"Racist" party is Leftist

The following letter from Lord Tebbitt about the British National Party appeared in the London "Daily Telegraph". Norman Tebbitt has himself been described as a "hardline rightwinger". He was a Minister in several portfolios under Margaret Thatcher and chairman of the Conservative Party

"Sir - It is of some comfort that the Labour Party at least, even if not yet the Tories, has woken up to the threat posed by the BNP, because it has ceased to understand or listen to its own supporters when they express their concerns about multiculturalism, the levels of immigration and lack of integration that are affecting our great cities.

However, it remains of concern that even The Daily Telegraph (Comment, April 18) persists in so misunderstanding the BNP as to describe it as "an extreme Right-wing party". I have carefully re-read the BNP manifesto of 2005 and am unable to find evidence of Right-wing tendencies.

On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to "use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality", to institute worker ownership, to favour workers' co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.

Certainly the BNP poses as a patriotic party opposed to multiculturalism, and it has racist overtones, but there is no lack of patriotic Left-wing regimes; opposition to multiculturalism is now mainstream and racialism was not unknown even in the Soviet Union. So what is "extreme Right-wing" about the BNP?"

The Ku Klux Klan were all Democrats, Hitler was a socialist, Karl Marx was an antisemite, the Soviets persecuted the Jews and the main support for the White Australia Policy was the Australian Labor party -- and it still is!. Any pattern there? Nah!

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ELSEWHERE

BNP winning support: "The British National Party is on course to make significant gains in the local elections in England in two weeks time, according to a YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph today. It shows that seven per cent of voters are ready to back the far-Right party and that 24 per cent have considered voting BNP in the past or are thinking of doing so now. In the eyes of almost three-quarters of potential BNP supporters, Britain "almost seems like a foreign country".... The strong showing for the BNP, which has already achieved more success than any other far-Right party, will alarm all the mainstream parties. At the general election last year, the BNP won 4.3 per cent of the vote across the 116 seats it contested. It polled 16.9 per cent in the Barking constituency.... The BNP has said it is putting up more candidates than ever before - 356 - for the local elections. At present it has 15 councillors across England and hopes to win up to 40 seats on May 4.

Pew Survey: Leftists much less moral: "There is a partisan divide in how people judge these behaviors. A majority of Republicans say seven of the ten behaviors are morally wrong; while a majority of Democrats and independents say just three of the behaviors (adultery, underreporting taxable income; drinking excessively) are morally wrong. Independents are the least inclined of the three partisan groups to view the behaviors as morally wrong and most prone to see them as "not a moral issue."" [The ten moral issues were: Married people having an affair; Not reporting all income on taxes; Drinking alcohol excessively; Having an abortion; Smoking marijuana; Homosexual behavior; Telling a lie to spare someone's feelings; Sex between unmarried adults; Gambling; Overeating]

American generosity: "U.S. foreign aid from private sources totaled $71.2 billion in 2004, a sum more than 3? times greater than the foreign aid the U.S. government provided that year, according to a study by the Hudson Institute. "America is often criticized as being stingy in its foreign aid, but that assessment doesn't take into account the extent of private giving," the institute said. The study, titled Index of Global Philanthropy, was presented yesterday at a United Nations conference".

Government Financing Clowns -- Literally: "Fire departments are using Homeland Security grants to buy gym equipment, sponsor puppet and clown shows, and turn first responders into fitness trainers. The spending choices are allowable under the guidelines of the Assistance to Firefighters grant administered by the Homeland Security Department, which has awarded nearly 250 grants since February totaling more than $25 million out of the current spending pot of $545 million."

A vacation to the magical kingdom of capitalism: "On a recent trip to Florida I had the chance to see a good contrast between public works projects and private enterprises. This consisted of traveling through two public airports, Boston Logan and Orlando International and visiting two private entertainment parks, Walt Disney World and Sea World. I could linger long on the deficiencies of the public airports and rail against various aspects of their design, but instead I'd rather focus on the positive aspects of what I saw in the private capitalist dream that is Walt Disney World."

An end run around class action lawsuits: "Alan Kaplinsky is one proud man. For years, the Philadelphia lawyer has been advising financial institutions, leading their defense in class-action lawsuits brought by consumers -- and, more importantly, designing ways to limit such suits by writing arbitration clauses into many credit-card agreements and banking contracts. These clauses, often found in the fine print, have met with mixed results in court, with some judges upholding them, some not. Now, Kaplinsky has found a way to one-up the courts, at least in Utah, where a new law specifically allows these clauses in all consumer loan contracts, including credit-card agreements."

Russia: Surge in race killings as Hitler's birthday nears: "Russia is struggling to contain an upsurge in racist murders and attacks as skinheads in the country prepare to mark Adolf Hitler's birthday. The past week alone has seen a slew of race-hate crimes perpetrated despite condemnation from politicians and threats of heavier jail sentences. Four Roma have been murdered and one Vietnamese man killed, and there have been at least seven 'punishment beatings' of foreigners. Anti-racism activists are warning that Russia's estimated 60,000 skinheads appear to be attacking their victims with increasing impunity and that the problem has spun out of control."

Strange Justice has the latest on the very dubious Duke university "rape" prosecution.

For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).

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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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