The Brexit Party and Farage's "moment": the charisma, the strategy and the opportunism

Here's a quick reminder of where the British government stands currently.
It has a Prime Minister who leads a government that has no leadership: its ministers can say almost anything they want on the most important political crisis in living memory. The government is in a parliament in which it has no majority to agree on any decision relating to the most important crisis in living memory. The Prime Minister’s own party is desperate to get rid of her, but she refuses to relinquish (her meaningless) power, and they lack the means to force her out before more damage is done.

The governing party cannot agree how to deal with the most important political crisis in living memory, but neither can the opposition either; in this way, the two main parties are each divided into three or more incoherent and contradictory factions. The only established party that has a coherent position on the issue (the Liberal Democrats) are themselves being challenged by other (newer) parties, thus fracturing their wider cause into disconnected and uncooperative elements.

Given the nature of the crisis and the intellectual inadequacies nakedly displayed by the people involved, a way out of the current crisis looks impossible. All that can be agreed is to defer agreement on how to deal with the crisis, which has now simply resulted in the sudden emergence of the “Brexit Party”, with Nigel Farage poised to take ruthless advantage. There are no options on the table now that do not look bad for the main parties; only a menu of choices ranging from politically bad, to terrible, or apocalyptic. Nigel Farage looks likely to be able to exploit all of them.

In this way, Britain’s political class is divided and rudderless as never before.

As mentioned, into this “perfect storm” rides Nigel Farage, strategically positioned to take advantage of the “black hole” that Brexit has sucked in the Westminster establishment to a death-spiral of political oblivion. Using a strategically-adept sense of timing, Farage has allowed Westminster to simply destroy itself from within, its established parties simply displaying their own innate contradictions and failings in the face of Brexit.

Farage is both politically smarter than his established opponents give him credit for, and strategically more adept in understanding the fundamentals of modern politics compared to those who have only worked within the anachronistic structures of the Westminster bubble.

Playing the long game

While Farage is no intellectual, he has shown on several occasions a extremely canny reading of the political landscape, content to play the long game. Over a period of twenty years, he has succeeded in making an issue that very few people thought about (EU membership) become the defining issue of British politics. While his career has shown ups and downs, looking at things in the current situation, the trend of his political career has shown an unquestionable movement towards a greater and greater domination of the British political landscape. Yes, his career has had knock-backs (such as the numerous times he has failed to become a MP, and his various spells as UKIP leader); but the wider trend shows how he has been able to take an opportunity to make political capital of a situation and exploit it ruthlessly.

This is what has made him a political figure that his opponents have underestimated at their peril. While his appeal was initially marginal, his charisma seems to have appealed over time to a larger and larger segment of the electorate, when measured against his political opponents. In this sense, while Farage’s initial charisma was seen as a trivial distraction from the serious work of politics, the leading politicians in Westminster have over time simply displayed more and more of their inadequacies. Farage has the advantage of not needing to demonstrate his intellect compared to his political “betters” because his persona has that factored-in from the start. His supporters follow Farage because of his charisma, not his intellect; his appeal is his persona as a “man on the street” (regardless of whether it is a true reflection or not).

This was the impression he gave from the very beginning, so everyone identifies with that aspect of his personality. People like Cameron or Miliband could never hope to project that same impression because they would always be known for their orthodox political careers; they were “regular” politicians, and any attempts to show their charisma would always be balanced against that.

May and Corbyn, the “next generation” on, have other failings. May’s personality issues are now well-documented, while Corbyn’s charisma is, while genuine, limited in impacting only on those who share his old-fashioned view of politics. Given the changes of leadership in the mainstream parties, Farage is in some ways now an “established insurgent” in the political scene, given his long career on the sidelines, and his sharp rise in influence since 2010.

As said earlier, Farage’s high public recognition gives him the advantage of familiarity (everyone knows who he is, even if they disagree with him). Then the fact that his charisma is equally well-established in the public consciousness is another advantage. The last remaining factor is the actions of his opponents. Back at the “height” of UKIP popularity five years ago, Farage’s party came top of the European parliament elections (finishing in the high twenties), just above the other main parties. Five years on, and thanks to the collective rank incompetence of his opponents, he has been given an open goal (or at times failed to appear on the pitch at all); this explains how his new “Brexit Party” can manage to poll in the low thirties, at least ten points ahead of the next party.

The situation is extraordinary in every sense of the word, but Farage’s opponents have simply been doing most of his work for him, destroying each other’s credibility when not destroying their own. Farage simply has to step back from the fray (as he had been doing until a few months ago), and wait for the moment to strike. Worse, his opponents have given him all the rhetorical ammunition he needs to stir the emotions of the electorate in his favour. 

The “betrayal” narrative is now in full flow; the people who voted for Brexit have been stabbed in the back by traitorous politicians, who have simply rolled over to appease the European conspiracy against British independence. See? That’s how easy it is say such things, regardless of how many distortions and mistruths that narrative might involve.

Farage knows how to play the rhetorical game to a tee, though, and seems not to care too much about where that might lead. As said earlier, Farage may well have been playing a ”long game”, not too bothered about the means used to get what he wants, as long as the “end” is ultimately reached. He may have once been pilloried by Russell Brand as a “Pound Shop Enoch Powell”, but in the longer view, such slights can be laughed off or dismissed as the complaints of the “metropolitan elite” who simply play into Farage’s own well-established rhetoric of outsider victimhood. Beyond the city limits of London, Farage’s sentiments would be shared by many.

Given that the politicians in Westminster were never able to play a “long game” like Farage, they were only interested in generating the next headline in the “Daily Mail”; and such short-termism has consequences, as David Cameron found out. Theresa May’s own political strategy has been arguably even more cynically short-term (and a sign of her lack of intellectual foresight): she seems to be only ever interested in doing what is necessary to stay in power until the following month, which explains her Brexit strategy of delaying any decision where possible, or finding a route that can avoid her position being challenged.

The "Betrayal Party"

Now that the “betrayal” narrative has a willing and captive audience, Farage can exploit this to make as much political capital as possible. As the “last man standing” from the Brexit imbroglio, it is quite possible that he will be the only politician with public recognition that many people will be willing to trust. The advantage of Farage’s well-established rhetoric is that he has made it easy for himself to deflect blame for any errors on his part towards the actions of his opponents: he can play the perpetual “victimized outsider”, targeted by an elite only interested in suppressing his "popular uprising". He has already used the term “coalition against the people” to describe Westminster and Whitehall, while in the past has referred to his movement as a “people’s army”. This is the rhetoric of a Populist demagogue.

Farage doesn’t need to win over a majority to get what he wants; he only needs to convince enough people that their will is being betrayed, and already around a third of the electorate seem to fall into that category. In this sense, Farage’s “Brexit Party” could more fittingly be called the “Betrayal Party”: it is supported by those who feel they have been betrayed. These people are happy to lend their support to a one-man personality cult whose agenda is opaque beyond evocative slogans and divisive rhetoric. They seem happy to place it all on trust; and given the dearth of quality shown in the leading parties, you can see how they would do so. A vote for Farage is both a vote for blind hope and selfless trust. It is support out of desperation and anger. It might not be the first time that politics has led people to turn to turn people and agendas they didn’t fully understand, preferring to see what they wanted to see rather than the ugly truth hiding in plain sight; but it is the first time in living memory this has happened in Britain.

