Diksha Sundriyal
The sixth season of Netflix’s ‘Black Mirror’ offers a set of new stories which explore the nature of reality and the meaning of humanity while reflecting on the contemporary issues plaguing society. Its final episode, ‘Demon 79,’ takes a break from sci-fi and presents a horror story where a woman named Nida is visited by a demon who tells her of the impending apocalypse. If she doesn’t kill three people in three days, Armageddon will be on their door, and the world will end.
This is quite a turn of events for Nida, who lives a quiet life in a politically charged late 1970s England. In one scene, she has “NF” graffitied on her door by the supporters of a fascist party. Considering how political beliefs become an important factor in the show, you might wonder if the political party featured in it is real. Let’s find out. SPOILERS AHEAD
National Front is an Actual Political Party
Yes, National Front is a real far-right political party in the United Kingdom. The events of ‘Demon 79’ take place in 1979, when everyone is talking about National Front for the upcoming elections. Nida’s colleague at the shoe store is considering voting for National Front. We also find National Front on Nida’s television protesting about something. All of this is a representation of the real political climate in the country at the time.
The National Front was founded in 1967 and peaked in terms of political support in the 1970s. Back then, it became England’s fourth-largest party. However, as predicted by Daniel Smart in ‘Demon 79’, it didn’t win any significant elections and saw a sharp decline in its voter base over the years. The party’s ideology is rooted in fascism, and it was formed by the merger of three far-right groups— the League of Empire Loyalists, the British National Party, and the Racial Preservation Society. Later, it became a part of the neo-Nazi movement in the country and pushed for the agenda based on its racist ideologies.
In ‘Demon 79,’ we see National Front and Daniel Smart using immigration as the agenda to lure voters towards them. This is what National Front did, leaning on the anti-immigration sentiment bubbling in the country. It led to demonstrations that faced resistance from anti-fascist protestors, and things turned violent at times. Reportedly, hundreds of police officers and protestors suffered injuries during such marches.
Over time, as National Front lost its voter base, winning only a fraction of voters, it broke up and led to the formation of other parties with similar values. In its present form, National Front continues to hold itself as the “Racial Nationalist Party.” Its agenda is focused on the “halt to all non-white immigration to Britain and the forced repatriation of all people of non-European descent.”
It stood for “white family values” and promoted the slogan, “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” It was for the re-criminalization of homosexuality and fostered an anti-abortion stance, claiming that allowing abortions was a part of the conspiracy to reduce the white British population. It was also for the withdrawal of Britain from the European Union and NATO.
In ‘Demon 79’, we get a peek into the wave of hatred that the National Front was riding and tried to use to get themselves in positions of power to make the policies aligned with their ideals. The racist sentiment is everywhere around Nida, be it her workplace, where she faces it in the form of small things like when she is told to eat her food in the basement or right outside her house when someone vandalizes her door with NF graffiti on it. On the surface, ‘Demon 79’ appears to be an episode about a woman haunted by a demon. However, over time, we realize that the real bad guys in this story are not demons but humans.
