I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG

This was a book by Edward de Bono. Now that book has come grimly to life.

I had always realised of course that my parents were rather right wing. They approved of Franco (for heaven’s sake) but they’d lived for 15 years in Barcelona and my mother who, in retrospect, reminds me of Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey had a clear view about sorting things out:

“If I had my way I’d line them up against a wall and shoot them”
Or
“Tell them to go bowl a hoop”

I adored my parents and took their right wing views with a pinch of salt and a smile. Their brand of thinking was prevalent a long time ago and we didn’t take it that seriously because neither did they.  It’s only now as we see the extraordinary wave of extreme right wing political success in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary, Finland, Austria, Greece, Spain and now the Pegida Movement in Germany that the red light is flashing.

It’s not just a wave. It’s becoming a tidal wave.

And I’m no longer smiling. What was maybe OK in the 1950s when many adults would have regarded Nigel Farage as a limp wristed liberal is distinctly not OK today.

In France the fog horn voiced Marine Le Pen is bludgeoning her way towards power. I have friends in France who think she’s OK but prefer her niece 26 year old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen who’s even more right wing. Marine says having Muslims in France is “like the Nazi occupation” and she isn’t that keen on the EU.

“The EU is deeply harmful, it is an anti-democratic monster.”

And then there’s Donald in the USA. He’s a bit like Jim Davidson going for leadership of the Conservative Party - laughable until the opinion polls come in. But the Guardian says don’t worry, frontrunners never win nominations. Yes he has got a 20% + lead but….

“A look at polls from the past three presidential elections offers little to excite the businessman: none of those leading in the polls this far ahead of the election ended up winning their party’s nomination”

So that’s all right.

Only of course it isn’t because the flavour of international politics is beginning to resemble that of the 1930s. The voices of the far right and the far left are beginning to be heard more and more loudly and more and more nastily.

The world we thought we were creating which was more comfortable, fairer, more ethical and more liberal is being assaulted by the Boots Boys in Norway,  the Veneto Fronte Skinheads in Italy and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. Let me tell you about Geert. He’s facing trial in Holland in 2016 for:
“inciting "discrimination and hatred" against Moroccans living in the Netherlands”

It’s time to start saying “You are Right and You are Wrong” if we want to create the kind of kinder world most of us want.