A couple of years ago, the author wrote that it had appeared that Theresa May had found a way for a mainstream party to exploit Brexit for their own advantage. Farage seems to have seen the reality, though: Brexit is a decisive “turn” in politics that none in the old order are able to deal with without it destroying them. It was only a matter of time before that revealed itself.

The opportunity lying before Farage is an extraordinary (and dangerous) one, unprecedented in British politics. Never before has the entire British political class looked so intellectually and strategically moribund; a beast on its last legs, just waiting for the end to come. It is a frightening prospect to witness. Westminster is an establishment on political life support, seemingly in a fatalistic end-of-days mood, unable and unwilling to deal with reality outside its doors. But reality, in the face of Farage’s peculiarly British brand of Populism, is camped at the doors, seemingly just waiting the moment to act.  

Nigel Farage and "The Brexit Party": feeding off the Westminster political chaos (and the carcass)

The signs are all there that Britain's political elite are running out of road, Theresa May in particular.

The whole issue of "Brexit" became Farage's own vehicle for his career advancement, going back to the first "breakthrough" that Farage had with UKIP in the 1999 European elections. The financial crisis was the real turning point, however, which saw the Conservatives come to power through supporting a policy that surrendered the narrative to Farage: by Cameron committing to the impossible of reducing migration into Britain to the tens of thousands in 2010, it soon became open season within Cameron's own party on the whole issue of "migration" and the EU.

We know where that led; by surrendering to those forces within his party, with Farage and UKIP threatening, Cameron quickly became a hostage to events, forever responding to the narrative that Farage had established. In this sense, Cameron was barely a leader in a real sense of the word - it was Farage who was the main personality behind the whole agenda to get Britain out of the EU. Farage and UKIP, it can reasonably be claimed, effected the downfall of one Prime Minister (Cameron), and in his new "Brexit Party", Farage seems likely to able to claim the destruction of his successor (May).

It is now twenty years since UKIP and Farage's first encounter with the European Parliament. What is now clear is that UKIP was used by Farage as a vehicle for his own brand of personality politics; in his various spells as leader, he ran the party almost like a personality cult, allowing little time for other individuals to challenge his domination of the party.
After winning the EU referendum, he stepped back from the leadership. It could be argued his reasoning was as highly-strategic as personal; in his mind, perhaps Farage would have liked to think of himself as "retiring" from the public sphere to see how events panned out (and rightly predicting the high likelihood of Brexit being mishandled by the political elite). In this way, while he stepped back to allow Westminster to slowly destroy itself over Brexit, it would provide him with the right kind of reason to step back into the spotlight at the right time; in the manner of a "Shakespearean hero", able to maintain his own sense of honour, returning to save the day, victorious and all-conquering.


The smartest man in the room, or just the last man standing?

The narrative above sounds absurd, or at best a silly flight of fancy, but the current status of events in Westminster gives an astonishing amount of legitimacy to the narrative described.

As said above, Farage seems to have been able to predict the mess that would gradually transpire in parliament. With Theresa May having her own self-destructive and anti-social brand of "leadership", she has succeeded in making herself both poisonous to her party and her party's image poisonous to much of the public (and even to its own members).
Meanwhile, Labour has lost all sense of direction, and the groups that are clearly pro-Remain are as divided as they are lacking in proper leadership of their own. While the Liberal Democrats have recently had a strong recovery in support when in comes to local government, when it comes to Brexit, the pro-European votes are split between them, the Greens and "Change UK". A 1980s-style "alliance" of some sort might make more sense electorally between these groups, but the clash of egos and the narcissism of small differences seems to get in the way.

In the meantime, there is Farage's new political bandwagon: "The Brexit Party". As said earlier, when he was in charge of UKIP, he led the party almost like a personality cult; given that this new "party" doesn't even technically have any members (it has "supporters" that financially contribute), it is an unashamed personality cult in all but name - the "Farage Party".
Farage timed its launch to perfection, seeing the way that Brexit had been so dismally handled. After stepping back from front-line politics, he allowed UKIP to be taken over by the "culture war" narrative that has led to Tommy Robinson's involvement - allowing them to say overtly what Farage had always implied covertly. In this way, Farage would be able to claim that the party had been taken over by extremists and giving him a reason to create a newly-honed identity for the Farage brand.
However, UKIP without Farage would still serve a useful function for the wider agenda, in extending the earlier "culture war" narrative that Farage had initially exploited. In the new form that UKIP took, a more raucous and dangerous form of Populism would be harnessed, while this would allow Farage - free of UKIP's awkward mantle - to exploit the political ground vacated by the self-destructive Tory Party. He could claim to be "above the fray", while still being able to exploit it for his own advantage.

The Farage "brand" (2019) could therefore be seen as a highly-strategic (and highly opportunistic) form of personality politics more usually seen in authoritarian cultures.
This is the divisive "betrayal" narrative that has been gaining traction. Given that Trump's appeal is fueled by the narrative of a "conspiracy" against his supporters, Farage and Trump are politically peas from the same pod. This explains Farage's links to Bannon and Trump, and the selfsame wider global agenda that they share.

With the self-destruction of the Conservative Party now seemingly just a matter of time, and with Labour seeming almost as clueless, Brexit's esoteric power seems to be to destroy the old order that has ruled Westminster. A party that didn't exist three months ago and is led as a charismatic personality cult is almost certain to win the most seats in the Britain's European elections, and is currently even second on opinion polls for Westminster elections.

Apart from the timing of the launch of Farage's new "project" early this year so that it gains attention just as things are falling apart in Westminster (and with the original leave date being imminent), the simple imagery and the principles behind it, are what seem so attractive to the layman.
With a name like "The Brexit Party", there can be no doubt to the onlooker what it represents. Apart from the simple clarity of the message (like the famous "Take Back Control" of the leave campaign), is also the implicit message that this party represents "the will of the people" (i.e. those that voted to leave) and that others, like the Conservatives, have shown themselves to be insincere at best and Machiavellian at worst.
Another smaller issue, but one worth mentioning, is the imagery of Farage's party itself: a rightward-pointing arrow on a pale blue background (itself formed out of the space between the "E" and "X" in "Brexit"): this seems to suggest a borrowing of the colours of the Conservatives (but in a more soothing tone); meanwhile the arrow can have both an overt meaning ("Forward"?), and a covert meaning (pointing to the right, implying the real political agenda). In this sense, the real Libertarian agenda of Farage and his financial supporters is hiding in plain sight.

Few people will look that deeply into things, of course. Farage's new vehicle for self-promotion is still perfectly timed to take advantage of the meltdown of leadership in Westminster; the "betrayal" narrative has taken little nudging to gain traction given the abject failure of the political elite to deal with the Brexit negotiations with any intelligence or rationalism.

