YOU KNOW YOU SHOULDN'T....
But sometimes it's just so hard to resist. You know it's all too easy, you should try for something more ambitious. But you can't stop yourself giving in to temptation to have a bit of fun.
Yes, it's so easy to find yourself taking the piss out of far right loons who post gibberish on a public forum. Especially when they are repeating, and actually give every indication of believing, something that's been discredited so many times you wonder how they can type when they must be in the foetal position out of sheer embarrassment at behaving in so crass a manner. (Presumably Farage has a broom handle stuck up his back to prevent his spine spontaneously rolling into a ball whenever he says that 75% of our laws are made by the EU.... total bollocks of course.)
In this case it was that old favourite of the desperate fascist, that Nazism was a form of socialism. The clinching argument always being the word 'socialist' is part of the party's name. I can only assume they also believe that the DDR was a fully functioning democracy and the TPA actually represents taxpayers.
But this nutter was taking it to another level. His justification was just that bit more towards the fruitcake end of the spectrum. He believes it because.... Hitler said so. Which is perfectly reasonable when you recall the one thing we all remember about wee Adolf was his inability to tell a lie. Or was it something to do with cherry trees? I'm always getting those two mixed up.
When you're still pumping out this level of nonsense, even when a right wing historian writing in a right wing paper is able to point out why you're talking out of your anus, you really are outing yourself as a genuine fruitloop. He compounds it with his ever-so-modest nomenclature, a Twitter persona of 'Richard Lionheart'. No, nothing narcissistic or egocentric about this chappie, he has his feet firmly on terra firma.
So I gave in a took the piss. Just a little. And settled back. Wondering if he would be daft enough. Maybe he'd just laugh. There must be somebody on the far right who has a sense of humour, I mean look at the illustrious line of famous right wing comedians we see so often.....
No, me neither.
Sure enough, the bait was taken. Clueless as to what was going on, he followed the usual pattern. Gets irate, becomes abusive, then puerile. Followed by smug at having 'vanquished' another' lefty', and seeking the approval of his sycophantic fascist mates. A kind of virtual mutual masturbatory session.
But out of this amusing little encounter I did have a more serious thought. The main stream media will tell you differently, because it's not in their interests to say so, but possibly the greatest threat we may be facing right now, even more so than climate change, is the gradual rise of fascism in what we refer to as The West. In some cases it's overt, with the likes of Golden Dawn in Greece. In most it's far less obvious, coming in under some cloak of respectability. I used to joke that ukip was just the BNP for people who didn't want the neighbours to think they were racist, but they have proved to be a more insidious influence on UK politics, dragging it towards the extreme right. It's a relief to see support for them steadily falling, but that tendency towards fascism remains worrying.
There's no clearer illustration of this than what's happening in the campaigning to be the next US president. Two men are commanding most of the headlines, both viewed as extreme by US standards. On the one hand there's Donald Trump, becoming increasingly more racist, increasingly more outlandish, and increasingly closer to what we understand as fascist. Although most of us over here would view him as a caricature, he's being taken seriously by an awful lot of people over there. They seem to have forgotten what the fight in World War Two was really about.
For a country with their dark history of McCarthyism it feels like a huge leap forward that so many people are beginning to look at Bernie Sanders as a possible president. An avowed socialist, he stands for many progressive values that have had little opportunity for expression at the top level of US political life. Like we do in Europe, he believes that healthcare is a right of all, not a privilege of the wealthy. Radical stuff by American standards, when they are so used to doing without many of the rights we enjoy here (or do for now, but that's a whole other story....).
And therein is the dichotomy that gives the lie that fascism has any link to socialism. Trump's popularity is based on raising fear and hatred, of defining people as 'other' so that there is an enemy to focus on, obscuring the empty rhetoric behind it. Whilst Sanders offers hope. Hope of change, hope of a fairer society and a chance to start reducing the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy.
Hope of hatred? I'm with Bernie.
PS Now, do I send a link to this post to 'Mr Lionheart'? I know I shouldn't, but....
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