"The Filthy Lens of Political Extremism"

"In Trilling’s portrait of the last decade, the BNP was a predictable phenomenon, one that naturally accompanies cynical Blairite politics and a growing gap between rich and poor. But the 2000s look like a golden age compared to the perpetual desolation of the Cameron era. Miliband’s reviving Labour Party and the less ideologically blinkered press have to make the case for government and against the mindless dogma of austerity—austerity that doesn’t just destroy communities and ruin lives in the long run, but that hasn't even succeeded on its own short-run fiscal terms to lower deficits or stimulate private sector demand. Otherwise we may see not only the continuation of this British nightmare, but an even darker time in which the only alternative for most Britons is Griffin and his ilk."

Jason Farago in The New Republic reviews Daniel Trilling's Bloody Nasty People: The Rise of Britain’s Far Right.