All it takes is an extraordinary set of events and the right kind of person able to exploit them, and you have the makings of a political earthquake. Farage possesses all the necessary political tools and the right set of circumstances to make it happen. All the indications are that Britain is but a few missteps away from a fundamental collapse of the political order.
Events are ideally poised for Farage to take absolute advantage; to what end, no one is quite sure.

The UK "Porn Block": ineffective, counter-productive, intrusive…and a microcosm of Theresa May's psychology?

The author some time ago wrote about how Theresa May’s psychology seemed like a microcosm of Britain’s collective neuroses. As a person, her inner thinking is defined by her background. The manner of how she ruled the both the Home Office as Home Secretary and has run the country as Prime Minister can be explained by the self-evident moral rigidity of her upbringing: the only child of a priest, growing up in the whiter-than-white heart of traditional “Middle England”.

There is more than a whiff of poisonously-regressive, moralistic sanctimony to the manner of both May’s idea of society and the social agenda that her government has pursued. It is as though under her watch, she wants to actively encourage the authoritarian moralizing that typified the Victorian era, but implemented with 21st century technology.

Under May’s watch, Britain loses its identity as a progressive Western society, and slides into the authoritarian realm, where people’s private actions are policed, even when what they are doing is entirely legal. These are not even people suspected of being criminals or conspiring in criminal behavior; they are simply doing something that is entirely natural as human beings. This is done in the name of “protecting children”; as all authoritarian actions are done in someone else’s name.

In this way, she is taking the idea of “nudging”public behaviour that was introduced under Cameron’s administration, and applying her own deeply unsubtle, authoritarian methodology: from coaxing people’s inclinations to hammering them into their head.  

The “Porn Block” is merely the logical conclusion to May’s pursuit of a regressive moral agenda that both stigmatizes the private realities of modern life, and removes the right to privacy for those interested in most online sexual content. The consumption of pornography becomes an implicit “thoughtcrime”: while it is “legal”, those who consume it are made to feel stigmatized, with all their online private inclinations stored and recorded. How convenient. The infamous phrase that “people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to fear” is the exact opposite of the intention of this policy: they have everything to fear.

Of course, the real intention is as “red meat” to the Conservative Party’s geriatric grassroots. Of those people, few of them see the internet as anything else than a corrupting and dangerous influence. Of course, it can be this, but that is the same any form of media.

Then there are the practicalities behind it, which explain how the “Porn Block” is such an utterly stupid idea at various levels. Apart from all the security dangers it poses to users at recording vast quantities of personal data and sexual interests, it is easy to circumvent the age barriers using VPN software in any case, making it largely ineffective to any savvy (underage) internet user. And to those who can’t get around the age block, then the “dark web” will be another unregulated avenue for them to explore. In the same way that banning soft drugs simply means that it sends users to the same dealers of illegal harder drugs (and thus being a counter-productive government act), the “Porn Block” will simply entice more teenagers to the “dark web”, where the most extreme content possible can also be found. So how about that for protecting children from porn?

The fact that this policy is so ineffective, counter-productive and authoritarian and that is also has occurred under the watch of Theresa May cannot be mere coincidence. Apart from being a national leader who is so utterly useless at almost everything she deals with, she then has to distract her ineptitude with authoritarian policies that can only appeal to her party base. Even if the policy is disastrous on so many levels, the fact that her party base would probably love it supersedes all other concerns. This was true of the “hostile environment”, welfare reform, and “austerity”, and is also true of the “Porn Block”.

Another social consequence of the “Porn Block” is that is amplifies the moral gulf between the rulers and the ruled. 21^st century Britain is a "liberal" country, but this is a policy that does not belong in a liberal country. It is a policy that doesn’t even belong in the West at all. But Britain’s ruling elite are a class apart from those below them whose taxes pay for the moralizing of their rulers. The rulers don’t care about the “Porn Block” in practical terms, because they know how to circumvent it already. Many of them already do this in how they “manage” their tax affairs. In this way, the “Porn Block” is simply more evidence of the contempt that the rulers have for the private lives of the ruled. As far as the rulers are concerned, the ruled don’t deserve one; the “Porn Block” is simply confirmation of this.

 

No sex (education), please – we’re British

The “Porn Block”, as the government seems proud to point out, makes Britain a pioneer in online security. As mentioned already before, the “security” aspect is both dangerous and pathetically-easy to circumvent. So all this proves, in the same manner as Brexit, is how hopelessly how out-of-depth and painfully lacking in self-awareness Britain’s government looks to the rest of the world. If the “Porn Block” makes Britain’s government a pioneer, it is only a pioneer in embarrassing ineptitude, under the guise of moral authoritarianism. It makes Britain’s government look like a slapstick version of the “morality police”.

In any case, these actions only underline how abysmal Britain’s sexual education is compared to most other developed nations, and how the government’s first instinct is to prevent people from finding things out or (heaven forbid) enjoying themselves in a way that their rulers find somehow offensive or socially dangerous. British sex education is almost an oxymoron, as governments (especially Conservative ones) are so constrained by their own sexual insecurities they are horrified at the idea of people having an “education” in sex. They simply cannot countenance seriously talking about it.

The alternative to sex education is the situation Britain has had for decades: among the highest rates for teenage pregnancy in the Western world. Government policy that engenders sexual ignorance in society does not reduce the desire for sex; indeed, decades of evidence have shown it produces the exact opposite effect.

One glaringly obvious reason that teenagers watch porn is that – apart from entirely natural hormonal reasons – because they know so little about sex from their schooling or their parents, online pornography becomes the only “resource” they can access to discover more about it. Therefore the most obvious reason that teenagers have such questionable morality about sex is because, lacking any proper guidance from responsible adults, they get their “sex education” from porn. The end result of “porn” being their primary sexual resource, are (male) teenagers with highly questionable ideas of consent, among many other issues of sexual realism.

And now the government wants to prevent teenagers from having any practical knowledge of sex at all until they come of age, in a true moralizing throwback to Victorian prudishness. It is true that before the internet age, pornography was very much limited in its circulation to the general population. 

But is that really a regression that Britain should be making in the 21^st century – back to a time decades ago when pornography was a realm that only “perverts” inhabited? It is telling how pervasive that outdated thinking still seems to be in the socially-regressive mind of Theresa May.

In this way, Britain under Theresa May has become, in regards to sex, one step closer to the moral universe of puritanical absolutism with modern technology: a moral plane that is much closer to the contemporary Muslim regimes of the Middle East and Asia, for example; or to use a fictitious parallel, the logical conclusion of this path is the descent some kind of twisted British version of Gilead.

Not so much “Under His Eye”, but “Under Theresa’s Eye”.

Britain, social hierarchy and Fascist ideology

A hundred years ago, Europe was in the turmoil of the aftermath of the First World War. The social hierarchies that had supported the empires of Germany, Russia, Austria and the Ottoman Empire had either been dismembered or were in the last throes of their life. All the social hierarchies that had existed on the side of the Central Powers have long since ended. On the allied side (i.e. the “Entente”), the only social hierarchy to have survived is that of Britain.

