Pictured above are three of the most evil men of the 20th Century - Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. All three were responsible for the deaths of millions of fellow human beings. Two were followers of Marxism, one was not, but did this really make any difference to those that suffered under their cruel régimes? Was the Gestapo really worse than the KGB?
The logical answer is no, but in recent years, a modern myth has grown up that somehow the "far right" is in some strange way worse than the "far left". We currently see this in reports about Greece's "far right" Golden Dawn party. Now these people do not seem to be a particularly pleasant bunch, by any stretch of the imagination, but are they any worse than the "far left" anarchists, who are also growing in numbers in the country? New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/02/selective-zero-tolerance-greece-really-democracy-anymore seems to think so, but while I don't condone the violence of the police, I don't have much sympathy for the would-be-bank-robber young anarchists either. Let's face it, the anarchist movement has accounted for one US President, one Italian King and one Russian Czar. Its adherents are equally as capable of violent behaviour as the "far right".
While on the subject of Greece, I didn't know untl recently that the leader of the opposition SYRIZA party, Alexis Tsipras, is a Marxist. Had he won the election last year, he would have been the first overtly Marxist Head of State in an EU member state for, well, quite a few years. Would this have caused alarm bells to ring in Brussels? His anti-austerity policies would have done, but not his Marxism. The European Union is a bastion of this "far-right-is-worse-than-far-left" mindset. While I was working in the European Parliament, the "far right" formed a short-lived political group, Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty, which included the French National Front and the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini among its members. There was a huge outcry at the time that EU funds were going to be used to promote fascism. However, a "far-left" group, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, has been in existence since 1994, and no one seems to be bothered. You can find some pretty nasty individuals in the Green group as well. I still shudder with horror at the name of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, whom I remember as a revolutionary Marxist student leader in the 1960s, when I was a child, and fearful of a Russian invasion, as many were at the time. He is now a Green MEP. Why are so few people outraged? They should be. The current head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, who has been in the spotlight recently over the scandal at the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital, was an admirer of Leonid Brezhnev in his youth. OK, he might have changed his mind - some people do grow up, after all -but had he been an admirer of Adolf Hitler, he would never have got the job.
In this country, we have "Unite Against Fascism," "Searchlight" and all sorts of other similar groups dedicated to exposing the evils of the "far right." It is high time that the dangers of the "far left" were given more publicity. In the UK, the main far right parties - the BNP and the National Front - are going nowhere, and enjoy very limited electoral support, while meanwhile, many of the evils against which we have to fight - political correctness, hostility to those who speak out against homosexuality, compulsory sex education in schools - were first devised by the "far left" Marxists of the Frankfurt school.
It is pretty obvious to any fair-minded person that an attempt to paint fascism or Nazism as a sort of über-Conservatism - i.e., to the right of Thatcherism but somehow related to it - is nonsense. Supporters of the free market and limited government have no more in common with Hitler than with Stalin or Mao. The economist F.A. Hayek depicted fascism, Marxism and free market ideology in the form of a triangle with the free market at the bottom. The lower down you go, the greater the degree of liberty. Indeed, "far right" fascism has far more in common with "left of centre" socialism than with "centre right" free market thinking. Both believe in a big state; both ultimately are inimicable to freedom - particularly Christian freedom. Both must be opposed as evil, repressive ideologies.
(photographs copyright (c) Getty images)
The logical answer is no, but in recent years, a modern myth has grown up that somehow the "far right" is in some strange way worse than the "far left". We currently see this in reports about Greece's "far right" Golden Dawn party. Now these people do not seem to be a particularly pleasant bunch, by any stretch of the imagination, but are they any worse than the "far left" anarchists, who are also growing in numbers in the country? New Statesman http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/02/selective-zero-tolerance-greece-really-democracy-anymore seems to think so, but while I don't condone the violence of the police, I don't have much sympathy for the would-be-bank-robber young anarchists either. Let's face it, the anarchist movement has accounted for one US President, one Italian King and one Russian Czar. Its adherents are equally as capable of violent behaviour as the "far right".
While on the subject of Greece, I didn't know untl recently that the leader of the opposition SYRIZA party, Alexis Tsipras, is a Marxist. Had he won the election last year, he would have been the first overtly Marxist Head of State in an EU member state for, well, quite a few years. Would this have caused alarm bells to ring in Brussels? His anti-austerity policies would have done, but not his Marxism. The European Union is a bastion of this "far-right-is-worse-than-far-left" mindset. While I was working in the European Parliament, the "far right" formed a short-lived political group, Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty, which included the French National Front and the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini among its members. There was a huge outcry at the time that EU funds were going to be used to promote fascism. However, a "far-left" group, the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, has been in existence since 1994, and no one seems to be bothered. You can find some pretty nasty individuals in the Green group as well. I still shudder with horror at the name of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, whom I remember as a revolutionary Marxist student leader in the 1960s, when I was a child, and fearful of a Russian invasion, as many were at the time. He is now a Green MEP. Why are so few people outraged? They should be. The current head of the NHS, Sir David Nicholson, who has been in the spotlight recently over the scandal at the Mid-Staffordshire Hospital, was an admirer of Leonid Brezhnev in his youth. OK, he might have changed his mind - some people do grow up, after all -but had he been an admirer of Adolf Hitler, he would never have got the job.
In this country, we have "Unite Against Fascism," "Searchlight" and all sorts of other similar groups dedicated to exposing the evils of the "far right." It is high time that the dangers of the "far left" were given more publicity. In the UK, the main far right parties - the BNP and the National Front - are going nowhere, and enjoy very limited electoral support, while meanwhile, many of the evils against which we have to fight - political correctness, hostility to those who speak out against homosexuality, compulsory sex education in schools - were first devised by the "far left" Marxists of the Frankfurt school.
It is pretty obvious to any fair-minded person that an attempt to paint fascism or Nazism as a sort of über-Conservatism - i.e., to the right of Thatcherism but somehow related to it - is nonsense. Supporters of the free market and limited government have no more in common with Hitler than with Stalin or Mao. The economist F.A. Hayek depicted fascism, Marxism and free market ideology in the form of a triangle with the free market at the bottom. The lower down you go, the greater the degree of liberty. Indeed, "far right" fascism has far more in common with "left of centre" socialism than with "centre right" free market thinking. Both believe in a big state; both ultimately are inimicable to freedom - particularly Christian freedom. Both must be opposed as evil, repressive ideologies.
(photographs copyright (c) Getty images)