Stop the rise of Christofascism on our streets!

A Statement by South Asia Solidarity Group, 30 January 2026

We are deeply disturbed by the rise of fascists on our streets across the UK in recent months. This has included a repeated pattern of racially motivated sexual violence against Asian women in the West Midlands this past autumn. These attacks in Oldbury, Walsall and Wolverhampton have left many Asian women feeling deeply unsafe.

One of the latest fascist forces to rear its head has been the rebranded, Christonationalist UK Independence Party (UKIP), which held marches across many cities last November. UKIP recently announced plans to march on Whitechapel in East London – which they first threatened in October last year – in a ‘Walk With Jesus’ on Saturday 31 January. Local community organisations including Nijjor Manush planned a counter-mobilisation against this. Whilst the protest was ultimately banned by police, UKIP are now planning a march in central London ending up at Trafalgar Square.

UKIP’s politics is characterised by the stoking of religious supremacy and hatred and particularly anti-Muslim rhetoric. Most recently in January 2026, UKIP changed their logo to an Iron Cross, a symbol notoriously associated with the Nazis – not even attempting to hide their overt fascism behind more subtle branding.

The rise of Christofascism in the past six months has been national – the display of flags with Christian nationalist slogans, such as ‘Christ is King’ and ‘Jesus is King’, featured in over 40% of attacks on UK mosques between July and October 2025, according to the British Muslim Trust.

As well as the rise of UKIP being deeply concerning in its own right, we in SASG also recognise clear parallels and connections between this rise of religious fascism in the UK and other global examples of religious fascism, particularly India’s Hindu right-led government. This government continues to oversee the intense persecution of religious minorities including both Muslims and Christians.

Whilst UKIP does not explicitly support the Hindu right, the party is openly Islamophobic, and has thereby fuelled Hindutva narratives alongside their racism. For example, UKIP published a statement on the Leicester violence between Hindus and Muslims in September 2022, under the deeply racist title ‘Leicester tribal clashes’. This statement framed the violence as merely consisting of Muslims attacking Hindus, when in fact, it began with hooded Hindu mobs marching through predominantly Muslim areas of the city, shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and attacking Muslims. The role of Hindutva organisations in spreading misinformation and Islamophobia – both in the lead-up to and the aftermath of the violence – demonstrated the disturbing reach of these groups in the UK. Inevitably, UKIP, like any far-right organisation, jumped on the bandwagon of Islamophobia and ultimately used the violence to further its xenophobic and anti-immigration narrative.

Current UKIP leader Nick Tenconi is also the COO of Turning Point UK, an offshoot of Charlie Kirk’s US pressure group, which pushes Christofascism in schools and colleges under the guise of fighting ‘wokeness’. Tenconi has brought Christian identity politics and nationalism to the forefront of UKIP’s campaigning, has a ‘three step’ plan for immigration, and has made deeply misogynistic, racist, Islamophobic, homophobic and transphobic remarks over the years.

While seeking to appeal to the white working class on a racist platform, UKIP, like other fascist parties globally, is in fact funded by big business, and promotes the interests of corporate capital by attacking workers’ rights and welfare.

Like Modi’s BJP, which has spearheaded deportations of Muslims from India to Bangladesh over the past several months, UKIP describes itself as the ‘party of mass deportations’. Over Christmas, MP Zarah Sultana’s ‘Jingle Halal’ Instagram post – a trend involving Muslims sharing their seasonal celebrations – was predictably and unimaginatively retweeted by Turning Point UK with the line ‘all I want for Christmas is mass deportations’.

The Christmas season has, in fact, repeatedly been marked by UKIP along anti immigration lines, with one blog post from 2023 romanticising the ‘much-maligned’ British Empire and emphasising its ‘missionary zeal’ and another from the same year, entitled ‘All I want for Christmas is a bed to sleep in’, pitting ‘illegal immigrants’ against ‘homeless veterans’. Such emphasis on real issues like homelessness caused by the state, only to weaponise these issues against migrants, has long been a typical and deeply harmful tactic of the far-right in the UK and elsewhere.

In recent years, we have seen a sharp rise in religious supremacy in numerous contexts globally including India and the US, as well as of course the genocide carried out by the Israeli state which is built on religious supremacy. The rise of Christofascism in the UK should set off alarm bells for anyone familiar with these examples – we know all too well by now the extent to which religion can be weaponised for fascist agendas.

Far-right figures have often peddled divisive and Islamophobic narratives around Asian communities in the UK, pitting Muslims against Hindus and Sikhs. For example, Tommy Robinson offered to mobilise “hundreds of men” to protect Hindu communities in the wake of the Leicester violence and praised the efforts of the Sikh community to tackle grooming gangs. However, it is clear that the current brand of UK fascism doesn’t discriminate. Islamophobia is of course still a massive aspect – but so is plain old racism, including against Asians from all backgrounds.

We stand firmly in solidarity with all those that have faced racist and misogynistic violence amidst the current rise of the far right and will continue to resist religious fascism in the UK, India and beyond.

Say no to Christofascism!

Photo: UKIP supporters brandish crosses and flags at a march in Knightsbridge last October. After UKIP were banned from marching in East London on 31 January due to the strength of community resistance and planned massive counter demonstrations, only a handful turned out for their relocated Central London march.