Britain’s social hierarchy is both the longest and only surviving social hierarchy in the Western world. The USA’s social hierarchy is more complex and younger, while the only other surviving monarchy of similar stature on the continent is Spain’s, whose own survival during the 20^th century went through the long period of Franco, and also stood neutral during both world wars. In this sense, Britain’s social hierarchy – its “establishment” – survived through adaptation. It has survived through two wars and the economic welfare reforms of the postwar Labour government.

It is its survival, and the successful projection of its image to the world as representing values of decency and moderation, that gave the rest of the world the image of Britain as a bulwark against political extremism. The problem is that the establishment’s projected image is very different from the reality. The fact that the Britain’s social hierarchy remained largely intact after two World Wars meant that the political system remained largely unchanged as well.

The irony is that Britain’s rigid social hierarchy is also the aspect of Britain that its supposed “enemies” also most respected.

As the oldest surviving social hierarchy in the Western world, other imperial powers looked to Britain (or more exactly, England) as the exemplar of traditional patrician, socially-hierarchical values. In this way, the way that England’s ruling elite were able to dominate first the British Isles and then much of the rest of the world, gave an impetus for other aspiring imperial powers (such as the nascent German Empire) to follow.

The parallel with Germany is relevant in other ways. The German Empire created following a decade of sudden military triumphs, had its roots in the Kingdom of Prussia. In a similar way to how the Kingdom of England came to dominate over the British Isles, Prussia came to dominate over its other German-speaking neighbors. The roots of both England and Prussia emanate from their status as early medieval “frontier states”, on the wilder fringes of Europe’s Western and Eastern edges. Both emerging states were able to dominate the other social groupings in the region (such as the various Celtic tribes in England’s case, and the various Baltic tribes in Prussia’s case). Such historical parallels were not lost even on Hitler of all people.

If we jump forward to the years before the First World War, we see a Prussia-dominated German Empire ruled by a militaristic “junker” class of Prussian aristocracy. Meanwhile, the British Empire’s ruling elite has long been ran by an English-dominated aristocracy. While the First World swept away Germany's Prussian elite, in Britain it survived; older, more well-established, and more able to adapt to survive. It is this "survival instinct" that even draws the respect of Britain's enemies. All the ancient culture of Britain and its Anglo-Saxon ruling class is what the older European aristocracies respected. The social hierarchy in Britain was (and still is) one of the most rigid in the Western world; it is this that the other imperial powers respected. Brought forward to today, the respected image that Britain has been able (until recently) to maintain was due to this long tradition of social hierarchy - of an undefeated English-speaking elite that still dominated world affairs far beyond what the law of nature would allow. Gulf Arabs, Russian oligarchs and Chinese billionaires all bring their money to corruptly "invest" in London because they are seduced by the bricks-and-mortar symbols of an ancient social elite.  

True, the day-to-day running of the country lies with a government chosen from parliament, but Britain’s electoral system is still dominated by parliamentarians who came from the social elite. Britain only had as much democracy as its ruling elite believed it could get away with giving; just enough to offset the danger of social revolt until the next election. 

To this day, its electoral system remains as unrepresentative as it was in the days of empire; all that has changed is its cosmetic makeup. With a modern media that largely comes from the same socially-incestuous background,it is neither in the politicians’ nor the media’s interests to highlight the fundamental injustices in Britain’s social hierarchy that they benefit from. It is much better to provide distractions and scapegoats, such as immigrants, or the EU.

Britain's class system versus India's caste system: differing models of Julius Evola's Fascism?

Apart from the class system, which retains the highly unequal social divisions, the issue of land is at the heart of understanding Britain’s economic divisions. The class system makes Britain the most unequal social in the Western world, apart from the USA. Ownership (and thus scarcity) of land is the main division between British social classes. Compared to other developed countries, land ownership is still the privilege of the aristocracy, and is one of the main forms of their economic dominance. It is also this issue that makes Britain’s social structure most akin to that of a developing (or pre-industrial) country.   

In this sense, British society is a social hierarchy in the same way that Indian society is a social hierarchy. India’s culture is ancient, and its social structure is highly stratified into castes. It is this caste system that Fascist philosopher Julius Evola used as his intellectual justification for Fascism: he saw society as naturally unequal, and that the ruling elite were naturally bred to rule, in the same way that the peasant or worker class was destined to be peasants or workers. The Fascism of Hitler and the Nazi Party was intellectually separate from Evola’s more traditionalist, hierarchical perception of society. While Hitler saw Fascism as a force for change in creating a new elite, Evola was more inspired by India’s ancient culture and saw Fascism as a restoration of ultra-traditional, rigidly hierarchical values.

Britain’s social hierarchy has historically been portrayed by the media in more genteel, patrician terms; the “establishment” as a moderating force on society’s passions. But this same thinking can be found in that of Evola, albeit in more black-and-white terms. To Britain’s “establishment”, society is to be tamed and guided in the right direction, so that any change that occurs only does so when it can also benefit the ruling elite. This explains the gradual changes that have occurred in Britain since the execution of Charles I.

The Fascism of Julius Evola is therefore not so very far removed from the perspective held within some circles of Britain’s ruling elite. While they would never say it publicly, they may well hold the same views as Evola privately. How could they otherwise justify to themselves such blatant social injustice?

Such a social hierarchy can thus only be justified to itself in “Fascist” terms, on the lines of Evola’s thinking. The boys at Eton do not give Fascist salutes, but in their minds they are educated to believe themselves to be as “ubermensch”; born to rule and educated to believe they were born to rule. This is the self-justification that also lies in the heart of Fascist ideology.

Those that dismiss such words as “left-wing radicalism” miss the point. “Fascism” is not just about black-shirts and salutes; to think of it in such narrow terms is to be dangerously blinkered, careless, condescending and complacent. As the philosophy of Evola demonstrates with its parallels to the Indian caste system, its thinking can be much more insidious. Some of today’s right-wing politicians in Britain’s parliament show such contempt for the fate of the working class, dismiss disabled people as“fakers” and openly cite xenophobic rhetoric against Muslims in particular and foreigners in general. If they had been in parliamentarians in 1930s Germany, by this logic some of them might well have seen the Nazi Party as their ideological home.

Evola’s intellectual concept of Fascism could in these terms also be called “traditional elitism”. In this sense, it can be seen as the elite ruling and the rest suffering, as is their fate under a social hierarchy. The fate of Ireland in the 1840s is an example of this rationale in action: the population of Ireland collapsed during the potato famine due to the British government’s ideological indifference. To them, “charity” was a dirty word: better that Irish people die of starvation than set a “dangerous” moral precedent of feeding them for nothing.

Yet this is also the intellectual logic of the Fascist. But no-one today would use that word to describe the actions of the British government at that time, regardless of its potential relevance. It should also be remembered for the record, that the Bengal famine in India during the Second World War occurred under similar circumstances of governmental indifference, headed by Winston Churchill. He was also renowned for despising Indians, as well as advocating gassing rebellious Iraqis.

