Being Called Names

When I shared Father Zed's post, Dinosaur Media Attack on Catholics Who Uphold Faith and Morals, I mentioned that I would have to add 'alt-right' to the epithets I've been called. That reminded me of an incident years ago when I was in university.

I had a good friend, a professor in one of the hard sciences. He was a Kentishman and a left-wing socialist, in sympathy with the Militant Tendency in the Labour Party. He was also my doppelgänger, tho' his hair was greyer than mine, and my beard greyer than his. We were often mistaken for one another.

At the time, I was a member of the Conservative and Unionist Party in the UK and of 'Prag', a reactionary, High Tory ginger group within the Party. It drove Ron mad that I, of solid worker and peasant stock, should be a High Tory.

However, one day, a group of us were having coffee in the student union and, it being the sort of group it was, the talk inevitably turned to politics. As we chatted, I touched on my own political philosophy. Someone said, sharply, 'Why you're a fascist!

Ron may have been a Trotskyite, but he was an educated, intellectually honest Trotskyite. He leapt to my defence, saying, 'If Britain is saved from fascism, it will be by men of Weismiller's stripe!'

He, at least, understood what many people then, and the vast majority today, do not understand. Simply being anti-democratic, believing in monarchy, opposing socialism and communism, etc., does not define one as a fascist. There are many political tendencies on the right that are not fascist, which is inevitable. They are on the right, and fascism, as I pointed out in my post, Fascism/Naziism and Communism are Blood Brothers, is a movement solidly on the left, albeit nationalist, rather than internationalist.

So, I've reached a point that I've decided that since both (the left-wing) 'right' and the 'open' left hate me, I must be doing something right.