Don't get me wrong, I don't mind some Conservatives. It's a belief that certainly bucks the trend of late, however, I passionately believe that there are politicians in all parties who go into politics because they want to change things. They are fundamentally decent people. David Davis comes to mind...Lord Tebbit is NOT a decent person.
In a letter to The Spectator, Tebbit says that he does not think that there is anything right wing about the BNP. He believes that the party displays the old left wing policies of Labour before Blair et al. He regards history's greatest racists as leftists - Pol Pot, Mugabe and Stalin. To top it all he points out that 'Nazi' is short for NDSAP, or - National Socialist German Worker's Party.
Let's make one thing clear. Tebbit refuses to believe that the far right is the place for objectionable views because it provides room and justification for his own arch-conservatism. Indeed, he was the biggest right winger in the Thatcher cabinet - and made Thatcher herself look like someone whom Michael Foot was regard as a 'a bit of a lefty'
Of course Tebbit forgets to mention that the Nazis hated communism. Hitler campaigned for 20 years prior to becoming Chancellor on a platform of destroying the 'Reds' whom, for him along with Jews were responsible for the defeat of 1918. In power, Hitler banned the party (along with all others) and abolished trade unions. Economically, the extreme right and left do favour state control, the former through massive state corporations, the latter through worker's control. However, a fundamental difference remains - for fascists the state must become even more powerful. For communists and socialists it must wither away.
Furthermore, I don't think the BNP would take kindly to being regarded as 'left wing'. Only this week, Griffin railed against the 'liberal left' in the Unite Against Fascism movement for egging the leader a 'legitimately elected political party'. Opposition to Europe is a fundamentally right wing principle (socialists, by their very nature are internationalist), as are old fashioned attutudes to education and reluctance to invest in foreign aid (see BNP website http://bnp.org.uk/). We all know that anyone who criticises the BNP is, in their eyes, a Marxist nut, the 'mob' who attacked Griffin outside Parliament on Wednesday were under the auspices of the 'hard left'.
Clearly, Tebbit simply wants to pile the responsibility for the more extreme variants of his ideology on the left. Yes, communism has been responsbible for the deaths of millions (Stalin's purges and famines), however, to call fascism a left wing ideology is a complete contradiction in terms. At its heart fascists believe that life is a struggle between races, some of which are fundamentally better than others. Socialists don't see races, merely classes. Stalin fell into the old fascist trap of seeing some people as 'more equal that others', however true socialism has none of the hatred, bigotry and plain old idiosyncracies of its cousin on the far right. I am saddened that a former cabinet member will engage such a cheap argument not only when the old left-right argument is dead in the political mainstream but just so he can legitimise his own extreme views.
Is it any secret that he finds himself more akin to the BNP than the Tories? To make himself feel better Tebbit has had to dispense with some of the 'baggage of history'.
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2 comments:
The simple truth: There is no _real_ left and right. It's a circle. Extreme left is, effectively, extreme right, and whatever border there is is blurry at best.
As long as people keep trying to see politics in such a single dimension and the public are caught up on misconceptions and connotations of what they _think_ the term means we're - to coin a phrase - boned. And the arguments will continue to go round in circles, much like the phrase themselves.
The sad truth is that without much effort, one could argue that the BNP is left wing. But if it is, it's extreme left.
As you well know though, I can see and understand your points, and don't disagree with them, but the flat-canvas nature of right-left irritates me.
As regards Communists / Socialists requiring the state to whither away rather than become more powerful, I think that depends on your flavour... but I know what you mean. :) The problem is it depends which road the revolution takes. Inevitably, it'd have to take the state control line, and once the state has got used to taking full control, it's hard to believe it would ever come to relinquish it. Especially not with all the infighting these things invariably bring with them!
*sigh*
You're right Dave, left/right arguments have been disappearing ever since 1989. I still think that Tebbit has views which we would traditionally pigron-hole as 'far right' and feels a bit uncomfortable to be occupying the same space as Hitler - so he cheaply tries to position the Nazis away from himself.
The political spectrum, if it still exists, has always been a circle. This removes the problem of seeing political ideologies in polarities. Extremists, I agree, have much more that unites them - secret police, cult of leader, camps etc..
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