"New" versus "old" Fascism

If we bring forward how “Fascism” relates to British society today, on the one side we see traditional elitists of the “establishment” (some of whom would naturally align with Evola’s philosophy). On the other, we see a resurgent radical far-right with its social roots in the white working class; this group’s ideology is more aligned with the bottom-up hierarchy of the Nazis, with the idea of sweeping away the “establishment” to create a new hierarchy.

This is where Brexit has brought both these groups from the opposite ends of the social hierarchy together. We see the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg in the same ideological universe as Tommy Robinson; both want Brexit, but for differing reasons. Both of their core philosophies are about bringing about a cultural revival of British (in fact, Anglo-Saxon) heritage. To use a phrase named after one of Julius Evola's most famous works, both JRM and Tommy Robinson are implicitly promoting a revolt against the modern world. 

JRM's agenda is about destroying the remnants of Britain's industrial infrastructure (and thus turning the country into a deindustrialized - and backward-looking - state); a state with the superficial trappings of 21st century technology but ran very much like an 18th century one. In many ways, this is what the Gulf Arabs have achieved with oil and gas; Libertarians like JRM want to achieve it in Britain with ideology alone.

The "Tommy Robinson" agenda is much more Populist and modern in its methodology; in that sense, borrowing more from the anti-establishment rhetoric initially harnessed by the Fascists in Italy and Nazis in Germany; honed to the 21st century using modern technology, fears about native cultures being destroyed by globalisation on one hand and Islamism on the other. There is a very good reason why the militant far-right use phrases like "white jihad"; using the same tactics as Islamic extremists who they fear on one hand but secretly respect on the other.

Britain has thus been a culture that fascinated the rest of the world for its rigid and ancient social hierarchy. It's a pity that few inside of Britain can see it as well.

Theresa May's personality: an "anti-social" Prime Minister?

The motivations of Theresa May can be distilled down to her relationship to the Conservative Party, which has been with her from a young age. In this way, her role as leader of the country is really about her masking her inner inclinations towards the protecting the interest of her party. She is a product of her conservative background, and a dutiful servant of the Conservative Party.

These deep-set motivations explain her reasons for embracing the meaning of Brexit after the EU referendum. This allowed her to discard the "mask" she wore as part of Cameron's more centrist liberalism, and also explained her evident glee in sending George Osborne into parliamentary exile. She was able to express her reactionary, parochial instincts more freely under the cover of respecting the Brexit vote.

More tellingly, once she became Prime Minister, the more neurotic "quirks" of her personality became public knowledge.
As Home Secretary, she was known to protect her privacy fiercely, but as someone to work with, she was known to be secretive and rely on only a few loyalists (Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill in particular). One of the traits she had that became so useful to David Cameron was her reliability to master a "brief" i.e. to loyally repeat the "agreed" line. This was one of main things that accounted for her longevity at the Home Office.
Indeed, it could even be argued that the Home Office is continuing her work even after she has left it, leaving the official Home Secretary's role to often act as little more than a spokesperson for May's own strategy. In other words, Theresa May still seems in effective charge of Home Office strategy, leaving the Home Secretary to have little control over what the department's officials decide; the officials seem to be simply following the same strategy that May had when she was at the Home Office, regardless of what her successors might think. With Theresa May, Home Office strategy seems to be run almost directly by the Prime Minister.
To be fair, this isn't a new phenomenon, though: when Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister after being head of the Treasury for so long, it was well-known that his successor at 11 Downing Street had similar issues as Chancellor. But the fact the Home Office's persistence with policies that have even been criticized by the Home Secretary himself, suggests that May's psychological impact has been to turn the Home Office's staff into her personal "minions" (or "flying monkeys", if you prefer). The Home Secretary doesn't even control what goes on in his own ministry.


Interactions with the social environment

As Prime Minister, her ability to "master" a brief has since become a point of satire: turning her into the "Maybot", incapable of answering a question in any other way than the one she has learned, and equally unable to coherently answer a question that she hasn't been given advance warning about. When these things do happen, the result is as cringe-worthy as it is ridiculous.
At the other extreme, this has frequently led her to answer questions in a way that resembles crazy-making semantic nonsense. While politicians are famous for "dissemination", May's method to "not answer a question" is almost unparalleled, forming sentences and entire speeches often entirely absent of meaning. Speeches that she has given at times resemble "Vogon poetry" recitals, making them almost physically-painful to endure. You wonder if this is actually intentional; by discouraging media appearances by making them so awful to listen to, she succeeds in reducing the need to speak in public to a bare minimum.
In this way, her naturally-insular instincts allow her to rule from the bunker, unseen like an enigmatic arm-chair general. This has provided yet more satirical material, of course, but in the real world where real answers to problems are needed, her semantic nonsense has driven those that need to make actual strategic decisions to the point of madness.

That being said, while her instincts have seemed to be to reduce her public speaking engagements as much as possible, in recent months, the ever-more-chaotic turn of events (caused from her own strategic inaction) have forced her to make ever more frequent appearances in parliament: to "answer" questions to the house.
But again, she seems to have lately developed an almost masochistic pleasure in this experience: mechanically responding to questions with crazy-making semantic nonsense. Literally hours and hours of parliament's time has been eaten up in this way, as she eats up time by wasting parliamentarians'. It's hard not to get the impression that the more time she spends formulating different ways of saying nothing, she is privately enjoying the practice it allows her to hone her semantic-nonsense-making skills. To borrow the "Maybot" analogy, it's as though each three-hour-long session of speaking to parliament without saying anything allows her semantic-nonsense-making software to be upgraded yet further. Parliament can never win, because her "semantic software" is always one step ahead of them. The fact that such parliamentary sessions thus resemble a form of psychological torture is something that May seems to have little concern about.
This "semantic software" has also been shown off to Brussels, as well, as has been reported, in cabinet itself.

Apart from May's idiosyncratic "speaking skills", there are also more overtly-displayed traits of social dysfunction.
 Her lack of even basic social skills is now well-documented. She famously doesn't "do" small talk. It's as though she simply has no idea what to say to people beyond some basic phrases she may have learned through experience. This indicates a kind of personality that struggles to understand some of the basics of human interaction.
More generally too, this feeds through to her inability to make people feel comfortable in her company; in fact, it appears she has no instinct to want to make people feel comfortable. There are anecdotes of her having meetings with colleagues where almost nothing is said on her part - either in words or in meaning. It is this that also makes spending time with her socially feel like a form of torture. Her stilted mannerisms and frosty demeanor give the impression of someone who simply doesn't like social situations or human interaction at all. This seems more than just "introversion"; it seems like something bordering on pathological. It's as though, at a fundamental level, she doesn't understand people.


