Will The Real Extremists Please Stand Up
I don’t know about you, but I’m sometimes confused by the dizzying array of right wing boogeymen we are supposed to be afraid of. The news ‘services’ have been saying tirelessly for months that if Hofer gets elected, he will be the first far right extremist political leader elected head of state in Europe since the war. Everything must be done to stop him. Even electoral fraud seems to be an acceptable option, so he must be pretty bad.
I don’t know about you, but extreme, far out anything sounds really scary. I mean really SCARY!!!
The confusing part, though, is that I’m reading headlines, and I see other European leaders also getting called far right extremists.
I thought Hofer was going to be the first.
I mean Christian Blocher, who heads the SVP (the largest party in Switzerland), it says here: “Swiss far-right submits petition for referendum on courts’ sovereignty”. That was just yesterday. OMG, I had no idea Switzerland was run by the far right.
And regarding the UKIP, the Guardian asks: Is it fair to call Ukip a far-right party? Isn’t that the party responsible for Brexit? Well I heard that was a nasty piece of democracy. Here the Guardian says UKIP are a radical right wing party though not necessarily 1000% extreme right.
What about Denmark, that must be a safe place with nice people? I remember all the bicycles and the cute red buildings, cute girls. Low and behold it turns out, according to the NYT, the far right has seized control.
I keep frantically searching the internet, and it’s horrible. Right wing extremists now count among their ranks the largest party in France, while Hungary seems to be trapped between the far right Fidesz and the extreme right Jobbik. In Italy I read the largest party run by a comedian Beppo Grillo is the fascist party incarnate (if not also engendering “disastrous mental problems”). Now they shout ‘Bep-pe! Bep-pe!’ just like they use to shout ‘Du-ce! Du-ce!’
I visited Poland and all I remember is how nice the people, how safe, and how clean the streets. (Recent time spent in Paris left a slightly different impression.) Now looking at the headlines I realize it was all very sinister. Reading the always fair and balanced Economist, Poland is also run by right wing fanatics! Beyond being far right, they don’t like “critical media, vegetarians and cyclists” either. I was so shocked by that article, but yet so thankful that we have honest rags like The Economist to tell us how it is.
Then I thought that at least in America that we were safe from the rising tide of right wing extremism, fascism, & mean people. But a quick Google search reveals that it is too late. An article in Raw Story leads with the forgiving headline “Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler, but he is a Fascist.”
Well, it is a relief to know that Raw Story doesn’t think the Donald is a full blown Adolf––more of a Benito. Though with just some cursory googling you can see other news outlets are less kind. And that’s the GOP: the party of Teddy Roosevelt, Silent Cal Coolidge, and the Gipper. Now a full-blown fascist party. Who would have believed it?
It is all so confusing.
