What is the point of an anti-fascist organisation if there are no fascists?

Our attention was recently drawn to yet another anti-UKIP campaign ahead of the European Elections in May of this year.

This one would appear to be another UAF/SWP/HnH front. Carefully hosted overseas and using privacy to hide the true owners behind anonymous hosting companies in California it trots out pretty much the rubbish you'd expect.

One phrase which was interesting was this:

"Such a climate of racist and reactionary ideas also creates a fertile breeding ground for fascist organisations, such as the British National Party and the English Defence League."

Which rather flies in the face of experience. In fact, since the rise of UKIP began, we have seen the collapse of both the BNP and the EDL. UKIP have achieved more in the past year than Hope not Hate, Unite Against Fascism and the Socialist Worker's Party have in a decade in combatting the far-right by proving themselves a moderate, non-racist party which still stands up for Britain.

This of course is the reason UKIP now faces such ire from the hard left, and explains the increasingly violent methods they are using to combat UKIP. For Nick Lowles, Martin Smith, Weyman Bennett and the rest, their opposition to fascism was only skin deep and nothing more than a vehicle for their own wider political views which were no more or less fascist than those of their opponents. All of them occupy that strange position where the extremes of political right and left meet and onlookers can no longer tell the difference between the pigs and the men.

The real problem - and the reason for setting up UKIP as a party of the hard right when it is clearly nothing of the sort - is that there is little point in having an anti-fascist organisation if there is no fascism to fight. Hope not Hate is not a campaign, it is a multi-million pound business masquerading as one. The SWP is not a political movement, it is a shelter for rapists and a natural home for those who would destroy that which they can not possess. In both cases, it lends to people who would otherwise be non-entities a feeling of empowerment, of strutting self-importance which far exceeds their true abilities. Nick Lowles, a failed journalist. Ruth Smeeth, who lost a safe Labour seat and can't get voted onto the Labour NEC despite repeated attempts. Martin Smith, a rabble-rousing rapist who has been temporarily shunted out of sight. Weyman Bennett, who has multiple criminal convictions. These are not people who would otherwise be destined for stellar careers, these are the also-rans who cling to the prominence their failing organisations have given them.

We should not mistake their continued attacks for continued success on their part. They themselves are well aware of how thin the rope is on which their survival depends. With recent polls showing that UKIP is the most favourably viewed party in the country the hard left campaigns are in a tail spin: the public no longer believe their shrill hysteria.

Make no mistake, the European Elections are probably more important to these hard left campaign groups than they are to UKIP. At the moment, the traditional political parties - Labour, Tories and Lib Dems - are pinning their hopes on HnH and the rest doing their dirty work for them. With the Lib/Lab/Cons having no clear idea about how to stop UKIP, they are happy to sub-contract the dirty work to the hard left and never mind the ideological differences: the violent intimidation of geriatric UKIP campaigners, the assault of elected UKIP members, the graffiti-ing and theft from UKIP offices.

The real problems for Lowles, Smith, Smeeth and Bennett begin if UKIP garners a large percentage of the vote on the 22nd May. If 30% of the country support UKIP, will the political establishment continue to fund and tacitly support their organisations, or will they realise such campaigns to be counter-productive? You can not after all ask for 30% of the population to vote for you if you have spent the last year telling those same people that they're extremist racists, even if you have done it by proxy.

Naturally, such groups have other purposes. So far they have constrained debate on a wide range of subjects. Doubt whether global warming theories have a sound scientific basis? Heretic. Wonder whether mass immigration is good for the working class? Fascist. Think increased benefit payments may encourage indolence? Capitalist pig-dog lackey.

Be prepared over the coming months to have everything including the kitchen sink thrown at UKIP by these unaccountable rich-man's toys. For the traditional parties, the stakes are high, but for HnH/SWP/UAF it is their very existence which is at stake: if UKIP polls well, they will be discarded without a second thought. Lowles, Smeeth, Bennett and Smith will be queuing up next to Griffin, Brons, Robinson and Carroll at the jobcentre.