Cognitive understanding

When it comes to decision-making and issues of cognition, there are also indications that Theresa May's judgement and sense of perspective is lacking at some critical level.
As said before, there have been plenty of occasions where it appears she has an inability to relate to others; both in terms of social interaction, but also in terms of cognitive understanding. In other words, it's as though she lacks the ability to relate to another's perspective. Either she seems unable to see when others are bored to death by her inability to answer a question, or she can see it but doesn't care. Either one of these would indicate some kind of deeper issue of lacking empathy. More seriously, when real-life situations (such as the Grenfell Tower fire) intrude, her inability to relate to others' feelings has been painfully-clear to see.
One can speculate where this comes from; whether it is just the way she is as a person, or was something that happened as a result of personal experience (and her life has been touched by family tragedy). Regardless, it poses serious questions about how she makes decisions that affect the whole country. And the way she has handled Brexit is a clear example of that: she has been determined to stick to her own interpretation of the vote regardless of what effect it has on others.

Theresa May's (robotic) ability to learn a "brief" as Home Secretary leads on to her bloody-minded obsession with immigration; both in sticking to the target of reducing immigration numbers even after it was clearly impractical, and also in counting international students as "immigrants". Her obsession with immigration demonstrates her blinkered (and neurotic) tendencies, which are a further sign of a perspective on others that appears "anti-social" in its origin. Her inability to see things from another's point of view - a key attribute of empathy - seems missing when it comes to immigration. This is true of her stance on social issues in general, but her rigidity on immigration is the most glaring example.
It is her self-evident obsession with immigration that led to her "red lines" in the Brexit negotiations with the EU. It was "immigration" that led to her interpreting Brexit as the necessity to leave the single market and customs union, which is what led to the infamous "back-stop" (a British idea, it should be remembered). Thus many of the chaotic shenanigans over the British negotiating position have been due to May's own inability to see Brexit as anything other than a vote against immigration.

As has been seen, as reality has shown many of May's political "stratagems" to be ever more absurd, her inability to change political tack and semantic rigidity have made her look like an increasingly-surrealist figure. But on the point of being able to think how others' would see her, she is either cognitively-incapable of this, or absent of any shame.
Either one of these explanations would point to an "anti-social" aspect to her personality. The truth may be a little of both, as we have already seen that she seems to lack empathy; while her apparent shamelessness at simply disseminating, or repeating the same plan as before even after its flaws have been exposed, indicates a bloody-mindedness that is pathological. She will continue with the same approach until it succeeds, regardless of the wider effect.
In this sense, she doesn't care what others think. This attribute was inferred even when she was campaigning for the leadership: that she wasn't interested in (and actually reviled) the superficial "popularity contest" aspect of modern politics. This was demonstrated by her decision to interpret the Brexit result as being an anti-immigration vote, regardless of any wider contributing issues. Her tendency to operate in a "bunker mentality" also supports the view that she would make decisions regardless of outside voices' advice.
While this approach can have its advantages at times, the fact that it is May's "default setting" tells us that she is someone who wants to close-off the outside world, making decisions that affect millions behind closed doors, deep in her "bunker" with a small circle of trusted advisers. This is the mentality of the "anti-social" autocrat; of a ruler safely separated from the ruled.

So Britain has come to be led by someone whose tendencies are anti-social in their nature; who seems to have a problem understanding people, and whose approach to politics seems to lack empathy.

Theresa May's "personality void": her inner psychology and the effect of Brexit

There are two common comments that have been made about Theresa May's personality, by both outside observers and those that have had direct interaction with her: one is her apparent lack of an easily-identifiable personality, and the other is her social awkwardness.

To be fair, there are those - her supporters, for instance - who would dispute these two characterizations, but that's hardly surprising. This simply supports the notion that May is only comfortable around people who she knows like her, or are like her: in other words, when she is in her "comfort zone". To have a fair understanding of someone's personality you need a sense of objectivity to have a have a proper sense of perspective. The vast majority of observations by those outside her loyalist circle have highlighted either one, or both, of the above characteristics.

Dealing with the first of these issues in this article - May's apparent "lack of personality" - is easiest when we look at what we know of her interests and what motivates her.


A personality void

Her motivations seem to stem (unsurprisingly) from how she was brought up. Being raised in the traditional values of "Middle England" of the 1950s as the single child of a vicar (with her mother working as Conservative Party activist), it is not hard to see where she gets her conservative values from. In these highly-specific circumstances of time, place and parentage, it would he hard to be raised in these surroundings and not have conservative values subconsciously instilled in you.
In her interviews, one of the main words May uses to describe her morality is the sense of "service". She has talked in the past of how various people in her family and in past generations have worked in roles that have involved a service element to them, either morally or functionally. In this way, her family background is typical of the ambitions that still embody a traditional English deference to social hierarchy. Due to her family background and history, she has thus been instilled with an innate sense of modesty and self-sacrifice, as well as a sense of duty.

An added element to this which is crucial is how she got involved with the Conservative Party from a young age due to her mother's local connections. This emotional attachment to the party from a young age proves critical to understanding her motivations and well as her interests, because both become fused together in her relationship to the Conservative Party.
Her relationship to the party evolved as she spent time at Oxford University, where she met her husband (again, through their respective connections to the party). Thus it's not hard to an emotional connection to the Conservative Party become even more intertwined from her own mother's initial connections as well as her husband's. In this sense, she might emotionally connect both her parents and her husband with her own ties to the party.
Then, within a few years of her graduating both her parents died in differing circumstances, and by now she worked with the Bank Of England, joining her husband's pursuit in the financial sector. Her steady rise up the Tory ranks followed. Her psychology of "duty" and "service" therefore can be understood in the context of how, after her parents died, the Conservative Party was perhaps the one tangible thing that still kept her emotionally connected to her past. Her motivation was for the service of her party; both as a continuation of the morality of "service" that had been instilled in her from childhood, as well as out of a genuine emotional attachment she may have had for its values. It could be argued then that - in some psychological manner - her interest in the party compensated for the loss of her parents.

In this way, the accusation that Theresa May has no identifiable personality stems from the sense that her devotion to the party is there instead of any identifiable personality. To outsiders, she might seem like a personality void - an empty vessel - because her motivations and interests primarily revolve around her emotional connection to the Conservative Party. This point becomes key to understanding the way she had handled (and politically exploited) Brexit, which we'll look at a little later.

What are her interests, at a personal level? To outside eyes, Theresa May seems insufferably "boring". Her leisure pursuits seem mundane in the extreme: cooking at home and walking in the mountains seem to be the only obvious ones: the kind of things that associated with highly-traditional cultural values. It's hard to think what she and her husband talk about to pass the time, except for issues of politics and values. They appear like a cut-out "Mr and Mrs Middle England"; banal, wholesome, unimaginative and utterly two dimensional. Their personas seem designed to bore you into submission.
It is this lack of depth to both their personalities that feeds the sensation that their personas are masks; psychological "shells" that hide some deeper persona. Can they really, truly be that boring?

