Protesters gathered near Oxford Circus on Saturday, despite freezing temperatures, for the Stand Up To Racism march to “oppose growing racism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination”.
The march united fundamentalist Muslims and far-left protesters. White leftists and hijab-wearing Islamists marched together to Whitehall holding banners, reading “Migrants and refugees are welcome here” and “Stop racist attacks”.
French philosopher Pascal Bruckner has described this phenomenon as Islamo-Leftism, “the fusion between the atheist Far Left and religious radicalism”. According to Bruckner, Islamo-Leftism was “chiefly” conceived by British Trotskyites of the Socialist Workers Party.
Protest marches were held in other cities including Glasgow and Cardiff ahead of the UN’s Elimination of Racial Discrimination day on March 21, drawing large crowds.
Organisers of the event said one reason demonstrators were taking to the streets was to protest against a “massive rise” in racism in Britain and across the rest of the world.
In a statement on its website ahead of the events, it said: “Rampant institutional racism is being felt through a spate of deaths in police custody, the tragedy at Grenfell and systematic discrimination in employment and Housing.
“Trump’s Muslim ban, his racist ‘wall’ project and equivocation over white supremacist and fascist marches have led to a climate of racism and fear across the US.”
It added: “If we are to defeat the rise of racism, we need a united movement of everyone who opposes it. The #MarchAgainstRacism is a chance to bring that movement together and show that we will not be silent.”
According to a UN report, “divisive, anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric” during the EU referendum campaign “triggered a surge in hate crimes” following Britain’s June 2016 vote to quit the bloc.
Addressing crowds gathered in London, Labour MP David Lammy called Brexit architect Nigel Farage a “racist” and denounced his “extreme rhetoric”.
“We are sending a message to the arch chief of this tide of prejudice that is sweeping our world – Donald Trump.”
“There is racism in the UK, it is just more hidden because it’s so diverse and acts on a more subliminal level,” Abraham Khoudari told Al Jazeera at the march. “But when it’s like that it is even worse,” the 18-year-old Syrian added.
“Nationalists have come to the forefront, they are in parliament and in power. It means more people are becoming more confident about expressing their racist views. The result of that is hate crimes increasing so much. It’s just terrible and we are sick of it.”
Because Islamo-leftists perceive Islam’s potential for fomenting societal unrest, they promote tactical, temporary alliances with reactionary Muslim parties, Bruckner noted.
According to the French author, Leftist adherents of Third-Worldism hope to use Islamism as a “battering-ram” to bring about the downfall of free-market capitalism, and they see the sacrifice of individual rights as an acceptable trade-off in service of the greater goal of destroying capitalism.
Bruckner argues that Islamists pretend to join the left in its opposition to racism, neocolonialism, and globalization as a tactical and temporary means to achieve their true goal of imposing the “totalitarian theocracy” of Islamist government.
Political scientist Maurice Fraser has described Islamo-Leftism as part of a “striking and recent abdication of the Enlightenment project of human rights, freedom, secularism, science and progress,” on the part of the political left.
In his 2015 novel, Submission, Michel Houellebecq has Robert Rediger, the fictional character who is a convert to Islam and university professor turned politician, describe Islamo-leftism as “a desperate attempt by moldering, putrefying, brain-dead Marxists to hoist themselves out of the dustbin of history by latching onto the coattails of Islam.”