Sunday 1 October 2017

Right on the Rise.

Non-European readers might be interested to know that there are two big news items from Europe today.

In Spain, police are leaving hundreds of Catalonian citizens injured in an attempt to stop them voting in an independence referendum. How often have I said that it doesn’t take much to strip the veneer of civilisation from the denizens of so-called democratic countries? Beating people for trying to vote is something we’re supposed to look down on.

And Austria has finally banned the full face veil. Well, I’m surprised it took them so long. Didn’t a certain Mr Hitler come from Austria? And what’s their excuse for this little piece of mean-mindedness? They say it’s to ‘preserve Austrian values.’ So where have we heard that before? It isn’t even honest enough to justify the term ‘sophistry.’ If I could spell ‘disingenuous’ with three upper case Ds without being thought a stammerer, I would. It’s the classic, effectively meaningless phrase used by oppressive regimes and the rabid right everywhere to justify the ‘die Ausländer’ principle.

I suspect there’s something going on the ‘free west.’ In addition to the above, we’re also seeing the rise of the right in Germany and other European countries, and Trump is in charge of America. I think the real Third World War might have nothing to do with North Korea. I suspect it’s a war about establishing true values instead of nasty, narrow, nationalistic ones.

No comments: