Fighting The "Right Wing" Slur

This is a follow up to my earlier post about the misuse of the term "Right Wing".

"You can't get out of school without learning that the term "Right Wing" is a synonym for a close minded, hateful Fascist. Politics, education and media have been so long dominated by the left, creating a situation in which alternate views could be distorted, since people rarely saw them in the flesh. The recent European elections provide a chance to see that views often grouped together as "far right", have little in common."

Even though the European elections brought strong gains for the Tory party and other conventional groups supporting ideas like greater individual freedom and lower taxes, the coverage of the win has focused on one very dark and grim shadow in the form of gains by a truely racist party with links to Nazism as well as a few similar groups across Europe.

I can't fully agree with Daniel Hannan on this one. Even relatively small gains by a party as nasty as the BNP are no joke anywhere, let alone in a place with the history Europe has.(video made before election)



Still, I don't think the article, after article, after article of coverage, particularly in the traditionaly Socialist and pro Labour press is exactly innocent.

"Why do the pundits do it? Partly, to show what nice people they are ("I hate those evil fascists even more than he does!") Partly because some commentators wish that they had had the chance to be part of a struggle against Nazism and, not finding much by way of a genuine fascist menace, build up the paltry BNP as the next best thing. Partly, too, because the BNP is a handy card for quangocrats and their supporters to play against localism ("you couldn't possibly have elected police chiefs; what if the BNP won?")

Above all, though, the BNP is used as an indirect weapon against the mainstream Right. You will have noticed that the party is almost never mentioned without the soubriquet "far Right". The BNP doesn't call itself Right-wing, of course. It favours nationalisation, higher taxes, protectionism and (though it keeps quiet about this) republicanism. It markets itself as "the Labour Party your parents voted for". Its manifesto calls for "the selective exclusion of foreign-made goods from British markets and the reduction of foreign imports," and promises to "restore our economy and land to British ownership" and "to give workers a stake in the success and prosperity of the enterprises whose profits their labour creates by encouraging worker shareholder and co-operative schemes".

For years now, long before the BNP had gained almost any traction, Labour leaders and their allies have been giving them press. Tony Brown urged people to the polls to vote against the BNP as have all kinds of musicians, actors and pop star celebrities. As well as well funded website-- called "Hope Not Hate".

Each story is a chance to use the terms "Hate", "Right Wing", "Extreme Right Wing" Racist and Fascist again, hoping people link "Right Wing" and bad. Of course a real examination of the BNP's stated platform might show how similar it is to that of the left so no real discussion is allowed. They are racist, hatefull, Fascist and "Right Wing" so they should be banned and not talked about except by us in thousands of short blurbs saying just how right wing and bad they are-- is the spin.

I'll use the a metaphore to try to explain how we got here.

In the Socialist's ideal world we all sit around a huge collective pot into which everyone has thrown their earnings, sweat and labor. From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.

This blissfull state is usually painted as the end of all troubles since everyone has overcome their "selfishness and greed" to join hands in this hopeful new world. We joyfully wait our turn and watch the poorest exploited folks around the world get served first and then our own poor and then- well it's a long wait.

The big trouble in housing estates in places like Leeds and Manchester is that this waiting around the bowl thing is nothing new. These are the places Labour has controlled for close to a century. They know the game too well. From the lines for places in crime infested public housing to lines for the poor quality national health system, they have seen it all, and know very well the watery drool left in the bowl when they get to it. Now that Europe's already collectivist states have joined together into a grand union run by an even more opaque and elitist bureaucracy, their chances of getting anything seem even slimmer.

If a lot of the traditional left's support comes from people still drunk on Kool Aid and U2 songs, then the BNP's supporters come from people who aren't drunk anymore. Most of them are not well educated, but they know from common sense and personal experience that their countries can't afford to support everyone in the world through foreign aid or allow all of the world's poorest refugees in--and support them on the dole.

They haven't given up as collectivists since that's what they know and were taught was right, but they are now working to protect the people they know; their family; their tribe; their race. Screaming, chanting groups always get the good stuff out of the bowl. Then in walk the true Fascist's who tell them that real men just join a gang and grab the bowl and that history is an endless war between national and racial gangs. This is what is happening.

The only real antidote to this insanity is a system of objective laws to protect the individual's, not the group's rights to their own life, liberty and property. The smear campaign to imply a connection between the growing worldwide movement towards liberty and Fascist groups like the BNP cannot be allowed to stand.