Am I a far right extremist?

[Isitme245]

I had a conversation with my best friend of 25 years the other day and she called me a far right extremist and how my views are scary, dangerous and 'nazi coded'
I was really shocked as I didn't think any of what I said was bad. I'm not a particularly avid supporter of any political party and very much keep opinions to myself. She's very supportive of labour and anti trump and always has been. Usually when she asks me my opinions I just don't want to get into it but I did the other night and now I feel bad.

Here's the breakdown:

• she sent me an article and told me that Nigel Farage is going to ban abortion eventually if he wins an election. I read the article and pointed out he only suggested lowering the abortion cut off date to 22 weeks (not 24 as it is now). I told her it wasn't the end of the world and it's reasonable if you read his reasons. I also made the point that men shouldn't really be getting involved in abortion law but that what he said wasn't the end of the world.

• she asked me about immigration and I said that it's great but that we should be prioritising skilled immigrants and have stronger immigration laws. She also asked about asylum seekers and hotels and I said that we should have stronger laws about monitoring people and collecting documentation when people arrive.

• she sent me and asked about Elon Musk's Nazi salute and I said I didn't interpret it that way

• I said that immigrants who rape or murder should be deported.

To me this feels really reasonable and not over the top but she really attacked me for it? Now I feel really awkward and uncomfortable talking to her. Is this far right??

Re Musk's "nazi salute"....god, I hate so much the currently popular policy of deliberately misreading someone's actions and words in order to create a particular narrative.

It's like people have taken the advice of a certain politician who once said "repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth". There's enough things to criticise Elon Musk for, why make things up?

I’ll take your word for it, I only saw it very fleetingly as a tweet. Just saying how it’s not necessarily immediately obvious in some circumstances.

“Handicapped” is not commonly used now, it’s an offensive term.

There seem to be quite a few people wanting to consult Mumsnet to help them to decide what kind of political views they have. It seems to be becoming rather fashionable - we had one last week.

Elon loves Star Wars but he is not mostly famous for being Star Wars fan. He is however recently in the news as a supporter of Tommy Robinson and German Nazi party (literally all over the press two weeks ago), comes from apartheid South Africa (he was in his 20ies!!! when apartheid ended) and his dad had held racist views

I mean did you even read the link you posted? Like, to the end?

Not to continue the debate, but what you’ve just articulated is not any time any reason, which you first said. I also agree with abortion for medical reasons for baby or mother up until birth (and suspect our views are in fact broadly aligned), but I find the any time any reason line really unhelpful because it does conjure up the images of fictional late term abortion.

But back to the point at hand, OP you are right wing. So am I. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, it’s just that some people on the left have shifted to this place of becoming bigots in a mission to stop bigotry. They will vilify anyone not of their point of view, and will not entertain debate. I think even the likes of Nigel Farage would be more open to sitting down to a frank political discussion than a lot of people on the left. Your views aren’t extreme at all, there just a little bit right of centre.

@Isitme245 Your responses to her questions are balanced and fair, and they place you within the centre-left and centre-right of the political spectrum. Your responses to her immigration questions are certainly not far-right perspectives.

What you have to bear in mind though is that the far left love to label everyone and everything as a "nazi." The reason why this is done is because most people are intellectually lazy, and like to condense everything to black and white because it eliminates any kind of nuance or careful thought.

Thus, if everything they don't like can be labelled as "nazi," this makes the thought process easier because the nazis are unquestionably bad, so anything that is "nazi" must be bad and no further discussion is needed.

So basically, I wouldn't take any offence from what she is saying.

This thread is mental. A bloke who powerfully supports the extreme far right German AfD and throws out Nazi salutes is apparently doing some other salute that just looks exactly like a Nazi salute but isn't one, and is just something he fancies doing in that moment with his arm, creatively. Perhaps he was exercising 😂

People would describe me as far left.. but i didn't interpret Musks salute as a nazi salute either. I hate elon musk.. but I don't think he's a nazi, I think he's a libertarian (which is also awful imo) but I honestly don't think he'd purposefully do a nazi salute as he's spent a long time trying to get people to believe Hitler was a socialist, in order to get people to hate left wing politics more. It doesn't really make any sense he'd do a nazi salute. And you can make anyone look like they are doing a nazi salute if you photograph them at the right moment. I do think it was just an awkward wave, throwing love out to the crowd. He's an awkward man. He's a piece of shit but I worry about allowing the media to make money out of representing things as extreme as possible. It gets used on the left too...
It gets used on everyone and it feeds into populism. I think this dumbing down and extreme black and white view of everything is what allows people like Trump into positions of power.

Just ignore your friend. You aren't far right. You just have a slightly different view to her and she sounds like she's quite rigid in her thinking.
I have a friend who is similar. She called me an islamaphobe far right racist bigot because I pointed out that something she was saying about Israel was deeply antisemitic. It was conspiracy theory level stuff.
The sad thing is we actually broadly agree regarding Palestine but she is just a person who gets so fixated on one narrative that she loses sight of nuance. And dehumanises people because of that.
I'm a socialist through and through and I know that. I don't pay any attention to her calling me far right for gently challenging her views.
There are people all across the political spectrum who just can't stand any push back on anything.

Data to back this up?

I thought the gesture meant something like "my heart goes out to you", because I've never heard Musk say anything resembling Nazi sentiment before so it just didn't occur to me that he meant to do a Nazi salute.

i completely agree you all your views and think they’re normal and sensible.

a ‘Hitler’ salute has an outstretched arm in from of the person doing it, not to the side. Although I think the guy is a twat.

I've just done an online quiz to find out what you are, @heyhopotato and strangely it comes up with the answer 'Useful idiot, ignore'

Op your friend is silly we can all have different political ideas and have discussions about it without slandering people. Far right is a throw away phrase now to shut people up for questioning anything. Wanting controlled immigration is of course not far right it's just bloody sensible, as is not wanting migrants to come over on dingys paying people smugglers thousands of pounds and not knowing who is coming in it's just dangerous. Most are already in a safe country but risk coming here because they know they will get an easy ride but you will get gas lit in to saying that they are all genuine refugees. People shutting down conversations and calling names is causing a rise in the far right because people feel ignored. How are these people going to cope when reform get in to power. They are going to cry into their cornflakes just like after brexit because their own arrogance and dismissive attitudes have blown up in their faces.

i don’t see anything wrong with what you said (not saying I agree or dis agree )
Seems she had been looking for a political fight for a while and with your reply she had her “in”

Don't feel bad for your views we live in a democratic country after all.

If anything I’d tell your “friend “ where to do for pushing you then making you feel crap.

@Isitme245 - I'd ignore your friend when she tries to engage you in this. She's trying to bait you and/or get you to say something she can beat you over the head with later.

You should read Jonathan Haidt's book "The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion". Or search on Youtube for one of his TED talks etc.

He puts forward the idea (supported by evidence) that people on the left of the political spectrum tend to be more intolerant and more judgmental of others and their views than those on the right are.

Looking back those are certainly traits that I can identify my younger self as having in abundance. I now try not to be as self-righteous and judgmental as I used to be.

You seem wilfully misinformed OP. You’re entitled to your opinions of course, like anyone else is. But when you’ve been challenged on them here your responses seem mostly to be ‘oh well I don’t really know’.
Do you not see why that’s a problem?

Regardless of Right v Left, my biggest worry for our next election is this level of understanding and curiosity. People just taking what politicians tell them at face value. Politicians like Farage in particular are skilled orators who excel at sounding ‘reasonable’ but when you dig deeper or cross check what they’re saying, are anything but. It takes time, effort and an open mind to find the truth.

Who does it put at risk and how does it put them at risk?

Would you not agree that this policy change puts women less at risk? For instance female prisoners who no longer have to share their cells with males.

Your friend is an idiot

You lost me at Musk.

(Your friend sounds like an idiot.)

I'm not stepping in to this argument in any way at all but, to give some context, in 2022, 88% of all abortions occurred by week 9. A further 11% took place from weeks 10 to 19 and then around 1.4% took place from week 20 onwards.

The large majority of those done from 20 weeks onwards were done under "Ground E" - substantial risk that the child would be handicapped - and so would not be affected by any change in time limits anyway.

Shush. He's an autistic Star Wars fan who was excitedly waving his hands!!!

(Obvious sarcasm)

I mean at the end of the day you get one vote and so does your friend. Adults should be able to disagree on politics and still get along.

But the press love to whip people up into a frenzy. The number of ridiculous Trump stories and what he might do is one example. No one knows what he’ll do they’re just lazy headlines. And even if he’s not to our taste America voted for him. Twice. That’s what they want. And some people take this stuff seriously and get very excited about it.

I don’t think Musk did a Nazi salute by the way, I think it was a very unfortunate over exuberant gesture that has allowed the press to write more lazy headlines.