From what can be gleaned, the only interest that has been consistent over the years has been Theresa May's consistent interest in the Conservative Party. The "boring" aspect to Theresa May's psychology can be explained by both her stiflingly-orthodox background, and if we see her necessity to emotionally identify with the Conservative Party is because of deeper insecurities.
In this sense, May seems to live and breathe the traditional values of her party; her ideas in that sense may not be seen as her own, but those of her party that she identifies with emotionally for her own reasons. Her party acts as both a kind of emotional "comfort blanket" and as a kind of intellectual "inner voice". Her rhetoric to the party conference is thus her refracting back to the delegates what they want to hear, because what they want to hear is what she wants them to hear, and what she wants to hear herself. Her rhetoric in these "closed spaces" is thus an act of intellectual co-resonance: both her and her party's delegates in a mutual feedback loop. She is to be seen as "one of them" and "they" as part of her.

The understanding that May's core values come from her identification with the Conservative Party is what allowed her to become so popular within the party. Apart from the "Nasty Party" speech early on in her life as a parliamentarian, she has appeared as a living distillation of her party's moral values. The fact that she kept her life private and her thoughts to herself while she was a politician added to an air of mystery, allowing others to distill into her persona the positive attributes that they were looking for in a potential leader.


"The Will Of The People"

Theresa May's evident lack of personality was therefore an advantage when it came to the party leadership election after David Cameron's resignation. Having long instilled a sense that she was, as far as the party members went, "one of them", it was relatively easy to gain the backing of other members of the parliamentary party when the time came.
One of the innate problems of her "personality void" is that she has no natural charisma. Boris Johnson, the other main contender (and favorite) for the leadership, had it in spades; but what he had a surfeit of in charisma he lacked for when it came to willpower and tact. While May lacked charisma, she was able to exude an air of calm competence: she was able to offer the reassuring "comfort blanket" of a Thatcher of the 21st century, seeing in Brexit an act of moral duty to implement the "will of the people". For her, it was not about charisma, but simply one of service to the nation.

In implementing Brexit, Theresa May thus morphed her persona from being simply a servant of her party to being a servant of the country. For a time after her rise to power, her leadership of the country was portrayed as being almost above party politics. Exploiting the personal popularity she had with the electorate (under the same spell her party had been, it seems) her government was now "Theresa May's team". For a time, it didn't matter that she wasn't naturally charismatic or rarely made public appearances; this was excused by the public as she had "more important things to do", and represented a more workmanlike approach to politics that May encouraged. The politics of charisma was over; the politics of duty was back in fashion.
This was how May came to become a kind of Brexit "avatar": in her ideological and moral embrace of the meaning of Brexit, she sought to identify with the motivations and values of those who had supported it. She portrayed her role not really as a "typical" politician, but as someone whose duty was to be the servant of Brexit; through her role as Prime Minister, Brexit's meaning would be done. This explained the seemingly-meaningless semantics of "Brexit means Brexit"; to her, it wasn't meaningless, but perhaps beyond meaning. Brexit's meaning to May was self-evident, and her years of service to the same morality that Brexit represented gave May the self-belief that it gave her some special insight.
While we can only guess at her innermost thinking, it's not hard to imagine that her background made her think she was uniquely-able to meet the challenges of the task, as though Brexit were the task that she had been specially-suited for in life, and that her career had been leading to this moment in time: that a strange kind of fate was at work. At a more human level, even her husband is said to have told her that when it came to the premiership, her years of service to the party demonstrated that she "deserved it". In this sense, her role as leader of Brexit was both an ultimate act of service and the ultimate prize. This contrasting dichotomy of simultaneous great sacrifice with great reward can be seen as a morality whose heart is in the founding ethics of her upbringing.

Prior to the referendum, her support for the EU had been functional if anything; her instincts were in truth as parochial and as culturally-insular as those in Middle England that supported Brexit. Thus, it would have took little effort for her to emotionally identify with the cause, and to want to ensure that she embodied their values. For in reality, Brexit's values were also her own.
The rhetoric she used at the the first party conference as leader demonstrated this, and her determination that Brexit had to be done in a way that was loyal to the vote demonstrated her own psychological desire to continue the same morality that had been with her from a young age: for Theresa May, it wasn't about what she wanted, it was about being loyal to the people; the same morality that is repeated in her loyalty to her party. The referendum could not be ignored; it was her duty to carry out "the will of the people"; she had been chosen as the person with this responsibility; she knew what the people wanted as she was "one of them". These four tenets of belief seem to be the things that are understood like articles of faith by May. Anyone who challenged them would be seen as undermining people's faith in democracy, and by extension, May's own internal belief system. 
That belief system appears to be what is driving her on in the absence of personality.


"I feel sorry for her"

The "personality void" that has been talked about seems to now have been filled by Brexit.

Brexit has become May's raison d'etre. Although when she became leader she talked of her social program, there are few reasons to think that was serious talk; given her record as Home Secretary, more likely this future action was just humanistic "window dressing" to make her seem moderate - part of the "mask" - to hide the empty shell of her persona beneath.
Brexit has consumed May's personality like some kind of esoteric "force of nature". While it acts as a symbolic "talisman" that gives her strange powers of political fortitude and persuasion, its greater chaotic energy is ripping the social fabric of the country apart. Brexit's deeper power is only to corrupt and destroy.

What's more, while Brexit has given Theresa May a kind of political invincibility, it has warped her sense of perspective. Allowing the meaning of Brexit to consume her, all other decisions have to be taken in respect to Brexit. In this way, the government has become the political undead - kept alive by Brexit, but incapable of doing anything else. All the other problems of the country are allowed to deteriorate, leaving the impression of a country slowly falling to pieces, disintegrating socially, as the government is only interested in Brexit.
And even on Brexit itself, because its ultimate meaning is destructive in its nature, it seems to have a strange ability to promote discord among Britain's political masters. As no-one can decide what Brexit means beyond unreal abstractions, the onset of time pushes the country towards the most destructive path of all.
This is the path that could, if continuing discord allows it to happen, ultimately lead to Britain's self-destruction, socially and economically. The horrid irony here is that Theresa May, whose inner psychology is about duty, loyalty and service, will be indirectly responsible for it. It is her personality, and her neurotic loyalty to her party and to Brexit, that is to blame.

Those that see Theresa May on the television have witnessed her physical deterioration over the last two and a half years because of Brexit. It almost seems to sapping the human energy out of her as it yet protects her from her political enemies.

"I feel sorry for her" some have said.
But that sentiment is only a symptom of the wider problem: by choosing to allow the destructive energy of Brexit to guide her, she has abdicated responsibility; she has allowed Brexit to unleash both her inner demons, and the demons that lie within all those seduced by its power.

Brexit's esoteric symbolism: the power of beliefs, and the far-right's "Aryan resurgence" fantasy

It has been blatantly-apparent since the EU referendum that Brexit has opened a "Pandora's Box" of social issues in Britain, that has been exploited by opportunists on both the far left and far right. Furthermore, it has even been promoted by movements outside of Britain to promote a wider, destructive agenda: Brexit Britain has thus become a kind of exemplar, a standard-bearer for other like-minded movements to follow. We'll explore the deeper symbolism of this a little later.

