The right-wing is on the march across the globe and that's terrifying

This summer, I made a pilgrimage to Madrid to see the Goya collection at the Prado Museum. There’s no artist from the past who speaks more to the present. Extremism, the atrocities of war, humanity’s boundless capacity for sadism, our thirst for self-destruction, our wallowing in rank stupidity. It’s all there in the work of Francisco Goya.

Goya - like us - lived in an age when sense surrendered to madness. Born during the Enlightenment, in old age he witnessed Europe reduced to rubble as Napoleon and his rivals played chess with the lives of millions. One of Goya’s greatest works is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: an engraving of a man asleep at his desk as horrible creatures swarm around - demonic bats, owls and cats. The metaphor is simple: when we turn off rationality - when we reject thought - horror follows.

The Sleep of Reason was created just before the Napoleonic Wars, but if Goya were alive today, he’d be working on the same piece once again, I reckon.

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There’s a madness in the air today; a deliberate irrationality, a wilful rejection of decency. It flows from our leaders - if that word can even be used to describe the class of people at the top of politics anymore - and it has trickled its poison all the way down into our lives. A sickness is at large: barely contained and feverish spite. Words are being said which I never thought I’d hear from public figures in my lifetime. While there’s extremism on all sides of the political divide, it’s most pronounced on the right. Over recent weeks, right-wing toxicity has increased here in Britain.

Katie Lam, for instance, a former investment banker and now a Tory MP, said legal migrants to Britain need to “go home” in order for this country to be “culturally coherent”. It’s clear what she’s saying. Little wonder that the US news group Bloomberg featured her prominently in a think-piece entitled ‘Britain’s immigration debate is getting much darker’.

The column rightly noted that the “policy of mass deporting legal immigrants was once solely the preserve of fringe racist groups such as the National Front”.

A draft bill by shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp could revoke the legally settled status of around 400,000 people, regardless of whether they have a British spouse or British children. It’s estimated this would see more people expelled from Britain than Idi Amin expelled from Uganda during his dictatorship.

The days of dog-whistling are over. Now the right shouts what it once whispered.

Reform MP Sarah Pochin casually says: “It drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.” The Tory Party’s leader-in-waiting, Robert Jenrick, says with equal blitheness that when he went to Handsworth in Birmingham he “didn’t see another white face”.

One of Goya’s greatest works is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Image: Goya)

These are the kinds of words you once only heard from drunk racists in pubs, the sort of ignorant vomit that would make you collar the lout, or pick up your pint and move to the other side of the bar. Not anymore. The vomit is now unashamedly on public display. Lee Anderson, another Reform MP, wants to make disabled people “go back” to driving what he calls the “blue three-wheeler”. The so-called Invacar - meaning ‘invalid carriage’ - was a single-seater introduced in the 1960s. It was later banned following a spate of incidents which saw the cars burst into flames spontaneously.

Clearly, forcing disabled people to drive Invacars singles them out. Some folk have compared it to being made to wear a badge. Many disabled people feel fearful in the current climate. Grooming gang survivors are currently outraged at Nigel Farage. He said the inquiry had been widened “from those who were victims of Pakistani grooming gangs and brought in other women”.

Danny Kruger MP, Reform’s main strategist, appeared to equate support for LGBT-rights with backing Hamas. Kruger also wants to bring police under political control.

The Tories suspended - some would say cancelled - a member for saying Israel committed genocide.

Evidently, what we see in Britain is a mere shadow of the American experience, where bigotry is boss and speaking out is now dangerous.

There are very real consequences. Racist incidents against nurses have surged 55% in three years. We’re starting to hear of racially aggravated rapes.

There was a time when David Cameron proudly denounced racism in British society; when Theresa May criticised lack of diversity in the police. Indeed, May once called herself “woke and proud”.

There were serious problems with the so-called ‘woke’ agenda. But let’s get one matter straight: ‘woke’ was about improving the lives of folk at the bottom of the heap. It may have ended with purity tests and cancellations, but its intention was to take the side of the victim not the oppressor.

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The opposite of ‘woke’ is the right’s ‘sleep of reason’. Rather than trying to rein in the worst, most foolish excesses of the left, the right has gone much further in its own madness. It has declared war - not just on decency and respect - but on the very notion of equality.

‘Down with DEI’, is the cry. What kind of mind must you possess to oppose diversity, equality, and inclusion? Are these not good and noble objectives?

This is not the right I once knew. These are the policies of something far, far beyond the right, beyond Conservatism. This is the politics of hate, fear and persecution. And while the hate is concocted and amplified by a limping and loaded London media, real policy is abandoned. Why come up with ideas to tackle poverty, make energy and groceries cheaper, ensure Britain is safer, when you can peddle cruelty and bigotry?

We’re only in the foothills of this madness. The traditional parties of the left, right and centre are poleaxed. They don’t know how to respond to this new 21st century world. The vacuum has been filled by the hard-right, extreme-right, far-right, whatever you may call it. They too have no idea how to respond to the challenges we face, but what they do have is words. And their words are lulling many to sleep, and in that slumber, as Goya warned, they lose all reason.

Neil Mackay is the Herald’s Writer-at-Large. He’s a multi-award winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, extremism, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics