Friday, May 25, 2007

Right = What?




Here's a story from Reuters concerning the problems Switzerland is experiencing due to immigration:

"Radical Islam is a huge foreign political factor," said Swiss culture and politics expert Jonathan Steinberg of the University of Pennsylvania.
OK, so same problem many other European countries face. But what struck me was on page two of the article:
Meanwhile organizers have threatened to cancel Switzerland's traditional national day celebration on August 1 due to threats by right-wing groups to disrupt the event.

Neo-Nazis have disrupted the ceremony in recent years and shouted down then-President Samuel Schmid in 2005.

And this week, police suspected arson in a fire that destroyed Geneva's largest synagogue, although they have not ruled out an accidental blaze.
Say what? Is it just sloppy writing (I know, I should talk) or does that passage equate the right-wing with neo-nazis? Sure, Europe is different, but Geert Wilders is right-wing, Pim Fortyun was, or Sarkozy, but not those guys in the brown shirts. Neo-nazis are mentally ill, any politics they have are incidental. They're not right, left, or center.

The rest of the article tiptoes around the "immigration problem" and doesn't credit the resurgence of the right-wing directly to the threat of radical Islam. But that's the reason, and that's what is responsible for the shift to the right all across Europe. Are they shifting fast enough to save themselves? I hope so.

2 comments:

OMMAG said...

Lost in translation .... the difference between being on the political or social right and being a racist.
Too subtle for 99.9% of all leftards.
Too much for translation!

Anonymous said...

The original Nazis (including Hitler) were just slightly to the right of Stalin. They didn't put "Socialism" in their party name just because they liked the sound of it. The basic difference: the Communists stole from the rich, murdered them, and turned the factories over to ignorant thugs to run. Hitler graciously let the rich continue to run their factories, provided they weren't Jewish or liberal, supported the Nazis or at least kept their mouths shut about them, and took in one of his ignorant thugs as a partner. IOW, Hitler got the point of the the story about the goose who laid the golden egg, namely that you can steal more if you don't get too greedy the first time... All else was just rhetorical window dressing.

But I think you're right about the present crew, they're not right, left, or center - unless "mentally ill" has become the defining trait of one of those groups.

markm

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