I wrote recently about Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger, a book inspired – if that’s the right word – by the mirror-world of far-right grifters, snake-oil salesmen and demagogues, and their radicalised followers of conspiracy theorists, angry and lonely boomers, and young incel men who think women should return to lives of indentured servitude.

I wonder, sometimes, how these people see we, the left – like, really see us. Beyond the mockery, the loathing, and the fear that we might be right. Maybe race science, “biological women”, and climate change denial are all bollocks? Perhaps a lifetime online screaming about globalist plots to put microchips in vaccines isn’t, in fact, the best use of one’s time?

A few brave fascists – and it really is only ever a few – venture out from the digital unreality to engage in counter-protest. Many a time have I seen a tiny enclave of Tommy Robinson, Netanyahu, and Steve Bannon fans, huddled with their flags, surrounded by high-vis coppers protecting them from the many thousands of people pointing, shouting, and laughing at them.

Walking across Waterloo Bridge towards Russell Square for Saturday’s peace march, my friend Sara and I came across seven or eight of these anti-protest protesters, with their Israeli and British flags and puce-white, middle aged faces. 

What did they make of the tens of thousands of people, of all ages, classes, ethnicities and creeds, marching past them to demand an end to war, colonialism, and genocide? Did they think each and every one of us had been affected by the woke mind virus?

Did they think we were all crisis actors in the pay of George Soros? How does it feel to be so scared and angry that you feel you have to come out and protest in favour of what your government, your government’s allies, and all its acolytes in media and big business are already doing – profiting off the killing as many non-white children as they can?

I always wonder how they feel afterwards, when they pack up their nationalist flags and head back home to their online worlds. Is there a moment of self-awareness or a smidgen of self-doubt before they return to the reassuring cocoon of avatars of similarly lonely people they’ll never meet telling them that they’re right?

If there’s one lesson of Klein’s book, it’s that solidarity, collectivism, and empathy are the only ways forward if we’re to avoid cataclysm. But looking at those pale, old, and frightened faces… as kids looking a lot like the ones they are demanding we continue murdering march past with their Palestinian flags and home-made signs, I can’t help but thinking that some people are too far gone for peace, kindness, and love.