"Right or Left, I want No Part in Extremism" - Milli Hill

[WhereDidSummerGoAgain]

A thoughtful article by Milli Hill today.

https://millihill.substack.com/p/right-or-left-i-want-no-part-of-extremism

I can't help but find myself agreeing with her.

I know there's been a lot of debate on here about Kelly-Jay and whether she supports the far right.

Milli's article links to a Twitter post by Tommy Robinson showing an event and his inner circle. Kelly-Jay is there, dressed in a Union Jack.

This is pretty conclusive now, isn't it? You don't go and hang out with racists like Tommy Robinson and pals in times like these if you don't support them, surely?!

Milli's stood up for Kelly-Jay before, but this is a step too far for her, and for me too.

Just wondering what others think? This really doesn't look like a mistake this time.

What do YOU think the FAR RIGHT is? Bearing in mind you started this thread. Maybe define your definitions so that we can see where you are coming from.

I think that there is a tendency among some to think protests are things they would only go to if they had substantial, even total, political agreement. Not on just the topic of the protest, but all the people involved.

And they assume everyone is like that.

In fact, the vast majority don't think that way at all. THey don't see a political protest about being in perfect or even substantial alignment with anyone. They see it as a chance to say they personally are pissed off about some topic or set of topics, with other people who have similar or related views about those particular topics.

They often don't even care if the reasons people at the protest have for that view are totally different. The goal is something like , get men out of women's prisons, or stop shutting down protests, or stop flooding my town with immigrants. If others want the same thing for differernt reasons, that is not an impediment to political action, it actually makes it more effective.

Do we really think, for example, that everyone in the US who marched at the BLM protests believed in dissolution of the family, totally disbanding the police, or that it is ok to mug pregnant women with guns for drug money? The vast majority didn't think any of those things.

Interesting article by Trevor Phillips.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/d29d39c9-cdf7-4b44-b8f2-cb9a86c67a81?shareToken=3a0e575165f5bdc7b8f0ffad2fef5f50

Stop hurling abuse and listen. All KJK has done is Let Women Speak.

I’m not familiar enough with KJK’s discourse to know if there’s any ‘far right’ content but it’s not uncommon that the longer and more embedded in a particular narrative someone goes, that it can creep into extremism without intentionally or being conscious of it happening.

This is the danger of SYL and similarly Farage/Reform ie that non far right people will be and are being caught up in some of the more ‘reasonable’ rhetoric. There may well have been more centre right / right leaning people at that march mislead by the slogans of free speech etc.

It is a depressing reality that the people most likely to be hurt by Farage’s policies are exactly the people being attracted to Reform. He is a vile man who cannot stand to be anything but the centre of attention but a canny political operative who’s tapping into a larger malaise. All other politicians ignore the seemingly complex and intractable issue.

Also ordinary people’s concerns have been fuelled by social and mainstream media’s constant accounts of asylum seekers arriving by the boatload (allegedly). I’ve had friends shift both further right and further left driven by media accounts and algorithms.

I really think that the people that just tantrum about the Far Right day in day out really need a wake up call that either they are living alongside Far Righters or maybe, just maybe, the people who you are tantrumming about being Far Right all the live long day are mostly just pissed off lefties or centrists who have a whole range of views that probably coinside with half of yours.

Maybe just stop wailing about it for 5 fucking minutes and start listening to people and you might learn a thing or two. So bored with this broken record.

KJK and indeed TR have some views which I personally do not share and so now I am persuaded men can be women 🙄

I think there is a similar thing going on with Corbyn/Sultana. There was a time when most of my circle of friends were strongly in favour of Corbyn, after he became Labour leader. For quite a while, I dismissed other people's concerns about him, but these days I can see exactly what they were warning about.

Thanks for the link, it was a good read, it will fall on deaf ears though, the walls of the Westminster bubble are too thick to penetrate.

They ignored UKIP when it first started to come to prominence, and now we out of the EU, the political classes haven't learned the lesson, they never learn the lesson.

They're still stupidly ignoring Reform, and they won't pay attention to the 150,000 people who turned up on parliaments doorstep, until it's to late.

Agree that the article was a good summary ie

This was not an angry, activist crowd. And therein lies the danger for our democracy. When ordinary people are ready to brave the first cold weekend of the autumn at the behest of a serial convict and self-confessed fraudster, something is very rotten in the state of Britain. As the centre left shifted further into an authoritarian left, those on the centre right have shifted further right. Meanwhile it’s all ignored by Labour.

