This McCarthyite turn shows the govt isn’t shifting to the centre.

So much for post-Cummings liberalising, this government is drawing false equivalencies between the far right and the left, and upping hostility to progressives in a dangerous manner.

We heard much talk of the Johnson government become One Nation once Dominic Cummings left its midst, and saw a less confrontational shift, with TV shows no longer being boycott, less culture war attacks, and a more liberal conception of the Johnson administration. Alas, it didn’t last long, over the last few weeks we’ve heard attacks on the “woke” (now fully a dogwhistle), talk about non existent shadowy statue topplers, and now, a McCarthyite attack on progressives; this is still a government attempting to mimic the tactics of the far right.

Boris Johnson still hasn’t reckoned with the fact he can’t have it both ways. He’s even now attempting to mimic the most effective tactics of the radical right for his own political expediency, while simultaneously pivoting to a centrist, Keynesian policy on economics. He thinks he can rage the culture wars, and invest billions in green technology and Net Zero, but this isn’t how this works. He’s blind to the glaring contradiction at the heart of what he’s doing.

That glaring contradiction is the unshifting fact that if you play with fire, it gets out of hand, and we all get burnt. Johnson needs to realise by stoking these culture wars he’s playing with forces beyond his control, and going down a path one shouldn’t go lightly. The liberating effect having a Prime Minister parroting your thoughts rhetorically has on rightwing extremists cannot be overstated; every time the govt parrots the lines of Nigel Farage, or writes a culture war hit piece in the Daily Express, the most depraved elements of the far right feel yet more emboldened, and they act with assumed impunity; it’s the same process that resulted in the Capitol attack.

Over the weekend we hear the government is looking into something best summarized as “anti-democracy, anti-capitalist infiltrators into progressive groups”. This is part of a broader review that encompasses the political far right. The govt couldn’t just talk about the main threat and leave it at that, it had to push it and talk about how the actual threat is surely those evil progressives fighting for social justice.

This is McCarthyism, plain and simple, it starts with this, and it worsens. This country is already a very unwelcoming place for progressive forces, with a rising far right and a radicalised govt, and reviews like this legitimise the false equivalency that leftist activism is an equal threat to the far right thugs, or a substantial lesser threat along similar lines. Both of these assessments are wrong.

The infiltrators trope is the most worrying of them all. This is how across the US in years come by, communists, socialists, even social democrats, were hunted out, and then treated and shunted by society in a way you’d imagine paedophiles would be. That’s the route this govt is going, by legitimising this anti-communist trope. It’s scary, it’s dangerous, and they’re playing with fire they won’t be able to control.

In this country we are shackled with a media implacably hostile to the left, and a media that right across the spectrum, from conservative to relatively liberal, will happily legitimise and parrot these lines and attacks, and we tread farther and farther rightwards to god knows what. These tropes started with the talk of “Momentum thugs” touted in kind by so called respectable liberal Guardian columnists as much as the Daily Express. The entire media class is responsible for where this is going, and outlets like the BBC and The Observer have paved the road for it in a way that rightwing outlets never credibly could.

The great irony of the last few years of political discourse is a right that’s screamed about media bias and cancel culture, without realising they themselves are the biggest historical and current perpetrators of cancel culture (a phenomena directed almost exclusively towards minorities and the left throughout history), and that the apparently liberal media outlets they so despise often serve a vital function in furthering and legitimising their political priorities. The right has been setting the agenda since 2016, the victim mentality has to stop; but of course, it never will. Rightwing ideology is steeped in victimhood on the part of the privileged and the powerful.

The current Labour party views its role as a fight for electoral power and to marginalise the left, all while embracing the rhetoric and imagery of the far right. A Union Jack isn't an issue in my mind, a Union Jack being the focus of the outreach strategy absolutely is. Labour right now is no bulwark against the far right, since it’ll happily capitulate to its tropes in order to secure kudos within the pundit class, as Starmer’s passivity when faced with the white nationalist Great Replacement myth on LBC demonstrated so crystal clearly.

The left has to build its own community structures, organisational bodies, and media outlets, in order to right against this. No one is coming to help. The BBC and the Guardian will fiddle while we become a far right country. The only way to stem the tide is build our own narratives, our own strength, our own unity, our own discourse. We have to make ourselves core parts of community fabric; that’s the easiest way to combat far right poison; in person, on the ground. And we have to take on the corporate monopoly on our media; manufactured consent rules the day.

If you have any sympathies with the left whatsoever, this is the time to come forward. The most vulnerable are under attack, the left is under attack, and unless progressive minded people stand up, they’ll be the next targets. This govt would be satisfied until anything liberal or “woke” is removed.

This govt is doing us a favour, by showing us just how dangerous it is, and just what horrific McCarthyite lengths it’ll be willing to go. Don’t let this happen, and don't despair; take action, see the warning signs, stop it. We’re early in the sinister drift, and we CAN, and we MUST, stop this. The Johnson govt is once again showing its true colours coming off the back of a week of McCarthyism and pushing ahead on plans for the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria. Don’t let welcome economic initiatives distract from the fact this is a govt of, and a govt for, the far right, draped is fake populist clothes. The fight is only just beginning.