The vast majority of migrants have been from the EU so would not count in any immigration figures as they have been granted the right to work here. If you look at many supermarkets the international food sections have expanded considerably. My local ASDA has a huge Polish section and there are probably others. Most of what the government is doing is racist and pandering to a small segment of the electorate. Every illegal immigrant knows that they could be deported. In fact legal tourists know could be deported if they overstep the local laws. This is pandering to the far right of the Tory Party and those that might be tempted to vote UKIP or BNP.

I can know how much water there is in my bath without monitoring either the taps or the plugs, by looking at the water. We can get a fairly decent idea of what's going on with our society by looking at it, without the need to obsessively monitor its borders.

None of your statistics will be good enough for those whose views don't permit them to accept real numbers anyway. The Daily Mail brigade will assume every third lorry has 80 concealed Somalians who are for some reason desperate to come here and not work, because that is what they believe. The EDL will assume the same thing, except that they are also here to chop people up.

What really defines our level of fascism is our sympathy for certain ideas. If we became willing to accept that the state has a right to choose its citizens (by skin colour, language, name, religion or any other category). If we see outsiders as determined to obtain what is ours, and to take it from us by trickery and violence. And if we see that ultimate conflict as the inevitable result, which in turn legitimises a now necessarily violent - not just repressive - state. Then we have the basics of a fascist consensus.

OK

I'd say that one's ticked, and has been in Britain for a century at least. We've always been incredibly racist and mistrusting of those foreign types. I like to think it's less true today than it was in the past, but sadly the "enlightenment" is very far from complete.

Violence as in pre-emptive invasion of a country in direct contention of article 2 of the UN Charter? As in air strikes against civilian populations which may or may not be harbouring someone who may or may not be thinking about arranging a meeting to talk about plotting some terrible act against our nation? As in shooting dead a "slightly Arab looking" guy at Stockwell Tube station?
It seems to me there is a lot of effort being put into convincing the population that conflict is inevitable unless various violent and repressive actions are taken.

You don't say if you believe these conditions are met?

I think the definition of "fascist" is actually rather difficult to pin down. It's generally used as an insult for purely emotive reasons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism

I'm not going to attempt to define fascism, but I do think it's correct for people to make a noise when they see our country becoming more repressive. I think we're actually one of the freest nations in the world, and it would be good to keep it that way.

Err.. no. Violence by the state against it's own citizens. Which the UN will complain about, but has proved itself totally unable to prevent or stop once it's happening many, many times over.

If we're going to all agree that the whole conversation is meaningless then that's fine with me. Any given idiot can call any other idiot a fascist, and it's equally valid when idiot B throws the epithet back at idiot A, if fascism is just a general insult devoid of any meaning. Perhaps the thread can be closed by a fascist moderator.

Otherwise, I don't think we should settle for the dreary tripe in that blog. That guy just labels anyone who isn't on his side as fascist, or else a neo-liberal - which he regards as a form of fascism. I think perhaps we can do better.

Fascist ideologies, as opposed to basic conservatives, have something important in common (something shared with with Marxism, Maoism, Millenarian cults, the fiery end of political Islam, among others)... They are teleological in aspect. This means they have a view of history that shapes their outlook, they see the past as a series of unavoidable events (mostly conflicts) with a direction of travel that makes a future specific even (usually another conflict, typically a decisive one) inevitable.

The conflict depends on the factor that directs the history. For Marx it was between classes, for Hitler it was races, for some it is civilisations, more modern ones see nations (usually ethnically and linguistically homogeneous). The battle is for either total domination or outright survival / elimination. Furthermore, they don't have a view of people as choosing sides, people are born to their side of any given conflict and either serve or are traitors.

Fascism is about destiny and control. It is opposed to Marxism and all the other teleological ideals as rivals, but only to liberalism as an opposite.

In so far as we might be said to be drifting towards any such thing, it wouldn't be so much in the slightly nasty tone of our migration politics. It would be the trend for being too proud of our flags; too interested in whether we are Scottish, English or British; too obsessed with protecting Christmas from malign brown skinned influences. Fascism doesn't begin with meanness to outsiders, it is about over-identification with those groups of which we are on the inside.