We have all been round the block on this so many times on so many threads PT.
Lots of that 'large swathe' don't like migration and have a negative fixed image of islam that you or I are unlikely to change. In our communties and work places, we might, with luck, shift a couple of them an iota. Rather like the cuts issue, the background is complex and opaque. Complex and opaque just doesnt work for some people, regardless of their intelligence or class.
Growth of the far right is down to the crisis in working class political representation. And yeah we have done this again and again. People's fears over immigration are largely born of the pressure on jobs, homes and services, and the reality that their own economic positions are being forced down, with some drawing the conclusion this is because of immigration, rather than both being symptoms of the race to the bottom. A conclusion arrived a partly because much of the left and the af's fail to place growing racism within the context of the race to the bottom, and present immigration as a wholly good thing without reference to, for example, the role the bosses have played in using migrant labour (and contract labour, temp labour, outsourcing, etc) to attack pay and conditions.
I would never call someone a 'thick chav' or use a term of offence related to class. But if someone is a thick racist I don't see the point of going all wooly liberal and self censorious about saying so. What amuses me is that so many of the 'English Defence League' have utterly dire use of the language. They wibble about 'our culture' - one of the best things about England is the language, and they butcher it hourly with shit spelling, syntax, grammar and general incoherence. They are a rabble and a disgrace. Period.
Nobody is saying that. If someone says 'pakis should die' then they are a cunt and should be called a cunt. But what we see instead is a whole swathe of people being lumped in together and with their concerns dismissed instead of engaged with, and this polarises the situation further, leading people who have arrived at the conclusion that the lack of jobs or the long waiting list at the NHS dentist is down to too much immigration to the hard or far right as 'the only people who are listening to us'.
Look at how shit far right results have been in the handful of wards and areas in the UK where the pro-working class far left is strong - it isn't because the far left is taking on the attitudes or policies of the far right; it is because there is a political force in these communities engaging with those that establishment politics have left behind. And this is on a local level, with an inevitably rapidly changing population, with people moving in and out, meaning it is difficult for smaller parties to maintain a strong local profile - at a national level, the presence of a mass pro-working class alternative would strangle the electoral and social weight of the far right and force a shift in the mainstream political consensus, putting working class issues back on the agenda. We have seen this to a degree with the anti-cuts debate - and the strength of opposition to the cuts, with signs of a developing mass movement - but without an organised political body its impact is limited.
It's not about treating bigotry with kid gloves and it certainly isn't a or the liberal position - the liberal position is precisely the sneering anti-working class establishment anti-fascism position. What it is about is taking a pro-working class and, at the risk of sounding like a twat, dialectical approach, and recognising that there are social causes for the growth of the far right, that it doesn't take place in the abstract.
On a practical and personal level, this means a different approach for different people. Some outright neo-nazi knob or diehard racist, fuck them, mock away, but a middle-aged woman who tells you she voted BNP because 'there was nobody else' or some young lad who expresses some degree of support for the EDL because 'at least they are doing something' are the direct product of the lack of a working class political voice. And lumping them all in together as one thick stupid underclass hateful mob isn't going to do much to engage with them - it is going to isolate them further and, as the crisis in representation continues, further entrench views and push them towards the far right.
Morality is a bourgeois concept and all that. It's about what will and will not achieve the desired result.
And you are right, this has been done to death.
