Comment on More than 100 arrested in London as violence flares after Southport stabbings
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 months agoFair point, although I’d consider islamic extremism to be pretty far right. It’s just a different branch of far right to the BNP/EDL-style nationalism.
Streamwave@feddit.uk 4 months ago
I think bundling the two together obscures more than it illuminates. I don’t think it’s any less serious (in fact in some regards it’s more dangerous), just that it doesn’t fit with normal far-right characteristics. To take one important difference, the far-right are ultra-nationalists, while Islamic fundamentalists are strictly anti-nationalist – they don’t recognise the legitimacy of nation-states to exist at all. They also tend to be pretty unconcerned with race or ethnicity in themselves, whereas that’s obviously a major thing for Neo-Nazis and other Fascists. And it makes it harder to identify and address the problem, because the sources and drivers of far-right extremism are separate and often unrelated to the sources of Islamic fundamentalism and radicalisation.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
That’s true. When I see “far right terrorism” it certainly conjures images in my mind of nationalist terrorism, despite islamic terrorism literally, by definition, being right wing.
It’s probably indeed better to say “islamic terrorism” if you want to avoid ambiguity. Personally I think we should apply the same treatment to nationalist terrorism, but I think the boat has sailed on that one.
Streamwave@feddit.uk 4 months ago
It’s neither right-wing nor left-wing. This sort of claim always strikes me as fairly cheap politics by people on the left. ‘When people do bad things it’s right-wing, when they do good things it’s left-wing.’ etc
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Nope. You’ve lost me there.
They’re conservative religious views. Of course it’s right wing. Same as conservative Christians in the US or Uganda, or the Hindu nationalism we see in India.
I disagree. It’s just calling a spade a spade.
Respectfully, that’s bullshit.
You find very, very few people who call Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc right wing. Far less than you see far-right people trundle out the tired “Nazis were left wing because National Socialists” nonsense.