Nothing really much has changed since Gordon Brown was caught on mic dismissing an older women’s concerns about immigration (Polish at that time) by writing her off as a bigot. Labour should have listened then.

They didn't ignore UKIP. The Conservative government was concerned enough to shift to the right and took on a lot of UKIP policies to the extent of holding a referendum on the EU. Which is exactly what led to us leaving the EU. And despite saying on the eve of the vote that fears of a hard Brexit was project fear Farage switched immediately after the vote to agitating for exactly that.

I actually agree that labelling all the protesters far right is a mistake. And that it is important to listen. But if the argument is that a lot of people on the march had different reasons to march and shouldn't be tarred with association with Tommy Robinson (who is far right) then it also follows that Tommy Robinson's voice shouldn't be the "voice of the march" that gets listened to. I agree there were a lot of genuine frustrations that will have pushed people on the march. But then finding out and acting on those frustrations should be more important.

We can split hairs on what counts as "far right". But some things are entirely straightforward. Robinson has been to prison 5 times. He apparently owes £160,000 in tax. No decent person should want anything to do with him. As a British patriot, not much makes me angrier than someone who disrespects our country and its laws as much as this man does. I've no sympathy for illegal immigrants, but few can be as harmful to British society as this awful creature.

From memory I think there were some seemingly sensible reasons for this, perhaps to do with medication? But I do think it was rather a blunt tool to say a blanket "no", given how being trans means so many things. Mind you, I don't know the details of how he defined trans for the purposes of the ban.

Possibly being delusional? And suffering a mental health issue?

I would have to look it up, but it may have been dependence on hormones/use of surgery that would cause problems, though I imagine poor mental health would also be a problem.

These “look KJK’s a racist” threads are kind of superfluous now. If women weren’t already convinced all the other times she was accused of being far right or a racist it seems unlikely that it’ll work now.

Come on! Tommy Robinson and his crew have their roots in the BNP.

Personally, I'm with Milli.......heading back towards a more centrist, pragmatic position and being very wary of the extremes.

Of course, but personally I'd be wary of going on any march with ex members of the BNP......and certainly would not be voting Reform...which is a rag tag collection of extremists, ethno nationlalists, UKIPPers, the right wing of the Tory party, and lots of angry working class men who feel disenfranchised.

Yes - you can argue about the motivations of people attending the march, but anyone trying to defend TR is at best gullible or ignorant.

I don't think anyone is DEFENDING him are they? Just pointing out that it isn't just FAR RIGHT (whatever that is these days) people that went on a march.

What is FAR RIGHT in your eyes, nobody can seem to ever explain it?

What you say is true.....but you do need to be careful not to get sucked into the Farage machine. He's a disruptor, like Trump...and is catching a mood....though like Trump he tends towards even further polarisation and extreme positions.

To my mind 'Far right' comes down to extreme patriotism and ethno nationalism. All of the things that Hitler ranted about. 'Purity' of national culture. A suspicion of 'outsiders'. Militarism. Macho values.

Could that be because the Democrats haven't learnt anything from the situation that led to Trump being elected but have dug their heels in and gone even more overboard on the issues that the people want no truck with.

Same can be said for our political/elite class, they still dismissing this rally as 'far right'.

Absolutely.....evertthing is polarising to an extreme...which then leads to violence.

That is why we need for the Labour government not to veer towards the Left - but to hold a firm line on the things that most matter to people.

But was Hitler actually 'far- right' ?

"It's important to clarify what is meant by "Right" and what ideological framework is being used. The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) were not right-wing in the American or classical liberal sense—they were a form of authoritarian collectivism, far removed from limited government, individual rights, and free markets."

"The Nazis were explicitly socialist, though their socialism was nationalist rather than internationalist (unlike the Communists)."

That's the trouble when you stick labels on things, you might end up not recognizing where the real danger lies.

I'm no fan of TR, who is think is a self-serving publicist. But I'm not going to smear KJK or anyone else attending the rally.

For the last two years, our Jewish communities have been inundated with antisemitism from the so-called 'progressive' left. Weekly marches promoting hate. Violence and property damage.

If that's the left, I can see why the right is becoming popular.