a similar thing, encouraging school children to denounce lefty teachers, several of whom were attacked and seriously injured by NF members as a result. Like all the rest of our examples the NF campaign sought to encourage the teaching of traditionalist, nationalist history with a very definite bias instead of the accurate history, increasingly favoured by modern educational establishments.
The new far-right government of Brazil did the same in 2018 as did Mussolini prior to WW2. But perhaps the most widely known example of this ‘teacher denouncing’ occurred in Nazi Germany, beginning soon after Hitler seized power in 1933 and resulting in an almost complete takeover of German education by the Nazi party. The parallel with Nazi Germany interfering in academic freedoms to promote a bias for Nazi ideology is clear. After all, Turning Point UK doesn’t appear to have any problem with right wing teachers talking politics in the classroom or lecture theatre.
It really is time for British people to sit up and take notice. This is happening now, right under our noses and, just as the German people were too complacent to take the threat seriously, so are many Britons. Nazi Germany was already established with all its disastrous consequences by the time most people realised what had happened. Then, as now, the far right, the racists and the aggressive ultra-nationalists targeted impressionable children because it works. It worked then and if we’re not very careful it’ll work now.
Don’t let that happen here. There’s still time to protect our laws, our customs, our legal system AND maintain our democracy
Oh yes – and just in case you were wondering…It’s not Godwin’s law if they really are Nazis!
In truth, as this series hopes to demonstrate, the fight has been going on for centuries. It was raging long before any of us were born and will presumably continue long after we’re dead. All any of us can do is join the fray in our own time – we won’t see defeat or victory – only periods of setback and progress.
We need to take the long view. We need to be resilient and not despair. We must never give up the fight but press on, just as our ancestors did whose tireless struggle won for us the NHS and the Welfare state, decent housing and the right to be involved in our own government at every level from casting a vote to participation in cabinet and the Lords.
It was the brave activists of previous centuries that won for us employment rights, universal healthcare and an end to life-blighting childhood injuries from long hours in England’s ‘dark, Satanic mills’ and crippling stresses on developing bones in the mines to small boys suffocating to death in the blackness of chimneys. It was socialist reformers who fought for universal education and the right to more than a single day off a month. It was socialist activists who won for us access to the legal system and equality under the law. Their road to victory wasn’t easy and neither is ours but each generation of socialists makes its own progress overall. The current setback won’t change that so long as we come together, stick together and refuse to give up the fight.
Left eye view 