To ask what ‘far right’ means to you?

[Rainbowsponge]

Let’s not make this a Southport thread, just a political one. I consider myself a centrist and voted Lib Dem (to get us back in EU but that’s another story).

There’s been a lot of talk of ‘far right’ on here over the last few days, but very few observations on what far right actually means. To me it means things like capital punishment, enforced religion, open state misogyny, a blanket ban on abortion, homosexuality being outlawed, that sort of thing.

To me, having justified concerns about immigration, having views on new house building, voting Conservative or disapproving of Just Stop Oil protestors doesn’t make you ‘far right’. Centre or right of centre perhaps, but not far right.

What do you think?

Yes.

Are you aware of the GC movement? They're very left wing.

I haven't read the whole thread. I pretty much agree with your OP.

The big problem with the terms left and right in politics is that they're used to describe both economic and social attitudes, and the two don't always align. Originally left meant favouring state intervention in the economy and redsitribution of wealth, and right meant favouring a small state and free market. Because certain social attitudes went along with that much of time, they also became labelled as left and right.

"Far right" seems to be far more a social signifier than an economic one. Most people understand it to be where those social attitudes cross over from being part of a reasoned and moderate debate about how best to run society, into kneejerk, potentially violent divisiveness.

You're right that it's not necessarily far right to believe immigration levels should be lower. However many of the claims about this just don't make sense, and don't stand up to scrutiny when you examine them. In such cases, one can only speculate as to what leads people to believe such unevidenced beliefs, and one obvious factor is racism.

Southport being a case in point, where the alleged perpetrator was a British-born person who happened to be black; false information was spread early about them being a muslim asylum seeker; and before anyone bothered to fact check that information we had riots against mosques. It's like there's a force existing in advance that leads people toward believing certain things and acting in certain ways regardless of the facts. That's far right.

This pretty much sums up 'far right' to me too.

Thick as pig shit.

This! 👏👏

That's not correct. There are women from both sides of the political spectrum who are GC. For example Kemi Badenoch.

yeah, this was kind of what i meant. because some issues dont sit squarely in a left/right position. so there are some very GC people on both sides who might be labelled "far right" and that seems weird to me

Right and left aren't very helpful terms in my view as they both have an economic and a social aspect (at least, if not others). For instance, iirc the BNP used to advocate taking utility companies back into public ownership (an economically left wing policy). I remember talking to a couple of Hungarians once about Orban and their complaint was that he made it too easy for people to claim benefits (all you have to do, they said, was pop out children - I'll note that I don't know how true this was, but it was certainly their perception).

It's entirely possible to be quite left wing in one way and quite right wing in another. We need better political vocabulary.

I would say radical feminists are left wing but GC have no alignment with either wing politically because beyond knowing men are male and women are female, they don’t have to share any other political beliefs in common.

Well he openly supported and defended dictators like Chavez and Maduro. That was alienating enough for me.

I disagree, I think GC span all range of political viewpoints but gender ideology is firmly left wing. I can’t think of a single right wing party that promotes it, although I can think of plenty of critics from the right/left

Science and biology aren’t right wing or even political. How biology and science are utilised politically is a different matter.

For example, two people might agree that only women can be pregnant.

One person might believe that that means that women are a liability in the workplace and shouldn’t be considered for serious jobs or promotions.
The other might believe that that means women should have legal protection in place to protect their careers and should not be discriminated against on the basis of them being female.

I get that most GC women on here are left wing and feel uncomfortable ‘taking the side’ of a right wing position, but you can’t deny gender ideology is very much supported by left wing parties and not right. It’s become a left wing policy.

I’ve given you an example explaining why it is neither left nor right wing

Yes as I said earlier the romanticisation of the ideologies has sometimes ended up very badly. Corbyn condemned what was happening in Venezuela but not the leaders who had caused it, which I agree was unacceptable. But I would still have rather have had him than Johnson, who thinks setting fire to money in front of homeless people is a funny joke, as I don’t ever believe that Corbyn would have wanted anything bad to happen to people. Whereas Johnson couldn’t give a fuck about other people and he proved that repeatedly.

It's been supported by the Tories for the past decade. It's in schools, organisations and the public sector.

Let the bodies pile high.

I condemned him for it so what’s your point?

And yes, Johnson and his cronies did let the bodies pile high.

You said

Whereas Johnson couldn’t give a fuck about other people and he proved that repeatedly.

So I said - Let the bodies pile high. Which is something Johnson said.

Got out of the wrong side of bed?

Sorry - yes to be honest I did. I’m exhausted and very prickly. I sincerely apologise.

I’m going to get off Mumsnet and go for a walk instead!

Enjoy your walk 😊

Racist and islamophobic

It is not a question of what it means "to you" or any other random person. The term is clearly defined and understood as described in detail here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics

You can't just decide it means something else to suit your dogwhistled (claxoned) agenda.
Hope this helps.

It is more left than right yes. If you look at the media, and countries overall

On this the policy can be used by a centre left gov and become bi partisan ie Aus Labor

It does seem an issue in the U.K. and I think we’ll go towards national riot squads, public disorder and increasing numbers and flaring tension instead.

There’s a few EU countries on a similar trajectory atm