Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Someone gets it...

I have a great deal of time for Lord Tebbit, even if I don't always agree with his politics, still he usually makes sense, even if his adherence to the Tory Party occasionally blindsides him to common sense.
Still, his views on the EDL will have caused some on the left to have a collective heart attack as he's challenged them to prove they are 'far right' as he believes that's a slur on the Tory party, who to my eyes aren't right anything these days, more centre/soft left.
Huffington Post.
The outspoken former Conservative minister Lord Tebbit has insisted there is no evidence the English Defence League is "far right", sparking new debate on the place of the anti-Muslim street group on the political spectrum.
Lord Tebbit has challenged the founder of an anti-Islamophobia monitoring group to prove the group adheres to far-right principles, and says calling the group "right-wing" is an attempt to smear mainstream conservatives.
The former Conservative Party chair took issue with the description of the EDL in an independent report produced by Teesside University on the Far Right and the promotion of anti-Muslim prejudice, commissioned by Tell MAMA.
That would be the same Tell MAMA who fibbed about an anti-muslim backlash after the barbarous murder of Lee Rigby in order to try and divert attention from the islamoloons who perpetrated the act. The self same Tell MAMA who have now had their government funding revoked.
Lord Tebbit wrote to the head of Tell MAMA...
"As you are unable to give me any justification for your claim that the EDL is an extreme right wing organisation other than that someone else said that it was."I have as you so kindly suggested 'taken time' to follow up the references you sent me.
"Sadly, I can find no reference in any of them to views which are extreme right wing unless one is under the illusion that all extreme nationalists or all anti-Islamists are by definition extreme right wing.
"I am left therefore with no option but to ask you what it is that you think are the extreme right wing politics of the EDL?"
All Tell MAMA could produce were a raft of media descriptions prefacing the term EDL with 'far right' without anyone being able to say why or indeed prove they are. Indeed, to many these days, the term 'far right' is simply a descriptor of anyone or any group the left don't like.
Of course there are always some who cannot get it into their heads that what the EDL do is perfectly legal and has been succesful in drawing attention to the danger of islamists in our midst.
Yup, the EDL fly foreign flags, have a Sikh division, many members who are not white English and have a very energetic Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender division, all terribly multicultural and all opposed to islam which the author in the above picture can't quite grasp so he wants to ban them.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the EDL are 'far right' or indeed far anything, they are a reaction to a cancer in our midst. They are apolitical, by which I mean they won't tell you who to vote for and are open to anyone to join and support from all over the world.
That hardly fits the criteria for 'far right' now does it?

2 annotations:

Dioclese said...

Tebbitt is a neighbour. I bump into him occasionally in Waitrose. Remind me to tell him he's talking bollocks next time I see him.

If the EDL went any further to the right, it would meet itself coming back the other way...

Anthem said...

I thought this argument was as old as the hills?

The generally accepted thinking is that the more "socialist/collectivist" politics are "left wing" (Labour) whilst the more "capitalist/individualist" politics are "right wing" (Conservatives).

However, the slur has always been there as Nazism is considered "far-right" i.e. having more to do with Conservatives than Labourites (if this left/right stuff is any gauge).

I prefer to simply see it as "right and wrong".

At the moment, it is more a case of trying to establish which party is less wrong than the next.