One of the most striking aspects of the EU referendum and how it was won was the use of emotive arguments over factual analysis. It was a case of the heart winning over the head; the power of belief over the power of argument. That has remained the same ever since, with those still determined to leave the EU basing this solely on the force of their beliefs. While the "remain" side used facts to demonstrate the basis of their beliefs, for the "leave" side the most important thing was the power of the beliefs themselves to win others over.
In this very concrete sense, the "remain" side lost the case because they didn't know who or what they were arguing against. In the same way that an atheist can never use rational argument to convince a religious fanatic of the irrationality of their beliefs, the same was true of the EU referendum. You cannot use rational argument against an irrational belief.

The power of belief versus evidence-based analysis is historically the story of how mankind advanced its understanding of science. It is also the main thing that separates traditional, theocratic ideology and concrete materialist thinking.
Put in this deeper perspective, Brexit and the "belief system" that goes along with it follows a trend of conflating globalization, materialism and liberalism with a wider rejection of cultural identity. We could also argue that the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was the real turning-point in this trend: both the Brexit movement gained traction in the UK (particularly non-metropolitan England) in the years that followed, while Donald Trump's rapid rise was really following-on and exploiting the rise of the TEA Party movement that was instigated by the Koch brothers in the same time-frame.

Modern far-right movements across Europe, and more widely "Populist" movements in various high-profile countries today, all share the same skepticism of "global" values. It seems to more a collective rejection of the values that led to the GFC, which they have conflated with the materialist and heterogeneous values of social liberalism.
The problem is that we've been here before, following a earlier financial crisis: the Great Depression. Unlike in the 1930s, we don't have strongmen with private armies; with technological advances, we instead have online armies of "trolls" to intimidate virtually (with their anonymity arguably making them just as effective a force of dissuasion). Their ability to guide the direction of discourse and subvert the democratic process is similar to the tactics used by authoritarians in the 1930s; the only difference is how technology has changed their capabilities. While there are gangs of thugs to intimidate people as well (while claiming the right to free speech that their despised liberals so value), much of their real influence and "nudging" is done online, by exploiting the weak controls of social media.

In this way, the rise of Populism and the far-right since the GFC mirrors much the same trajectory of the 1930s, albeit over longer time-frame. If the banks hadn't been bailed out in 2008, the GFC would almost certainly have been a "Second Great Depression", rather than the drawn-out downturn and stagnant economies that have transpired in reality. A "Second Great Depression" would doubtlessly have led to a sudden surge in extremist politics in a very short time; what we have had instead is a "slow-burn" effect of far-right values slowly seeping in to mainstream discourse as people get more and more wearied of the seemingly-endless slog towards an ever-receding sun-lit horizon.


Brexit as an "Aryan Resurgence" fantasy

Relying on the power of beliefs, culture and spirituality is the classic reaction against materialist liberalism. In the eyes of Fascist theorist Julius Evola, this was part of a historical trend where scientific rationalism and materialism had led to a collapse in the moral values of hierarchy and a deeper spiritualism. He saw Fascism as a justifiable reaction against society's moral decay.
We can see many of today's authoritarian leaders using the same kind of rhetoric to justify their actions. In the Anglo-sphere, both Brexit and Trump supporters talk about the morality of their cause, seeing in their movements a deeper meaning: where the potential for chaos is seen as justifiable, and the threat of violence is never far from the surface. To borrow a phrase, Brexit and Trump are both a "Triumph Of The Will", to be enforced through mob rule if necessary.

In the eyes of Evola, Fascist ideology is in a battle for the restoration of ancient civilization i.e. the morality of the warrior. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were, in his eyes, attempts to restore the "natural" racial hierarchy that he believed existed before the rise of Christianity in Europe. Pagan "Warrior races" like the Germans and the Romans had proved their superiority in battle in the ancient battles they had fought to dominate Europe. Bringing this rationale to the 20th century, Evola then used this to justify Germany and Italy's carving up of Europe, with the ultimate expunging of liberal thought and the subjugation of inferior races. When the Nazis applied this to its "logical" conclusion, it was about the elimination of the Jews entirely.
As a matter of record, Hitler wanted an "understanding" with Britain, as he saw Anglo-Saxon culture as a fellow Aryan tribe. Hitler's fantasy was the German domination of the European continent from the Atlantic to the Urals, while leaving the British Empire intact. As we know, Churchill was having none of it, Nazi Germany over-reached with its invasion of the Soviet Union and was defeated.

The following post-war period was one of radical strategic realignment. To Fascist die-hards that lived through the post-war period, the advance of Communist influence across half of Europe, with Germany itself divided, materialist America triumphant and the slow disintegration of the British Empire, meant they had only their fantasies to believe in. The emergence of the EU as a political institution, with its zenith reached with the accession of former Communist Eastern Europe countries might have been seen as the real nadir for the fortunes of the far-right. But things were soon to change.

The GFC was the turning-point for the far-right, as they saw in the economic chaos an opportunity that had eluded them.
The cultural symbolism of English identity was based to an extent on "otherness". Being apart from the continent through their island geography, they felt emotionally detached from European culture, even when they were engaged in it politically. This sentiment was picked up on by Europe itself (most famously by Charles De Gaulle, when he rejected Britain's initial attempts to join the EEC). This meant that when Britain did join the EEC, they spent most of the time complaining about it, even when they had got the best "deal" of all.
In this sense, the more esoteric argument is that the instinctive scepticism that English culture had towards European integration and culture was an inadvertent echo of the same hostility found in historical Fascist circles. By this reasoning, England's "true" cultural identity is not materialist or liberal in the European sense, but more naturally traditional and authoritarian. Following this narrative, England's desire for Brexit was the subconscious desire to "carry the torch" of far-right ideology, first by breaking away from the materialist EU culture and then to encourage other like-minded nations in Europe to do the same. The "Aryan resurgence" fantasy is thus realized by England recognizing its destiny as the liberator of a materialist, liberal Europe, with a grateful Germany finally free from the guilt of the Second World War, and Brexit Britain as the instigator and leader of this supra-national neo-Fascist movement. In this nightmarish fantasy, it is England, using the "dark power" of Brexit, that brings about the collapse of the EU and the eventual "restoration" of Fascist rule across Europe. This would be achieved not through the military might of old, but through economic warfare and social destabilization: using the modern weapons of the 21st century to turn back the clock. The signs are already there this is the path the far-right would like to take.

The primal symbolism of the St George's cross mirrors the ancient heraldry of the black cross of the Teutonic knights that colonized Eastern Europe. "Brexit" is exploited by the Fascist far-right as an opportunity to reconnect people with their "roots", and to identify materialist "Europe" (i.e. the EU) as the enemy of their culture.   
But this strategy has already been used to great effect in Russia. It is no wonder that the Kremlin should be a supporter of Brexit: they would see it as another example of exporting "hybrid warfare" even more effectively (and surreptitiously) than has already been used in Ukraine.