Back in the 1920s, racialist and militaristic imagery worked for fascism because that’s what sold back then. Breakfast cereals were advertised on the basis that they would give you “the might to conquer all seven continents.” (Ricicles ad, 1923) Make-up ads informed young women that x brand of blusher would highlight “the superior facial features of the Caucasian, or white, race.” (Maybelline campaign, 1927) The Napoleon brand of toothpaste was sold on the premise that it would make your teeth “as strong a history’s greatest general and statesman.” The polite middle classes lapped this stuff up and these sorts of values were the ones they also looked for in their totalitarian political movements.

But nowadays, thanks in part to the fall-out of WWII, this sort of stuff would never fly with the bland, passive-aggressive majority. Nowadays violence and destruction are deplored. Some people might infer from this that this would mean fascism could never again get a grip on our culture, because fascism is inherently about violence or whatever. But that’s not what fascism is about, surely: fascism is about the absolute assertion of middle-class values. Therefore, we can look to whatever is currently used to sell consumer products to tell us what sort of imagery a contemporary fascist movement (or at least, a *clever* contemporary fascist movements, no easily-marginalised EDL thugs) would utilise. And this is, of course, we must think: twee imagery.

There was a time when car adverts would tell you how powerful the car was, how big and cool of a man you’d look driving it, how hot babes would swarm to you as soon as you got behind the wheel, and give you a blowjob while you sped across the motorway at many hundreds of miles per hour over the speed limit (this bit was usually tacit). But now cars are advertised as “a lovely way to drive all my friends to our favourite places,” or as a weird sort of of toy vehicle in a perfectly-choreographed toytown, or with talking babies cleaning it. Mobile phones have joined the tweepocalypse also: “I like to text all my friends,” declares some bint in a baby voice over mangled acoustic guitar chords in one Orange ad. Twee imagery has also infected the worlds of online dating, bread, breakfast cereals, fruit juices, and jam, amongst others (in fact, every advert that isn’t just a lengthy stream of pseudo-scientific gibberish, or for Lynx).

So if we were going to have a fascist dictatorship in this country, or leading fascist party, what would it look like? I propose that it would base itself around twee, homely comforts and associate these things with ‘Britishness’, thereby excluding anyone who lives a life outside the comfortable mainstream. This would be a political movement of tea-drinking, of knitting, of ‘meeting up with friends’, of cycling, of sorting out one’s recycling properly, of organic food, free-range eggs and local produce (in a sort of “return to the earth way”), of doing a bit of cleaning and then retiring with a gin and tonic or a glass of wine, of real ale (*never* ‘common’ or ‘foreign’ lager), of Cath Kidston bags, of throws on the couches, of soup in thermos flasks, of making your own chutney, of Rugby Union, of Test Cricket, of chuckling at the antics of the family cat, of taking pictures of your food and putting it on facebook. It would be a political movement that professed to deplore violence, without realising how all its own imagery is just sublimated violence.

Above Westminster a knitted flag depicting an amused cat would fly, dipped in the blood of impolite youths. The women of provincial towns would form ‘knitting circles’ that had the real purpose of reporting on and denouncing the thought-crimes of those who, say, were wearing sports clothing, or enjoying football. At Party rallies, crowds of delighted white faces would wave coloured brooms in the air…

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See also: #OperationCupOfTea